Teleportation

[ferratus]

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.

 

[ferratus]

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.

 

[Elf Witch]

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.



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.



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.



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.



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.

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?

 

[Elf Witch]

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.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

 

[Elf Witch]

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.



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 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.

 

[Elf Witch]

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?

 

[the Jester]

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)

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.

 

[Neonchameleon]

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.

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.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

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.

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.