Are 3e's tactics very different from AD&D's?

[Username17]

--Only permanent effects can travel with you. Buffs vanish when you teleport.

Teleport, the new improved Break Enchantment?

--A loud noise and sigils precede you.

That's going to have to be part of it. Any long distance teleport should probably act as a gate time effect with a big swirling portal taking form over a couple of rounds, clearly visible and audible from both sides.

You still want a separate spell that makes you vanish in a flash of green smoke to fight another day, and I suggest this version be set to a particular place ahead of time. I really don't worry about people sayin a magic word and returning to their sanctum. But instantaneous travel into other peoples' houses simply cannot be fixed.

--All polymorph effects need to operate on a full character replacement process

Your continued insistance on this, in the face of huge mountains of weights of evidence that it is unworkable is at this point simply puzzling. No system of polymorphing based on monster entries can be balanced. Ever. Under any circumstances. 3e Alter SElf is kind of powerful and very cool, 3.5 Alter Self is completely ass broken from the bottom to the top.

Have a "go bigger spell" or "ogerize" for people who want to play anime guys, but don't make Polymorph a necessary combat tactic for every fighter. Achilles should not be forced to become a Firbolg just to kill a few Trojans.

I'm starting to think that buff spells in general should simply be removed. If you want to be magically stronger, you should take the "Is magically stronger" class. Period. There shouldn't be level based and non-level based methods of character enhancement like this. If Ogreization gets you anything and costs only spell slots (which is to say: nothing), then sooner or later everyone is going to need to be ogreific. The only way to stop that is to make people actually pay for the ogreization in lost other abilities.

Like getting Rage instead of getting Divine Grace, instead of like allowing the Wizard to use one of his extra slots on you or not.

-Username17

[User3]

Full character replacement is the only way to make fighters turned into rats not kick your mage ass.

Shapechanging of any kind should have much bigger limits. There are times when the hero takes on the Zombie template and still contributes to the party during the adventure, and then turns back at the end(a good episode of Sliders). There are other times when the hero gets invaded by an insect creature and goes all insecty and is a villain(another episode of Sliders). there are times when the hero changes into a new thing entirely without any preparation or preamble, and never comes back(Allyra/Fred from Angel).

Combat buff shapechanging should not exist at all, in any form. At best, you should be able to move around some skills for some other skills. Maybe saying that you can take your level, and the become an equal level or lower (ECL + HD) monster. Add a limit that you can't become a monster without an ECL(which clears up 99% of the broke stuff). So with Alter Self, you could take your 4 levels of wizard and become a Gnoll(we'll keep the same Type restriction of 3.5 Alter self, and add in a max level 5 trade). Tiefling wizards are now safe to become not borken stuff.

(I hope the 3.5 Efreet doesn't have an ECL, or thats one hole in the system. Stupid efreet.)

And how does my core idea of full replacement have anything to do with 3.anything Alter Self? They don't share any mechnics at all.

[Username17]

Full character replacement is the only way to make fighters turned into rats not kick your mage ass.

And this is even desirable because.....???

Add a limit that you can't become a monster without an ECL(which clears up 99% of the broke stuff).

So your solution is to wave your hands and magically fix ECL? I'll tell you what, I'll just hold my frickin breath until someone fixes ECL, and then I'll start working oxygen back into my cold and purple extremities while I'll consider whether or not your polymrph concepts have any merit at that time.

-Username17

[Absentminded_Wizard]

The teleport ambush can probably be fixed by a combination of making the teleported characters sick or dazed for several rounds after the teleport and some kind of noise and fanfare announcing the arrival of teleportees. You could probably make it look something like a Star Trek transporter, with a distinct high-pitched noise and sparkly lights right at your new location for a round or two while you're fading in. Give your targets a fix on your general position and several rounds where you're basically helpless, and the teleport ambush becomes a far cry from a slam-dunk maneuver.

And the second spell to allow instant retreat already exists. We'd just have to give wizards access to Word of Recall.

[Username17]

It would probably need to be its own condition, with a name such as "flooby". As is, there are creatures that are unimpeded by just about any condition you hope to name. I mean, I don't think that anyone wants the Teleport Ambush around at all, regardless of whether you are sending in your own party or a bunch of elite elemental killers.

Speaking of which, it would probably want to be visible, audible, and just plain sensable for a significant distance in all directions. Earth Elementals can teleport inside the walls, the least we can do is let everyone else run for it.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Why can't teleport be both spells?

It teleports you away instantly, while it takes 5 rounds or whatever warning on the other side?

Is there any problem with that? Because that's what I'm about to do in my game, and I don't want idiotic loopholes that lets teleport give people unlimited wealth or kills anything without a save or other weird effect.

[RandomCasualty]

I think that instantaneous long range teleportation is just a bad idea in general. Whenever you can be halfway across the planet in one action, that's a bad thing. Because it means that basically the only way to kill you is to win initiative and disable you or kill you in one round. And one round kills generally aren't something you want in a game of heroic fantasy, because they're very anti-climactic.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

1087060969[/unixtime]]Why can't teleport be both spells?

It teleports you away instantly, while it takes 5 rounds or whatever warning on the other side?

Is there any problem with that? Because that's what I'm about to do in my game, and I don't want idiotic loopholes that lets teleport give people unlimited wealth or kills anything without a save or other weird effect.

I just want to know where the teleporting people are during those rounds when they're neither at their original location nor their destination. Maybe they're on some other plane where they could be attacked by random monsters?

You could probably get unlimited--or at least considerable--wealth by teleporting into somebody's treasure room with a bag of holding (repeat as many times as you have appropriate spell slots), but that's possible even with the Teleport + Word of Recall (for wizards) combo that I was proposing.

Speaking of which, it would probably want to be visible, audible, and just plain sensable for a significant distance in all directions. Earth Elementals can teleport inside the walls, the least we can do is let everyone else run for it.

What do you mean by "signifigant distance"? Does every teleport have to be audible in the next county to balance it out? And if we really do need audibility over such large distances to counteract elemental hit squads, would some sort of scaling work? Like increase the audible distance according to the size of the teleported creatures?

[Username17]

I should hope not. Reducing your friends and popping them into your own bag of holding before teleporting in is already encouraged, I wouldn't want to encourage it any more, on account of that tactic is kind of stupid.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

To prevent the whole treasure vault thing, you actually need spells that just outright prevent teleportation like Forbiddance, or even worse, something that redirects the teleportation.

As for bags of holding, I don't think we should encourage people to put themselves inside them, so I would say that we should just say that extradimensional weight counts as normal weight for the purposes of teleportation spells, possibly for the purposes of all spells in general too.