Teleportation

[pemerton]

I bolded your comment about hit points because -now that I have some experience with how other games handle HP- I find myself unhappy with how HP works out in D&D.

Following up on this tangent - for a long time I hated hp as a combat resolution mechanic. 4e, for me, has shown me how a game can be successfully built around them, embracing the gonzo "action movie" flavour and making it fit into a coherent game rather than push against other, gritty mechanical features.

Returning to teleportation: it tends to make the game non-gritty (by making ordinary movement modes redundant) and it also gives the players a lot of power over scene-framing (because with long-distance teleport they can take their PCs where they like). If it's going to be part of the game, these implications should be thought through. (For example, the game needs to make it easy for the GM to work out what the players find at the other end of an unexpected teleport - otherwise teleporting becomes equivalent to "killing the session dead", which is a silly mechanic to have in a game.)

 

[CM]

I'm strongly in favor of 4e's teleportation.

• Teleportion of short distances is common, as in a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero settings. Generally it always requires line of sight.
• Teleportation of long ranges requires that a destination portal exist (which you have visited or learned of in some manner) and can be costly in terms of time and resources, are very high level, or are unreliable (taking you to a random location in the desired plane).

For example, the 4e version of 3e's greater teleport is essentially the level 28 ritual, true portal.

 

[Argyle King]

Following up on this tangent - for a long time I hated hp as a combat resolution mechanic. 4e, for me, has shown me how a game can be successfully built around them, embracing the gonzo "action movie" flavour and making it fit into a coherent game rather than push against other, gritty mechanical features.

Returning to teleportation: it tends to make the game non-gritty (by making ordinary movement modes redundant) and it also gives the players a lot of power over scene-framing (because with long-distance teleport they can take their PCs where they like). If it's going to be part of the game, these implications should be thought through. (For example, the game needs to make it easy for the GM to work out what the players find at the other end of an unexpected teleport - otherwise teleporting becomes equivalent to "killing the session dead", which is a silly mechanic to have in a game.)

For me, while I have had fun with 4E... I'm trying to figure out to put this. I enjoy it for what it is, but I dislike it for what I want a rpg to be. That is not to suggest I have not have fun rpg moments with it. I most certainly have. There are just a lot of stories I want to tell and styles of games I want to explore which I feel are very poorly suited to the system and vice versa. In particular, for a longer campaign and one which (for a lack of better words) has more depth, I prefer something else.

I do enjoy action movies, but I think my interests fall into some sort of weird middle ground where I feel as though reality rather than gonzo special effects are a better way to enhance the feel of action. An example I have used before would be the Transporter movies. The first movie most certainly does contain action which is somewhat unrealistic. However, it at least makes a passing attempt at trying to make things seem plausible. The second movie (I feel) didn't even try, and -for me- came across as being silly. In particular, there is a scene where Jason Stathom's character knows there is a bomb attached to the bottom of the car. He removes it by ramping the car toward a crane hook, doing a barrel roll mid-air, and having the crane hook perfectly snatch the bomb from the underside of the car.

I do not necessarily disagree with your comments on being able to teleport. To paraphrase a modular fantasy game which I enjoy "Teleportation and time manipulation spells tend to ruin dungeon fantasy where time constraints, physical barriers, and keeping the party together are among the important challenges." Generally speaking, I think I agree with that. I realize this means I am somewhat arguing against myself, but I was originally speaking up more out of a dislike for the game being artificially programmed to not allow an action to be possible as opposed to giving a player the ability to choose whether or not risking an action is worth the possible reward.

 

[Manbearcat]

In my AD&D days the threat of losing your character from a bad roll when teleporting was usually enough to keep players from not only abusing the scry and fly method but it kept them from even attempting something so dangerous. I never had a player die from a bad teleport since they never used it to go to places they weren't familiar with.

It might seem a harsh punishment on paper but if the rule keeps players from ruining years of character building by failing a die roll then it becomes an effective deterrent that never actually occurs. No one is going to risk that eight or ten percent chance that they might miss teleporting to a place they have only scryed once or twice.

Rather than the built-in cost-benefit-analysis (overly punitive - death - or disproportionately rewarding - win), binary mechanical nature of this spell, I would prefer a much more colorful form of operative conditioning of my players: Whenever they cast Teleport (or its higher level equivalents), a big, spring-loaded ACME boxing glove explodes from their d20 and punches them in the face.

 

[tlantl]

All I know is it's just another instance of WotC trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and screwing it up royally.

There's a lot of that in their versions of D&D.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I made 3E teleportation work in a couple of campaigns by making it inherently drain life energy of each participant, as if from undead--though I was using the temporary negative levels instead of the more nasty version.

If a portal-to-portal connection was properly maintained and treated, this could be largely avoided. The users of such a portal would be weakened for an hour or so, but nothing permanent. Maintaining a portal in this manner took the spells of low-level wizards and clerics, and treating one that was not kept maintained took a few 3rd to 5th level spells from the same.

Then I adopted something closer to the 1E teleport mishap logic, but with bad rolls draining even more life. So if you tried a blind or nearly blind teleport, you'd typically gain a negative level or two automatically, but if you had to shift out of solid rock or the like, you'd lose even more.

Seemed to make teleports something that casters would use in a real emergency, but not friviously.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

All I know is it's just another instance of WotC trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and screwing it up royally.

There's a lot of that in their versions of D&D.

If they took everything that someone asserted wasn't broken and left it alone, they'd never change anything. In this case, same as with many, "not broken" is very much in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Dragongrief]

For avoiding the Scry-Teleport-Kill strategy, why not institute the Vampire Rule: you cannot teleport across a threshold that you have not been given permission to cross.

Any enemies in their home/lair would be safe, though it would still allow a "stealth approach" to get close (unless it also causes a small "sonic boom" from the sudden air displacement by the arriving/leaving characters).

 

[1of3]

The only teleportation I need is Stargates: The ability to handwave characters to relevant adventure sites. 4e did a fine job with its Linked Portal ritual.

 

[Someone]

In one of the campaigns I DMed I took the “teleportation is inexact” route, so you appeared within a couple miles of the intended target. It worked well for the most part at avoiding most of the troubles mentioned in the OP (unless you consider bypassing wilderness treks a problem) and it was still a very useful (and used) spell.