Teleport: rules question about Obscuring / blocking a designated destination

[Old Micah]

First off: to any of my players (the anti-brain collector crew) who stumbled onto this: shoo.. You can check this thread later :)
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I have a smart villain who knows the party, that the party can teleport, and that the wizard was studying a very distinctive room. He would like to make it as unpleasant as possible if/when they try to return by shunting them into a less valuable, more defensible room. He doesn't have a lot of time, but a fair amount of resources, and I'm thinking that he might try two different tacks.

1) Changing the destination's appearance to up chance of a false destination result:
a. Illusion to disguise room: I'd vote that this does not work b/c it does not change the physical characteristics of the room, but wanted to make sure I didn't miss any errata on it.
b. Adding large crates/stacking furniture. While it might have a chance of blocking the area, I think at most it might move the players down the familiarity from 'studied carefully' down a slot or two. (or am I wrong? :)

2) Blocking the room, (Causing a false destination result?)
a. Web spell: Here's the big question. Can you teleport into a room that is webbed?
b. Flooding: Can you teleport into an area that is completely flooded? Alternatively, if the room gains a foot or two of water, are they just get shunted above the water or would it generate an off target teleport?

Finally, and thanks for all the patience here: Mishap is a little unclear. If there's a mishap with multiple people teleporting, do they all arrive together or scattered randomly?

many thanks all!

[John Napier 698]

Screen the room.

[Claxon]

Teleport Trap

[Guru-Meditation]

Runes! On every surface, as many as you can.

Add some open barrels of lamp oil for extra explodiness. Throw in a few handfull of caltrops, just because.

Wait in proximity of the prepared room (but not too close ;-) ) to immediately hit them once you hear the BOOM. Other wise they will simply heal up, use some useless low-level spells or charges from healing wands as your only "victims" of the nice ambush.

[2bz2p]

Had a different but related situation when a party teleported back to a familair room on the third floor of an Inn that had since burned to the ground. Ruled the "targeting" of the spell is based on what the caster thinks they know. So they arrived where the room was, then fell. Once the caster knew the room wasn't there, it could no longer be "well known".

As for water - that's a good one. For something like filling the room with stones, though Teleport does not say what happens, perhaps you could borrow from Dimension Door:

"If you arrive in a place that is already occupied by a solid body, you and each creature traveling with you take 1d6 points of damage and are shunted to a random open space on a suitable surface within 100 feet of the intended location.

If there is no free space within 100 feet, you and each creature traveling with you take an additional 2d6 points of damage and are shunted to a free space within 1,000 feet. If there is no free space within 1,000 feet, you and each creature travelling with you take an additional 4d6 points of damage and the spell simply fails."

But is water a solid body? I think not. If you can displace it, it's not solid. Water dwelling mages can teleport around underwater, so should their above ground counterparts. You arrive completely under water......... Hmmm. Seems within RAW to me.

[Yorien]

Ok, let's see. Teleport states:

Quote:

You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination. The clearer your mental image, the more likely the teleportation works. Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

If the wizard has studied carefully the room as you said, he merely places the room on his mind to port to it, he does not have to scry the current room status.

The main point is that you have to play with both layout and location. You may be able to make severe changes to the layout, but the heavier the caster location awarenes the harder for the spell to be deceived, so think how well they know the location. They've been in the room? they know where it is "in the neighborhood/city/continent/world"? The more info they have, the harder for the spell to be deceived even in it was a kitchen and you turn the room into a brothel. Layout is important, but location may be even more

To give an idea, you know where your house is because you've been living there for XX years and essentially know the street, neighborhood,city, damn, even if you checked google maps, you know it's general location on planet Earth. Even if it gets totally bombed, if you teleport to the porch you would most probably port to the crater in the place where the porch was. The layout has been heavily changed... but your location knowledge is too strong, so you can still land on target.

So, illusions would do nothing because neither layout nor location are changed. Flooding, webbing... would also do nothing (again, layout and location unchanged). Players would just port and deal with the consequences (drowning, reflex saving throw, whatever)

Very severe changes to the layout might grant a chance for the spell to grant you an "Off target", but again, the more location knowledge caster has, the heavier the changes will have to be. 10 extra closets won't be enough.

Things that could actually work might be:

a) Physically prevent the destination to be a valid destination. For example, flood the room... with concrete. There's no physical way for the tp to succeed this way (unless you decide it works and they get fused at a molecular level with the concrete), so players WILL land elsewhere, most probably somewhere nearby (let's say th caster knows the localization well enough, to the point of knowing it's is in castle X, tower A. Chances are, if there's a similar room on tower B, they'll port there instead).

b) Magically prevent the destination to be a valid destination. An Antimagic Field the entire size of the room WILL generate a wrong teleport result because there's no way the spell can land on-target. Destination up to you (I'd go with "off-target" or "similar area")

[Old Micah]

Thank you for the responses. It helps clear things up greatly: I had completely missed the location bit and the idea of displacement as a consideration for blocking, plus I learned that I really ought to be using the word "explodiness" a whole lot more than I have been!

He won't have access to most of the spells listed and only has 15 min to prep, but I have a much better idea on what's possible than I did. (and it will help with future villains! )

Many thanks to everyone!