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How many characters are there in the party, including animal companions?
My 11th level group is still riding horses for decent distance journeys because Teleport/Wind Walk/Word of Recall is self + 1 person/3 levels, some of them are weight limited and they are a large group with two large animal companions.
They can't teleport away en masse and they can't travel fast en masse, requiring multiple castings of their top level spells to avoid travel.
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Lot going on In that wall of text there, but jut take a step back and wonder what the impacts of such a violent and dangerous world would be on trade and communication. If a stalwart band of heroes can't take a day trip to the neigh oring town with pout multiple high CR encounters then there is no way a farmer can plow his field without getting eaten by dire ground hogs.
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sunbeam pretty much has it. If teleporting would seriously mess up your narrative, you're welcome to ban it. Just explain why to the players, and let them know up front whether or not you're imposing similar restrictions on your NPCs.
A simple "Okay... teleport effects, the ones that send you huge distances, really mess up the risk-reward for adventuring and gut a lot of the things I want to emphasize in my story. I won't allow your characters to use this spell, that spell, or... those spells. That other spell might be okay, let's talk about it and see if any of you even care about that one. Also, my NPCs (will/will not) be subject to the same things your characters are, because (reason)."
Most players should nod to it. If the 'D&D' experience to them is reliant on having Teleport, that's... kind of weird.
Have an out of game conversation about it. As players, they want a good game. You making stuff on the spot weakens their experience. Discuss that.
On the other hand, the players have legitimately gotten more powerful. They should get something for that. So you need a gentle mans agreement.
So, teleporting over a pit is fine, as is teleporting out of the crushing wall trap. Choosing a random spot on the map and saying "what's happening here" is not ok.
Ultimately, you'll probably end up with something like a subway system. There will be a few stops, and the players can get to them quickly. Other places are less convenient to get to.
You can add stops slowly, and access to a new location is a new kind of treasure to give out.
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Tell them there is a latent miasma in the area from an ancient magical disaster. It has a nasty effect on teleportation magic. The more powerful, the more likely something strange or dreadful will happen.
This means, when you need teleport to fail, it fails.
When you need teleport to work, it works.
Other times, well, you can make a chart and roll for random effects.
Reminds me of Eberron, which was often described as islands of civilization floating amidst the dangerous seas of the untamed, monster-filled wilderness.
I suggest talking to your players ahead of time to see what they will probably will be using the spell for. Then report back here if you need anymore assistance.
A simple adjustment of the spell would work too. Make it where they can only teleport somewhere they have seen or been to
We banned almost all of the movement magic a couple of campaigns ago: not only teleport but fly, overland flight, dimension door, wind walk, shadow walk, and planeshift.
Upsides: Terrain makes a much bigger difference, and the PCs are much more involved with it. Mounts, ships, and so forth are a lot more important. There's a stronger sense of place. Fewer fights are rendered irrelevant by the PCs simply staying out of reach. Traps work better (prior to banning these spells we had some trap-heavy scenarios blunted by PCs who flew all the time). You don't have to fuss with the complex flight rules. Perhaps most significantly, the scry/buff/teleport combo, which can spoil high-level games, isn't as dangerous without the teleport.
Downsides: Some monsters are too powerful if the PCs can't take to the air to fight them. Unless you also strip these abilities from creatures, it can seem unfair (teleporting demons and devils were the biggest one for us). Some adventures assume fast travel and the pacing breaks without it. It's hard to do a series of adventures in very diverse locations. Players sometimes resent having abilities removed (not a problem for us--we had a consensus--but could be for other groups). PCs lose a potentially life-saving getaway option; so do NPCs, many of whose combat tactics involve a last minute dimension door.
My husband is thinking of bringing back very short duration combat flight, but both of us are agreed that long-range movement magic has more downsides than upsides in our games, and we will continue to ban it. I particularly recommend this if you ever run _Kingmaker_.
That said, I would have a big plausibility problem with 4-5 dangerous encounters per day, unless every town is built like a fortress and every caravan is armed to the teeth.
I think it's important to have known, consistent rules. If you want less teleportation, either add in an expensive component, or increase the casting time, or both.
That way, it's still there for story reasons, but no one is teleporting to get a bagel.
My only concern is how tedious constant random encounters would get. Also there would be the issue of high XP gain, but low loot (random monsters are away from lair so lack much of their treasure). I prefer the small percent of encounter + dealing with environment/natural obstacle way of doing overland travel through dangerous areas.
As for the teleport issue, make sure you enforce the rules of the teleport, many players and GMs kinda handwave it. The spell is honestly balanced, when you get high enough level that your party can all use it, you are already above the level of normal humans and obstacles, teleports explain why high level adventurers have't cleared out the places in between cities, they skipped that part.
Tell them there is a latent miasma in the area from an ancient magical disaster. It has a nasty effect on teleportation magic. The more powerful, the more likely something strange or dreadful will happen.
This means, when you need teleport to fail, it fails.
When you need teleport to work, it works.
Other times, well, you can make a chart and roll for random effects.I would avoid doing this if at all possible. If I were a player and my DM were obviously arbitrarily adjudicating on the fly whether or not my more powerful class abilities worked according to his whim, I'd get frustrated.
It's very similar to DMs having monsters auto-save against some spells to "make the combats interesting." I've had DMs do that before, or just make monsters immune to stuff on the fly, and it makes me wonder why I even bothered building a caster if the monsters are just going to arbitrarily resist my spells. (Although I wasn't the caster in question there.) It wasted the PC's action, wasted their resources, and occurred without any forewarning.
I mean, if you do this, at least tell them upfront that it means that you're only going to let some spells work some of the time, and the players will have no insight into when or why that decision will be made. That way they'll know to just never prepare the spells in the first place if they have no idea whether or not they'll succeed, for totally metagame reasons.
+1 to this. Our DM actually did this once and I found out about it since I knew the stats of a cursed item we were forced to pick up* and saw him make the item activate the ill effects faster than it normally should "to make things interesting". I only got lucky seeing that one, but who knows how many times I'm gonna end up doing nothing with my spells just because the DM decides to be his usual arbitrary self. I don't even know if he's going to shoot me down whenever I use Fly, so I didn't even pick it up when I could.
Icyshadow, you really need to change your DM. :)
You know, I wish I could.
The problem is, he's one of the few DMs who plays with a style I like (healthy mix of RP and game mechanics, though more of the former), but he's got such an attitude problem (including a way of being overly arbitrary, not listening to the pleas of his players and generally doing whatever the hell he wants with no respect for second opinions or suggestions from others) it's almost unbearable. The only good part is that he SOMETIMES gets his head out of his arse and bothers to listen for a moment or two, but sadly those occurences are rare. He's far more prone to complain to me about me "whining about his DMing on forums" when it's not my fault he's not even taking into account a request ALL FOUR PLAYERS OF HIS OWN GROUP HAVE MADE.
TELEPORT AM NO PROBLEM. AM NINJA AM WILLING TO WORK FOR FOLLOWING COMPENSATION. AM NINJA WANT 51 PERCENT OF EACH PLANE AND ENDLESS SUPPLY OF SCROLLS TO DO JOB WITH.
You can always accept that high level characters don't care for such things as distances and random encounters or just play games that never got into such levels.
We banned almost all of the movement magic a couple of campaigns ago: not only teleport but fly, overland flight, dimension door, wind walk, shadow walk, and planeshift.
Upsides: Terrain makes a much bigger difference, and the PCs are much more involved with it. Mounts, ships, and so forth are a lot more important. There's a stronger sense of place. Fewer fights are rendered irrelevant by the PCs simply staying out of reach. Traps work better (prior to banning these spells we had some trap-heavy scenarios blunted by PCs who flew all the time). You don't have to fuss with the complex flight rules. Perhaps most significantly, the scry/buff/teleport combo, which can spoil high-level games, isn't as dangerous without the teleport.
Downsides: Some monsters are too powerful if the PCs can't take to the air to fight them. Unless you also strip these abilities from creatures, it can seem unfair (teleporting demons and devils were the biggest one for us). Some adventures assume fast travel and the pacing breaks without it. It's hard to do a series of adventures in very diverse locations. Players sometimes resent having abilities removed (not a problem for us--we had a consensus--but could be for other groups). PCs lose a potentially life-saving getaway option; so do NPCs, many of whose combat tactics involve a last minute dimension door.
My husband is thinking of bringing back very short duration combat flight, but both of us are agreed that long-range movement magic has more downsides than upsides in our games, and we will continue to ban it. I particularly recommend this if you ever run _Kingmaker_.
That said, I would have a big plausibility problem with 4-5 dangerous encounters per day, unless every town is built like a fortress and every caravan is armed to the teeth.
Incapable of building encounters with movement magic in mind? Or just feel that it's too much work to adjust the campaign to match the magic at hand?
Yeah I think waypointing or simply taking most teleport spells out of the game would be fine, if discussed ahead of time and something that is world wide.
I've played exactly one character that was a dimensional specialist type (teleports spacial distortions, time lapsing and the like) and even then actual teleporting and what have you is only a small part of the whole. I don't think losing a large portion of it would hurt the concept too much -- though I would ask for the dimension step (from the subschool of teleport) and d.door be left in as those are rather short range.
There are some useful things about teleportation magic, but you have to control it somehow. You literally can wind up with something like Sir Palomino and Jeeves discussing how Sir Palomino is teleporting to the Dungeon of Dread tomorrow at 8 am. He will break for lunch, circumstances permitting, at noon. Jeeves should have lunch ready at 12:30, and there is a possibility Sir Palomino will have guests (prisoners), so plan for eight in attendance. Sir Palomino will then return to the dungeon and will eat supper at 7. The bath will need to be drawn by 6, so Sir Palomino can bathe before the repast.
If any changes need to made for this plan, Sir Palomino will Send Jeeves the details.
It doesn't make for a very interesting book to read, and definitely not a game after you do it once or twice.
Hey if it means anything to you, I think this could be a spark for a great bit of fun.
"not very common in fantasy and sf literature"
Really? Have you not watched star trek? Have you not read Forgotten realms books (the high level guys rarely walk anywhere). Heck I remember a scene in Dragon Lance where the mages all used wish spells to teleport out because they didn't bother to memorize the basic teleport.
I've read a large number of Sci Fi books many of them quite old. My Sci Fi wall in the library is 10 feat tall by 15 foot wide in paper backs that I have read. I have books elsewhere that never fit on the shelves, and are in storage. Teleporting isn't in all of them, but its common enough to have established tropes similar to how warp drives are handwaved.
In comics I assume you mean Marvel/DC. Those setting are so internally screwed up they have to destroy everything on a periodic basis to reset story lines. Teleporting exists (and should be common in the alien/cosmic crowd, but lazy writers are lazy and don't think about the result of certain tech changing things), but when it doesn't suit whatever hack they got writing it that month, that power is turned off.
Schlock Mercenary is a Sci Fi web comic that has common long distance teleporting, and counter measures for teleporting. In a world where people teleport around, counter measures would exist. Heck in PF/D&D there are in fact spells that can restrict teleportation.
As for the actual spell, its a 5th level spell, giving up that slot hurts. There is a misfire chance where you don't end up where you want. Even the "scry tele" doesn't work if there are counter measures in play, high level characters know about this kind of thing, and will take counter measures if they can.
Really?
No one yet wondered why he travels to his group by plane?
Is that common practice on your continent? ^^
Anyway, if bringing a battlemap is a problem, but paying plane tickets isn't, I'd suggest getting an ipad (or sth similar) and a beamer. Prepare the maps whereever you have the time, like, when you're waiting at the airport, and then throw them on the table.
You can easily copy maps out of pdfs you own, and there are numerous maps available on the net for free, plus it's easy to combine your own stuff, so you can build up a reasonable collection and always have all the maps wih you.
Regarding the random travel encounters, that's of course a question of personal taste. I, for what it's worth, would tune that down to one or two random encounters every few days of travel. Having multiple random on-the-road fights a day means you got less time to spend on actual plot things.
I wouldn't so much worry about teleport stuff. As has been said, just houserule you can only teleport to places you've been to before, or increase the probability and damage of mishaps... Or maybe if you end up on a second mishap after you rerolled, you are not shunted out... you remains stuck "in" (or maybe "fused with") whatever has been where you end up.
For combat situations, everybody who wants to be teleported has to be in touch with the caster (at least indirectly). Holding on to other people should at least net you some penalties on AC and attacks due to reduced mobility.
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The times we needed to retreat have all been with 8-10 characters. It seems the power increase jumps about than. Before than you do the best you can in doing a controlled retreat and that usually means the tank holding off the bad's while the rest get away. Yes D.D. is 4th level and for most situations can get you out of the dungeon. Teleport will allow you to go get that one scroll you need to continue though.
Thank God for teleport. Overland travel is tedious for most players, unless it is really different. How can you be globe-trotting world powers without teleport? You can't teleport to places you've never seen - and if you are scrying to get somewhere, most baddies of your level will have invested in Forbiddance spells, or teleport diversion spells. And of course, there is the threat of mutual destruction - if your PCs start 'scry and die' feel free to return the favor. What's good for the goose and all that.
I would save my 'teleport ban' for certain areas of the campaign world - in ours, there are a few places where it doesn't function well due to magic catastrophe, dead magic areas, or powerful magical foci.
You don't need a bunch of rabid monsters lurking outside to get the players to roleplay with each other. If they will talk to NPCs, they can be 'forced' to talk to each other:
The PCs meet a travelling merchant on the road, and he is happy for the company and protection, and offers them meals if they will travel with him. During the meals, he asks of their exploits, and maybe shares gossip. He can turn the conversation to politics, and ask questions of whether the PC enjoys the king's rule, or thinks him a fool. Ask what the PC's policy is on captured criminals. What do they think of 'charm person'? Open it up to get them talking.
Then award experience for the role play encounter. They'll see the reward.