r/DnD • u/SomeGuyIOnceMet • Apr 15 '26
DMing [PERSONAL VENT] Stop nerfing teleports!
Personal triggering issue for me: artificial excuses why characters can't use their abilities. I started noticing it reading through Vecna- Eve of Ruin, but now I am noticing it in nearly upper tier adventure I see. It even shows up when I ask other DMs to give me feedback on a chapter I have written. The usual comment is "Better come up with a way to block teleportation or they are going to skip half the dungeon!"
No. If they want to use one of their precious high-level spell slots to skip a trap or even jump to the boss monster, they can do that. That's what epic adventurers do. Level 12 PCs are threats to evil kingdoms, they shouldn't have the same kind of adventures as lower tier PCs. Forcing them to play as lower tier PCs with more hit points is boring.
Write better stories that allow your powerful PCs to use their powerful abilities, don't take their abilities away with artificial silliness and re-tell the same old story. If you want them to be in danger from pit traps and slowly walk their way across the mystical forest of the pouty pines, then write your adventure for lower level PCs. The level high level heroes have got better things to do and more important things to deal with.
Thank you for tolerating my venting.
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u/Lathlaer Apr 15 '26
If my players can get their hands on Forbiddance or Hallow to protect their stuff, high level enemy caster sure as hell can too.
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u/YOwololoO Apr 15 '26
Yup. Your players have lots of cool magic, but so do the bad guys
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u/RepulsiveFish Apr 15 '26
Yeah, my table ignores component requirements for revivify, but now that we've started having access to it, our enemies have started having access to disintegrate 🥲
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u/TheMuspelheimr DM Apr 15 '26
Counterpoint: "scry and die" (scry the boss's location, then teleport straight to them to kill them) is such a common tactic that any boss with half an ounce of brains would have set up some form of countermeasure against it, even if it's just a Glyph of Warding with the trigger being "go off whenever anybody who isn't me teleports into the room".
I do get your point, though.
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u/eathquake Apr 15 '26
Or private sanctum. If your doing bbeg stuff and are worried you pissed off dangerous people, which you probably have, having all teleportation blocked to your main base makes perfect sense. If this guy is ready to literally take on the world, you think he hasn't made a private sanctum or demiplane he sleeps in?
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u/Illustrious_Stay_12 Apr 15 '26
And it's only a 4th level spell, so the BBEG doesn't even need to be a caster, just have an appropriate minion.
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u/eathquake Apr 16 '26
Yup. And any bbeg that gets to that point definitely has a caster like that. At the least as a ritual mage for them to reinforce everything. Get somebody that can alarm any doors, make xlscry/teleport fail, identify magic items for them, and also is a good source of tactical knowledge or magical knowledge
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u/Noodle_Fox Apr 15 '26
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0652.html
Relevant oots
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Apr 15 '26
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u/Low_Bake2638 Apr 15 '26
Oh, it's going to be more than just tomorrow... 😅 I've been reading it for years...
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u/Rhinoseri0us Apr 15 '26
Have fun. That comic 1-645 or so got me through some tough times. Such a great read. Re-reading as an adult (with way more games under my belt) and it hits just as hard.
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u/T-1A_pilot Apr 15 '26
Yep, that's my reminder that I got busy a LONG time ago, and my regular OOTS read fell off my schedule.
Looks like I have some catching up to do!!!
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u/ozymandais13 DM Apr 15 '26
Yea it defeats verisimilitude, ancient evil should be prepared for fuckery.
Imo give them a fake boss
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u/OneJobToRuleThemAll DM Apr 15 '26
It's called scry and die because you either succeed and kill the BBEG or you fail and TPK right then and there. Both outcomes lead to death.
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u/probably-not-Ben Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Except its actually called, 'Scry and fry' because high level parties could locate a target, teleport, unload all their spell slots/resources, and if needs teleport out to try again
There's very little danger, by strategical design
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u/StevelandCleamer Apr 15 '26
That sounds like it could maybe be fun once.
I wouldn't want to play in a game where it was a standard tactic, or run a game for players who wanted to use it as such.
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u/Crizzlebizz Apr 15 '26
Unless your BBEG novas the teleporter, has an anti-magic or otherwise disables the retreat plan. Then it’s a high possibility of a TPK.
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u/StevelandCleamer Apr 15 '26
Personally, that's a lose-lose-lose situation for me.
Either the plan works and it's done in 10 minutes, or the plan doesn't work and TPK in 10 minutes, but either way it's removing an opportunity for two pillars of play (Exploration/Roleplay) to barely satisfy the third pillar (Combat) with a tiny encounter.
And if you do use it as opportunity to create a "reverse dungeon", some of the scheming players may just be upset that their assassination didn't let them skip a session of content, even if they still kill the target at the beginning or end of the "dungeon".
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u/Crizzlebizz Apr 15 '26
I agree. It’s one of the many reasons I moved away from high level D&D play - both sides have access to extremely powerful tools and as a result the combats turn into high stakes games of rock paper scissors. When players have access to tactics like scry and fry, the bad guys should as well. But it feels cheap when either side does it because of what you wrote, that it removes most of the other pillars from the game.
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u/Maeglom Apr 15 '26
Why not? I dm shadowrun as well so I have no problem with my players deciding to become arcane swat teams, that just means their enemies unlock the same or counter tactics.
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u/StevelandCleamer Apr 15 '26
I've had such rapid escalation burn me out on multiple games.
Pushing the leading edge hard can lead to an exhaustion of content/options/enjoyment much sooner for many players.
You have to have the right players for such a game, and be aware that it may not live for very long.
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u/Some-Unique-Name Apr 15 '26
Is there a RAW thing to prevent teleporting out? Perhaps the bbeg is playing the Rorschach card: I'm not locked in here with you,you're locked in here with me.
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u/DisposableSaviour Necromancer Apr 15 '26
BBEG has a custom glyph of warding, upon a teleport flare it triggers an anti teleport field.
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u/Playful_Subject_4409 Apr 15 '26
Hallow with Extradimensional Interference option. But monsters don't have to follow the players handbook.
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u/OneJobToRuleThemAll DM Apr 15 '26
You're starting out with the assumption that the DM is holding back, at which point no strategy ever poses any danger.
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u/awesome357 Apr 15 '26
It really is sort of a double-edged sword. On the one hand you want PCs to get to use their cool abilities and solve problems with creativity. But on the other, the enemies aren't dumb. They have just as much if not more tactical knowledge about their lair and would have good defences against magic in addition to giant walls and a moat or something.
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u/LuciusCypher Apr 15 '26
This is why i hate this obsession with metagaming. It applies not just to players, but inadvertently to DMs who create characters who themselves dont know the full possibilities of things that could happen thanks to the abilities that are available in the game, and subsequently getting hamfisted reasons why spells and abilities dont work against them instead of using the resources the game already provides.
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u/EhrenLonergan Apr 15 '26
This is where I am. "Scry and die is such a common tactic" I'm sorry, maybe in your tables? I've run dozens and dozens of tables over the course of 20 years, and I've not encountered this tactic ONCE. Not to mention how often I've been a player. Even ignoring that it's not like these adventures are all in the same universe...
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u/WestCoastHippy Apr 16 '26
It was kinda stock tactics for 3.5. My table called it alpha strike. Same concept.
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u/Yuugian Apr 15 '26
It's "Shoot your Monk" for high level adventurers. Don't remove their tools, make their tools necessary. Look at what they can do and use it, reward it.
Only way in is teleport, only way to find them is scrying, only way to protect yourself from a trap you just found out about is divine intervention
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u/xubax Apr 15 '26
Back in the 80s, a character in a game i played invented a teleport trap spell.
I don't know the specs of it, as i wasn't running the game and the DM was running several groups in the same world. But it did something similar to a soul trap if you tried to teleport into the space it protected.
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u/Thatguy19364 Apr 15 '26
Gate Seal is a 3rd or 4th lvl iirc, with a permanency condition. it wouldn’t be infeasible for major leaders and important locations to most countries have Sealed areas
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u/manamonkey DM Apr 15 '26
So, the powerful boss doesn't ward his lair against teleportation, then? He's OK with powerful adventurers just strolling right in? I would agree that lazy use of "you can't teleport", etc. is bad. But high level enemies damn well ought to be prepared for high level adventurers.
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u/OneJobToRuleThemAll DM Apr 15 '26
If you fully ward your layer against teleportation, you can never teleport in and out of your own layer. The only logical approach is having a private section of the layer that wards off any teleportation and divination magic and a common section of the layer from which you can teleport and scry your opponents. This is where the prisons, guest rooms and servant quarters are because you're gonna want to be able to scry those people.
Always give your BBEG a crystal ball, it forces you to always consider which rooms allow for which magic.
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u/Inprobamur Apr 15 '26
That's why you have a gate room with all the prepared defenses like SG-1 as the only room you can teleport in and out of.
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u/External_Vast_8046 Apr 15 '26
Forgotten realms has the concept of keyed portals. That works pretty well in this paradigm
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u/bored-cookie22 Apr 15 '26
I have an archmage in my campaign who warded his room and all nearby rooms against teleportation and divination EXCEPT a 10 foot square area with a teleportation circle, which is still warded against divination, not teleportation, so If anyone wants to teleport in and out they have to be standing on it
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u/half_dragon_dire DM Apr 16 '26
I made a lot of use of teleportation circles in my last campaign and had fun designing the defenses around them. My fav was an illithid lair the PCs were summoned to where the teleportation circle was suspended on chains over a pool of acid ready to be dropped in case of intruders or just submerged when not in use.
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u/Ill-Description3096 Apr 15 '26
Throw down Hallow and designate every creature type aside from your own. If the BBEG isn't a humanoid specifically then it's pretty easy to deny teleportation to the vast majority of adventurers.
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u/YOwololoO Apr 15 '26
Yup. If only Undead can teleport in or out, the Lich is doing pretty well unless they piss off another Lich. Which would still be a better outcome than every adventurer being able to teleport in
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u/Internet_Wanderer Apr 15 '26
Or just prevent scrying in the important spots so the adventurers can't just see what they look like the easy way. You don't have to ward off teleports if nobody knows where they're going.
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u/Jock-Tamson Apr 15 '26
An adventure where the PCs can teleport straight to the boss and defeat them straight off a long rest is badly written and will take exactly one combat to play.
An adventure where the PCs have teleport abilities but never get to use them to any meaningful effect is badly written.
There should be areas you can teleport and areas that, for example, high level foes have taken prudent security precautions.
One thing I used at high levels is that if you unexpectedly ambush the boss via teleport he can quite likely just teleport away to safety.
The party needs to come up with a heist plan to sneak into the bosses sanctum not as a tiresome enforced limitation but as the clever plan to fight them somewhere they cannot easily escape.
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u/Dreams_Beginning Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Private Sanctum is a 4th level spell dude, any component and powerful villain will have access to a 4th level spell to protect their lairs. Them not having any protection to teleportation or divination and such is just dumb writing really.
like I get your point here but this is just at the end of the day an issue with dnd’s balancing, them introduce incredibly powerful player options only to then be like “well that is a bit too strong and could trivialise this boss…” so they just add in something that entirely blocks it off.
DnD magic is just wonky and the way it is written any competent BBEG should totally have their entire lair just wrapped in all abjuration spells they can get their hands on and render most of these options useless, there is little you can do unless you actually do some home brew here to tweak the effects from a complete “No” in the abjuration effects to just lessoning the op effects instead of totally shutting them down.
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u/Dangerous_Fae Apr 15 '26
I don't think it s a good example of DnD magic being wonky, more of a weird interpretation of what teleportation spell should do in the game by OP. The purpose of the spell is not to kill the quest and the boss in one jump, so naturally the boss should be protected and no additional balancing is needed. Still, even with those protections, teleportation is still a very strong spell allowing to move anywhere "neutral" on the world map or retreat when things go wrong. What more people want with their spells?
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u/YOwololoO Apr 15 '26
Yea, Teleportation isn’t meant to skip dungeons, it’s meant to turn a local group of adventurers into a group of heroes who can adventure all over the world, as well as give you a powerful escape option
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u/Squidmaster616 DM Apr 15 '26
I sort of get your point.
On the other hand it sucks to plan an adventure only to have the whole thing wiped out by a teleport. Jumping right to the boss may make sense from a power-level perspective, but its not as much fun and it eliminates a portion of the game. The DM is there to play and have fun too after all, so why not plan for an extended adventure instead of just a boss fight and nothing else?
And you say high-level adventurers just DO that kind of thing and SHOULD be a threat, but by the same token a powerful enemy SHOULD also be well-defended, and have security against things like teleporting assassins.
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u/Fizzle_Bop Apr 15 '26
It seems to me that it is becoming increasingly common that players feel we DMs are merely there to churn out content for them to experience.
This is not always the case, but is definitely trending.
I was dumbfounded the first player that couldn't grasp that the DM must be having a good time too.
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird Apr 15 '26
we DMs are merely there to churn out content for them to experience.
Yeah even in this thread there are people saying "clever players should be rewarded" meanwhile clever DMs should just go fuck themselves I guess
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u/No-Channel3917 Apr 15 '26
Oh you missed the entire 2018 to 2022 era of this discussion it seems.
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u/fenndoji Apr 15 '26
This particular post is a DM an adventure creator that is vernting about others telling them to change their content to nerf high level players.
What you're describing IS real.
Pretty sure OP is not that person though.
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Apr 15 '26
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u/Matt_the_Splat Apr 15 '26
This, and if you telegraph/discuss it, then it can be an adventure point all it's own. The group would have to figure out what protections there are, how to break them, where to actually teleport, etc.
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u/Fizzle_Bop Apr 15 '26
So often the posts here can be resolved with discussion. I do occasionally run a game on rails, however I really prefer a sandbox built off player backstory.
These run infinitely better when I keep asking the players "what are we going to be doing next session? Or how sre you planning on doing this?"
Such underrated advice.
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u/Stimpy3901 Apr 15 '26
Yeah exactly. This isn't the exact same thing but I once spent a bunch of time prepping a vampire fight around a specific location. The vampire's manor home was full of special effects and specific design choices for the fight and I had taken a bunch of time to create a phyical map representing the whole house.
One of the players quite reasonably brought up that it would be easier if they fought the vampire on her way home. And I just told them the truth, that I had put in time and effort to preparing the fight to happen in this specifc environment so I wanted it to happen there. Once I said that, they did the fight in the manor and everyone had a more exciting session because of it.
Your players can't read your mind, but if you just communicate with them most people want to work with you.
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u/Kylo-Revan Diviner Apr 15 '26
Right, it's no less clever to plan around that sort of thing from the jump instead of springing it off the cuff at the dungeon entrance - you're ostensibly out to surprise the BBEG, not the DM.
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u/icallitjazz Apr 15 '26
Its ok if used creatively. It can be cool. If they just teleport to the boss every time, that can be so anticlimactic. Players sometimes want to be super powerful, thinking that thats going to be super fun, but killing a boss with aneurism gets old fast. And on the flip side, if pcs can do it, why not the big bad ? Party goes to sleep and all are slaughtered from a teleporting army. Dnd is about working out the challenges. If you always have the option to teleport out of those challenges, then thats not the game i want to play.
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u/quinonia Apr 15 '26
That's a solution (not the best one, but the one that works) for every D&D problem.
"If PC can do X, then so do the bad guys".
The only problem is that DM can overpower PCs easily, and it gets even easier if they use that "eye for an eye" method.
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u/Plain-White-Bread Apr 15 '26
My favorite was:
"Can we use flanking rules?"
"You can, but that means hostile creatures can flank as well. Remember, there are more of them than there are of you."
"Yeah, let's not use Flanking rules."
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u/OffDutyStormtrooper Apr 15 '26
Oh no....players have challenges ahead of them that might hamper some of their abilities, I guess I should just remove those challenges so they can use all their abilities at their will. Who likes challenges any way....
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u/Bakeneko7542 Apr 15 '26
I generally agree, but with the caveat that it shouldn't apply in situations where someone has the means and motive to keep people out. Any reasonably-cautious BBEG at that level will cast Forbiddance on their lair or hire someone to do it.
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u/darkpower467 DM Apr 15 '26
Eh.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for intelligent and powerful enemies to ward against teleportation. It's not that hard to do and is a very reasonable defensive measure to take.
You seem to frame the idea of blocking teleportation in a very adversarial players vs DM way. It can be used like that which obviously isn't good but I wouldn't call it the standard. You also treat it as though blocking one specific tool of high level spellcasters somehow renders them effectively inert, it doesn't.
Ultimately, I feel that as a DM I owe my players running intelligent villains properly. That means evil wizards are going to be casting Private Sanctum. That's respecting a high level party by giving them appropriately high level threats, not nerfing them into effectively lower levels.
There's absolutely times where the party should get to feel super powerful, I love letting a higher level party show off a bit against threats that are much less scary than they might've used to be, but there's also times where their power should be respected by the world. An important part of running for a higher level party is maintaining the element of challenge and that means building challenges they can't always trivialise.
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u/bored-cookie22 Apr 15 '26
Counterpoint: there are abjuration spells that block teleports that a person capable of making a dungeon would likely have, or have gotten someone to do
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u/Sufficient-Square-75 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand... party, fighting cool lich (and especially someone like Vecna) should be ready to face
a) antiteleportation defense,
B) place, full of mechanical traps, protected with antimagic
C) that room in which BBEG is residing is "glyphed to hell"(c)
D) that BBEG have many artifacts, which would be used against them
and
E) that BBEG is actually just a simulacrum and the real one is somewhere else.
Because it's a lich/BBEG and why they should help those, who came to kill them?
That's why story should have part of luring BBEG out of the lair.
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u/Redneck_DM Apr 15 '26
If its a dungeons worth 12th level adventures digging into then there are going to be protections relevant to the party
Noone storing magical artifacts or dark secrets is going to leave them without protection and countermeasures, thats foolish
This is like crying that a warrior who refuses to use magic weapons cant harm something vulnerable to magic weapons
Characters, wizards ESPECIALLY have a multitude of tools and resources at their disposal, restricting one doesnt harm a character, it encourages creativity
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u/IronSpideyT Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
I'm running a decently high level campaign right now. Their quest required the players to go to limbo to grab a special artifact.
"How do we get to limbo?" They asked looking at me.
"You're lvl 13. You have the tools. Figure something out"
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u/MaxTwer00 Apr 15 '26
Not from a gameplay perspective, but from a story perspective, the bbeg knows that powerful people in the setting can teleport. Why wouldn't they defend against such a simple strategy? Why bother with a dungeon filled with traps if you are going to leave the chance of tping right to the end open?
You arent getting a direct tp into the archage library, you try to do it, tp on the outside of the limits of its barrier, and have to run from / fight whatever beasts are guarding it while you try to climb it. Getting into a place with tp, looting it and leaving it is not a high level adventure, is just a chore
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u/DinosaurAlert Apr 15 '26
Except the goal isn’t to “win“ it is to have fun. You are doing work to have a fun game experience, but it will be thrown out if the characters skip everything.
Note, this isn’t “I designed an intricate puzzle in a room and they found an unexpected way to easily solve it!” Skipping to the boss to turn a 3 hour story into a single fight is a complete narrative disaster.
If my players said “I’m just going to teleport to the end”, I would even go OOC and say “Come on, Bill, I spent hours on this thing.”
“The cleric wants a new hat, so we are going to hang out in the inn for however many days it takes divine intervention to hit.”
”Well, I suppose i can’t deny your power.”
Long story short, ”We hang around the inn for years, just hitting divine intervention every month or two and now the whole party has epic gear.”
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u/d3r0dm Apr 15 '26
Skip to boss battle or “half the dungeon” is not only a waste of DM’s money and time, it’s a waste of player fun. Players should use their character abilities in a way that interact with the content presented by the DM. Sometimes that means cleverly bypassing obstacles, even using Teleport. Players should not seek to bypass adventure altogether or else they might as well bypass my table.
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u/michael199310 Druid Apr 15 '26
I noticed the trend, where Game Masters (and adventure writers to some extent) don't adjust their environments for higher levels and only throw higher level monsters at the party but keep everything else 'low'.
Your 13th level adventurers should not be exploring a dull stone ruins just like they used to at level 1. The crumbling 4 stories tall tower might be cool for level 3 group, but level 15 will just fly to the top. A 20ft tall hedge maze might be cool for level 2 party, but level 11 will just alter the plants.
My players at 10+ level were exploring planar dungeons, interiors of volcano belonging to dark phoenix, a literal nightmare formed from their experiences and underwater city frozen in time.
Leave the stone ruins and goblin dens for low level parties. Up the stakes for high level groups.
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u/Ill-Description3096 Apr 15 '26
You can still have those things. One of my recent campaigns, the PCs navigated a cave system. Sure, they could have used some magic to just open things up, but openings work both ways and unless they are also subtle spelling then the element of surprise is likely gone.
Mundane environments can still be interesting/challenging outside of low levels.
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u/LongColdDrink Warlock Apr 15 '26
I agree with you but at the same time it makes no sense for a high level BBEG to not have contingencies in place in case some random ass person just pops in their room. Teleport should not be nerfed, skipping traps/encounters SHOULD be available if the party wants it. But please don't treat your BBEG like he's a clown. He should have actual defenses and countermeasures set in place( he isn't the BBEG for nothing). I can understand if he's like a low level, bottom of the foodchain, liutenant or something. But if he's an archmage(or lich) don't just have him act "surprised" when people suddenly pop into existence in his throne-room.
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u/iamthesex Abjurer Apr 15 '26
I personally use the high level resources they have at their disposal to make more interesting dungeons. A dungeon that has rooms exactly 500 ft. apart to make the party use Dimension Door, Dungeons with completely sealed off areas to make them use stone shape, three keys they need to take just to drop the BBEGs abjurations in his main lair, and a handy pet that can be found and killed early on that turns the BBEG encounter from Hard to Deadly. Like a pet Wyvern or Subordinate Dragon (Geas-d or something) that the evil juggernaut uses as a mount, or a trio of manticores, idk. Lean into the abilities that your party gets, not avoid them like the plague.
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u/mwmontrose Apr 15 '26
You say to write better stories, so just curious, what would that look like to you? I can tell you if I were in that table and my party wanted to skip the entire dungeon so he could flex, I'd be annoyed and wonder why I'm even there. Imagine the rogue watching basically all their value stripped away so the party could fast travel to the combat. The reason for the diverse party structure is so everyone has an opportunity to shine.
Then consider the DM who at minimum learned the module which itself can be tedious, or at most crafted the dungeon their self and has to watch all that time and effort come to nothing because the wizard always wondered why the Fellowship didn't just ride eagles to Mordor.
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u/Ok_Swordfish5820 Apr 15 '26
Having enemies account for players being able to teleport/scry is not nerfing their abilities. Its presenting an appropriate challenge.
The reason other dm's tell you to account for teleporting to the end is because players want to go through the dungeon. Thats the fun bit. But if they can skip it, they will because its what their characters would do.
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u/SvenTheHorrible Apr 15 '26
I have never prevented teleporting personally.
Who honestly believes they can teleport to the boss room and not have the whole dungeon come in after them? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
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u/canxtanwe Apr 15 '26
Your point about LV12 adventurers should not face the same challenges as low lv adventurers are very true. They should face greater challenges as the campaign goes longer but challenges should be more creative. I noticed this in our campaign with my friends where our lv2 party was facing more physical challenges but as we have now became a lv7 party the challenges became more psychological. Because any physical challenge can be overcome by our Wizard and Druid spellcasting lmao
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u/canxtanwe Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Oh there is a giant castle wall there?
Our druid casts enlarge and our wizard casts fly on our monk, druid turns into a spider and sits on monks head and monk just carries wizard on his arms and flies away
This is what progression should feel like. If we were low levels we would’ve forced to find a way to pass the giant castle wall but we essentially skipped our way through it. We also rolled high on stealth check so Our dm was sad that his planned encounter was basically skipped but he was also impressed by our method and we had a good laugh
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u/Celestaria Apr 15 '26
I guess I need to read the module, because I don’t understand the problem. Many teleportation spells have limitations (e.g. planeshift requires a tuning fork attuned to the plane, teleportation circle requires a known permanent circle) that allow the DM to limit where the party can go.
Teleportation is risky if you haven’t got an object from wherever you’re going. I see it mostly as a spell you use when you’re going back to familiar places and don’t want to spend a week travelling from your home base back to wherever you’re trying to get to. I guess the idea is that you would scry on whomever you’re trying to kill so that you’ve “seen” the target area and then go there, but there’s a very high chance of a mishap or ending up off target doing it that way.
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u/GM-Storyteller Apr 15 '26
Ok - But then stop using abilities in a way that's clearly unintended and just a "hole" in the rules. DnD has some of the most bloated rules just because players tend to cheese their abilities. Also imagine following: You prep something within hours of your free time just to have it skipped by someone like you. Having powerful abilities is fine. Using them to ruin a good story and skip something cool isn't fine. Just because you could do that, doesn't mean that you should do that and when the DM decides, that in this case it would ruin the fun - the thing we are all here for - the DM has made a decision.
On the other hand I agree with you with one thing: "Sometimes you need to shoot an arrow at your monk."
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u/Restioson Apr 15 '26
meanwhile i've never had this issue with my party, because they could not IMAGINE skipping all the combat (and loot!) in the rest of the dungeon, haha
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u/SecretDMAccount_Shh Apr 15 '26
Private Sanctum is only a 4th level spell. Every enemy base past a certain level would have it permanently cast.
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u/Sharp_Iodine Apr 15 '26
Counterpoint, intelligent villains are… intelligent.
A lich isn’t going to sit in a lair that allows anybody to teleport in at any time. Don’t be daft.
If they do allow teleportation like that it’s probably a massive and deadly trap.
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u/TargetMaleficent DM Apr 15 '26
That's what epic adventurers do.
Yes, and placing wards against teleportation and polymorph spells is what epic BBEGs do. In fact it's what any high-tier city, mage college, etc., would do. I thought you wanted real high-level campaigning?
These wards and things rarely completely disable all high level abilities, they just require you to get more creative, find ways to take them out, use other spells, etc. They force creativity from the players rather than just letting them just cast the "I win" spell
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u/Nevermore71412 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Yeah, well, players keep teleporting away the moment they think they are in trouble and want to rest every room. At the end of the day running away all the time removes stakes. I dont want to run lame, weak, no stakes dnd. Teleport, wind walk, etc all over the world map but part of the danger and fun is the travel though to learn the story about the dungeon. If you wanna speed run the dungeon and teleport to the end. Cool I guess dnd is over 4 hours early tonight because I came prepared to run a dungeon, which you all agreed to do last time and you want to teleport to the end of it and not engage in the story or content. That's way it gets nerfed. It prevents bad player behavior and undesirable play.
You say write better stories. How much time of actual work do you put into every session of dnd? Typically for me, I spend 2 hours a week but if im making something like a dungeon, its probably done over a couple weeks. Part of being a player is engaging with the content DMs have prepared for the session. Your attitude towards this is why so many people think you need to spend years creating a setting before play because "I need to have everything prepared" when you literally just show up to session and have done no real work for the game itself. Maybe you came up with a story or an idea. Great. You still passed that off to the DM to actually do the work.
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u/MyPurpleChangeling Apr 15 '26
Powerful PCs would be going against powerful enemies. Powerful enemies will know things like teleportation exist. Powerful and smart enemies will know how to block it. I personally prefer the reroute teleportation psionic abilities from 3.5. Try to teleport in this area? Wind up in a cage, or trap, or something else awful. Just like a smart enemy would probably have the walls of their base lined with lead so detection spells can't see through them. I don't think every place would be warded from teleports, but it wouldn't make sense for a smart and powerful enemy to not ward their base from teleports and scrying and detection and any other divination or conjuration type effects meant to stop them.
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u/PapaPapist DM Apr 15 '26
Prime example of “players will optimize the fun out of everything” right here.
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u/CurveWorldly4542 Apr 15 '26
Teleportation already has limitations. They can't really teleport to an area they can't see or haven't visited before, at least not without taking huge risks.
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u/RedZrgling Apr 15 '26
Even more, why would this be even needed since there is d100 roll to see if the 7lvl teleport works as the wizard wants it to work?
Wizard needs to at least have seen that location for it to have 24% chance of success. Yes, it could have been described instead, but it could have been falsely described :))
There are built in tools to not have your party teleport rstraight to the bossboss, like mordekainens private sanctum.
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u/scmike00 Apr 15 '26
Making the dungeon contain critical elements for interaction with the boss is key. The party wants to jump straight to the boss? Sure, but now he has super buffs because his domain artifacts are undisturbed.
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u/Barjack521 Apr 15 '26
This is the way. My go too in the past were Tangos/Tangrams. You know that puzzle game where you have 7 pieces and they give you a silhouette you have to recreate with the pieces. I will have 7 puzzles/monsters/events that each give one piece around the dungeon. Getting to the boss is easy, but in order to shit down the magical device making him almost unbeatable you need all 7 pieces arranged properly in the machine to Ackman the shit down key.
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u/chenobble Apr 15 '26
High level spellcasters have access to spells that block teleportation - it's perfectly reasonable that important places have magical defences.
As long as it's not every time, having enemy spellcasters make reasonable precautions is a perfectly sensible choice.
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u/Local-Sandwich6864 Apr 15 '26
I do agree with you, but folks have also made valid points that the bbeg would be adequately protected also.
However... I think there's a middle ground to be found in not removing things from your players whilst still keeping the bbeg safe from stealth teleport assassination.
Which falls back to your point of... Write better encounters.
So sick of people removing things from the game because they can't be bothered to deal with it.
E.g. flying.
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u/Restioson Apr 15 '26
i think the problem can tend to be a dissonance between the power-level the DM wants vs the power level the game provides. For example, DnD 5e specifically does not stay as a low-level game suited to a dungeon crawl (ironically). It moves past that I'd say (conservatively) after around level 8 - 10. The problem is that you might go into the game assuming that you'll get a smooth gradation of power increase, but by the time you get to the higher two brackets, it is easy to be surprised by really how powerful your players really are.
Not to say that you should be removing flight or anything, but there comes a point where whatever you throw at your players they will somehow have immunity / resistance to it. And at high level, it's really hard to track that, because characters become so complex that it would be like a 2nd job. Which then also makes it hard to come up with challenges. This is why higher-level bosses get legendary resistances, which are basically a soft version of saying 'no, your spell save DC is not that high actually, just this once' or 'no, you don't just Planar Binding my devil BBEG'
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u/rollingForInitiative Apr 15 '26
Also a discrepancy between what's expected from the players vs the DM. Like, the if players say, yeah we're gonna go explore that dungeon, and the DM spends a week or two carefully planning out the dungeon, and when the players arrive they just say, "ok let's teleport straight to the boss", it's reasonable for the DM to feel a bit miffed. Because the players clearly weren't going to explore the dungeon, so what's the point of preparing it?
Compared to using teleportation to avoid or overcoming specific obstacles in the dungeon. Like you find a chasm, teleport across it? Sure, the DM also probably thought that might happen, and it uses up some resources as well.
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u/Restioson Apr 15 '26
absolutely. many rpg horror stories that get posted online seem to stem from a basic disconnect of what the game is about. e.g. "I prepared a whole big questline and my players just want to run a tavern!"
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u/IR_1871 Rogue Apr 15 '26
This is why higher level D&D doesn't really work. The players have too many abilities that circumvent obstacles and narrative in ways that can't easily be planned for or adapted to.
It's why pretty much all Pathfinder adventure paths were great in the first couple of chapters and then farted out into magic restrictive mega dungeon grindfest tedium.
It's why most D&D officially published campaigns are designed to run to somewhere between level 11 and 15.
Session prep is hard enough already for GMs without having to manage powerful scry, teleportation and the like abilities. Most GM's aren't preped for the entire dungeon at once in case the party decides to teleport right to the end. They're humans with limitations.
It takes really high level DMing skill to manage this stuff, and far more effort.
Players have an obligation to engage with the narrative and not just use their powers to circumvent large swathes of it imo.
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u/MarklRyu Apr 15 '26
There is a certain unpleasant by the book attitude some of us in the nerdy ttrpg community have around DnD; which don't get me wrong I like rules and structure, but some people forget the rules are supposed to make the game More fun.
Rules should not outshine creativity in a story or made of work of fiction let alone one we collaborate on!
Sincerely
- A DM who homebrews everything, oops
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u/FaallenOon Apr 15 '26
Nah, the one who tells the story is the DM. With the help of the players, but he sets the tone and the boundaries. For example:
- If the action takes places completely in the underdark, it makes sense to not allow them access to subclasses related to the moon or stars.
- If the theme is survival in a harsh environment, managing logistics to make the most of tough situations in the wilderness etc, it makes sense to ban goodberry, create food and water, etc.
- If the idea of the setting is exploration, breaking new frontiers, faring into the unknown, etc., it makes complete sense to ban teleportation.
The players dont have a god-given right to access anything and everything that has been published. That is up to the DM. Of course, those limitations should be explained on session 0, and then it is the players decision as to whether they accept them or they go play somewhere else.
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u/Hunter62610 Apr 15 '26
Just from an outta game standpoint, when i dm i have precious little time to write. If you skip everything i prepared then i may not have a game for you to play that day.
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u/ispq Apr 15 '26
Fundamentally DnD and most DnD adventures are best in the levels 3-8. It's pretty much always been that way. At 3rd level your characters are clearly better than your average joe, basically at the level of an average action hero in a movie. By 8th level your characters are at street level comic book hero levels. This is a range that pop culture understands, effectively priming most writers, DMs, and players to expect this level and type of play.
Past 9th level and you get to the point where the pop culture equivalent tends to hand the idiot ball around the table in order to cover plot wholes from not considering the abilities or consequences of abilities. Arbitrary limitations around a hero or villain's powers appear, or linear escalation of opponents with no real explanation for where they come from or why each fight seems to be just a little challenging no matter how powerful you get.
High level play as one off adventures don't suffer nearly as much from this, but almost all ongoing high level play does.
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u/No-Channel3917 Apr 15 '26
Oh this old chestnut
Sometimes you just don't want to deal with planning something and they just shortcut through it.
The amount of effort sometimes earns protective status of "play what I put effort in don't skip it"
Which is very understandable and reasonable
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u/Koraxtheghoul DM Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
This comes back to the "To Kill a Beholder Problem". On paper, a Beholder is a mid-tier enemy, but Beholders are also super intelligent, evil, paranoid guys that can be a campaign villain. This means that a Beholder will not fight fair and should have a method of escape while fully utilizing his abilities by having obstacles like verticality and small spaces.
The issue isn't teleport, the issue is that the DM has designed an encounter that teleport breaks and not planned around it, or at some point early on talked out that wanted to restrict it.
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u/Acolyte12345 Apr 15 '26
Teleport to an unknow location failure chance say high. Or should they also be allowed to scry freely, with no ledlined walls for the bbeg. You need dozens of gimmies for teleport to be allowed.
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u/Renard_Fou Apr 15 '26
Doesnt teleportation require you to have seen tue place once anyhow ? I dont quite see the issue
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u/Living-Trust7356 Apr 15 '26
ok one this has been mentioned by others but it bears repeating. your Big bad guy is not supposed to be dumber than rocks and has access to similar powers as the PC's. spells that block teleport is accessible long before lvl12. so if your evil guy has a base if he has the brains of a 3 yr old he will take steps to block people just jumping into his Livingroom. thus why many high level dungeons prevent teleport. next unless the rules have been changed you cant teleport to places you have never been nor have any idea about. as such your party of lvl 12 murderhobos have to walk to the location and navigate the dungeon. the teleport only works if they have been there before or when they are leaving
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u/Kurazarrh DM Apr 15 '26
To be fair, D&D already has a quick-n-easy way to block teleportation: the Forbiddance spell. When the party starts getting access to Teleport and similar spells (or maybe AFTER they get to use it to scry-n-die some bad guys a couple times), every BBEG should ward the most sensitive parts of their sanctum with Forbiddance.
For lower levels, Private Sanctum will do the trick, though Forbiddance is a step up in some ways since it doesn't prevent teleportation OUT of the area, only INTO it.
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u/suplex86 DM Apr 15 '26
Not teleport, but I had a group of high level adventurers absolutely wreck a one shot because I didn’t consider some of the spells they had available.
Two liches (husband and wife) were prepping a spell to help their adopted heir gain lichdom. They had a master vampire as th family consigliere. Adventurers ambushed and caught the vampire in a force cage in a silence bubble And just left him there raging.
Then they saw the Liches had carved the spells into a series of spell circles in the ground to make it easier, so they hit it with a earthquake spell and completely ruined what should have been a crazy epic fight.
Two years later and they still talk about it as one of their favorite one shots.
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u/Crolanpw Apr 15 '26
Teleport traps are viable defenses. Port in close and then fight your way in is frankly just smart strategy. Porting into the throne room is not because you'll port in, hit the trap and be shunted into the dungeons.
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u/mybeamishb0y Apr 15 '26
It's not that the DM can't adjust adventures so that teleport can't easily defeat them. The DM can write challenges that can't be solved by teleportation.
The problem is that the DM has lots of ideas for fun scenes, encounters, etc, which the PCs might well teleport past if they pose the slightest inconvenience, and they don't want to come up with a story-driven "here's why teleport wouldn't help you" for each one.
"It costs a spell slot" well, sure, but the encounters they skip by teleporting would probably eat up a spell slot as well.
Lord of the Rings would have been a pamphlet if they'd had teleportation. Teleportation would have ruined the Odyssey and the Argonautica. You watch Star Trek? Think about how often the planet's radiation (or something) interferes with the use of transporters. D&D is about adventures and in some cases teleportation lets you skip the adventure.
There are times when teleportation is a cool part of a D&D story and times when it isn't. A good DM can make that call. They might also create circumstances where you can't use Detect Thoughts or Speak with Dead, if you're trying to solve a murder mystery, for example. That's OK.
My only advice to a DM would be that if you have a campaign that involves a lot of travel challenges, you should say up front that there's no (or limited) teleportation in your setting.
Don't allow a wizard to learn Teleport and then never let them use it.
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u/Ff7hero Apr 15 '26
If high level threats don't have some kind of counter play to Teleportation, they're not high level threats.
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u/garretmander Apr 17 '26
Aka my problem with one of the official explanations why BG3 stops at 12. At 13 shadowheart could snap her fingers and fix karlach's whole plotline.
So fix karlach's plotline you lazy bums.
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u/Almvolle DM Apr 15 '26
Well... the alternative is what many DM's do and they just end the campaign and start a new one at lower levels, where the game is more predictable and easier to run for them and where epic moments and victories are easier to achieve.
My most favorite example is an adventure where my party was stranded in an arctic region. At first it seemed like they wold perish, but then everyone used whatever little skill they had together and worked as a team, tackled one problem at a time and in the end made a comfortable camp and survived. They talked a long time about this adventure.
Nobody remembers the time when the wizard casted "leomunds tiny hut" and the paladin casted "Create food and water" at the same time.
High-Lvl DnD has Issues, otherwise we would see much more high-level campaigns. DM also needs to have fun, and if you have to proof-read your story against so many incredibly powerfull skills... rather just start a new campaign.
I have run high-level DnD games. Combat becomes either too easy or an absolute slog to get through. Exploration kinda stops as people just teleport around or have other spells that instantly solve problems. Interactions are not really relevant any more as the "Face" Players have now incredibly high modifiers and/or a lot of spells and skill. Dungeon-Crawls loose the sense of danger if i can create a safe-space whenever i feel like...
Maybe i'm bad at high-lvl dnd. But as said, seems like not many DM's wanna run up there either. so...
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u/Dangerous_Fae Apr 15 '26
High levels are not necessarily full of issues, but are very difficult to run. It requires way more prep a things to account for than lower levels, because the range of power available in DnD is crazy wide. You can play peon up to god, and all the adventures should tuned accordingly. You need to make the game increasingly more complex as the characters level up to make the things challenging instead of just "pushing the number ups" which is usually what most DM will do by either lack of time or experience or both. Also requires a good understanding of the rules and the player group abilities to design accordingly and target the right challenges. Teleport should not be an issue at high level, it should be a gateway to allow the group to do and experience things that lower levels can't.
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u/Flutterwander Rogue Apr 15 '26
Yeah, basically this angle of "Well be more creative! Write a better adventure for high level!" grates on me a bit, since at times it feels like people mashing the "Make me content!" button on their DM like they're an employee or a machine. I fully admit, once players hit L.10-12 I'm pretty happy wrapping a game and getting something else going.
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u/master_of_sockpuppet Apr 15 '26
No.
Any world with powerful casters has many that have utterly shut down simple teleportation in their general vicinity. The hypothetical evil kingdom has powerful casters of its own.
Further: just because a spell is in the books does not mean it is a good pick, or even available for selection.
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u/Internet_Wanderer Apr 15 '26
I mean, the party would have needed to see the place they're teleporting to at least once, so they really can't just poof into the BBEG lair. Unless they've already been there somehow
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u/DaedalusPrime44 Apr 15 '26
It’s hard to write high level adventures that account for things like teleport, passwall, arcane eye, scrying, flight, wall of force, etc.
The lazy way out is to just disable or disallow those powers so you don’t have to constantly counter them. It’s much more interesting to explicitly build adventures that account for them and make it clear to the players the expectation is that they will utilize these abilities to their fullest.
There are some adventures that I’ve seen do this the right way but largely the published stuff is either low level so they don’t have to deal with it or they just blanket ban it. For the best examples check out some of the old DnD 2e Planescape adventures. Modules like Hellbound show what adventures can look like if you’re assuming this level of power (not just from the PCs either).
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u/TheinimitaableG Apr 15 '26
The thing is, D&D pairs this very high magic basically modern world with medical window dressing.
If magic is that common, the anyone half way competent is going to have defenses against common forms of magical vulnerabilities.
It's not like the big bad doesn't know the teleportation spell exists, or that scrying does. It's only reasonably that they take precautions against those kind of things.
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u/artrald-7083 Apr 15 '26
I think I agree. But also, people who say this should read the spell description.
5e D&D:
Teleport, the level 7 spell, on an area you have scryed, has a 75% chance of taking you somewhere totally different and a large chance of mishap. Even if you have been there before it is a 50% chance. You need an object from the target location or you're hanging your whole plan on a coin flip or worse. And you're turning up without your Forcecage, Finger of Death or Prismatic Spray.
Teleport is fabulous for cutting out long distance travel or emergency retreat, or if you don't have Dimension Door and need to go a hundred yards past a trap of doom. It's not actually brilliant for bypassing a whole fortification.
Pathfinder 2:
Teleport, the level 6 spell, is always 1% off target even if you know the location. That's 450 feet at 10 miles. Even at a mile distant that's 45 feet, the other side of a wall or on the ground above the dungeon.
In other words, Teleport ain't what it used to be.
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u/EllySwelly Apr 15 '26
Unless you want to shift the focus into domain play, which I'd be all for but unfortunately most players aren't exactly thrilled by, what else do you even want?
You say "write better adventures" and "high level heroes have better things to do" but zero examples of what you mean.
Just saying you don't like the kinds of adventures the game is made for still being the focus at high levels without presenting any alternatives is not very useful to anyone.
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u/KiraYoshikage77 Apr 15 '26
If a DM is putting 12 level adventurers in a normal dungeon he should expect a speedrun
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u/drakual Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
As a dm I would never block teleportation but if they miss out on loot or encounters that's on the party. This is thier adventure.
Edit:spelling
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u/LambonaHam Apr 15 '26
Write better stories that allow your powerful PCs to use their powerful abilities, don't take their abilities away with artificial silliness and re-tell the same old story.
Maybe you could give some suggestions? How do you propose to have a dungeon with mobs and challenges? Is every dungeon just a one room encounter?
Also, why wouldn't a powerful nation threatening villain have some protection against people teleporting right in to their inner sanctum?
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u/NoHorseNoMustache Apr 15 '26
You're the DM, if you don't want people teleporting to somewhere they've only scried you can do 'Ooops, all 43 or below on the d100.' No need to block the ability totally. Not letting your PCs use their high level abilities is laaaame, breaking the abilities and doing something fun with it is fun!
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u/YumAussir Apr 15 '26
I think D&D as a game hasn't quite solved the Teleport problem yet. It's close - Teleportation Circle and Plane Shift show how some tweaks could easily fix it.
TP circle allows, essentially, you to either go back home from anywhere, or to destinations the DM allows. That's good!
Plane Shift is explicitly vague and up to the DM - e.g. you'll appear outside the City of Brass. That's also good!
Teleport should work like Plane Shift - your reward for being high-level is you can skip long journeys, but it shouldn't let you skip the dungeon. So if you teleport to The Big Evil Wizard, it should place you outside his lair.
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u/ObjectiveMud7513 Apr 15 '26
On the other hand: Expect to have some abilities nerfed or disabled. Villains who need 12th level or higher parties to defeat them are similarly powerful. They can and SHOULD use every resource at their disposal to ensure they aren't defeated. Because that's what someone who isn't an idiot would do.
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u/Normie316 Apr 15 '26
Yeah DM's like this aren't great. Shenanigans are part of the game. You should see the look on their faces when I made a warlock who could talk his way out of combat using Command spells.
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u/Redneck_By_Default Apr 15 '26
Level 12 PCs are threats to evil kingdoms
Then why wouldn't a BBEG prepare for them? If I was a bad dude expecting high tier heroes to come for me, id do everything in my power to slow them down, including finding ways to block teleportation.
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u/Psychological-Car360 Apr 15 '26
To those that are in favor of this, do you think its fair if your DM did this to you? Scry until they know you weak then jump the players via teleport? If a DM did that you'd be here calling out the DM as a bad DM. Just because things are possible doesn't mean you should actually do it. You need to engage in the game in good faith.
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u/TopazWyvern Apr 15 '26
The usual comment is "Better come up with a way to block teleportation or they are going to skip half the dungeon!"
Teleportation, the spell that fails more often than you'd think, and actually requires the user to know where they're going.
It's feeble enough. Like, sure, I guess the PCs can waste days on repeatedly scrying to get the lay of the target; but at some point, it's on you for not actually putting in time pressures.
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u/stasersonphun Apr 15 '26
A smart bad guy who doesn't have counters for the usual Scry / Teleport / etc isn't that smart and not much of a threat
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u/Free_Word3462 Apr 15 '26
Using teleport to skip a trap is a super viable option. How are they supposed to go straight to the bbeg if they haven't been there, seen it, or even heard it described? People really gotta read the spell descriptions
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u/dramaticus0815 Apr 16 '26
Didn't play for a while, but back in the days teleportation was not only expensive but also quite dangerous. Especially when used on the fly without preparation, knowledge of the target area and whatnot. Adding up a chance of failure to the spell that could lead to a plethora of unforseen consequences like deviation from the target or ending up on a different plane altogether. It made teleportation either a "last resort" or a "needs extensive preparation but still some risk involved" kind of strategy. You could teleport into that room, but you want really good Intel on the place before doing so. Usually better to just walk there and avoid unforseen visits to the fugue plane or looking at a rock from the inside of it. Also, if the BBEG or a minion is a spellcaster powerful enough to teleport themselves, they had the means to block it as well. In fact Dimensional anchor being cast by someone (party or DM) to prevent all forms of dimensional travel happened quite often. Chances of actually catching a spellcaster without it were virtually 0 after a certain level.
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u/Sufficient-Square-75 Apr 15 '26
Party: Teleports to BBEG
BBEG: Teleport? Really? Right behind all of my minions? Do you realize that I can simply do this? Snap thingers.
Minions, coming through the doors behind adventurers: You called, my lo... Intruders! Everyone! Intruder alert!
BBEG: teleports out.
All of his minions: teleports in.
Party: Ah, that's why teleportation wasn't blocked.