Teleportation range limits and epic teleportation

[jefgorbach]

[MENTION=2875]Paradox[/MENTION], close and acceptable in your campaign, however RAW clearly states the ONLY limitations to Greater Teleport are the caster must have a reasonable description of the destination and that interplanar travel is not possible .... thus he just needs a telescope or similar scying device/spell to GT to the nearby moon/planets.

Heck, Gygax defined the Prime Material Plane as comprising the entire Multiverse including its infinite alternate dimensions, making it quite feasible for the Wizards Three to GT to Earth per the old Dragon columns. Likewise, its possible to *pop* over to ANY PLACE described in ANY book, movie, gaming system, etc once a reasonable description is obtained by finding a copy of the book/etc; perhaps via Wish.

IE: A wizard peers into the night sky and Wishes he knew what the distant point of light actually is. Now knowing is a plasma sea, he prepares accordingly then GT there having obtained a reasonable description via the Wish; whereupon he could use a telescope to view its orbital planets and GT to each.

IE: PCs find the crashed USS Beagle in the Barrier Peaks, Oerth and manage to access the computer records describing the worlds it visited - enabling them to GT to those worlds.

IE: Superman routinely shown making intergalactic travels. Presuming he visited one of the d20 worlds, a local wizard could use Legend Lore(superman) to obtain a reasonable description of his background then LL(DC.Earth.Metropolis) for the needed description to GT there.

Furthermore, once there he could return with one additional person/creature for every three caster levels; each with upto their maximum carrying capacity in gear/etc -- making it feasible using RAW to pop over to charm Superman into picking up the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier and bring BOTH back to your homeworld.

 

[S'mon]

Personally I don't think the range should be more than x10 per +2 levels, and clearly not through the planet, since you traditionally can't even teleport more than a mile in the Underdark; clearly heavy masses and electromagicomagnetic fields prevent teleportation, Star Trek style. So I'd use:

Lv 5 Teleport 100 miles/level.
Lv 7 Teleport 1000 miles/level - 13,000 miles gets you to the other side of an Earth-sized planet ok.
Lv 9 Teleport 10000 miles/level.
etc

For longer distances I'd think a Plane Shift type spell was more appropriate.

Edit: 1e PHB Teleport is a different kettle of fish. No range limit but a good chance to die, no planar. 1e UA Greater Teleport is safe intra-plane, can be used inter-plane but then you can die again. My impression is that 1e Archmages were 'supposed' to use the Astral and Deep Ethereal for planar travel, rely on Clerics with tuning forks, or else a generously-GM'd Gate spell. An Amulet of the Planes would also work.

 

[Salthorae]

[MENTION=28278]jefgorbach[/MENTION]

All that sounds like you are presuming the old rule sets for your extrapolation and definition of "RAW".

Given that this is a Pathfinder forum, those are the rules we should use. Pathfinder has a spell in its online PfSRD called Interplanetary Teleport that clearly states Greater Teleport actually dies have a range limit big enough to get anywhere on Golarion or similar sized bodies, but not off those bodies. Interplanetary Teleport is required for that and is 9th level.

I've never liked the idea of a 7th level spell able to move you anywhere you've had a good description of in the prime material plane.

If you want to go old school, Spelljammer states that the Phlogiston blocks teleportation from Crystal Sphere to Sphere, so no teleporting anywhere in the prime, just w/n your Sphere.

 

[paradox42]

I've been playing since 1st Edition and still have all my 1E books today, so I'm well aware of the various rule sets involved here, thank you.

The relevant factor in this discussion is, as Salthorae noted, that Ultimate Magic introduced a spell at 9th level called Interplanetary Teleport, which begs the question of what we then do with Greater Teleport- since both spells begin with the words "This spell functions like Teleport, except that there is no range limit." Both Greater and Interplanetary state that they have no range limit, that you do not need to have seen the destination in advance, and that there is no chance of off-target arrival. (I believe Interplanetary actually was introduced in an AP, possibly Second Darkness, and then reprinted in UM- though I don't know for certain.)

Ultimate Magic actually has no text or sidebar explaining what the difference is, exactly, between Interplanetary and Greater; the only clue it gives us is that Interplanetary says "...there is truly no range limit..." which seems to imply (given the inclusion of the word "truly") that the "no limit" statement for Greater Teleport is false. It implies it- but nowhere is it actually stated. It seems to be left up to GM interpretation, exactly what limits Greater has vs. Interplanetary.

Hence, Matthias's question, and this ensuing thread.

 

[S'mon]

Answer: The people who wrote Greater Teleport equated "same plane" with "same planet", which in 99% of campaigns is exactly how it works.

 

[Salthorae]

(I believe Interplanetary actually was introduced in an AP, possibly Second Darkness, and then reprinted in UM- though I don't know for certain.)

It was the 2nd book of the Second Darkness AP. I'll have to double check but I'm 99% sure that the version in the AP states that Greater teleport does have a limit of "X". I'll check when I get home to my pdf's.

 

[paradox42]

It was the 2nd book of the Second Darkness AP. I'll have to double check but I'm 99% sure that the version in the AP states that Greater teleport does have a limit of "X". I'll check when I get home to my pdf's.

Cool; it's nice to be right. Thanks for the confirmation, and thanks in advance for shedding further light on the question!

 

[Matthias]

Answer: The people who wrote Greater Teleport equated "same plane" with "same planet", which in 99% of campaigns is exactly how it works.

Trivia moment: JRR Tolkien had it both ways with his Middle-Earth. Arda was originally flat-earth with a disc-like perimeter (which is supposed to resemble a Ptolemaic cosmology I guess). Later on, he had the western homeland of the elves "uplifted" and made Arda a true planetary sphere, implying that the Sun and Moon and other planets got "promoted" as well.

 

[jefgorbach]

[MENTION=1095]Salthorae[/MENTION] - oops, forgot I linked from the Pathfinder forum and stand corrected.

Since Pazio essentially duplicated the 7th level Greater Teleport with a 9th level variant, it seems reasonable they feel GT should subsequently be limited to any location on the same world and for IT to cover traveling anywhere within the same plane.

Presumably limiting IT to only the current solar system, would theoretically allow even higher level variants such as an 11th level variant covering Intragalactic teleports, and a 13th level covering Intergalactic teleports; etc (presuming a house-rule negating Metamagic(Heighten) 9th level cap). Such increases seem reasonable given the series established by Pazio and the rarity of caster's capable of researching/casting such ultra-high level spells.

Personally Plane Shift should be treated similarly by limiting the 7th level source spell to switching to more-or-less the same spot on a coterminous plane, with 9th, llth, etc variants allowing access to more distant planar layers.

 

[Salthorae]

Cool; it's nice to be right. Thanks for the confirmation, and thanks in advance for shedding further light on the question!

Finally found it! It was actually in the "Traveling between Worlds" text surrounding the new spell Interplanetary Teleport

While many believe that spells such as greater teleport have no limit to their range, those who have tried to use them to reach the stars know otherwise. Some attribute it to the mind’s inability to truly comprehend the distances involved, others to the great speed with which the celestial bodies move through the blackness, and still others to the lack of any sort of ether for the magic to travel through. Whatever the cause, most have concluded that it’s easier to shift planes and explore the universe’s mysteries that way than to travel across spaces so vast. Conventional scrying methods are likewise inhibited by the incredible distance. Still, for those determined enough, magic can sometimes do the job via spells (see page 54) or through the construction of massive and convoluted artifacts, some of which can still occasionally be found abandoned by their creators on planets like Golarion.

It then has the text box for the spell:

Interplanetary Teleport
In addition to spells like wish and miracle, there’s at least one
incantation that is capable of sending a group of creatures
instantly from one planet to another.
Interplanetary Teleport
Description:
This spell functions as teleport, save that there is truly no range limit and you do not need to have seen your destination, though you must have a solid grasp of which world you wish to travel to (“Verces” is an acceptable destination, but “a habitable world near that bright star” is not). If you have a specific location on a planet in mind, you arrive there without a chance of failure, otherwise you arrive at a location that would not immediately be life-threatening. If no such safe landing zone exists on the world, such as someone attempting to travel into the sun without the proper precautions in place, the spell simply fails.

So the spell rules don't limit Greater Teleport, but the descriptive text describing how to travel between planets says that it is limited to one planet while the power of 9th level spells like Wish, Miracle, and Interplanetary Teleport are required to get to other celestial bodies. Beyond that....

As I said earlier, I like the idea of porting in the 3e Epic Magic rules to get an Interstellar Teleport slotted above the power of the 9th level spell.