# Teleportation



## the Jester (Jul 30, 2012)

I was just thinking about teleportation through the years and the various ways it has been handled in D&D.

We've seen that some combinations of spells or abilities being available to pcs can lead to the scry-buff-teleport approach, an optimal suite of tactics that a lot of folks find problematic. We've seen that unconstrained teleportation can circumvent entire categories of obstacles (e.g. a chasm with no bridge) and make certain types of adventure obsolete (e.g. trek across the wilderness).

We've seen that the limitations on teleportation have a huge impact on the way pcs use teleportation abilities (e.g. requiring line of sight, chance of teleporting into a wall, must have a circle to teleport into or from). These change the teleportation game greatly; you can have low-level teleport spells or abilities without breaking the game if you put limitations on their utility.

There are also possibilities that we haven't seen in full bloom in D&D before. Perhaps teleporting stuns you for a round (dimension door has always had an effect something like this, but most teleportation has not). Maybe it deals nonlethal damage to you. Maybe it blinds you, is inexact (c.f. plane shift up to 3e), can't take your gear with you, can't take your magic items with you, automatically teleports anyone else within 30' with you, etc. The possibilities are pretty endless- and of course, there is always the option of simply "no limits!!".

How do you think 5e should handle teleportation?


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## Dausuul (Jul 30, 2012)

I think the Golden Rule of Teleportation should be, "You can't take another person to a place of your choice."

You may be able to take yourself to a place of your choice. Or you can take a group of people to a preset location (or a random one!). But no teleport ability, no matter how powerful, should allow the entire party to go wherever it likes*.

If combined with fairly high spell levels for all long-range teleport spells, I think that restriction deals with the vast majority of teleport-related headaches. Sure, you personally may be able to pop all over the place, but if you can't bring the other PCs, you're not going to be able to circumvent whole adventures.

[size=-2]*Unless everyone in the party is a high-level wizard.[/size]


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## Jester David (Jul 30, 2012)

I was always amused by how much 4th edition limited flight but so many races and classes had teleportation abilities. 
So, a tiered approach seems like the optimal choice. 

* At low levels (the "gritty" tier) teleportation just does not exist.
* At mid levels (the heroic tier) teleportation can happen but only for short distances or very expensively over distances. It is often time intensive and requires a set prepared destination such as a portal or teleportation circle. 
* At high levels (the paragon/ super-heroic/ wuxia/ Legendary tier) teleportation is more affordable and can be quickly done to a set location or slower and more expensive to any destination imaginable, and there might be a risk of failure.
* At epic levels you teleport to get the paper every morning before opening a portal to Milliways for breakfast.

The trick is to really accept those limitations and stick to them. And then provide rules and advice for DMs to design and plan around them. I.e. don't plan a lengthy wilderness trek for PCs of 17th level.


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## RangerWickett (Jul 30, 2012)

I want long-distance teleportation to be rare, normally.

I want all teleportation to be optional, because it doesn't fit in some settings.

In my setting, though, I want a character who devotes a lot of character resources to be able to get the ability to teleport short distances at will at a fairly low character level.


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## john112364 (Jul 30, 2012)

I would definitely like to see limitations of some sort. Even though I have used those tactics myself in the past, I think  the game is more interesting with out those tactics easily available. I like the line of sight and magic circle limitations from 4e, but I wouldn't mind a long range teleport similar to 3e and prior with some severe limits or penalties.  
Not the teleporting into the wall severe because that can end a campaign in a hurry without some heavy handed DM intervention at which point you have to wonder how limiting it really is. But maybe some long term disorientation such as penalties to all your rolls until a certain amount of time has passes and/or a con save is made. That would stop the scry/buff/teleport trick though maybe not the circumventing travel problem. 

My 2cp. I recognize that some opinions may differ.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 30, 2012)

Combat is about the action economy. If you want to limit its combat utility, having people lose a couple turns due to disorientation is reasonable. Inaccuracy is also an important feature of teleport.

I don't mind teleport being available as a 5th level spell; just throw a bunch of drawbacks on it and gradually take them off as the levels get higher.


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## tlantl (Jul 30, 2012)

In my AD&D days the threat of losing your character from a bad roll when teleporting was usually enough to keep players from not only abusing the scry and fly method but it kept them from even attempting something so dangerous. I never had a player die from a bad teleport since they never used it to go to places they weren't familiar with. 

It might seem a harsh punishment on paper but if the rule keeps players from ruining years of character building by failing a die roll then it becomes an effective deterrent that never actually occurs. No one is going to risk that eight or ten percent chance that they might miss teleporting to a place they have only scryed once or twice.

Alternately the player could find that missing wasn't deadly but by using those same miss chances to cause the spell to fail upon casting and deliver some small amount damage or stunning effect that persists for hours the same result could be had.


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## Minigiant (Jul 30, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I think the Golden Rule of Teleportation should be, "You can't take another person to a place of your choice."
> 
> You may be able to take yourself to a place of your choice. Or you can take a group of people to a preset location (or a random one!). But no teleport ability, no matter how powerful, should allow the entire party to go wherever it likes*.
> 
> ...





I prefer a 2 of 3 method.

Multiple persons
Chosen Location
Casting time

You can teleport 1 person to a location of your choice in one action.

You can teleport multiple persons to a general location in one action.

You can teleport multiple person to a location of your choice after a hour casting per person.

I think the "2 of 3 rule" can and should be applied to many iconic spells.


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## sheadunne (Jul 30, 2012)

I enjoy teleportation/dimension door effects in D&D and hope they remain. The primary issue I've had with teleport is that it decreases time. If you only have a day down time and the DM says you can't buy or sell items in the town you're in. Bam. You just teleport to the nearest big city and do a little buying and selling. I think that they should be scaled. For instance

Hoping - Short distance no greater than your standard movement. Requires line of sight. No delay. This form of movement is useful to bypass terrain difficulties but only for the caster.

Dimension Door - Longer distance. Requires line of sight. Stuns you for a round (and anyone who goes with you). Another option would be to stun the caster for a number of rounds equal to the number of people going with her. This type of moment is good for getting across chasms and the like, but leaves you and others vulnerable for a round or more.

Teleport - Unlimited earthly distance. Does not require line of sight, but does require knowledge of location. Takes an amount of time to reach the location equal to 1 quarter the distance traveled. (time to reach destination increases based on number of people going with you). This type of movement is great for traveling vast distances in shorter periods of time, but it still takes time.

Plane Shifting - Unlimited planer travel. Does not require line of sight, but does require knowledge of the plane. Random location on plane. (randomness of location increases based on number of people going with you). Great for getting you to the abyss, but unless you've got a teleport and good knowledge handy, you're going to probably be somewhere you weren't expecting.

Places like teleportation circles and planer circles could allow less time to travel and no randomness. Or something to that effect.

I'd hate to not be able to make my teleporting swashbuckler because the rules don't support it.


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I think the Golden Rule of Teleportation should be, "You can't take another person to a place of your choice."
> 
> You may be able to take yourself to a place of your choice. Or you can take a group of people to a preset location (or a random one!). But no teleport ability, no matter how powerful, should allow the entire party to go wherever it likes



Sounds reasonable.



tlantl said:


> In my AD&D days the threat of losing your character from a bad roll when teleporting was usually enough to keep players from not only abusing the scry and fly method but it kept them from even attempting something so dangerous. I never had a player die from a bad teleport since they never used it to go to places they weren't familiar with.



If the rationale for the failure chance is to stop PCs teleporting to unfamiliar places, then why not just follow Dausuul's approach and impose a hard limit: no teleporting to unfamiliar places.


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## Croesus (Jul 30, 2012)

Some good ideas already mentioned. One idea I always liked was that the caster could teleport anywhere within line of sight, or to a location he had arcane marked previously. There would be limits on how many marked locations he could have at any one time. And scrying was *not* considered "line of sight".


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## Argyle King (Jul 30, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Sounds reasonable.
> 
> If the rationale for the failure chance is to stop PCs teleporting to unfamiliar places, then why not just follow Dausuul's approach and impose a hard limit: no teleporting to unfamiliar places.





Personally, I dislike that for many of the same reasons why I dislike how some have said attacks of opportunity should be handled.  I remember a thread a while back in which AoO were being discussed, and the subject of whether or not not having them would make ranged weapons superior to melee came up.  There were those who advocated the idea that ranged attacks should simply be impossible if you are threatened by an enemy.

I dislike that and I dislike being told something like teleporting somewhere unfamiliar is impossible because I feel as though it removes an element of risk-versus-reward which I find enjoyable and which I also feel is an important element of many adventure stories.  Just like there may be times when I tempt fate by firing my bow at the troll in my face because I really need my fire arrow to strike home, there may also be times when the party has been battered and beaten by the troll, and their only hope of survival is for me to call upon my years of arcane training to hopefully get them somewhere safe -even if we don't know where that somewhere is.

That being said, I am ok with the requirements concerning teleportation being somehow tied to skill.  I am also ok with teleportation and similar thaumatology being far far less common than it currently is in D&D.  While they are not teleportation spells, I would also prefer that spells which allow walking through walls and things of that nature be far less common than they currently are.


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Personally, I dislike that for many of the same reasons why I dislike how some have said attacks of opportunity should be handled.
> 
> <sip>
> 
> Just like there may be times when I tempt fate by firing my bow at the troll in my face because I really need my fire arrow to strike home, there may also be times when the party has been battered and beaten by the troll, and their only hope of survival is for me to call upon my years of arcane training to hopefully get them somewhere safe -even if we don't know where that somewhere is.



That might be something better handled by a Fate Point or similar mechanic - ie spend some other, limited, "Get Out of Jail" resrouce in order to augment the teleport beyond its usual capacities (I gather than Mutants & Masterminds uses a mechanic a bit like that).

I just don't see how a percentage chance of instant death on teleportation really enhances the play experience - it seems to just increase swinginess (either you _really_ win, or you _really_ lose). And once you reduce the penalty (eg in Rolemaster, rather than instant death, it is "fail to teleport and be stunned") then teleportation starts to become overpowered again.


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## Argyle King (Jul 30, 2012)

pemerton said:


> That might be something better handled by a Fate Point or similar mechanic - ie spend some other, limited, "Get Out of Jail" resrouce in order to augment the teleport beyond its usual capacities (I gather than Mutants & Masterminds uses a mechanic a bit like that).
> 
> I just don't see how a percentage chance of instant death on teleportation really enhances the play experience - it seems to just increase swinginess (either you _really_ win, or you _really_ lose). And once you reduce the penalty (eg in Rolemaster, rather than instant death, it is "fail to teleport and be stunned") then teleportation starts to become overpowered again.




I find the possibility of trying something to be more exciting and more game-enhancing than the game simply saying "bzzzzzt! wrong answer."  Though, this is something which highly depends upon how the rest of the world works.  I am more inclined to accept more limitations on things if the game as a whole is built in a way such that the game world makes sense to me -even considering magic, dragons, and elves (this touches upon my recent comments in a different thread.)  If the game world is instead built in a manner which is consistent with some of the problems I have with the current edition of D&D then I find a blanket statement of no to be a worse option than a statement of "yes, but it's risky."


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## Argyle King (Jul 30, 2012)

I suppose what I was trying to say was this:  

If the limitations seem natural to the game world and seem like they are organic to how things work, I'm on board.  If -on the other hand- the limitations come across more as being artificial limitations in a manner more consistent with how I cannot jump in certain video games because jumping was not programmed into the game, I'm not happy with that as a rpg experience.  

I was also trying to say that I much prefer having the freedom to weigh risk versus reward and attempt an action -even if doing so is suicidal- than having the freedom to make that choice taken away from me.


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> If the game world is instead built in a manner which is consistent with some of the problems I have with the current edition of D&D then I find a blanket statement of no to be a worse option than a statement of "yes, but it's risky."



"Yes, but it's risky" gives me a very Tunnels & Trolls vibe - lighthearted, with high PC turnover and wackiness as the default.

But I get the impression you're seeing "Yes, but it's risky" in a more serious sort of fashion. Does D&D support that level of seriousness? I think it can at the "overview" level - serious characters, serious plot and themes, etc - but I'm not sure at the level of action resolution. Hit points already make it not that serious, I feel.

Serious "Yes, but it's risky" teleportation would seem to me to fit better in gritty combat with crits, for example - then staying to face the troll is taking the same sort of risk (it might get a good crit) as choosing to teleport out (you might end up underground). And the whole play of the game is built around this sort of grittiness.

Does that make any sense?


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## Elf Witch (Jul 30, 2012)

First I think teleport should be a DM optional spell. I feel this way about several spells. 

One of the issue is scry it is to easy to abuse. I liked the mechanic in 3.0 where you had to put ranks in scry to be any good at it. I also think that you should not be able to scry on someone or someplace that you have no familiarity with. I also think that there should be some rule of having something that belongs to the person to allow the connection.

I like how teleport works in the Dragonriders of Pern to go between you have to have a clear picture in your mind of your destination screw this up and you could end up anywhere or worse end up in wall. 

So some kind of danger should be there if if all it is is being off course by 100s of miles. 

Also the more people you are teleporting the harder it should be.

Teleport without error should not be a spell to be able to teleport without error you should have to have some some kind of device or portal or circle.


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## Mishihari Lord (Jul 30, 2012)

I like the idea of making it a ritual with a significant cast time, several hours at least.  Yes, you can SBT, but if the opposition is stronger than you thought then you're stranded in hostile territory.  

I also like the idea of having a one-use teleport circle that can be cast on a location then used at any time, as a line of retreat.

I also like to require that either the starting point or destination is a well-known location.


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## Argyle King (Jul 30, 2012)

pemerton said:


> "Yes, but it's risky" gives me a very Tunnels & Trolls vibe - lighthearted, with high PC turnover and wackiness as the default.
> 
> But I get the impression you're seeing "Yes, but it's risky" in a more serious sort of fashion. Does D&D support that level of seriousness? I think it can at the "overview" level - serious characters, serious plot and themes, etc - but I'm not sure at the level of action resolution. *Hit points already make it not that serious, I feel.*
> 
> ...





It does make sense, and -as I participate in more of these discussions- I start to see more and more reasons why I feel as though I am outside of the target audience for D&D 5th Edition.  Now I'm only left to wonder if my tastes have changed over the years or if I was playing a game which was ill suited to my tastes (and enjoying it) because I was not aware there was another way of handling things at the time.

I bolded your comment about hit points because -now that I have some experience with how other games handle HP- I find myself unhappy with how HP works out in D&D.  "Unhappy" is perhaps too strong of a word.  Elsewhere, in a different thread, I once made the comment that HP is one of those things which I do not really notice as long as I'm only playing D&D.  However, when I come back to it from playing a different game -with a different method fresh in my head- it bugs me.


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## howandwhy99 (Jul 30, 2012)

A Gate is an awesome thing. It does funky stuff with the layout of surrounding environments and populations. I like permanent magical features like the Gate spell, but the consequences of such really do need to be nailed down well to get the full effect of how powerful they are for any magic system, regardless of the campaign setting.

Teleportation is similar to a Gate, but instantaneous. It is super-powerful. If everyone could teleport "at will" we should definitely drop the Movement abilities. Such expense for "movement" would then be a rare spell for unusual situations at best.

Limitations on teleport depend on the play style and campaign:


For a high power, world spanning game, then teleport should be daily or less and without any further cost. It should also likely only be limited by planetary scales or whatever the campaign calls for. 

For a low level dungeon crawl the teleport is a "get out of jail free" card. Before you had to crawl back out and the infamously short workdays barely broke the surface. With teleport to safety and back in, the game's difficulty changes for everyone. 

For adventure path games a teleport can skip over meaningless trips between each chapter. But they can also skip over meaningful quests to the top of a proverbial mountain simply because such is in sight. 

For sandbox games a teleport can quickly take one outside of the sandbox and end the session there and then. Too often and too cheap and the game leads to undeveloped (and unentangled) locations routinely.
I like teleport costing more than simply a daily spell slot. I like that it would be limited in terms of miles. And in respect to the early version I like that it is unreliable. If you have more reliable methods you go with them first. If teleport can really harm you just by bad luck, then important travel will often be taken by other means (like heading to a combat). The last thing anyone wants is to arrive hip deep in stone in the evil vizier's assassin barracks. (rat bastardry is great, random certain death not so much). 

1e was not limited by distance, but to locations the caster had already visited or heard about. IOW, if the DM told you about it, he better have something ready if you decide snap you fingers and go there.  

It was also limited by weight, so like a Gate there is only so much that can pass through at one time.

Also, there was a table of mis-teleporting depending on the degree one knew the location. "High" could deliver you a number of feet above ground depending on the roll. "Low" could do the same into the ground below, so there was a chance for instant burials, if you'd never seen the place.

One major point to note: Both Teleportation & Gate presumed they were cast to a location upon a solid surface. I kind of prefer the option not to do so, but then "Forced Teleportation" of another is basically a Touch of Death spell or even Imprisonment. Teleportation Circle is even worse, if the caster is prepared for where they're all going. Taking such things into account for balancing the magic system is every bit as important as including flavorful details like the odds of having to saw your friend out of a tree.


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I bolded your comment about hit points because -now that I have some experience with how other games handle HP- I find myself unhappy with how HP works out in D&D.



Following up on this tangent - for a long time I hated hp as a combat resolution mechanic. 4e, for me, has shown me how a game can be successfully built around them, embracing the gonzo "action movie" flavour and making it fit into a coherent game rather than push against other, gritty mechanical features.

Returning to teleportation: it tends to make the game non-gritty (by making ordinary movement modes redundant) and it also gives the players a lot of power over scene-framing (because with long-distance teleport they can take their PCs where they like). If it's going to be part of the game, these implications should be thought through. (For example, the game needs to make it easy for the GM to work out what the players find at the other end of an unexpected teleport - otherwise teleporting becomes equivalent to "killing the session dead", which is a silly mechanic to have in a game.)


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## CM (Jul 30, 2012)

I'm strongly in favor of 4e's teleportation.
Teleportion of short distances is common, as in a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero settings. Generally it always requires line of sight.
Teleportation of long ranges requires that a destination portal exist (which you have visited or learned of in some manner) and can be costly in terms of time and resources, are very high level, or are unreliable (taking you to a random location in the desired plane).
For example, the 4e version of 3e's greater teleport is essentially the level 28 ritual, _true portal_.


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## Argyle King (Jul 30, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Following up on this tangent - for a long time I hated hp as a combat resolution mechanic. 4e, for me, has shown me how a game can be successfully built around them, embracing the gonzo "action movie" flavour and making it fit into a coherent game rather than push against other, gritty mechanical features.
> 
> Returning to teleportation: it tends to make the game non-gritty (by making ordinary movement modes redundant) and it also gives the players a lot of power over scene-framing (because with long-distance teleport they can take their PCs where they like). If it's going to be part of the game, these implications should be thought through. (For example, the game needs to make it easy for the GM to work out what the players find at the other end of an unexpected teleport - otherwise teleporting becomes equivalent to "killing the session dead", which is a silly mechanic to have in a game.)





For me, while I have had fun with 4E...  I'm trying to figure out to put this.  I enjoy it for what it is, but I dislike it for what I want a rpg to be.  That is not to suggest I have not have fun rpg moments with it.  I most certainly have.  There are just a lot of stories I want to tell and styles of games I want to explore which I feel are very poorly suited to the system and vice versa.  In particular, for a longer campaign and one which (for a lack of better words) has more depth, I prefer something else.  

I do enjoy action movies, but I think my interests fall into some sort of weird middle ground where I feel as though reality rather than gonzo special effects are a better way to enhance the feel of action.  An example I have used before would be the Transporter movies.  The first movie most certainly does contain action which is somewhat unrealistic.  However, it at least makes a passing attempt at trying to make things seem plausible.  The second movie (I feel) didn't even try, and -for me- came across as being silly.  In particular, there is a scene where Jason Stathom's character knows there is a bomb attached to the bottom of the car.  He removes it by ramping the car toward a crane hook, doing a barrel roll mid-air, and having the crane hook perfectly snatch the bomb from the underside of the car.  

I do not necessarily disagree with your comments on being able to teleport.  To paraphrase a modular fantasy game which I enjoy "Teleportation and time manipulation spells tend to ruin dungeon fantasy where time constraints, physical barriers, and keeping the party together are among the important challenges."  Generally speaking, I think I agree with that.  I realize this means I am somewhat arguing against myself, but I was originally speaking up more out of a dislike for the game being artificially programmed to not allow an action to be possible as opposed to giving a player the ability to choose whether or not risking an action is worth the possible reward.


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## Manbearcat (Jul 30, 2012)

tlantl said:


> In my AD&D days the threat of losing your character from a bad roll when teleporting was usually enough to keep players from not only abusing the scry and fly method but it kept them from even attempting something so dangerous. I never had a player die from a bad teleport since they never used it to go to places they weren't familiar with.
> 
> It might seem a harsh punishment on paper but if the rule keeps players from ruining years of character building by failing a die roll then it becomes an effective deterrent that never actually occurs. No one is going to risk that eight or ten percent chance that they might miss teleporting to a place they have only scryed once or twice.




Rather than the built-in cost-benefit-analysis (overly punitive - death - or disproportionately rewarding - win), binary mechanical nature of this spell, I would prefer a much more colorful form of operative conditioning of my players:  Whenever they cast Teleport (or its higher level equivalents), a big, spring-loaded ACME boxing glove explodes from their d20 and punches them in the face.


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## tlantl (Jul 30, 2012)

All I know is it's just another instance of WotC trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and screwing it up royally. 

There's a lot of that in their versions of D&D.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jul 30, 2012)

I made 3E teleportation work in a couple of campaigns by making it inherently drain life energy of each participant, as if from undead--though I was using the temporary negative levels instead of the more nasty version.  

If a portal-to-portal connection was properly maintained and treated, this could be largely avoided.  The users of such a portal would be weakened for an hour or so, but nothing permanent.  Maintaining a portal in this manner took the spells of low-level wizards and clerics, and treating one that was not kept maintained took a few 3rd to 5th level spells from the same.  

Then I adopted something closer to the 1E teleport mishap logic, but with bad rolls draining even more life.  So if you tried a blind or nearly blind teleport, you'd typically gain a negative level or two automatically, but if you had to shift out of solid rock or the like, you'd lose even more.  

Seemed to make teleports something that casters would use in a real emergency, but not friviously.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jul 30, 2012)

tlantl said:


> All I know is it's just another instance of WotC trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and screwing it up royally.
> 
> There's a lot of that in their versions of D&D.




If they took everything that someone asserted wasn't broken and left it alone, they'd never change anything.  In this case, same as with many, "not broken" is very much in the eye of the beholder.


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## Dragongrief (Jul 30, 2012)

For avoiding the Scry-Teleport-Kill strategy, why not institute the Vampire Rule: you cannot teleport across a threshold that you have not been given permission to cross.

Any enemies in their home/lair would be safe, though it would still allow a "stealth approach" to get close (unless it also causes a small "sonic boom" from the sudden air displacement by the arriving/leaving characters).


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## 1of3 (Jul 30, 2012)

The only teleportation I need is Stargates: The ability to handwave characters to relevant adventure sites. 4e did a fine job with its Linked Portal ritual.


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## Someone (Jul 30, 2012)

In one of the campaigns I DMed I took the “teleportation is inexact” route, so you appeared within a couple miles of the intended target. It worked well for the most part at avoiding most of the troubles mentioned in the OP (unless you consider bypassing wilderness treks a problem) and it was still a very useful (and used) spell.


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## Black Knight Irios (Jul 30, 2012)

One of the major problems was scry > teleport > X.

I would require for a longrange teleport to work that, the caster has to either *personally* (*1) visit the site he wants to teleport to or know the code phrase for a teleportation circle/portal at the target location.

Casting times for long range teleportation are another matter but for me really not that important (ritual vs. 1 action). I would'n mind if both would be an option and the ritual is fail-safe.

Short range teleportation doesn't matter that much even if it is w/o LoS requirements as long only the caster can use it. He might get behind the door but he is on his own until he opens the door.




(*1): This requirement should by no means be bypasseable by any means of scrying. Maybe if 'Wish' exists and is costly that would be an option.


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## Lanefan (Jul 30, 2012)

I don't mind teleport provided there's some limits and-or drawbacks.  In a campaign where you want to have different settings (far north, desert, jungle, temperate, etc.) and don't feel like spending ages of in-game time in travel, teleport or similar is the answer.

First and most important limit to prevent scry-teleport-X is to make it that the caster can only teleport herself and what she is actually carrying, to a hard weight limit that increases (a bit) with each caster level.  In other words, you can't teleport a horse unless you can find a way to somehow make it weigh a lot less and then pick it up and carry it; but you can teleport another person along with you provided they're riding piggy-back.

Second is to keep the risk of failure, with a smaller but still possible risk of catastrophic failure e.g. arrive in solid rock.

Third, there need to be some items in the game that can defend a lair/home/temple/etc. against anyone arriving by non-physical means.

The first two above can be beaten by use of a permanent teleport gate, circle, or device - but these can't be built by field adventuring parties.  Having these available for city-to-city travel (at significant cost, of course) really helps at mid-high level: the players can get on with it, and the DM doesn't have to run weeks of overland or sea travel - again.

Lan-"using two planeshifts as a Clerical teleport is a whole other breed of rules-messy"-efan


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## TwoSix (Jul 30, 2012)

Teleportation can only be made to locations adorned with a specially prepared rune, about 1 ft. square, with the carving of the rune inlaid with alchemically treated quicksilver (the symbolic metal for swiftness).

Additionally, a wizard can only teleport to a specific rune if the rune has had a small portion of the wizard's blood poured into the rune carving.

That's the flavor of magic I like for D&D.


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## Stormonu (Jul 30, 2012)

Dragongrief said:


> For avoiding the Scry-Teleport-Kill strategy, why not institute the Vampire Rule: you cannot teleport across a threshold that you have not been given permission to cross.
> 
> Any enemies in their home/lair would be safe, though it would still allow a "stealth approach" to get close (unless it also causes a small "sonic boom" from the sudden air displacement by the arriving/leaving characters).




I like this idea; its kind of like Star Trek's beaming technology not being able to work through shields. If you do want to get through, you've got to do some preliminary work to knock down or otherwise render the shields inoperative.

  Inhabited locatations might create some sort of interferance or the superstions/mores of house and hearth may create some sort of natural barrier.  This need not be some elaborate ritual; perhaps the simple claim of homeownership might produce a natural block or it might be a boon of the god(ess) of house and hearth.   At the least, it makes a great optional rule.

Overall, I think teleportation needs to be in the game based on the fiction it is derived from.  As a baseline, I think it should be something you don't want to use unless your very familiar with the destination, but the cost of failure to be the consumption of the spell with no effect or being lost/displaced with a few HP lost in the shuffle.  Save the "imbedded in walls" for NPCs or special teleport traps and whatnot.

I'd like to see it be next to impossible to pull a scry-n-die; it should be on the level of effort of breaking in directly and facing the opponent; it just might require a different skill set (scry skill instead of stealth, a personal item taken from the target, possible hp damage getting through any protective barriers/wards/measures, etc.)


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## CleverNickName (Jul 30, 2012)

the Jester said:


> How do you think 5e should handle teleportation?



Teleport is a messy, messy spell that needs a lot of work.

First of all, let me say that I think the teleport spell belongs in the game.  Many scenarios need it, many fantasy novels use it, and some character concepts depend on it.  But the 3.X versions are broken on so many levels, it put a bad taste in my mouth.  So with that in mind, I suggest 4 things:

1.  Make it harder to cast.  I think it should be a ritual that requires at least 5 minutes to cast, and it should require very specific material components (some soil from the area you wish to travel to, for example.)  Simply scrying the area with magic should not be enough.

2.  Stop the buffing.  Traveling through the temporal distortion, or time-space continuum, or wormhole, whatever, should end the duration of ongoing magical effects.  All buff spells should end when a creature is teleported...that's just one consequence of messing with space-time.

3.  Bring back the risk.  I think it should always carry at least a 5% chance for failure, no matter what your level.  "Failure" should be inconvenient, even dire...but it shouldn't be lethal.  I don't remember which edition of the game it was in, but back in the day there was a rule that if your teleport failed, you arrived safely, but you were d% miles away from your desired location in a random direction.

4.  But don't go crazy with risk.  I never cared for instant death consequences, such as "oops, you teleported into rock" or "oops, you arrive 2,000 feet above the ground."  I'd much rather the party arrive in an unknown location, or without half their gear, or both...I think that would be far more interesting than "ha ha, you suck."

Any one of these things would be a step in the right direction, but to truly "fix" the teleport spell, I think all of them should be implemented in the new edition.  My two coppers, anyway.


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## ferratus (Jul 30, 2012)

A teleport spell removes Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan and any other campaign where distances and wandering matter.   If all you are doing is exploring Undermountain or Castle Greyhawk and just want to port to the surface when you want to go home, then teleport is fine.   All other campaigns suffer for its inclusion.

If it must be in the game at all, I prefer linked portals or gates.  You have fixed places linked to other fixed places, so that players can link their strongholds to their city or a DM can move players from one place to another by placing a gate or portal in the adventure.  Linked portals facilitate everything you want to use teleport for, with none of the problems.   If you want to move quickly, get a Chariot of Sunstarre, a griffon, or Shadowfax.  

I don't particularly like low-level short ranged teleportation either for a few reasons.  The most important one is that it really screws up battlefield and siege tactics in a way that few of us can comprehend because we have no real examples of how it changes things.   We can understand how flight changes things (no more castles, just bunkers (dungeons)), we can understand how area effect spells change things (by looking at artillery) but there is no analogue to teleportation.   I know it pretty much allows you to ignore terrain though, so if you are a person who prefers "Combat as War" over "Combat as Sport" you should have a problem with short range teleportation.


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## KidSnide (Jul 30, 2012)

Dragongrief said:


> For avoiding the Scry-Teleport-Kill strategy, why not institute the Vampire Rule: you cannot teleport across a threshold that you have not been given permission to cross.
> 
> Any enemies in their home/lair would be safe, though it would still allow a "stealth approach" to get close (unless it also causes a small "sonic boom" from the sudden air displacement by the arriving/leaving characters).




There are lots of ways to get this effect, but - as a general matter - I think the key is to make it difficult to teleport into the middle of an adventure.  IMG, we handle this by making teleportation wards relatively easy.  They aren't impenetrable, but a heroic level ward will keep out most paragon teleportations.  Similarly, I don't have a sonic boom, but even moderately powerful wizards can set up a divination that detects teleportation in the immediate area.



CM said:


> I'm strongly in favor of 4e's teleportation.
> Teleportion of short distances is common, as in a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero settings. Generally it always requires line of sight.






I don't think short distance teleportation is unbalanced, but I don't find it appropriate to the fantasy genre.  Except for "ethereal" style creatures, short distance teleportation always felt much more like a supers ability than a fantasy ability.  I don't think it should necessarily be excluded for D&D (as it is appropriate for certain styles of game), but I would have preferred a lot less of it than we see in 4e.  

-KS


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## Dausuul (Jul 30, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> You can teleport 1 person to a location of your choice in one action.
> 
> You can teleport multiple persons to a general location in one action.
> 
> ...




High casting time does nothing to discourage the abusive uses of whole-party teleport. Six hours' casting time still lets you bypass days or weeks of travel, get into any fortress that isn't specifically teleport-warded, and perform scry-'n'-die attacks. The only thing it prevents is using teleportation as an escape hatch to avert TPK; and that, to me, is a _desirable_ use of teleport.


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## Minigiant (Jul 30, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> High casting time does nothing to discourage the abusive uses of whole-party teleport. Six hours' casting time still lets you bypass days or weeks of travel, get into any fortress that isn't specifically teleport-warded, and perform scry-'n'-die attacks. The only thing it prevents is using teleportation as an escape hatch to avert TPK; and that, to me, is a _desirable_ use of teleport.




True. But it would be dependent on the tier of play when it comes to precise multiple person teleportation. Party porting eevery 6-8 hours at level 20 is fine for me.

Though anti-TPK teleport is the second case (multiple persons, general location) where you telport to some nearby location or a predetermined spot or circle.


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## Dausuul (Jul 30, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> True. But it would be dependent on the tier of play when it comes to precise multiple person teleportation. Party porting eevery 6-8 hours at level 20 is fine for me.




I've seldom seen a party _want_ to teleport more often than that, even at level 20+. All the problems I've had with teleporting have involved teleports no more than 1-2 times in a day.


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## Minigiant (Jul 30, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I've seldom seen a party _want_ to teleport more often than that, even at level 20+. All the problems I've had with teleporting have involved teleports no more than 1-2 times in a day.




Well I am not against party porting. But I would prefer to see some drawback for it outside of level.


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## ferratus (Jul 30, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> H. The only thing it prevents is using teleportation as an escape hatch to avert TPK; and that, to me, is a _desirable_ use of teleport.




Gaseous form, flight, invisibility, or even dimension door do that job as well as teleport, without the inherent problems of teleport.


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## Stormonu (Jul 30, 2012)

ferratus said:


> A teleport spell removes Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan and any other campaign where distances and wandering matter.   If all you are doing is exploring Undermountain or Castle Greyhawk and just want to port to the surface when you want to go home, then teleport is fine.   All other campaigns suffer for its inclusion.




And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there.  In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel.   Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit?  And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation?  Unfortunately, I've not read or seen Game of Thrones, so I don't know what sort of magic is possible in that world.



ferratus said:


> I don't particularly like low-level short ranged teleportation either for a few reasons.  The most important one is that it really screws up battlefield and siege tactics in a way that few of us can comprehend because we have no real examples of how it changes things.   We can understand how flight changes things (no more castles, just bunkers (dungeons)), we can understand how area effect spells change things (by looking at artillery) but there is no analogue to teleportation.




The closest equivalent I can think of is combat air drops - paratrooping; it is certainly a different tactic from air-to-air and air-to-gorund combat.


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## ferratus (Jul 30, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there.




I don't know Pern, but it seems you are describing teleport in a more defensive way.   Couldn't linked portals work for summoning heroes to key strategic positions?  Why give the heroes the ability to teleport offensively?   What is the gain for the story?   Because it brings up the huge story and setting problem as to why people bother with defensive strongholds at all.



> In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel.   Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit?  And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation?




I don't recall either situation, no, but I could stand to be corrected.   The point is, that Gandalf didn't simply teleport Frodo to Mt. Doom and have him drop the ring in so they could be back to the shire in time for tea.   So we didn't miss all of the sights and events of the Lord of the Rings.   The problem with teleportation is that you don't have a reason to take a flaming chariot, a Griffon, or a Lord of Horses.    You miss the journey because you just handwave everyone to the dungeon.   If the DM wants to do that, he can simply say "after many miles, you reach the "temple of naughty baddies".    Otherwise, it is an immersive breaking handwave from one fight set-piece to another, and contributes to the problem of going nova, teleporting out, buffing up again.

Linked portals are an elegant solution that doesn't require.

1) The DM putting anti-teleport wards on everything.
2) Screwing over the players (sometimes randomly) for daring to use a spell that they invested character resources and spell slots in.

Which pretty much every other suggestion on this thread requires.   We have a solution, it pretty much works for all high-fantasy games (and doesn't intrude on low fantasy ones unlike the teleport spell).    I'm afraid I just cannot see the downside to linked portals that makes people want to reach for that spell again. 



> The closest equivalent I can think of is combat air drops - paratrooping; it is certainly a different tactic from air-to-air and air-to-gorund combat.




The feather fall spell simulates that much better.   For one thing, once they land, they land.


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## Dausuul (Jul 30, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there.  In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel.   Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit?  And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation?  Unfortunately, I've not read or seen Game of Thrones, so I don't know what sort of magic is possible in that world.




Gandalf's magic seems to consist largely of creating light and blowing stuff up, with an occasional minor illusion. When does he teleport?

I don't know about Thulsa Doom, not familiar enough with the Conan ouvre. Game of Thrones is a low-magic (albeit magic levels are on the rise) setting with no teleporting that I am aware of.


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## Li Shenron (Jul 30, 2012)

Personally I like teleportation when it is tied to (and complicated by) planar travel.

For example one of my favourite is having a spell that lets you shift to the plane of shadows so that you can find there a shorter route to your destination and then pop back. Another option could be to use some sort of plane of mirrors, so teleporting is entering a mirror, travel from inside the plane of mirrors to find the exit mirror, and pop back.

When you tie this sort of flavor to a spell, this easily leads you to represent it with mechanics that (1) reduce the insta-travel spell to more of a shortcut which is generally more acceptable and can be made proportionate to the target distance, (2) add a chance of getting lost, missing the target or even be lead further away from your starting position, since navigation in the alternate plane towards your target is not always automatic, and (3) introduce environment-based limitations such as the fact that you need enough shadows in the target area or that you travel between actual mirrors.

A purely instantaneous, error-free and no-limits teleport spell could still be in the game as a 9th level spell, on par with Gate but usable only by the caster.

I think (1) is important to avoid rendering long-distance travel pointless. To me long-distance travel _equals_ adventure! Skipping that is like fast-forwarding to the end of a movie, so if _all_ teleporting spells but that 9th level one are based on an alternate "route" exploiting the planes, you just replace one travel with another and adventuring is still there.

Penalties in point (2) IMHO are much more interesting than a % chance of death... I don't understand the point of such deterrent, if I had such penalty I'd simply not cast teleport at all unless when using it to save myself from another (higher) chance of death.

And final point (3) reduces the occurrences of when the spell can be used so that at least it doesn't become the sole tactic of the party. The DM has a lot of control on this point, and can stress the limitations if the gaming group is overusing teleportation.


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## Black Knight Irios (Jul 30, 2012)

ferratus said:


> I don't know Pern, but it seems you are describing teleport in a more defensive way.   Couldn't linked portals work for summoning heroes to key strategic positions?  Why give the heroes the ability to teleport offensively?   What is the gain for the story?   Because it brings up the huge story and setting problem as to why people bother with defensive strongholds at all.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




You play a low magic setting, just ban Teleport -done.
It is easier to ban a single spell than to require all other DMs/players to invent it on their own just because it does not fit your specific campaign.

The *new 5E teleport could have more restrictions than its 3E version*. Some uses could be reduplicated with different spells whatever. That does not mean we can't have teleport as well. 

Lightning Bolt is just some slightly different Fireball.


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## Aenghus (Jul 30, 2012)

I prefer the 4e approach to long distance teleports. How common short range line of sight teleportation is seems a setting matter to me.

I am strongly opposed to catastrophic balance mechanics, such as a chance of instant death on a teleport. I prefer less powerful effects that don't break the game over broken effects albeit with a chance of death or dismemberment. 

It occurs to me that the latter  approach allows teleports to be used by NPCs, as any accidents can be fudged by the DM, (as in unimportant bad guy wizards might die from teleport accidents, but the BBEG is highly unlikely to), while most players will avoid the random chance of death and not use the spell.


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## Dark Mistress (Jul 30, 2012)

What my group did long ago was decided. You can't teleport to somewhere you have never personally been in person before.


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## ferratus (Jul 30, 2012)

Black Knight Irios said:


> You play a low magic setting, just ban Teleport -done.
> It is easier to ban a single spell than to require all other DMs/players to invent it on their own just because it does not fit your specific campaign.




If Teleport is ported from 3e with all its attendant problems, then yes I'll have to ban it to suit my game.

However, I don't really see anything that is gained for ANY campaign that requires magical transport by having a spell rather than a linked portal ritual.   No matter how high magic your campaign, linked portals serve the job rather nicely, and don't have any of the setting problems, going nova problems, or need to nerf the spell with anti-teleport wards or random punishment every session problems.  

So what does teleport as a spell (where you simply travel wherever you want in the world in a single round) add to a setting that a more restrictive linked portal (which links two places together) lacks?   What does it give that is worth its inherent problems?


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## Lanefan (Jul 30, 2012)

ferratus said:


> So what does teleport as a spell (where you simply travel wherever you want in the world in a single round) add to a setting that a more restrictive linked portal (which links two places together) lacks?   What does it give that is worth its inherent problems?



Well, first off don't use the 3e version; use the 1e version instead, with attendant risks etc. and limitations on what you can take with you.

Also, you can't go "anywhere in the world": you can only go to somewhere you know about in - I think - any edition of the game.  I have no real issue with teleporting back to town from an adventure, but I don't like teleporting from town back into said adventure.

What does teleport add?
 - the ability for at least the caster to get out of bad situations in a hurry.  Party's in a no-win situation?  Bail out, round up a rescue group, and go back in - travelling conventionally - to recover the bodies (I've seen this done)
 - the ability for the caster to get back to home base fast, from anywhere
 - the ability to cut out long stretches of boring play during travel

Linked portals between cities - or even within cities - are great too; as long as the PCs can't just go around building them wherever they like. (one earthquake-prone city in my game has several pairs of linked portals within it, taking the place of bridges across a wide river as said bridges keep falling down during quakes...)

Lan-"teleports are also great for adventurers who simply want a vacation on a sunny beach somewhere"-efan


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## mlund (Jul 30, 2012)

Teleport was a spell I learned to hate in 3E after using it as a player. It broke the world for me. Mundane transportation and travel restrictions were obsolete for characters. Between Fabricate and Teleport I turned a global economy on its head and all the solutions we could come up with were horribly contrived to patch an obvious game defect.

4E handled Teleport much better. I have no problem with short, no-cost hops (like fey step), and even distances measured in football fields that have limited daily uses (like dimension door). However, the idea of grabbing your allies and anything that's not nailed down up to a weight limit and jumping half-way across the world with a snap of your fingers is just bad.

Long-distance teleportation should always been held tightly under lock-and-key unless you're running some crazy magi-tek setting where its taken for granted.

Limited-use portals, rituals, and targets all work wonders for these problems. Portal A to Portal B once per day? Doable. Consumable artifact-type focus for an hour-long ritual that can take you anywhere if you have a piece of the soil? Doable. Special destination rune that you can recall to but it leaves you exhausted? I can do that too.

*SNAP* We're in Waterdeep, time to sell all this junk and heal up. - No way.
*SNAP* We're in the Dragon's lair, buffed to the nines, time to kill. - Not happening.

- Marty Lund


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## Elf Witch (Jul 30, 2012)

ferratus said:


> I don't know Pern, but it seems you are describing teleport in a more defensive way.   Couldn't linked portals work for summoning heroes to key strategic positions?  Why give the heroes the ability to teleport offensively?   What is the gain for the story?   Because it brings up the huge story and setting problem as to why people bother with defensive strongholds at all.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




In Pern the dragons and riders teleport to be able to get to the area to stop thread from hitting the ground and devouring every living thing. It is an integral part of the story. 

I have played in DnD games where teleporting was a major part of the adventure. 

I know people always bring up teleport as an example of how LORT would not be the same if they had the ability to teleport well along with that is the argument of why didn't Gandulf just get the eagles to fly them in.

There is always a way to use story to make something make sense. They didn't teleport because Sauron has anti teleport magic or it is a chaos magic zone spells act wonky and dangerous. 

I would rather have teleport be one of those spells that is in the DM control to decide if it fits in his game and what kind it is. Give the DM several choice of teleport spells to choose to put in his game.


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## bouncyhead (Jul 30, 2012)

For my current campaign, the setting has no teleport or dimension door spell, with the knowledge lost in the mists of time. There are static gates and discovering their locations is a major plot-point, since certain dungeon areas are only accessible through them. These areas have been sealed for good reason, as my adventurers are currently discovering.

I'm finding the lack of teleportation (plus the restriction of item creation and restriction to core only) is keeping the whole process more balanced at levels 12+.

Also, the search for personal teleportation by the forces of nastiness (founded on investigation of Abundant Step) serves as another plot-point/threat. 

So far so good.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 30, 2012)

ferratus said:


> If Teleport is ported from 3e with all its attendant problems, then yes I'll have to ban it to suit my game.
> 
> However, I don't really see anything that is gained for ANY campaign that requires magical transport by having a spell rather than a linked portal ritual.   No matter how high magic your campaign, linked portals serve the job rather nicely, and don't have any of the setting problems, going nova problems, or need to nerf the spell with anti-teleport wards or random punishment every session problems.
> 
> So what does teleport as a spell (where you simply travel wherever you want in the world in a single round) add to a setting that a more restrictive linked portal (which links two places together) lacks?   What does it give that is worth its inherent problems?




Being able to teleport can allow you to get away from a TPK. It can also allow you to teleport to get help if your party is dying from poison or has been leveled drained and is facing a permanent level loss if you can't  get to someone who can help you.

It can allow travel around the world. Sometimes the point is not the trip but the destination. 

Portals only work if they have already been established. 

In the game we played in we would teleport all over the planet stopping demon gates from opening. The DM used the mechanic that if you failed your roll you teleported in an 100 mile area which lead to some interesting adventures. 

There is a place for it in the game which is why I would rather see it banned by individual DMs then taken out by the game designers.


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## Minigiant (Jul 31, 2012)

I think teleport is more of a level issue.

3E's teleport was too easy but the more important feature was too low level. I have no problem with high level archmages and popes of the Traveler Deity to be teleporting around parties and granting minor missions that are beneath them to their minor friends.  But Joe Gritwand and Harry the Scarred should not be popping their parties all around to any place at ease until they have  two dozen levels.

*Grit level teleports (1st-5th)*
4E Fey/Misty Steps (teleport self a couple feet)

*Heroic level teleports (6th-10th)*
Arcane Gate (create 2 short duration linked portal with LOS)
Linked Portal (Create a portal to another teleportation portal)

*Superheroic level teleports (1ith-15th)*
Dimension Door (teleport self and a couple allies up to ~500-600 feet)
Plane Shift (teleport to another plane far from your destination)
Teleport with higher mishap chance (teleport self and couple friends a couple hundred feet))


*Paragon level teleports (16st-20th)*
Greater Teleport with mishap chance (teleport self and couple friends anywhere on the plane)
Gate
True Teleportation Portal 

*Epic level teleports (21th+)*
Teleport without Error (teleport self and couple friends anywhere... anywhere)


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## Stormonu (Jul 31, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Well, first off don't use the 3e version; use the 1e version instead, with attendant risks etc. and limitations on what you can take with you.
> 
> Also, you can't go "anywhere in the world": you can only go to somewhere you know about in - I think - any edition of the game.  I have no real issue with teleporting back to town from an adventure, but I don't like teleporting from town back into said adventure.
> 
> ...




Agreed.  Another limitation of ONLY using linked portals is those portals most likely would fall under enemy control or at the least someone's control (such as sometimes happens in the Stargate series) whereas with a teleport, you don't have to risk venturing into enemy territory just to use one ... and when you're already running from the enemy, that's a great boon.

I, personally, do not want to use battlefield teleportation like in 4E; it just doesn't fit in my personal campaign world (though I expect to see it in the game, I plan on disallowing it for games based on my homebrew campaign world). I'm primarily interested in what was mentioned as defensive teleportation - useful for handwaving already-travelled roads without having to pack the supplies and funds for a 30-day trip.

I do think I'm going to incorporate the "can't pass the threshold" idea mentioned earlier in my own Pathfinder games; you can teleport to the front door of the (occupied) dungeon or king's castle, but not into it's depths or the king's banquet hall without an open or implied invitation.


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## pemerton (Jul 31, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> In a campaign where you want to have different settings (far north, desert, jungle, temperate, etc.) and don't feel like spending ages of in-game time in travel, teleport or similar is the answer.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Having these available for city-to-city travel (at significant cost, of course) really helps at mid-high level: the players can get on with it, and the DM doesn't have to run weeks of overland or sea travel - again.



I'm not sure if your focus is on ingame time, or on real time spent resolving travel at the table.

If the second, then there are other ways to handle it besides teleport. For example, you just handwave the travel and narrate the passage of time in about as many sentences as you would use to narrate the teleport.



Stormonu said:


> Overall, I think teleportation needs to be in the game based on the fiction it is derived from.



What fiction is that?

Classical fantasy is full of mysterious wanderers (gods, fairies, etc) who appear and disappear mysteriously. But there's not a hell of a lot of teleportation in it, is there.

EDIT: I see that you have Pern in mind.


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## Stormonu (Jul 31, 2012)

pemerton said:


> What fiction is that?
> 
> Classical fantasy is full of mysterious wanderers (gods, fairies, etc) who appear and disappear mysteriously. But there's not a hell of a lot of teleportation in it, is there.
> 
> EDIT: I see that you have Pern in mind.




Besides Pern, I am trying to think of other places I've seen it or read it, and anyone who wants to chime in, I'd appreciate.  I'm having a much harder time recollecting actual occurrences in movies or books prior or contemporary to early D&D.

Harry Potter series (yeah, late to the genre, but used quite dramatically)
Hawk the Slayer (70's movie)
Dragonslayer (80's movie)
Excalibur (80's movie)
Aladdin from 1001 Arabian Nights
7th Voyage of Sinbad (50's movie - the genie teleports several times)

I've not read the books, but what about teleportation in Terry Pratchet's series, Moorcock's Elric series and the Shannara series?  Anyone know/remember if teleporation is used in those stories?

Demons (Such as in Faust), Angels and elves seem to have a particular knack for some sort of teleportation.  There are several stories where they use these abilities to transport the heroes of the story from place to place.

I'm rumbling through older fables and myths in my mind, but while the idea of a wizard (or another character with a magical item) who mystically transports himself from place to place seems natural (I'm assuming some sort of teleport), I can't nail down any specific story by name.


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## pemerton (Jul 31, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> Excalibur (80's movie)



I know this movie pretty well. Where is this teleportation (as opposed to Merlin mysteriously coming and going)?



Stormonu said:


> 7th Voyage of Sinbad (50's movie - the genie teleports several times)
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I agree that the mysterious arrivals and disappearances of genies, angels, devils, faeries etc are the closest thing to widespread teleportation in classic fantasy.

The question is, does D&D-style teleportation evoke that feel, or sit at odds with it? I tend to think that linked portals are a nice compromise between classic D&D and a fantasy feel. (Short-distance teleport, like 4e eladrin and warlocks, is a different matter - it's closer to classic D&D blink dogs, and can raise issues about flavour and tactics but not about ingame travel and metagame scene-framing.)


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## ferratus (Jul 31, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Well, first off don't use the 3e version; use the 1e version instead, with attendant risks etc. and limitations on what you can take with you.




The 1e version is better, but with the flavour problem of why wizards don't bother to improve the spell.   I can understand a spell being unreliable if it is wild magic, or draws upon a spiteful demon for power... but teleportation doesn't really have a reason for screwing up instead of game balance.   Linked portals don't ask you to accept wonky flavour in exchange for game balance.  



> Also, you can't go "anywhere in the world": you can only go to somewhere you know about in - I think - any edition of the game.  I have no real issue with teleporting back to town from an adventure, but I don't like teleporting from town back into said adventure.




Hence the scry in "scry-buff-teleport".   If you can scry to see it, then you can teleport to it.  If you can teleport to it, you can buff before hand.   If scrying doesn't count, and you have to have been be actually physically present at one time, then teleporting back to a teleportation circle works just fine.   Heck, smuggling in a teleportation circle could be fun in and of itself.




> - the ability for at least the caster to get out of bad situations in a hurry.  Party's in a no-win situation?  Bail out, round up a rescue group, and go back in - travelling conventionally - to recover the bodies (I've seen this done)




Sure, so did I, but lower level spells do this too.   Gaseous form, fly, invisibility, and all sorts of neener neener powers.  Contingency clone and similar spells could also work.



> - the ability for the caster to get back to home base fast, from anywhere




More of a bug than a feature for me I'm afraid.   Nearly losing should matter, and be a setback.  Teleporting home and charging up is pretty immersion breaking for me.



> - the ability to cut out long stretches of boring play during travel




Griffons are more fun.   That's the biggest problem, just when you are high enough level to tame wyverns and griffons, you have teleport which makes fantastic travel obselete.


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## ferratus (Jul 31, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Being able to teleport can allow you to get away from a TPK. It can also allow you to teleport to get help if your party is dying from poison or has been leveled drained and is facing a permanent level loss if you can't  get to someone who can help you.




Again, there are many spells that allow for consequence-free retreat that don't have the problems of teleport.   The game doesn't fall apart because the wizard failed his roll to learn that spell.



> It can allow travel around the world. Sometimes the point is not the trip but the destination.




Sure, but the world becomes a very small place filled with nothing but set-piece combat encounters (kind of like an official 4e adventure ) with teleport.



> In the game we played in we would teleport all over the planet stopping demon gates from opening.




Why didn't you just use the demon gates, re-keying them to get open to the next demon gate?



> The DM used the mechanic that if you failed your roll you teleported in an 100 mile area which lead to some interesting adventures.




Which is pretty much the same result you'd get with flying mounts or travelling by ship or whatever.  Interesting adventures that are a break from the main plot.


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## Stormonu (Jul 31, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I know this movie pretty well. Where is this teleportation (as opposed to Merlin mysteriously coming and going)?
> 
> I agree that the mysterious arrivals and disappearances of genies, angels, devils, faeries etc are the closest thing to widespread teleportation in classic fantasy.




That's one of the damnable traits about magicians - it's sometimes hard to tell when they use a bit of the "side door skadoo" versus actual magic (and in several cases, to that of a fleet animal as much or more than actual teleportation).

To answer your question, I've only seen the movie 2-3 times; I thought I remember Merlin teleporting out of the cave when he was finally awakened at the last battle, though I could be badly mistaken.

I still think teleportation as a mode of transport should remain in the magical arsenal, and while the portal-to-portal teleportation could be argued to cover most uses, as far as my playstyle I still desire the ability for off-the-cuff rapid transport/escape hatch - both available to PCs and NPCs.

And aren't blink dogs essentially a form of Hounds of Tlindros?


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## pemerton (Jul 31, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> To answer your question, I've only seen the movie 2-3 times; I thought I remember Merlin teleporting out of the cave when he was finally awakened at the last battle, though I could be badly mistaken.



He appears in dreams, and so comes and goes like a figment. In a fantasy RPG, I would model it through some sort of dream projection/magic jar ability.



Stormonu said:


> And aren't blink dogs essentially a form of Hounds of Tlindros?



Maybe. What's a Hound of Tlindros? (Sounds Lovecraftian to me, but I may have a tin ear.)


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Again, there are many spells that allow for consequence-free retreat that don't have the problems of teleport.   The game doesn't fall apart because the wizard failed his roll to learn that spell.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Really tell that my sorcerer who got level drained by a vampire and then flubbed my teleport back to Greyhawk to get help for it.  I didn't pick the spell   so I was using a scroll that had only one. I ended up in the middle of farming country and not a high level cleric in site. It really kind of sucked losing that level.  But them are the breaks when you choose a life of adventuring. 


Also some of the spells you suggested in your other post does very little to help the entire party get away when the entire party is facing death. Most of the ones you suggested are single person only and if you have a party of six it would take six rounds to get everyone away.

Put that fits some worlds and some campaigns. 

Because they didn't work that way. They opened from the abyss powered by evil magics that corrupted everything around it. They needed to be closed not only to stop the demons from pouring out onto pour world but corrupting and turning our plane into a mirror of the abyssal plane. 

We were not the only team of gate closers the seers would feel the disturbance and we would be sent  we had one scroll to use to get back. You have to understand this was a huge war that had been going on for years. It was an awesome campaign. 

The reason we didn't build portals was in the past they had tried that and the demons and their allies had used to use them as well. 


The point is very simple it is easier to take things out then put back in. As a DM I make these kind of decisions all the time. In my current game there is to raise dead only reincarnation. I have taken out teleport before as well as other spells.  In my campaign not only is there no raise dead but you can summon anything that comes from another plane or do anything that involves another plane. Because this plane is locked off from the others by a powerful magical spell.  

Just because you don't like teleport does not mean it does not have a place in the game rules.


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## Stormonu (Jul 31, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Maybe. What's a Hound of Tlindros? (Sounds Lovecraftian to me, but I may have a tin ear.)




Whoops - that's Hound of Tindalos, and it's Lovecraftian.  From their monster entry and picture in Call of Cthulhu, they inhabit "the angles of time" - seemingly able to appear/vanish (teleport/blink between) into corners with an angle of 120 degrees or less.  Though they are apparently quiet evil....


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## JasonZZ (Jul 31, 2012)

"Aren't blink dogs essentially a form of Hounds of Tindalos?"

Um...no. First of all, they're actually canines, instead of an otherworldly something that happens to be less uncanine than unanything else. Second, when last I checked, blink dogs had a default alignment of lawful good--they're moral, communal and compassionate creatures. I dare you to name *any* Lovecraftian creature that is moral or compassionate in a way that has meaning to humans. "Doglike and teleports (or seems to teleport)" is about as similar as they get.


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## JasonZZ (Jul 31, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Also some of the spells you suggested in your other post does very little to help the entire party get away when the entire party is facing death. Most of the ones you suggested are single person only and if you have a party of six it would take six rounds to get everyone away.
> 
> Put that fits some worlds and some campaigns.
> 
> ...




Teleportation is probably one of those things that should be a "dial"--maybe two, one each for short- and long-distance. I'm not fond of the risk-roll style long-distance teleport; I actually like the "fixed gate" style; it blocks scry-and-fry without simply saying no or having a % chance of a TPK with one action.


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## Eldritch_Lord (Jul 31, 2012)

ferratus said:


> The 1e version is better, but with the flavour problem of why wizards don't bother to improve the spell.   I can understand a spell being unreliable if it is wild magic, or draws upon a spiteful demon for power... but teleportation doesn't really have a reason for screwing up instead of game balance.   Linked portals don't ask you to accept wonky flavour in exchange for game balance.




D&D teleportation uses the Astral Plane, so its unreliable targeting (along with that of _plane shift_, _shadow walk_, and similar) are explained by the fact that the planes aren't connected point-to-point and going from one plane to another will always involve a bit of distance distortion.



ferratus said:


> Sure, but the world becomes a very small place filled with nothing but set-piece combat encounters (kind of like an official 4e adventure ) with teleport.




I don't see why people seem to think that getting teleportation means just 'porting from one combat to another.  One example of contemporary fantasy with prominent teleportation that no one has mentioned thus far is the Wheel of Time series.  Partway through it the main characters rediscover the lost arts of Skimming (like _shadow walk_) and Traveling (a _teleport_/_gate_ hybrid) and occasionally use them to move massive armies back and forth.  But one main character, Rand, is a ruler of many different cities and peoples, and he uses Traveling to meet with other rulers, check in on his followers' training, bring supplies to refugees, and plenty of other non-combat-related uses.

------------------------------

Part of the issue with teleporting, I think, is that _teleport_ has stayed the same for 1e through 3e while the game changed around it.  It used to be that around "name level" (8-10) you got some land, trained some followers, and settled down, and that's about when you got _teleport_.  You weren't teleport-ambushing mooks in a dungeon, you were visiting rulers on the far side of the world, administering multiple baronies, transporting massive amounts of material to build new wizard towers, and otherwise shifting from low-level tactical play to mid-level strategic play.  Nowadays, without that explicit tonal shift from dungeon crawls to Logistics & Dragons, people just keep truckin' along with the killing of creatures and the taking of their stuff and expect the game to be "the same, but more so" when it really isn't and hasn't ever been.

Similarly, the examples that always, always, always get trotted out against free-target teleportation are LotR and Conan.  In 3e, those are low-level stories, with most of the characters able to be statted out as 5th-6th level characters; in AD&D they're closer to low-to-mid-level stories given the slightly lower power curve, but the characters can still be statted out as 6th-10th level characters.  Let's face it, "cross this wide ravine" and "climb this tall cliff" haven't ever been mid-level challenges, since casters have had low-level mobility spells like _levitate_, _fly_, _phantasmal force_ and similar since 1e, all of which are available at or before 5th level, not to mention more creative solutions like _charming_ flying creatures and such, and even with random spell acquisition it's exceedingly unlikely that no party caster has even a single mobility spell.

Another thing people tend to forget it that people in the world can take teleportation into account.  Yes, people have said that they don't want to have to _dimensional lock_ Mordor, but why is teleportation special?  The giant eagles weren't used in LotR until the end because they'd be freaking obvious to the enemy and would be attacked by the Nazgul, and no one is complaining about the effort it would take to have Nazgul patrolling all the time.  If Sauron could counter physical fliers, there's no reason he couldn't defend against teleporters as well--and if we're using all the D&D rules, the Ringwraiths could counter Frodo's _invisibility_ with _see invisibility_ and protect their mounts from Gandalf's _daylight_ or _searing light_ with _darkness_ or _dispel magic_, the heroes could defend against the palantirii scrying with _screen_ or _detect scrying_, and so forth.  Magic isn't always the world-breaking monstrosity people often make it out to be unless the world is basically "medieval England plus magic" and NPCs act like magic is some new invention instead of something that's been around for millennia.

D&D has been inspired by many sources with varying levels of magic, but it has never modeled low-magic settings well past level 7ish.  While power curves have fluctuated with different editions, D&D has pretty consistently done low magic or swords-and-sorcery at low levels, high fantasy at mid levels, and mythic at high levels--this is the game where early modules had people killing gods by level 15, after all.  Trying to "fix" individual spells to preserve a low-magic or swords-and-sorcery feel past the low levels isn't really productive when the rest of the game doesn't feel low-magic; if you want to run a low-magic setting, better to spot-fix things for that rather than trying to change the tone of mid-to-high-level play for everyone.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 31, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> B
> I've not read the books, but what about teleportation in Terry Pratchet's series



My namesake teleports in the Discworld Novels. I believe it's the story involving Vampires in Lancre.


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## ferratus (Jul 31, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Really tell that my sorcerer who got level drained by a vampire and then flubbed my teleport back to Greyhawk to get help for it.  I didn't pick the spell so I was using a scroll that had only one. I ended up in the middle of farming country and not a high level cleric in site. It really kind of sucked losing that level.  But them are the breaks when you choose a life of adventuring.




Yeah, but Word of Recall and Contingency are just as good for that purpose, and you don't have the offensive liabilities of teleport.

Party members carry a portal key on their person, and when they say the word they are whisked back to their teleport circle.   Done, and you don't need teleport ever again for that purpose.



> Also some of the spells you suggested in your other post does very little to help the entire party get away when the entire party is facing death. Most of the ones you suggested are single person only and if you have a party of six it would take six rounds to get everyone away.




Some, but there are other spells when any particular one wouldn't work.  Plus, by the time you get teleport, you could probably research spells such as rope trick without the rope, mass invisibility, or mass gaseous form.    Heck, you should be able to mass any lower level spell single person only spell with higher level spell slots.



> Because they didn't work that way. They opened from the abyss powered by evil magics that corrupted everything around it. They needed to be closed not only to stop the demons from pouring out onto pour world but corrupting and turning our plane into a mirror of the abyssal plane.
> 
> We were not the only team of gate closers the seers would feel the disturbance and we would be sent  we had one scroll to use to get back. You have to understand this was a huge war that had been going on for years. It was an awesome campaign.




My point was that there was other ways the DM could allow you to move from one campaign location to another quickly.   Teleport wasn't absolutely essential to telling that story.



> The point is very simple it is easier to take things out then put back in. As a DM I make these kind of decisions all the time. In my current game there is to raise dead only reincarnation. I have taken out teleport before as well as other spells.  In my campaign not only is there no raise dead but you can summon anything that comes from another plane or do anything that involves another plane. Because this plane is locked off from the others by a powerful magical spell.




Sure I can, and like I said I probably will have to.   But that doesn't change the fact that teleport as a spell in a dungeon crawling fantasy adventure game is a bad idea.



> Just because you don't like teleport does not mean it does not have a place in the game rules.




Oh, I don't want to take it out merely because I don't like it.   I want to take it out because it has problems, and there are better way to do teleportation.


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## ferratus (Jul 31, 2012)

Eldritch_Lord said:


> D&D teleportation uses the Astral Plane, so its unreliable targeting (along with that of _plane shift_, _shadow walk_, and similar) are explained by the fact that the planes aren't connected point-to-point and going from one plane to another will always involve a bit of distance distortion.




If the teleport spell only worked to bring you within 5 miles of your target destination all the time (rather than randomly) then it is a much better spell.  You don't have the problems of scry-buff-teleport, and it actually works with the flavour text you have there.   Also, if the spell is only designed to bring you close to your destination, you can use it for escape, to cut down travel time, while strongholds still make sense.    Plus, linked portals and gates still have a purpose as well.



> Part of the issue with teleporting, I think, is that _teleport_ has stayed the same for 1e through 3e while the game changed around it.  It used to be that around "name level" (8-10) you got some land, trained some followers, and settled down, and that's about when you got _teleport_.  You weren't teleport-ambushing mooks in a dungeon, you were visiting rulers on the far side of the world, administering multiple baronies, transporting massive amounts of material to build new wizard towers, and otherwise shifting from low-level tactical play to mid-level strategic play.




Sure, but linked portals work very well for that.  You don't need the teleport spell to do those things.



> Nowadays, without that explicit tonal shift from dungeon crawls to Logistics & Dragons, people just keep truckin' along with the killing of creatures and the taking of their stuff and expect the game to be "the same, but more so" when it really isn't and hasn't ever been.




I hear that, but unless you are part of the OSR, you are pretty much out of luck.  You might get a few side-supplements but it isn't the consensus among players and DM's in the new school that higher level games involve power and statecraft.   That's all I want to do though.  



> Let's face it, "cross this wide ravine" and "climb this tall cliff" haven't ever been mid-level challenges, since casters have had low-level mobility spells like _levitate_, _fly_, _phantasmal force_ and similar since 1e, all of which are available at or before 5th level, not to mention more creative solutions like _charming_ flying creatures and such, and even with random spell acquisition it's exceedingly unlikely that no party caster has even a single mobility spell.




Yeah, but each of those options is more fun than teleport, plus proves that we don't need something as powerful and game-breaking as teleport to do the same job.



> If Sauron could counter physical fliers, there's no reason he couldn't defend against teleporters as well--and if we're using all the D&D rules, the Ringwraiths could counter Frodo's _invisibility_ with _see invisibility_ and protect their mounts from Gandalf's _daylight_ or _searing light_ with _darkness_ or _dispel magic_, the heroes could defend against the palantirii scrying with _screen_ or _detect scrying_, and so forth.  Magic isn't always the world-breaking monstrosity people often make it out to be unless the world is basically "medieval England plus magic" and NPCs act like magic is some new invention instead of something that's been around for millennia.




That solution really bothers me.   Basically, it means that there is no reason to learn the cool spells because the DM is just going to make it impossible to use them.   If you are going to make a spell available, don't make it so overpowered that it breaks the game unless there is an anti-spell that shuts it down.

That's why I like linked portals.   You have cool teleportation, and you have no need for anti-teleport wards for evil lairs to make sense. 



> Trying to "fix" individual spells to preserve a low-magic or swords-and-sorcery feel past the low levels isn't really productive when the rest of the game doesn't feel low-magic; if you want to run a low-magic setting, better to spot-fix things for that rather than trying to change the tone of mid-to-high-level play for everyone.




Linked portals aren't low magic.   They just don't have the problems of the teleport spell.   Nobody is trying to make a low magic game here.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Yeah, but Word of Recall and Contingency are just as good for that purpose, and you don't have the offensive liabilities of teleport.
> 
> Party members carry a portal key on their person, and when they say the word they are whisked back to their teleport circle.   Done, and you don't need teleport ever again for that purpose.
> 
> ...




Sure I could have that spell but it requires my character to have a sanctuary which is fine and dandy. So know I have gotten to my sanctuary how do you suggest I get back to my party? I now get to sit out the rest of the game play because my character is back at Garyhawk and the party is weeks travel away. 

If your game supports that kind of magic portals are great but they don't fit every campaign and there are places that wont have portals.

Well Mass Gaseous is not a spell and so it is up to DM fiat to say you have made this spell. Now in my campaigns wizards can do this sorcerers can't. But again those spells don't guarantee that you can get away safely.  

What good does those spells do if a creature can see invisible or they have glitterdust prepared or just a bag of flour. And if you have unconscious party members  neither is very helpful. 

Which is why we always carry at least one teleport once we can just so we can have emergency beam out.

There are always different ways to do somethings but in this game it worked we had a blast everyone including the DM couldn't wait until the nest session so in the end since fun is all that really natters when playing a game I say teleport worked just fine.  


In your opinion is is a bad idea but in my opinion is an excellent tool and not everyone plays the game with a lot of dungeon crawls.

I don't understand this desire to take things out of the game because some people don't like them.

If you don't like teleport then why is it such an issue to simply ban it at your table why force everyone else to play your way?


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

JasonZZ said:


> Teleportation is probably one of those things that should be a "dial"--maybe two, one each for short- and long-distance. I'm not fond of the risk-roll style long-distance teleport; I actually like the "fixed gate" style; it blocks scry-and-fry without simply saying no or having a % chance of a TPK with one action.




There is nothing wrong with dials and that is how I think a lot of these issue should be handled giving individual DMs the ability to dial the game for their campaign. 

There are other ways of stopping scying and frying then just getting rid of teleport. 

There are spells that work against those spells and it just makes sense that the bad guys have the same access to magic as the good guys so they would have use of these spells.


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## TwoSix (Jul 31, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I don't understand this desire to take things out of the game because some people don't like them.
> 
> If you don't like teleport then why is it such an issue to simply ban it at your table why force everyone else to play your way?



Because they aren't in the game yet.  This is D&D Next.  It isn't an upgrade to anyone's particular version of D&D.  By using your preferred version of _teleport_, you're taking away my preferred version of _teleport_ as a 4e fan.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

ferratus said:


> That solution really bothers me.   Basically, it means that there is no reason to learn the cool spells because the DM is just going to make it impossible to use them.   If you are going to make a spell available, don't make it so overpowered that it breaks the game unless there is an anti-spell that shuts it down.
> 
> That's why I like linked portals.   You have cool teleportation, and you have no need for anti-teleport wards for evil lairs to make sense.
> 
> ...




That is a fallacy the spell still comes in handy maybe you can't teleport into the evil lair but you can teleport near it saving time.

Also it is fun to turn the tables on the PCs and have the bad guys scry and teleport in on them.  Very few parties out in the wilds put up anti scrying and anti teleport spells. 

Sometimes it makes sense for the bad guys to have these anti spells and sometimes it does not. 

The problem with portals is that as I said before they don't make sense for all campaigns a campaign that is point of light with little civilization mostly wilderness is not going to have a lot of portals. A world with a lot of warring going on between nations is not going to have portals connecting those cities. 

There are a lot of spells people have issues with like rope trick, scry, teleport, fly,  raise dead to name a few I am sure there are a lot more the answer is not to just take them all out of the game the answer is to give the DM tools to run his game and one of those tools is rule zero which gives the DM the power to tweak the game to fit his vision for his campaign.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

TwoSix said:


> Because they aren't in the game yet.  This is D&D Next.  It isn't an upgrade to anyone's particular version of D&D.  By using your preferred version of _teleport_, you're taking away my preferred version of _teleport_ as a 4e fan.




No I am not. I have said that there should be dials an options on how to use the spell so each DM can decide what is best for their campaign. 

I am against seeing the spell completely taken out. 

I also suggested some changes I would like to see to both scry and teleport. 

I do find it funny that if a person talks about what they would like to see in the next edition here on EnWorld someone will  say but what about my version your way is stopping me from playing my version. You have to wonder if they even consider the opposite is true as well.

There is no way that they will be able to design a game that gives everyone exactly what they want. 

And just discussing different options here is just that a discussion.  Do you really think that everything we discuss here is taken my heart by the designers of the game?


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## the Jester (Jul 31, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> Besides Pern, I am trying to think of other places I've seen it or read it, and anyone who wants to chime in, I'd appreciate.  I'm having a much harder time recollecting actual occurrences in movies or books prior or contemporary to early D&D.
> 
> Harry Potter series (yeah, late to the genre, but used quite dramatically)
> Hawk the Slayer (70's movie)
> ...




Add Vlad Taltos stories by Stephen Brust- there is some teleportation in them, but the setting is very high-magic, to the point where raising the dead is fairly ubiquitous and taken for granted.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 31, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there. In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel. Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit? And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation? Unfortunately, I've not read or seen Game of Thrones, so I don't know what sort of magic is possible in that world.




Game of Thrones has magic?

And it's trivial to add teleportation to a world that doesn't have it.  Pern has a specific type of creature that can teleport.  4e has no inherent problem with this.  But if Teleportation is readily accessible  it fundamentally changes the nature of the stories.



Jester Canuck said:


> I was always amused by how much 4th edition limited flight but so many races and classes had teleportation abilities.




This would be the same 4th edition that allows monks to fly short distances (wire-fu) at level 1?  What 4e seriously limits is mid-long distance flight and teleportation.  How you cross six squares doesn't matter.  That you can spend three turns aloft out of reach of the orc axes is a problem.  That you can essentially determine how far you are from anything and tell the DM much of his planned adventure is irrelevant is a huge problem.


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## TwoSix (Jul 31, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I do find it funny that if a person talks about what they would like to see in the next edition here on EnWorld someone will  say but what about my version your way is stopping me from playing my version. You have to wonder if they even consider the opposite is true as well.



I'm not sure how it's funny as opposed to just the way life is, but sure.




Elf Witch said:


> There is no way that they will be able to design a game that gives everyone exactly what they want.



Which is why I'm advocating for what *I* want.  If you can get yours too, that's groovy, but if only one of us can, better that it's me.



Elf Witch said:


> And just discussing different options here is just that a discussion.  Do you really think that everything we discuss here is taken my heart by the designers of the game?



Not any one post in particular, but I think the weight of opinion on both this and other sites plays a role.


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## Someone (Jul 31, 2012)

The Witcher setting also has mages able to teleport in a very D&D compatible way (teleporting is also an important part of the plot in some of the books). Generally it's "balanced" by the fact that every mage powerful enough for it either are complete bastards, have an agenda, or most of the time both.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 31, 2012)

Someone said:


> The Witcher setting also has mages able to teleport in a very D&D compatible way (teleporting is also an important part of the plot in some of the books). Generally it's "balanced" by the fact that every mage powerful enough for it either are complete bastards, have an agenda, or most of the time both.



Well, some players/characters also have an agenda, so it fits.


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## Black Knight Irios (Jul 31, 2012)

I've got the feeling that one of the most reccuring counter-argument against teleport is 'scry-buff-teleport'.

Ok, I think most of us heard that.

As I already said:

a) don't use the nearly unrestricted 3E version as basis, add a restriction like, you had to be at the destination in person (scry does not qualify). 
We do not know how the 5E teleport will work, don't always assume the worst oucome in your imagination.

b) remove scry, divinations of all kinds can break many other games for various reasons, 'scry-buff-teleport' works not only because there is teleport

c) ban teleport in your game, not in every players/DMs game. As others said before it is easier to ban a single spell as a DM than to invent one (w/o guidance).


Regarding other spells that are sometimes superfluous because teleport exists.

_So it might be, fighters were rather superfluous in 3E as well with clerics, wizards and druids around. Yet, the designers deemed them worthy to reappear in 4E. I heard they will be in 5E as well, even with a brand new fighter-only mechanic._

Some suggestions like you could research Mass-versions is in the DM's hands, so not everyone has the option. Contigency, to save casting time if no Mass-version is at hand has a higher level as teleport - not always an option. Linked portals and teleportation-crcles are all nice and dandy ...

but remember opposers of the teleport...

option c) is only a single sentence for you and your gaming group.


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## Lanefan (Jul 31, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure if your focus is on ingame time, or on real time spent resolving travel at the table.



Both.

For in-game time, if a party has to spend 4 months travelling up to the arctic for a two-week adventure, then spend 4 months coming back again, this causes various issues to arise:

 - the meta-plot has had all kinds of time to advance (possibly to places I haven't even planned out yet!) - 8-9 months is a long time in a situation where major shifts can happen within weeks
 - that party is probably now way out of synch with the other groups (I run multiple parties in my world, sometimes interacting) meaning they'll have to be put on hold until the rest of the world catches up with them; and as sometimes those "major shifts" I mentioned are the direct result of the actions of a party I need to know what the other parties have been up to



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> If the second, then there are other ways to handle it besides teleport. For example, you just handwave the travel and narrate the passage of time in about as many sentences as you would use to narrate the teleport.



I'm well aware of this, but wandering monsters and random encounters are (in theory) a fact of life and it seems jarring to mysteriously not have any such during a multi-month journey; also I've yet to see any party enter any town without getting into some sort of trouble...and there might be a lot of towns to go through en route... 


			
				Elf Witch said:
			
		

> Also some of the spells you suggested in your other post does very little to help the entire party get away when the entire party is facing death. Most of the ones you suggested are single person only and if you have a party of six it would take six rounds to get everyone away.



Teleport *should* only be a single-person spell, plus what said person can physically carry.  Planeshift is the one that can take a bunch of people and has in my experience been the bigger headache - I ended up having to put some limits on Planeshift but have never felt the need to do so with Teleport.  Again, I have to bang 1e's drum here; as it got Teleport right.

Also,when I talk about teleport as an exit strategy from a no-win situation, I'm only referring to the caster.  The rest of the party have to rely on the caster to somehow get them out and-or revive them from death*. 

The same applies to scry-buff-teleport: if the caster's the only one who can go, the strategy becomes rather (literally!) self-limited.

* - in an old campaign of mine, this is exactly what happened: a PC who happened to have a device of teleportation saw the party had got WAY in over its head (due in large part to their own ignorance of a bunch of very clear warnings), grabbed what looked like the most expensive gear he could quickly find, and blipped out to town; the rest of the party was dead within 2 rounds.  He then used said expensive gear to pay for a wish to revive people and get them out...

Lan-"as long as there is one survivor the party can and will continue"-efan


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

TwoSix said:


> I'm not sure how it's funny as opposed to just the way life is, but sure.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




At least you are being honest so let me be honest while I hope that 5E has things that make the game enjoyable for a large group of people I do hope that it leans more to what I like. 

I think trying to please everyone from reading these and other forums lies the way to madness.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 31, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Both.
> 
> For in-game time, if a party has to spend 4 months travelling up to the arctic for a two-week adventure, then spend 4 months coming back again, this causes various issues to arise:
> 
> ...




That is one way to run the spell and if that works in your games then great I will always have some kind of teleport spell in my games to save the entire party. 

If it is limited to just casters I can hear the screams now on the forums about how over powered the caster are and how they get to avoid death and if they choose they can go back to get their fallen party so now they have total narrative control.


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## mlund (Jul 31, 2012)

I suspect at the heart of the matter we'll find Quadratic Wizards and Linear Fighters again. Some people simply *must* have their wizards be able to evade any finite number of high-level martial types by wiggling their fingers. That way they can go reload on Vancian spells and keep the uppity muggles in their place. 

I mean, imagine the social ills and degradation of society and vulgarity of it all if higher-level Wizards were reduced to slumming it with "The Help" (equal or higher level fighters, rogues, etc.) by using fixed emplacements, vehicles, or magical beasts to travel long distances.

You just can't get your Elminster on if you have to get around like the primitives that still try to solve their problems with metal sticks. 

- Marty Lund


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Black Knight Irios said:


> a) don't use the nearly unrestricted 3E version as basis, add a restriction like, you had to be at the destination in person (scry does not qualify).
> We do not know how the 5E teleport will work, don't always assume the worst oucome in your imagination.




If you have to have been there in person already anyway, then why not just have linked portals?   It also leads to ramifications in the wider campaign world.  For example people would start banning mages from setting foot in castles or walled cities for security reasons, because he can sneak in with teleportation and assassinate the king.



> c) ban teleport in your game, not in every players/DMs game. As others said before it is easier to ban a single spell as a DM than to invent one (w/o guidance).




I'm well aware I can ban a problematic spell, I'm just letting you know why teleport is problematic, and how it can be done better.   Why is a broken spell necessarily better than one that you come up with yourself?



> Some suggestions like you could research Mass-versions is in the DM's hands, so not everyone has the option. Contigency, to save casting time if no Mass-version is at hand has a higher level as teleport - not always an option. Linked portals and teleportation-crcles are all nice and dandy ...
> 
> but remember opposers of the teleport...
> 
> option c) is only a single sentence for you and your gaming group.




i) If the mass spells are in the DM's hands, then there is no reason not to put them in the PHB spell list instead of teleport.   Let's make a specific spell that is an avoid-TPK spell at 5th level that doesn't have teleport's problems.

ii) Why does contingency need to be higher level than teleport?  It is less useful than teleport, so why isn't it less powerful?   Gamist thinking no doubt.

iii) If linked portals work just fine, why do I have to ban the teleport spell?  Why not just have the teleport spell work that way from now on?   One works just fine, the other has problems, so it seems a no brainer.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Sure I could have that spell but it requires my character to have a sanctuary which is fine and dandy. So know I have gotten to my sanctuary how do you suggest I get back to my party? I now get to sit out the rest of the game play because my character is back at Garyhawk and the party is weeks travel away.




You can cast word of recall again, naturally, just as you'd have to cast teleport again.   Or you could have hidden a teleportation circle to return to outside the dungeon.

The problem with teleport is that it is an instant surprise attack, at full strength, directly against any powerful enemy.   It is a problem because it makes other forms of transport obsolete.  It is a problem because it allows you to leave whenever you are losing, instead of thinking your way out of a jam.  

Linked portals plus a few "expiditious retreat" spells work well with none of those problems.   

 Now, if there is no way to land at a specific desired point problem #1  disappears.  Having people land within 5 miles of their desired destination works and removes scry-buff-teleport as a tactic.   Nobody has offered a solution to problem #2 .   Problem 3 is touted as a feature rather than a bug, but I frankly don't see any difference between that and returning to full hp between encounters or a night of rest.



> I don't understand this desire to take things out of the game because some people don't like them.
> 
> If you don't like teleport then why is it such an issue to simply ban it at your table why force everyone else to play your way?




I know I can just ban it, but that doesn't stop teleport from having problems, and yes Lanefan, even in 1e. (Though it has less problems than the 3e/PF version.).   Why not choose the teleport that doesn't have the problems?


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2012)

Black Knight Irios said:


> As others said before it is easier to ban a single spell as a DM than to invent one (w/o guidance).



In the case of D&D teleport, I would have though that it is trivially easy for any GM who is familiar with it from a past edition to "invent" it again! Just cut-and-paste.

There's not even a balance question. Should teleport be 1st level? 3rd level? 5th level? 9th level? A far as  I can tell, the answer to that question depends entirely on the level at which you're happy for overland travel not to matter in your game anymore.


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## Eldritch_Lord (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> If the teleport spell only worked to bring you within 5 miles of your target destination all the time (rather than randomly) then it is a much better spell.  You don't have the problems of scry-buff-teleport, and it actually works with the flavour text you have there.   Also, if the spell is only designed to bring you close to your destination, you can use it for escape, to cut down travel time, while strongholds still make sense.    Plus, linked portals and gates still have a purpose as well.




It doesn't even have to be 5 miles--3e teleport's off-target distance is [1d10*1d10]% of the distance traveled in a random direction, so if you roll badly you could end up going several hundred miles in the wrong direction.

The problem with scry-and-fry isn't the teleport accuracy, really, it's the fact that scrying a place for a while counts as "studying it carefully."  If you change it to make all divination count as "seen once" regardless of repeated viewings, that gives you a 25% chance to be off-target or damaged, up from 5%, and that's just making a single tweak to the 3e rules.  For a more significant change you could, for instance, change the on-target chance to 100% for going to your home base or somewhere within line of sight, 70% for somewhere you've carefully studied in person, 40% for something seen casually once or twice in person, 10% for something viewed through divination, and 0% for somewhere you've just heard of, and scry-and-fry suddenly isn't really a dominant strategy anymore.



> Sure, but linked portals work very well for that.  You don't need the teleport spell to do those things.




Not if you want to visit a city you haven't been to before, travel somewhere in the wilderness to meet in a neutral location, show up outside of a city instead of in a designated portal area, or more.  I realize you're really set on linked portals as a solution, but there are many things you just can't do if you're restricted to specific locations.



> I hear that, but unless you are part of the OSR, you are pretty much out of luck.  You might get a few side-supplements but it isn't the consensus among players and DM's in the new school that higher level games involve power and statecraft.   That's all I want to do though.




It's a matter of individual group playstyle, not edition.  I just finished up a game last semester with my college group, who learned D&D with 3e, where our party was trying to overthrow an archmage who'd conquered two continents; we started off as conscripted mercenaries in one of the two remaining free cities and ended up in control of a continent after ruthlessly overthrowing the archmage's puppet governments politely asking the other cities to join us.  We controlled a local capitol, two port cities, a mining city, a handful of smaller towns with good agricultural resources, a mage tower, and more.  I was actually the only combat-capable party member, as everyone else was a utility build of one variety or another, and we played Logistics & Dragons for a good 7 levels or so, one important facet of which was that we were able to coordinate our towns against a three-pronged attack by the enemy precisely because we were able to do things like move resources and people between cities _and_ 'port into our enemies paths in the forests, up in the sky, and under the sea to delay and harass them.

Not everyone likes that degree of strategic play, nor do I expect them to, but it's a playstyle that's just as viable in 3e as it was in AD&D.  I would posit that the playstyle of high levels being just another dungeon crawl where the DM has to fiat in "solutions" to a bunch of "problems" because they let the PCs do things besides 'port between pre-established adventure sites or affect the world on a large scale is just as _un_viable in 3e as it was in AD&D, but if you want to tweak the game to make that work you're welcome to do so, it's just not my cup of tea.



> Yeah, but each of those options is more fun than teleport, plus proves that we don't need something as powerful and game-breaking as teleport to do the same job.




Each of those options also doesn't fulfill the same function teleport does.  I'm not arguing that teleport is a low-level ability at all, I'm arguing that there's an obvious progression from walking around cliffs to throwing ropes over cliffs to levitating up cliffs to flying over cliffs to teleporting past them.  Teleportation isn't this sudden problem spell that invalidates challenges, it's the continuation of a trend of "zooming out" as you level; you go from worrying about avoiding that pile of rubble as you charge an orc, to avoiding that stone wall as you charge a group of orcs, to avoiding that rocky cliff as you flyby attack that warband of orcs, to avoiding that mountain as you launch an attack on that orc army, to avoiding that mountain range as you stave off the attacks of the Avatar of Gruumsh.  Teleport is no more game- or story-breaking than any other magical mobility, it's just a question of which sorts of stories they mess with and what context they fit into.



> That solution really bothers me.   Basically, it means that there is no reason to learn the cool spells because the DM is just going to make it impossible to use them.   If you are going to make a spell available, don't make it so overpowered that it breaks the game unless there is an anti-spell that shuts it down.
> 
> That's why I like linked portals.   You have cool teleportation, and you have no need for anti-teleport wards for evil lairs to make sense.




Are swords overpowered because a DM needs plate armor to protect enemies from them?  Is fire damage overpowered to the point that lots of creatures have fire resistance or immunity?

Two points.  First, spells tend to be at the same levels as their counters plus or minus a level for a reason (_charm person_ and _protection from evil_, _fireball_ and _protection from energy_, and so on, all the way up to _imprisonment_ and _freedom_).  D&D is a game of counters, between needing certain weapons to bypass certain DR to needing certain spells to remove certain conditions and on.  You (and your enemies) need counters for common abilities, counters for counters, and so on, and determining what resources to use is part of the game.  _Teleport_ shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all solution any more than sneak attack or _fireball_.  Yes, if your DM puts all of Mordor under a _dimensional lock_ he's being a bit of a jerk, but expecting NPCs not to use commonly-available countermeasures to commonly-available and relatively widely-known abilities isn't really fair.

Secondly, NPCs aren't all-knowing and all-wealthy (or at least shouldn't be, or your DM is, again, not being fair).  Warding against teleportation costs money, or minions, or time, or some other resource, and if a villain _is_ paranoid enough to _forbiddance_ all of Mordor it probably means he doesn't have the time or cash to churn out all his _+1 hobbit-bane short swords_ or equip a few bazillion hobgoblins to siege Minas Tirith.  Anti-teleportation spells are either finite in direction or extremely expensive per unit volume, like many other wards, and if an enemy devotes all of his resources to defense his offense will suffer.



> Linked portals aren't low magic.   They just don't have the problems of the teleport spell.   Nobody is trying to make a low magic game here.




That wasn't a shot at your beloved linked portals, it was a counterpoint to those who think LotR and Conan should be playable as-is at high levels.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Both.
> 
> For in-game time, if a party has to spend 4 months travelling up to the arctic for a two-week adventure, then spend 4 months coming back again, this causes various issues to arise:




Sure, but nobody is saying that you should ban instantaneous travel.  We just don't want a spell that allows you to transport anywhere, instantly.

How often do you have a time sensitive mission where you have to teleport hundreds of miles away, in the middle of nowhere so that you can't contact someone with a message spell (to start the other half of the teleport link), to a place you have never been before, and you absolutely need to teleport back the next day?

It stretches plausibility I have to say.



> I'm well aware of this, but wandering monsters and random encounters are (in theory) a fact of life and it seems jarring to mysteriously not have any such during a multi-month journey; also I've yet to see any party enter any town without getting into some sort of trouble...and there might be a lot of towns to go through en route...




Flying avoids most wandering monsters, or towns, as does travelling by ship.    But really, why is it a problem now when it wasn't a problem earlier?  



> Teleport *should* only be a single-person spell, plus what said person can physically carry.  Planeshift is the one that can take a bunch of people and has in my experience been the bigger headache - I ended up having to put some limits on Planeshift but have never felt the need to do so with Teleport.  Again, I have to bang 1e's drum here; as it got Teleport right.




Planeshift doesn't work as a spell at all.  What's the point of having a hell dimension if fiends can be summoned to the prime material without a by your leave?  Gates guarded by angels or about to be opened by cultists only please.




> Also,when I talk about teleport as an exit strategy from a no-win situation, I'm only referring to the caster.  The rest of the party have to rely on the caster to somehow get them out and-or revive them from death*.
> 
> The same applies to scry-buff-teleport: if the caster's the only one who can go, the strategy becomes rather (literally!) self-limited.




Eh, ironskin + most likely energy resistance + readied save or die spell + teleport in and out = scry buff teleport anyway.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 1, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Should teleport be 1st level? 3rd level? 5th level? 9th level? A far as  I can tell, the answer to that question depends entirely on the level at which you're happy for *overland travel not to matter in your game anymore*.




Or harrowing pursuit evasion/narrow escapes, anxiety-inducing navigation of treacherous terrain or extreme environments, or cloak and dagger travel via subterfuge, stealth and uncanny wits through a city in which you are wanted or a target (of the guard, local thieves guild, or worse).  And on and on.  

There should be a collection of spells by level 13 whereby you can narrow the scope of the game to "wake up, have breakfast, collect loot and infamy Fedex package from doorstep, take a nap until afternoon tea."


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> If you have to have been there in person already anyway, then why not just have linked portals?   It also leads to ramifications in the wider campaign world.  For example people would start banning mages from setting foot in castles or walled cities for security reasons, because he can sneak in with teleportation and assassinate the king.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Then they also need to ban rogues and monks who can sneak in and kill the King. But I don't need teleport I will just dominate one of personal guards and have him do it or I will cast improved invisibility on assassin and let him do it. 

There are dozens of ways to get int the castle and kill the King with using teleport.

A King worth his salt should pay to have anti teleport, anti scrying and other protections up as well.This is not rocket science in a world where magic exists the powerful will find ways to use it to protect themselves. 

It is only a problematic spells for some people not everyone has problems with it. Something some people tend to forget. 

I would not want mass spells like that available in the PHB mass gaseous form could cause a lot of headaches and I can see the forums now with the cries of how the rogue is now having his niche steeped on because the wizard has taken away his ability to be the sneaky one and now everyone can sneak around. I can hear the cries of frustrated DMs of the party just uses mass gaseous form avoids all the encounters I have planned for them and off they go straight to the boss fight.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> You can cast word of recall again, naturally, just as you'd have to cast teleport again.   Or you could have hidden a teleportation circle to return to outside the dungeon.
> 
> The problem with teleport is that it is an instant surprise attack, at full strength, directly against any powerful enemy.   It is a problem because it makes other forms of transport obsolete.  It is a problem because it allows you to leave whenever you are losing, instead of thinking your way out of a jam.
> 
> ...




I would have far more issue with wizards and sorcerers making a teleportion circle or portal outside of every damn campsite they make just in case. I would find that far more broken than the 3E teleport with error. 

The problem with teleport is DMs who don't know how to counter it or DMs who don't have the backbone to just say no this is not allowed in my game. If the only tactics a party uses is scry and teleport eventually the evil guys who have access to the same tools will figure out a counter. An easy counter would be to set up some illusion magic hiding the real threat the party teleports in and bam it is not what they were expecting. 

Sometimes there is no thinking yourself out of a jam your butt is being handed to you on a silver platter and the entire party is about to die. 

As a DM I have found teleport really useful as a way to frame and shape encounters. 

A lpt of people including myself have offered ways to tweak teleport you just have your mind made up and don't want the spell in the game.

Tjhat is fine for your table but again I have to ask for those of us who want some form in the game why is that such an issue for you. Why is is it a problem for you to just take it out of your game. Why should it matter if in my game we use the spell?


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Eldritch_Lord said:


> It doesn't even have to be 5 miles--3e teleport's off-target distance is [1d10*1d10]% of the distance traveled in a random direction, so if you roll badly you could end up going several hundred miles in the wrong direction. {snip bit that deals with how to improve the odds of failure}




I like something that is always inexact better.   Being unable to teleport where you want 25% of the time,  still allows you to teleport where you aren't wanted 75% of the time.   If you can only land in a vaguely close area to where you actually want to go, you have all the utility of teleport with much fewer problems.  Not all of the problems are solved mind you, but the scry-buff-teleport problem is.

Or we could simply make teleportation limited, at least until say 16th level or so.




> Not if you want to visit a city you haven't been to before, travel somewhere in the wilderness to meet in a neutral location, show up outside of a city instead of in a designated portal area, or more.  I realize you're really set on linked portals as a solution, but there are many things you just can't do if you're restricted to specific locations.




Yes, but we both know those are all rare situations that have multiple solutions outside of giving players to teleport instantly anywhere.



> Not everyone likes that degree of strategic play, nor do I expect them to, but it's a playstyle that's just as viable in 3e as it was in AD&D.




Sure its viable, it just isn't expected, nor does it seem to happen very often.



> Each of those options also doesn't fulfill the same function teleport does.  I'm not arguing that teleport is a low-level ability at all, I'm arguing that there's an obvious progression from walking around cliffs to throwing ropes over cliffs to levitating up cliffs to flying over cliffs to teleporting past them.  Teleportation isn't this sudden problem spell that invalidates challenges, it's the continuation of a trend of "zooming out" as you level;




Sure, and I could see a place for teleport anywhere anytime as a godlike power, as a 9th level spell or epic spell.   As a 5th level spell, no.   When mages are casting 5th level spells, its time to ride griffons.



> Two points.  First, spells tend to be at the same levels as their counters plus or minus a level for a reason (_charm person_ and _protection from evil_, _fireball_ and _protection from energy_, and so on, all the way up to _imprisonment_ and _freedom_).  D&D is a game of counters, between needing certain weapons to bypass certain DR to needing certain spells to remove certain conditions and on.  You (and your enemies) need counters for common abilities, counters for counters, and so on, and determining what resources to use is part of the game.




I certainly don't like the idea that the only counter to wizard spells is other wizard spells.   That's what we have with teleport.   Instead of building a stronghold meant to keep men out, the only way I can keep a wizard out is to hire another wizard.     D&D has a lot of that.   A wizard can block a swordsman's best attack with ironskin, but a fighter can't block a 1st level magic missile with a shield.



> Secondly, NPCs aren't all-knowing and all-wealthy (or at least shouldn't be, or your DM is, again, not being fair).




DM's are often petty creatures, and sometimes they need to shut down certain mid-level spells so that the adventure is coherent at all.    That's why the wheels pretty much fall of the bus in 3e & earlier editions around 12th-14th level.   Heck, that's why characters of that level (or higher) were pretty much equated with overpowered munchkins in the 2e days of my youth.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

pemerton said:


> In the case of D&D teleport, I would have though that it is trivially easy for any GM who is familiar with it from a past edition to "invent" it again! Just cut-and-paste.
> 
> There's not even a balance question. Should teleport be 1st level? 3rd level? 5th level? 9th level? A far as  I can tell, the answer to that question depends entirely on the level at which you're happy for overland travel not to matter in your game anymore.




But what if a DM is not familiar with it? Wouldn't it be nice to have an option in the DMG on how to use these kind of spells? With examples on how to make them fit want more high magic easy travel use a less restrictive teleport want something more dangerous then one with added risk.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I would have far more issue with wizards and sorcerers making a teleportion circle or portal outside of every damn campsite they make just in case. I would find that far more broken than the 3E teleport with error.




Why?   How can travel to one specific place be more broken than simply being able to teleport anywhere?


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Then they also need to ban rogues and monks who can sneak in and kill the King. But I don't need teleport I will just dominate one of personal guards and have him do it or I will cast improved invisibility on assassin and let him do it.




Both easier to thwart than a teleporting mage with a save or die spell.



> A King worth his salt should pay to have anti teleport, anti scrying and other protections up as well.This is not rocket science in a world where magic exists the powerful will find ways to use it to protect themselves.




Yes I know, the only way to counter a wizard is with another wizard.   It doesn't matter that thousands upon thousands of gold pieces were spent creating a bastion.  If it isn't enchanted, then there is no way to keep out a mid-level wizard.

I really, really, dislike the attitude among D&D players that magic users not only have to be powerful and mysterious, but have to be more powerful than other classes in every way by the time they reach mid levels.   Pah.    Magic is the unreliable tools of the craven and weak, that can't stand up to honest steel.  



> I would not want mass spells like that available in the PHB mass gaseous form could cause a lot of headaches and I can see the forums now with the cries of how the rogue is now having his niche steeped on because the wizard has taken away his ability to be the sneaky one and now everyone can sneak around. I can hear the cries of frustrated DMs of the party just uses mass gaseous form avoids all the encounters I have planned for them and off they go straight to the boss fight.




Which teleport (and other magics) already do, and for which gaseous form causes less problems than teleport.    For example, a deep dungeon with a labyrinth keeps away those players with gaseous form, because they will run out of rounds before they arrive at the big bad.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Why?   How can travel to one specific place be more broken than simply being able to teleport anywhere?




Because you saying that wizards and sorcerers should take the time every night that they camp to set up a portal. 


I have always felt that certain spells belong in the DMG scry, teleport, raise dead are some examples. Let the DM have the tools to pick if they want this in their game at all and give them the tools to decide how powerful they want it to be.


In some games I have banned spells, modified them change the level of them. I have done the same with races and classes. Not everything fits every campaign style.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> But what if a DM is not familiar with it? Wouldn't it be nice to have an option in the DMG on how to use these kind of spells? With examples on how to make them fit want more high magic easy travel use a less restrictive teleport want something more dangerous then one with added risk.




Wouldn't it be nicer not to leave a trap for a novice DM to tear his hair out in frustration, as players skip over everything that they can, and his relatively mundane world that he built be torn to shreds of implausibility by having the ability to break time and space?

At least if you hold it off to 16th or 18th level, the campaign is nearly over, so you don't have to deal with all the problems of teleport for half the game.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Because you saying that wizards and sorcerers should take the time every night that they camp to set up a portal.




Yes... but how is that less broken than not having to bother with a camp at all?  With being able to teleport to aid immediately without any planning or prep?

You are claiming that creating portals is more powerful than teleport at whim to anywhere in the world.  How so?


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Elf Witch said:
> 
> 
> > Then they also need to ban rogues and monks who can sneak in and kill the King. But I don't need teleport I will just dominate one of personal guards and have him do it or I will cast improved invisibility on assassin and let him do it.
> ...


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Wouldn't it be nicer not to leave a trap for a novice DM to tear his hair out in frustration, as players skip over everything that they can, and his relatively mundane world that he built be torn to shreds of implausibility by having the ability to break time and space?
> 
> At least if you hold it off to 16th or 18th level, the campaign is nearly over, so you don't have to deal with all the problems of teleport for half the game.




I was once a newbie DM and I didn't pull my hair out over the spell. I know plenty of DMs who were once newbies and who did just fine with it in the game. 

The whole point of having a spell like that in the DMG is so that those newbie DMs can have guidance on if they would like it in their games. 

DnD attracts pretty smart people I don't think they need to be treated like idiots and protected from a possible abuse of a spell.


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> But what if a DM is not familiar with it?



Well, then they won't miss it. Or, if they wonder about it, they can come to ENworld and become informed!

It's not as if D&D currently has spells to cover every possible magical, supernatural or science fiction effect, such that removing teleport would leave the game mysteriously lacking.


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## Lanefan (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I was once a newbie DM and I didn't pull my hair out over the spell. I know plenty of DMs who were once newbies and who did just fine with it in the game.



This made me giggle, as when I was a newbie DM my first campaign world was built around - you guessed it - a teleport network.   It wasn't a perfect setting by any means, but the teleport network was one of the (rather shamefully few) things that worked out pretty well in the long run.

Lan-"the campaign name 'Telenet' in my .sig in fact comes from *tele*port *net*work"-efan


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> This made me giggle, as when I was a newbie DM my first campaign world was built around - you guessed it - a teleport network.   It wasn't a perfect setting by any means, but the teleport network was one of the (rather shamefully few) things that worked out pretty well in the long run.
> 
> Lan-"the campaign name 'Telenet' in my .sig in fact comes from *tele*port *net*work"-efan




See, the way I want to do things works, even for newbie DM's.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Yes... but how is that less broken than not having to bother with a camp at all?  With being able to teleport to aid immediately without any planning or prep?
> 
> You are claiming that creating portals is more powerful than teleport at whim to anywhere in the world.  How so?





It is right up there why would you create a portal at every camp sight? And if you do that then what is the difference between traveling through the portals to avoid the trip and teleporting?

I know what you are going to say you worry about the offensive abilities of teleport. 

The one big problem with teleport is scry. Scry is one of the most broken spells in the game as far as I am concerned you should only be able to scry on someone you know well seeing someone once should not be enough unless you have an item off of them with their essence in it. And you should never be able to scry on a place you have never seen or been easily. 

And as much as I like teleport I don't like teleport without error there should always be a risk involved. 

I have modified scry in my game and I use a modified teleport there is always a risk of not ending up where you hoped, having the party scattered over several miles there are ways to modify the power of the spell without completely banning it.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Well, then they won't miss it. Or, if they wonder about it, they can come to ENworld and become informed!
> 
> It's not as if D&D currently has spells to cover every possible magical, supernatural or science fiction effect, such that removing teleport would leave the game mysteriously lacking.




A lot of gamers never visit forums. 

I disagree with that I think being able to magically go from one place to another is part of the game regardless of how you accomplish it. 

We could make this argument about every spell in the game.

Teleport is a spell put into the game to allow faster travel in a world without airplanes.  I have seen it used to enhance the game and allow different types of adventures. 

I don't think the game designers had in mind when they made the spell that it would be used to ruin games anymore than putting knock in the game was to step all over the rogues. It was to allow parties without rogues to be able to function.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I really really dislike the attitude among some DnD players that their style of play is the only one that is the right way to play.




Right back at ya I guess.



> I happen to sometimes like powerful magic and using magic as a counter to it and in games where magic is powerful the counters will have to be for the most part magical.




Sure, but it pretty much means that wizards rule everything.  Which I don't really see why that should be the case unless you want to specifically make that type of campaign.   This seems to better a fit a "high magic" module, than a D&D campaign generally, which could have a dial from very low to very high magic.  



> If you don't like that style of game then you need to A find a system without powerful magic, B tweak the game so it plays more in the style you like.




Or you could tweak the game to play more in the style you like.   But either way, it doesn't solve the problems with the teleport spell.



> To get around the time running out all a wise wizards needs is a wand with the spell on it and poof they are all gas again.




Or you could have a wand of teleport... which is worse.  Of course, a lot of abuse of spells could be curtailed if you can't store 50 of them in a wand.  That might be something to look into.

Magical items were also something that 1e did better.  You couldn't create wands of teleport or gaseous form at a whim.



> Anything can be abused in the game in the hands of smart players. If we took out everything that they can abuse we would have very precious little left to use in a game.




Yeah, but it would be nice if players had to think a little bit about how they can abuse something, rather than just having abusive spells that only exist because of the idea that wizards should be more powerful than everyone else.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I don't think the game designers had in mind when they made the spell that it would be used to ruin games anymore than putting knock in the game was to step all over the rogues. It was to allow parties without rogues to be able to function.




The problem with knock is not that it allows the wizard to pick locks.  It is that it allows the wizard to pick locks better than a rogue who focused all his skills on picking locks.

The problem with teleport (or plane shift if you prefer Lanefan) is not that it allows you to travel quickly.  The problem with teleport is that it makes travel unnecessary, renders logistical problems obsolete, and renders almost all defenses moot.... unless you have another wizard cast anti-teleport.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> This made me giggle, as when I was a newbie DM my first campaign world was built around - you guessed it - a teleport network.   It wasn't a perfect setting by any means, but the teleport network was one of the (rather shamefully few) things that worked out pretty well in the long run.
> 
> Lan-"the campaign name 'Telenet' in my .sig in fact comes from *tele*port *net*work"-efan




LOL my first time behind the screen I let my players use skills and options and those blasted kits. It was a munchkin paradise and after several months  all I wanted was to kill every last one of their's PCs.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> DnD attracts pretty smart people I don't think they need to be treated like idiots and protected from *a possible abuse of a spell.*




But the problem with the above is that it misrepresents the issues with the actual RAW rules (non-abusive) mechanics of the spell.  Teleport isn't a problem (for those who have a problem with it, such as myself) due to corner cases and synergistic combinations (Scry, Buff, Teleport, Assassinate).  It is a problem due to the fact that at mid-level it absolutely circumvents standard genre tropes (much in the same way that unconstrained Divinations circumvents investigation and intrigue) such as Oregon Trail attrition, overland travel (and the organic plot points that can derive from it - caravans, roadside inns, bandits, etc etc), harrowing pursuit evasion/narrow escapes, anxiety-inducing navigation of treacherous terrain or extreme environments, or cloak and dagger travel via subterfuge, stealth and uncanny wits through a city in which you are wanted or a target (of the guard, local thieves guild, or worse).  And on and on.  

Once you've narrowed the scope of your game by cutting these possible adventure paths/scenes out of the picture, the level of potential, genre-relevant dynamism of your game is choked to its last breath.

Yes, there are all manner of contrived conventions that DMs of 20 + years can use to short-circuit a wizard's repertoire...but the game can quickly turn into a trite effort of rock/paper/scissors and you find the entirety of your prep and in-game effort is built around trying to foresee the numerous ways that your resident Generalist Wizard PC can checkmate the excitement out of the collective fiction and circumvent anything resembling a climactic plot-point so that the session/adventure turns into a "why are we even bothering?" moment for everyone at the table who isn't the cynical Generalist Wizard.  And possibly even worse yet is when the contrived conventions become so painfully transparent that they illicit a facepalm from the players (and from the DM inside is own head....maddened that he has to use such nonsense....maddened that he cannot let his Generalist Wizard go full bore...lest the game become fully unhinged).  

Yes, I know that not everyone has those problems and some have never seen them manifest ever.  I've had this same conversation with a few other posters on here.  Nonetheless, there actually are very practiced, very proficient 20 + year GMs out there who would like a module that either constrains these spells via limited, hard-coded mechanics or moves them down the line to a higher level.  They aren't foolish or afraid of cutting the spells out of the game or reaching social accord with their players to "play nice" with those spells.  They are just worn out by the games that those spells, read as written, produce.  Keep those beloved spells in the core for all I, and others, care.  All we ask for is a supported (designer created, play-tested, quality controlled) module that allows the game to retain the elements listed above for a bit longer than through level 9.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> The problem with knock is not that it allows the wizard to pick locks.  It is that it allows the wizard to pick locks better than a rogue who focused all his skills on picking locks.
> 
> The problem with teleport (or plane shift if you prefer Lanefan) is not that it allows you to travel quickly.  The problem with teleport is that it makes travel unnecessary, renders logistical problems obsolete, and renders almost all defenses moot.... unless you have another wizard cast anti-teleport.




And it should allow the wizard to pick the lock better than the rogue because it is a spell and a limited resource and the wizard using it has given up a spell slot that would be better used for a different spell and it does nothing for traps.

The rogue can pick locks all day ,if there is no danger he can take 10 or 20 on it and he is not using up a limited resource. It does not take away from his combat abilities. He also has the skills to detect traps. 

Well it is in my game and does not do any of that. There are a lot of other spells that make logistical problems obsolete shall we take all of those out of the game as well. There are counters to teleport just as there are counters to other spells meant to get around defenses shall we take out those spells as well.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 1, 2012)

Manbearcat said:


> But the problem with the above is that it misrepresents the issues with the actual RAW rules (non-abusive) mechanics of the spell.  Teleport isn't a problem (for those who have a problem with it, such as myself) due to corner cases and synergistic combinations (Scry, Buff, Teleport, Assassinate).  It is a problem due to the fact that at mid-level it absolutely circumvents standard genre tropes (much in the same way that unconstrained Divinations circumvents investigation and intrigue) such as Oregon Trail attrition, overland travel (and the organic plot points that can derive from it - caravans, roadside inns, bandits, etc etc), harrowing pursuit evasion/narrow escapes, anxiety-inducing navigation of treacherous terrain or extreme environments, or cloak and dagger travel via subterfuge, stealth and uncanny wits through a city in which you are wanted or a target (of the guard, local thieves guild, or worse).  And on and on.
> 
> Once you've narrowed the scope of your game by cutting these possible adventure paths/scenes out of the picture, the level of potential, genre-relevant dynamism of your game is choked to its last breath.
> 
> ...




But who decides what is genre relevant? The ability for wizards to travel instantaneous has always been a part of the genre I have seen it many books I have read since I started reading fantasy when I was sixteen. 

I have been playing since the 70s and I have never seen it what you are describing where every single time teleport is used to get around all those things. 

It is a very easy counter use a teleport spell that has a risk involved these things were not a huge issue back in the days of 1 and 2E I didn't start hearing about it until  3E and players figuring out if they combine this and this and this they are almost unstoppable. It is the same as multiclassing on the face of it you sacrificed some power to get other things and have your character concept well in the hands of powergamers some multiclass builds are over powered. The answers for some is to ban multiclassing. My answer is to say look this concept is over powered you need to change it. 

Not everyone wants to play LOTR or Conan maybe I want teleport and flying airships in my DnD.

There seems to be a lot of I don't like this in my game so I don't want it in the game at all.

I really hope the 5E has teleport in it as option  I hope it has dials as well to allow the DM the choice on how to use it in their game.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> It is right up there why would you create a portal at every camp sight? And if you do that then what is the difference between traveling through the portals to avoid the trip and teleporting?




The difference is that you still have reason to travel using griffons, you don't annhihilate the narrative flow of most adventures, and you don't obliterate all the enemy's defenses.  The three problems are still there with at whim teleport, and they aren't there with linked portals.

Perhaps you think they are creating permanent magical items, rather than just locations where they can teleport from?



> The one big problem with teleport is scry. Scry is one of the most broken spells in the game as far as I am concerned you should only be able to scry on someone you know well seeing someone once should not be enough unless you have an item off of them with their essence in it. And you should never be able to scry on a place you have never seen or been easily.




I don't really see any problems with Scry.  Sure, you might cut a mystery or two short, but if you already know who you should be scrying on, there probably isn't much information that you need to get.  What information that you can gleam (ie. where the location of the target is, what he is doing at any given moment, etc.) are often good ways to push the plot forward.

No, the teleport is definately the second biggest problem in the scry-buff-teleport chain, with buff being the first.



> And as much as I like teleport I don't like teleport without error there should always be a risk involved.




If teleport only puts you in the vague area of where you want to teleport (within 5 miles) then two of my objections to at-whim teleport disappear.   

I don't care about the chance of failure in a teleport spell.  It is often better odds than I can get vs. a save or die spell, so what do I care about a chance of death?   I have a chance of death greater than a teleport spell gone awry every day.   A 75% chance of killing the opponent easily with little risk otherwise?   Sign me up, because I likes them odds.


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I have been playing since the 70s and I have never seen it what you are describing where every single time teleport is used to get around all those things.




Sure, but you could believe others have problems.   There have been people on this thread that have no problems with 3e teleport, some that have problems with 3e teleport but not 1e teleport.  Then there some others who have had problems with at-whim teleport period.

For example, I can tell you that I once gave an aerie full of wyverns to players but they didn't fly them once because I didn't give it to them before the wizard learned teleport and fly.   I couldn't very well give them to them much earlier, otherwise the wyverns would have been more powerful than the PC's.  So just when overland flight on the backs of monsters becomes a viable option to PC's, teleport renders it obsolete.




> It is a very easy counter use a teleport spell that has a risk involved these things were not a huge issue back in the days of 1 and 2E I didn't start hearing about it until  3E and players figuring out if they combine this and this and this they are almost unstoppable.




3e definately made spellcasters even more insufferable, mostly because it was a lot easier to get the XP to climb to higher levels of magecraft.   If it takes a couple of years to reach the level required to cast teleport, most games will break up and the campaign will end simply because people move on to other things.

But if you are playing a D&D 2e game where you didn't count XP (the heresy) or started players above level one (the horror!) often enough, then you certainly would find many of the same problems that you found in 3e in regards to spellcasters. 



> The answers for some is to ban multiclassing. My answer is to say look this concept is over powered you need to change it.




Yeah, but we are all talking about changing teleport, not banning it.  Nobody wants to ban teleport, we just want to change how it works so it isn't as problematic.



> Not everyone wants to play LOTR or Conan maybe I want teleport and flying airships in my DnD.




If you give group teleport, why do you need airships?   

From Cracked:

_Now, the 2009 film has a major plot point where Kirk needs to be teleported onto the Enterprise, but the Enterprise is moving at warp speed at the time. Scotty figures out a way to do it, and the movie celebrates this achievement as being the first time anyone has ever been transported to an object moving that fast. But that isn't the point.

The Enterprise is shooting off at Warp 3 just before Scotty and Kirk beam aboard. Warp 3, by the way, is 27 times the speed of light. Or 5 million miles a second. That means that by the time Kirk has finished saying, "I really liked you in Shaun of the Dead," the Enterprise would be out of the solar system. A distance Scotty has no trouble overcoming with his transporter.

So, uh, why do we need spaceships again?_

Read more: 7 Movies That Ignored World Changing Discoveries | Cracked.com 7 Movies That Ignored World Changing Discoveries | Cracked.com


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## ferratus (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> And it should allow the wizard to pick the lock better than the rogue because it is a spell and a limited resource and the wizard using it has given up a spell slot that would be better used for a different spell and it does nothing for traps.




Sure, but there is a reason why I joked we could fire the rogue character after we picked up a wand of knock in my last 3e game.  If a major part of the rogue's abilities are overshadowed by a wizard's minor spell slot, then it can be a little emasculating for the skill based rogue.   This is even worse in 1e and 2e where you wouldn't be able to pick a lock reliably until... right about when the wizard picked up a knock spell.



> The rogue can pick locks all day ,if there is no danger he can take 10 or 20 on it and he is not using up a limited resource. It does not take away from his combat abilities. He also has the skills to detect traps.




Yep, but the time when you as a thief fail a lockpicking roll, and the wizard casts knock from a scroll, is really, really humiliating.   You suddenly realize you could have been a better thief to deal with the occasional lock than you are now with a spell, and you'd be able to cast fireball by now.



> Well it is in my game and does not do any of that. There are a lot of other spells that make logistical problems obsolete shall we take all of those out of the game as well. There are counters to teleport just as there are counters to other spells meant to get around defenses shall we take out those spells as well.




I don't mind magical counters.  But I'd like an actual shield to be able to block magic missiles, just like the shield spell can.   So to do I not want tactics, terrain, logistics, and defensive fortifications invalidated by teleport just because I didn't have a wizard cast anti-teleport.   Let me have tactics, terrain, logistics, and defensive fortifications something I can use when fighting wizards... because I can't do magic unless I hire it, and I can't afford spell protection better than my higher level enemy.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> And it should allow the wizard to pick the lock better than the rogue because it is a spell and a limited resource and the wizard using it has given up a spell slot that would be better used for a different spell and it does nothing for traps.
> 
> The rogue can pick locks all day ,if there is no danger he can take 10 or 20 on it and he is not using up a limited resource. It does not take away from his combat abilities. He also has the skills to detect traps.



But how many locks does he actually have to pick in any given day? 

And what if the Wizard writes a few scrolls of Knock, or gets a Wand of Knock? Suddenly it's not really such a limited resource anymore. Also consider - the Thief has his Open Lock skill trained with his skill points. He invested a character resource permanently. The Wizard can decide each day whether he wants to prepare a Knock. If the Wizard knows there are no locks to expect, he can slot something else. If the Rogue knows this, he's still stuck with his ranks in Open Lock / Thievery.

Maybe you want to do away with Scrolls and Wands? But I hardly believe that, since you also don't want to give up any-distance-and-location Teleports. It seems to me there is no interest (by you at least) in reducing the Wizard's power level, and no interest in raising that of non-spellcaster either to deal with Wizards (see my thread with the fighter-suppresses-magic-protection).


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## Black Knight Irios (Aug 1, 2012)

ferratus said:


> If you have to have been there in person already anyway, then why not just have linked portals?   It also leads to ramifications in the wider campaign world.  For example people would start banning mages from setting foot in castles or walled cities for security reasons, because he can sneak in with teleportation and assassinate the king.
> 
> *You could use many of the alternatives of teleport as well: Spider Climb, Fly, (improved) Invis., Silence, Dimension Door, Etherealness, Gaseous Form, the list goes on. Nice examples by Elf Witch, by the way, as well.*
> 
> ...




Having the spell and just banning it if it disturbs your game seems like a no brainer to me. I highly advocate that WotC adds some disclaimers to certain spells to warn DMs that they might not work in certain campaign types.

Interesting for me is that you still avoid a discussion about scry and its brothers even so one can blame scry as much for 'scry-buff-teleport' as teleport. 
What would you say if I wanted WotC not to print all divinations that give you concrete information or visual confirmation. I mean anyone who wants them can write them themselves, can't they.
Or I can just ban them in my game if they would ruin my investigation based adventure.
Which of those to options seems more useful to a larger playerbase. Again I would add a disclaimer to the divinations to inform DMs that they might be not suited for the adventure they are creating.



pemerton said:


> In the case of D&D teleport, I would have though that it is trivially easy for any *GM who is familiar with it from a past edition* to "invent" it again! Just cut-and-paste.
> 
> *My emphasis: What do you propose should a new DM do. Starting from scratch. A new DM can surely ban teleport just fine, read above for my suggestion about a disclaimer.*
> 
> There's not even a balance question. Should teleport be 1st level? 3rd level? 5th level? 9th level? A far as  I can tell, the answer to that question depends entirely on the level at which you're happy for overland travel not to matter in your game anymore.




Yeah plane hopping and gating is possible but we are not able to move faster from a to b. Overland Flight negates a crapton of encounters as well. Sometimes you don't care about the way only the destination. I think I sound rather repetitive ban teleport if the way is that important in your games.


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2012)

Black Knight Irios said:


> What do you propose should a new DM do. Starting from scratch.



Well, first, a new GM proably won't miss teleport.

Second, if s/he wants it, it is trivial to stick it in. As I posted upthread, there is no serious balance issue - it's just a question of at what level you want overland travel and all that goes with it to no longer be part of the game. For some GMs, that could be 1st level!


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## Black Knight Irios (Aug 1, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Well, first, a new GM proably won't miss teleport.
> 
> Second, if s/he wants it, it is trivial to stick it in. As I posted upthread, there is no serious balance issue - it's just a question of at what level you want overland travel and all that goes with it to no longer be part of the game. For some GMs, that could be 1st level!





He might not miss it or he might miss it - who knows. Kowing other peoples expectations is a difficult thing. 

Except that teleport has usually more parameters than just transport from a to b. Like what you can bring along or chances for failure or what must be known about the destination.
If everything was so easy to develop and understand I wonder why WotC has to publish FAQs and Erratas?


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I don't think the game designers had in mind when they made the spell that it would be used to ruin games anymore than putting knock in the game was to step all over the rogues. It was to allow parties without rogues to be able to function.





Elf Witch said:


> And it should allow the wizard to pick the lock better than the rogue because it is a spell and a limited resource and the wizard using it has given up a spell slot that would be better used for a different spell and it does nothing for traps.



On teleport: the first published high-level exploration module, Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, has a teleport-nerf written into it. This suggests to me that the designers actually didn't intend teleport to operate as an "adventure-winning" ability. (I assume they thought that it would allow boring/headache-cauasing travel to be skipped, as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has suggested.)

On Knock: if there is no wizard to cast fireball, the rogue can't take his/her place. So why should the wizard be able to take the rogue's place? And why should the wizard be _better_ at this back-up role than the rogue? Leaving aside the fact that the only time the rogue will be opening locks "all day long" is if s/he is putting on a Houdini performance, the cost for the wizard in learning and memorising a Knock spell is close to trivial - whereas for the rogue it is one of the few class abilities (in AD&D) and/or represents a significant character build investment (in 2nd ed AD&D or 3E).



Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But how many locks does he actually have to pick in any given day?
> 
> And what if the Wizard writes a few scrolls of Knock, or gets a Wand of Knock? Suddenly it's not really such a limited resource anymore. Also consider - the Thief has his Open Lock skill trained with his skill points. He invested a character resource permanently. The Wizard can decide each day whether he wants to prepare a Knock. If the Wizard knows there are no locks to expect, he can slot something else. If the Rogue knows this, he's still stuck with his ranks in Open Lock / Thievery.



This.



Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Maybe you want to do away with Scrolls and Wands? But I hardly believe that, since you also don't want to give up any-distance-and-location Teleports. It seems to me there is no interest (by you at least) in reducing the Wizard's power level, and no interest in raising that of non-spellcaster either to deal with Wizards (see my thread with the fighter-suppresses-magic-protection).



In this and some other recent threads Elf Witch has also said the following:



Elf Witch said:


> I am all for giving fighters more goodies and bringing down some of the wizard abilities.





Elf Witch said:


> I happen to sometimes like powerful magic and using magic as a counter to it and in games where magic is powerful the counters will have to be for the most part magical.





Elf Witch said:


> The games I play in are not just dungeon crawls and killing things and taking their loot there is a lot of political intrigue, religious strife and maneuvering as well as puzzles, mysteries  and other non fighting aspects and every other class except for the fighter and the barbarian can at least participate with a better chance of being successful than the fighter, all he does is swing his sword and that is it. Hence why we find them boring and no one will play one by the RAW.



I think "boring" fighters are not unrelated to powerful magic. I also think that simply dropping teleport without error (as Elf Witch suggested upthread) isn't enough of a "bringing down" of wizard abilities to seriously improve fighters.

This is the paradox of D&D reform: everyone can see that it needs changing, but a big chunk of players seems to have desires that are in tension with any of the necessary changes!


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## Neonchameleon (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Teleport is a spell put into the game to allow faster travel in a world without airplanes. I have seen it used to enhance the game and allow different types of adventures.
> 
> I don't think the game designers had in mind when they made the spell that it would be used to ruin games anymore than putting knock in the game was to step all over the rogues. It was to allow parties without rogues to be able to function.




That may have been why Teleport was put in the game.  But 3.X style teleport literally ruins worldbuilding.  Which is a good reason to take it back out.  And no, knock doesn't allow parties without rogues to function. They can do that anyway.

If you want a party with no one who can pick the lock, _kick the door off its hinges_.  Knock was put in because some wizard wanted to be cool or because someone read the spell in a fiction novel.



Elf Witch said:


> And it should allow the wizard to pick the lock better than the rogue because it is a spell and a limited resource and the wizard using it has given up a spell slot that would be better used for a different spell and it does nothing for traps.
> 
> The rogue can pick locks all day ,if there is no danger he can take 10 or 20 on it and he is not using up a limited resource.




Apparently time is not a limited resource.  Right.  If you give a wizard enough time, he gets a dump truck of spells given to him almost for free.  And seriously, how often do you see more than two doors in a day that need picking?

The wizard should just pick up a handaxe like anyone else other than the rogue if there is no danger.  Break the chest open or the door down.  After all, time isn't a problem and neither is danger.  What picking locks does is _speed_ and _subtlety_.  Those are literally the two reasons to pick a lock rather than break the door.  And knock is better at both.



> There are counters to teleport just as there are counters to other spells meant to get around defenses shall we take out those spells as well.




Name three in both cases.



Elf Witch said:


> I would have far more issue with wizards and sorcerers making a teleportion circle or portal outside of every damn campsite they make just in case. I would find that far more broken than the 3E teleport with error.




Why?  Making teleportation circles _costs money_ and can be used to follow them.



> The problem with teleport is DMs who don't know how to counter it or DMs who don't have the backbone to just say no this is not allowed in my game.




Translation: The problem with teleport is DMs who consider the book they have paid good money for shouldn't be a half-baked product that needs fixing.  Oberoni fallacy.



> Tjhat is fine for your table but again I have to ask for those of us who want some form in the game why is that such an issue for you. Why is is it a problem for you to just take it out of your game. Why should it matter if in my game we use the spell?




You're keen on house rules.  House rule it back in.  Or mark it as strictly optional at the DM's discression in the rulebook.  It's a DMing nightmare with smart tactical players, and a worldbuilding and logistical nightmare.



Elf Witch said:


> It is only a problematic spells for some people not everyone has problems with it. Something some people tend to forget.




Congratulations!  You don't have problems with it!  I know you've learned to cope.  But why do you want to inflict common problems on other DMs and force them to all discover workrounds to massively setting-altering spells.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 1, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> But who decides what is genre relevant? The ability for wizards to travel instantaneous has always been a part of the genre I have seen it many books I have read since I started reading fantasy when I was sixteen.
> 
> I have been playing since the 70s and I have never seen it what you are describing where every single time teleport is used to get around all those things.
> 
> ...




Hmmm...I'm not really sure how any of this is a rejoinder to my post.  The only thing I see here is the use of the term "genre relevant".  However, the use of it doesn't address the thrust of my post.  It asserts that the spell "Teleport" and the genre trope of "Astral Taxi Wizard" is within genre expectations as established by DnD history.  That I do not dispute (nor ever have).  I've consistently stated that DnD is a mashup of various (thus its incoherency) pulp fantasy elements.  This broad genre emulation scope has been, historically at least, one of its main selling points to a large section of the user base (even if they did not know or were unable to articulate it).  However, what it doesn't address is the narrowing of genre emulation capibilities (the thrust of my post) due to the existence of teleport (at 9th level, RAW).

- I understand that you like teleport (we wouldn't be having this discussion if you did not).  
- I understand it is a DnD Legacy Issue and that to a great many (including myself), it is part and parcel of DnD.
- I agree that the genre trope of "Astral Taxi Wizard" is within genre expectations as established by DnD history. 
- I understand that some (many?) have never experienced these problems either due to social contract or do to mass-levaraging of transparent, contrived conventions to neutralize the wizards capibilities or teleport-proof their climactic plot-devices.
- I understand that some (many?) do not care for the genre trope emulation capibilities within the Exploration Pillar that I outlined in my post.  

However,

* Some (many?) do care for the genre trope emulation capibilities within the Exploration Pillar that I outlined in my post.  
* Some (many?) have had these Exploration Pillar dynamics circumvented due the existence of Teleport (RAW).  
* Some (many?) have "mass-levaraging of transparent, contrived conventions to neutralize the wizards capibilities or teleport-proof their climactic plot-devices" fatigue and/or cannot stand what it does to their games.  
* Some (many?) despise saying no to their players (when they shouldn't have to) because they cannot stand artificially neutralizing their player's beloved resources (their fun), so the game doesn't break down.

Would it be unreasonable for the group outlined by - to have their teleport in the game (even core?...I don't care etiher way)?  

Would it be unreasonable for the group outlined by * to also have their modified (either by level or mechanical constraints) teleport in the game (in a module?)


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## Black Knight Irios (Aug 1, 2012)

Manbearcat said:


> [...]
> Would it be unreasonable for the group outlined by - to have their teleport in the game (even core?...I don't care etiher way)?
> 
> Would it be unreasonable for the group outlined by * to also have their modified (either by level or mechanical constraints) teleport in the game (in a module?)




I totally agree with the idea to print multiple versions of teleport in different modules. As I said in a previous post, you could put a disclaimer besides spells that warn DMs that this spell might create a problem for their specific game(-type).

The thing I don't understand is that people don't believe that there can be a teleport spell and cause no damage to their games because DMs have the power to ban.
Banning is easier and faster (disclaimer idea!) than creating things.


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## mlund (Aug 1, 2012)

Ah, OK. Suspicion confirmed - this *is* a "You'll have to pry my Quadratic Wizard's character sheet from my cold dead hands" thread. Fine. "Elminsterfanboi999's Space-time Shift" ... ahem ... I mean "Teleport" can just be thrown into an Optional Rules Module marked "Radioactive." 

As long as the barrel is lined with lead it isn't a contamination hazard for the Core 5E product.

- Marty Lund

Don't assume you know what someone else is thinking. Also don't belittle other people's play style. Thanks - Lwaxy


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## Manbearcat (Aug 1, 2012)

Black Knight Irios said:


> Banning is easier and faster (disclaimer idea!) than creating things.




Agreed.  Social contract to not use it or DM banning will solve the problem from one perspective.  That is the perspective of:  "There will be no Teleport or derivative thereof in this game."  However, I actually love the concept of Teleport (as I suspect that a great many of folks who have problems with it do as well).  My players love the concept of Teleport as well.  There are some great ideas how to leverage the "fun" of Teleport in this thread (fixed teleportation circles/rituals, etc) that don't infringe upon exploration pillar genre emulation.  What's more, some of those ideas organically lend themselves toward fun adventure components (creation of the ring/gate, component gathering for the ritual, creating infrastructure for warding/guarding the teleportation gate/ring or enlisting a local city's wizard guild, or elite guard...on and on) in and of themselves.  They add all of that, enriching the game, without subtracting from it by way of a "Fast Forward Button."


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## Black Knight Irios (Aug 1, 2012)

mlund said:


> Ah, OK. Suspicion confirmed - this *is* a "You'll have to pry my Quadratic Wizard's character sheet from my cold dead hands" thread. Fine. "Elminsterfanboi999's Space-time Shift" ... ahem ... I mean "Teleport" can just be thrown into an Optional Rules Module marked "Radioactive."
> 
> As long as the barrel is lined with lead it isn't a contamination hazard for the Core 5E product.
> 
> - Marty Lund




If you are talking about me. I tend to play fighters or similar chars. Last time I played a spellcaster was somewhere at the beginning of 3E and not for long. Even though I like teleport I worry about caster balance.

And I can't understand that you can't accept/understand that there are people that like a teleport spell in their game in the core rules or a module published at the beginning alongside the core rules. Please read on below.



Manbearcat said:


> Agreed.  Social contract to not use it or DM banning will solve the problem from one perspective.  That is the perspective of:  "There will be no Teleport or derivative thereof in this game."  However, I actually love the concept of Teleport (as I suspect that a great many of folks who have problems with it do as well).  My players love the concept of Teleport as well.  There are some great ideas how to leverage the "fun" of Teleport in this thread (fixed teleportation circles/rituals, etc) that don't infringe upon exploration pillar genre emulation.  What's more, some of those ideas organically lend themselves toward fun adventure components (creation of the ring/gate, component gathering for the ritual, creating infrastructure for warding/guarding the teleportation gate/ring or enlisting a local city's wizard guild, or elite guard...on and on) in and of themselves.  They add all of that, enriching the game, without subtracting from it by way of a "Fast Forward Button."




You are right if there is only a single rather unrestricted teleport published and your adventure is about travel (the way) you would have to ban it. But I never demanded that there is only one teleport spell and I never argued that there should be no other methods of teleportation.

I simply want a teleport spell as well. 

And if you ban that for your specific campaign all other options are still there ready to use.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Aug 1, 2012)

Lots of good ideas in this thread -- as I'm coming in late, I'll sum up my favorites.

1.  Teleportation should be in the game; it's intrinsic to most of the genre.  The devil's in the details of implementation.

2.  Short range, tactical line-of-sight teleport (ala dimension door) is fine at mid levels.

3.  Long range, strategic teleport should be possible at high levels, but with some drawback and risk.  At those levels, there's not need to force overland travel. The real risk of abuse is the buff-scry-teleport tactic.  To balance it, without something as swingy as miss-chance, nor as draconian as "No teleport to an unknown location", I'd make it a ritual with a lengthy casting time (10 minutes or more), which eliminates its use as a tactical retreat tool.  I'd also implement a "jump shock" mechanic -- for example, you are stunned for 2+1d4 rounds after arrival.  That makes teleporting near a place to attack shortly a viable tactic, but does not make teleporting into combat viable.

3.  Infinite range, no risk teleport should also exist -- via fixed-site portals, which can only be built with the highest level ritual magic.

In short, a few tweaks to 3E- and 4E-style teleport magic can fill most needs.


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## keterys (Aug 1, 2012)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> 3.  Long range, strategic teleport should be possible at high levels, but with some drawback and risk.  At those levels, there's not need to force overland travel. The real risk of abuse is the buff-scry-teleport tactic.  To balance it, without something as swingy as miss-chance, nor as draconian as "No teleport to an unknown location", I'd make it a ritual with a lengthy casting time (10 minutes or more), which eliminates its use as a tactical retreat tool.  I'd also implement a "jump shock" mechanic -- for example, you are stunned for 2+1d4 rounds after arrival.  That makes teleporting near a place to attack shortly a viable tactic, but does not make teleporting into combat viable.



This solution keeps the thing I most dislike "sidestepping the journey, loading up with all possible bonuses and ambushing a target" without the thing I do like "emergency button to prevent TPK".

I'd like the reverse, please.


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## Tovec (Aug 1, 2012)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Lots of good ideas in this thread -- as I'm coming in late, I'll sum up my favorites.
> 
> 1.  Teleportation should be in the game; it's intrinsic to most of the genre.  The devil's in the details of implementation.
> 
> ...




I'm of a similar mind and I just thought I'd jump in too.

I agree there is a place for dimension door, but for me it only works as a limited thing, such as vancian spellslot/day. I don't mind if they prepare it more than once but I don't want large swaths of enemies being bypassed or eliminated, or more importantly DEFENSES being bypassed or eliminated, routinely or without some effort expended. It the wizard can routinely jump past all kinds of defenses, like several times every fight, then it won't work for me. But that said, that is a large area to maneuver in with a lot of changes that can be made. Oh, I also would prefer a line of effect rule instead of line of sight, but that is just personal preference. Being able to see the destination works most of the time, but if it is blocked by a wall of force or similar kind of barrier then I think it should be a barrier. I see DD as more of a skip or squeeze through the space between, instead of a disappearance in one place and reappearance in another.

As for regular teleport, I love some of the ideas presented here, but I don't like a few of the direct solutions provided. I have some of my own.

For general teleporting, I like the idea back on page 1 or 2:



Minigiant said:


> You can teleport 1 person to a location of your choice in one action.
> 
> You can teleport multiple persons to a general location in one action.
> 
> ...




But I disagree on the 2/3 and what the third should be. Personally, outside of strong (very high level) magic I think it should be a 1/3 most of the time. Unfortunately I've never felt the time limit aspect to be a good limitation. Either, you have more than enough time, making 10 minutes all but irrelevant to spend on a spell, or they are too long to be used in a crunch when you truly need a teleport spell to get away. Being dazed on landing has a similar problem for me. The only thing the 10 minute casting and dazed on landing do is stop people from scry,teleport,fry,teleport (or variations) but there are a lot of better limiting factors which make more sense. Otherwise those limits don't really matter.

Personally I feel the best limiter is of accuracy. If you are always assured to be off by a number of miles, be that a fixed value of 5-100 miles or a percentage of the distance traveled (which I actually really liked) then that is fine. I feel that should be the _expected_ outcome instead of the undesired few percent. If you area always out by that factor then it eliminates the scry and fry tactic from the get go.

From there I can understand putting fixes or limits on it. Like if you have never been to a place then the distance out changes as well, you don't know exactly how far you are from your target, or in what direction. You could be 80 leagues from the place you meant to be or you could be the next street over. That is assuming you don't know where you are going, if you DO then the miss chance could be lower. If it is your childhood home where you spent most of your life then I could see appearing at the outskirts of town, or a field where you used to play, or (if you are lucky) right inside your old bedroom. But once again, for me it makes a lot more sense if you are NOT expected to land in your room, that you are ALWAYS going to be off target, but aren't sure how much.

Adding more weight, more passengers and similar aspects from previous versions of teleport should be MORE factors (or higher degree of being off target).

Next, if there is no safe spot EXCEPT the spot you are aiming for, such as a single room in the middle of a solid stone mountain, then I want the spell just not to work - instead of the silly rules of being buried or shunted to the next free space. I don't really want my players trying that at all, unless they have something to hit, not because they could die from doing it but because it is all but impossible -the spell fails.

Now I've said a couple of times that I think you could have something to hit, or aim for. That is where teleportation circles come into play. If you are trying to hit a location and that location has a teleportation circle then ignore the miss chance for being off target. DMs can decide how hard, or costly, or time consuming it is to make these circles. I would want big elaborate stone circles with intricate carvings in order to make the circle work properly, others may want something simple involving special salts or whatever and that is fine too. But that would be my number one way to consistently be on target.

Also, for my money, if you are teleporting FROM a circle then you can ignore issues of carrying limit or party size (passengers) when casting the spell. Because then it isn't like you are doing it constantly or often, it is only when you happen to find these circles (or make them).

Also, in general, I don't need the circles to be linked per se. I can understand them even coming with a lock to ensure unwanted travelers can't use them. (The lock could be a key, item, soil, passphrase, etc. used at the time of casting TO the circle before traveling or arriving.)

An honourable mention to the whole "have to be invited thing" or passing the threshold which I would institute as a general rule as well, but I think that a lot of what I've proposed further up solves a lot of those problems.


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## GSHamster (Aug 1, 2012)

Here's another idea:

Teleporting is very draining on the caster. For one hour after the teleport, the caster cannot cast spells.

This is not swingy, the teleport is reliable, and useful. At the same time, it's not something wizard likes doing, and you certainly don't want to teleport _into_ danger.


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## Lanefan (Aug 1, 2012)

pemerton said:


> On teleport: the first published high-level exploration module, Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, has a teleport-nerf written into it. This suggests to me that the designers actually didn't intend teleport to operate as an "adventure-winning" ability. (I assume they thought that it would allow boring/headache-cauasing travel to be skipped, as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has suggested.)



I'll go one further and suggest they also assumed t-port would not become SOP over the long term due to the risks involved.



> On Knock: if there is no wizard to cast fireball, the rogue can't take his/her place. So why should the wizard be able to take the rogue's place? And why should the wizard be _better_ at this back-up role than the rogue?



One thing the 'Knock' spell (or Chime of Opening) does is leave adventure design space open for doors/chests/portals (even teleport portals!) that cannot be opened by physical means.  Yes you can use a puzzle a la "Speak friend and enter" but that isn't to everyone's tastes either...


> This is the paradox of D&D reform: everyone can see that it needs changing, but a big chunk of players seems to have desires that are in tension with any of the necessary changes!



I don't so much think it needs further changing; I think it needs a bunch of changes already made to be undone.

I mean, let's face it: teleport abuse is almost exclusively a 3e-4e problem; it came up rarely if ever in 1e-2e.  So why not just go right back to the 1e version and stop there?


			
				Black Knight Irios said:
			
		

> Banning is easier and faster (disclaimer idea!) than creating things.



I very much disagree.  Once players see something in the PH banning that thing becomes difficult; impossible in some groups.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Aug 1, 2012)

Tovec said:


> Personally I feel the best limiter is of accuracy. If you are always assured to be off by a number of miles, be that a fixed value of 5-100 miles or a percentage of the distance traveled (which I actually really liked) then that is fine. I feel that should be the _expected_ outcome instead of the undesired few percent. If you area always out by that factor then it eliminates the scry and fry tactic from the get go.



I'd far rather see there be at least a decent chance of getting where you want to go, particularly if it's very familiar (scrying doesn't count).



> Next, if there is no safe spot EXCEPT the spot you are aiming for, such as a single room in the middle of a solid stone mountain, then I want the spell just not to work - instead of the silly rules of being buried or shunted to the next free space. I don't really want my players trying that at all, unless they have something to hit, not because they could die from doing it but because it is all but impossible -the spell fails.



Then how *does* one get there? (assuming this room in the middle of the mountain is just that: a room, or cavern, with no doors or exits)

I've always liked the idea of putting a BBEG's lair in the middle of a mountain and making it only accessible by teleport; it's a simple way of keeping out the distracting riff-raff... 



> Now I've said a couple of times that I think you could have something to hit, or aim for. That is where teleportation circles come into play. If you are trying to hit a location and that location has a teleportation circle then ignore the miss chance for being off target. DMs can decide how hard, or costly, or time consuming it is to make these circles. I would want big elaborate stone circles with intricate carvings in order to make the circle work properly, others may want something simple involving special salts or whatever and that is fine too. But that would be my number one way to consistently be on target.



This works except when you're trying to get somewhere for the first time; see my BBEG-in-a-mountain example above.

Side note: it only just now occurred to me that the concept of teleport always being off by 5-100 miles is probably deadlier in the long run than the 1e version!  You could come out in a gorge, or on a mountaintop, or in a lake, or miles out to sea...

Lanefan


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## Tovec (Aug 1, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> I'd far rather see there be at least a decent chance of getting where you want to go, particularly if it's very familiar (scrying doesn't count).



Right, okay so that is the scale I'm talking about. If the "off chance" on a known and very familar location is say.. 1d4 (as an example) miles from target, every time. Then there is a decent chance you'll end up within sight of where you wanted to be. If you are going somewhere you aren't familiar with it could be 3d20+6 (as an example) miles from target.
Scale up or down for other variables. If you are a very accomplished caster (and solo) and trying to hit "home" then you could end up in your bedroom on a lucky roll, you could end up in the field you used to play in. You aren't more than a few minutes (an hour on the outside?) travel from your home either way. If you are with a lot of people then you are more likely to be off target in some other way, even if you are accomplished.

I liked the idea of this being modified with distance traveled as well, but I'm not sure how to incorporate it or how to scale it. The figures of course need some modifying but that was the general idea I was talking about.



> Then how *does* one get there? (assuming this room in the middle of the mountain is just that: a room, or cavern, with no doors or exits)
> 
> I've always liked the idea of putting a BBEG's lair in the middle of a mountain and making it only accessible by teleport; it's a simple way of keeping out the distracting riff-raff...



Right, okay so first, how does one get there? Carefully? Tunnel? If the room is in the middle of a mountain and there is no other way to get there then I'm assuming the person designed it to be inaccessible. You know, to keep out the riff-raff.

Next, the guy who made it and lives there and keeps it as his lair would know the location and be able to teleport in. Maybe adding a nice teleportation circle to ensure his arrival. (He could possibly even lock it and give the keys only to trusted lieutenants. Something the party then neesd to exploit.)

The idea in either case was to make sure that people don't just end up dead because of a poor roll. I'd prefer them to fail at getting there at all. Preferably that would be off target, aiming for that room inside the mountain you could end up on the mountain instead. But that only works for me if it is within the margin of error. I don't like having the party TPK because of a faulty roll, it should be something that is intentional to keep people out not just plain luck.
That is the whole TPK or auto-win discussed earlier.



> This works except when you're trying to get somewhere for the first time; see my BBEG-in-a-mountain example above.
> 
> Side note: it only just now occurred to me that the concept of teleport always being off by 5-100 miles is probably deadlier in the long run than the 1e version!  You could come out in a gorge, or on a mountaintop, or in a lake, or miles out to sea...
> 
> Lanefan



Right, so that is two parts that I wanted to address and partially avoid. If it is somewhere you have never been before the spell can still work. If you are aiming for a specific city then you might be off by a days travel or off by a whole kingdom depending on the miss chance and how far you are traveling. If it is necessary to hit the city then maybe it should have a teleportation circle so that people who are trying to teleport in CAN on their first try (or with a reasonable margin of error for not knowing where it is). I would say that if you can't picture the city on a map (or in your mind) then you probably shouldn't be able to hit it in the first place.

Also, the whole "over a lake or gorge" thing is also tied into the solid stone. I would put an amendment that you teleport to solid ground. Edge of a cliff is fine, off the cliff isn't. Underground isn't.


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## Lanefan (Aug 1, 2012)

Tovec said:


> Right, okay so first, how does one get there? Carefully? Tunnel? If the room is in the middle of a mountain and there is no other way to get there then I'm assuming the person designed it to be inaccessible. You know, to keep out the riff-raff.



Excatly, yet the PCs are the riff-raff trying to get in 


> Next, the guy who made it and lives there and keeps it as his lair would know the location and be able to teleport in. Maybe adding a nice teleportation circle to ensure his arrival. (He could possibly even lock it and give the keys only to trusted lieutenants. Something the party then neesd to exploit.)



Exactly what I did in my game...except the party gave away the key without realizing what they had; and sooner or later they're going to be expected to go back there...


> The idea in either case was to make sure that people don't just end up dead because of a poor roll. I'd prefer them to fail at getting there at all. Preferably that would be off target, aiming for that room inside the mountain you could end up on the mountain instead. But that only works for me if it is within the margin of error. I don't like having the party TPK because of a faulty roll, it should be something that is intentional to keep people out not just plain luck.
> That is the whole TPK or auto-win discussed earlier.
> 
> Also, the whole "over a lake or gorge" thing is also tied into the solid stone. I would put an amendment that you teleport to solid ground. Edge of a cliff is fine, off the cliff isn't. Underground isn't.



(quoted out of order, to combine points)

What you're doing here is taking risk and replacing it with inconvenience.  They aren't the same.  If there's nothing involved but inconvenience then teleport will become SOP - just with more grumbling about the inconvenience.  But if there's actual risk involved - even if slight - they oftentimes just won't do it unless they really have to...and that's the point.


> If it is somewhere you have never been before the spell can still work. If you are aiming for a specific city then you might be off by a days travel or off by a whole kingdom depending on the miss chance and how far you are traveling. If it is necessary to hit the city then maybe it should have a teleportation circle so that people who are trying to teleport in CAN on their first try (or with a reasonable margin of error for not knowing where it is). I would say that if you can't picture the city on a map (or in your mind) then you probably shouldn't be able to hit it in the first place.



This is all fine, except for me the miss chance should include a small risk of danger either by coming out too high or too low.

You know, someone else mentioned it earlier in this thread but nobody followed up: a pretty good example of how teleport could work is Harry Potter's translocation.  You can only take yourself (HP allows passengers, I'd lose this) and there's a risk that not all of you gets there.  For mass transit there's Portkeys, single-use items that take whoever is touching them - in some cases at a predetermined time - to a predetermined location set during casting.

Lanefan


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## keterys (Aug 1, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> I mean, let's face it: teleport abuse is almost exclusively a 3e-4e problem; it came up rarely if ever in 1e-2e.  So why not just go right back to the 1e version and stop there?



Hmm - it's not a problem at all in 4e that I've seen. It is most obviously a problem in 3e, but I remember it coming up in a high level 2e game as well (and see no reason that wouldn't have come up in 1e as well, but the memory may be foggy)


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## Neonchameleon (Aug 2, 2012)

keterys said:


> This solution keeps the thing I most dislike "sidestepping the journey, loading up with all possible bonuses and ambushing a target" without the thing I do like "emergency button to prevent TPK".
> 
> I'd like the reverse, please.




Very very easy.  You can only teleport _to_ the location of a teleportation circle you know the code to.  Teleportation circles take a week to create or so and are easily broken if they aren't literally carved into rock.  But this means you can teleport back to your stronghold quite easily at the cost of admitting defeat (especially as your fastest way back to where you were is now Phantom Steed).

As for teleporting into the BBEG's lair, that's just as easy.  The BBEG needs his own teleport anchor.  You need to somehow steal the password.  And then make it out past the defences - everyone knows the security on teleport circes can be broken (although the hubristic may think it won't happen to them).



GSHamster said:


> Here's another idea:
> 
> Teleporting is very draining on the caster. For one hour after the teleport, the caster cannot cast spells.
> 
> This is not swingy, the teleport is reliable, and useful. At the same time, it's not something wizard likes doing, and you certainly don't want to teleport _into_ danger.




Wanna bet?  Teleport is _just that good_.  Wizard 1 buffs then teleports everyone else in.  Wizard 2 takes part in the combat and then teleports you away.

And [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], Teleport has been known to be an AD&D problem with groups up against the odds - it never has in 4e.


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## Tovec (Aug 2, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Excatly, yet the PCs are the riff-raff trying to get in
> Exactly what I did in my game...except the party gave away the key without realizing what they had; and sooner or later they're going to be expected to go back there...
> (quoted out of order, to combine points)
> 
> ...




By in large it seems we agree then. The couple parts you disliked from my explanation were that there SHOULD be risk of death, which is fine. That is either something that can be amended to the base rule or something that can be stripped from the rule. It is also a relatively minor part. Again, for ME I would disallow the players from going somewhere that wasn't solid ground beneath their feet. I would prefer the spell to simply fail if all other choices are death, as per my version of teleport.

If that doesn't work for you that's fine. Get rid of the off by X miles and replace it with an X chance of death. Seems simple enough. Everything else about my version seems to stand true for both of us.

As far as 1e: You'll have to excuse me because I don't know 1e's version and have never played 1e either. I haven't actually seen anything on this board about how 1e's version works, only that it is better than the broken 3e version. Also, it seems like things may have changed as far as balance from 1e to practically any other version. So simply taking 1e for teleport may not work when used in ALL other versions of DnD. But that is only a possibility instead of an assurance, I just thought I'd mention it.

Small question: if your only objections to my version are that it doesn't have a option for a TPK - which you seem to value and which I despise - is everything else workable or not?

I did bring up how I see interaction with teleportation circles, locks (and keys), party hindrance, accuracy hindrance, issues with length of casting.

Outside of "1e good, 3e bad" I don't actually know your position on the subject Lanefan.


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## Lanefan (Aug 2, 2012)

Tovec said:


> Small question: if your only objections to my version are that it doesn't have a option for a TPK - which you seem to value and which I despise - is everything else workable or not?



Give or take, yes...though my version of teleport would not have an option for TPK unless the party was made up of at most two people, as in my view a caster should only be able to teleport herself and what she is carrying (which could include another person, but not an entire party).



> I did bring up how I see interaction with teleportation circles, locks (and keys), party hindrance, accuracy hindrance, issues with length of casting.



I think my version is simpler in that you can either take it or not - there's no variable based on what you are taking.

Casting length can be whatever suits ya - 1e has it as only two segments which is probably too fast; one round would be fine (keeping in mind its utility as a last-ditch escape spell); ten minutes works in all respects except this.



> Outside of "1e good, 3e bad" I don't actually know your position on the subject Lanefan.



I've tried to explain... 

Here's the 1e version, from the PH (typed by hand as I don't have a scanner; please excuse any typos; and the formatting will be all to hell):

Teleport (Alteration)

Level: 5
Range: Touch
Duration: Instantaneous
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V
Casting Time: 2 segments
Saving Throw: None

Explanation/Description: When this spell is used the magic-user instantly transports himself or herself, along with a certain amount of additional weight which is upon, or being touched by, the spell caster, to a well-known destination.  Distance is not a factor, but inter-plane travel is not possible by means of a teleport spell.  The spell casteris able to teleport a maximum weight of 2500 g.p. equivalence, plus an additional 1500 g.p. weight for each level fo experience above the 10th, i.e. a 13th level magic-user teleports a maximum weight of 7000 g.p. (700 pounds).  If the destination area is very familiar to the magic-user (he or she has a clear mental picture through actual proximity to and studying of the area) it is unlikely that there will be any error in srriving exactly at the place desired.  Lesser known areas (those seen only magically or from a distance) increase the probability of error.  Unfamiliar areas present considerable peril.  This is demonstrated below:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *Probability of Teleporting*
Destination
Area Is . . . . . . . . . . . High . . . . .On Target . . Low[/B]
Very familiar . . . . . . . 01-02. . . . . 03-99 . . . . . 00
Studied carefully . . . . 01-04. . . . . 05-98 . . . . 99-00
Seen casually . . . . . . 01-08. . . . . 09-96 . . . . 97-00
Viewed once . . . . . . . 01-16. . . . . 17-92 . . . . 93-00
Never seen . . . . . . . . 01-32. . . . . 33-84 . . . . 85-00

Teleporting high means the magic-user will arrive 1" above ground for every 1% he or she is below the lowest "On Target" probability - only 2" when the destination area is very familiar, and as high as 32" if the destination area was never seen.  Any low result means the instant death of the magic-user if the area into which he or she teleports is solid.  Note that there is no possibility of teleporting to an area of empty space, i.e. a substantial area of surface must be there, whether a wooden floor, a stone floor, natural ground, etc.

In 1e n" as a distance means n x 10' indoors and n x 10 yards outdoors.  The final clause was put in obviously to prevent people from pre-casting fly or levitate and teleporting to a space well above their intended destination.

But it's the risk of instant death that is the key, and that prevents abuse of the spell.

One thing I just realized: in any edition is it possible to teleport onto a moving target e.g. a ship at sea?

Lanefan


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## keterys (Aug 2, 2012)

Teleport without Error was the same thing, but 2 levels higher without any error, right?


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## tlantl (Aug 2, 2012)

keterys said:


> Teleport without Error was the same thing, but 2 levels higher without any error, right?




Or five levels and 1,365,000 experience points more than the normal teleport  spell. 

Only humans and god-like elves could ever cast the thing without using a scroll and suffering a chance of miscasting the spell. 

In 2e any elf could cast 7th level spells but that was the limit.


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## keterys (Aug 2, 2012)

In theory it was hard to get to high level in every edition, but plenty of people did it. It just happens to usually be the least balanced part of D&D, no matter how you get there


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## Tovec (Aug 2, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Give or take, yes...though my version of teleport would not have an option for TPK unless the party was made up of at most two people, as in my view a caster should only be able to teleport herself and what she is carrying (which could include another person, but not an entire party).



That is true. I didn't realize the 1e method described ONLY the caster themself (plus whatever they are carrying). A lot of posts around here were talking about a spell that can wisk away a party of players, leading to TPK.



> I think my version is simpler in that you can either take it or not - there's no variable based on what you are taking.



Eh, the simpler aspect is debatable, assuming you are using the full version of the spell. Mine is simple, but I took time to explain a lot of the side cases that came up AND to include some aspects that bother me specifically AND to include a way to add in portals.



> Casting length can be whatever suits ya - 1e has it as only two segments which is probably too fast; one round would be fine (keeping in mind its utility as a last-ditch escape spell); ten minutes works in all respects except this.



I don't know what 'two segments' is. My comments about 10 minutes still stands though. I don't like longer casting times to be a factor as I find they rarely work as intended. It seems like all or at least most teleportation spells would be best suited to be one round, or about there. I could live with 1 round/person that is going or something.



> I've tried to explain...
> 
> Here's the 1e version, from the PH (typed by hand as I don't have a scanner; please excuse any typos; and the formatting will be all to hell):
> 
> ...



Thanks for the pull. I didn't notice anything glaring, but I also didn't understand parts of that. I don't blame you I think it is obviously due to the differences in edition that causes my confusion.

From a quick read through this seems similar to 3e's version. What is the major aspect that is different for you? Is it the "caster only" clause? I don't remember the '' above the ground caveat either so maybe that is it.



> But it's the risk of instant death that is the key, and that prevents abuse of the spell.



Key for you. I find there are a number of other things that could avoid abuse. At best I think we'll have to agree that there are a number of ways to handle this, based solely on personal taste. I personally dislike when players die from an unforunate single roll. I understand it when it is a failed save because there is usually a fight that leads up to that moment. When it happens with a failed... well no, not failed but just an unlucky roll on a successful casting then I don't especially like it. For me a chance of being not where you intended but close gets rid of almost all the bugs so I thought I'd propose it.

Again, higher level casters going solo to a very familiar place will end up either exactly where they wanted or near where they wanted. It is once you start adding in the other aspects, like more people, more weight, unfamiliarity and so on that I find it more acceptable to be further and further off target.

My favourite aspect of my solution which doesn't really seem to occur with yours is that you are almost always off target. You can be close but rarely are you going to be exactly where you want. It immediately gets rid of the scry/teleport problem. It gets rid of the problem of knowing someone is some place and teleporting in as (in mine) you'll always be off target.

With yours you might die teleporting in but chances are you'll end up where you intended. Again, I have to think that the 1e might work with a 1e mindset on spells, but if you have MORE capability in combat then being solo doesn't really hurt you like it used to back in 1e.

I also want to say that I'm open to objections or alterations on my idea. I don't think its the greatest but I don't see objections to the base idea EXCEPT that it doesn't allow for someone to die while performing it - which was actually a goal and can be easily fixed by reintroducing a "roll bad and you die" percentage. What is the problem with the base goal of "almost always being off target, close perhaps but off target"? Personally it just seems that it isn't your cup of tea. That is fine but it isn't really a criticism that I can work on.



> One thing I just realized: in any edition is it possible to teleport onto a moving target e.g. a ship at sea?
> 
> Lanefan




Any edition? No idea. Any version? Hells yes.
Actually can't the 3e version do it if you are familiar with the captain's chambers or something? Its an instantaneous effect that happens on your turn, the ship isn't really moving during your turn as far as that matters.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Right back at ya I guess.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Actually no it is not right back at me the big difference is I am suggesting dials and options to allow DMs to customize the spell to the game or to not use at all. You on the other hand want it just gone from the game and replaced by portals even though as I have said that may not fit every campaign. 

Sounding like a broken record here but not everyone has a problem or thinks the spell is broken. 

I think wands are way to cheap in 3E it was one of the major flaws that I thinks needs to be addressed in the new edition. 

This old argument is going to get us no where a lot of people think wizards are over powered and a lot of us don't and there does not seem to be any middle ground here. I would rather handle something like that as the DM rather than have it hard wired in the rules and ed up with classes that they did in 4E.

I been around this topic to many times lately and I know it will generate 35 pages of examples and counter examples and in the end someone will get testy and the thread will get locked.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Sure, but you could believe others have problems.   There have been people on this thread that have no problems with 3e teleport, some that have problems with 3e teleport but not 1e teleport.  Then there some others who have had problems with at-whim teleport period.
> 
> For example, I can tell you that I once gave an aerie full of wyverns to players but they didn't fly them once because I didn't give it to them before the wizard learned teleport and fly.   I couldn't very well give them to them much earlier, otherwise the wyverns would have been more powerful than the PC's.  So just when overland flight on the backs of monsters becomes a viable option to PC's, teleport renders it obsolete.
> 
> ...




If my players had a choice of griffins mounts or teleport the griffin mounts would win hands down. Why because it would be just that much more fun.

If your players are scrying and frying maybe you should ask them why they want to avoid  all the cool stuff on the way. 

If the players love this tactic and they don't want to deal with travel and encounters then my question is why is this a wrong way to play. 

I know DMs complain that it breaks their carefully crafted encounters well maybe the players just don't want to play that way. And this sounds like a play style issue. 

Plenty of groups I know don't have an issue because the players are not interested in always taking the easy way out because that is not fun they don't go looking for ways to circumvent what the DM has planned. 

If your players like scry and fry and you don't discuss it with them maybe there is a play style difference and you can work out or maybe you can just go with it and design encounters around it. Or maybe you these are not the right players for you. 

BTW airships way more cooler and fun than teleport.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

ferratus said:


> Sure, but there is a reason why I joked we could fire the rogue character after we picked up a wand of knock in my last 3e game.  If a major part of the rogue's abilities are overshadowed by a wizard's minor spell slot, then it can be a little emasculating for the skill based rogue.   This is even worse in 1e and 2e where you wouldn't be able to pick a lock reliably until... right about when the wizard picked up a knock spell.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




This is something I don't understand why on earth would you pick up a wand of knock if you have a rogue? And if it was loot why would a DM put one in with a group who has a rogue? 

Sure a wizard with a wand of knock can step all over the rogue's niche but that is not a rule issue that is a player being a dick issue. 

Why is it humiliating that is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. The ring of lock picking that most rogues love has knock on it three times a day so why is it different for a rogue to use the spell then for a wizard to cast? The rogue should know that wizard had to use magic to do what he can do with talent. 

Then in your game make ordinary shields block magic missiles. Make teleport a costly spell. 

If 5E truly has dials it should be possible to turn down the dial on magic or turn it up for a more high magic game.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But how many locks does he actually have to pick in any given day?
> 
> And what if the Wizard writes a few scrolls of Knock, or gets a Wand of Knock? Suddenly it's not really such a limited resource anymore. Also consider - the Thief has his Open Lock skill trained with his skill points. He invested a character resource permanently. The Wizard can decide each day whether he wants to prepare a Knock. If the Wizard knows there are no locks to expect, he can slot something else. If the Rogue knows this, he's still stuck with his ranks in Open Lock / Thievery.
> 
> Maybe you want to do away with Scrolls and Wands? But I hardly believe that, since you also don't want to give up any-distance-and-location Teleports. It seems to me there is no interest (by you at least) in reducing the Wizard's power level, and no interest in raising that of non-spellcaster either to deal with Wizards (see my thread with the fighter-suppresses-magic-protection).




That depends on the game I have seen the rogue have to pick dozens in a day and then not have to pick any. 

Knock has an important job in the game it can be vital for a party that does not have a rogue. It can be a nice back up if the rogue can't get the lock open or in an emergency like get the door open now before the dragon catches us. Usually though most rogues I have seen have an item that lets them cast knock in those kind of cases. 

This is a game and we are all responsible for other people having a good time. So a player who would be making scrolls of knock or wands and just stepping all over the rogue for no other reason that being a super dick who can't share the spotlight is the issue not the spell. 

A lot of these issues are more player issues than rule issues and no matter how much you try to make ironclad rules that can't be abused someone will always find away to be a jerk. So rule number 1 don't play with jerks.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> On teleport: the first published high-level exploration module, Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, has a teleport-nerf written into it. This suggests to me that the designers actually didn't intend teleport to operate as an "adventure-winning" ability. (I assume they thought that it would allow boring/headache-cauasing travel to be skipped, as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has suggested.)
> 
> On Knock: if there is no wizard to cast fireball, the rogue can't take his/her place. So why should the wizard be able to take the rogue's place? And why should the wizard be _better_ at this back-up role than the rogue? Leaving aside the fact that the only time the rogue will be opening locks "all day long" is if s/he is putting on a Houdini performance, the cost for the wizard in learning and memorising a Knock spell is close to trivial - whereas for the rogue it is one of the few class abilities (in AD&D) and/or represents a significant character build investment (in 2nd ed AD&D or 3E).
> 
> ...




And funnily enough not all groups chose to use this tactic. And as I said I think a lot of this is a play style issue and if a group likes to use these tactics why do you want to ruin their fun is your fun as a DM more important than theirs? If they would rather use teleport to get around obstacles and avoid all the encounters but the big boss fight then it seems pretty obvious this the kind of game they want to play in.  Sure yo can stop them by banning the spell or changing it but I have to wonder if this is the best approach wouldn't it make more sense to either run the game they enjoy or find players more suited to your DMing style.

And the rogue at a certain level most certainly can cast fireball from a wand or if he has a necklace of fireballs just pull and toss them. A rogue with use magic device can do a lot of what the wizard does and using a wand does not provoke an AOO like the wizard casting a spell. 

A rogue with one level of bard not only can use magic device but can heal as well as a cleric using a wand. 

I know I keep repeating this but in my 30 years of gaming knock , teleport, the 15 minute work day has never been an issue with any group I have ever played with. The players playing rogues don't sit around feeling humiliated or bummed out that with a spell the wizard can unlock a door better than they can. 

So much of this just seems to be about fairness and making everyone exactly the same. 

But that is only go to happen if everyone can heal, cast magic and do the sneaky things and then why bother having classes at all have one.

The reason I think fighters are boring has nothing at all do with the lack of magical ability it has to do with the fact that unlike most other classes they don't have any skills for use outside of combat and if a game is more than just combat then it can be boring to play a fight as boring as I would think it would be to play a bard in game that had nothing but combat.

Bringing down a wizard powers is not going to make a fighter anymore fun to play if all they can still do is hit things with a sword and nothing  else. So instead of making the fighter more fun to play you have just made the wizard unfun to play. Well they do say misery loves company.


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## Tovec (Aug 2, 2012)

Why oh god why did you need 4 consecutive posts? EDIT: Five!



Elf Witch said:


> That depends on the game I have seen the rogue have to pick dozens in a day and then not have to pick any.



The question of "why does the wizard have a simple spell that is BETTER at doing the rogue-thing than rogues" should still be addressed, regardless of how often it comes up in a given day, simply because it can come up many times in a day or not at all.



> Knock has an important job in the game it can be vital for a party that does not have a rogue. It can be a nice back up if the rogue can't get the lock open or in an emergency like get the door open now before the dragon catches us. Usually though most rogues I have seen have an item that lets them cast knock in those kind of cases.



I'm glad your parties routinely have items of knock for the rogues. Mine never do. The few times they do have items of knock (looking at chimes of opening) is when it is a cool or random treasure instead of "being a dick" as you seem to think. It DOES happen that these items exist. There are numerous ways for the wizard to HAVE or MAKE the item that very simply cuts into the core of what another class has to SPECIALIZE in, which also happens to do it worse than the wizard with a single (low level) spell.



> This is a game and we are all responsible for other people having a good time. So a player who would be making scrolls of knock or wands and just stepping all over the rogue for no other reason that being a super dick who can't share the spotlight is the issue not the spell.



Again, its not a matter of super dick, its a matter of easily accomplished. If fighters (let's say) could heal BETTER than the party cleric then we would be calling foul. Why is it a dick move when someone with that ability (to heal better than the cleric) creates items in order to do just that. Why isn't it just prudent planning?



> A lot of these issues are more player issues than rule issues and no matter how much you try to make ironclad rules that can't be abused someone will always find away to be a jerk. So rule number 1 don't play with jerks.



Right, but BETTER rules are harder to break. Better rules are less likely to be abused from the get go. If you have no interest in fixing broken rules then they will continue to be abused. It isn't a matter of being a jerk but if these situations are well known (which they are given we have the term for it: scry/teleport/fry) then they will continue to be abused unless that rule is fixed.

Also, "don't play with jerks" is good when you can get it but not all of us have that luxury. Sometimes it is a jerk DM and you are a player. Sometimes it is a jerk player when you are a DM. And sometimes it is a jerk player when you are another player. You can quit a game with a bad DM but then you have to find another game. You can kick that player if you are the DM, but hopefully you still have enough to continue playing. Or you can complain to the DM about the jerk player and sometimes nothing comes of it, which leads to you dealing with it or quitting.
BUT if the rule isn't so easily exploited in the first place then you don't need to quit, boot or suffer through. If it isn't an issue then there is nothing to discuss. Not trying to fix the issue doesn't make it go away. Just like not-engaging doesn't stop the jerk from being a jerk.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> That may have been why Teleport was put in the game.  But 3.X style teleport literally ruins worldbuilding.  Which is a good reason to take it back out.  And no, knock doesn't allow parties without rogues to function. They can do that anyway.
> 
> If you want a party with no one who can pick the lock, _kick the door off its hinges_.  Knock was put in because some wizard wanted to be cool or because someone read the spell in a fiction novel.
> 
> ...




If it does not fit your campaign here is an idea take it out. A lot of spells can ruin world building raise dead for one, speak to dead another, how about remove disease try and have a good plague with a bunch of pesky clerics around undoing all your hard work at spreading disease. 

The answer is not to just strip every possible spell that could in some way possibly ruin a campaign out of the book. The answer is to have rules that give the DM the ability to tailor things for his game. 

So you need to be as quiet as possible to get through the locked door so now the party has a choice make as much noise breaking a door down and if it is magically locked that is going to be difficult.  I guess you could teleport past the door oh wait teleport has been taken out as well. Lets hope the cleric has the the ability to stone shape or has that been taken out because who needs a rogue to pick locks when the cleric can just detect traps and then stone shape doors. 

I have played in games without rogues and not being able to get around locks other than making a lot of noise becomes very frustrating. The only time I have ever really seen knock used was either in a game with no rogue or as back up for the rogue who asks the wizard to cast it. 

And if there is no danger than a rogue just takes 20 and the door opens as easily as if with knock and other then time no resources have been spent. 

Ah yes the because I and some others have an issue it means that the rules are badly written and the people who don't have an issue with it well to bad the rules should be changed for us because we are the squeaky wheels. Well WOTC listened to all the squeakers last time and yet here we are facing another new edition that promises to fix everything that was wrong before and make a game that everyone will love. 


Have I not said many times that teleport should be in the DMG with advice on how to use it or not use for the style of campaign the DM wants to run.


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## Black Knight Irios (Aug 2, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> [...]
> I very much disagree.  Once players see something in the PH banning that thing becomes difficult; impossible in some groups.
> 
> Lanefan




I totally understand that argument. The banning is still easier because I relate 'easier' to the fact that you have just to say 'no teleport in my game' you can give a reason or not probably a reason is better if you know your group argues a lot. 
If you have a group that argues a lot than 'enforcing' or making them follow your decision is the 'hard' part.

Remember my idea for disclaimers for certain spells, that would help for sure when facing opposition to banning by your group.

The 'difficult' part for the other option is you have to create the spell yourself or together with your group. 
And please don't assume that everyone is a hyper experienced DM that can pull out the spell within 2s from his mind while sleeping.


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## Elf Witch (Aug 2, 2012)

Tovec said:


> Why oh god why did you need 4 consecutive posts? EDIT: Five!
> 
> 
> The question of "why does the wizard have a simple spell that is BETTER at doing the rogue-thing than rogues" should still be addressed, regardless of how often it comes up in a given day, simply because it can come up many times in a day or not at all.
> ...




I am sorry you don't like how I choose to post which is to read and post as I go. If it bothers you so much there is a feature here called ignore I suggest you use it.

Not everyone is as computer savvy as others and I have never figured out how to break up a post into sections and quote under each section much less on multiple posts. 


It has been addressed over and over and over the designers changed it in 4E yet here we are still addressing it. 

Knock is another one of those spells that needs to be handled by the DM and his players. Like teleport there could be different version for those of you j who just hate the idea of it, make it a ritual or make it just give the person a plus to pick lock or don't have it in your game at all.

I like knock being in the game as it is in 3E. I would rather players just use some courtesy and only use it when there is no rogue in the party. As a back up. As A DM I want to be able to run an adventure where people actually lock doors without making it impossible for the party to function without a rogue. 

Knock is one way to do that another is to let any character choose open lock as a skill. 

I think that wands should be able to be used by anyone who has the trigger word and I would love to see the heal skill actually give back some hit points.


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## Lwaxy (Aug 2, 2012)

the Jester said:


> How do you think 5e should handle teleportation?





Generally, it's been fine as is. So many ways for the GM to curb it if needed, so asides from information about how to possibly handle problems, nothing needs to change IMO.


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## pemerton (Aug 2, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> If they would rather use teleport to get around obstacles and avoid all the encounters but the big boss fight then it seems pretty obvious this the kind of game they want to play in.



For me, it's also about the game presenting a coherent model for play. For example, if the expectatin is that the GM is meant to be in charge of scene framing, and that his/her job is to make life hard for the PCs (thereby putting pressure on the players to which they must respond as part of playing the game) then the inclusion of a teleport spell can be counterproductive.

Plus it has other unhappy consequences of the sort that   [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has described.

In the end I don't care if it turns up somewhere in a module. But if the game is build around teleport as a core conceit, or a presupposition of play, it is less likely that the game will appeal to me.

One suggestion from   [MENTION=95493]Tovec[/MENTION] is to focus on the "off target" chance. My concern with that is that - unless you are playing a heavily-mapped sandbox - this can come close to "teleport into boring session", as the GM has nothing particularly to offer as a challenge for a party that arrives 15 miles from their destination. I would actually prefer something like the following variant: the GM chooses a destination for the teleport (anywhere from ontarget to a random location); the player then makes a skill check (probably Arcana in 4e) and if successful gets to choose whether the PC teleports there or not; if the check is failed then the PC ends up in the GM's chosen place.

Linked portals/teleport circles, on the other hand - as   [MENTION=55966]ferratus[/MENTION],   [MENTION=95493]Tovec[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] have described them - seem fine to me. They still leave the GM in charge of scene framing (because s/he gets to decide where the NPC-created circles are).



Elf Witch said:


> the rogue at a certain level most certainly can cast fireball from a wand or if he has a necklace of fireballs just pull and toss them. A rogue with use magic device can do a lot of what the wizard does and using a wand does not provoke an AOO like the wizard casting a spell.
> 
> A rogue with one level of bard not only can use magic device but can heal as well as a cleric using a wand.



In AD&D this is not true.

In 3E I don't really understand this. Wouldn't I just be bettter off being a wizard (perhaps with a level of bard also) than a rogue? Then I wouldn't need to spend skill points on Use Magic Device, and I would have spells as well! Plus there is the more general weirdness that the way the rogue becomes a viable PC is by doing the non-roguey thing of pretending to be a wizard.



Elf Witch said:


> So you need to be as quiet as possible to get through the locked door so now the party has a choice make as much noise breaking a door down and if it is magically locked that is going to be difficult.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I have played in games without rogues and not being able to get around locks other than making a lot of noise becomes very frustrating.



I've been in situations where a fireball would be handy and there is no wizard. That's part of the point of a class-based game - you work around the abilities you don't have!



Elf Witch said:


> It has been addressed over and over and over the designers changed it in 4E yet here we are still addressing it.



Huh? Who thinks that teleport (ie the portal rituals) or knock causes a problem in 4e?



Elf Witch said:


> So much of this just seems to be about fairness and making everyone exactly the same.
> 
> But that is only go to happen if everyone can heal, cast magic and do the sneaky things and then why bother having classes at all have one.



Huh? _You're_ the one saying that wizards have to be the same as rogues (ie have an open lock ability). And that rogues should be the same as clerics (by using wands of cure spells).

My point has consistently been - if you don't have a rogue, then I guess you won't be picking any locks. Find another way around! Just like, if there's no wizard, you won't be doing any fireballing. Find another way to kill those orcs!

For the first 5 levels of play the PCs in my 4e game didn't have a leader (ie a dedicated healer). They worked around it - finding other methods of recovering or mitigating damage.



Elf Witch said:


> Bringing down a wizard powers is not going to make a fighter anymore fun to play if all they can still do is hit things with a sword and nothing  else. So instead of making the fighter more fun to play you have just made the wizard unfun to play. Well they do say misery loves company.



Are you really saying that the wizard is not fun to play if it doesn't get access to abilities that overlap and overshadow the niches of other classes?


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## Lanefan (Aug 2, 2012)

Tovec said:


> That is true. I didn't realize the 1e method described ONLY the caster themself (plus whatever they are carrying).



It's done to a weight limit - a 9th level caster can take 250 lbs (it's not specifically stated but my assumption is this limit does include the caster's own weight; thus an excessively fat caster might not get much use out of this spell until 11th or even 12th level!) - the limit goes up by 150 lbs at 11th level and each level thereafter.


> AND to include a way to add in portals.



I'm not at all concerned about portals, tele-sites, gates, etc. for these purposes - just the spell.  All the other things are fixed in place.


> I don't know what 'two segments' is.



1e as written used a rather strange way of timing things.  A round (1 minute) was subdivided into segments, only thing was there were two different types of segments - 10 per round for spellcasting (so 6 seconds each) and 6 per round (10 seconds each) for everything else.  Thus, a spell with a 2 segment cast time would take about 12 seconds to cast, very fast for a 5th level spell.


> From a quick read through this seems similar to 3e's version. What is the major aspect that is different for you? Is it the "caster only" clause? I don't remember the '' above the ground caveat either so maybe that is it.



The biggest difference, other than what can be taken along for the ride, is the risk of deadly failure. (the risk of potentially painful failure by appearing too high is another difference, but that's easy to get around)


> Key for you. I find there are a number of other things that could avoid abuse. At best I think we'll have to agree that there are a number of ways to handle this, based solely on personal taste. I personally dislike when players die from an unforunate single roll. I understand it when it is a failed save because there is usually a fight that leads up to that moment. When it happens with a failed... well no, not failed but just an unlucky roll on a successful casting then I don't especially like it.



Fair enough, but one can just put it under the high-risk high-reward category.  A caster using the spell is going to know there's a chance, however slight, of messing it up; to avoid teleport becoming SOP the failure consequences have to - at least sometimes - be nasty.  


> For me a chance of being not where you intended but close gets rid of almost all the bugs so I thought I'd propose it.



Having to walk a few extra miles isn't nasty. 


> My favourite aspect of my solution which doesn't really seem to occur with yours is that you are almost always off target. You can be close but rarely are you going to be exactly where you want. It immediately gets rid of the scry/teleport problem. It gets rid of the problem of knowing someone is some place and teleporting in as (in mine) you'll always be off target.



As a player I know I'd just find that to be annoying, particularly if it happened every time.  As a DM - meh, still annoying, as now I have to dream up possible encounters for the intervening distance if needed.


> Actually can't the 3e version do it if you are familiar with the captain's chambers or something? Its an instantaneous effect that happens on your turn, the ship isn't really moving during your turn as far as that matters.



I guess it depends on whether the spell is looking for the particular surroundings wheverver they may be or a fixed GPS-style location.

If I've seen the inside of the Queen's carriage can I teleport there without knowing whether ithe carriage is currently in London or Birmingham?  By the same token, if I know the inside of the captain's chambers can I teleport there without knowing where the ship actually is?

Lanefan


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 2, 2012)

*Teleport* (Level 5 Wizard spell)Casting Time: Variable

Teleport allows you to travel instantly between two locations. Most teleports are between teleportation circles or portals, but experienced casters can also cast the spell at a higher level to gain more powerful versions of the spell.
_GM Note: The GM Notes for this spell indicate the likely consequences these spells have on your campaign and adventure design as they become available. If you dislike some of the consequences, you may want to adjust component cost, casting time or disallow certain variations of the spell entirely. Generally, the point at which you allow Teleportation to occur in your campaign marks the point where overland travel becomes a non-issue. Disallowing Teleporation or making it very difficult allows you keep travelling relevant to your campaign. Allowing Teleporation on the other hand allows the party to react quickly to new events and allows you to place adventures anywhere in your campaign world, potentially even making teleporation a neccessity for the party to achieve their goals._

*Craft Teleportation Circle* (Cast as Level 5 spell/Ritual) 
Casting Time: 8 hours
Component Cost: 1,000 gp
You create a teleportation circle with an area between a 5 ft radius to a 20 ft radius (your choice). The circle can be disrupted by altering or removing the markings you made, or by destroying the foundation it is build on. Reparing a damaged circle takes only 10 % of the time and component cost.

You are the only person that knows the sigil sequence needed to teleport to this portal, you can freely share this key with other people. 

You can designate this circle as your "arcane refuge". You can have only one such refuge of this type at a time. As an arcane refuge, you have special privileges - the circle is automatically protected by a Magic Circle and Alarm within its boundary, and you are aware if someone uses the portal. You can augment the teleporation circle protection with further spells.

Other creatures can analyze the portal to identify you. If the portal is your _refuge_, it can also be used as a physical connection to you, similar to a hair lock or a drop of blood.

_GM Note: This spell is simply for explaining how teleporation circles even form, and the arcane refuge special ability is for the Teleport to Refuge spell - but can also serve its own purpose. By establishing a "guarded" teleporation circle at their home base, the players can feel a bit safer - the tidbit with it serving also as a physical connection can still keep them paranoid - someone may infiltrate their base and find something that would otherwise be very hard to obtain. But it also establishes a potential weakness about enemy spellcasters that have a "home base"._

*Teleport to Refuge* (Cast as Level 6 spell)
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Component Cost: None
You teleport yourself and up to 8 creatures weighing no more than 1,000 lbs to your Arcane Refuge. 
_GM Note_: _This version of the spell allows the party to retreat to a save haven they created previously. It allows them to retreat in a dangerous situation with little chance of their opponent catching up._ _But they will now have to think about how they can get back to wherever they were last. This spell also can cut overland travel short if the party often needs to get home._

*Linked Portal *(Cast as Level 5 spell/Ritual)
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Component Cost: 100 gp
You teleport yourself and up ot 8 creatures weighing no more than 1,000 lbs to any other Teleporation Cricle whose sigil sequence you know. If you are casting this spell while on a portal, you can teleport twice the number of creatures and weight, or reduce the casting time to 1 minute.
_GM Note_: _This version of the spell allows great distance travel. As the DM, you have control about where such portals may exist, but keep in mind that Linked Portal is likely to reduce the amount and impact of overland travel in your campaign._

*Greater Teleport* (Cast as Level 7 spell)
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Component Cost: 500 gp
You teleport to any location that you have previously visited with perfect accuracy.
If you have only a description of the location or using a diviniation spell or ritual to view the location, you can only land within 3d6-2 miles of the target location. 
You and everyone teleporting with you are stunned for one round after the Teleport.

If you are at the location of a Teleportation circle, the casting time is reduced to a standard action. 
_GM Note: This version of the spell allows great distance travel at low risk. Once this spell becomes avaialble, long distance travel is probably no longer a challenge in your campaign._


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## wrightdjohn (Aug 2, 2012)

Well here is my two cents worth....

Here is how I'd handle teleport

Teleport starts out as caster only, 25 feet range, line of sight.   This could be a level 1 daily.

At higher levels, the range grows.  But only at the highest levels does it span continents (18+).   Teleportation Circles can be used as an augmenting device for the spell that increases range.  For those that dislike 

If you teleport to someplace you have never seen IN PERSON you are stunned for d6 rounds.   You must know where a place is at to teleport there.  

At higher levels you can trade range for additional passengers.  Those passengers are automatically stunned d6 rounds.  I might allow for magic items that reduce or eliminate this at higher levels.   Like a helm of teleportation.  I might (might now) allow fellow wizards who have the spell prepared go along without being stunned if they have IN PERSON seen the destination.


My Scrying Limitations
1.  It has a range based upon level.  Even 18+ wizards though can only do it 50 miles.
2.  You only see the immediate area of the target and cannot zoom out or in.  If that's not enough info to know where the target is at then that's tough.  So teleportation is not possible from a scry unless you already know of the area.

Clairvoyance
1.  You must select a specific spot to view.  As such you could already teleport to that spot.  This spell does not count as viewing IN PERSON.


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## wrightdjohn (Aug 2, 2012)

I believe in absolute positioning for teleport.  So a captains cabin can't be teleported into without knowing where the ship is at.  Scrying is different.  It allows the captain to be the target and that can show you his cabin but you still can't teleport there unless you know where the ship is at.


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## wrightdjohn (Aug 2, 2012)

Tovec said:


> Also, "don't play with jerks" is good when you can get it but not all of us have that luxury. Sometimes it is a jerk DM and you are a player. Sometimes it is a jerk player when you are a DM. And sometimes it is a jerk player when you are another player. You can quit a game with a bad DM but then you have to find another game. You can kick that player if you are the DM, but hopefully you still have enough to continue playing. Or you can complain to the DM about the jerk player and sometimes nothing comes of it, which leads to you dealing with it or quitting.
> BUT if the rule isn't so easily exploited in the first place then you don't need to quit, boot or suffer through. If it isn't an issue then there is nothing to discuss. Not trying to fix the issue doesn't make it go away. Just like not-engaging doesn't stop the jerk from being a jerk.




I am always amazed at the belief that rules can keep DMs or players from being jerks.  Jerkiness is part of their character.  While you might over time change that, I really do think that "don't play with jerks" is the best policy.   

As DM, I don't even allow debates at the table.  We can discuss any ruling on non-game time.  If I think the argument is a good one then I change in the future.  If I think my ruling turned out really bad for the player then I make it up.  That is rare though due to experience DMing if nothing else.  This rule is the best rule ever for DMs.  Just don't let it start.  

Here is the conversation....

1.  The fireball explodes.  Save for half damage Rorik.
2.  Hey I'm outside the area of effect of a fireball.
3.  While you contemplated how in the world a fireball could reach you, you failed to dodge out of the way of the fireball.


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## Neonchameleon (Aug 2, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> If your players are scrying and frying maybe you should ask them why they want to avoid all the cool stuff on the way.




Because they are y'know, actually roleplaying?  Because in character they are taking threats seriously and want to take them out efficiently and safely and, most of all, don't want to die?  Scry and Fry is their best way to stay alive and beat the bad guys - and they can go griffon riding when things _aren't_ threatening the world.

It's like Mass Effect.  Shepherd is presented by this race against time in character.  Which means that in character based on the fiction you chase Saren down as fast as possible.  But if you are playing against the metagame resolution system you don't do this.  You survey half the planets in the galaxy for minerals, and the absolute last places you visit are the ones with main plot on them.

There's a huge disconnect between doing what's smart and matches the fiction (Scry and Fry) and doing what gives the most fun (exploration).  And these are two things that should not be in conflict.



> Plenty of groups I know don't have an issue because the players are not interested in always taking the easy way out because that is not fun they don't go looking for ways to circumvent what the DM has planned.




Plenty of _Player Characters_ therefore are willing to stake the fate of the world on them having fun beating things up.  It's a case of either OOC you can be a jerk and scry and fry or IC you can be a jerk and gamble with the fate of [wherever] needlessly.  I don't want to be forced to make that choice.



> BTW airships way more cooler and fun than teleport.




Which is why if one of my characters wants a honeymoon they will take an airship.  If they want to save the world or stop the bad guy, they will go for effective over cool.

Airships may be cool - but they are also sitting ducks.



Elf Witch said:


> Usually though most rogues I have seen have an item that lets them cast knock in those kind of cases.




Thus making them even _more_ redundant because other people could be carrying those items.



Elf Witch said:


> So you need to be as quiet as possible to get through the locked door so now the party has a choice make as much noise breaking a door down and if it is magically locked that is going to be difficult.




So you pry it off its hinges.  Next question: Why do you _need_ to do it quietly?  To not alert the guards?  Either that's a luxury or this is a railroad plot.  If it's a luxury then why does the wizard need Knock?


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## tlantl (Aug 2, 2012)

I wonder how many players actually read the scry spell after seeing that scrying an area was sufficient to reduce the chance of mishap to studied carefully. if they ever really did they would find that they couldn't actually do it. the spell's duration is 1 minute per level. Studying closely takes an hour. 

Each casting of the scry spell takes an hour. It also requires some intimate knowledge of the  person being scryed upon or that person gets a significant bonus to their save vs the spell. 

I'd say that half of the problem with this method of assault is really bad interpretation of the spells involved. 

It would help if the weight limit was measured from the caster's current level rather than just saying that for every three levels they can take another body along, since this alone would make such travel as a group impossible without at least two casters until the caster was around 18th level.

I actually had to read the spell three times before I realized there was no stipulation on the caster's current level as there was in the past. Seems to me to be a major faux pas.

As for using the spell to bypass all of the stuff in between, well it's going to happen. If the party wants to play this way they certainly have that option but as I see it they are really just cutting their own throats. Teleporting to the main chamber to fight the arch fiend means they don't get the experience points or treasure from all of the stuff they bypassed. This leaves the others to regroup and carry on as before, maybe even resurrecting their fearless leader, but someone is certainly going to fill that void.

As a short term tactic it might be the answer but in the long run it only serves to make reaching him the second time all that harder since he won't be so easily scryed the next time.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 2, 2012)

tlantl said:


> Teleporting to the main chamber to fight the arch fiend means they don't get the experience points or treasure from all of the stuff they bypassed.



The characters don't know about experience points. But they know about catching the enemy off-guard being usually advantageous.

Again, metagame and fiction come in an unnneccessary conflict. If it wasn't such a damn common tactic once it's available, you should actually give your players all that experience points for the monsters they cirvumvented, because they proved how clever they were in ignoring the enemies defenses. In 3E and 4E, XP was usually gained for overcoming challenges (4E also added story awards for achieving goals), not just for bringing down every enemy they found to 0 hit points. Not that I'd be really advocating this, but if we _really _want to reward "smart play", we shouldn't demand the players to hack down every monster they ever see. We should reward them for circumventing them and avoid unnecessary dangers by their cleverness. If they know there is a Troll guarding the bridge, they shouldn't be only compelled to scream "XP" and charge in - it would be nice if they had a reason to find an alternate, safer route. Scry & Fry is just the uber-lame variant of this, because it involves no real thinking anymore, just pressing the right buttons on your character sheet.


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## tlantl (Aug 2, 2012)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> The characters don't know about experience points. But they know about catching the enemy off-guard being usually advantageous.
> 
> Again, metagame and fiction come in an unnneccessary conflict. If it wasn't such a damn common tactic once it's available, you should actually give your players all that experience points for the monsters they cirvumvented, because they proved how clever they were in ignoring the enemies defenses. In 3E and 4E, XP was usually gained for overcoming challenges (4E also added story awards for achieving goals), not just for bringing down every enemy they found to 0 hit points. Not that I'd be really advocating this, but if we _really _want to reward "smart play", we shouldn't demand the players to hack down every monster they ever see. We should reward them for circumventing them and avoid unnecessary dangers by their cleverness. If they know there is a Troll guarding the bridge, they shouldn't be only compelled to scream "XP" and charge in - it would be nice if they had a reason to find an alternate, safer route. Scry & Fry is just the uber-lame variant of this, because it involves no real thinking anymore, just pressing the right buttons on your character sheet.




At my table they would get squat. 

If leaving a major threat in place is the same as overcoming it then you are welcome to give all the awards you want. 

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I don't usually set up great plot lines where the main antagonist is apparent. Sometimes this is a good change of pace but seldom do I use world shattering events or powerful, easily found bad guys. Sometimes the bad guy is really just a powerful merchant with a sense of humor. Killing him off would take a whole hell of a lot more than just suddenly appearing in his living room. And most are like him. They ain't super powerful and dangerous because they're stupid.


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## Dausuul (Aug 2, 2012)

This is the sort of thing I'd like to see in the way of teleportation spells, from lowest to highest level. "Foundation stones" are rare and expensive material components which cannot be teleported--any attempt to teleport or travel to another plane while carrying a foundation stone simply fails. (The goal is to ensure that you can't use personal teleportation spells to get where you want to be, then build a portal or establish a sanctuary and bring all your friends. There are other ways this could be handled, but foundation stones seemed like a solution that was both elegant and flavorful.)

*Low-Level (1-3)*
_Blink_: You teleport up to 50 feet. You cannot take other living creatures with you, and you must have line of sight to the destination.
_Desperate Escape_: Up to 12 willing subjects within 25 feet teleport to a random location. Roll 1d8 to determine the direction and 3d6 x 100 feet to determine distance. If this would land you inside a solid object, you are shunted to the nearest empty space. Casting this spell is incredibly stressful; it expends all of your remaining spell slots and stuns you for 1d4 rounds.

*Mid-Level (4-5)*
_Dimension Door_: You teleport up to 400 feet. You cannot take other living creatures with you, but do not need line of sight to the destination.
_Command Portal_: You temporarily open or close a teleportation portal. The change lasts for 5 minutes, after which the portal reverts to its previous state. An open portal can be used by travelers from either end.
_Plane Shift_: This is actually multiple spells, one for each destination plane. Up to 12 willing subjects within 25 feet travel to a parallel plane such as the Feywild or the Plane of Shadow. They arrive at a location matching their departure point. Another casting is required to return to the plane of origin. Parallel planes can often be used to cover distance more rapidly or avoid obstacles, but they contain hazards of their own.

*High-Level (6-7)*
_Familiar Teleport_: You teleport to any location on the same plane where you have physically been present. You cannot take other living creatures with you.
_Portal Mastery_: You permanently open or close a teleportation portal. An open portal can be used by travelers from either end.
_Planar Travel_: This is actually multiple spells, one for each destination plane. Up to 12 willing subjects within 25 feet travel to a transitory plane such as the Elemental Chaos or the Astral Plane. They arrive next to a one-way portal back to their departure point. This portal lasts for 1d6+6 days before dissipating. Transitory planes can be used to travel to more distant realms such as the Abyss or the elemental planes.
_Sanctuary:_ Up to 12 willing subjects within 25 feet of you are teleported to your prepared sanctuary. Preparing a sanctuary takes 1 week and requires a foundation stone. You can only have one sanctuary at a time. 

*Extreme High-Level (8-9)*
_Create Portal_: You create two linked teleportation portals. Before the spell can be cast, the portals must be physically constructed; each one takes 1 week to build and requires a foundation stone. The portal is created in an inactive state, but you can activate or deactivate it by concentrating for 1 round.
_True Teleport_: You teleport to any location on the same plane. You cannot take other living creatures  with you.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Aug 2, 2012)

tlantl said:


> At my table they would get squat.
> 
> If leaving a major threat in place is the same as overcoming it then you are welcome to give all the awards you want.



Well, I did specifically state that they killed the major threat, didn't I? The evil bad guy that was leading it all is dead after the scry & fry. His minions - well, maybe we mop them up later, or maybe not.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 2, 2012)

wrightdjohn said:


> I am always amazed at the belief that rules can keep DMs or players from being jerks. Jerkiness is part of their character. While you might over time change that, I really do think that "don't play with jerks" is the best policy.




I think if we get too broad and discuss the very generic topic of "jerkdom within humanity" that does not help us to diagnose the very specific underpinnings of the question (i) "with regards to teleportation usage in DnD, what is (are) the root cause (s) of jerkdom" and then attempt to resolve it by ruminating upon the question of (ii) "how can we limit/end this jerkdom?"  Within the scope of question (i), there are specific issues that can be zeroed in on.  If that is true, then there are specific resolutions that may be attempted to curtail the offender's _*access*_ to the means that allow them to indulge in the behavior.  That way you don't have to _*hope*_ that punitive measures or social operative conditioning do the trick.

In every area of life, you could apply the exact opposite of the "precautionary principle" and just throw up your hands and vaguely say:  "Well, jerkdom is intrinsic to being human.  There are no policy or infrastructural provisions or revisions that will change this reality and operatively condition jerkdom out of humanity.  Therefore, do nothing on the macro-policy/infrastructural/mechanical level and just handle everything on a micro basis."  Both extremes (absolute adherence to the "precautionary principle" or to its opposite philosophy) are not particularly helpful to a profound understanding of life issues as they basically promote lack of scrutiny and intellectual apathy.  What follows is lack of progress (where needed) or a lack of conservation (where needed).


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## keterys (Aug 2, 2012)

I think there's a difference between making it impossible to be a jerk, and helping things along.

The recent Olympics badminton thing is a good example where the rules of a game encouraged people to do something unfun and jerkish, and the "DMs" had to step in. It'd be _way_ better if the system itself were setup to stop that in the first place.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 2, 2012)

keterys said:


> I think there's a difference between making it impossible to be a jerk, and helping things along.
> 
> The recent Olympics badminton thing is a good example where the rules of a game encouraged people to do something unfun and jerkish, and the "DMs" had to step in. It'd be _way_ better if the system itself were setup to stop that in the first place.




Absolutely, that is a good anecdote to express my point. Rather than depending upon the notion of pride and "good faith" sportsmanship to curtail such behavior as throwing a match to manipulate seeding, it would be much better if it was expressly forbidden within the written framework of the competition.

However, given how often Teleport affects games (both in spirit and in functional play), I think an example more endemic (such as doping) to the philosophy of "fairness in and legitimacy of competition" would map slightly better.


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## Dausuul (Aug 2, 2012)

Manbearcat said:


> I think if we get too broad and discuss the very generic topic of "jerkdom within humanity" that does not help us to diagnose the very specific underpinnings of the question (i) "with regards to teleportation usage in DnD, what is (are) the root cause (s) of jerkdom" and then attempt to resolve it by ruminating upon the question of (ii) "how can we limit/end this jerkdom?"  Within the scope of question (i), there are specific issues that can be zeroed in on.  If that is true, then there are specific resolutions that may be attempted to curtail the offender's _*access*_ to the means that allow them to indulge in the behavior.  That way you don't have to _*hope*_ that punitive measures or social operative conditioning do the trick.



I don't think it's particularly productive to focus on "jerks." Rather, let's ask this: Assume players who are not trying to be jerks, but who _are_ roleplaying intelligent characters who naturally want to achieve the party's goals with minimum risk and maximum efficiency. The rules should be designed with the idea that players who adopt this approach can have a functional game. There should not be a tradeoff between roleplaying and fun.

A 3E wizard loses essentially nothing by learning _knock_ and preparing a few scrolls of it. At higher levels, you can dispense with the scrolls and just use a couple of 2nd-level spell slots. So, a smart wizard would do exactly that. The players may worry about the spotlight, but their characters would not; surviving the adventure is more important than everyone being able to contribute equally. If you were in a commando team alongside Captain America, which would you prefer? Cap holds back so everyone else gets a chance to shine? Or Cap exerts himself to the utmost, so everyone comes home alive?

Likewise, teleportation that allows scry'n'die tactics and bypassing overland travel would be used for exactly that by any sensible PC.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Aug 2, 2012)

Teleportation has never been an issue for me. The point where it obviates an obstacle or overland travel denotes a transition point in the group's power level and achievments. And if this strains against the theme of your world (like Darksun) then remove that spell from the list of those available. Not every spell need have been developed on every world or there may be good reason why it wasn't.

As for Scry-Buff-Teleport, don't change Teleport, change the nature of Scrying. It seems _awefully_ powerful to me to be able to reach into nothingness to locate that ancient red dragon you're searching for. SBT has never been a problem in my games because I keep scrying results very nebulous. Your are at best seeing disjointed visions of what you seek, like a dream state, not a direct video link into the dragon's bedroom. Nothing I'd allow a teleport to hone in on, because you've never really seen the target.


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## Black Knight Irios (Aug 2, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I don't think it's particularly productive to focus on "jerks." Rather, let's ask this: Assume players who are not trying to be jerks, but who _are_ roleplaying intelligent characters who naturally want to achieve the party's goals with minimum risk and maximum efficiency. The rules should be designed with the idea that players who adopt this approach can have a functional game. There should not be a tradeoff between roleplaying and fun.
> 
> A 3E wizard loses essentially nothing by learning _knock_ and preparing a few scrolls of it. At higher levels, you can dispense with the scrolls and just use a couple of 2nd-level spell slots. So, a smart wizard would do exactly that. The players may worry about the spotlight, but their characters would not; surviving the adventure is more important than everyone being able to contribute equally. If you were in a commando team alongside Captain America, which would you prefer? Cap holds back so everyone else gets a chance to shine? Or Cap exerts himself to the utmost, so everyone comes home alive?
> 
> Likewise, teleportation that allows scry'n'die tactics and bypassing overland travel would be used for exactly that by any sensible PC.




Nice assessment of the situation. 

Exactly b/c chars should be able to strive for a good ingame performance it should not/never be necessary that the characters have to hold back to allow others to shine/contribute in a meaningful way. 

Class Balance is therefore necessary. 

Not every char should be equally good in every aspect of the game but he should have a niche that is relevant for the story a reasonable amount of time which lets him shine.


And it is more like everyone agreed to play a super heroes group and somehow only the Cap. got super powers (vancian casters) and all others ended up playing ordinary people. Now everyone must depend on the Cap. to make it through. But they never wanted to play that way. It's the systems fault.


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## Tovec (Aug 2, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I am sorry you don't like how I choose to post which is to read and post as I go. If it bothers you so much there is a feature here called ignore I suggest you use it.



I would rather not ignore you as I don't want ignore what you are saying. I would just prefer to read one post rather than 5 (and it would have been 6) all from the same person.



> Not everyone is as computer savvy as others and I have never figured out how to break up a post into sections and quote under each section much less on multiple posts.



I can teach you if you'd like, but in general all I would prefer would be if you were to use the Multi-Quote button. It usually isn't too bad, but 5 (would have been 6) is rather a lot and kind of annoying. Especially since 3 of those were to the same person.



> Knock is another one of those spells that needs to be handled by the DM and his players. Like teleport there could be different version for those of you j who just hate the idea of it, make it a ritual or make it just give the person a plus to pick lock or don't have it in your game at all.



Actually wasn't knock a ritual in 4e and people called foul too? My only point about knock was that it doesn't make sense for a single spell to be better than something a class has to specialize in. If it was weaker than the rogue who put all his attention then that is completely fine for me.



> I like knock being in the game as it is in 3E. I would rather players just use some courtesy and only use it when there is no rogue in the party. As a back up. As A DM I want to be able to run an adventure where people actually lock doors without making it impossible for the party to function without a rogue.



I liked knock in my 3e games too. It rarely came up. But it shouldn't matter about courtesy or not as far as how a spell is written. It shouldn't come down to courtesy NOT to be automatically better at something than the class which is designed to handle that thing.
As a DM I want to run the adventure as the adventure dictates. Sometimes that means a certain class will shine. But I never want to run an adventure dictating the party composition. I might put in locked doors, but picking the lock isn't the only way to deal with it, they can blast through it, muscle it off its hinges, or find another way into the room/corridor in question. That being said, as far as picking locks goes, I want my rogue to be the best at it. Just like I want my fighter to be the best at fighting. If another class can surpass that class in their role, just like a fighter being a better healer than the cleric, then something has gone wrong and needs to be at least looked at.



pemerton said:


> One suggestion from    @Tovec  is to focus on the "off target" chance. My concern with that is that - unless you are playing a heavily-mapped sandbox - this can come close to "teleport into boring session", as the GM has nothing particularly to offer as a challenge for a party that arrives 15 miles from their destination. I would actually prefer something like the following variant: the GM chooses a destination for the teleport (anywhere from ontarget to a random location); the player then makes a skill check (probably Arcana in 4e) and if successful gets to choose whether the PC teleports there or not; *if the check is failed then the PC ends up in the GM's chosen place.*



Actually, I don't run a heavily mapped sandbox, it is rarely mapped at all. I just know that if they were off target then it is no different from the party having to travel by food (albeit from a closer location) when dealing with terrain and random encounters. I never described how or where they would be off target, only HOW FAR. As DM, I would by all means send them to a location that worked best for me.

And as an addendum to my version; maybe the chance of being on target can be higher, or maybe the off target not as extreme. I just wanted the off-target chance to be large enough that the party isn't relying on teleport to immediately get the drop on someone nor are they necessarily avoiding travel entirely. If they are off by hundreds of feet instead of miles then that would work equally as well for me. As I first said, I would actually prefer them to be off-target based on how far they are traveling. Maybe 1% of the total distance is the range of how far off target they could be.



> Linked portals/teleport circles, on the other hand - as    @ferratus ,    @Tovec  and    @Neonchameleon  have described them - seem fine to me. They still leave the GM in charge of scene framing (because s/he gets to decide where the NPC-created circles are).



That was the idea. Also it was to add more of a pinpoint accuracy that some people seem to desire.



> Huh? Who thinks that teleport (ie the portal rituals) or knock causes a problem in 4e?



I don't know about problems with teleport that are exclusive to 4e but I have heard issue with 4e's version of knock. I happen to agree with you - a first for once I think  - but I HAVE heard problems with 4e's knock. Both on the actual effect but also with it being a ritual only (iirc).



Lanefan said:


> It's done to a weight limit - a 9th level caster can take 250 lbs (it's not specifically stated but my assumption is this limit does include the caster's own weight; thus an excessively fat caster might not get much use out of this spell until 11th or even 12th level!) - the limit goes up by 150 lbs at 11th level and each level thereafter.



That's fine. I'm just saying you like the 'caster only' approach but a lot of people seem to want a party tool so everyone can go. I've seen both in many different forms of fiction so I could live with either I'm sure.



> 1e as written used a rather strange way of timing things.  A round (1 minute) was subdivided into segments, only thing was there were two different types of segments - 10 per round for spellcasting (so 6 seconds each) and 6 per round (10 seconds each) for everything else.  Thus, a spell with a 2 segment cast time would take about 12 seconds to cast, very fast for a 5th level spell.



Fair enough.



> The biggest difference, other than what can be taken along for the ride, is the risk of deadly failure. (the risk of potentially painful failure by appearing too high is another difference, but that's easy to get around)]/quote]
> Okay, but if 3e had the fixes of "caster only plus X weight" and "you can die because you can end up 6" under ground" then you're fine with it? I don't think I'm alone in saying that I don't want my player dying so easily on an otherwise successful spell. Especially since there is no way to pull out and since there are better limiting factors to stop players/parties from abusing teleport.
> 
> 
> ...


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## Tovec (Aug 2, 2012)

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> Teleportation has never been an issue for me. The point where it obviates an obstacle or overland travel denotes a transition point in the group's power level and achievments. And if this strains against the theme of your world (like Darksun) then remove that spell from the list of those available. Not every spell need have been developed on every world or there may be good reason why it wasn't.



That doesn't mean there are no other ways of dealing wit the spell simply because you haven't had a problem. A lot of people WANT teleport in their games. I'd say even MOST people on this thread want a simple form of teleport that works for their games but the version we have doesnt work for them. Giving the response of ''ban it in your games'' does not and will not work for everyone.



> As for Scry-Buff-Teleport, don't change Teleport, change the nature of Scrying. It seems _awefully_ powerful to me to be able to reach into nothingness to locate that ancient red dragon you're searching for. SBT has never been a problem in my games because I keep scrying results very nebulous. Your are at best seeing disjointed visions of what you seek, like a dream state, not a direct video link into the dragon's bedroom. Nothing I'd allow a teleport to hone in on, because you've never really seen the target.



The problem isnt just scry buff teleport. It is actually longer and relates to scry buff teleport fry teleport. The problem in that equation is the TELEPORT in and TELEPORT out. If you remove the possibility of teleport in or out then the problem solves itself. My solution is to be off target so you can never teleport in in the first place. Fixing scrying alone won't do the job. Don't get me wrong, we should fix scrying too. It is too powerful as it is but fixing JUST scrying wont work.

Believe it or not I've never had a problem with scry buff teleport either. But I recognize that it exists and I DO have a number of actual issues with teleport that I think need to be addressed as well.

It may be that one solution won't work for everyone but I think that solutions have to be sought after nonetheless.


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## Steely_Dan (Aug 2, 2012)

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> And if this strains against the theme of your world (like Darksun) then remove that spell from the list of those available





In the 1st Ed PHB it explains that a DM may change, augment, diminish, add and/or remove etc spells entirely.


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## keterys (Aug 2, 2012)

At risk of being decried as some kind of anti-gamer... World of Warcraft's treatment of teleport is pretty good.

It's _trivial_ to teleport home.
You otherwise can't portal anywhere unless someone's traveled there already and either summoned you or learned how to portal there. 
It's quite easy, however, to teleport anywhere the caster's been.
It's quite easy to gather allies to a teleport location.

It's extraordinarily difficult to do _any_ of these actions in combat.

So, for example, it'd be difficult to teleport to Mount Doom and drop in the ring. But they'd have probably teleported directly to Minas Tirith and traveled from there.  

In a 4e game recently, I had the party bard sneak and bluff her way into the castle they wanted to assault, find an unused chamber and create a portal. The party then used that portal to linked portal back and forth as needed, albeit with some risk and stealth. So, the teleport was still a very big deal, but it was a far cry from scry + fry, and required actually visiting the location to set things up. Was neat - and not at all what I expected them to do, so they sidestepped a fight or two.


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## Dausuul (Aug 2, 2012)

Tovec said:


> I would rather not ignore you as I don't want ignore what you are saying. I would just prefer to read one post rather than 5 (and it would have been 6) all from the same person. ...
> 
> I can teach you if you'd like, but in general all I would prefer would be if you were to use the Multi-Quote button. It usually isn't too bad, but 5 (would have been 6) is rather a lot and kind of annoying. Especially since 3 of those were to the same person.




The irony here is that this is the beginning of a giant omnibus post where you reply point-by-point to 15 quotes from 4 different people. Eyes... glazing... over...


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## Tovec (Aug 2, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> The irony here is that this is the beginning of a giant omnibus post where you reply point-by-point to 15 quotes from 4 different people. Eyes... glazing... over...




A compromise perhaps is one post per person. Which still would have combined 3 of the 5/6 for him. Not that it is really a point either way.

If it is only a matter of not knowing then that knowledge can be acquired, I'll teach him/her. If it is a matter of PREFERRING it that way then that is something entirely different Dausuul.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 2, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> The irony here is that this is the beginning of a giant omnibus post where you reply point-by-point to 15 quotes from 4 different people. Eyes... glazing... over...






Tovec said:


> A compromise perhaps is one post per person. Which still would have combined 3 of the 5/6 for him. Not that it is really a point either way.
> 
> If it is only a matter of not knowing then that knowledge can be acquired, I'll teach him/her. If it is a matter of PREFERRING it that way then that is something entirely different Dausuul.




You know what is better than posts about posts about posts about posts?  Posts about posts about posts about posts about posts.  You know whats even better than that?  I'll bet you'll find it somewhere beneath this post.


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## Dausuul (Aug 2, 2012)

Manbearcat said:


> You know what is better than posts about posts about posts about posts?  Posts about posts about posts about posts about posts.  You know whats even better than that?  I'll bet you'll find it somewhere beneath this post.




META SOLO!

<onomatopoetic words suggesting the sound of a guy going crazy on the drums>


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Aug 3, 2012)

Tovec said:


> That doesn't mean there are no other ways of dealing wit the spell simply because you haven't had a problem.




I did not intend to limit the solutions or to hand-waive the problem because I never encountered it.



Tovec said:


> A lot of people WANT teleport in their games. I'd say even MOST people on this thread want a simple form of teleport that works for their games but the version we have doesnt work for them. Giving the response of ''ban it in your games'' does not and will not work for everyone.




But isn't this _basically_ going to hapen to "set your dials right?" Whether they have a block of alternative ways teleportation work according to your tastes or a multitude of different spell choices that mimic the types of teleportation various people like, you will end up including some things and/or removing others to get the game you want.

Don't get me wrong. I think this is great. It's basically what we did in AD&D with very few arguments about it. Then modern D&D came along with disccusions about RAW and whatnot.


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