Teleport Idea

[Piratecat]

At one point I considered having a teleport spell strip away any existing buff spells -- and immediately realized that it'd be used offensively by PCs teleporting their NPC foes across the room to dispel magic.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I wondered if that could be applied to D&D. Imagine if the teleport spell (regardless of distance travelled) took approx 12 hours say 12+1d3 hours. The spell could still be used for travelling distances or escapes but this would preclude its use as a tactical tool removing the scry-buff-teleport problem.

I address the scry-buff-teleport by ruling that scrying doesn't give you enough info to teleport.

I let you teleport to:

1) Places you have been.

2) Places you have a suitable description of--anyone who can teleport knows what's needed in the description. It would be unusual for anyone else to be able to do it, though.

3) An offset from your current location. Note that this does nothing to ensure a safe arrival. If the target square is blocked you take d6/10' as you're shunted to the nearest open space.

4) A location you can observe. Clairvoyance counts but only if you're using an offset from your current location.

 

[nijineko]

well, i'm not sure what the furor against teleport is about. until you hit teleport without error or teleport circle, there is always a chance that you mis-jump... it's in the tables. plus, it takes a minimum of an hour to achieve the relative safety of the studied carefully result. a lot can happen in an hour.

furthermore, and in spite of greater teleport and so forth, there are teleport traps, tracing teleports, wild magic interference, faerzress interference, and the limited range of a teleport. if you gate or portal a party outside of the range of any places they know, unless they have some form of remote viewing with decent range, they are stuck - not everyone knows scry.

i have a party that can teleport now, but for some reason they don't have any form of scrying, which makes it fun. they've wound up riding horseback several days journey, having to use line-of-sight teleports to get across a mountain range, getting towed through the sky by a dragon, and mis-jumping while attempting a teleport in the underoerth. and even though they found a teleport locate for their next intended destination they somehow managed to get tangled up and emotionally invested in a locally-based plot, and so they aren't willing to leave until the finish off the whole deal.


and by the time a party has reliable access to greater teleport, i think there are other more pressing things to worry about than being able to jump from place to place instantly.


come to think of it, based on the greater teleport description, if the party picks a place that happens to be in a dead magic zone, wild magic zone, anything that blocks access to the astral plane, or under some sort of dimensional lock effect, even a greater teleport will simply fail. something to keep in mind. i wouldn't take it away completely, but the occasional, 'sorry, but the spell fails' is good for the party.

 

[Stormonu]

I guess my fix would be to set the cast time to the distance teleported. Dimension Door is fine for a short hop, have Teleport take an hour to use, but it allows you to go much, much further. Perhaps throw in teleporting to an external location has no chance of failure - but underground, indoors and whatnot wrecks havoc, misplacing you or making you fall short of the target (Will/Wisdom save or it's grenade scatter time). Maybe even make something like teleporting to the other side of a mountain tricky, making it better to teleport to the top and then to the bottom of the other side.