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Garimeth
2015-09-28, 10:44 AM
I was reading the thread about Powergaming and Forum therapy, and want to canvas some positions both from players and GMs. I'll open with the premise of the questions, and then explain my stance on it for my group I GM for.

The Questions:

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
5. What systems does your group primarily play?

So to get the ball rolling I will answer my own questions.

1. Yes!

2. See Below:
Resurrection: Easy access to resurrection makes character death only a resource tax, demolishes the verisimilitude of a setting in most cases, and takes away the epic quest to revive long lost heroes or fallen companions.

Detect Lies or Thoughts: Ruins the ability to run a good mystery or intrigue based campaign without everyone an their mom having access to the ability to NOT be read, and to READ others. Its like a psychic arms race.

Mind Control: While this can also be used to fuel many plots, if access to it is easy to come by, powerful, or long in duration it can invalidate entire plot arcs similar to the above.

Teleportation: Along with the obvious travel related adventures, teleportation creates a huge problem for verisimilitude. Knowledge and discoveries can be shared across huge spans of distance instantaneously, which would almost assuredly raise the tech level of a setting very quickly, especially if there is a magical method for reproducing text similar to the printing press or easy access to long range communication. Goods can be easily moved from one location to another, causing entire mission types to become unnecessary, obstacles to be bypassed, and not to mention what would castle, keep, and city defense have to look like!

Magic that Mass Produces Things: See my argument for the tech level, you basically have a magically induced industrial revolution if the access to this type of magic is easy to come by.

3. Resurrection is easy since I run 13th Age (casters have a limited number of times to cast, and people being resurrected can only be raised a handful of times.) and its pretty limited already, I also tend to make the campaigns be a little lower level to make this harder to access, or even sometimes ban the spell in D&D. I'm fine with a raise dead after the battle, but resurrection and TR I tend to limit.

Mind Control and Detect Thoughts/Lies: I don't limit it, but I definitely like settings where it doesn't exist. When it does exist, I just arms race with the PCs.

Teleportation: I limit free destination, long range teleports - particularly if it moves more than the adventuring party and their stuff. I am a fan of stargate style teleportation circles and shadowstep/dimension door style short range teleports.

4. As a player... I never get to play! So I probably wouldn't care, lol.

5. 13th Age and D&D.

Comet
2015-09-28, 10:58 AM
1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
Of course. That's what an ability does, it circumvents a particular obstacle and traditional D&D sort of gaming is all about obstacles.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
Any kind of magic and all kinds of adventures. To be more precise, any kind of magic as long as it is reliable enough and all kinds of adventures that are not particularly designed to negate that particular magic.

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
Sure. Usually I rely on the designers of the game knowing what kind of stories they want to tell with it, though, so I don't tamper with their decisions too much.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
The discussion bit is important, yes. No fun reading a rulebook and then arriving at the table to find out that that wasn't actually the game you were going to play.

5. What systems does your group primarily play?
Lamentations of the Flame Princess at the moment, since old D&D is really very good at producing fun and excitement with minimal tinkering and having to worry about things like this. Though we're branching out to try different retro systems and then hopefully something that is not so challenge driven eventually.

Flickerdart
2015-09-28, 11:02 AM
Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level. It's just a lot easier to do this for non-magical quantitative type powers because you can just give the enemies equally big numbers behind the scenes.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 11:06 AM
Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level. It's just a lot easier to do this for non-magical quantitative type powers because you can just give the enemies equally big numbers behind the scenes.

Yeah I agree, magic is just the catch all phrase I am using to indicate a particular set of abilities, you could easily substitute magic with tech for example. I'm more curious about which particular types of "power" people find it problematic to plan around, if they perceive it as a problem at all, how they deal with it, and what systems they are running that inform their opinions.

Anonymouswizard
2015-09-28, 12:06 PM
Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level. It's just a lot easier to do this for non-magical quantitative type powers because you can just give the enemies equally big numbers behind the scenes.

Also known as the 4e method. *ducks for cover*

To answer the questions:
1) Yes.

2) Any kind of magic can break a plot in the hands of a crafty player. Although some things (resurrection, teleportation, fabricate, mind reading, and so on) are easier to break the plot in two with a smart player can destroy a mystery with a timely charm person or two, while throwing a warning fireball or five might demoralise an army that it becomes less 'great big battle' and more 'mop up those who didn't flee'.

3) I do ban magic, but more for campaign theme than balance purposes. I prefer universal systems because I can pluck spells/powers/extras and build the list of allowed magic from the ground up, allowing me to avoid theme-breaking magic while keeping magic thematic to the setting.

4) As long as I knew by the time the group has started making characters I'm fine with it. Sure, I might need to rethink my concept, but I have the rest of the group to help me with that.

5) Whatever I can convince my players to try. This mainly turns out to be D&D, despite it being my least favourite system.

NichG
2015-09-28, 12:30 PM
1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?


Yes.



2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?


This is really too big of a question to answer in detail - it depends on too many things.

The way I look at it, an adventure is made up of the players determining a sequence of atomic actions in order to resolve or direct a situation in a way they want. Those atomic actions are the things that the PCs can just 'do' - they might take in-world time, but OOC they're a single statement like 'I move to this square' or 'I spend the day crafting' or 'I cast Fireball'.

The actual thing that makes it an adventure is that the players have to figure out the sequence of atomic actions to accomplish their goals. Because it's a sequence and not just one thing, circumstances can change and interact along the way; characters can depend on eachothers' abilities to reach that end point; and there is some element of the players having to actually 'figure out' what to do by engaging with the details of the scenario. This takes OOC playtime in a way that atomic actions do not, and so that kind of thing makes up the bulk of the actual gameplay.

In D&D, for example, abilities tend to be designed to add new atomic actions to a character. This need not be the case in general - abilities which have prerequisites for their usage can give the player a choice between different sequences or more options in the pattern that a given sequence takes instead of just replacing with atomic actions. Anyhow, this is not necessarily a fundamental design problem, but it is a consequence of adding new atomic actions. The result is simply, when a given goal becomes something that can be done via an atomic action, it ceases to be a viable adventure and just becomes an action that a character can do.



3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?


I tend to customize systems or write them from scratch as necessary to create the kind of gameplay I want to explore. So its less a matter of banning them and more a matter of not putting them into the system I'm writing in the first place.

Generally what I try to do is favor enablers over solvers in my design. That is, abilities which just do something outright tend to be weaker in games I design than abilities which require some build-up or careful planning or cooperation or creativity to apply. I also favor abilities which allow the player to shuffle around trouble - solve trouble now for different trouble later, that kind of thing. Direct high-end solvers I tend to limit more to one-use items and artifacts and things like that - the idea being, you can still do a huge thing and just solve a problem outright, but you can't systematize that and rely on doing it with regularity. So you still have to make the decision 'is this the problem I solve outright, or should I save this for the future?'

That said, new atomic actions do still accumulate, but I build that into the overall plan for the campaign - which is much, much easier when I'm the one designing the abilities than when I'm given a particular list. The ability list generally evolves over the course of the campaign - players can usually invent and discover new skills and abilities as the game progresses - and so when I want gameplay to move on to a different type of adventure I can do that by seeding new abilities I introduce with the necessary atomic actions to suggest the possibility of those kinds of goals and resolutions.



4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?


If the GM is going somewhere with it and I'm interested in the game, I'm generally okay with whatever. But it is also possible that the GM might be trying to run a game that I wouldn't be interested in. Not specifically because the things were in the rules and then removed.



5. What systems does your group primarily play?


Custom stuff, D&D.

JeenLeen
2015-09-28, 12:30 PM
The Questions:

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
5. What systems does your group primarily play?


1. They can but not necessarily in a bad way (see #2)

2. Magic Spell A makes Obstacle A void or so easy it's a non-issue. This is only a problem if Obstacle A needs to be a true obstacle for the group's enjoyment. If the game is about defeating a corrupt mayor, then being able to brainwash him or Detect Lies could be a major issue. But in many other games this might be a stepping stone in the plot and one of many ways to solve the issue. So I think it's fine if the powers available to the players are proportional to the current obstacles. Likewise, teleportation is only an issue if the game demands it's an issue. Resurrection can be an issue, since sometimes you need someone to not be able to rat you out.
In an Exalted game, we found a spy via a Charm that let me detect folks' motivations. It bypassed some obstacles the DM had planned, but that was okay. It didn't hurt the main story arc. If I had a power to instantly kill his master through his link of loyalty, that would've been gamebreaking.

3. I do ban spells that are problematic. If power X defeats too many obstacles or is not in line with other things, I'll ban it. Sometimes I would prefer to ban something just for players (like summon spells--not for gamebreaking reasons, but for 'combat takes too long' reasons), and I try to get the players' opinions about that. I can't think of any real example where this has happened, though. I guess in Mutants & Masterminds I banned a couple powers that would be too strong for the Power Level we were playing at.
Moreso, I try to think of in-game reasons why something makes sense. For example, in oWoD, powers are often balanced by how the setting will screw you over for abusing your powers (Paradox/Technocracy hunts you in Mage, punished for breaking the Masquerade in Vampire, etc.). Not in a GM fiat that you are screwed, but things that flow naturally from the setting (and players can avoid if they act wisely.)

4. I'm generally okay with it, but I like to now upfront before the game starts. Changing what exists in the world changes my character's perception of it (and my build) so I want to know enough to make it correctly. I would get annoyed if I felt I had to play a tactically foolish character, so I prefer stuff banned universe-wide instead of just for the PCs.

5. We veer towards d10 stuff like nWoD or Exalted, but are trying different systems. Played a lot of D&D 3.5 about 5 years ago.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 12:32 PM
Also known as the 4e method. *ducks for cover*

To answer the questions:
1) Yes.

2) Any kind of magic can break a plot in the hands of a crafty player. Although some things (resurrection, teleportation, fabricate, mind reading, and so on) are easier to break the plot in two with a smart player can destroy a mystery with a timely charm person or two, while throwing a warning fireball or five might demoralise an army that it becomes less 'great big battle' and more 'mop up those who didn't flee'.

3) I do ban magic, but more for campaign theme than balance purposes. I prefer universal systems because I can pluck spells/powers/extras and build the list of allowed magic from the ground up, allowing me to avoid theme-breaking magic while keeping magic thematic to the setting.

4) As long as I knew by the time the group has started making characters I'm fine with it. Sure, I might need to rethink my concept, but I have the rest of the group to help me with that.

5) Whatever I can convince my players to try. This mainly turns out to be D&D, despite it being my least favourite system.

OOC, what types of powers do you have the most trouble with and/or do you remove when using a universal system. Also as someone who runs D&D do you find these issues more or less pronounced in 5e vice previous versions? Haven't gotten to play a lot of 5e myself.

NoldorForce
2015-09-28, 12:47 PM
1. Yes, but as noted above this is not necessarily bad.

2. Most often it's information-gathering, but in general anything that's capable of getting around some sort of real-world assumption would fit this category. Magical genefixing and indefinite no-effort refrigeration are some of the weirder examples I've seen.

3. It honestly depends on what we're going for. Sometimes the game designer explicitly has a theme in mind for implementing some sort of "problematic magic", or perhaps the use of the magic makes the game itself flow better. In such a case I'm not going to break up what's going on just based on particular views of How Things Should Work. Flow is important, and I generally find that at the end of the day I still have enough ways to challenge the players that I don't mind much. (If society does move on, then everyone's dealing with the upheaval, not just the PCs!)

An obvious example is resurrection magic. Sure, it might seem like it messes around with society, but from the perspective of the mechanics it can be invaluable given a maxim of game design I've mentioned before: permakilling a PC should not be easier for the GM than making a new PC should be for the player.

4. Discussion is important here, but at least I'd be forewarned if my ideas on themes and setting clashed with the GM's.

5. A crazy-quilt collection of RPGs run in short campaigns.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 01:00 PM
1. Yes, but as noted above this is not necessarily bad.

2. Most often it's information-gathering, but in general anything that's capable of getting around some sort of real-world assumption would fit this category. Magical genefixing and indefinite no-effort refrigeration are some of the weirder examples I've seen.

3. It honestly depends on what we're going for. Sometimes the game designer explicitly has a theme in mind for implementing some sort of "problematic magic", or perhaps the use of the magic makes the game itself flow better. In such a case I'm not going to break up what's going on just based on particular views of How Things Should Work. Flow is important, and I generally find that at the end of the day I still have enough ways to challenge the players that I don't mind much. (If society does move on, then everyone's dealing with the upheaval, not just the PCs!)



For 2, how do you usually deal with that? For 3, could you elaborate? In 13th age for example most of the things I find problematic are intentionally not cooked into the system, but it'd be useful to know of other examples.

Joe the Rat
2015-09-28, 01:07 PM
1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?Yes, but.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?Flight and Teleportation foil many travel hazards, and can make or break combats. Truth magics complicate mysteries, the resource game becomes moot with very basic spells.

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?No. When plots and tricks become moot, it's time to find new ones. If I can't run a parlor room mystery thanks to mind reading and postcognition, then I simply have to create a different type of mystery, or include hypnotic amnesia and mind control. Sustained flight means no more roadside ambushes, but opens the possibilities of aerial combat.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
With prior discussion, no worries.

5. What systems does your group primarily play?
D&D 5, though we dabble is a couple other OSG types (Basic Fantasy, DCC). I have a secondary group that does 3.5, though we might be shifting away.

Segev
2015-09-28, 01:18 PM
As has been mentioned, it's a combination of power levels and expectations.

You generally don't have 10th-level D&D characters trying to deal with a mere corrupt mayor. Not unless that mayor is actually something far more than a mortal demihumanoid politician. Either he's a dragon or something else in disguise who is seeking to use this as his seed for a larger, more vile empire, or he's the puppet of some greater entity (demon, devil, dragon, aboleth...) with similarly grand plans.

By the time resurrection is a casual/simple option for the party to consider, you should expect that it will be a tool used both to resolve plots surrounding deaths and to reduce the risks involved in life-threatening situations. "Chautsu died again; go get the Dragonballs," is perfectly valid, and makes the party more open to tactics that might involve such things as a self-destruct attack to be used as a deterrent.

Generally speaking, just always have a potential bigger bad or new problem awaiting, in case the party thwarts something too quickly. Don't be afraid to improvise, or, if you don't feel up to it, don't be afraid to let the players know, "Well, that went a lot faster than I'd planned; do you have anything you want to do in some downtime?" or "see you next week!"

When you see them use a power you hadn't considered, think about who the enemies are and what their options are. Think about why they're supposed to be threatening. And consider how they'll react to knowing the party has these options available. In some cases, have them use similar tactics. Watch to see how the party reacts and deals with it.

Remember the limitations of problematic powers, as well. Teleport requires knowing where you want to go, for example. If you like the notion of the dungeon-maze that requires thorough exploration, there's both the fact that the PCs don't know the central room's appearance, and the bonus option of having the "dungeon" be an investigative romp where they have to find clues to ultimately discover WHERE to go. Once they know where, sure, they might curb-stomp the enemies guarding it, or even circumvent them, but their challenge was even knowing where the excessive force should be applied.

And let them have a few trivial trompings of foes. Their cool powers make one or two adventures easy...and that's how their reputation expands to reach those in need of such powers just to have a shot at victory. King Richard Thanheck just doesn't have the power to teleport around and raise people from the dead. If you could raise his slain heir, however, that's be awesome, and also, his heir's body is currently being held in full view by a dastardly villain who delights in pitting his death-trap laden gauntlet of evil against any foolish enough to try to approach.

Later, when scrying makes teleport "easy," remember that this is also a tactic whose word will get around. Foes will trap the rooms where scrying targets are located. Kidnapped princess? The scry will show you she's in a plush chamber. What it won't show you is the 30 dozen murder holes with highly-trained kobold crossbowmen ready to shoot anybody who enters without authorization. Not to mention the identical room that's filled with vocanic gasses, which will catch those who accidentally get "similar location" as a teleport result.

And the princess has been made into a time bomb of her own, whether via explosive runes, necrotic cyst, or other effects. So rescuing her is only part of the problem!

Eisenheim
2015-09-28, 01:21 PM
I think easy resurrection makes for bad world building, but none of the others are deal beakers, if they're genre appropriate. teleportation can bypass some problems, but I don't find "can the heroes get to the rest of the adventure?" to be a super interesting problem, and some teleportation systems add more interesting challenges than they remove, like 7th sea's Porte magic.
I don't think that detecting lies or some mind reading kills a mystery plot: if knowing who's lying is all you need to solve the mystery, it wasn't a very interesting mystery to begin with.

My group primarily plays fate.

Segev
2015-09-28, 01:35 PM
The tricky thing with easy resurrection magic is what defines "easy."

In D&D, for example, people often act as if it's easy and thus strains belief in some way. However, the absolute lowest level that anybody can pull off even the simplest raise dead spell is 9th.

A 9th level cleric is firmly in the mid levels, and is not going to be common. And he has very few raise dead spells per day, assuming he even prepares it in every single slot.

Add in the 5000 gp material component, and only the very wealthy can afford it with anything resembling casualness. But the truth is, that 9th level cleric is the rarer commodity. Depending on the setting, he could be the sort of holy man of legend which people travel months just to lay eyes on him from a distance for a few minutes. Or he could be so common as to be the high priest of a fairly large city's central temple. But he's hardly somebody that even most wealthy merchants can easily command the time of.

It again depends on the setting, but it's possible that there are more ruling kings than there are 9th level characters in the whole setting. A lot of kings in fantasy settings either rule the "entire land" (in which case this won't be true) or rule, effectively, a city-state with at most 2-3 smaller towns on the outskirts.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 01:54 PM
Segev, you raise a good point about the power level of a campaign, and it is also very system dependent. One of the benchmarks I try to use when establishing my setting, is what ECL other powerful individuals in the campaign are. For my current 13th Age (max level of 10, with incremental advances in between levels) game I established at the outset that the most accomplished of NPCs in the setting are level 6-7 with only legendary figures being an 8, only one documented resurrection has occurred in the past several hundred years, etc. So now because of this I limit the number and aggression of some of the more powerful types of creatures in the setting, and the main antagonists are orcs, ogres, undead, and other members of society - this way they are not constantly outclassed by their opponents. By the time they reach that level they will be legends of their own, having significant impact on the setting (to be held to in future running of the setting) and are dealing with problems on a multi-kingdom level.

In most campaign of D&D (3.5) I've run 5k diamond is not a difficult thing to get, and you are absolutely right - it becomes a valid tactic and needs to be baked into the world. For my part that's simply not the story I'm interested in telling. I'll run tippyverse and have fun, but for me that fun has a quick expiration date lol.

GungHo
2015-09-28, 01:59 PM
Sometimes I introduce complications or change "physics" to match whatever paradigm I want to present... such as the only thing resembling teleportation being done by Stargate or replacing it with something like a plane shift to "subspace"/"hyperspace" that requires traversal (and has its own obstacles) instead of instantaneous transport. Or, you can teleport/resurrect, but failure is quite possible for anything (no such thing as teleport without error), and critical failure is REALLY bad (such as having the resurrection grab the wrong soul or since it's a quantum effect, having the time part of spacetime displacement come into effect rather than just the space part...)

However, when you come up with these complications, you need to address why you're adding the complication. Is it because the teleportation/resurrection is really the problem or is it because you planned poorly? You need to be careful not to look like you're trying to punish ingenuity or fun simply because it led to a solution you didn't anticipate. Additionally, you need to make sure you're not trying to use the same obstacles for a 15th level party that you did when they were at 3rd level. If you're just providing stronger and stronger versions of the same 7 orc grunt party they were fighting months ago, that's on you, not on them.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 02:03 PM
I think easy resurrection makes for bad world building, but none of the others are deal beakers, if they're genre appropriate. teleportation can bypass some problems, but I don't find "can the heroes get to the rest of the adventure?" to be a super interesting problem, and some teleportation systems add more interesting challenges than they remove, like 7th sea's Porte magic.
I don't think that detecting lies or some mind reading kills a mystery plot: if knowing who's lying is all you need to solve the mystery, it wasn't a very interesting mystery to begin with.

My group primarily plays fate.

I think for my part it depnds on how much of the setting is a game feature. By way of an example. In Morrowind I could not fast travel anywhere I wanted to go, even if I had been there, this caused me to see much more of the world and in so doing be more immersed. In later TES games this was not the case. Even if as the DM I elapse time and simply say it takes you XXX time to get to XXX place, I'm telling you about the places you see and visit along the way, places you may find interesting things in, or meet interesting people, or find cool opportunities for side quests etc. As soon as teleportation (or anything similar) is on the table, that's one less story-telling tool at my disposal. That's why I don't mind teleportation circles much, I even find them interesting.

I've heard interesting things about 7th Sea, I may look into that game.

Detecting lies in and of itself may not thwart the plot, but related magics certainly can. You can know somebody is playing you, or planning on betraying you, or any number of things. We recently had an awesome session where an apparent mentor of the party betrayed them and tried to kill them, it was awesome. The player were shocked and outraged, and when they defeated said person their satisfaction was immense. Go back and give the party's Wiz/Rog those kinds of abilities and the only way to pull that off is give everybody relevant a trinket that protects against those abilities, but that means they aren't rare, which mean magic items can be easily made, which mean that....and so on.

In my 13th Age game though, non-charged magic items can not be made, items become permanently magic based off of being used to do heroic things and the "imprint" of those deeds and the wielder leaving their mark on the object.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 02:06 PM
Sometimes I introduce complications or change "physics" to match whatever paradigm I want to present... such as the only thing resembling teleportation being done by Stargate or replacing it with something like a plane shift to "subspace"/"hyperspace" that requires traversal (and has its own obstacles) instead of instantaneous transport. Or, you can teleport/resurrect, but failure is quite possible for anything (no such thing as teleport without error), and critical failure is REALLY bad (such as having the resurrection grab the wrong soul or since it's a quantum effect, having the time part of spacetime displacement come into effect rather than just the space part...)

However, when you come up with these complications, you need to address why you're adding the complication. Is it because the teleportation/resurrection is really the problem or is it because you planned poorly? You need to be careful not to look like you're trying to punish ingenuity or fun simply because it led to a solution you didn't anticipate. Additionally, you need to make sure you're not trying to use the same obstacles for a 15th level party that you did when they were at 3rd level. If you're just providing stronger and stronger versions of the same 7 orc grunt party they were fighting months ago, that's on you, not on them.

Agreed! I personally always feel any of these kinds of complications need to be baked into the setting before we even start the game, and clearly communicated to the players. Otherwise even if I've always felt that only stargate-esque teleportation exists, or that resurrection is XXX the players may feel like I'm just trying to shut them down, which is never good!

Eldan
2015-09-28, 02:06 PM
I think certain types of magic just fall under "system basics". Like, some kind of settings and systems just don't do certain plots well.

Like, resurrection. I could write a setting/system where it was normal that everyone just came back when killed. In a superhero system where everyone can fly, a wall isn't an obstacle.

I think the same goes for, say, teleport. yes, it invalidates travel plots, but I think you just have to plan for that, if you play with it.

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 02:11 PM
I think certain types of magic just fall under "system basics". Like, some kind of settings and systems just don't do certain plots well.

Like, resurrection. I could write a setting/system where it was normal that everyone just came back when killed. In a superhero system where everyone can fly, a wall isn't an obstacle.

I think the same goes for, say, teleport. yes, it invalidates travel plots, but I think you just have to plan for that, if you play with it.

Well, of course! I'm interested in seeing which other things people run into problems with, how they handle them, and what systems they use, lol.

Segev
2015-09-28, 02:32 PM
It also doesn't have to invalidate travel plots. It just means you need a reason to traverse that path. Perhaps there is literally searching going on. Teleportation won't help you learn about the road. Perhaps the party is supposed to be making a map. Perhaps the party is actually scouting for a good location to build a fort, or lay an ambush, or just to find a new mining spot. Or maybe they're trying to trace where the bandits that stole the phylactery of the lich they just defeated went, and they don't know anything about the bandits so can't begin to scry them out. They do have the Ranger's tracking talents, however, and know where the robbery occurred. Now they have 1d10 days to find and destroy it before the lich returns!

Garimeth
2015-09-28, 02:47 PM
It also doesn't have to invalidate travel plots. It just means you need a reason to traverse that path. Perhaps there is literally searching going on. Teleportation won't help you learn about the road. Perhaps the party is supposed to be making a map. Perhaps the party is actually scouting for a good location to build a fort, or lay an ambush, or just to find a new mining spot. Or maybe they're trying to trace where the bandits that stole the phylactery of the lich they just defeated went, and they don't know anything about the bandits so can't begin to scry them out. They do have the Ranger's tracking talents, however, and know where the robbery occurred. Now they have 1d10 days to find and destroy it before the lich returns!

Hmm. I don't disagree with you, but consider the following adventure (actually this is the next couple of sessions in my game!)

The party has to find passage from their land locked kingdom across a nearby sea. this will be the first time that their characters have ever left the kingdom, and most people in the kingdom have never left either, as travel in this region is long and dangerous, and the relationships with other kingdoms is strained. First they will have to get passage to the new kingdom, from which they can get passage to their actual destination. The intial passage will be handled by their employers (a council of knights). In this new city they will hire a crew to drop them off near some uninhabitated ruined necropolis that is excessively dangerous for normal folk. This gives me the opportunity to tell them about this new kingdom and the people they meet etc. Gives the world more of a lived in feeling and opportunity for a recurring NPC (the crew captain). They get dropped off and fight their way through the ruins for the McGuffin. Afterwards they have to extract on foot. They will run into a group of "adventurers" looting one of the towns they will most likely go through (the whole region has been abandoned due to a calamity centuries ago) if they try and get a ride with the adventurers, who have their own ship, the adventurers will try and rob them once they are out to sea. any other interactions with the NPC group I'm leaving fluid based off of the party's actions, but with the basic rule that the NPCs are non-law-abiding looters who want the PCs' stuff.

Now if the party had access to scry and teleport, the first portion (getting there, which will only take 15 minutes or so real time) and the third portion (getting home, which is now a mini adventure) would be invalidated. Its not necessarily that its a BAD thing per se, its that it gives me as a DM less tools to tell the story with. Of course in some cases these same things can be used to FEUL stories - invaders from another plane, teleports gone wrong, a scrying that reveals the OTHER, all kinds of things.

Sidenote, I like that bandit/lich idea.

Segev
2015-09-28, 03:22 PM
Have whatever reason they are going to the far-away land require them to stop off at a few places in Nearby Kingdom (including that necropolis) to gather some information, some special supplies, or any other second- or third-order MacGuffins needed to operate successfully in the far-away land.

Also, again, remember that they've never been to this place; how will they teleport there? On whom or what will they scry to get a view of it? They don't know where the MacGuffin is, specifically; at best, they have a(n outdated) map to where they THINK it is. Here, overland flight will be more trouble than teleport: it will let them cover more ground safely.

Of course, flying draws its own attentions; plan your adventure to include things that fly rather than merely things which lurk on the ground. Dragons, harpies, even couatls and bow-using bugbears could be trouble.

Getting home won't be such a challenge, no. So don't plan for it to be. Spend that effort on improving the challenges once they are home that will prevent them from using the MacGuffin. If you must have them go through the additional exploration phase, have the "slot B" for which the MacGuffin is "tab A" have been stolen, a la the bandits-with-lich-phylactery plotline, and send them searching through that area.



Of course, this is, again, a higher-level party. What you described would be an excellent low-level adventure, culminating anywhere from level 5 to level 8. Before teleport, scry, and overland flight are available.

oxybe
2015-09-28, 04:44 PM
1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
5. What systems does your group primarily play?

1 - yup

2 - Magic as plot disruption tool. While convenience-based magic is fine, when your spells seem to exist to tell the plot "no" and you constantly need to work around it or ban it, it gets frustrating. This tends to be an issue when you haven't really nailed down the scope of the magic you want the players to have regular access to. doubly so if this magic is only in the hands of some players and not others, or at least easily accessible to some and very hard for others.

3 - if the game or it's setting don't address the issue, i won't run it. I want adjust things, not rewrite it. I have better things to spend my energy on.

4 - Depends on the game. If I sign up for a Mage the Awakening game and I'm told "don't break reality" I likely won't play. If I sign up for a non-supernaturals WoD game, I never planned on using that stuff, so W/E. In a game like D&D, this is a big "it depends".

5 - pathfinder for the main game, but between modules or when the gm can't make it, it tends to be fair game.

Honest Tiefling
2015-09-28, 05:24 PM
1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
As said before, any ability will make obstacles go away. I think the problem is that certain systems have enough magic to make too many go away compared to other characters. But, as said before, this depends greatly on the power level of the game. In a game where the fighter is basically a demigod of destruction, that noble isn't so much an obstacle as a fresh coat of red paint on the walls. In these high powered games, such an approach is not an issue, but a feature.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
I think it depends less on the type of adventure, and more on the power level of the game. With broken magic in a low power setting/game style, any sort of adventure becomes a problem. Intrigue-based? Charm person. Nature-based? Nature is now burning with Hellfire. Combat? Now the baddies are fighting for us, and I summoned a flying, invisible juggernaut. So long, mundane suckers!

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
I honestly haven't found a happy medium with house rules nor have a dedicated set of players to really answer this. Best I can do is to say I'd like to move away from big, flashy spells that have daily limits to spells that are more limited in their function but are limited to encounters.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
Depends. If they go too far, I'm less likely to find it appealing as I primarily play casters. However, I do try to keep an open mind. What would also help is if the DM makes it clear they are open to discussion in case a house rule backfires or they want to prohibit certain uses of spells. In turn, I'm willing to ditch spells and abilities mid-game with a bit of retconning if they prove problematic after talking about it. I do prefer talking about it instead of ripping it from my character sheet, however...

5. What systems does your group primarily play?
Pathfinder/3.5, with some Whitewolf, but not frequently enough for me to understand it or the settings well.

Knaight
2015-09-28, 06:36 PM
While I wouldn't define any magic as inherently problematic, I would say that particular classes of magic have disproportionate setting and thematic implications, and should be handled more carefully. Permanent enchantments have a much bigger setting implication than temporary effects, mind affecting magic tends to have a major setting implication, widespread healing has a major setting implication, resurrection has a major setting implication, easy flight has a major setting implication. There are things that can be plopped down in an otherwise non-magical setting which wouldn't necessarily alter it too dramatically, and those are significantly easier to deal with and generally things that I put less careful thought into the matter of including or excluding.

SimonMoon6
2015-09-28, 06:53 PM
I think it's not just the existence of a particular magical power.

I think the problem is when every party has *every*power available to them. Yeah, of course, every wizard knows teleport *and* detect thoughts *and* so forth *and* so on. Every party has access to resurrection. Well, they have to, because every monster has a chance to insta-kill the party. Blah.

But then, I come from a background of superhero games, where each character may have powers, but they are limited, and they don't change every day, and if you need to resurrect somebody, you don't just go to town and pay people. Superheroes tend to be way less powerful and way more balanced than any D&D (3.x) party, in the context of what adventures they can ruin.

Fiery Diamond
2015-09-28, 07:00 PM
Yes.



This is really too big of a question to answer in detail - it depends on too many things.

The way I look at it, an adventure is made up of the players determining a sequence of atomic actions in order to resolve or direct a situation in a way they want. Those atomic actions are the things that the PCs can just 'do' - they might take in-world time, but OOC they're a single statement like 'I move to this square' or 'I spend the day crafting' or 'I cast Fireball'.

The actual thing that makes it an adventure is that the players have to figure out the sequence of atomic actions to accomplish their goals. Because it's a sequence and not just one thing, circumstances can change and interact along the way; characters can depend on eachothers' abilities to reach that end point; and there is some element of the players having to actually 'figure out' what to do by engaging with the details of the scenario. This takes OOC playtime in a way that atomic actions do not, and so that kind of thing makes up the bulk of the actual gameplay.

In D&D, for example, abilities tend to be designed to add new atomic actions to a character. This need not be the case in general - abilities which have prerequisites for their usage can give the player a choice between different sequences or more options in the pattern that a given sequence takes instead of just replacing with atomic actions. Anyhow, this is not necessarily a fundamental design problem, but it is a consequence of adding new atomic actions. The result is simply, when a given goal becomes something that can be done via an atomic action, it ceases to be a viable adventure and just becomes an action that a character can do.



I tend to customize systems or write them from scratch as necessary to create the kind of gameplay I want to explore. So its less a matter of banning them and more a matter of not putting them into the system I'm writing in the first place.

Generally what I try to do is favor enablers over solvers in my design. That is, abilities which just do something outright tend to be weaker in games I design than abilities which require some build-up or careful planning or cooperation or creativity to apply. I also favor abilities which allow the player to shuffle around trouble - solve trouble now for different trouble later, that kind of thing. Direct high-end solvers I tend to limit more to one-use items and artifacts and things like that - the idea being, you can still do a huge thing and just solve a problem outright, but you can't systematize that and rely on doing it with regularity. So you still have to make the decision 'is this the problem I solve outright, or should I save this for the future?'

That said, new atomic actions do still accumulate, but I build that into the overall plan for the campaign - which is much, much easier when I'm the one designing the abilities than when I'm given a particular list. The ability list generally evolves over the course of the campaign - players can usually invent and discover new skills and abilities as the game progresses - and so when I want gameplay to move on to a different type of adventure I can do that by seeding new abilities I introduce with the necessary atomic actions to suggest the possibility of those kinds of goals and resolutions.



If the GM is going somewhere with it and I'm interested in the game, I'm generally okay with whatever. But it is also possible that the GM might be trying to run a game that I wouldn't be interested in. Not specifically because the things were in the rules and then removed.



Custom stuff, D&D.

This sounds really interesting. I'm having some difficulty wrapping my mind around abilities that do not add new atomic actions, though. Could you give some examples and how they work? I assume from what you've described you're talking about something more complex than just making the numbers bigger, and what you've said sounds intriguing, but without any frame of reference I'm having trouble envisioning it.

Psyren
2015-09-28, 08:46 PM
"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level.

I don't know about how other games treat teleportation, but in D&D there is plenty of reason for it not to work without the GM relying on a "crutch" or arbitrary "field." An oft-overlooked line in the spell says:


You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination. The clearer your mental image, the more likely the teleportation works. Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

Bam. Even if you have a crystal-clear idea of where you're headed (inside the bad guy's dungeon, with shifting walls, where none of you have set foot before), "strong energy" can still screw you over.

In short, teleportation gets you to the doorstep safely, and from there you're following the rogue in - like a damn adventuring party instead of a delivery service.

NichG
2015-09-28, 08:59 PM
This sounds really interesting. I'm having some difficulty wrapping my mind around abilities that do not add new atomic actions, though. Could you give some examples and how they work? I assume from what you've described you're talking about something more complex than just making the numbers bigger, and what you've said sounds intriguing, but without any frame of reference I'm having trouble envisioning it.

So, for example, in my current game there's a skill for Summoning. This allows the user to call forth from nothingness the manifestation of a particular legend or myth. The summoned creature is not automatically compelled, and must be negotiated with and placated with appropriate offerings or deals. This can potentially give the user the ability to solve many different problems, but not in a single step - instead, they have to figure out what myth to summon, gather the resources necessary to make an appropriate offering, etc. Using a very powerful summon is a mini-adventure in its own right. So given a particular goal, the players could choose two broadly different paths to resolve it - one path would be to just do things the 'normal' way, the other path would be to figure out how to get a summon to deal with it for them. Both paths still require multiple atomic actions to resolve.

A simpler example would be an ability that allows one to obtain a lead for a given mystery once per game or something like that. It doesn't promise to solve the mystery (it isn't an atomic action that resolves the conflict), but rather it helps prime the player into coming up with what to do next. So it helps the adventure continue rather than causing it to come to a quick end.

Another example would be something like an ability that lets one take the party on a journey into the inner world of an item or person in order to learn their history or knowledge. So if you want to get information from someone, you now have a choice - do you do it normally (interrogation, investigation, bribery, etc), or do you do it by journeying into their head and navigating a dungeon made up of their subconscious instead? So it gives the players a choice of the type of gameplay and methods they want to use to resolve the situation, but it still requires an adventure in either case. It may even require more of an adventure to do the journey-inside thing than it would just to work out how to negotiate with the person.

The thing is, if these abilities aren't very powerful, players will just not use them because they seem like trouble. So the art is in balancing that aspect - making the abilities powerful enough to entice the players to use them despite the fact that they take time and aren't just automatic. Furthermore, you have to be careful about the sequence they require becoming repetitive, since then they effectively do become atomic actions. That's part of the reason why the summoning ability doesn't transport a particular entity from somewhere but actually creates them out of nothing each time - it allows for the summoned entities to be resilient to threats of force without just being stupid, since otherwise it'd open up the automatic procedure of 'summon into a cage and then threaten with death to ensure cooperation' or things like that.

Kelb_Panthera
2015-09-28, 09:41 PM
1. Anything can be problematic if you don't know what to do with it.

2. I don't have much trouble with anything but I'll address some of the more common ones.

Teleportation: The only problem this causes is that it eliminates -some- travel based adventures. The easy solution is to send the party somewhere neither they nor anyone they know has been before. They can TP as to the closest location/person they know but have to manually cross the remaining distance. False information can also lead to teleporting into untenable positions. Finally, in my preferred game at least, there are methods to both trace and block teleportation effects.

Flight: I honestly don't get why this one gives people pause. Bad weather, flying enemies, ranged weapons, underground adventures; there are just so many ways to make this a non-issue.

Info gathering, mind reading, et-al: these affects can be fairly problematic for people that aren't familiar with the control of the flow of information. Mind reading is useless if the target doesn't have the knowledge you seek and can be a detriment if he's been fed false information for enemies to glean from him. Detect lies can be foiled by misleading truths hand half-truths, doesn't do anything at all if the target refuses to speak and, again, the target can't tell you the truth if he doesn't know it because of genuine ignorance or because someone lied to him. You can't use scrying to spy on someone you don't know and a good cover identity can keep you from finding anything even if you do know the target. Then there's camouflage and coded messages to keep your scrying sensor from seeing/hearing the truth. If you know how to control information, magics that gather it are just one more tool for spycraft, not an absolute foil against it.

Ressurection: whether this is a problem or not is entirely a matter of taste. In my chosen game, it's expensive enough and those who can perform it are rare enough that I really don't have a problem with it. Dragging the body back to town and paying the full cost of a death reversal can be unfeasible until at least mid level and even then it's a nasty blow to the wallet.

Excessive healing: Supposedly makes lethality a non-issue since the party goes into every battle at full health. Ramping up the battles and/or destroying the source of healing can turn such into a decent resource drain. You don't want to go overboard but there are options. Besides, HP can be a contributor to the 15 minute workday and this prevents that so it can be a good thing too.

3. Mostly I just keep the limitations of the spells in mind and use those limitations to make them useful tools instead of game-busters. In a few exceptional circumstances I'll nerf a particularly problematic combination of effects or weird rules interaction but otherwise I like the magic in my chosen system as is.

4. As long as it was discussed and made clear up front, I'm usually game until/unless the GM is using a system I generally dislike outside of those aspects anyway.

5. D&D 3.X.

NoldorForce
2015-09-28, 11:43 PM
One big thing I should note is that if some setting element exists which obviates certain plots (teleportation is obvious, but so is flying, for instance), that will restrict you to some degree in setting up the narrative. But inversely, it will also enable certain plots if they require the setting elements in the first place to be resolved.

One example from my current experience is from my Rogue Trader campaign. (It's actually hacked Dark Heresy 2E because original Rogue Trader is long in the tooth, but that's just details.) Normally you're expected to navigate from point to point by employing a human from the Navis Nobilite to steer your ship through the turbulent Warp. Getting anywhere takes a fair bit of time, and even if you're specialized to navigate incredibly well the Warp can still ruin your day. In contrast to that (given what happened in the precursor campaign of Black Crusade), my group of PCs is on a Necron vessel with a Necron navigator. Because Necron ships fly around sheltered within the ancient Webway routes of the Warp, the party has found it far easier and far safer to travel amongst the stars than they would on any human vessel.

So by virtue of having the OSHA Bullet as their ship, the party's made a decision that Warp storms and other catastrophic hijinks aren't going to be plot elements for them. Nor will long amounts of time delay matter on their part. But at the same time, all of this has enabled other plot elements to come to the fore. The party has been able to dive into a churning Warp storm risk-free to put down Necron pylons on select worlds (when anyone else would almost certainly be lost), and to speed way ahead of conventional voidships to beat them to the punch. Thus my advice here is that one shouldn't necessarily rankle against the PCs' newfound capabilities; one can instead require the PCs to use those capabilities.

Garimeth
2015-09-29, 07:19 AM
Custom stuff, D&D.

Interesting response, I accidentally skipped it yesterday! I too tend to heavily "houserule" and keep them all in a Word document that I distribute to the players. Never tried making my own system though.


[B]3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
I honestly haven't found a happy medium with house rules nor have a dedicated set of players to really answer this. Best I can do is to say I'd like to move away from big, flashy spells that have daily limits to spells that are more limited in their function but are limited to encounters.
Check out 13th Age, based off of what you described it may be up your alley.


But then, I come from a background of superhero games, where each character may have powers, but they are limited, and they don't change every day, and if you need to resurrect somebody, you don't just go to town and pay people. Superheroes tend to be way less powerful and way more balanced than any D&D (3.x) party, in the context of what adventures they can ruin.
This is a good point, I've also always been a fan of magic "specialists" as well. Good heroes and villains are defined by their weaknesses as much as their strengths.


In short, teleportation gets you to the doorstep safely, and from there you're following the rogue in - like a damn adventuring party instead of a delivery service.
Well, that's a welcome change to me, but it definitely was not the case in some editions of D&D!


One big thing I should note is that if some setting element exists which obviates certain plots (teleportation is obvious, but so is flying, for instance), that will restrict you to some degree in setting up the narrative. But inversely, it will also enable certain plots if they require the setting elements in the first place to be resolved....

... Thus my advice here is that one shouldn't necessarily rankle against the PCs' newfound capabilities; one can instead require the PCs to use those capabilities.

For the first part that is definitely where flight falls in many settings (any with airships for example) and in many of those games and setting it is a graduated ability of sorts - everybody above a certain power level is assumed to have some method of doing it or getting around it.

For the second, I agree that's how you should handle it after you have already started the game, but if you know something doesn't work for the setting or game you envision I don't have an issue with disallowing it at the start. Communication obviously being the key here.

Raimun
2015-09-29, 07:33 AM
Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.


Yeah. Usually when people think stuff in a high level (10+) campaign is overpowered, it just feels like they assume high level characters face similar challenges as low level characters. Or most characters in fantasy literature, who would be pretty low level if compared to what characters in D&D 3.5 can do.

Of course, this is all assuming mediocre to high optimization and not theoretical loophole builds like infinite damage loops, Locate City-bomb, Pun-pun and actual deviation from the rules.

Garimeth
2015-09-29, 08:43 AM
Or most characters in fantasy literature, who would be pretty low level if compared to what characters in D&D 3.5 can do.

I think this is a crux of it for most of my group and me. Most of us got into gaming because of novels, not video games, and so our expectations are made accordingly. In a lot of the high powered fantasy, late WoT among others, I just feel a lot of it gets overboard. Pretty big Sanderson fan though, but he goes out of his way to create systems and heroes with real limitations. Even if I was going to base it on a video game experience I think the first half of FF9 fits my bill best.

Segev
2015-09-29, 09:31 AM
If you wish to use D&D, then, the best choice is to keep it low-mid level. When you hit level 9 or so should be the climactic end point of a campaign, as your heroes are moving firmly into mid-levels and are no longer going to be doing the low-level adventure activities of worrying just about travel across country and back. Heck, they're not even worried about shelter when they deign to be out in the middle of nowhere, anymore. Mid-level adventurers are more akin to extremely skilled specialists with access to modern real-world convenience-tech such as RVs and ready communication and access to basic necessities and reasonable comforts. They've stopped being inconvenienced by mundane concerns; they're confident in their prowess to stride anywhere and get on with dignity. They're not yet powers that cause kingdoms to quake and fall, but they catch the notice of potentates and are easily well-known if they want to be.

Hawkstar
2015-09-29, 09:49 AM
Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.
There is a problem with this analogy - A race to a city is qualitatively different from a high-school wrestling competition.

Both, Hercules and Jim the Jock would be similarly challenged by a race to a city, with the difference being why they're racing - Hercules might be needing to save the city from a Hydra, while Jim just needs to not be late for the state High School Wrestling competition.

Flickerdart
2015-09-29, 10:11 AM
I don't know about how other games treat teleportation, but in D&D there is plenty of reason for it not to work without the GM relying on a "crutch" or arbitrary "field." An oft-overlooked line in the spell says:



Bam. Even if you have a crystal-clear idea of where you're headed (inside the bad guy's dungeon, with shifting walls, where none of you have set foot before), "strong energy" can still screw you over.

In short, teleportation gets you to the doorstep safely, and from there you're following the rogue in - like a damn adventuring party instead of a delivery service.
Oh yeah, "strong energy" is so very different from "anti-teleporation field."

There is a problem with this analogy - A race to a city is qualitatively different from a high-school wrestling competition.

Both, Hercules and Jim the Jock would be similarly challenged by a race to a city, with the difference being why they're racing - Hercules might be needing to save the city from a Hydra, while Jim just needs to not be late for the state High School Wrestling competition.
Hercules is qualitatively different from a 9th level wizard, too. That's why he's in the wrestling analogy.

Honest Tiefling
2015-09-29, 11:25 AM
Check out 13th Age, based off of what you described it may be up your alley.

I've never heard of it, care to explain more about it? If it solves the whole issue of my players getting bored/hoarding resources like insane squirrels, I'm intrigued.

Garimeth
2015-09-29, 01:47 PM
I've never heard of it, care to explain more about it? If it solves the whole issue of my players getting bored/hoarding resources like insane squirrels, I'm intrigued.

So its a d20 derivative made by the lead designers of 3e and 4e, and only requires one book to run, though the expansion book is very well done, and I'd recommend picking it up. Its more rules light than D&D but still crunchier than something like Fate. Most of the familiar D&D races and classes are present.

Mechanically most of the classes function differently. The Fighter for example has "flexible attacks" which would be a special attack triggered based on the natural die roll. Some attacks might only trigger on a natural even roll, and give the fighter the ability to reroll 1s and 2s on his damage, or make a second attack. Some may trigger on a miss and cause their next attack that hits to hit harder. These represent the fighter being adaptable to his changing environment and taking advantage of slips in the opponent's defense, etc. Casters have "at will" spells, encounter based spells and "daily" spells that aren't really daily, but I'll come back to that. The caster gets to spend his spell slots and select which ones he takes, but many of these will not be "dailies" and the caster will never NOT have something to do. Also with greater levels comes more damage and new abilities, not more attacks, so combat does not start to crawl more with the power creep.

There are no skills, instead there are backgrounds. Each character gets 8 back ground points and they spend them on backgrounds they come up with themselves. So if I were making myself for example I might give myself 5 ranks of Fleet Marine force Sailor and 3 ranks of Musician. When I tell the DM I am going to stand as the camp sentry he might have me roll a WIS check to see if I spot somebody spying on the camp or trying to sneak in telling me I can apply any appropriate back ground, to which I would add my FMF Sailor to my check. Provides players with a lot of freedom to decide what they are good at.

Going back to dailies, the system does not use actual "days" they use "full heal ups". Basically from a narrative standpoint a day is "every 3-4 battles". This mean that there is a lot less down time in the game because players are rewarded for pushing through, not retreating and resting. There is more to this of course, and in my group I've house ruled some changes and tweaks, but that's probably more in the weeds than you want or need atm.

Lastly, there are two really cool storytelling tools that could be taken and applied to other games pretty well. One is the One Unique Thing, which is where the player says something that makes them different from everyone else in the game world. These could be mundane "I am the son of the richest man in the kingdom" or extraordinary "I am the reincarnation of a long dead hero" all of these of course are subject to DM approval. The other tool is the Icon Relationships. In my setting the Icons are basically factions and you get 3 points to state whether you have a positive, conflicted, or negative relationship with various icons and there are some mechanical implications to that, but mostly its just a great tool combined with the OUT in making the player connected to the rest of the setting.

Anyway those are some highlights, obviously there is much more to it, and there is also a free PDF of the SRD on the pelgrane press website if you want to look into it further before shelling out for the book. The book is QUITE nice though, and you get a PDF if you purchase it off their site. Lastly, combat is pretty quick and the system is very easy to run and prepare for sessions with, and homebrewing is a breeze.

Psyren
2015-09-29, 07:29 PM
Oh yeah, "strong energy" is so very different from "anti-teleporation field."

It's part of the spell, PHB pg. 293. It's not the DM's fault if everyone goes in expecting a favorable houserule, they should be expecting RAW unless otherwise noted.

Flickerdart
2015-09-29, 08:14 PM
It's part of the spell, PHB pg. 293. It's not the DM's fault if everyone goes in expecting a favorable houserule, they should be expecting RAW unless otherwise noted.
That's not what those words mean, but you are also completely missing the point. There is no difference between countering teleport with "strong energy" (incidentally it's completely up to the DM whether or not to put "strong energy" into the campaign, or even decide what "strong energy" means) or an anti-teleportation field, or a dead magic zone. All of them are just excuses. Excuses put into the game to make lazy DMing easier, but still excuses.

Kelb_Panthera
2015-09-29, 08:21 PM
That's not what those words mean, but you are also completely missing the point. There is no difference between countering teleport with "strong energy" (incidentally it's completely up to the DM whether or not to put "strong energy" into the campaign, or even decide what "strong energy" means) or an anti-teleportation field, or a dead magic zone. All of them are just excuses. Excuses put into the game to make lazy DMing easier, but still excuses.

Hold on just a sec there.

Not every instance of teleportation being blocked is lazy DM'ing. Some enemies and environs do have legitimate reasons to keep teleporting into their territory from being feasible; take the underdark with its faerzress or the state of Adar in Eberron's continent of Sarlonna or -any- reasonably intelligent spellcaster antagonist's tower. It's not lazy DM'ing unless it's being done all the time because the DM doesn't want to deal with it and couldn't be honest enough to just ban it.

goto124
2015-09-29, 08:21 PM
Box of Anti-Teleportation
Caution: Use Sparingly.

hifidelity2
2015-09-30, 05:58 AM
1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?

Yes they do - but its up to me as DM to think of them and work around them

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
For me Mind Affecting / reading spells are the worst

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
Some spells I say they just don't know - although maybe a quest will allow them to find the spell. The other way is rare and expensive components. This allow me to limit how often they can caste the spell


4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
No problem so long as its set out at the beginning. If I don't like the restrictions I can always play another PC

5. What systems does your group primarily play?
3.5 D&D, GURPS,

Garimeth
2015-09-30, 09:27 AM
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
Some spells I say they just don't know - although maybe a quest will allow them to find the spell. The other way is rare and expensive components. This allow me to limit how often they can caste the spell

I like this, and it works for wizards, but what about clerics, bards, and sorcerers as well as other classes that just "learn" new spells and select them at level up?

Psyren
2015-09-30, 12:33 PM
That's not what those words mean, but you are also completely missing the point. There is no difference between countering teleport with "strong energy" (incidentally it's completely up to the DM whether or not to put "strong energy" into the campaign, or even decide what "strong energy" means) or an anti-teleportation field, or a dead magic zone. All of them are just excuses. Excuses put into the game to make lazy DMing easier, but still excuses.

How is incorporating an intended drawback of the spell "lazy?" Is it because you personally don't happen to like the fact that the designers wanted a generalized counter to teleportation less contrived than "I blanket every inch of my lair with Dimensional Lock?"

If you don't like it, houserule it out, but following the rules (especially when they improve the game) is not "lazy."

Flickerdart
2015-09-30, 12:48 PM
Must I repeat myself endlessly? The clause of teleport is utterly beside the point. If it makes you feel better, we can look at any number of other spells that similarly snap campaigns in half but have no lazy crutch built in.

Psyren
2015-09-30, 12:57 PM
Must I repeat myself endlessly? The clause of teleport is utterly beside the point. If it makes you feel better, we can look at any number of other spells that similarly snap campaigns in half but have no lazy crutch built in.

Some of those are indeed broken, like polymorph and shapechange. Others do have similar clauses that folks not familiar enough with the RAW also overlook, like simulacrum and planar binding.

You can call it a "crutch" if that makes you feel better, but GMs who ignore these clauses have no grounds to complain about the spell wrecking their campaign.

Flickerdart
2015-09-30, 01:15 PM
You can call it a "crutch" if that makes you feel better, but GMs who ignore these clauses have no grounds to complain about the spell wrecking their campaign.
What does that have to do with anything? I've never once mentioned GMs complaining about spells wrecking their campaigns outside of the context of those same GMs implementing blanket no-sells on the offending power, which is the specific thing I am against.

Honest Tiefling
2015-09-30, 02:26 PM
-snip-
Thanks! I'll take a look at this.

Garimeth
2015-09-30, 02:44 PM
Thanks! I'll take a look at this.

Yeah, np. I'm curious to know what you think after you look into it. Not a lot of us on this board seem to play it.

Psyren
2015-09-30, 03:06 PM
What does that have to do with anything? I've never once mentioned GMs complaining about spells wrecking their campaigns outside of the context of those same GMs implementing blanket no-sells on the offending power, which is the specific thing I am against.

It's not a "blanket no-sell" - it's a plausible reason for the GM to say "teleporting to the objective doesn't work in this specific place." Which is a legitimate thing for the designers to be concerned about, and want to assist the GM with. It allows teleport to still be a thing in the game (i.e. not outright banned) but set aside when doing so is advantageous to a specific section of the plot, in a way that the PCs can't simply circumvent through dispelling or something.

Cluedrew
2015-09-30, 04:51 PM
If I may comment on the teleport debate (ignore this if I may not).

Flickerdart's argument seems to be, because of the lose concept of "strong energy" that is used in the rule it really comes down to the GM saying yes/no on what is an strong energy, how far it extends and so on. For instance: does a concentration of life energy stop teleport? Life energy is not really an energy in our world, but you see it getting drained and channeled all the time in fantasy. So is teleportation between population centers a no-go?

Psyren (is that from the book series by the way?) on the other hand seems to be arguing that even such a vague tool is better than a GM having to create one from nothing just to stop a problem. "The obelisk projects a field over the entire necropolis, it animates the bodies of all who lay there and stops teleportation." comes across as a little more natural than "The [anti-teleport] spell has been cast all over the tombs because the ancients didn't want anyone to teleport in and rob the dead."

And I think both sides are right (assuming I've understood everything properly). It is the fact that D&D is a fantasy role-playing game, or heroic fantasy or high fantasy but when it gets down to it that is really a generic fantasy. It wants to be able to tell any sort of fantasy story. Some of those stories involve teleport, others do not and others still would be ruined by teleport. So the designers tried to create a limit on teleport that is adaptable enough that is can be used when it is dramatically appropriate and also stopped when the situation calls for it. Is it perfect? No, but it seems to be close enough that a lot of people still play it.

Raimun
2015-10-01, 01:52 AM
It's totally okay for the GM to ban some magic spells if they really feel it wouldn't suit their setting. However, this must be established before the campaign. Knee jerk reactions are not an ideal bais for limiting content, you know. I once played a Cleric in a campaign with no resurrection spells (not even Raise Dead) and it was totally fine since lack of resurrection was an established fact.

As for the teleportation issue? If teleporting is a thing, it should work, unless there is an established reason that it wouldn't. Anti-teleportation spells are also thing in the Core Rules. High level Evil Wizard or Cleric might probably have it for his permanent residence but the legendary orc barbarian king most likely doesn't have it.

I don't really know much about "strong energy" but it's got to be pretty major. No random mundane place should have it because the only instances of "you just can't teleport there" found in the rulebooks (that I remember) have been the immediate presence of deities in their natural planar homes. Mere mortals, such kings and dragons shouldn't benefit from this unless they really are able to cast anti-teleportation spells or can and will hire people to cast the spells for them. Of course, extremely/double mystical places (DM of the Rings: every forest is enhanced) and warships of ancients civilizations just might have anti-teleportation spells.

Knaight
2015-10-01, 02:09 AM
It's totally okay for the GM to ban some magic spells if they really feel it wouldn't suit their setting. However, this must be established before the campaign. Knee jerk reactions are not an ideal bais for limiting content, you know. I once played a Cleric in a campaign with no resurrection spells (not even Raise Dead) and it was totally fine since lack of resurrection was an established fact.

It's not necessarily a matter of banning spells though. As the thread says, it's system agnostic, and as such could come down to things like picking systems. For instance, the magic system in any edition of D&D makes me less likely to play those games relative to something like REIGN, where I really like the magic system in part because it avoids certain spells (though it's more because what it does have is incredibly creative and thematically cohesive).

NichG
2015-10-01, 03:42 AM
Slinging around things like 'lazy' isn't useful here. I could equally well say 'lazy players who never want to deal with their powers not working perfectly' or things like that. What it comes down to is preference and consequences for play, not 'they're wrong/bad/etc'

More productively perhaps: What do you feel about a teleportation magic that, rather than having spot exceptions where it fails, has very specific conditions for it to work? For example 'this spell lets you teleport between specially prepared obelisks which cost 1000gp to craft, weigh a minimum of 1 ton, and the caster must have personally attuned themselves to any obelisks they wish to teleport between.'
E.g. is the issue that you don't like being surprised that 'suddenly, your spell doesn't work!' but if you knew ahead of time what the restrictions were it would be okay, or do not like abilities which sometimes don't work in the most general sense of the kind of thing they enable, or something else?

Psyren
2015-10-01, 09:43 AM
I don't really know much about "strong energy" but it's got to be pretty major. No random mundane place should have it because the only instances of "you just can't teleport there" found in the rulebooks (that I remember) have been the immediate presence of deities in their natural planar homes. Mere mortals, such kings and dragons shouldn't benefit from this unless they really are able to cast anti-teleportation spells or can and will hire people to cast the spells for them. Of course, extremely/double mystical places (DM of the Rings: every forest is enhanced) and warships of ancients civilizations just might have anti-teleportation spells.

It specifically says "physical or magical energy" can stop it, i.e. that there are non-magical energies that can interfere. Therefore there can be "purely mundane" places or conditions that interfere with teleportation, otherwise it would have only said "magical."

"Physical energy" can refer to a wide variety of things. A waterfall, a geyser, a volcano, an earthquake, a tornado etc. Coincidentally, many of these are places where a big bad can set up shop.

Also, the spell "failing" is not the only outcome. It also says this energy can make the spell "hazardous." So you can get where you're trying to go, but take damage. Or you can get there but not in the marching order you originally planned. Or perhaps you leave some items behind. Or you get shunted into a trap-filled corridor just outside of your destination. There's a lot of ways to make teleportation have more of a trade-off without banning it completely.

Garimeth
2015-10-01, 01:04 PM
Slinging around things like 'lazy' isn't useful here. I could equally well say 'lazy players who never want to deal with their powers not working perfectly' or things like that. What it comes down to is preference and consequences for play, not 'they're wrong/bad/etc'

More productively perhaps: What do you feel about a teleportation magic that, rather than having spot exceptions where it fails, has very specific conditions for it to work? For example 'this spell lets you teleport between specially prepared obelisks which cost 1000gp to craft, weigh a minimum of 1 ton, and the caster must have personally attuned themselves to any obelisks they wish to teleport between.'
E.g. is the issue that you don't like being surprised that 'suddenly, your spell doesn't work!' but if you knew ahead of time what the restrictions were it would be okay, or do not like abilities which sometimes don't work in the most general sense of the kind of thing they enable, or something else?

I'm going to second everything here. I think for players the problem is "why doesn't my thing work?" You run into a similar problem all the time with spot checks not catching things, or what have you. The fact of the matter is there is a lot of strange things in the world the PCs don't understand or know about, and sometimes the focus of the game is even in finding out about these. I just re-assure the player that it doesn't make sense to them if its something new. "Yeah, XXX is positive he is doing the spell correctly and he is unsure why it isn't working, he has never heard or seen this before." OR "XXX suspects that the cause may be THIS."

I personally think that mind controlling or altering magic is much more damaging than teleport.

ThinkMinty
2015-10-02, 12:55 AM
The players who aren't the teleporter (or ARE) can veto teleporting there in favor of the journey. I know that's a social solution, but long-range teleportation is supposed to be a sometimes food.

You don't have to let the mind reading bring up anything useful. The target could just be scatting elevator music in their head instead of thinking anythin' useful.

Pretty much my suggestion is if the tool breaks the flow, make the tool less useful rather than stripping it away. Or give people ample enough warning to not waste their resources acquiring it.

hifidelity2
2015-10-02, 06:00 AM
I like this, and it works for wizards, but what about clerics, bards, and sorcerers as well as other classes that just "learn" new spells and select them at level up?

I can "add" the need for components to most spells if I want to.

Having said that most of our Adventures occur under 10th level so there are not many Adventure breaking spells

The closest has been I multi year adventure where my Character got to 19th Level Wizard and then the type of stuff were were doing was either political or was dealing with threats that were of a challenge to us -so allowing tour "mundane" armies for fight a fair battle

Garimeth
2015-10-02, 10:53 AM
I can "add" the need for components to most spells if I want to.

Having said that most of our Adventures occur under 10th level so there are not many Adventure breaking spells

The closest has been I multi year adventure where my Character got to 19th Level Wizard and then the type of stuff were were doing was either political or was dealing with threats that were of a challenge to us -so allowing tour "mundane" armies for fight a fair battle

Fair point. Though I would suggest that all of your wizard's political problems would go away with appropriate use of some enchantment magic.

Segev
2015-10-02, 02:50 PM
Anti-teleportation effects are a thing, and should be used when and where they make sense. The powerful lich who doesn't want unexpected visitors doubtless has a slew of such magics around his lair, as well as traps and wards and warnings for when that is insufficient. The richest, most powerful empire in the world that can employ high-level mages to secure its military assets from intrusion will likely do the same.

The clause about "strong energy" is more an invitation to play with transporter-like shenanigans. In fact, looking to Star Trek for examples of when and how to use "teleportation isn't working right" effects is a good idea. They did it plausibly, with only the occasional instance that screamed "this is merely a plot contrivance." Usually, there was a work-around or a way to exploit it that came up later in the episode.

You also don't have to make it shut things down entirely. "Hazardous" teleportation could mean an altered mishap chance table, or any number of - again - Star Trek-inspired shenanigans (swapped personalities, split into two people, merged into one person, left and right halves swapped...).

LudicSavant
2015-10-02, 08:00 PM
It seems to me like the problem isn't about wide categories of magic so much as it's about abilities being designed without consideration of impact or counterplay. This goes for both the divide between mages and martials as well as issues of narrative disruption. For instance, let's take a look at teleportation.


Teleportation: Along with the obvious travel related adventures, teleportation creates a huge problem for verisimilitude. Knowledge and discoveries can be shared across huge spans of distance instantaneously, which would almost assuredly raise the tech level of a setting very quickly, especially if there is a magical method for reproducing text similar to the printing press or easy access to long range communication. Goods can be easily moved from one location to another, causing entire mission types to become unnecessary, obstacles to be bypassed, and not to mention what would castle, keep, and city defense have to look like!

Travel adventures are only impacted if the specific type of teleportation available to you can obviate the travel adventure. For example, maybe teleportation simply can't go very long enough distances and can't be recast quickly, so that it'd actually be slower for long distances than riding hard or flying on a griffon or something. if you want to explore the uncharted reaches of the Frozen Continent, the fact that you have access to the ability to teleport to a beacon you've attuned yourself to isn't going to matter, because it's not already at your destination. If you want to teleport to the end of the dungeon, maybe teleportation can't actually go through walls of a certain thickness or constructed of certain materials. Things like that.

In one setting I worked on, castle/keep/city defense actually was designed with teleportation in mind. Small strike teams could teleport to sufficiently large beacons (the more mass you wanted to transport, the bigger the beacon had to be), which could be thrown with siege equipment. The result of that (as well as some other technology, such as tossing regenerating troll-like creatures in catapults) was that people were building things like Star Forts (https://www.google.com/search?q=star+forts&biw=1571&bih=879&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIltPxjIulyAIVB-CACh0UoQX0), which are designed for the express purpose of reacting easily to breaches. Other options include things like having teleportation spells telegraph, so that people on the other side can just gather up all the guys with crossbows to aim at the portal when your party can finally go through it. Or simply having magic that can block teleportation.

Goods can only be easily moved from one place to another if teleportation is designed in such a way that it is highly efficient for such purposes. What if there's a huge cooldown on teleportation? What if it can't move much mass? What if it ruins inorganic material? What if it requires you to jump into a dangerous dimension for a bit and has real mortal risks? What if it has a very limiting material component, such as the eye of an eldritch abomination (which you might expect heroic adventurers to pick up a handful of, but not really be able to stockpile)?

Sharing information can be curtailed by making teleportation travel limited or inefficient (already gave a few examples above). It could also be impacted by just plain not having a culture that's intent on sharing arcane/technological secrets (something we take for granted in our modern scientific culture).

There are hundreds of options for interesting limitations and counterplay that can be built into magic. Next time you are designing a power (or tweaking one, as the case may be), think to yourself: "How can I create interesting counterplay for this power?"

ThinkMinty
2015-10-24, 11:22 AM
It seems to me like the problem isn't about wide categories of magic so much as it's about abilities being designed without consideration of impact or counterplay. This goes for both the divide between mages and martials as well as issues of narrative disruption. For instance, let's take a look at teleportation.



Travel adventures are only impacted if the specific type of teleportation available to you can obviate the travel adventure. For example, maybe teleportation simply can't go very long enough distances and can't be recast quickly, so that it'd actually be slower for long distances than riding hard or flying on a griffon or something. if you want to explore the uncharted reaches of the Frozen Continent, the fact that you have access to the ability to teleport to a beacon you've attuned yourself to isn't going to matter, because it's not already at your destination. If you want to teleport to the end of the dungeon, maybe teleportation can't actually go through walls of a certain thickness or constructed of certain materials. Things like that.

In one setting I worked on, castle/keep/city defense actually was designed with teleportation in mind. Small strike teams could teleport to sufficiently large beacons (the more mass you wanted to transport, the bigger the beacon had to be), which could be thrown with siege equipment. The result of that (as well as some other technology, such as tossing regenerating troll-like creatures in catapults) was that people were building things like Star Forts (https://www.google.com/search?q=star+forts&biw=1571&bih=879&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIltPxjIulyAIVB-CACh0UoQX0), which are designed for the express purpose of reacting easily to breaches. Other options include things like having teleportation spells telegraph, so that people on the other side can just gather up all the guys with crossbows to aim at the portal when your party can finally go through it. Or simply having magic that can block teleportation.

Goods can only be easily moved from one place to another if teleportation is designed in such a way that it is highly efficient for such purposes. What if there's a huge cooldown on teleportation? What if it can't move much mass? What if it ruins inorganic material? What if it requires you to jump into a dangerous dimension for a bit and has real mortal risks? What if it has a very limiting material component, such as the eye of an eldritch abomination (which you might expect heroic adventurers to pick up a handful of, but not really be able to stockpile)?

Sharing information can be curtailed by making teleportation travel limited or inefficient (already gave a few examples above). It could also be impacted by just plain not having a culture that's intent on sharing arcane/technological secrets (something we take for granted in our modern scientific culture).

There are hundreds of options for interesting limitations and counterplay that can be built into magic. Next time you are designing a power (or tweaking one, as the case may be), think to yourself: "How can I create interesting counterplay for this power?"

Remind me to write up counterplay things later, because I really need to.