Teleportation range limits and epic teleportation

[Matthias]

Personally I don't think the range should be more than x10 per +2 levels, and clearly not through the planet, since you traditionally can't even teleport more than a mile in the Underdark; clearly heavy masses and electromagicomagnetic fields prevent teleportation, Star Trek style.

Going "over the hump," and if my calculations are right, 130,000 mi should be enough to cover half the mean circumference of any terrestrial planet and all gas giants except Jupiter (~41,400 mi in radius).

 

[S'mon]

Going "over the hump," and if my calculations are right, 130,000 mi should be enough to cover half the mean circumference of any terrestrial planet and all gas giants except Jupiter (~41,400 mi in radius).

I would think so. Re Jupiter - it's a big ball of gas & liquified gas, there would be nothing to stand on anyway, so I don't see how PCs could teleport to a Jupiter-type planet in the first place.

In general, for interplanetary teleport to be practical I'd think your cosmology would need to be very different from IRL. But I think it's a nifty idea when combined with a sword & planet type approach, which has been discussed a fair bit in the OSR blogosphere, eg Grognardia's Dwimmermount campaign has Areon the Red Planet for Mars/Barsoom. You can have the lush, primeval Venus world, the dying civilisations of the Mars deserts, plus possibly a primordial, fiery Mercury, an asteroid-belt ex-world destroyed in some cataclysm, and long-dead worlds or moons further out in the Jupiter/Saturn zone.

Edit: Something like that might work in my Wilderlands campaign - but the core 'Ghenrek IV' world is an ice-age planet with a dim sun, anything further out would be frozen, so best bet would be to move in towards the Ghenrek star and detail planets I-III.... hmmm...

 

[Matthias]

Edit: Something like that might work in my Wilderlands campaign - but the core 'Ghenrek IV' world is an ice-age planet with a dim sun, anything further out would be frozen, so best bet would be to move in towards the Ghenrek star and detail planets I-III.... hmmm...

On the other hand, Distant Worlds has a gaseous atmosphere for even Aucturn even though it falls into the range of the Kuiper Belt. (For what it's worth, Pluto is known to have an atmosphere though nowhere near the pressure/density of anything found on Earth.)

 

[Salthorae]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] well personally if I were teleporting to any other planet I would hardly and other protective spells up so teleporting to a Giant Gas Planet wouldn't be that bad... Maybe there's really good trade with the jellyfish people from there?

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] well personally if I were teleporting to any other planet I would hardly and other protective spells up so teleporting to a Giant Gas Planet wouldn't be that bad... Maybe there's really good trade with the jellyfish people from there?

Yes but AIR Teleport requires a firm surface to stand on!

 

[paradox42]

Yes but AIR Teleport requires a firm surface to stand on!

Incorrect, at least in current editions of the game. It's perfectly possible to teleport into midair; you just start falling immediately if there's a gravity field present and you don't have a Fly effect active. As an example, how else would one be able to teleport around in the Elemental Plane of Air, or the Elemental Plane of Water?

And a gaseous atmosphere is actually perfectly plausible even for a world that's a rogue planet floating between star systems- all that's necessary is that it produce enough internal heat to keep the atmosphere gaseous, but not so much that the gas atoms reach escape velocity and break out of the planet's gravity well. Such a place wouldn't be very hospitable by human standards, but it's scientifically sound.

Where things get really interesting and exotic is when you start to consider objects like an Earth-sized "moon" of a brown dwarf, or something similar. How about a world where life is possible thanks to the warm body nearby, but said body doesn't actually put out any light as such? Can you say "illithid" and "aboleth," boys and girls? I knew you could!

 

[S'mon]

Incorrect, at least in current editions of the game.

It was correct in 1e-3e; Pathfinder changed it? I see the PRD doesn't mention it, yup. Those little details always trip me up. Strange they would actually make a spell more powerful - after my 3e experiences that doesn't give me much confidence I'd ever want to run high level Pathfinder.

 

[Salthorae]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I just went delving in my older rule books and the 3E and 3.5 SRD text for Teleport is basically the same as that of Pathfinder, there is no mention of needing a solid surface onto which you must teleport. 2E however, does have the statement that:

A wizard cannot teleport to an area of empty space--a substantial surface must be there, whether a wooden floor, a stone floor, natural ground, etc

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I just went delving in my older rule books and the 3E and 3.5 SRD text for Teleport is basically the same as that of Pathfinder, there is no mention of needing a solid surface onto which you must teleport. 2E however, does have the statement that:

You're going to make me dig out my 3.5 PHB, aren't you? I'm guessing the PRD text is a straight copy/paste of the SRD.

 

[Salthorae]

Nope, I did that just now too and I don't see that text anywhere in the 3.5 PHB... you're welcome to double check though, as you may be interpreting something differently than I.