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Kaelaroth
2007-08-13, 12:29 PM
How can I stop PCs randomly escaping with spells such as dimension door and teleport without employing magics such as antimagic field. I still need them to be able to fight with arcane wrath.
Thanks!

Green Bean
2007-08-13, 12:32 PM
Dimensional Anchor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalAnchor.htm)

Dimensional Lock (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalLock.htm)

Is this what you're looking for?

reorith
2007-08-13, 12:38 PM
if you're into railroading, have them make a check of some kind, and then tell them they failed.

Kaelaroth
2007-08-13, 12:42 PM
Dimensional Anchor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalAnchor.htm)

Dimensional Lock (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalLock.htm)

Is this what you're looking for?

That kind of thing yeah. Anything else though? Less conventional methods? (I'm not a fan of fudging either)

13_CBS
2007-08-13, 12:48 PM
What do you mean by "less conventional"? Like, a dimensional anchor spell cast by a statue, or something entirely different creating a similar effect?

Duke of URL
2007-08-13, 12:48 PM
You could always employ counterspelling, but this offers far more chances for the PCs to outwit or outluck you. :smalltongue:

PaladinBoy
2007-08-13, 05:59 PM
It's not going to stop them the first time, but introducing enemies that are intelligent and/or have powerful allies might convince your players that it's a bad idea to run. For example, the players invade a wizard's castle, leave with one of these spells, then return the next day to find the defenses reorganized and much more prepared than they were the first time. Or the thieves guild that they attack calls on the help of the city guard or an allied guild, so that the players have that much more firepower lined up against them.

As for magic, the two big ones have already been mentioned. Forbiddance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forbiddance.htm) is a defensive ward for a building which, in addition to making entry more hazardous, prevents any extradimensional travel in the warded area.

Reel On, Love
2007-08-13, 06:08 PM
Beyond dimension-anchering/locking them? It's tough.

The Divert Teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/divertTeleport.htm) power does what you're going for, but having a 13th level psion there every fight might get suspicious. You can justify it by making him a Seer, and giving him largely security- and divination-based powers, meaning he's not going to go in and Energy Stun the melee characters to death, he's going to sit to one side--hopefully invisible somehow--and do what he's being paid by his employers to do (which is *not* risk his life fighting a bunch of invaders).

You could take a different approach and base your game for the next while around some kind of severe magical catastrophy that severs the Astral Plane from the Material, causing all teleport-style magics to fail everywhere (with the appropriate effects on travel, trade, etc. for an even moderately magical society). Heck, you could even make it progressively worse, as the elemental planes start to pull away, too (making summoning impossible), and so on. The PCs would have to figure out what's doing this and try to resolve it somehow. Of course, this could very well not fit at all with whatever your game is doing right now. If your PCs are all about being Chaotic Bastard mercenaries that kick people in the nuts and take their stuff, and they're currently in the middle of another plot, it's not gonna work so hot.

A smaller-scale version of the same thing is time-critical and/or unabortable missions mentioned by other people. If you leave, the MacGuffin gets moved/reinforcements are summoned/etc.

Subotei
2007-08-13, 06:11 PM
Perhaps give them a ticking clock - something like a prisoner under imminent threat of sacrifice to rescue etc - if they bug out to avoid the encouter they fail their mission.

PinkysBrain
2007-08-13, 06:16 PM
Forbiddance works too.

Fhaolan
2007-08-13, 06:22 PM
The ticking clock mentioned before is one of the best methods, because it's not an arbitrary restriction on their abilities.

Basically you want something that makes the players second guessing themselve about bugging out. Something that will penalize them for leaving without completing the task.

Tokiko Mima
2007-08-13, 06:39 PM
Paralysis, Nauseate, Slow, Cower, or Confuse at least one of them if this is a group of good aligned PCs. This will prevent their retreat, because they will have to leave one or more members behind.

Also, you could equip the foes they face with the same teleportation ability, and make observing where a teleporter is going part of the Spellcraft check, i.e. they *can't* run away, because they'll be followed where ever they go the moment they do.

Drider
2007-08-13, 06:55 PM
have a bad guy they "escaped" from pour molten hot lead on the magic-ey person who has teleport via some trigger plate...or maybe a tucker-esque kobold on a high ledge pours it on, allowing a teleportation "mis-hap" or just not allowing it

BCOVertigo
2007-08-13, 07:03 PM
Perhaps give them a ticking clock - something like a prisoner under imminent threat of sacrifice to rescue etc - if they bug out to avoid the encouter they fail their mission.
I agree with this, there is no reason to fiat the players into doing what you want. That's stupid and will only anger them / prove how creative you aren't.

The simplest method is the best: If you don't want them to run, remove their desire to run.

Rachel Lorelei
2007-08-13, 07:06 PM
Another option would be to, well, talk to them about this. You know, out of character. "Hey, guys? The whole teleporting out thing? It's making running the game a little hard. Could you guys tone it down a little, like save it for if you're dying or something?"

Edit: you do realize that making it so running away always screws them over, all missions are ticking time bombs, and so on is... just as much DM Fiat/Railroading/etc as any of the other suggestions, right?

Reel On, Love
2007-08-13, 07:13 PM
Another option would be to, well, talk to them about this. You know, out of character. "Hey, guys? The whole teleporting out thing? It's making running the game a little hard. Could you guys tone it down a little, like save it for if you're dying or something?"

Edit: you do realize that making it so running away always screws them over, all missions are ticking time bombs, and so on is... just as much DM Fiat/Railroading/etc as any of the other suggestions, right?

Oh, come on. A little funneling and the periodic need for other tactics isn't nearly the same thing as "your teleports stop working, period." By that logic everything the DM ever does is railroading, since he decides what the PCs face.

Saph
2007-08-13, 07:13 PM
How are they managing to all teleport out at once? Dimension door, teleport, etc., are all touch range spells. That means all the PCs have to be standing next to each other, and then wait for the teleporter's turn.

If all the PCs are free to assemble, and none of them are immobilised/disabled/dying/dead, then why do they need to retreat in the first place? If the fight's dangerous enough to force them to retreat, there'll probably be at least one PC down by the time they do.

- Saph

Reel On, Love
2007-08-13, 07:17 PM
How are they managing to all teleport out at once? Dimension door, teleport, etc., are all touch range spells. That means all the PCs have to be standing next to each other, and then wait for the teleporter's turn.

If all the PCs are free to assemble, and none of them are immobilised/disabled/dying/dead, then why do they need to retreat in the first place? If the fight's dangerous enough to force them to retreat, there'll probably be at least one PC down by the time they do.

- Saph

Maybe they're wussies. Or maybe they just spend their spells too fast and so hop on out to wait until they have them back.

Rachel Lorelei
2007-08-13, 07:19 PM
Oh, come on. A little funneling and the periodic need for other tactics isn't nearly the same thing as "your teleports stop working, period." By that logic everything the DM ever does is railroading, since he decides what the PCs face.

Well, there's a difference when it comes to options. A little variety is certainly par for the course, but if every mission just happens to preclude the use of a set of spells, well, I start hearing "choo-choo".

Saph
2007-08-13, 07:23 PM
Maybe they're wussies. Or maybe they just spend their spells too fast and so hop on out to wait until they have them back.

Yeah, I was thinking that was the other possibility. The 'bungee' style of adventuring (teleport in, kill things, teleport out).

In that case the easiest solution is to make each encounter difficult enough to be a day's worth of encounters on its own. No multiple little encounters, just one big one. So all the teleport really does is get the players to the combat faster.

- Saph

Corolinth
2007-08-13, 07:28 PM
The ticking clock is a good one. Another tactic is to start having villains figure out where the PCs like to go to hide out. Think Serenity, when the Operative torches every settlement that Mal holed up in over the past six months.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-08-13, 07:50 PM
I've never understood the "Teleport is a problem" thing. It's like "OMG! They're actually using their ability to teleport to instantly travel where they want?!" Getting in and out of the dungeon is what teleport is for, isn't it?

But if you really think it's a problem, make your PCs come up with a few solutions for you. I'm sure any antagonist with the ability to teleport would appreciate its ability to whisk him away to safety. If they really want/need to defeat this opponent, they'll apply some brainpower to it.

Anyway, as others have mentioned, time marches on when the PCs are gone. Even if there isn't some sort of time bomb—the PCs could take a couple decades working on this adventure if they had to—things are bound to change in the PCs' abscence. Some time these changes are in the PCs' favor, sometimes not. It's particularly nasty when the enemy is capable of setting a trap for when the PCs return or tracking the PCs down afterward. It's all in the NPCs' reactions.

BCOVertigo
2007-08-13, 08:02 PM
By that logic everything the DM ever does is railroading, since he decides what the PCs face.

I try to set up npc's as independent nodes that work towards their own ends regardless of what the players do, the players add in their own actions and goals and shape the events that occur. I think this style, as opposed to running the players through a script, is more effective because you don't have to think up ways to put them back on track.

My current campaign for example has an army that is essentially running over the country they are in, if they choose to fight it (which they have) then the army will react appropriately, if they choose to run, the army will probably win and the other npc's goals will unfold unopposed. (I'm being purposefully vague because some of them frequent this board and THEY MUST NOT KNOW THE TRUTH)

goat
2007-08-13, 08:13 PM
Send them on a long and dangerous mission to find the High Priests of the God of Fearlessness, who lives in the gaps between the planes. Recently, said God has been getting irritated with the displays of cowardice he's seeing among the adventuring community. If people 'port out of combat unnecessarily there's a percentage chance that he kicks them to a different destination, or swipes something that they're carrying.

Your party's mission is to find the High Priests and convince them (probably though a hideously dangerous quest) that courage, bravery and laughter in the face of death are still strong among the people of the world. Said god has no problem with 'porting outside of (or into) combat, so they can still travel around with the spells, but using it to escape a battle might be a quick way to lose a kidney in transit.

Kurald Galain
2007-08-14, 09:04 AM
You can have wild magic zones where teleportation gets wonky (shifting people several meters in a random direction works fine).

You can also have an epic plot about the fabric of the reality getting unravelled because of overusage of dimensional ripping spells. First the PCs do a bunch of teleporting. Then they get followed by some people who wish to keep reality stable, and attack the PCs. Then they get to explain themselves and get to help repairing the world.

Tormsskull
2007-08-14, 09:10 AM
Too late to do now, but I always attach expensive material components to the spells that require you to rethink the world too much.

kjones
2007-08-14, 09:28 AM
I think that talking to your players is a reasonable idea. Chances are, they're not actively trying to antagonize your game - they just like their mobility. Honestly, having everyone Dimensional Anchor them, or making every dungeon they enter have Forbiddance cast, are good ideas - but only once. Just explain to them that it's annoying to you, and a waste of time for everyone, and they might just be willing to tone it down for the sake of the game.

What I might do, in addition to some of the other clever plot-based ideas here, is give them defend missions. Defending people wouldn't really work, since they can just teleport out with them, but defending a static location, such as a sacred altar or shrine, a town or village, a treasure trove, some nexus of magic - heck, even a castle - would make it so that teleporting out means that their defenses would be overrun.

PaladinBoy
2007-08-14, 09:28 AM
Also, I just remembered something. If you choose to have intelligent enemies that change their plans in the 8 hours that the PCs are gone, then the anticipate teleport spells are a useful way for them to set up a trap for the PCs. They're in the Spell Compendium; basically what they do is alert the caster to incoming travelers using teleport and delay their arrival by a round or so. Thus allowing the caster and his friends to set up an ambush.

ravenkith
2007-08-14, 09:51 AM
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Set up a major caster villain. Give him lots of intelligence.

Put him into play as the leader of a group of raiders: his minions hit the trade caravans going from place to place, looking for expensive material components and lots of gold, and lots of magic items.

Set him up in a deep fortress full of magical traps and horrors. Coat the place in anti teleport stuff to prevent people from getting in. Make sure it's on the villains list of spells to do this.

Every. single. time. they invade his inner sanctum, they get there just in time to watch him teleporting out with 90% of the treasure (so as to set up another base somewhere else).

They'll get the message eventually.

Leon
2007-08-14, 10:16 AM
With a Pet Living Teleport, every hit is a random journey

OverdrivePrime
2007-08-14, 10:27 AM
After years of DMing, I got frustrated with my players just traipsing around the planet willy-nilly whenever they hit full-capricious mode. I don't mind a little dimension door here and there, a desperate teleport to get out of a collapsing dungeon or other remarkable uses. I do mind when teleportation gets relegated to the mundane, and is used to bushwack the DM outta nowhere. If I've got a reasonably detailed campaign written up, I usually have a long-running metaplot that I track, and then plan a few level-appropriate hooks for the characters. My ability to do this is vastly diminished if instead of riding from Hawk's Reach Falls to Treefather like they had originally planned, the characters decided to teleport over to Delucron (two thousand miles and fifteen plot hooks away) grab a bite to eat and buy a magic weapon, then teleport into Granite Hill to hang out with the dwarves there for a while, before teleporting out into the Wild Lands on the other side of the planet to go on a monster hunt.


So, when I designed my second world, I came up with a bunch of pseudo-science BS that was passable for game physics. I decided that due to the make-up of the planet's core, the planet's magnetosphere created massive electrostatic build-up when dimensional sliding/teleportation was used. Using the blink spell wasn't really a problem, little tingles here and there, nothing bad.
Dimension-dooring a hundred feet or so was much the same, though you might experience a small static jolt (1d4) if you dimension doored more than 500 feet.
Teleporting more than a mile caused a chance for a larger jolt, 10 miles more, until you got to the hundreds of miles where anyone not protected by wards against electricity would most certainly be blasted to ash upon rematerializing.

This worked out pretty well for me. Characters could still teleport (a useful spell that I didn't want to get rid of, just didn't want used capriciously), but they recognized that when doing so, they'd need to cast a protection spell on each person traveling. Even then, there was still a strong chance of injury if they were trying to teleport far enough.

This also made the few beings immune to electricity a fairly potent threat as they could teleport with impuny.

Arbitrarity
2007-08-14, 10:41 AM
Until the players got their hands on 24 hour Energy Immunity, and rod-chained it. :smallbiggrin:

OverdrivePrime
2007-08-14, 10:44 AM
This was in the days before the Energy Immunity spell surfaced. Now where are my rheumatism meds?

sikyon
2007-08-14, 10:49 AM
Teleport... easy solution is to just punish them for retreating. Make the villans stronger the longer it takes to fight him. Or even better, make it so that if they teleport out the monsters from the random encounter will consume a village. Shift their alignment and whatnot a little bit when they do this. Have their reputation drop. Etc. Basically, during encounters have the players pitch something into the pot as well. If they ditch, they lose it. Hell, you can not just punish them for leaving but reward them for staying. Give them allies if they stay, or better items or whatever. If they constantly don't, send them up against something that would have been balanced if they stayed most of the time and got the allies & treasure... but is overpowering for them if they don't. Then when they complain, explain it to them.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-08-14, 10:52 AM
With a Pet Living Teleport, every hit is a random journey
I want one of thoes!


If I've got a reasonably detailed campaign written up, I usually have a long-running metaplot that I track, and then plan a few level-appropriate hooks for the characters. My ability to do this is vastly diminished if instead of riding from Hawk's Reach Falls to Treefather like they had originally planned, the characters decided to teleport over to Delucron (two thousand miles and fifteen plot hooks away) grab a bite to eat and buy a magic weapon, then teleport into Granite Hill to hang out with the dwarves there for a while, before teleporting out into the Wild Lands on the other side of the planet to go on a monster hunt.
So, you know they have teleport, and instead of thinking they might want to use it, you figure they'll go travelling everywhere via the hard way? Why would anyone who can teleport ride two-thousand miles rather than actually teleport unless they felt they the time to kill and a strong desire to spend a month on an arbitrary road trip?

If you have detailed plot hooks you just have to spring, keep the players' teleportation ability in mind when designing them. Up the alley-way muggings at the destination points and don't bother with the roadside ambushes. It's no different than knowing your PCs hate orcs and then avoiding the hooks that require them to help the poor little orc that got lost in the wilderness.

But don't act like people will get a powerful ability and then just not use it.

goat
2007-08-14, 12:27 PM
Well, if you think teleporting is too cheesy, bump all the teleportation spells up a level. They're still available, but in the more valuable spell slots your wizard is less likely to have lots prepared.

Kaelaroth
2007-08-14, 12:35 PM
Thanks Everyone.

For reference, I am not trying to restrict my PCs mobility or ruin spell-lists. Just for one dungeon I want my charcters to not jump over chasms with dimension door, and/or do quick recon with teleport/greater teleport.

So - I will think about all you have supplied me with, and put it to use. Ta mateys!

lord_khaine
2007-08-14, 12:44 PM
seriously, having teleport to get over chasms/out of pit traps is the base purpose of the spell, and whenever they do use a spell on that you should be thinking; "thnx gods, thats one less maximised scorching ray for the BBEG"

Morty
2007-08-14, 01:01 PM
All teleportation spells are horribly written. As soon as you hit 9 level, you can travel 900 miles via one standard action with little or no chance of failure. When you get higher-level teleportation spells it gets even worse.

horseboy
2007-08-14, 09:09 PM
Well, if it's for one dungeon. Have it take place in a lead mine. All the lead in the area makes divination and teleporting in/out of the complex impossible.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-08-14, 10:16 PM
Lead doesn't affect teleportation at all. And it only affects detect <x> spells. Other divinations are just fine.

horseboy
2007-08-14, 10:52 PM
Lead doesn't affect teleportation at all. And it only affects detect <x> spells. Other divinations are just fine.

DM>RAW. If the DM says you can't teleport through half a mile of lead (given the prescience that lead does mess with magic going through it) then it doesn't work and has a "reasonable" reason instead of "cause I said so." :smallbiggrin:

tannish2
2007-08-14, 11:00 PM
maybe prevent the specific teleport spell from working in out out of the dungeon, so you could teleport from room A to room Z, (but you might want to hit this one with forbiddance dimension lock ect) but not from room A to town A,
add a long casting time to teleport (cheesey) but NEVER disallow conjuration spells, that totally ****s up druids, people who dont abuse teleport, ect.
the occasional villian with trace teleport divert teleport or anticipate teleportation should prevent its abuse.

Rachel Lorelei
2007-08-14, 11:03 PM
DM>RAW. If the DM says you can't teleport through half a mile of lead (given the prescience that lead does mess with magic going through it) then it doesn't work and has a "reasonable" reason instead of "cause I said so." :smallbiggrin:

No, it's not "reasonable". Teleportation moves you through the Astral Plane. Not only does lead not mess with any and all magic going through it, but teleport never goes through it. It goes "around" it.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-08-14, 11:03 PM
Lead doesn't mess with magic in general at all. Just five or six spells out of, what, several hundred? And to suddenly apply this restriction to an entire subchool that has no relation whatsoever to the few spells that are affected is purely arbitrary on the DM's part.

Also sets potentially dangerous precedent, I think.