Let's ban Teleport!

[BiggusGeekus]

Another option:

The spell only works within 5 minutes of midnight. Also introduce a 0-level spell that lets the spellcaster know when midnight approaches.

The hit-and-run tactics will be reduced to a very narrow timeframe and people will be at their guard during the witching hour. It occupies a 0-level spell slot (no big deal, but hey). It still lets the PCs zap back to their base. It kinda bones the sorcerers, but socerers spent 1st level hanging out with the bards in taverns picking up highly attractive members of the desireable gender while the wizard was awake until 4am up to his elbows in frog's intestines so @#$^ the #$%^ing sorcerer anyway. Not that the highly intellegent wizards are bitter or anything.

 

[Trainz]

[...] Giant eagles are extremely potent mounts for sure.

How would a campaign similar to the Lord of the Rings trilogy have been with giant eagles. *flap, flap, flap* *splosh* The End. Pretty damn fast. [...]

Huh... except that there ARE giant allied eagles in LOTR. At least in the Hobbit, where the heroes hitch a ride for a while, and in the movie adaptation, where Sam and Frodo are rescued from mount Doom.

I guess the DM simply decided on a plot device why the Eagles couldn't simply take the ring and drop it in mount doom.

Which is really just what a DM has to do from time to time to keep the campaign running smoothly. With teleport, as well as with many other instances.

 

[GSHamster]

An easier solution may be to bump up the teleport spells a couple of levels. Much of the problem is that you start teleporting at 9th level, and can Teleport Without Error soon after. If Teleport got pushed off to, say, 13th level or so, it would be a bit better.

I do like the way Midnight dealt with Teleport. An event in the storyline had a side-effect of banning extra-dimensional spells and effects. I thought it was quite well done.

 

[coyote6]

Arcana Unearthed has an interesting system for teleport, which looks like it might limit it a little bit, without crippling things. It would also give a built-in way to adjust things -- e.g., certain areas add to the DC to teleport in, some building techniques (blood of gorgons, or just the right feng shui) increase the DC, items etc. Other areas or items

PS: I'm Talon5's GM; the Underdark limits I took from Vault of the Drow, which seemed appropriate to me, since I'm running a game in Greyhawk. Plus, there was this Elder God/Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know rising in the deep, gathering Its power to Itself, and generally mucking things up. I blame Piratecat.

Myself, I think unlimited, very reliable teleport tends to be either bland, requires common & relatively easy countermeasures, or leads to a setting like RangerWickett described (or one like Brust's Dragaera) -- but I suspect some people would find such a setting too different to be interesting for long.

Note the handwaving which Star Trek writers have gone through trying to limit transporters -- range limits, not through shields (except when they can), not through "ion storms" (execpt when they can), etc. Other SF universes go through similar contortions to limit their FTL, to achieve particular results (e.g., Traveller's 100D jump limit, 2300 AD's 7-odd lightyear limit, MechWarrior's JumpPoints, the FTL systems in Weber's Honor Harrington novels, the limits of the goa'uld's Stargates, etc.). All of those settings would be much less interesting if the teleport effects didn't have some limitations.

So I prefer teleport have some flavorful limitations.

Making teleport difficult, but with interesting ways of easing the difficulty is one fairly useful way of adding flavor and complications. GURPS' Teleport spell, for example, comes with hefty costs & skill penalties, such that while long distance teleport of multiple people is possible, it is fairly difficult (or requires Beacons, which makes it more akin to the previously mentioned Town Portals & the like).

Single person-only teleport is another interesting idea, but it would probably just lead to all the non-teleporters climbing into bags of holding or portable holes for transit home.

Teleport with side effects could be fun -- the dispel magic effect (leading to teleport as a form of attack -- grab someone & try to teleport them into an ambush, simultaneously stripping away magical defenses), teleporters are stunned or nauseated or otherwise inconvenienced (hey, tearing up reality can be unpleasant), teleport causing some sort of advance warning at the destination (e.g., a rainbow shimmer grows at the destination several rounds or minutes before you arrive -- either teleporting isn't actually instantaneous, or people at your destination will have hints that you're coming before you actually leave -- take that, cause and effect); a complete & working system of measure, countermeasure, and maybe counter-countermeasure (which D&D doesn't really quite have -- there's dimensional lock, but that's significantly more difficult than teleport); etc. There are tons of possibilities.

 

[Luvin Lt. Fingers]

What?! I just gained the supernatural ability of Dimension Door!!! (Hey it's only 1/day, chill).

 

[Steel_Wind]

To get around the problems of Teleport and Air Wing (A Rolemaster "summon kick ass flying elemental birds for entire party" flying spell) I ultimately seized upon a great plot device which turned into a campaign premise:

1 - Back in time, a MASSIVE ground burst nuclear explosion (future world tech) on top of a huge prison made of virulent antimagic metal was touched off, wiping out a million sq miles of civilization and contaminating the atmosphere with huge gobs of antimagic dust.

2- the dust antimagic and normal in the air caused a prolonged winter and wreaked havoc with magic. The dust settled and destroyed the bonds around similar ancient prisons for mega and not so mega demoms set along lei lines. A cataclysm occurred and the world was thrown into darkness and despair.

3- over time, the dust settled to the earth and began to be washed away. It gathered in rivers, streams and especially estuaries and irrigated land.

4- The result was that the human cities and settled lands were essentially non-magical (or very, very low power), leaving only the remote wilds and the aforementioned lei lines as the places where magic persisted in usable quantities.

5 - the coalescence of fallout dust along rivers and estuaries and irrigated land created hundreds of various "bands" of none, low, mid, normal and high magic power. The rule was you could not teleport reliably between from one zone to another. Effectively, teleport and spells like Air Wing were prevented from operating strategically at a stroke. Telepathy and similar magical means of communication was also disrupted.

6 - I designed it so that inherently magical creatures and pure and hybrid spell users would become sick - violently ill - when passing through a major power change border. So as the characters left settled land to head into the wild, they were forced to camp so that the spell users could stop vomiting and contend with the migraines for a day.

7 - The nice part was that I also concentrated the magic that was left along lei lines in the wild and in old important ruins (read - plot zones). These were always prime adventuring zones given the plot of the campaign, and I artificially increased the power available to the party in a particular zone to match the threat level that was present there. It was a nice solution to refusing to give out power point multipliers of any kind - but making the power necessary to fight the monsters available when the players needed it - on a zone by zone basis.

And yes - teleport and mass flying spells and expedient travel of any kind on a strategic level was brought to an abrupt end. The shattered and divided lands in a post cataclysmic society was maintained and rationalized. It also prevented the bad guys from using magic over distance to communicate too.

All in all - a nice solution to the pressing problem of teleport. To top it all off, I made the PCs time twisted and the ones in the past (the PCs future) who were responsible for the entire explosion in the first place.

 

[RangerWickett]

Y'wanna have some fun, give the high level PCs a sword forged of antimagic. Oh sure, it'll kick the butt of demons six ways from Tuesday, but you have to convince the demons to come to you. *grin*

 

[MerakSpielman]

You know, if you, as a DM, feel that you can keep your campaign interesting for the players when they're spending the vast majority of their lives traveling from one adventure to another, then go for it.

If after 9 levels the players are sick of traveling and would prefer to use teleport, I don't think it's the DMs place to say "no, I don't like teleport, it ruins the game and you can't do it."

The players know what they like. If they don't like traveling, the DM should allow the spells for bypassing lengthy journeys. It's only polite.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I agree Thanee. I think for some campaign styles Teleport ruins the feel of the game. I am contemplating banning translocation travel magic in my homebrew world. To be quite honest, the entire core D&D magic system doesn't fit some campaign styles. Some campaign styles require a serious reworking of the core rules or the entire game feels like just another run of the mill D&D campaign in a world with a different name being the only difference.

 

[Talon5]

BTW, you can teleport horses, too.

I know- thing is Alran is 10th lvl in 3e (not sure about 3.5e) that's just 500 lbs (horses weigh just a little more then that). A Reduce spell would help, but at 10th lvl that's only two 5th lvl spells/dy- one to leave the area with Mr Horse and one to return to the others, so basically 2 days and most of Alran's 1st lvl spells spent on Reduce and 5th on TP.