I'm trying to figure out a way to teleport back to the party's ship. It doesn't seem like there's a safe way to do it, as Teleport (via a Tiara of Translocation or Teleport spell) always carries a risk of being off-target, which in all probability involves someone dying in the vacuum of space.
Interplanetary teleport is apparently safer (there's no risk of a mishap, though you end up somewhere random if you don't have a familiar place in mind) but the wording seems to imply you can strictly only target planetary surfaces.
Telepathic jaunt is safe, and actually can go between systems, but it wouldn't work in the standard situation: all the party members teleporting down, Star Trek style.
Is this an oversight, and the wording meant to include any familiar locations in-system, but only unseen areas on planet surfaces, or is that strictly off-limits?
And if so, is there any way of teleporting to your own ship safely? It seems like there should be, like, some kind of beacon you can put down to allow you to teleport back after you teleport to the surface, but I can't find anything in the rules.
You definitely can't teleport to it while it's moving. It explicitly says that in the starship rules
To the party's starship, so long as it's stationary, is "Very Familiar" for teleport.
For interplanetary teleport, again presuming a stationary starship in this case that is on-world, this part of the spell is what seems to matter:
If you have a specific location on a planet in mind, you arrive there without a chance of failure;
As long as you buddies didn't relocate elsewhere on the planet, you're good to go using interplanetary teleport. If not, you'll need them to give you a good video panorama of the ship's surrounding area to peruse for a bit before *poufing* in.
Based on the starship combat rules, I interpret a "stationary" ship as one that hasn't undergone any acceleration or changed vector. A ship (and planet!) is always moving relative to something, so a stable predictable direction of movement is the closest you can get to "stationary."
The harsh version is it can't have moved since you got your fix, the permissive version is it just can't be under thrust somewhere in the system. For interplanetary teleport I'd use the latter, for teleport (like surface to orbit) I'd use the former.
I know you can't teleport to it if it is moving. My point is that the teleport spell has a failure chance, which puts you off course by a percentage of the travel distance, which is at a minimum several kilometers and at worst hundreds of kilometers away from the ship. Pretty much death unless you have a really good contingency plan.
Interplanetary teleport, on the other hand, has no miss chance, but seems to specifically require you to target positions on a planetary surface.
I don't think the stationary situation is a problem. There are natural geostationary orbits (too far away for regular teleport, but we're talking about Interplanetary Teleport) and I assume most starships have a 'parking mode' which puts you at something like satellite height (100-1000 km from the surface) and geostationary. Even if you were traveling down via shuttle, you won't want the main ship to be on the other side of the planet half the time, out of sight.
My problem is with the wording of Interplanetary Teleport, which is higher level than Teleport, but might not be able to target a spaceship.
It can, per "specific location on a planet". That specific location can be your favorite bar stool in the Mos Eisley cantina, your home-away-from-home on Eox or your crew station aboard the party's ship you've been adventuring in for 10-15+ levels with ease sitting in dock or geostationary orbit. I get the concern re: on planet though, as some sticklers may deny the higher level spell's ability to get you there.
Very Familiar via teleport targets anywhere within 2,000 miles (3,200 km or so), well within orbital distances and has a very, very slight chance of arriving off-target at 1-in-50. The closer you were to the ship the less distance off-target puts you, perhaps necessitating a second teleport to zap you into the ship. One's armor will easily provide more than sufficient protection against almost any environment for nearly 2 weeks at the level one accesses teleport. The 1-in-100 risk of "similar target" means that someone locally (relatively speaking) has a very similar destination to where you wanted to go. Either of these at 3-in-100 is an acceptable risk.
If you get hung up on "planet" then you can't teleport to asteroids, moons (even if much larger than a planet), a city on the sun, Pluto only after 2006, etc. It's absurd. Planet in this spell means a distant object with a defined orbit that you know exists and have a rough, very high level conception of its location relative to ther bodies in the system.
Telepathic Jaunt is the safest. You can connect up to six people. To teleport down:
16th level Solarion with ultimate graviton:
"Gravity Boost: Your bonus applies to all Acrobatics checks, and you take no damage from any fall." (Might be rule bending but it doesn't say "no damage from the impact of a fall". So the heat damage from entering (or 'falling') into the atmosphere should be negated)
Drop him out of the airlock with an oxygen tank and wait for him to hit ground. Boom teleport to him.
Get back to ship?
Hire an NPC to sit on the ship and include him in the link. Better yet, link him and put him in a coma and just leave him on the ship. Teleport back to him no problem.