mjmeans's page

I was having a philosophical conversation with a Venture Captain about the uses of the teleport spell. By RAW it says that any additional creature, medium or smaller creature or its equivalent, counts against your limit of creatures teleported. Fleas and lice are creatures and there is the wording "or smaller" to consider.

1) If the caster cannot choose leave the fleas behind then each flea, louse, skin mite, or any other external parasite counts as a "medium or smaller" creature that is touching the caster. The consequence would be that infesting a spellcaster would guarantee that he can never use teleport as they would not have enough "creatures" capacity.

2) However, if the caster can choose to not take the fleas, etc. with him, it makes the teleport spell a 100% successful dis-infesting spell, and since nearly every adventurer has at least one form of beneficial parasite (skin mites) it means that teleporting would leave a faint outline of all the infesting creatures. I suppose that what the spellcaft check is for, noticing that faint outline if vermin would mean it was a teleport spell, not and invisibility spell. :)

Now the term "or equivalent" may also apply. The standard rule of 2:1 being 1 large creature counts as 2 medium, if applied to diminutive and fine creature sizes would mean that each group of up to 16 fleas or lice, would count as 1 medium creature in the teleport limit.

This was actually a devolvement of a discussion about teleporting with a tiny familiar. While neither of us could find the rule, we both though that a tiny familiar carried by a wizard would not count against the teleport limits. But that couldn't be resolved with the wordging in the teleport spell.