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Comes down to this to me. The villains have at their disposal whatever resources the game master deems necessary for the sake of the story. In effect their resources are limitless. The game master looks at the group and decides what is needed to make for an interesting adventure. The villains then receive this gratis. Keep in mind that often villains have had years if not decades or centuries to secure their base of operation and often their person against common threats such as scrying and teleportation. If someone cannot figure out how to counter their players for the sake of good story then they should not be running the game in my view.
If a villain of mine needs to be able to restrict scrying and teleportation, then he is going to be able to do so. Either through spells, items or class features.
Here's a question for you:
What's the difference between writing every villain so he can resist Scry and Die and creating an in-game limitation on the spells?
Answer: the amount of work you have to do as a DM.
The best part of my solution is that its easy. Rather than rewrite every villain to ignore one tactic, or come up with elaborate reasons why he didn't use his money to just hire an army instead of plating his whole complex in lead, you can just work on the story.
I addressed the problem this way:
I asked my players if S&D was a technique they supported. If they did, then the foes would use it as well. They thought better of the idea and asked me to derive a house rule.
I ruled that teleportation magic requires a metaphysical connection to the place to which you are teleporting. You can get this connection by physically seeing the place (atop yonder mountain) visiting the place (we were at the palace once, let's go there) or having your familiar visit the place (familiars provide this benefit to their masters per PHB) but simply viewing the place though magic is not enough of a connection for the spell to work. This allowed all forms of divination to be useful but prevented S&D attacks on NPCs and the party (which is far more vulnerable to it really since they interact with a wider circle of people).
And as far as dungeons go, they are used IMHO because they are easily defended, out of sight, hard to locate, relatively easy to expand with labor or magic and hard to recon without entering.
I actually like this solution and may adopt it in my game. The idea of limiting teleport in some reasonable way prevents S&D in most cases and, potentially opens up many new strategic decisions for the players -- do they attempt to infiltrate the cultist hideout to get a "teleport resonance"? Do they risk sending the fragile familar into dangerous areas unprotected? etc.
The limitation on dungeons doesn't account for wizard towers, keeps, abandoned buildings and the like that are common settings for hideouts. To be honest, I don't want to have to design my world around lead-lining everything.
Heh. I'll combine BOTH solutions. I'm just going to rule that the rock of the dungeons is unusually high in galena (lead ore). It'll block scrying, but won't provide untold wealth unless the characters have Knowledge (geology) to identify it, Profession (mining engineer) to assay it, have a horde of miners to mine it, and have Profession (metallurgist) skill to know how to extract the lead.
Comes down to this to me. The villains have at their disposal whatever resources the game master deems necessary for the sake of the story. In effect their resources are limitless. The game master looks at the group and decides what is needed to make for an interesting adventure. The villains then receive this gratis. Keep in mind that often villains have had years if not decades or centuries to secure their base of operation and often their person against common threats such as scrying and teleportation. If someone cannot figure out how to counter their players for the sake of good story then they should not be running the game in my view.
If a villain of mine needs to be able to restrict scrying and teleportation, then he is going to be able to do so. Either through spells, items or class features.
Here's a question for you:
What's the difference between writing every villain so he can resist Scry and Die and creating an in-game limitation on the spells?
Answer: the amount of work you have to do as a DM.
The best part of my solution is that its easy. Rather than rewrite every villain to ignore one tactic, or come up with elaborate reasons why he didn't use his money to just hire an army instead of plating his whole complex in lead, you can just work on the story.
And in the process negate just about any use of Scry or Teleport in an Underdark campaign. Not a good fix in my opinion.
As for extra work, what extra work? If you are running the game you should be aware of the basic means of countering common tactics. It not extra work to make sure the villain already has items/spells you know about and how they work. It is not as if you are desiging the items or spells yourself.
In closing, I never said write all villains so they can counter scry and die. Not every villain should be able to do so. Just as not every party will be able to pull it off or willing to do so since they would know the villain may actually be aware of their scrying.
-Weylin Stormcrowe
And in the process negate just about any use of Scry or Teleport in an Underdark campaign. Not a good fix in my opinion.
You do know that back in the day that was the way it worked right? DMs wanted people to spelunk so teleporting didn't work in the Underdark.
You do know that back in the day that was the way it worked right? DMs wanted people to spelunk so teleporting didn't work in the Underdark.
And in the process negate just about any use of Scry or Teleport in an Underdark campaign. Not a good fix in my opinion.
More often it was because teleporting to an unknown underground area was far far more dangerous prospect than doing so above ground. More likely to end up in a wall somewhere when doing so underground.
I'd even buy the "faerezz energy" from the Underdark book interfering with scrying and teleporting more than i would base rock of any sort doing so. This would mean you could scry and teleport into some areas of underground but not into others.
Or even saying only certain very dense forms of stone such as granite do so. But not any little limestone cavern.
-Weylin Stormcrowe
Pretty funny thread...
my 2cents are that the problem is not so much the scrying, but the teleporting... That a party uses resources to magically scout should not be penalized (though magic-using enemies would try to outdo the tactic). They can get an edge by knowing what to prepare for.
Teleporting is quite easy to fix. You don't need magic to prevent teleports into your choice lair, just a bit of ingenuity:
1) fill some choice lairs with butterflies, moths or similar. You cannot teleport into living matter, just be a nasty DM and apply the rule firmly. Even a not-magic-oriented foe of enough intelligence and resources can figure that out.
2) as an alternate, you can have your lair quite choked with hanging vines , fungi or similar yucky stuff (ideal for demons or other who don't mind). Again, party cannot teleport into it
3) decoys. I would rule that unless the party has some personal item of the intended victim (hair, nail clippings, blood), they can only scry through appearance. A resourceful foe can get some decoys of himself. The party can scry and teleport right next to a decoy in a conveniently prepared trapped area.
5) magnetic ores... that's for the old timers, I think it can be familiar for old timers (it appears in D1, Descent into the Depths of the Earth). I would not ban teleport, just scramble it. You can come up with a sort of magnetic-magical distorter which teleports you into a given location (perhaps a cell). Otherwise, fantasy-world banks would be quite empty!
They are Sorcerers, which means the chances of any one of them being able kit out a lair and still able to use battle magic is very low.
They can use scrolls. Also, it doesn't take many different spells to defend against a teleport surprise attack. Mordekainen's Private Sanctum, and you're good. As they can often learn cleric spells, they even have access to Forbiddance, which is actually a really good spells for dragons, as it keeps the thieving halflings away.
I've fought far more demons on the Prime than on other planes, so I'm not sure why everyone assumes they are hooked into an infernal hierarchy with all of the resources of major organizations.
"Environment: A chaotic evil-aligned plane"
And read the description of what Pit Fiends and Balors actually are. They're not random monsters terrorizing the countryside.
By the rules, they don't even have minions except for some limited summoning ability.
"Organization: Solitary, pair, team (3–4), or troupe (1–2 pit fiends, 2–5 horned devils, and 2–5 barbed devils)"
Heck, sometimes the villain is just a giant non-intelligent ooze thats destroying whole villages. Where's his Scry and Die protection?
I really don't get the examples you use. Hullathoins and giant oozes... these aren't exactly stealthy creatures. What's the scrying part good for? What's the Teleport part good for? They're visible from a great distance anyway, can't fly, don't have ranged attacks, and are dead meat anyway if the party wants to spend the spells.
And really... a giant ooze villain? I don't think that even qualifies for the meaning of the word villain, lest make a reasonably good one. If the adventure resolves around hack & slay, than Scry and Die is really not the problem you should worry about. It's - again - adventure design.
And again, the ooze eating villages gains no benefit from the rule you propose.
It might be helpful to tell us where S&D actually killed an adventure in a party you were in / DMd. With the examples you've given so far, I really cannot see why you would S&D at all.
Even so, most combats last three or four rounds. The party can teleport out with the loot before any minions know what is going on.
If left alive for three or four rounds, a proper BBEG can give a pretty nasty fight. A Demon/Devil could just teleport away if the survives the first rounds. Even if the party was clever enough to prepare more Scry and Teleport spells, they'll run out faster - and their buffs will end before the teleport chase.
A running teleport battle across the game world would be a fantastic scene to me. Full of flavor, and very cinematic. An honest epic battle worthy of legends...kind of like the shapechanging chases in many celtic legends. See no problem with it being initiated by te heroes or the villains.
-Weylin Stormcrowe
I really don't get the examples you use. Hullathoins and giant oozes... these aren't exactly stealthy creatures. What's the scrying part good for? What's the Teleport part good for? They're visible from a great distance anyway, can't fly, don't have ranged attacks, and are dead meat anyway if the party wants to spend the spells.
Presumably the teleport part allows you to prebuff in safety or the scry part helps you find a time and place where flying and plinking are feasible. It's a bit confusing, because I think there are really two complaints here:
(1) Scrying (and other divination spells, to a lesser extent) can spoil stories by making it easy to spy on anyone, anywhere in the world.
(2) Teleport can spoil encounters by making it possible to ambush someone from 1000+ miles away.
Sometimes #1 is the problem, sometimes #2 is, and sometimes both are in combination. To give the two problems one name is a bit misleading, IMO.
The best part of my solution is that its easy. Rather than rewrite every villain to ignore one tactic, or come up with elaborate reasons why he didn't use his money to just hire an army instead of plating his whole complex in lead, you can just work on the story.
The worst part of your suggestion is that it requires every villain to live like hermits underground in some kind of dungeon complex... yeah, that sure doesn't get boring soon.
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There are more than a few ways to be clever about preventing a plan like this to work.
I like the old school approach. Too far underground and the like is fine by me. Lead blocks scrying works for me too. Adamantite I believe was alow hard to scry around. If it can work for Acererak it can work for my games.
With all the discussion of the Fabricate spell and what it can do. It would seem to me that lead sheets can't be that hard to make.
I like the idea of items to prevent scrying. I like the ideas of rooms being warded against. And plenty of BBEGs have moved into places that have protection that they didn't create. It might have come from a bygone era or they could have taken it by force.
Of course BBEGS don't have to make things easy for teleporters either. They don't hae to be in the biggest of rooms. Space doesn't have to be a consideration when a party teleports in, but when they start to fight they need to have thier 5x5 squares for the most part. If not they they are fighting in a disadvantage. Suddenly that 10x10 room looks very good for the BBEGif they can get only 3 fighting spots and they have 4 PCs.
And I also like BBEGs coming back from the dead/clones getting revenge using the same tactics against players to get thier stuff back if the party thinks that they can get away with something so easily. After all, they have almost all thier assets to go after them.
I short though, while I understand that some rules need to be revamped. Some DMS (and adventure writers) need to take account of what a party can do adjust accordingly.
You have to take the players shtick when running a game. Change it up if they think its going to be predictable.
I like the idea of five (or ten) feet of stone or an inch of lead stops teleportation, unless the area contains a teleportation circle or other keyed point of arrival. This allows PCs to transport to/from adventure sites, but fortifications like castles and other places actually prevent the "scry & die" tactic from working well.
BTW, Gorgon's blood mixed into the mortar of stone used to be the way to stop teleportation in earlier versions of the game (I think it had something to do with a gorgon's ability to affect ethereal opponents with their "turn to stone" ability).
<edit> I'd also like to be able to run adventures with high level fighter-type opponents (the evil warlord and the like) without having to force them to rely on high-level NPC spellcasters protecting them from these types of tactics at every turn or burning huge amounts of gold on items protecting them in a like manner.
I like the idea of five (or ten) feet of stone or an inch of lead stops teleportation.
An inch of lead around an entire room is TONS of metal. Maybe a foil thickness would be more reasonable?
An inch of lead around an entire room is TONS of metal. Maybe a foil thickness would be more reasonable?
I guess "lead-based paint" would work ;)
Sorry, guess I was thinking in older edition terms, where I believe it was 1 inch of lead that blocked divinations.
I guess "lead-based paint" would work ;)
Yes; that's why goblins are so deranged. Young goblins are always eating paint chips because of the sweet taste. If you're in a dungeon and the walls have almost all the paint peeled off of them, watch out for goblins. On the other hand, if the walls are all a lovely pastel yellow, with maybe pink My Little Ponies for decoration, watch out for the evil sorcerer.
A fighter type might coat this fullplate with "a thin sheath of lead". That'll certainly be bad for the armor's stats, but it's dirt cheap and should render him immune to Scry as long as he wears it.
A fighter type might coat this fullplate with "a thin sheath of lead". That'll certainly be bad for the armor's stats, but it's dirt cheap and should render him immune to Scry as long as he wears it.
That's a cool idea! Add to the weight and armor penalty, and decrease the max Dex to 0, maybe, to account for the lead... and assume the armor is lined, not coated, or else any blow will strip off a fair amount of that soft lead.
In the old days, what stopped people from teleporting was that it ran a significant risk of instantly killing you (8% for a "viewed once" location). Sane people would only use it as a means of emergency escape from a dungeon (since it still ran a 1% chance of insta-kill to a "very familiar" location). Anti-teleportation trickery wasn't necessary until Unearthed Arcana introduced teleport without error.