Which abilities trivialize challenges?

[frogglesmash]

I'm trying to identify what kind of abilities have the greatest potential to trivialize a wide variety of obstacles, and challenges. To give an impression of what I mean I'll just list all the ones that I can think of.

Polymorph
Teleportation/Planar Travel
A large number of Divination abilities
Resurrection Magic

[Bucky]

I'm trying to identify what kind of abilities have the greatest potential to trivialize a wide variety of obstacles, and challenges. To give an impression of what I mean I'll just list all the ones that I can think of.

Polymorph
Teleportation/Planar Travel
A large number of Divination abilities
Resurrection Magic

Mind control
Summoning, especially with long duration

[Willie the Duck]

Flight.

How about things that trivialize large amounts of status effects? I'm thinking:
protection from evil/good/etc.
freedom of movement
true seeing

[frogglesmash]

Flight.

How about things that trivialize large amounts of status effects? I'm thinking:
protection from evil/good/etc.
freedom of movement
true seeing

I was actually thinking about this, the problem with counters to things like invisibility and mind control is that they kind need to exist for both game balance, and internal logic, but having them be hard counters makes them too effective unless they have a relatively short duration.

[Larrx]

Incorporeality

Scent (for mysteries, "that guy smells like the murder scene!")

[Willie the Duck]

I was actually thinking about this, the problem with counters to things like invisibility and mind control is that they kind need to exist for both game balance, and internal logic, but having them be hard counters makes them too effective unless they have a relatively short duration.

Absolutely, and low duration is how the game mostly deals with them (which is why creatures who can do so at will or constantly make certain builds like illusionists so frustrating at times). The alternative (for a different game system. I'm not advocating putting them in D&D) is to make one's invisibility X powerful, and someone else's see invisibility Y powerful, and have a contested roll to see which power succeeds.