PDA

View Full Version : Dimension Door does not need LoE?



Frosty
2008-05-06, 01:38 PM
I'm in a dungeon of some sort. I know (or guess) there's a lower floor. Can I DD through the floor and onto the floor below if I guess the distance correctly? Is DD just like Teleport, where you don't need LoE and LoS?

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-05-06, 01:44 PM
It shouldn't. Like all Conjuration(Teleportation) spells, it works by moving you through the Astral Plane, and therefore isn't blocked by earthly matters.

Also, the Q&A thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75042). Use it for this type of thing.

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-06, 01:45 PM
No you don't need LoE, yes you can Dimension door downward, no you aren't going to like it when you appear in the wall, get shunted Prone to the room next door where the Minotaur is kept.

Mewtarthio
2008-05-06, 01:45 PM
DimDoor has explicit rules for what happens if you teleport inside a solid object. You generally do not have line of effect to the inside of a solid object. Therefore, you can teleport where you don't have line of effect.

This is probably why the spell explicitly forbids you from taking additional actions. You can teleport to the inside of the BBEG's lair, but the BBEG's minions will get to attack you before you can react (note that you can't even use celerity tricks to bypass this: The wording is "After using this spell, you can’t take any other actions until your next turn," which prohibits immediate actions, as well).

Keld Denar
2008-05-06, 01:46 PM
Correct. DDoor works under 2 modes. The first is similar to Teleport...visualize and go, so long as its in range. The 2nd is a vector mechanic. Pick a direction and a distance and go.

Neither requires Line of Effect or Line of Sight.



You instantly transfer yourself from your current location to any other spot within range. You always arrive at exactly the spot desired—whether by simply visualizing the area or by stating direction.


Emphasis mine.

Frosty
2008-05-06, 01:49 PM
no you aren't going to like it when you appear in the wall, get shunted Prone to the room next door where the Minotaur is kept.

Meh, I bet Cindy wouldn't care :p After all, she's undetectable with Mindblank and Superior Invisibility. And she's probably immune to metal weapons.

I was at first worried about the party skipping entire sections of my dungeon. Then I remembered that DD doesn't let you bring others iirc.

Jasdoif
2008-05-06, 01:52 PM
I was at first worried about the party skipping entire sections of my dungeon. Then I remembered that DD doesn't let you bring others iirc.It most certainly does let you bring others along. Another Medium (or smaller) creature per three caster levels.

Gorbash
2008-05-06, 01:53 PM
Then I remembered that DD doesn't let you bring others iirc.

Umm, yes you can. One additional creature per 3 caster levels.

EDIT: Ninja'd. And you can bring creatures bigger than medium, although Large counts as 2 medium, Huge as 2 Large, etc...

The_Snark
2008-05-06, 01:53 PM
It does indeed. So does the warlock invocation version, which is quite handy at times.

And while the party could use this to skip entire sections ofa dungeon, they'd have to know where they want to get to first, or else they'll be teleporting randomly around, and risking landing in a wall/trap/room with a hungry monster.

Frosty
2008-05-06, 01:54 PM
oops. I need a way to prevent my players from abusive DD.

valadil
2008-05-06, 01:55 PM
I was at first worried about the party skipping entire sections of my dungeon. Then I remembered that DD doesn't let you bring others iirc.

Not quite.


You may also bring one additional willing Medium or smaller creature (carrying gear or objects up to its maximum load) or its equivalent per three caster levels.

What you need is a way to keep the players from learning the layout of the dungeon. DD'ing 50 feet straight down could bypass sections of the dungeon or it could leave you in a lava pit. It's generally considered too hazardous to try.

Craig1f
2008-05-06, 02:03 PM
Correct. DDoor works under 2 modes. The first is similar to Teleport...visualize and go, so long as its in range. The 2nd is a vector mechanic.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure you can't dim door by visualization. You need to know where your target is relative to you; not just what the target looks like.

You have to define a direction and a distance I believe.

Jasdoif
2008-05-06, 02:07 PM
I'm pretty sure you can't dim door by visualization.The spell's text disagrees.
You always arrive at exactly the spot desired—whether by simply visualizing the area or by stating direction.

senrath
2008-05-06, 02:45 PM
oops. I need a way to prevent my players from abusive DD.

If all else fails, have the dungeon under dimension lock. I think that would prevent all forms of teleportation.

Lochar
2008-05-06, 02:53 PM
Or have the dungeon have been designed by a mad man. Any path your on drops 5' vertically every 20' of movement, and have random twists and turns.

You're guarenteed to catch them in walls a few times.

Frosty
2008-05-06, 02:58 PM
Dimensional Lock works for a dungeon or two, but if every dungeon has it, it strains belief.

Keld Denar
2008-05-06, 03:01 PM
Forbidance is actually a more cost effective solution than a massive Dim Anchor. Plus, if the BBEG of the dungeon knows the password (presume he's the one that put it there) then he is free to dim door/teleport/shadow walk/plane shift/ethereal jaunt/astral projection in, out, and around as he please.

Its of consequence that Dim Anchor poses some serious other consequenses. No more use of Benign Translocation, Anklets of Translocation, Dimensional Jaunt, Step, Stride, or Waltz (ok, made that last one up) and believe it or not, no more Blink/Greater Blink. Since those spells phase you back and forth from the ethereal plane, you are traveling dimensionally, and the Anchor would block that, supressing the effect for as long as you are affected by the Anchor.

Craig1f
2008-05-06, 03:03 PM
The spell's text disagrees.

Ah ok. My mistake. I didn't remember it that way.

valadil
2008-05-06, 03:06 PM
Keep in mind that players who skip sections of dungeons will miss out on substantial portions of treasure. Yeah it might be worth it once in a great while, but players like treasure.

Here's an idea. Dim Lock your dungeon. Screen it too for good measure. But have the Dim Lock and Screen powered by some sort of artifact in different corners of the dungeon. Players will have to disable both of those before they can teleport around as desired. Dealing with Dim Lock and Screen generators ought to require a reasonable amount of adventuring in and of itself. The bottom line is that getting to a point in the dungeon where dim door is feasible will require more work than the group is circumventing.

Jasdoif
2008-05-06, 03:08 PM
Dimensional Lock works for a dungeon or two, but if every dungeon has it, it strains belief.Oh, you want a more general solution then. Here's some ideas....

Ban the spell. Campaign event that blocks the Material Plane from the Astral Plane, preventing most teleportation spells from functioning on the Material Plane. Alter the spell to require either line of effect, or having been physically present at the destination before.

The_Snark
2008-05-06, 03:08 PM
Dimensional Lock works for a dungeon or two, but if every dungeon has it, it strains belief.

I pose the following solution to you: Every time the party tries to teleport in a dungeon, request a Will save. Then nod, and proceed to have the spell work normally. Don't tell them what would have happened if they failed, or why they're rolling saves.

Once they start to suspect you're simply messing with their minds OR if they ever roll a natural 1, have the current dungeon be affected as with a Desert Diversion spell... meaning they land in a random spot in a randomly determined desert. Doesn't matter if that was outside the spell's range. Cue desert adventure, complete with attempts to figure out where the hell they are and maybe some Dune-style sandworms as they walk out. (Have the Desert Diversion linger on the caster for a day or two, also, if they also have Teleport.)

Ideally, if the paranoia inspired by unknown Will saves isn't enough to cut down on the tactic, the misteleportation adventure will. And it's more fun than just saying the dungeon is Dimension Locked, too.

Frosty
2008-05-06, 03:13 PM
Teleporting to the entrance of dungeon I'm fine with. It's the teleporting straight to the BBEG and skipping 90% of the adventure that I don't want.

Lochar
2008-05-06, 03:21 PM
Have the BBEG set up a custom spell that warps the Astral. All Astral links lead to the beginning of the dungeon, regardless of where you are.

Then have the BBEG Dim. Lock his own area, so you can't escape by ddooring away.

Cuddly
2008-05-06, 03:24 PM
Dimensional Lock works for a dungeon or two, but if every dungeon has it, it strains belief.

I've never understood this attitude.
Why would you go to the trouble of digging all those holes and stuffing your treasure in there when you aren't going to guard it against magic that totally bypasses all those expensive traps and hungry monsters?

By the time the PCs have regular access to teleport spells, enemies should be aware that teleport spells exist. It really makes less sense to not have every square foot of everything locked down with dimensional anchor.

As for kingdoms that can't afford high level casters, well, they shouldn't exist, seeing as how they would probably have been overrun by orcs/demons/a high level wizard sometime in the past, I don't know, forever.

Ugh. I hate the part of the DMG that says only 2% of the population uses magic, and only ~10% are PC classes.

Farmer42
2008-05-06, 03:34 PM
As has been said, if they just jump through 90% of the dungeon, they lose out on the treasure and XP for those encounters. I don't care if they "overcame" the encounter, they didn't do anything to earn that XP beyond having one character stand and chant for a few seconds. Besides which, do you, as a PC, want to be in a campaign where all you do is blip a few thousand feet every couple of seconds get in one fight, then leave? That isn't fun. If your players want to use that tactic, let them, but don't reward them, and if they do it to every dungeon, make it so that the next dungeon, there's a specific item they have to get before they can take down the BBEG, and it's divided between several different sections of the dungeon and masked from scrying. If they still want to use the technique after that, tell them where they can stick their game.

Jack_Simth
2008-05-06, 04:02 PM
No you don't need LoE, yes you can Dimension door downward, no you aren't going to like it when you appear in the wall, get shunted Prone to the room next door where the Minotaur is kept.
Actually, with Dimension Door, it's a random location within 100 feet of the intended destination. Which could mean the surface, in a lot of cases. Especially as that's where you're liable to find the most available surfaces....

lord_khaine
2008-05-06, 04:08 PM
Teleporting to the entrance of dungeon I'm fine with. It's the teleporting straight to the BBEG and skipping 90% of the adventure that I don't want

i cant really see the problem here, unless the players actualy know where the BBEG is at the moment, they cant do this.

and honestly, if they manage to find out where he is hiding then i firmly belive they also deserve to port up besides him.

of course, then the BBEG can start running out though the dungeon, summoning all his minions (who is still alive) on the way.

Mewtarthio
2008-05-06, 04:17 PM
Remember, though, that you cannot take any actions until your next round after using DimDoor. Just have a few rooms with lots of monsters. PCs attempting to DimDoor in are pretty much caught off-guard (not even Foresight + Celerity combos can bypass that). Pits of lava, huge drops, and nasty traps could also keep your players paranoid: You'd rather not appear in midair over a bunch of poison spikes that you never saw coming (and, remember, no actions, so no feather fall). Best of all, all of these things are perfectly normal to find in any dungeon.

Frosty
2008-05-06, 04:42 PM
There's also Anticipate Teleport right?

Mewtarthio
2008-05-06, 05:22 PM
Not to mention divert teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/divertTeleport.htm). You know, the wording on that's a little weird: Does the caster make a single Will save and PR check for the entire teleportation spell, or does each individual creature teleported make their own saves?

OverWilliam
2008-05-06, 05:23 PM
oops. I need a way to prevent my players from abusive DD.

I'd set up the dungeon so that the levels are staggered in a random fashion. To wit: have only certain parts of any given level be directly above the next level below it. Instead, have most of the level be off to the side of the current level and then the level below that shifted back to directly beneath that level. Or have it go off in a third direction, and then the fourth level down is directly below that level. Don't have the dungeon levels stacked directly on top of each other and they can't reliably DD straight down, because the next lower level isn't directly below them at all. :smallwink:

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-06, 05:35 PM
1) First things first. You should really read the Dungenomicon. It talks extensively about this sort of thing.

2) There are a hundred and one spells to apply, and various reasons for them to be in place.

3) How do your PCs know the layout of the Dungeon? Seriously. Go drive to the center of town and find a big building, like the Capitol Building of your state or something, or a corporate building. Walk inside the entrance. Imagine you had DD at will. Without looking around at maps and directories (because dungeons don't have those) where would you teleport to get to the CEO/Governor's office?

Is that method any faster or better then searching floor by floor, room by room?

I mean seriously, if your PCs know how to teleport to the BBEG, then you have bigger problems then Dimension Door.

Frosty
2008-05-06, 05:38 PM
I was thinking more about extensive Scrying. Sometimes there are enemies who don't know magic.

And What the heck is Dungenomicon?

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-06, 05:57 PM
This (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547). Characters

Frosty
2008-05-06, 06:09 PM
CoV, that site is made of win. *gives stamp of approval*

An Aristocrat's primary job in life is to get married to another aristocrat or better yet a hard core adventurer. In this manner they will get more family members who can slay dragons. That's important, because as soon as none of the living members of a house are powerful wizards or warriors – the house gets its assets liquidated by an adventuring group of orcs or elves (depending upon what kind of house it was) and all the aristocrats in it who weren't killed outright have to run off into the night with whatever wealth they can hide inside their body. It's not pretty, so aristocrats spend a considerable amount of time trying to make themselves as pretty as possible – anything they can do to make a high level Barbarian want to have children with them is something they'll do without a second thought.

I laughed. Hard.

The Valiant Turtle
2008-05-06, 06:18 PM
This little problem is why I consider the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook to be one of the best books for 3E that almost nobody has. It provides good crunchy rules for doing all sorts of cool things to any kind of structure. I highly recommend all GMs get it and use it frequently (and not just for the bad guys).

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-06, 06:24 PM
CoV, that site is made of win. *gives stamp of approval*

There's three other Tomb books of similar quality. But the Dungenomicon is the one that addresses Scry-and-Die and Teleport.

Farmer42
2008-05-06, 06:33 PM
Scrying should never be a problem for someone with the wherewithal to build their own dungeon. There are so many different counters to it that it shouldn't be a problem. I mean, If you have the resources to build your own dungeon, fill it with magical traps, bottomless pits, invisible mazes patrolled by a legion of minotaurs (yes, I do actually have a dungeon that's nearly a square mile with a large portion of it a force wall maze, I've yet to ever be mad enough at my players to make them face it), and even more obscure beasties, complete with an Ancient Artifact #3 and you can't have non-detection placed on yourself you're a joke, one who shouldn't be in charge of their own dungeon.

ShneekeyTheLost
2008-05-06, 07:20 PM
Party: We use DimDoor abuse to bypass most of the dungeon and go straight for the BBEG!
GM: Fine. The BBEG, who is ten levels higher than you, because you were expected to go through the dungeon and level ten times before meeting him, pwns you. Reroll please.

Seriously, loot isn't the only thing you loose by skipping content. You don't get xp from the monsters, either.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-05-06, 07:36 PM
The reason you get XP for bypassing an encounter is because it gets wonky otherwise. Lets say you know the dungeon is packed with monsters. The smart thing to do would be to avoid engaging as many of them as possible so that you have surprise and are at full strength for the final battle. The metagaming thing to do is ignore that fact and walk in the front door for the XP. If the Wizard picked up a spell that let the party avoid fighting, he should use it, because fighting means risking death. He's got an Int of 24, he shouldn't be stupid about his life.

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-06, 07:39 PM
Party: We use DimDoor abuse to bypass most of the dungeon and go straight for the BBEG!
GM: Fine. The BBEG, who is ten levels higher than you, because you were expected to go through the dungeon and level ten times before meeting him, pwns you. Reroll please.

Seriously, loot isn't the only thing you loose by skipping content. You don't get xp from the monsters, either.

Yes you do. You bypassed the challenge. Of course, per DMG suggestions you can't even level until after you kill the BBEG of the Dungeon anyway.

Cuddly
2008-05-06, 07:44 PM
So by staying home in bed, and not going out to adventure today, my character bypasses challenges. Should he get experience?

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-06, 07:49 PM
So by staying home in bed, and not going out to adventure today, my character bypasses challenges. Should he get experience?

No you didn't bypass challenges, because you didn't accomplish your goals. Stop being a jerk just because you didn't remember the rules.

Cuddly
2008-05-06, 07:52 PM
No you didn't bypass challenges, because you didn't accomplish your goals. Stop being a jerk just because you didn't remember the rules.

What if my goals were "stay in bed and sleep?" or maybe "not milk the cow"?

It seems a little absurd for awarding experience to players for things they didn't do, especially since there are so many ways to go about not doing something. Concievably, there are an infinite number of challenges between me and a goal. So that would be an infinite amount of exp, would it not?

Flickerdart
2008-05-06, 07:56 PM
So...for every time I don't fall flat on my face while walking, I've gained valuable XP? Sweet!

Jack_Simth
2008-05-06, 07:57 PM
Yes you do. You bypassed the challenge. Of course, per DMG suggestions you can't even level until after you kill the BBEG of the Dungeon anyway.

Sorta. A encounter not encountered isn't an encounter. If your sneak scouts out the building exterior, notes the guards at the front door of the manor, and locates a cellar entrance that will bypass said guards, you get XP for the guards encounter (you encountered them, and bypassed them). If, on the other hand, you never find nor trigger a trap on a particular dungeon door for the simple reason that your mapper said "We've been there already" and you never tried that particular door, you don't get XP for the trap - because you didn't encounter it. You don't even know it's there. You did for the guards.

If you simply skip a dungeon level, you have only the foggiest notion of what you skipped - you never encountered it - so no XP for you.

ShneekeyTheLost
2008-05-06, 08:31 PM
Sorta. A encounter not encountered isn't an encounter. If your sneak scouts out the building exterior, notes the guards at the front door of the manor, and locates a cellar entrance that will bypass said guards, you get XP for the guards encounter (you encountered them, and bypassed them). If, on the other hand, you never find nor trigger a trap on a particular dungeon door for the simple reason that your mapper said "We've been there already" and you never tried that particular door, you don't get XP for the trap - because you didn't encounter it. You don't even know it's there. You did for the guards.

If you simply skip a dungeon level, you have only the foggiest notion of what you skipped - you never encountered it - so no XP for you.

Precisely. Or, to use an OoTS reference, when the party used the 'employee exit' to bypass levels to get to :xykon:quicker, they never got any xp for the encounters on the floors they passed. Same concept.

The Sandman
2008-05-06, 10:49 PM
Dimensional Lock works for a dungeon or two, but if every dungeon has it, it strains belief.

Put the dungeon in Limbo, or at least have a planar breach to Limbo somewhere. Except for whatever rooms you deem necessary to the plot, no part of the dungeon will stay the same for long enough to get the sort of fix you need for teleportation.

Draz74
2008-05-06, 10:59 PM
What if my goals were "stay in bed and sleep?" or maybe "not milk the cow"?

It seems a little absurd for awarding experience to players for things they didn't do, especially since there are so many ways to go about not doing something. Concievably, there are an infinite number of challenges between me and a goal. So that would be an infinite amount of exp, would it not?


So...for every time I don't fall flat on my face while walking, I've gained valuable XP? Sweet!

Where did you guys think Level 4 Commoners come from? Because I don't think it's from surviving Orc raids; if they actually manage to survive those, they'll start taking levels in a PC class (or at least Warrior).

The Sandman
2008-05-06, 11:09 PM
Where did you guys think Level 4 Commoners come from?

"Well, when a mommy 5th level Commoner and a daddy 5th level Commoner love each other very much..." :smallwink:

Cuddly
2008-05-06, 11:09 PM
Where did you guys think Level 4 Commoners come from? Because I don't think it's from surviving Orc raids; if they actually manage to survive those, they'll start taking levels in a PC class (or at least Warrior).

Roleplaying xp.
Actually overcoming challenges, such as building a house or milking a cow.

Collin152
2008-05-06, 11:56 PM
"Well, when a mommy 5th level Commoner and a daddy 5th level Commoner love each other very much..." :smallwink:

Reminds me of Vampire and their constantly shrinking power levels.
At least they get to be immortal, otherwise they'd die out.
Well, die to the Final Death, anyways, technically they are dead.

Larrin
2008-05-07, 09:25 AM
bypassing one challenge might be worth comparable xp to fighting it out, but bypassing 20 encounters of hacking through monsters with one spell is NOT worth as much xp as fighting your way all 20 encounters of hacking monsters...you might get one encounters worth, thats it.

think of it this way. You have a goal, lets say its becoming a doctor. so you need to go to school. you can reasonably avoid the occasional exam or class and still be learning, because circumventing one exam or class involves some challenge, you still do most of the work, you can keep up. thats like using DD to skip one encounter.

But if you skip all of med school and just buy a license on the black market, you'll definitely be lacking in experience and be a really bad doctor. (in general). Thats what skipping a whole dungeon to get to the boss is like.

I'm not saying that DM's should squash players that do this out of hand, but the rewards (xp and treasure) should reflect this. You cast one mid level spell and defeated one encounter, you get one twentieth of the xp you would have gotten for fighting your way there (maybe one and a half twentieths for the clever use of DD)

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-07, 10:00 AM
Or lets say you need to rescue the princess before she is sacrificed to a dark god. So you teleport in, kill the BBEG, then leave. And you get less XP for actually succeeding at your goal then you do for hunting random Minotaurs for a few hours, even if she's dead when you get there.

And so you flat out tell your players: Don't accomplish your goals intelligently, this is a Computer game, you only get XP for what you kill.

Larrin
2008-05-07, 10:29 AM
Or lets say you need to rescue the princess before she is sacrificed to a dark god. So you teleport in, kill the BBEG, then leave. And you get less XP for actually succeeding at your goal then you do for hunting random Minotaurs for a few hours, even if she's dead when you get there.

And so you flat out tell your players: Don't accomplish your goals intelligently, this is a Computer game, you only get XP for what you kill.

There is a difference between hunting random minotaurs and fighting through many battles that are 'necessary'. If they dilly dally and hunt for non-plot xp and it results in princess dying, then they shouldn't be rewarded. If they can fight through a series of plot battles to get to the princess and save her in time THAT should be worth more than taking an easy way out. if the only way to save the princess in time is using teleport, xp will be given for them finding the one good solution, thats a different situation, and as a DM you have the control over that.

Intelligence is fine and ORIGINAL thought should be encouraged (and rewarded). But taking the easy way out isn't necessarily a sign of intelligence, it can just be laziness, and that shouldn't be encouraged. It makes for a lousy story after a while. and one instance of 'intelligence' isn't worth the xp of 10 chances to test your cunning. xp doesn't need to come from killing, you could have social encounters, fun trap puzzles, a country dance (put those perform skills to the test baby). you're skipping those by teleporting too. After a while scry-and-die CAN become as much of an computer game grind and just killing everything.

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-07, 10:50 AM
Yes, they should be punished for rescuing her. How dare they take the best possible approach to saving someones life. Those jerks.

Wandering around fighting Minotaurs is bad because it's unnecessary, but fighting a series of unnecessary battles that you set up (that's what the Minotaurs where in my example, the DM's "plot related encounters") that are 100% avoidable and unnecessary should be rewarded.

Seriously, you advocate punishing them for putting rescuing the princess above their own XP/treasure intake.

Maxymiuk
2008-05-07, 10:51 AM
And that is why in my games I switched to awarding XP based on achieving goals rather than defeating individual encounters. But anyway, back on topic...

As was stated before, any dungeon builder worth his salt would Dimension Lock his dungeon precisely to prevent that kind of tactic being employed. An interesting read, while not talking about dungeons directly, would Complete Warrior's section on high-magic warfare, particularly the concept of underground (dungeon!) castles that employ such defenses against wizard strike teams. Aside from DL, most dungeons would be protected from scrying earthquakes, spells such as Rock to Mud and most common methods of magical forced entry.

Remember: those spells exist for everyone, not just PC's. It's only common sense that there'd be people who know how to defend against them.

Aquillion
2008-05-07, 11:06 AM
I had an old trick that went something like this:

I am a level one character. I declare that I am going to slay every dragon in the entire world. I become completely obsessed with slaying every dragon! I fixate on it in all respects and make that my challenge -- every dragon, all at once, in a single day.

The day arrives.

Then, I decide not to kill the dragons. I have now "overcome" the challenge posed by them, and gain XP as if I had actually killed them. If this isn't enough to make me epic level, I do it again as many times as necessary.

...anyway, as far as skipping dungeons goes, I've never seen it become a big problem. Players are reluctant to skip out on loot, for one. For another, you can always use the things they skipped to bite them in the ass (you teleported past the room filled with orcs? Good for you. Now when the Orc Chief shouts for help, they all run in and you have to fight them and the chief at the same time. Hope you saved another teleport to get back out without going through all the deathtraps you skipped, too. Oh, what's that, the Orc Shaman hit your teleporter-guy with Feeblemind? What a pity...)

Another trick is, at higher levels, to avoid making the man challenge "go from point A to point B." Honestly, it gets old anyway. If the players have to discover the weak point of the BBEG, teleporting straight to him won't help. Remember that most divinations allow for cryptic responses, too -- enough to, say, point the players in the direction of a dungeon or city and say that what they need is there, rather than giving them enough information to teleport right to it (or scry it more specifically.)

And sometimes killing everything can itself be a goal. If the players are hired to wipe out the orc threat, say, the people who hire them can make it clear that they want as few survivors as possible -- killing the orc chief might be good, sure, but if it just means that the evil orc forces dissolve into roaming bands of disorganized looting and pillaging orcs causing trouble, it isn't that much of a gain. Likewise, even if killing the necromancer is a main goal, cleaning out the fortress of undead can be a secondary one.

Giving the PCs a reason to explore can help, too. They might be hired to map an underground cave complex, or to find every trap and danger in a decaying ruin so it can be restored. If the treasure (or a large number of scattered MacGuffins throughout the dungeon, which amounts to the same thing) is itself the primary goal, teleporting around won't help much -- if they're on a quest to recover the lost crown of the king that was taken by the orcs, say, they could discover that the squabbling orcs broke it up into pieces and all of its dozens of jewels are now scattered (and hidden) throughout the cave, forcing them to search for and recover them individually.

If you must have the players hunt a BBEG, you can give them so little information that they can't scry effectively -- tell the players that the orcs have been acting restless or that undead have been spotted around the tower or whatever, and don't tell them about the orc chief or necromancer (who's been keeping a low profile, apparently.) That's not enough to scry on without a connection (which can, itself, be a trophy in the dungeon -- you could put the necromancer's bedchambers or personal library in there with the intention that once the PCs find those places and get a connection good enough to scry with, then they have the option to scry and teleport to wherever he is. Of course, you won't make those places easy to reach.) In fact, in that case simply discovering that there is a BBEG behind events can be part of the goal of the dungeon; PCs can't use clever tricks to kill a BBEG that they don't even know exists.

One advantage to these things is that they don't make teleportation and scrying useless -- those are valid class features, and swaddling every dungeon with a no-teleport, no-scry zone is unfair to the sorcerer who devoted lots of his spell list to those spells, say, or the wizard who specializes in divinations, or the psion who goes for Elocator... or the player who just likes the idea of being clever and teleporting around. I mean, killing people with swords would come across as a fairly blunt and uninteresting solution to some people, but that doesn't mean you need to make every dungeon swordproof, does it?

The occasional challenge that makes a player's usual abilities inapplicable can be nice for a change of pace. If you're going to do it all the time, though, you should just work it in from the start and tell the players flatly that teleportation and high-powered divinations are not allowed, so they don't waste time focusing on them.

Don't give players goals that are below their abilities. This includes teleportation and divination at higher levels; saying "Here, save the princess from this non-magically-warded cell in this exact location" to a high-level wizard is no different from saying "Here, kill these three kobolds" to a high-level fighter. (Of course, you can throw easy challenges like that at the players occasionally just for setting purposes -- they'll probably feel clever and satisfied at "outsmarting" you, even if you really just put it in deliberately to give them a chance to use their abilities. Giving them 'throwaway' places to use scrying+teleportation like that can also reduce the complaining when you reach a point where you have to just put in a no-teleporation field. And you're justified in giving them few XP for saving the princess, because guess what? It secretly wouldn't have been that hard anyway, since it was never intended as one of the campaign's main challenges.)

Larrin
2008-05-07, 11:23 AM
Seriously, you advocate punishing them for putting rescuing the princess above their own XP/treasure intake.

Not quite, I advocate rewarding them with xp for doing more work. I have no problem with rewarding them for putting the princess above their own xp intake. I just don't do it by giving them the same amount of XP. Her father might give them something, the world might not end, a god might notice their efficiency and throw some work their way, and they might get some xp, just not as much. If they can rescue the princess with a wave of the hand AND have their full xp, then they didn't put the princess above anything, they simply went the easy way. Doing things the easy way is the base reward; ever challenge you face after that is more reward.

I know what you're saying, they got the job done, they saved the day, and they did it quickly. That counts for something. But storywise, its ends up being anti-climatic, the players certainly didn't put alot of effort into "Hey lets just teleport there" (its not exactly an original idea at this point) or even any strain on their PC's resources. I'm going to give greater rewards to the players the actually did some heavy lifting, put their lives on the line for more than just one battle, and had to expend themselves to pull it off. The adventure isn't about saving the princess in under 60 seconds, its about heroes being heroes, doing heroic things. If you can get the same xp for doing less work, then i feel i'm punishing those brave enough to actually work their way to the last battle.

heh, okay, don't take this the wrong way, its supposed to be silly.

Compare three groups:

A) fights to princess, saves her, leaves safely
B) teleports to princess, leaves safely
C)Teleports to princess, fights way out through everything group A did.

Now If A and B should get the same xp, how much should C get? They acomplished the goal, and thus should get the "accomplished goal xp" but then they just happened to get in all these fights afterwards...those are worth something aren't they :p and what if group D teleports to princess, leaves safely, drops her off, then comes back the way A did and fights all the same battles just for kicks.....

Aquillion
2008-05-07, 12:52 PM
Yes, they should be punished for rescuing her. How dare they take the best possible approach to saving someones life. Those jerks.

Wandering around fighting Minotaurs is bad because it's unnecessary, but fighting a series of unnecessary battles that you set up (that's what the Minotaurs where in my example, the DM's "plot related encounters") that are 100% avoidable and unnecessary should be rewarded.

Seriously, you advocate punishing them for putting rescuing the princess above their own XP/treasure intake.
The problem with this is that challenges are supposed to be ranked by difficulty, and rewards given accordingly. Something that is easy for the players should not give as much XP as something that's hard; that much is common sense. But this can sometimes result in a situation that gives the appearance of players being rewarded for being stupid (and making things harder for themselves), while being punished for being intelligent.

The solution to this is twofold.

First, CRs should always be set based on the easiest way a challenge could be resolved. For instance, it might be possible for the players to get past a locked door at the guardhouse by slaughtering every guard in the city and searching their bodies for the key... but this doesn't mean that they earn XP for that just by using Knock or bashing it down. The CR of the door is based on the difficulty of the easy solution, not the difficulty of the hard solution.

Second, though, players can also end up making additional challenges for themselves, and can then earn some XP for these. If the players do kill every guard in the city to get the key, this is a significant feat, and they earn XP for it far beyond the negligable amount they get for opening the door. Likewise, while the CR of rescuing the princess is actually pretty low for a class with a proper caster (you can just teleport), someone who fights the three minotaur guardians does get additional XP for beating them.

Does this mean that being stupid is rewarded and being intelligent is punished? No. The guards and minotaurs are other, optional challenges. Just like players can go randomly hunting dragons or undead and get XP for it, a player who chooses to face something they can avoid entirely can earn extra xp for it, if they're plainly facing more of a challenge in the fight (using move silently to sneak past a dangerous monster is often as dangerous as killing it, though.)

But it doesn't actually benefit the players to do that, because here, in the real world, encounters take up time at the table -- the time they spend fighting those minotaurs could be spent fighting something else after rescuing the princess and getting the reward. Basically, your players should be always earning xp and facing challenges; if they're ever being driven primarily by that, you're doing something wrong. Similarly, spending an entire session to earn the same xp that they could've earned by saying "Ok, I cast teleport" is no fun.

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-07, 03:21 PM
Have you played Computer RPGs? This is exactly my point. Accomplishing "optional" challenges is mandatory if you want to be strong enough to complete the main ones. That's not something I want in my D&D.

If you accomplish your objective in the stupidest possible way, you don't get more XP for being stupid. If you let the Minotaur beat you up and take no actions until you are at 1 HP then it was a more difficult challenge, do you get more XP? No. Because stupidity shouldn't be rewarded.

Farmer42
2008-05-07, 04:11 PM
Rarely do CRPGs require you to do side quests, hence they're called side quests. But that's besides the point. What he is referencing is that you bypassed, not overcame the challenge. It isn't a matter of making it more difficult, it's about whether or not you even try. As has been mentioned, if you sneak past the guards, you're trying. If your wizards goes poof, you aren't trying. It's a subtle, but important difference.

Edit: That's also a balancing factor built into the spells themselves. While teleport and it's ilk are powerful, there's a lot you miss out on. And while that's fairly insignificant at lvl 15, at lvl 7, that can mean a whole lot.

Aquillion
2008-05-07, 04:59 PM
Have you played Computer RPGs? This is exactly my point. Accomplishing "optional" challenges is mandatory if you want to be strong enough to complete the main ones. That's not something I want in my D&D.The difference is that a typical computer RPG only has a set number of challenges in it, and a total amount of XP you can earn. Additionally, there's usually a set difficulty to all challenges in a computer game that doesn't change -- so if you get less than full XP in the first city, say, you'll find the second one much harder. As a DM, though, you're going to constantly make up challenges whenever the players need them (in fact, let's be honest here -- if the players bypass a challenge completely via teleport or something, hardly even seeing it, most experienced DMs will probably just shrug, tuck the 3x5 cards with the challenge's stats on it away, and use a slightly refluffed version of it at the next opportunity. No reason to waste a perfectly good minotaur.)

Likewise, a PnP game's difficulty will, one way or the other, end up getting scaled to the players -- depending on how it happens, it could be because the DM drops different hooks, the players look for different sorts of adventures, or the DM explicitly scales things behind the scenes, but however it happens the end result is the same. A player never has to worry about getting 'behind the curve' in a PnP game (except as relative to the other players), because the party can go through things at their own pace and the DM will just put things in the world to accommodate this.

So it doesn't really do the players any good to go around mindlessly throwing themselves into challenges, because if they just bypass those challenges they'll still get the XP for the 'simple' solution and then be able to go on to the next adventure (which, of course, will probably use as many of the bypassed parts from the old one as the DM can salvage, but the players don't need to know that.)

Basically, my feeling is that as long as the players are basically succeeding at something, they should keep getting xp at a steady rate and advancing. Even if they're the Three Stooges of adventuring and keep bumbling into pointless fights with dragons they have no real reason to fight, killing those dragons is still an accomplishment.

For more detailed 'self-inflicted' difficulty like the one you described, I would avoid granting more XP not because I'm opposed to the idea but because it would be impossible to balance. But, really -- while your example is silly, there are certainly examples in literature of someone being seen as 'more heroic' for self-inflicted challenges (fighting the monster unarmed, wielding the sword in your off-hand, refusing to call in reinforcements, etc), and I could see that translating into more xp in D&D. It's just that the system really doesn't support that -- but it does support, say, assigning a CR of 1 to getting the princess out of the tower through the barely-hidden back door, while still giving full xp for people who for whatever reason end up fighting each of the CR 4 minotaurs at the front gate instead.

Basically, I don't want to be there at the end of a session saying, "Well, congrats, guys, you beat the minotaurs... but sadly, there was a very easy way to do this without fighting, so you get barely any XP." Conversely, if someone goes in through the back door and never even sees the minotaurs, it seems absurd to grant them XP as if they'd fought each and every one of them.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-05-07, 07:50 PM
Basically, I don't want to be there at the end of a session saying, "Well, congrats, guys, you beat the minotaurs... but sadly, there was a very easy way to do this without fighting, so you get barely any XP." Conversely, if someone goes in through the back door and never even sees the minotaurs, it seems absurd to grant them XP as if they'd fought each and every one of them.The problem is, then the players are rewarded more for being stupid. If they do the dumb thing and charge in the front door, they get XP. If they use Divinitation spells to scout the area, the Rogue to break in, and the Fighter to guard their backs while ambushing the BBEG in his sleep, they get far less XP than they would for being idiots. I don't like rewarding stupidity.

Farmer42
2008-05-07, 10:07 PM
No, because they aren't just skipping it, they're actually dealing with it, not bliping in then out again.

Frosty
2008-05-08, 11:18 AM
I think that if the players use the most efficient method to complete their task while still roleplaying their characters, they should get full exp. That said, the DM should be smart enough to design dungeons that provide challenges even IF THE PLAYERS use the most efficient method.

Jack_Simth
2008-05-08, 03:55 PM
The problem is, then the players are rewarded more for being stupid. If they do the dumb thing and charge in the front door, they get XP. If they use Divinitation spells to scout the area, the Rogue to break in, and the Fighter to guard their backs while ambushing the BBEG in his sleep, they get far less XP than they would for being idiots. I don't like rewarding stupidity.
Remember my example of the guards at the door that were scouted and avoided vs. the trap that was never discovered on the door because the mapper said they'd already been in the room on the other side?

If you're using (Greater) Scrying on the sacrifice and simply teleporting in, then you're not facing a prepared opponent of a high enough CR to make him an individual challenge - by the time you can Dimension Door in, your opponents should be able to arrange for a Private Sanctum or False Vision to confuse and befuddle at the location the sacrifice is located. If you're doing this, your DM is being lax and doesn't know how to handle the scry/buff/teleport nuke. There was no real challenge and little resource expenditure involved, and it doesn't take much table-time.

If you're sending the rogue in with a ring of invisibility and orders to scout out the entire area, then you've got someone who's gone in, looked at almost everything, and come back out with a description of the area you're going to - the party has gone through quite a number of encounters and traps, even if it's the rogue who's doing the work. You know exactly what's there for a lot of the dungeon, and you've eaten up a lot of table-time on it. You've encountered it, even if it didn't notice you.

If you're using repeated castings of Clairvoyance to check an area, look around, then use Clairvoyance to check a nearby area, then again to check another area, and so on to map the place out and find the sacrificial chamber, then you've burned an absurd number of spells and you've scouted the place out - you know exactly what's there for a lot of the dungeon, and you've eaten up a lot of table-time on it. You've encountered it, even if it didn't notice you.

If you're casting Arcane Eye and having it scout about, slipping under doors and through keyholes, again - you're spending a lot of table-time scouting the place, and you know exactly what's there for a lot of the dungeon. You've encountered it, even if it didn't notice you.

In the first case, yes, that's an intelligent thing to do... but you're facing a not-so-smart adversary. He can't set up a challenge, and nothing noticeable was really spent skipping the minions. In the others, it's still an intelligent thing to do, you're potentially still facing a rather bright adversary (when your sensor hits the Private Sanctum wall, you know you've reached something interesting), but this time around, you've encountered everything to one extent or another; you know what's there, you've spent time and resources finding out and bypassing the minions (or finding out there are no minions).

Hmm... I suppose I'm making a rant for table-time being the deciding factor in actual XP awards, aren't I?