Teleportation

[Minigiant]

I've seldom seen a party want to teleport more often than that, even at level 20+. All the problems I've had with teleporting have involved teleports no more than 1-2 times in a day.

Well I am not against party porting. But I would prefer to see some drawback for it outside of level.

 

[ferratus]

H. The only thing it prevents is using teleportation as an escape hatch to avert TPK; and that, to me, is a desirable use of teleport.

Gaseous form, flight, invisibility, or even dimension door do that job as well as teleport, without the inherent problems of teleport.

 

[Stormonu]

A teleport spell removes Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan and any other campaign where distances and wandering matter. If all you are doing is exploring Undermountain or Castle Greyhawk and just want to port to the surface when you want to go home, then teleport is fine. All other campaigns suffer for its inclusion.

And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there. In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel. Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit? And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation? Unfortunately, I've not read or seen Game of Thrones, so I don't know what sort of magic is possible in that world.

I don't particularly like low-level short ranged teleportation either for a few reasons. The most important one is that it really screws up battlefield and siege tactics in a way that few of us can comprehend because we have no real examples of how it changes things. We can understand how flight changes things (no more castles, just bunkers (dungeons)), we can understand how area effect spells change things (by looking at artillery) but there is no analogue to teleportation.

The closest equivalent I can think of is combat air drops - paratrooping; it is certainly a different tactic from air-to-air and air-to-gorund combat.

 

[ferratus]

And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there.

I don't know Pern, but it seems you are describing teleport in a more defensive way. Couldn't linked portals work for summoning heroes to key strategic positions? Why give the heroes the ability to teleport offensively? What is the gain for the story? Because it brings up the huge story and setting problem as to why people bother with defensive strongholds at all.

In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel. Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit? And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation?

I don't recall either situation, no, but I could stand to be corrected. The point is, that Gandalf didn't simply teleport Frodo to Mt. Doom and have him drop the ring in so they could be back to the shire in time for tea. So we didn't miss all of the sights and events of the Lord of the Rings. The problem with teleportation is that you don't have a reason to take a flaming chariot, a Griffon, or a Lord of Horses. You miss the journey because you just handwave everyone to the dungeon. If the DM wants to do that, he can simply say "after many miles, you reach the "temple of naughty baddies". Otherwise, it is an immersive breaking handwave from one fight set-piece to another, and contributes to the problem of going nova, teleporting out, buffing up again.

Linked portals are an elegant solution that doesn't require.

1) The DM putting anti-teleport wards on everything.
2) Screwing over the players (sometimes randomly) for daring to use a spell that they invested character resources and spell slots in.

Which pretty much every other suggestion on this thread requires. We have a solution, it pretty much works for all high-fantasy games (and doesn't intrude on low fantasy ones unlike the teleport spell). I'm afraid I just cannot see the downside to linked portals that makes people want to reach for that spell again.

The closest equivalent I can think of is combat air drops - paratrooping; it is certainly a different tactic from air-to-air and air-to-gorund combat.

The feather fall spell simulates that much better. For one thing, once they land, they land.

 

[Dausuul]

And there are stories, like Pern, where teleportation play an important part for the heroes to be where they need to be when they need to be there. In the others you mentioned, teleport is still in play, though its primarily used by the enemy, and generally only for personal travel. Doesn't Gandalf use teleportation (or at least Dimension Door) in the Hobbit? And I believe Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, sometimes uses teleportation? Unfortunately, I've not read or seen Game of Thrones, so I don't know what sort of magic is possible in that world.

Gandalf's magic seems to consist largely of creating light and blowing stuff up, with an occasional minor illusion. When does he teleport?

I don't know about Thulsa Doom, not familiar enough with the Conan ouvre. Game of Thrones is a low-magic (albeit magic levels are on the rise) setting with no teleporting that I am aware of.

 

[Li Shenron]

Personally I like teleportation when it is tied to (and complicated by) planar travel.

For example one of my favourite is having a spell that lets you shift to the plane of shadows so that you can find there a shorter route to your destination and then pop back. Another option could be to use some sort of plane of mirrors, so teleporting is entering a mirror, travel from inside the plane of mirrors to find the exit mirror, and pop back.

When you tie this sort of flavor to a spell, this easily leads you to represent it with mechanics that (1) reduce the insta-travel spell to more of a shortcut which is generally more acceptable and can be made proportionate to the target distance, (2) add a chance of getting lost, missing the target or even be lead further away from your starting position, since navigation in the alternate plane towards your target is not always automatic, and (3) introduce environment-based limitations such as the fact that you need enough shadows in the target area or that you travel between actual mirrors.

A purely instantaneous, error-free and no-limits teleport spell could still be in the game as a 9th level spell, on par with Gate but usable only by the caster.

I think (1) is important to avoid rendering long-distance travel pointless. To me long-distance travel equals adventure! Skipping that is like fast-forwarding to the end of a movie, so if all teleporting spells but that 9th level one are based on an alternate "route" exploiting the planes, you just replace one travel with another and adventuring is still there.

Penalties in point (2) IMHO are much more interesting than a % chance of death... I don't understand the point of such deterrent, if I had such penalty I'd simply not cast teleport at all unless when using it to save myself from another (higher) chance of death.

And final point (3) reduces the occurrences of when the spell can be used so that at least it doesn't become the sole tactic of the party. The DM has a lot of control on this point, and can stress the limitations if the gaming group is overusing teleportation.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I don't know Pern, but it seems you are describing teleport in a more defensive way. Couldn't linked portals work for summoning heroes to key strategic positions? Why give the heroes the ability to teleport offensively? What is the gain for the story? Because it brings up the huge story and setting problem as to why people bother with defensive strongholds at all.



I don't recall either situation, no, but I could stand to be corrected. The point is, that Gandalf didn't simply teleport Frodo to Mt. Doom and have him drop the ring in so they could be back to the shire in time for tea. So we didn't miss all of the sights and events of the Lord of the Rings. The problem with teleportation is that you don't have a reason to take a flaming chariot, a Griffon, or a Lord of Horses. You miss the journey because you just handwave everyone to the dungeon. If the DM wants to do that, he can simply say "after many miles, you reach the "temple of naughty baddies". Otherwise, it is an immersive breaking handwave from one fight set-piece to another, and contributes to the problem of going nova, teleporting out, buffing up again.

Linked portals are an elegant solution that doesn't require.

1) The DM putting anti-teleport wards on everything.
2) Screwing over the players (sometimes randomly) for daring to use a spell that they invested character resources and spell slots in.

Which pretty much every other suggestion on this thread requires. We have a solution, it pretty much works for all high-fantasy games (and doesn't intrude on low fantasy ones unlike the teleport spell). I'm afraid I just cannot see the downside to linked portals that makes people want to reach for that spell again.



The feather fall spell simulates that much better. For one thing, once they land, they land.

You play a low magic setting, just ban Teleport -done.
It is easier to ban a single spell than to require all other DMs/players to invent it on their own just because it does not fit your specific campaign.

The new 5E teleport could have more restrictions than its 3E version. Some uses could be reduplicated with different spells whatever. That does not mean we can't have teleport as well.

Lightning Bolt is just some slightly different Fireball.

 

[Aenghus]

I prefer the 4e approach to long distance teleports. How common short range line of sight teleportation is seems a setting matter to me.

I am strongly opposed to catastrophic balance mechanics, such as a chance of instant death on a teleport. I prefer less powerful effects that don't break the game over broken effects albeit with a chance of death or dismemberment.

It occurs to me that the latter approach allows teleports to be used by NPCs, as any accidents can be fudged by the DM, (as in unimportant bad guy wizards might die from teleport accidents, but the BBEG is highly unlikely to), while most players will avoid the random chance of death and not use the spell.

 

[Dark Mistress]

What my group did long ago was decided. You can't teleport to somewhere you have never personally been in person before.

 

[ferratus]

You play a low magic setting, just ban Teleport -done.
It is easier to ban a single spell than to require all other DMs/players to invent it on their own just because it does not fit your specific campaign.

If Teleport is ported from 3e with all its attendant problems, then yes I'll have to ban it to suit my game.

However, I don't really see anything that is gained for ANY campaign that requires magical transport by having a spell rather than a linked portal ritual. No matter how high magic your campaign, linked portals serve the job rather nicely, and don't have any of the setting problems, going nova problems, or need to nerf the spell with anti-teleport wards or random punishment every session problems.

So what does teleport as a spell (where you simply travel wherever you want in the world in a single round) add to a setting that a more restrictive linked portal (which links two places together) lacks? What does it give that is worth its inherent problems?