Let’s start off with my (mostly new) description of the Teleportation sub-school: There’s a slight loss of utility from teleportation at low levels, and class abilities such as Abundant Step (yes I’m think of monks, INdran) may need to be slightly rethought. In principle, these limitations seem perfectly fine to me as a GM. Even high level casters, who teleport off the grid will run into trouble. There is no ‘teleport without error’ or similar spells in the game any more. Teleporting off the grid is dangerous, and becomes progressively more dangerous if you are less familiar with your destination. If you want to teleport to a location you cannot see, and the destination is not a teleportation circle then you’ll need a spell of at least 8th level to get there. High-level spells: Spells of levels 8 and 9 are required if you want to teleport ‘off the grid’. And yes, characters can build their own teleportation circles using the rules for constructing magic items. However, if you’re teleporting between two existing circles then the spell is cast as a standard action. Casting a spell from a random location to a teleportation circle takes several minutes to cast. If the caster doesn’t know the runes for a particular circle then he cannot teleport to it. Teleportation circles are coded with runes (gate addresses). Any spell caster can use the teleport spell to travel from where they are, as long as the destination point has a teleportation circle. Think stargates for want of a better analogy. Teleportation circles are magical items that are designed to be the sending and receiving points of teleportation magic. Mid-level spells: Spells of levels 5 to 7 allow you to teleport sight unseen, but in order to use them you have to lock on to an existing teleportation circle. These rules leave the door open to introduce some nifty fourth edition classes like the Swordmage, as well as making certain third edition prestige classes (Shadowdancer) more attractive. You can use them to transport through a window (as you can see what’s on the other side). You can’t use them to transport onto the other side of a closed door, or if you’re blinded, or if it’s too dark to see. The range of these abilities is reduced to line of sight. Low-level spells: Teleportation spells of 4th level or lower (which includes dimension door) can’t transport you further than you can see. This is how I see the scope of teleportation spells: As far as teleportation is concerned, planning is absolutely everything. The less familiar you are with the destination, the more dangerous the journey becomes: the more likely it is that you’re deposited somewhere you don’t want to be, or that you suffer physical damage (as part of you appears somewhere, and the rest of you appears somewhere else), or you may even find yourself shunted onto the Astral Plane. After all, teleportation isn’t like dusting crops. You don’t want to crash into an astral whale, or zip through the lich-queen’s boudoir. A bit like the way hyperspace works in the old Star Wars RPG, you have to be sure of your route through the Astral Plane to your destination. You’re stepping out of this reality into the Astral Plane and crossing the intervening distance in the blink of an eye to instantaneously arrive at your destination. My feeling is that teleportation is very dangerous. It should be possible to cross vast distances at mid-levels, but only very high level casters should be able to do so at a whim. I quite like the idea of even low-level characters blipping around a single combat with low-level teleportation, while I think long distance teleportation needs to be curtailed somewhat. The rules I propose for Teleportation take something of a lead from the fourth edition game. So have a look and see what you think: Teleportation Spells These proposed changes are flavourful, and actually create new roleplaying opportunities instead of closing them off. They also opens the door for access to limited teleportation at lower levels than the third edition game previously permitted. I’m not trying to undermine the potency of the characters, but I don’t think that teleportation has ever been sensibly addressed in the D&D rules (well, not until fourth edition). It’s not as bad as Divination (which we’ll get to later) but it can place unnecessary barriers to some perfectly good and enjoyable adventures. Right, this is the second and penultimate post in my series of ‘problem spells in D&D’. Teleportation is a problematic part of the game for the GM.
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