Why would merchants use ships instead of teleportation to transport cargo?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Kudaku wrote:
Mathius wrote:
How does Kirth handle teleportation in a way that makes castles make sense?

Spells with the scrying or teleportation descriptor cannot penetrate an area that is entirely enclosed by a thin panel of lead, an inch of metal, 1 foot of solid stone, three feet of earth etc.

IE royalty build and live in castles because it provides them with both mundane and magical protection - no need to worry about divination wizards selling their secrets to the highest bidder or commando teams teleporting into their bedroom at night.

It's a small alteration but it helps rationalize a great deal of the otherwise very odd decisions made in Golarion.

Idk, I think it makes more sense that nobles would pay for antiscrying/teleportation spells for their castle. More costly perhaps, but no labor and it's instant. Leave the castles for mundane stuff like trebuchets and demolisher demons ;)


Kudaku wrote:


And I'm still struggling to figure out who this "anti-Teleportation" group is. Apart from the people who previously worked in transportation (and I'm guessing an 18th level wizard wasn't lugging luggage for a living), why would anyone be opposed to a form of transportation that will dramatically improve their way of life?

It doesn't have to be a rival organization or people opposed in any way at all. It could simply be someone that wants to steal the goods being teleported.


Matt Thomason wrote:
It doesn't have to be a rival organization or people opposed in any way at all. It could simply be someone that wants to steal the goods being teleported.

A group of people who try to hijack teleportation circle shipments? Almost like pirates, except incredibly rare since they'd need to have the resources to research and cast their own "teleport hijack"-spell and they're directly interfering with the project of an 18th level spellcaster?

...I'd still take that over traditional piracy, decay of whatever you're shipping, maintenance and salaries for ship and ship crews, not to mention the 1-6 month shipping time.


Kudaku wrote:
Mathius wrote:
How does Kirth handle teleportation in a way that makes castles make sense?

Spells with the scrying or teleportation descriptor cannot penetrate an area that is entirely enclosed by a thin panel of lead, an inch of metal, 1 foot of solid stone, three feet of earth etc.

IE royalty build and live in castles because it provides them with both mundane and magical protection - no need to worry about divination wizards selling their secrets to the highest bidder or commando teams teleporting into their bedroom at night.

It's a small alteration but it helps rationalize a great deal of the otherwise very odd decisions made in Golarion.

So your castle has to be cube with no openings of any kind? Not the kind of place most people want to live...dwarves excluded of course.


Mike Franke wrote:
So your castle has to be cube with no openings of any kind? Not the kind of place most people want to live...dwarves excluded of course.

Enclosed, not necessarily encapsulated. Windows are perfectly fine. Actually I'll just quote the full section:

Kirthinder wrote:

Spells (and abilities duplicating the effects of spells) with the [scrying] or [teleportation] descriptor cannot penetrate to an area that is entirely enclosed by more than 1 ft. of solid stone, 3 ft. of earth, an inch of metal, and/or a thin coating of lead. This guideline, adapted from the Dunegonomicon (Frank and “K,” The Gaming Den), not only curtails “scry-and-fry” tactics, but also provides a rationale for both castles and dungeons.

Kings live in stone castles, not for defensibility from armies, but for secrecy; if a need to teleport or use divination magic comes up, they can go to an outside room and open a leaded-glass window, but while inside an inner room with stone walls and a lead-lined door, their councils are protected from eavesdropping and teleporting assassins. Many wizards likewise live in stone towers with designated divining and transportation rooms open to the outside. Tombs and cultist headquarters are typically found in dungeons underground.
Divination and dimension door effects within a dungeon or building itself are normally not affected, as the doorways, rooms, and corridors provide “open” lines of effect within the complex itself. However, rooms with stone walls and thick stone or metal doors (such as all of the Tomb of Horrors beyond the Chapel of Evil and Stone Gate) would fall under these guidelines.


Kudaku wrote:
Matt Thomason wrote:
It doesn't have to be a rival organization or people opposed in any way at all. It could simply be someone that wants to steal the goods being teleported.

A group of people who try to hijack teleportation circle shipments? Almost like pirates, except incredibly rare since they'd need to have the resources to research and cast their own "teleport hijack"-spell and they're directly interfering with the project of an 18th level spellcaster?

...I'd still take that over traditional piracy, decay of whatever you're shipping, maintenance and salaries for ship and ship crews, not to mention the 1-6 month shipping time.

Absolutely - it's not beyond the realms of possibility, for example, that a former Pirate Lord gets annoyed that everything's now being teleported everywhere, and uses his pile of treasure to hire his own wizard(s) to develop "teleportation piracy". It's entirely possible that the merchants just live with that risk and keep on using the teleport system.

You can completely ignore the idea, actively use it as an adventure hook, or choose to use it as a reason why merchants decided to keep using ships after all. My point was to offer an option for GMs who don't want teleportation replacing traditional shipping and needed a valid reason to prevent it from happening, not to argue why people shouldn't use teleportation in their worlds if they wanted them to work in a more fantastic manner ;)

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

If you read Skull and SHackles, you'd know that the Hurricane King hijacked the sun elxir twice...the first time in person, and the second time from a teleporter. So, teleporting isn't the be-all and end all, either, if someone is prepared for it!


Loren Pechtel wrote:
Te'Shen wrote:
If you go ahead and have muleback cords and the heavyload belt, strength becomes 39 for lifting and x3 to weight.
Those items don't feel like they should stack. They're almost exactly the same effect. (And it's stupid that one costs twice what the other does.)

I will agree that its wonky, but they still stack because they are different things.

PFSRD wrote:

Muleback Cords

. . . The wearer treats his Strength score as 8 higher than normal when determining his carrying capacity. This bonus does not apply to combat, breaking items, or any other Strength-related rolls, it only contributes to the amount of equipment or material the wearer can carry.

It doesn't give an enhancement bonus or insight bonus... just an untyped bonus in a very specific instance.

PFSRD wrote:

Belt, Heavyload

. . .
The belt’s wearer is affected as though subject to a permanent ant haul spell.

Ant Haul
. . . The target's carrying capacity triples. This does not affect the creature's actual Strength in any way, merely the amount of material it can carry while benefiting from this spell. . . .

And this doesn't impact strength, just the multiplier.


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If teleportation is the only shipping, then teleportation piracy will increase. And that's not a bad thing, anymore than a sorcerer who couldn't care less about becoming a merchant.

Seriously. There are people with massive talents all the time in real life, who go on to shelve that talent and pursue something different. When you are talking about magic, which has literally limitless possibilities, the idea that 'merchant monopoly' is the only allowed outcome becomes ludicrous.

For one thing, having hundreds of ships at sea ensures a variety of different destinations and trade routes. Having a single (or few) sorcerer doing the work via teleportation cuts down on the destinations, cuts down on the variety of goods being shipped, etc.

For a second thing, teleportation restricts the available destinations to those known by a single person (or by the teleporter). You can hand a captain a map and he can try to find the place. Or he can sail off the charts into new territories. A teleporter cannot.

For a third thing, sometimes people want to do things themselves. It's possible that waiting for a dragon blooded punk to grow up to 10th level and learn to teleport isn't ideal for Driver Dan and Sailor Sam. Maybe they start an anti-teleportation movement, based around honest work and back breaking labor. No doubt it will be a full fledged religion by the time the sorcerer comes around to his inescapable destiny as a shipping merchant. Driver Dan is now Deity Dan.

Or maybe someone links teleportation with autism, and starts a mass hysterical movement away from teleportation, and no matter how many wizards explain that it is perfectly safe to eat food that has been teleported, a sizable (and profitable) portion of the populace refuses to utilize it. "Organically shipped" and "No Mystic Additives" become slogans of the future.

This is a game based around imagination. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with a reason for whatever shipping your world possesses.


Mathius wrote:


So why would merchants risk ships when magic would be available and it is 40 times better and almost risk free.

Because the DM got tired of this silly crap and refuses to run anything but E6 games now.


Sebastian wrote:

Meh. Whether you "need" a few tweaks depends on what you "need" in your rpg. There are a lot of rough edges in gaming because a fun system is in tension with a realistic system. See also: the 20th level barbarian who can survive a fall from orbit, armor that makes a person harder to hit instead of reducing damage, etc.

If your sense of realism demands that you address how teleportation works in the world, by all means, make such changes as you feel are necessary to satisfy your demands. But don't mistake your demands for realism with a need to actually change the game rules for all other players and groups. The game has been played for decades with these issues, and the same issues have survived multiple rules iterations, so cleary it is nowhere near a fatal flaw.

I agree with all of this, particularly if your campaign doesn't feature piracy or long distance boat trade. A campaign world consisting of one large continent bound by untraveled oceans, or one that has many smaller internal bodies of water, isn't going to have long distance boat trade anyway. But that's not what the thread is about, now is it?

This thread is why anyone would use a boat to move bulk trade goods sufficiently long distances instead of teleport, and the answer clearly is "nobody would."

Tiny Coffee Golem wrote:
I'm surprised Treasure stitching hasn't come up yet.

Ohh, nice find.

So you don't need multiple portable holes or a dinosaur, you just need a bag of holding.


thejeff wrote:
andreww wrote:
Mike Franke wrote:
But unless you are in a gonzo high magic world, NPC wizards don't do this kind of thing for the same reason nobles still live in castles.
A lack of thought about the impact of magic and flying monsters on an internally consistent world?
Or more likely the realization that an internally consistent world based on a set of rules for adventuring isn't really desirable or quite possibly possible.

Amethyst: Renaissance does a decent job of creating such a world. Albeit, a number of world changing spells are made unavailable or modified in the pursuit of such a world.


So the merchant king that is replaced by the teleport merchant (let's say it's the boot wearer, rather than the Mage who made them and his profit and retreated back to do other things.) Said ex merchant watches as the new port-merchant signs his contracts etc. Assuming it all goes well for a while. The solution now? The Ex merchant king kills the port-merchant, who is a normal (albeit rich) schmo. Now, since the porter is the only one that has all the spots memorized, etc, the port-merchant's coster falls apart once contracts aren't fulfilled. The ex merchant king steps back in with his "more reliable" ships, and caravans, and charges a much higher premium.

By the time the port-merchant's coster sends someone else out to memorize all the locales,(which, by the way, they'll most likely take ships to)it will have been so long that a lot of those contracts will be reluctant to sign with the port-merchant.

;) , :P

Or in a far less lethal manner, the merchant king hires a wizard to cast dispel magic on the shoes. The port-merchant now has to go through the whole expense of having new shoes made.


Kelarith wrote:


Or in a far less lethal manner, the merchant king hires a wizard to cast dispel magic on the shoes. The port-merchant now has to go through the whole expense of having new shoes made.

Dispel magic only suppresses magic items for a short time. But really it would make more sense for the merchant king to get into the teleport business.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Duskbreaker wrote:
Didn't the first elven kingdoms in Golaria have teleportation networks?

There was a system of Elf Gates centered on the master Sovereign Stone in Illdara. They require however special keys to use which can take the form of codes, rituals, or actual items, and the keys to operate most of the gates have been lost, in fact the locations of many of those gates themselves are lost to history. (See the excellent novel "Queen of Thorns" for an example of what happened to one major gate).

As some of these gates are now in Human lands, the revelation of the existence of such gates has been an unsettling factor in Human-Elf relations, to say the least. For this and other reasons such as Treerazor's attempt to corrupt the Sovereign Stone itself, use of the gate system has been kept both low-key and highly restricted.


fictionfan wrote:
Kelarith wrote:


Or in a far less lethal manner, the merchant king hires a wizard to cast dispel magic on the shoes. The port-merchant now has to go through the whole expense of having new shoes made.
Dispel magic only suppresses magic items for a short time. But really it would make more sense for the merchant king to get into the teleport business.

"Make the most sense" has not underwritten much of human history.

If it is easier to kill the teleporter than to buy into your own teleportation technology (and running the same risks you are considering introducing to this guy), then that will happen. And if it happens enough, would-be teleporting merchants will get the idea that they need to be more discreet with their attempted monopolies.


Makes the most sense might take a while to catch on but it will eventually unless the entire population is against it. That is why I like superstition as a reason for boat trade.


Hmmm it would be cool to have a chance of teleport accidents. Not the old teleport into solid matter thing.

But like Star Trek Transporter accidents. You know you go to a mirror "Savage" world, and your counterpart goes to your world.

A good time is always had when they do these kinds of shows.


Kelarith wrote:

So the merchant king that is replaced by the teleport merchant (let's say it's the boot wearer, rather than the Mage who made them and his profit and retreated back to do other things.) Said ex merchant watches as the new port-merchant signs his contracts etc. Assuming it all goes well for a while. The solution now? The Ex merchant king kills the port-merchant, who is a normal (albeit rich) schmo. Now, since the porter is the only one that has all the spots memorized, etc, the port-merchant's coster falls apart once contracts aren't fulfilled. The ex merchant king steps back in with his "more reliable" ships, and caravans, and charges a much higher premium.

By the time the port-merchant's coster sends someone else out to memorize all the locales,(which, by the way, they'll most likely take ships to)it will have been so long that a lot of those contracts will be reluctant to sign with the port-merchant.

;) , :P

Or in a far less lethal manner, the merchant king hires a wizard to cast dispel magic on the shoes. The port-merchant now has to go through the whole expense of having new shoes made.

Um, no. If you're going with an internally consistent world, then whichever merchant king (there's always more than one) realizes it's cheaper to transport via teleport first starts doing it, and then all the other merchant kings start doing it too, to keep up, since their margins are getting killed by the teleport guy. In the end, all the merchant kings are using sorcerers.

One way or another, they will always end up using sorcerers unless there's something peculiar about either your house rules or your campaign that prevents it.

And if you don't really care about having that in your world, then it's no big deal. Have it. There's nothing inherently wrong with all long distance trade being handled by creepy guys in robes. Just don't go trying to squeeze nonsense like boat pirates into that world, or your players are going to call you out on it.

The Exchange

The only reason redirect teleport isn't in the rulebooks is that most campaigns haven't invoked teleportation magic as a setting preference yet. The magic system already has dimensional anchor as a sort of template: it'd only be a matter of time before some impoverished-but-inventive mage said to himself, "As long as I'm forcing all the teleporation within 1000 feet to redirect to a location I specify, I may as well specify that they're going to arrive in the Maximum Fun Monster Room (With Monsters)."


Lincoln Hills wrote:
The only reason redirect teleport isn't in the rulebooks is that most campaigns haven't invoked teleportation magic as a setting preference yet. The magic system already has dimensional anchor as a sort of template: it'd only be a matter of time before some impoverished-but-inventive mage said to himself, "As long as I'm forcing all the teleporation within 1000 feet to redirect to a location I specify, I may as well specify that they're going to arrive in the Maximum Fun Monster Room (With Monsters)."

Actually this spell does exist - Teleport Trap. It's primarily a defensive spell, not an offensive one. The long casting time and the area of effect limitations would make it quite hard to disrupt long-term teleportation gigs with it, since you'd need to defeat all the defenses at the teleportation location first.

One-time teleport heist when teleportation is just catching on though... Teleport Trap might just work for that.

Like I said, you're perfectly free to create justifications for why teleportation doesn't dominate shipping in your Golarion campaign, or just ignore the possibility entirely.

However, the way the setting is written currently, there isn't really a good explanation in place for why no one is using cheap convenient magical contraptions to solve a myriad of mundane issues - teleportation is hardly the only area where magic can make other industries superfluous. Well, at least not an explanation I've seen.


Kudaku wrote:
Lincoln Hills wrote:
The only reason redirect teleport isn't in the rulebooks is that most campaigns haven't invoked teleportation magic as a setting preference yet. The magic system already has dimensional anchor as a sort of template: it'd only be a matter of time before some impoverished-but-inventive mage said to himself, "As long as I'm forcing all the teleporation within 1000 feet to redirect to a location I specify, I may as well specify that they're going to arrive in the Maximum Fun Monster Room (With Monsters)."

Actually this spell does exist - Teleport Trap. It's primarily a defensive spell, not an offensive one. The long casting time and the area of effect limitations would make it quite hard to disrupt long-term teleportation gigs with it, since you'd need to defeat all the defenses at the teleportation location first.

One-time teleport heist when teleportation is just catching on though... Teleport Trap might just work for that.

Like I said, you're perfectly free to create justifications for why teleportation doesn't dominate shipping in your Golarion campaign, or just ignore the possibility entirely.

However, the way the setting is written currently, there isn't really a good explanation in place for why no one is using cheap convenient magical contraptions to solve a myriad of mundane issues - teleportation is hardly the only area where magic can make other industries superfluous. Well, at least not an explanation I've seen.

And yet, strangely enough, they aren't using it.

If your players bring up the issue, smile and say "That does seem odd, doesn't it." Then have any NPCs who might be expected to know, once the PCs are notable enough to warrant their attention refuse to talk about it.
That should keep them confused and wary long enough for you to build a plot around it, if they keep pressing.

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The answer is actually simple. Some merchants certainly do use teleportation and other kinds of magic to help their business, but their wares are probably expensive and their clients on the high end of the wealth spectrum. Those who do not use teleportation magic either cannot afford it or wish to reach as large a client base as possible.

Say I was a merchant and could only afford to have one thing teleport once a day. I am then only servicing one or two locations with limited number of commodities. If one area or commodity goes under I will then have to find replacements, which takes time and money and stalls my operation. A stalled operation loses money. So this can be very profitable, but very risky. We also have to consider what we are transporting and selling. Not everything would be worth transporting with such an expensive method.

Same merchant but instead of spending my money on one thing teleporting I have a fleet of ships and several caravans. Now I cover a larger area, can deal in many types of commodities, and if one of those areas or commodities goes away I don't have to stall everything while I find a replacement. I may see a loss in one area, but the many other areas make up for it.

So yes there are some who would use it, but they are probably doing so at a risk.

*Edit*
I would like to point out that Ring Gates, which cost 40,000 gp, has a limit of 100 lbs of material a day at a limited distance of 100 miles. Anything that transports more material farther (or one or the other of those two things,) should cost more than this item.


thejeff wrote:

And yet, strangely enough, they aren't using it.

If your players bring up the issue, smile and say "That does seem odd, doesn't it." Then have any NPCs who might be expected to know, once the PCs are notable enough to warrant their attention refuse to talk about it.
That should keep them confused and wary long enough for you to build a plot around it, if they keep pressing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly aware that this is a problem easily fixed by a good GM. I just wish it wasn't a problem in the first place.


How much does a portable hole weigh?


We ran across this many a year ago, before Pathfinder even. That game was house ruled to make teleportation over long distances unreliable at best. Then again, there were also magical storms that disrupted magic as well, with periods of time that made being outdoors unpleasant at best.

Then again, it also fixed a lot of other problems that I see on the boards, like magical folk running the table over mundanes.

Probably not the fix for everyone, but it worked for that game fairly well and dealt with the whole teleporting cargo bit. Lost a few shipments and people are eager to use boats and horses.


beej67 wrote:

Um, no. If you're going with an internally consistent world, then whichever merchant king (there's always more than one) realizes it's cheaper to transport via teleport first starts doing it, and then all the other merchant kings start doing it too, to keep up, since their margins are getting killed by the teleport guy. In the end, all the merchant kings are using sorcerers.

One way or another, they will always end up using sorcerers unless there's something peculiar about either your house rules or your campaign that prevents it.

And if you don't really care about having that in your world, then it's no big deal. Have it. There's nothing inherently wrong with all long distance trade being handled by creepy guys in robes. Just don't go trying to squeeze nonsense like boat pirates into that world, or your players are going to call you out on it.

What a sad little world you live in, where there is only one possibility.


18th level wizard can bind an extraplanar entity to act as a guardian of the teleport circle. For a price of course.


This is why I pretty much always build magic-tech/steampunk-style settings when I run Pathfinder. Magic doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's a pretty huge stretch of logic to think that a world with such possibilities would resemble medieval Europe, complete with filth, poverty and disease. Instead, I see magic being incorporated into everyday life, and helping civilizations advance.


Disclaimer: The following speculation assumes GMs allow custom magical items. Since that is a fairly generous assumption, this is not meant as an argument either for or against teleportation merchants - it's more of a thought experiment than anything.

I did some napkin math and I think a custom wondrous command word item casting Teleportation Circle 1/day would cost approximately 100 000 GP, and could be made by a 3rd level wizard, assuming someone else fronted the actual cost of the item.

The item would cast Teleportation Circle, active for 170 minutes, active once a day. It could go anywhere in the world you've had described to you, since Teleportation Circle is based on Greater Teleport instead of normal Teleport.

It could also be made permanent through the application of a Permanency spell, though that adds a 25 000 GP rider on each casting. If you need to trade to the same location for an extended amount of time that's more cost effective, but if you're worried about flooding the market (or some hoodlum with a custom Dispel Magic item) a portable teleportation circle seems more convenient.

He'd need access to a repository (700 GP) and the use of an Armillary Amulet (2500 GP).

5 (base DC) + 17 (CL) +5 (doesn't have teleportation circle) +5 (doesn't have CL 17) = DC 32 Spellcraft check.

Spellcraft skill: 10 (take 10) + 6 (ranks and class skill) +5 (intelligence) +3 (skill focus) +1 (trait) +4 (magical repository) +5 (competency bonus) = 34

9 (spell level) * 17 (caster level) * 1800 (command word) / 5 (single charge per day) + 50 000 (materials) = 105 080 GP.

That sounds really expensive until you start considering building prices in the Kingdom rules. Going by the general rule that 1 BP equals about 4000 GP, the teleportation item would cost about 25 BP. In comparison a Temple, a common sight in most major towns and cities, costs 32 BP - 128 000 GP. A waterfront, a specialized 4-lot district designed to load, unload and accommodate large watercraft costs 90 BP, or 360 000 GP.

Caedwyr wrote:
How much does a portable hole weigh?

The portable hole is essentially a small piece of cloth - it has no weight listed, so whatver weight it does have is negligible.


Kain Darkwind wrote:
fictionfan wrote:
Kelarith wrote:


Or in a far less lethal manner, the merchant king hires a wizard to cast dispel magic on the shoes. The port-merchant now has to go through the whole expense of having new shoes made.
Dispel magic only suppresses magic items for a short time. But really it would make more sense for the merchant king to get into the teleport business.

"Make the most sense" has not underwritten much of human history.

If it is easier to kill the teleporter than to buy into your own teleportation technology (and running the same risks you are considering introducing to this guy), then that will happen. And if it happens enough, would-be teleporting merchants will get the idea that they need to be more discreet with their attempted monopolies.

I've already covered this more than once. The merchant king or guido the longshoreman or whoever is easily bought from the profits. For goodness sakes it's a win-win. New guy hires merchant king to use his contacts and pays him handsomely but best part is mk's costs went to near zilch. He can still pad his payroll with favored employee/clients and no longer needs to run extremely expensive ships. Guido gets to move it physically to the customs/retail stores or just pay them to sit on ass all day there's an obscene amount of money to be made and throw around.


Kudaku wrote:
thejeff wrote:

And yet, strangely enough, they aren't using it.

If your players bring up the issue, smile and say "That does seem odd, doesn't it." Then have any NPCs who might be expected to know, once the PCs are notable enough to warrant their attention refuse to talk about it.
That should keep them confused and wary long enough for you to build a plot around it, if they keep pressing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly aware that this is a problem easily fixed by a good GM. I just wish it wasn't a problem in the first place.

It's a genre problem. There's no such thing as a consistent world that is both high-magic and still close enough to historical to get the feel that most want in their fantasy: pseudo-historical+magic. People like pirates and sailing ships and knights on horseback and castles and they like powerful wizards teleporting around the world and flying monsters and all the other high fantasy jazz.

And that's cool. Even if you have to suspend disbelief a bit to get the society to hang together.

Nothing wrong with the totally gonzo attempt to extrapolate everything to how it might really be with a given ruleset, but it's not for everyone. And I suspect with PF's ruleset, which is ridiculously high powered and designed (and priced) around combat and adventuring utility, you really couldn't make a coherent world, with all the possibilities built in.


Karl Hammarhand wrote:


I've already covered this more than once. The merchant king or guido the longshoreman or whoever is easily bought from the profits. For goodness sakes it's a win-win. New guy hires merchant king to use his contacts and pays him handsomely but best part is mk's costs went to near zilch. He can still pad his payroll with favored employee/clients and no longer needs to run extremely expensive ships. Guido gets to move it physically to the customs/retail stores or just pay them to sit on ass all day there's an obscene amount of money to be made and throw around.

What you continue to fail to cover is how, if things always resolve that simply, have they not resolved that simply in our own world? History is full of events where the win-win situation was avoided, lost, or deliberately walked away from.

Could happen does not translate to will happen. Almost like there was a reason we have two different words for those concepts.


Kain Darkwind wrote:
Karl Hammarhand wrote:


I've already covered this more than once. The merchant king or guido the longshoreman or whoever is easily bought from the profits. For goodness sakes it's a win-win. New guy hires merchant king to use his contacts and pays him handsomely but best part is mk's costs went to near zilch. He can still pad his payroll with favored employee/clients and no longer needs to run extremely expensive ships. Guido gets to move it physically to the customs/retail stores or just pay them to sit on ass all day there's an obscene amount of money to be made and throw around.

What you continue to fail to cover is how, if things always resolve that simply, have they not resolved that simply in our own world? History is full of events where the win-win situation was avoided, lost, or deliberately walked away from.

Could happen does not translate to will happen. Almost like there was a reason we have two different words for those concepts.

Oh yeah, I remember when we waged war on phones. That terrible, terrible war.

Only the 1891 great Car-nage was worse.


Right. Science and technology are always embraced and accepted. Tesla called. He wants to know if you'd like to come over to my house and play Dreamcast with him.

We can do it after we get our vaccines, while chatting about the current actions taken to combat global warming and hunger, and maybe look up slides about the end of warfare. You can bring your solar powered car, so that when we're done, we can head out and maybe have some sensibly protected sex with various people or each other, if we're into that.

Because no one is against any of those things, or denies them, or starts huge movements aimed at ruining them.

Human progress, always going for the win-win.


Dreamcast is not orders of magnitude better then other things in its generation.

Vaccines are not universally accepted but they are pretty wide spread. Solar powered cars are not yet cheaper then regular cars but when they are they will be adopted pretty fast. Fighting war, hunger and global warming are needed but make no one money so they are not done.

You are right about the huge movements stopping forward progress, that it why superstition is better then a guild war for stopping the teleporting merchant.

In general progress wins out it just takes a while.


beej67 wrote:
If you're going with an internally consistent world [...]

The magic item pricings themselves are wildly inconsistent. There has been no broad core item review since the publication of 3.0 and a number of core pricings are therefore two editions' worth of obsolete (if they were ever perfect in the first place).

Looking to base an internally consistent world on a bunch of giant beasts of burden (or teleporting sorcerers, or whatever) taking advantage of magic item pricing is a fool's errand. You input an inconsistent system, you output the same.

Sczarni RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

To be honest, an item that teleports a beast of burden should cost more than an item that teleports a player character.

And Coriat is correct that there are some inconstancy in item pricing.


Kain Darkwind wrote:
Right. Science and technology are always embraced and accepted. Tesla called. He wants to know if you'd like to come over to my house and play Dreamcast with him.

Thing is, choosing between teleportation magic and mundane shipping is not the equivalent of choosing between Edison and Tesla. It's choosing between electricity and gas lights.

It's not choosing between gas and electrical cars. It's choosing between modern state of the art cars, and horse-drawn buggies.
It's not choosing between the Dreamcast, the Gamecube and the PS2 - it's choosing whether or not to have video games.

A better parable is that deciding between petrol driven and electrical cars is is the equivalent of deciding what form teleportation magic will take in your world, and how prevalent it will be - teleportation boots vs teleportation circles, for instance.

Granted, humanity can be short-sighted. Global warming is a good example. However, Big Money is reluctant to tend to the environment because it's a losing bet - the car or oil industry definitely isn't going to go green because it's the right thing to do. They're motivated by profit. Whenever you tighten the margins they need to be dragged kicking and screaming, one inch at a time.

Why would this not a problem for Teleportation? Because anyone with a hint of financial understanding will realize how valuable teleportation can be. Once that idea has been suggested to the populace, they are going to keep trying until they make it work. It's profitable not to.

The form teleportation will take and how it effects society might not be exactly the form envisioned in this thread, but that people will look at it, consider it from all angles and go "nah, this just doesn't seem worth the effort"... I just don't see it happening. The concept of teleportation is too viable.

It's like turning your back on a cure for cancer because it requires you to work late every other tuesday.


Coriat wrote:
The magic item pricings themselves are wildly inconsistent. There has been no broad core item review since the publication of 3.0 and a number of core pricings are therefore two editions' worth of obsolete (if they were ever perfect in the first place).

This is a fair point - I still have no idea why boots of teleportation and helmet of teleportation have wildly different price tags. I get that helmet slots are less valuable, but come on.

However, my personal favorite are the slippers of the triton (underwater breathing, 30 foot swim speed or a +10 enhancement bonus to swim speed if you already have a swim speed) coming in at a hefty 56 000 GP.
VS
Pearl of the sirines (breathe underwater, 60 foot swim speed) priced at a modest 15 300 GP. Especially when you consider that the pearl is slotless.

The kicker? They're published in the same book - Ultimate Equipment.


I will grant you that the magic item pricing is off. Removing the boots or teleportation just means you actually need the caster to do the act instead of an item. Even without muleback cords a mastoadon with ant haul carries alot. Just cast any haul instead of using the item.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

I"ll have you know in some Economics courses at the college level, "What if we had Star Trek transporters?" is a question used to get students thinking about economic disruption and what new technologies do to established industries.

Ain't no different when you're talking teleporting.

==Aelryinth

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

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Really the closest real-world equivalent to a network of teleportation circles is a network of airports. High speed point to point travel that ignores intervening terrain and is more difficult to intercept and so forth.

But: It's expensive, especially to set up.
It only goes to relatively major settlements.

And we have the advantage that theoretically anyone with the industrial capability can build more - you don't have to be one of the best engineers in the world to expand the air network. Whereas you do need one of the best spellcasters in the world to cast teleportation circle. Even a metropolis doesn't have 9th level spellcasting available.

Yet we still have land trade, sea trade, and pirates. Huh.


ryric wrote:

Really the closest real-world equivalent to a network of teleportation circles is a network of airports. High speed point to point travel that ignores intervening terrain and is more difficult to intercept and so forth.

But: It's expensive, especially to set up.
It only goes to relatively major settlements.

And we have the advantage that theoretically anyone with the industrial capability can build more - you don't have to be one of the best engineers in the world to expand the air network. Whereas you do need one of the best spellcasters in the world to cast teleportation circle. Even a metropolis doesn't have 9th level spellcasting available.

Yet we still have land trade, sea trade, and pirates. Huh.

I think the form teleportation trade takes depends on a few factors, but I would expect it to have a form.

If you're reliant on the teleportation boot/dinosaur mode described in the OP, I'd expect teleport to primarily handle bulk trades, especially perishables, or trading to locations where it would otherwise be hard to get to, such as a castle under siege. One should also make note that Teleport actually has a range restriction (100 miles/CL) so very long-distance trade could become an issue, though one could cast multiple teleports in succession to extend the range.

If you're able to use teleportation circle (through the item I described above or because you have access to a spellcaster able to cast it) I think teleportation would be rather more common.

The cost to set it up is actually not particularly high compared to other kingdom projects - the cost of casting a teleportation circle and making it permanent is less than the cost of building a pier, the cheapest structure able to handle water trade.

If the nation provides the ability to cast Teleportation Circle (either through a spellcaster or an item, as described above) and each city provides the money to cast Permanency on their circle, I'd expect a nation to have a teleport circle network set up fairly fast. However it wouldn't completely invalidate traditional transportation - there would still be a demand for local trade and cargo shipping, typically from whatever the closest teleportation circle is to the outlying villages and areas too thinly populated to afford their own circle.

Basically teleportation circles would take on the role of airplanes, railways and large cargo ships. You'd still need mundane transportation to areas that doesn't have a dock, a railway station or an airport.


Hmmm my inclination is to never let anyone set up a permanent Teleportation circle (and also pretend that for the most part people who can cast Teleport don't do it as a business).

But Kudaku's last post gives me an idea. Imagine that the art of making Teleportation Circle permanent is lost, a knowledge possessed only by vanished civilizations, or it takes an artifact or something.

But say we have one on one continent, and a matching one on another say.

A whole culture develops around the gates. A city on both ends, two cities in very different environments. A single nation, which just happens to have its capital city on two continents, and which has leveraged this gate to have lucrative trade for a thousand years. And actually the whole economy and life's blood of this kingdom depends on the gate. And one of the gate cities would starve without this gate pair, being in a desert or something.

I'd go with that, but I wouldn't let players set one up.


Kain Darkwind wrote:
Karl Hammarhand wrote:


I've already covered this more than once. The merchant king or guido the longshoreman or whoever is easily bought from the profits. For goodness sakes it's a win-win. New guy hires merchant king to use his contacts and pays him handsomely but best part is mk's costs went to near zilch. He can still pad his payroll with favored employee/clients and no longer needs to run extremely expensive ships. Guido gets to move it physically to the customs/retail stores or just pay them to sit on ass all day there's an obscene amount of money to be made and throw around.

What you continue to fail to cover is how, if things always resolve that simply, have they not resolved that simply in our own world? History is full of events where the win-win situation was avoided, lost, or deliberately walked away from.

Could happen does not translate to will happen. Almost like there was a reason we have two different words for those concepts.

Wrong, I have already cited the example of how the railroad maintained makework jobs to keep the unions happy. Guido and his friends also leached onto the teamster unions eventually wholly owning them and actively working against their members via their political choices. Other examples on both sides of that include governments subsidizing unprofitable airlines to governments setting up caravansaries, deploying ships to fight off pirates etc. Cargo shifted from ships to land traffic more than once because of pirates including sending men and cargo down the silk road.

Pre-steamships sail can be kinda, sorta cheap however pirates screw that into three kinds of hell. Post steam you do not keep the sail for long hundred or two years tops. Long before that railroads, begin inroads into wagons or pack trains. Governments gave huge subsidies to move freight and people faster. Railroads linked nations all over the world. Governments did everything to get them going.

Did people still use pack mules and airships? Yes there is room for both even in the same country. But that doesn't mean that we still used pony express to deliver mail across the west. At the same time we used packmules in the mountains of Idaho, we also used airmail.

Need more examples?


Kain Darkwind wrote:

Right. Science and technology are always embraced and accepted. Tesla called. He wants to know if you'd like to come over to my house and play Dreamcast with him.

We can do it after we get our vaccines, while chatting about the current actions taken to combat global warming and hunger, and maybe look up slides about the end of warfare. You can bring your solar powered car, so that when we're done, we can head out and maybe have some sensibly protected sex with various people or each other, if we're into that.

Because no one is against any of those things, or denies them, or starts huge movements aimed at ruining them.

Human progress, always going for the win-win.

You do know we are communicating using Tesla's breakthrough tech. It's called 'AC current'. Shh, keep the secret. Unless of course you have your computer running off of batteries.


Kain Darkwind wrote:

Right. Science and technology are always embraced and accepted. Tesla called. He wants to know if you'd like to come over to my house and play Dreamcast with him.

We can do it after we get our vaccines, while chatting about the current actions taken to combat global warming and hunger, and maybe look up slides about the end of warfare. You can bring your solar powered car, so that when we're done, we can head out and maybe have some sensibly protected sex with various people or each other, if we're into that.

Because no one is against any of those things, or denies them, or starts huge movements aimed at ruining them.

Human progress, always going for the win-win.

Listen, humans don't always go for the 'win-win'. However, over time absent biological imperatives like reproduction, money will win out. Slaves becoming too expensive in Europe due to too much 'harvesting the steppe' and governments being able to fight back? Switch to Africa.

Pirates causing problems? Send in the Navy (if you're strong enough) if not go to shipping via land. Bandits a problem? Build Caravansaries and sponsor big caravans. Shipping via wagon or even canals costing too much? Switch to railroads. All of the above can happen at the same time.

You can have airplanes and men using horses. Steamships and sail.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Karl Hammarhand wrote:
Kain Darkwind wrote:

Right. Science and technology are always embraced and accepted. Tesla called. He wants to know if you'd like to come over to my house and play Dreamcast with him.

We can do it after we get our vaccines, while chatting about the current actions taken to combat global warming and hunger, and maybe look up slides about the end of warfare. You can bring your solar powered car, so that when we're done, we can head out and maybe have some sensibly protected sex with various people or each other, if we're into that.

Because no one is against any of those things, or denies them, or starts huge movements aimed at ruining them.

Human progress, always going for the win-win.

You do know we are communicating using Tesla's breakthrough tech. It's called 'AC current'. Shh, keep the secret. Unless of course you have your computer running off of batteries.

On the other hand, Chris Christie of NJ, became the latest of a series of governors to effectively ban the sale of Tesla cars by signing a law heavily pushed by the Big 3 automakers. New Jersey now requires that all cars be sold through a dealership, effectively banning Tesla which uses the direct sales method.


LazarX wrote:
Karl Hammarhand wrote:
Kain Darkwind wrote:

Right. Science and technology are always embraced and accepted. Tesla called. He wants to know if you'd like to come over to my house and play Dreamcast with him.

We can do it after we get our vaccines, while chatting about the current actions taken to combat global warming and hunger, and maybe look up slides about the end of warfare. You can bring your solar powered car, so that when we're done, we can head out and maybe have some sensibly protected sex with various people or each other, if we're into that.

Because no one is against any of those things, or denies them, or starts huge movements aimed at ruining them.

Human progress, always going for the win-win.

You do know we are communicating using Tesla's breakthrough tech. It's called 'AC current'. Shh, keep the secret. Unless of course you have your computer running off of batteries.
On the other hand, Chris Christie of NJ, became the latest of a series of governors to effectively ban the sale of Tesla cars by signing a law heavily pushed by the Big 3 automakers. New Jersey now requires that all cars be sold through a dealership, effectively banning Tesla which uses the direct sales method.

Which goes back to the problem with electric cars. They need subsidies to exist. Not more profitable, unlike our example of magical transport.

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