Friday, 30 June 2017

The Scry/Teleport Exploit

Back when 3e was new (perhaps before then, but 3e was when I really started to hear about it), an exploit of the rules appeared - because attack is so much more effective than defence in D&D, high-level characters could (and should) routinely bypass adventures by first scrying extensively on the end-boss of the adventure, then teleport to his or her location, and kill said end-boss.

Of course, various suggestions were put forward for combatting this. And, indeed, with 4e (and now 5e), WotC provided a solution by removing arbitrary teleport and instead imposing teleport circles - and without the secret code for a given circle, teleport was impossible.

Which is fair enough, but I prefer a different approach.

(Of course, the best solution is just to agree with the players, "gonnie no do that". But that's crazy talk, of course.)

My preferred solution is to add a small bit of text to the teleport spell (and variants) noting that it does not allow you to pass a threshold. That is, you can teleport anywhere in the public realm, but it simply isn't possible to teleport into a temple, dungeon, home, or whatever else. (It does allow you to teleport within one of these buildings, but that same would apply to an inner sanctum, bed chamber, or similar.)

This mostly solves the problem, without getting rid of arbitrary teleports (which are a feature of some of the source material). It also, usefully, mostly fits with the genre conventions (although note what I said recently about purity in fantasy!).

Mostly, though, I just like it as an easy fix for the issue.

No comments:

Post a Comment