Teleporting To A Ship
Teleportation is, of course, a fascinating subject. However, 3e's version is troublesome in some new areas, particularly the percentage off area where a random number determines how far off you were - which is a percentage of the whole distance traveled.
When teleporting to a different planet, for example, say several hundred light years away, even 1% off will probably kill you. "Gee, I only missed it by one or two light years, for gosh sakes." Now how safe can that really be? And its contradictory, for it says 'safely,' but then goes on to say you could be in trouble anyway, so assured safety is not really guaranteed here after all. This new wrinkle makes interplanetary teleportation a rather dangerous endeavor. Or does it?
Before, it just simply killed you if you were high, but now it seems to give greater details as to how simply being off target may kill you. Unfortunately, this percentage idea will mean death isn't bad enough, but your body will be lost, probably, when traveling vast distances, and that has some nasty consequences concerning Raise Dead (no body).
On the other hand, one may infer they also meant interplanetary, as well an interplanar travel, was not possible since they say things like you can end up anywhere on the 'globe.' Alas, the spell has problems in its faulty and seemingly inconsistent presentation.
I would say, however, the big problem is going from one inertial reference frame to another. If relative motion is large, it could be nasty. That is why it is generally believed one can only travel to places that are either relatively fixed in space, or large enough such that known planetary rotational and orbital factors can be compensated for. So castle to castle, keep to keep, town to town, etc. is fine, but ship to ship or shore to ship may not be, unless you know where these mobile platforms are, either by seeing them or scrying on them first (or well timed calculations, but man, do we even have a good time piece here?). Ship to shore is not as big a problem as you know the shore's relative motion to the ship you can see.
Yet, this spell is not stupidity personified or a wizard's death wish, so if the wizard knew the difference in motion, they could probably compensate. Trouble is, knowing it is a bit hard if not impossible. This will necessitate spell subroutines to automatically compensate for relative motion as one nears their desired destination, which is good since few players want to deal with this anyway. So as long as the relative motion is either known or small enough for the spell's compensational limits, things will be fine.
Unfortunately, the spell seems to work via visualization, and not really knowing where you are going, but only by what it's supposed to look like once you get there. Since this is apparently the case, according to the spell write up, one can easily travel to a moving ship, even if unbeknownst to them, that ship had moved to another galaxy since they last saw it if all that is required is a firm understanding of the unique characteristics of the ship or target cabin within the ship. This gets to be silly, of course, so I'd rather not play that way.
For me, I'd say this spell allows you go to far away places that you know about or were at least described to you in detail. Off target will not mean a % of the whole trip, but more a random distance and direction within certain guidelines, like a % of 100 miles if you'd like. I'd lose this odd two d10 multiplication scheme, however, and just make it d% miles. The range is the same, even if the probability distribution may be different.
'Similar Area' is going to be a problem, the entire concept allowing you to go anywhere you can imagine, and the spell will search the infinite universe (or the PMP anyway) trying to find a location that most closely matches your imagined parameters. Unless you put some limits on distance, the vastness of space, like an infinite number of monkeys producing Shakespeare's Hamlet, can probably come up with anything reasonable. Just imagine a huge ass pile of gold coins, and it will be somewhere in the universe, will it not? But there's that reference to globe again. Well, is this spell of infinite range or not?
I say yes, let it be infinite in range in total distance traveled, but no, the spell is not going to subsequently search the entire universe after you pick a location. It doesn't have the time or power. Instead, let it again search within (arbitrarily, I confess) 1 light second of where you imagine you are going. If no such place or no reasonable approximation thereof is within 1 light second of where you thought it would be, then a random off target location is likely. Rolls that indicate 'similar area' will only set you down there if such a place that VERY closely matched your mental image existed in that range. If such a similar place existed within 1 light second of intended destination, you may end up there. Otherwise, you are just off 1d% miles of where you thought it would be.
I pick one light second, BTW, since this more or less is anywhere on the intended planet, whereever that planet may be. Remember, you can travel an infinite distance, even millions of light years away, but must visualize a target within a sphere with a radius of 1 light second at the distance.
But this assume you even like the concept of similar area, which I do not. I'd much rather a wizard know where he intends to go, and a spell to allow him to do this, rather than some spell that searches the cosmos like some vast search engine hooked into the PMP looking for whatever one can imagine.
Anyway, the more complex you make it, the harder it is to play with it. For simplicity's sake, allow the caster to travel to known locations as given. Make 'similar areas' only happen, even when rolled, if such a reasonably similar area exist within 1 light second of intended target (i.e. probably on the planet they intended), or set them safely down 1d% miles from imagined location if no similar area exists. Instead of a random direction, ones assuring safety would be favored. If no such place exists, oh well, teleporting blindly no bowl of cherries you know.
I will say, however, that 3e's spell is better insofar as death is less probable. Now it's simply mishap damage which you can probably survive, unless teleporting around the cosmos while already seriously injured. Thus, this spell becomes far more usable than before.
As for teleporting to even a well known ship, quite simply, unless you know where it is, I can see a DM clearly saying such a thing is in the 'description' category as it suggest location is important as well as appearance. So using the description category, on target will take you there, off target will likely land you in the ocean or a nearby shore 23% of the time (unless it's a space ship, in which case you'll probably be sucking vacuum. Talk about no air teleport). A further 15% of the time you'll end up on a similar looking ship (somewhere on the intended target world), and you may or may not take some mishap damage along the way, about 7% of the time. So can you do it? Yes. Is it safe? Not really.
To better the odds, if you can see the ship directly or by first using scrying magic, make it up to very familiar. If your intel is good as to where the ship is supposed to be, make it from studied carefully to viewed once, depending on how far off they are. And if they don't have a clue as to where it is, use 'description' for the well known aspects of the ship, but no clue as to its current location, which is also important.
A DM should not let a player find this out through trial and error (to be mean) but let them know all this and then allow them to risk it or not. The choice is theirs.
Finally, Teleport without error just converts the off target rolls to on target rolls, and similar or mishap rolls negate the spell, the caster ending up where they started. Alas, no error used to also allow travel between planes, but I guess they put a stop to this. Oh well.
