Teleport Circle - Destroyer of Worlds
- Thread starter Lizard Lips
- Start date
Number47
First Post
Boy, in my game if you reach 17th level and can cast the most powerful spells in the entire world, money is not a problem. I mean, sure the wizard could expend XP to charge somebody 100,000 gold. Or, he could just go and get that gold for himself, raising his XP in the process. Heck, he could even CREATE the gold if he really wanted! I'm sure one of the handful of elite magic-crafters in the world might have a solution to that problem. Face it, unless you play a world where 20th level people are a dime a dozen, then you simply can't go down the street to the "wish and miracle" shop. To even have the audacity to suggest a 17th or higher level wizard is for hire should be enough to warrant your immediate frying!
If we take a pre- capitalistic example, I think Napoleon would pay his right hand and his soul for this during the English blockade, and the Swedish would pay what they could to avoid the customs of the Danishs in Öresund. The market interests in a spell of this kind would be extreme between big cities.
But of course, the invasion is a very real possibility when looking at this circles. Suddenly, you could have a crack squad of a couple of hundred mages and priests in your city because of the circle. But OTOH, this is really what every modern day city is experiencing (because of the small size of modern day bombs etc), and it doesnt stop the trading.
But of course, the invasion is a very real possibility when looking at this circles. Suddenly, you could have a crack squad of a couple of hundred mages and priests in your city because of the circle. But OTOH, this is really what every modern day city is experiencing (because of the small size of modern day bombs etc), and it doesnt stop the trading.
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
A few points:
1) So there are several hundred of these portals in the world. And? They're certainly all going to be forgotten, or else they'll be tightly controlled by armies or Very Powerful Beings.
2) If a merchant creates one in Paris, linking to England, and King Louis finds out, there's going to be a merchant's liver that sees the sun this afternoon. Most leaders won't be happy about merchants creating these huge vulnerabilities into kingdoms of their enemies (i.e., any foreign nation).
3) The mage who helped the merchant will become persona non grata, if possible, and better have some defenses against assassins.
4) When the king has tortured the merchant and driven off the mage, he'll take one of two actions: either he'll launch an invasion through the portal, or he'll have a court wizard dispel it.
5) Your very rare, capitalistic king will trust his neighbors enough to establish commerce through the portal. Anyone creating a competing portal will, of course, be tortured to death -- competition isn't a virtue when you're competing against the king. And you better believe the taxes on use of the portal will be hefty.
6) A wizard who decides to guard one of these portals won't be doing much else with her time -- definitely won't be gallivanting about earning more experience. The portal is fantastically powerful, very vulnerable, and immobile.
I think it's a great idea to have a few of these portals in the world. I think a world with a lot of them is pretty dang implausible, unless you make them a lot easier to create.
Daniel
1) So there are several hundred of these portals in the world. And? They're certainly all going to be forgotten, or else they'll be tightly controlled by armies or Very Powerful Beings.
2) If a merchant creates one in Paris, linking to England, and King Louis finds out, there's going to be a merchant's liver that sees the sun this afternoon. Most leaders won't be happy about merchants creating these huge vulnerabilities into kingdoms of their enemies (i.e., any foreign nation).
3) The mage who helped the merchant will become persona non grata, if possible, and better have some defenses against assassins.
4) When the king has tortured the merchant and driven off the mage, he'll take one of two actions: either he'll launch an invasion through the portal, or he'll have a court wizard dispel it.
5) Your very rare, capitalistic king will trust his neighbors enough to establish commerce through the portal. Anyone creating a competing portal will, of course, be tortured to death -- competition isn't a virtue when you're competing against the king. And you better believe the taxes on use of the portal will be hefty.
6) A wizard who decides to guard one of these portals won't be doing much else with her time -- definitely won't be gallivanting about earning more experience. The portal is fantastically powerful, very vulnerable, and immobile.
I think it's a great idea to have a few of these portals in the world. I think a world with a lot of them is pretty dang implausible, unless you make them a lot easier to create.
Daniel
Lizard Lips said:
II have to agree with you on the Teleport circle issue even if they are difficult to build (maybe each high level wizard is only willing to build a pair of them in a life time) they are permanent.
Unless another high level Wizard dispells them they will be around forever.
Say in a couple of hundred years there will be a circle here a circle there and the whole world would be connected.
In my campaign any Teleport effect (including Blink, D-Door and so on) passes you through the void and requires a Cuthulu style san/fear check.
That keep all the bad effects of teleport down to a minimum but still allows it in emergencys.
It also gives me an excuse to have a lot of mad wizards
Hatchling Dragon
First Post
let's try this garbage again, damned forums 'ate' my last long post (ie: with details, spelling checks and examples) *sigh*
A few brief points before I go to bed (get to start a drive from Minnesota to Conneticut via DC (I know) tommorrow morning, bleh)
Weight limits: the spell has them. at 17th it's about 800'ish pounds. How often does that limit reset? Not stated specificaly for a permanent Circle, so that leaves it totally in the DM's hands. Even if there isn't any limit built-into the spell you'd have to allow 'unloading' time so that people and/or cargo could be moved. Otherwise you're looking at a very rapidly growing mess as cargo (or passengers) keep arriving, only to be shunted aside to the closest clear space becuase the arrival spot (which can't be changed remember) is occupied.
Security: There are spells already that'll block Astral or Ethreal travel, and doesn't Teleportatoin 'shunt' you through one of those? Even so, if someone started to make wide use of this type of 'mass transit' someone would realise the dangers and develop spells along the lines of Teleportation Block
Assuming I'm right and Astral or Ethreal 'shortcuts' are used for Teleportation, something's going to eventually take notice of constant and/or large amounts of materials moving between two points. And if memory serves (cuz I don't have MoP) the average inhabitant of either plane is far above the power level of all but mid to high level adventurers. And we all know that Adventurers tend to be the 'cream of the crop'. Things could get ugly quickly.
Hatchling Dragon - Just started to like the new boards too... *sigh*
A few brief points before I go to bed (get to start a drive from Minnesota to Conneticut via DC (I know) tommorrow morning, bleh)
Weight limits: the spell has them. at 17th it's about 800'ish pounds. How often does that limit reset? Not stated specificaly for a permanent Circle, so that leaves it totally in the DM's hands. Even if there isn't any limit built-into the spell you'd have to allow 'unloading' time so that people and/or cargo could be moved. Otherwise you're looking at a very rapidly growing mess as cargo (or passengers) keep arriving, only to be shunted aside to the closest clear space becuase the arrival spot (which can't be changed remember) is occupied.
Security: There are spells already that'll block Astral or Ethreal travel, and doesn't Teleportatoin 'shunt' you through one of those? Even so, if someone started to make wide use of this type of 'mass transit' someone would realise the dangers and develop spells along the lines of Teleportation Block
Assuming I'm right and Astral or Ethreal 'shortcuts' are used for Teleportation, something's going to eventually take notice of constant and/or large amounts of materials moving between two points. And if memory serves (cuz I don't have MoP) the average inhabitant of either plane is far above the power level of all but mid to high level adventurers. And we all know that Adventurers tend to be the 'cream of the crop'. Things could get ugly quickly.
Hatchling Dragon - Just started to like the new boards too... *sigh*
Question, sort of related
Speaking to the "bad wizard dispels the circle" idea, since the circle is now a magical item (I'm assuming create wondrous item and not a Permanency spell) won't dispel magic just disrupt it for a time...I seem to remember Dispel Magic being changed so you can't just go around dispelling people's magical swords and such...you can supress the enchantment for a time but only Mordenkainen's Disjunction or some similiar spell would permanently disenchant it. Of course I could be mixing up my spell systems. If this is the case you would need an exceedingly high level wizard (and in my campaign he would have to research disjunction himself since Mordenkainen is from Greyhawk) to even think about a permanent dispelling of the circle.
Speaking to the "bad wizard dispels the circle" idea, since the circle is now a magical item (I'm assuming create wondrous item and not a Permanency spell) won't dispel magic just disrupt it for a time...I seem to remember Dispel Magic being changed so you can't just go around dispelling people's magical swords and such...you can supress the enchantment for a time but only Mordenkainen's Disjunction or some similiar spell would permanently disenchant it. Of course I could be mixing up my spell systems. If this is the case you would need an exceedingly high level wizard (and in my campaign he would have to research disjunction himself since Mordenkainen is from Greyhawk) to even think about a permanent dispelling of the circle.
Last edited:
Henry
Autoexreginated
OK, two example points using the Forgotten Realms as an example:
1) Remember the invasion of Cormyr in the "Death of the Dragon" novels? What if there were teleport circles between Cormyr and Waterdeep for 'easy travel'? Khelben or Maskar Wands would have shut the darned things down so fast it wouldn't have been funny! Otherwise, there would have been armies of Goblins roaming downtown Waterdeep, pillaging and looting like crazy! Generally, good commerce or no, rulers do not like teleport circles in their major cities.
2) Faerun is ALREADY littered with magic gates! Wizards have been setting up the things all over the place for millenia! Listen to Elminster for a while and you will find gates, sometimes totally by accident, set up by a wizard 500 years ago! Sometimes, you wande into them, sometimes, you have to walk between two petrified tree stumps and speak a special word, etc. But they are all over the place!
Plausibly, a teleport circle would be a major undertaking for a wizard, and yes, there could conceivably be several linking major cities of an empire together. However, even after, say, two thousand years, there would only have been 5 wizards or less who would be both powerufl enough and willing to create such a thing. Unless, of course, you play in the Forgotten Realms.
More plausibly, you would have middling level wizards who charged exorbitant fees to travel special teleport routes to get you where you needed to go, much like in modern times businessmen charter private planes to take them to special locations.
1) Remember the invasion of Cormyr in the "Death of the Dragon" novels? What if there were teleport circles between Cormyr and Waterdeep for 'easy travel'? Khelben or Maskar Wands would have shut the darned things down so fast it wouldn't have been funny! Otherwise, there would have been armies of Goblins roaming downtown Waterdeep, pillaging and looting like crazy! Generally, good commerce or no, rulers do not like teleport circles in their major cities.
2) Faerun is ALREADY littered with magic gates! Wizards have been setting up the things all over the place for millenia! Listen to Elminster for a while and you will find gates, sometimes totally by accident, set up by a wizard 500 years ago! Sometimes, you wande into them, sometimes, you have to walk between two petrified tree stumps and speak a special word, etc. But they are all over the place!
Plausibly, a teleport circle would be a major undertaking for a wizard, and yes, there could conceivably be several linking major cities of an empire together. However, even after, say, two thousand years, there would only have been 5 wizards or less who would be both powerufl enough and willing to create such a thing. Unless, of course, you play in the Forgotten Realms.
More plausibly, you would have middling level wizards who charged exorbitant fees to travel special teleport routes to get you where you needed to go, much like in modern times businessmen charter private planes to take them to special locations.
Zappo said:
Hehe, I like the way you think Zappo.
My logic here runs similarly. Wizards willing & capable of casting TC for money are extremely rare & even more expensive. Most merchants can't afford it even if they can find such a wizard. So, most merchants HAVE to make money in other ways. So, most merchants would strenuously object to a TC effecting their market (assuming it could run at a profit despite the previously mentioned pitfalls). So, most merchants would do whatever they could to eliminate the competition.
Plus, there's the all those implications regarding national security. I'm sure the local king (or whatever) is going to just LOVE having a backdoor into his territory that can let whole armies bypass all those neat castles he's got on the frontier. He's far more likely to have secretly funded the construction of a few his own TCs in key fortresses around the realm (him & his predecessors). Even then, only for emergency use, because they'd be too tempting a target if word spread that you had them.
IMC, teleportation & planar travel don't work in large towns & cities. There are just too many nasties out there for some bright wizard somewhere, sometime, to have thought up some sort of warding spell to keep them out. (I currently use the idea that city-funded rituals mean you can teleport within a city, or outside a city, but into/out-of one, due to the wards - but I don't have a spell description fully worked up yet). So far my PCs haven't run into this as a problem, but then, they only just reached the level where they can use that scale of magic.
