Teleport only at midnight?

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm kicking around the idea of saying that teleport works, but you only appear at the destination when the moon is at it's highest point. That still lets the party evacuate, but guards know when to be on alert so the defenders have a bit of an edge. It also lets heroes and villians have an "escape" period where they simply don't exist from the time of casting to the time of arrival.

What do you think?

 

[green slime]

Cool idea. Nice flavour.

You could expand this and have it dependant on the alignment of the caster: Evil only arrive at midnight, Good at noon.

Or somesuch.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

That's a nice twist. The only reason I won't immediately yoink it is it might make life a little harder for the bad guys. Lemme think on that.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Cool idea! Would this just be teleporting, or portals and gates as well? If you include the latter, it becomes more a campaign flavor thing, instead of a metagame nerf of teleport. Perhaps the Goddess of Gates and Portals is also the Goddess of the Moon or Night. Or perhaps it is keyed to some other Celestial body or event which doesn't have a constant (or perhaps not even a predictable) schedule.

 

[HellHound]

Nice.

Especially the rationale, Dave.

Consider it YOINKED for my game.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Cool idea! Would this just be teleporting, or portals and gates as well?

I'm tying it to the larger of the three moons1. So, technically this wouldn't happen exactly at midnight and you'd need to do some kind of Survival or Knowledge (whatever) skill check to know if you're in the clear for that night. However, I haven't ruled out the alignment check suggested by Mr. Slime. That seems pretty cool.

The rationale I'm giving is that the "trouble" spells IMC would have been self-nerfed by the denizens of the campaign world in the past. If you read Spechulcrave's story hour, you'll have an idea of what I'm thinking of (i.e. the Clavinger). The exact story would exceed the boundaries of your time and my typing speed, so I'll leave it for now.

-BG

1 - Nerd that I am, I have the relative distances and masses of the moons loosely figured out as to prevent massive tides, earthquakes, and volcanoes. I need help.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Is this a world-wide phenomenon or is it more local? And, is this something that's "always been that way" in this campaign? It would kinda odd, wouldn't it, if some wizard on the other side of the planet all of a sudden found he was in the wrong place and at a weird time.

But, I like the idea. What happens in the mean time? I mean, if a bunch teleports out of a dungeon at 3pm, and they show up at some designated "teleportation pad" at midnight, do they just not experience the 9 hours? Is it as though the 9 hours don't pass for them (i.e. they blink out and then blink in, and 9 hours pass for the rest of the world, but not for them)? What happens to spells that they have on them? What about other effects that last for a certain number of hours? Can a wizard "rest" during this time and get his spells back?

Dave

 

[HellHound]

In my write-up for this phenomenon, that time is "lost" to the teleportee. It never happened. Teleportation is a trip forward in time in addition to a trip 'sideways' in space.

Spell durations extend, and aging does not occur.

I'm already writing up a wizard who is trying to live for a much longer time frame by teleporting every night at 12:30 am, until he runs out of teleports at which time he sleeps for 8 hours, memorizes a bunch of spells, and starts the cycle up again.

 

[green slime]

Well, that is one way of doing it. Another is that they are whisked off to the moon in question, and spend nine hours there doing (?) what ever adventurers do between teleports...

This could be rationalised such that the moon must be "directly" above the place in question before they can arrive. This means they must survive the nine hours on the moon before the other half of the teleport kicks in and delivers them to where they want to go. And that occurs instantaneously. This would entail (perhaps) that teleport could only be cast when the moon is in the sky, or even only on a clear night, and perhaps not even indoors.

It also means that, as a means of escape, it is hardly 100%, as anyone of power will realise where they have gone (somewhere on the moon) and give chase. Of course they'll have 9 hours (or 20 minutes or whatever) to locate the escapees...

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Is this a world-wide phenomenon or is it more local? And, is this something that's "always been that way" in this campaign?

World-wide. This is how teleport works as soon as you step foot on this aspect of the Prime Material. It's been this way for just under a thousand years in the game history. Quickie history version: nasty high-magic war occurs. Post-war, one of the few suriviving high level casters uses an epic level spell at great expense to himself to change the fabric of magic in order to make the world a saner place to live.

What happens in the mean time? I mean, if a bunch teleports out of a dungeon at 3pm, and they show up at some designated "teleportation pad" at midnight, do they just not experience the 9 hours?

Hellhound beat me to it. The teleportees exist as magical energy with no concious knowledge of the time elapsed. They are appear at the destination unrested and unhealed. If by some krazy kooky event, the magical energy was disrupted or magic ceased to exist on the plane, they'd just drop back in at some random point between the starting point and the destination. Although technically, according to my description, they probably "should" instantly evaportate, but I'm not going to do that to my players ... or more importantly, my villians.

The teleporting-to-avoid-aging angle is a nice twist. Assuming the wizard can cast 4 teleports, that would be 12 hours experienced for every four days elapsed or one year for every eight that go by.

I'd use the vacation on the moon idea, it would tie in nicely with the alignment concept, but I already wrote in all the stuff about travel beyond the world's atmosphere. In hindsight, I'd have been a lot better off using a Spelljammer-esque ether or phlogitson mega-atmosphere, but that horse already left the barn. Pity. It's a cool idea.