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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 1675614" data-attributes="member: 1328">Congratulations, you just found out why I choose to parrot Thanee's original post with giant eagles instead of teleportation.What if we bring Teleportation spells into the LotR epic? Is anything changed in the story? Well, yes. The heroes die.  No "zzzip, splosh, world saved." Sauron, being the impatient he is, teleports his Nine to the Shire, while good ol' Gandy-geezer is still doing his researchs in the libraries, and here it is.Unless you look at TP's limits. Sauron probably never went to the Shire, he had more interesting places to go. His scrying abilities seem somewhat limited -- he still needs to use palantiri to spy on those foolish enough to use them. He can only sense the Ring when it is worn. So, no teleportation of the bad guys. (Beside, Gandalf could have left some wards against teleportation.)So, who can teleport? Not the hobbits, they're not wizards. Not Aragorn, who, no matter which D&D class you slap on him (ranger, paladin, fighter, aristocrat...) is not going to teleport. Not Legolas, nor Boromir, nor Gimli. Just Gandalf. Who is shy of using big blatant magic -- something about being detected by other magic-users. Imagine how much it would have sucked: Gandalf teleports him and his crew besides Mount Doom, meanwhile Sauron tells Ringwraith #1 "I sense a disturbance in the force. Let's teleport with the gang to the Lava Pit of Doom." Then you can insert a "Ah, Gandalf, my old enemy. We meet again." dialogue if you want, and a bloody battle, which the heroes are not going to win.Anyway, the location of the Magical Trash Can, conveniently placed in the heart of the enemy fortress, makes it an unlikely place to be left open to wanton teleportation. Even if Gandalf wanted to use his newfound mad teleportation skillz to go to a lavatan trip in Mount Doom, he wouldn't be able to; because someone put a big "No door-to-door salesmen, Jehovah's  witness proselitizer, surveyors, or unleashed dogs allowed" magical sign on his property.Another thing that makes the destination a place in which the heroes won't teleport anyway, even if they were in a D&D campaign: XP. None of them have enough levels to dare entering the Evil Vile Villain's Stronghold of Icky Blackness and Unabated Evil (tm). Gandalf is an exception, maybe, but then again, Gandalf is clearly a NPC that tags along the PC group. The DM use him as a plot device, to convey informations to the PCs ("dudes, you need to do this and that" "we can pass through the Moria, but be warned it's an effin dungeon crawl, there's traps and goblins aplenty, unstable bridges incredibly thin and without railings arching over bottomless abysses, and a few fiery demons from the dawn of time. Not a dainty place, I tell you.") Sure, he can do the occasional bit of Deus Ex Machina if needed, but then, to avoid making it too easy for the party, he'll disappear for some time. Otherwise, the DM would commit one of the cardinal sins of game mastering: giving the spotlight to a pet NPC rather than the actual heroes.So, the heroes embark on a lot of adventures, gain lots of levels, and then enter the heart of the villain's fortress, and launch the proton torpedo into the core generator, then they leave in a hurry because everything explodes.And this, my friends, is where teleportation would actually, finally, enter play. The story is over. The fight is won. The Evil Dude Boss is no longer a threat. But the clichéd cataclysmic autodestruction of the secret base is. Teleportation back to the Shire's festhall, and go spent all their reward on ale and meal (I don't think you can find whores in the Shire, and anyway, the hobbits' carnal urges seem more directed toward meat than toward flesh).So, no, teleportation don't hamper a Lord of the Rings-style campaign. Because, just like with the giant eagles, there's lots of factors that makes it easier said than done, and not necessarily a good idea.</blockquote>

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