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(that said I personally think exp incentives players to seek out more content and encounters rather than just "eh, let's skip as much as possible to speed run this campaign"Man I cannot fathom at all playing D&D with this kind of mindset. It feels so alien to me to approach the game that way.
Thing that people in the forum here hasn't seen is ROLEPLAYING your characters into speedruns x'D Ascalaphus really nailed it there.
After all "well of course we want to solve the important thing as fast as possible and avoid as much bloodshed and possible threat of injury on us as possible" does technically make sense. Basically milestones turn some parties into extreme "well let's take as many shortcuts as possible"
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When level up is based on how fast you get through the story than the way to optimize is to cut as many corners as possible. Which is part of why so many people dislike teleports: If you play with XP you miss encounters, if you play with milestones you skip entire sessions.
If the players collectively make that choice, I think there's no problem with "skipping sessions". Except the GM needs to learn what the players are likely to skip and avoid putting too much effort into that.
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When level up is based on how fast you get through the story than the way to optimize is to cut as many corners as possible. Which is part of why so many people dislike teleports: If you play with XP you miss encounters, if you play with milestones you skip entire sessions.If the players collectively make that choice, I think there's no problem with "skipping sessions". Except the GM needs to learn what the players are likely to skip and avoid putting too much effort into that.
Exactly. We're playing through a story and the players are the driving force, GMs just facilitate.
Your players see through the plot once or twice, shoot the villain-hiding-in-plain-sight the first time they meet him and circumvent *everything*, and scaling the tower or sneaking into Mordor seems pretty tame.
The only thing might be that the villain-hiding-in-plain-sight might be way too powerful for the players to handle if they skip straight to that part.
But then you just need to come up with a way to have the players escape.
Yes more GMs should be fine with players changing things up and not following the rail. If the rail is really needed they should have a reason why the ability fail, not straight up ban the ability. But alas that is not the world we live in.When level up is based on how fast you get through the story than the way to optimize is to cut as many corners as possible. Which is part of why so many people dislike teleports: If you play with XP you miss encounters, if you play with milestones you skip entire sessions.If the players collectively make that choice, I think there's no problem with "skipping sessions". Except the GM needs to learn what the players are likely to skip and avoid putting too much effort into that.
I think bans are justifiable on certain things. Teleportation magic is generally problematic. I'm okay with long distance teleportation being banned and short range teleportation magic being reskinned (so it doesn't get you through objects). Sure, it's nice if a GM gives in game reasons like the magic is rare and lost, so you can't get it. But that creates the idea that players who try really hard might get it, and if I as a GM have no intention of letting that happen then suggesting it could ever happen is misleading.
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I think bans are justifiable on certain things. Teleportation magic is generally problematic. I'm okay with long distance teleportation being banned and short range teleportation magic being reskinned (so it doesn't get you through objects). Sure, it's nice if a GM gives in game reasons like the magic is rare and lost, so you can't get it. But that creates the idea that players who try really hard might get it, and if I as a GM have no intention of letting that happen then suggesting it could ever happen is misleading.Yes more GMs should be fine with players changing things up and not following the rail. If the rail is really needed they should have a reason why the ability fail, not straight up ban the ability. But alas that is not the world we live in.When level up is based on how fast you get through the story than the way to optimize is to cut as many corners as possible. Which is part of why so many people dislike teleports: If you play with XP you miss encounters, if you play with milestones you skip entire sessions.If the players collectively make that choice, I think there's no problem with "skipping sessions". Except the GM needs to learn what the players are likely to skip and avoid putting too much effort into that.I was referring to using things that negate teleport in an area, or that control what type of spells are allowed. Or even just "you need to have been to the place to teleport there." There are actually a lot of ways to handle teleport without needing to ban it.
Also I didn't mean that bans are always bad. But the reason teleports are usually banned is because of what I said. GMs going, "I want players to fight" and/or "I want players to do X side quest on the way".
It's true that there are some answer that are better than bans, but I wont begrudge someone for banning certain things. You're solution of requiring having been there before does help to an extent. Although then you run into issues like Dimension Door into an area that had an otherwise "impossible" to access area, unless you also apply the restriction to it...which I guess would work.
Anyways, it can get wonky. As a GM you might try these very nuanced approaches, but in my experience (my) players will try to find every way around them which then invalidates the plot line prepared. Which goes back to effort on the GM side and knowing what your players want. It's not easy.
I generally like to plot more in "here's a problem, you're powerful adventurers, I'm sure you can come up with a solution" kind of way. So if the players find a different solution that doesn't disrupt my plans very much.
I tend to prefer to write my dungeons and stories as if every major stronghold will be tackled like a SWAT raid or Heist. I also have genre-aware enemies, wizards that lair in the middle of their tower rather than at the top as one example, because in a world with flight the top of a tower isn't safe. If the party wants to spend a session on nothing but planning and crafting items needed to pull off the raid that's a session well spent in my book.
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I generally like to plot more in "here's a problem, you're powerful adventurers, I'm sure you can come up with a solution" kind of way. So if the players find a different solution that doesn't disrupt my plans very much.I tend to prefer to write my dungeons and stories as if every major stronghold will be tackled like a SWAT raid or Heist. I also have genre-aware enemies, wizards that lair in the middle of their tower rather than at the top as one example, because in a world with flight the top of a tower isn't safe. If the party wants to spend a session on nothing but planning and crafting items needed to pull off the raid that's a session well spent in my book.
Really genre savvy wizards just have private permanent demi-planes that they astrally project from and never leave.
Of course, in PF2 that isn't so much a thing. But it was in PF1. And the tuning fork to reach it was basically impossible to get (see planar adventures handbook). It was practically impossible to get rid of such a wizard.
I generally like to plot more in "here's a problem, you're powerful adventurers, I'm sure you can come up with a solution" kind of way. So if the players find a different solution that doesn't disrupt my plans very much.I tend to prefer to write my dungeons and stories as if every major stronghold will be tackled like a SWAT raid or Heist. I also have genre-aware enemies, wizards that lair in the middle of their tower rather than at the top as one example, because in a world with flight the top of a tower isn't safe. If the party wants to spend a session on nothing but planning and crafting items needed to pull off the raid that's a session well spent in my book.Really genre savvy wizards just have private permanent demi-planes that they astrally project from and never leave.
Of course, in PF2 that isn't so much a thing. But it was in PF1. And the tuning fork to reach it was basically impossible to get (see planar adventures handbook). It was practically impossible to get rid of such a wizard.
Its a bit limited by the 8th level tag on the Create Demiplane Ritual in PF2e for sure.
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Really genre savvy wizards just have private permanent demi-planes that they astrally project from and never leave.I generally like to plot more in "here's a problem, you're powerful adventurers, I'm sure you can come up with a solution" kind of way. So if the players find a different solution that doesn't disrupt my plans very much.I tend to prefer to write my dungeons and stories as if every major stronghold will be tackled like a SWAT raid or Heist. I also have genre-aware enemies, wizards that lair in the middle of their tower rather than at the top as one example, because in a world with flight the top of a tower isn't safe. If the party wants to spend a session on nothing but planning and crafting items needed to pull off the raid that's a session well spent in my book.
At sufficiently high levels of course that's what they did. That 7th level necromancer in his tower worked with what he had and hoped to live long enough to get a demiplane.
Really, REALLY genre-savvy wizards probably just made an army of efreeti simulacra with enough wishes to make themselves into a god and never bothered about those worlds with those pesky adventurers in them.
The savviest was the Omnicifier, who oversaw all of this and persuaded anybody who might try this to pursue another course of action lest they be removed from reality.
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Sounds like the Red Warlock in Oglaf (Realistic Goals).
That specific comic is safe, but other comics on the same site are NSFW, so no link.
Exactly, only I used that as a GM tool to stop stupid stuff like that from happening at my table.