I'd advise against trying to limit your PCs abilities. That's the sign of a poor GM. Let your players take advantage of the characters they've built.
Just run through game according to the rules. If you feel you aren't providing challenges, then vary your encounters, scenarios, environments, etc. Try running or at least reading a few published adventures to help.
Again. Don't.
For some games in the past, I've instituted a rule that teleport requires a 1000gp Emerald. By the time they can cast it it's not a huge amount of money, and therefore the spell is still useful when time is tight or in an emergency situation, but it's expensive enough that they won't use if frivolously. My players seem accepting of it.
How about the caster is wiped for one round per person teleported.
Somebody stuffs them into the hole with several open bottles of air. The fighters get to shine.
I describe teleport spells as every atom is separated from every other atom in your body. It feels like this is done with a knife.
It's extremely painful for the characters in game, but not different mechanically from the rules at all.
My original version of Teleport we used in the campaign really focused on the idea of having to tear a hole into an alternate dimension. From there the party had to run like hell through the twisted nightmarish landscape found on the other side as hordes of undead / demons, etc pursued the party. Once they got to their destination they slammed the portal closed on the other side before the demons could come pouring out into the world. This scenario was actually taken from the movie Constantine with Keono Reeves.
Later we decided that while this worked well it was too heavy handed and dropped it in favor of going with a lower level cap for the campaign. In the final draft the campaign level capped at 10th level for NPC's, 11th for PC's. Further it had an additional level restriction of how high of a level spell you could cast that was outside of your specialty school or domain. This actually addressed several of the issues in the campaign and things balanced surprisingly well with few customs rules needed to fix resulting holes in the system. We found that most of the reported (and experienced) flaws within the D20 system really only become serious problems as you start reaching higher levels anyway.
Most of the classes and races were restricted to the core rule book, with only a few clearly stated exceptions, and all casters were considered specialists.
I'd advise against trying to limit your PCs abilities. That's the sign of a poor GM. Let your players take advantage of the characters they've built.
Just run through game according to the rules. If you feel you aren't providing challenges, then vary your encounters, scenarios, environments, etc. Try running or at least reading a few published adventures to help.
Again. Don't.
Your probably right. 35 years as a player, 28 as a DM and I'm definitely a poor DM that wouldn't live up to your standards. You got me. I guess next you are going to tell me that Paizo was completely wrong when they started monkeying around with the 3.5 system? Maybe they should have asked someone at WOTC to explain it better for them?
I'd advise against trying to limit your PCs abilities. That's the sign of a poor GM. Let your players take advantage of the characters they've built.
Just run through game according to the rules. If you feel you aren't providing challenges, then vary your encounters, scenarios, environments, etc. Try running or at least reading a few published adventures to help.
Again. Don't.
Your probably right. 35 years as a player, 28 as a DM and I'm definitely a poor DM that wouldn't live up to your standards. You got me. I guess next you are going to tell me that Paizo was completely wrong when they started monkeying around with the 3.5 system? Maybe they should have asked someone at WOTC to explain it better for them?
Sarcasm is fun, but that alone might not control the abuse of teleportation. You can use sarcasm to defend the restrictions you use as GM. It's not like the players had to create all these challenging encounters. Where in prepared adventure paths does it say "Let some murder hobo teleport past the guards and kill the main villain in his sleep"? Nowhere!
If the players don't like it, they can create a game world where governments are founded on the abuse of teleportation and suchlike. Actually, that might be interesting. Big brother is scrying on you. :)
In some campaigns, I adopted a little extra rule to even try a teleport: You must have a focus object (not a perishable one) you have taken with your own hands from the area you want to teleport to. It can't be a personal possession of someone else: it must be an object belonging to the place itself.
This destroys the "scry and fry" tactic, since it becomes impossible to teleport to areas you have never been at, even if you are looking at them that very instant.
It also limits teleportation to areas the caster himself has been before and can't be used with a "generic description" at all, so it requires some adjustment to the "results" table.
Blocker(Inevitable)
This looks like a cubist, humanoid, metal, statue. I think 4D10 +4 HP.
It's special powers are teleport(Usually to the destination of a scry and fry mission) and mass dimensional anchor. It's armed with a heavy repeating crossbow, which it will fire at the invading force. Meanwhile it will be screaming about dirty, chaotic, terrorists. If slain, the anchor is released and it vanishes back to the lawful neutral plane with it's crossbow.
You could impose the rule that casting Teleport physically ages the caster 1d4 years...
In my current campaign, my GM has done away with Teleport and instead replaced it with the possibility of covering great distances by travelling through a shadowy, other-wordly realm, sort of like the Astral Plane mixed with the Plane of Shadow.
It is a realm populated by guardians and the longer you seek to travel in the "real world" the more fierce a guardian you are likely to encounter in the other world, which means a great risk of a dangerous fight. So every use of this short-cut becomes a case of weighing potential risk vs. potential gain - and in any case we are sure to have an adventure! :-)
If we're talking homebrew?
Watch any Star Trek episode in which the transporter malfunctions.
Roll from there.
40K would be an even more interesting source to draw from.
Let me take you through the average Warp travel procedure.The Captain calls down to prep the ship for Warp expedition. At that time 12000 slaves who have never see the outside of the work galley begins shoveling the dead bodies of the previous workers into massive furnaces along with whatever hard fuel source they have in storage, like a brutal Mr Fusion.
A field of pure psychic F*$* YOU is generated around the ship and the blinded mentally traumatized man inside a metal egg begins screaming unendingly as he charts a course through the Warp, which is basically a giant ocean of pure emotion on which the Unnamed Ones lounge around and f%@$ with humanity by the luxury of simply existing.
The ship then ploughs into the miasma of what you could call hell if you lacked imagination. Pray to the Holy Throne the Astropath doesn’t accidentally get you lost, become possessed by a Daemon or just explode like a mushy human piñata from the mental stress of being around so much CANNOT BE.
If the void shields even flicker on the 8000 year old vessel (which no one actually understands completely how they work) Daemons made of RAPE and LEMON JUICE will crawl into our reality and do things you literally cannot imagine to every soul aboard. I mean that. The very notion of understanding the completeness of the horror the human victims will be witness to would shatter your perception of reality and cause your head to explode.
Mission clock says that they were only in the Warp for 5 days. It was 17 months for everyone onboard. They also missed the destination by a couple of solar systems and 8/10ths of the crew is dead.
The Captain turns to his bridge staff and pops the cork on a vintage stock of Jherrik Ale and salutes another successful Warp Jump.
Welcome to 40k
Spite Nettles:
These plants grow in large bushes and can be easily avoided, unless you are teleporting! If the path from the start to destination passes through, over, or under, they are yanked from the ether right over the bush! The seeds of the bush imbed in the flesh or fabrics and cause distracting itches. It effects blinking and dimension door the same way, so blink dogs avoid it. If someone manages to teleport afterwards, the seeds fall all along the route and take root.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You could impose the rule that casting Teleport physically ages the caster 1d4 years...
In my current campaign, my GM has done away with Teleport and instead replaced it with the possibility of covering great distances by travelling through a shadowy, other-wordly realm, sort of like the Astral Plane mixed with the Plane of Shadow.
It is a realm populated by guardians and the longer you seek to travel in the "real world" the more fierce a guardian you are likely to encounter in the other world, which means a great risk of a dangerous fight. So every use of this short-cut becomes a case of weighing potential risk vs. potential gain - and in any case we are sure to have an adventure! :-)
I used something very very similar at one point. It is sorta nice to know that I'm not the only one who had such an idea.
As for the idea of it being used to ferry troops, you can only bring between 3-4 people with you at a time. Hardly a threatening invasion force.Pull a Skarda! You can fit a lot of undead into a Portable Hole.
About 20 M sized plague zombies?
Because that's a great trap.