I am trying to get my head around long distance travel around Golarion. As I understand it the VAST majority of all travel is done on boats and ships. What I am hopping to create with this post is a list of alternate travel methods that should be available to players early, mid and late game. The list below is what I could find.
Teleportation circle: Would act like an airport. Although introduced in the Kingmaker CRPG as being able to be placed in any town the rules as written seams to make this not be the case as a settlement would need a settlement level of 17+ to cast teleportation circle. As far as I can tell there are only 4 such city's on Golarion. Those being Absolom, Absolom; Mechitar, Geb; Yled, Geb; and Quantium, Nex.
Airships: Said to be on the plane of air and maybe Akenstar, but can not fine a list of city's with air terminates.
Underdark: Specifically states that it can not be used to get around with the exception of a couple Dugar roads.
Aiudara Gates: I assume the main one from Golarion and Castrovel is open and used by the elves of Kyonin.
I would love to hear how GMs are getting their players around the globe.
Airships exist in Alkenstar. In Skyside they have a region called Pilot's square. Ustalav has been creating stasian spooky airships as well. The crew of the Zoetrope of Howl the Wild had an airship that they used to travel.
Though the most common mode of travel is via beast of burden I imagine followed by ship.
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As I recall from Lost Omens: Travel Guide, the reason why teleportation circles aren't used en masse, at least for goods, is that a.) governments don't like it when people have a way to bypass their toll and tax gatherers or register their arrival for their records, and b.) teleportation has some unpleasant potential side effects when done on a large scale. I can't imagine those don't apply just as much to people as it does to trade goods.
Further teleport is an uncommon spell needing a minimum of an 11th level caster. Which oddly is what some/most/all/??? venture captains are per the NPC codex. Does this not mean there would be reliable teleportation travel between all Pathfinder Lodges?
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As I recall from Lost Omens: Travel Guide, the reason why teleportation circles aren't used en masse, at least for goods, is that a.) governments don't like it when people have a way to bypass their toll and tax gatherers or register their arrival for their records
This doesn't actually suffice as an explanation. If you have the means to avoid tax collectors, you have the means to avoid cops.
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As I recall from Lost Omens: Travel Guide, the reason why teleportation circles aren't used en masse, at least for goods, is that a.) governments don't like it when people have a way to bypass their toll and tax gatherers or register their arrival for their recordsThis doesn't actually suffice as an explanation. If you have the means to avoid tax collectors, you have the means to avoid cops.
If the cops are high level clerics from the church of Abadar, it ain't that easy. ^^
And, yes, that is the actual explanation from the Travel Guide, that the church of Abadar takes care to keep prices stable, prevent unlimited supplies of precious metals from the elemental planes and put tariffs on teleported goods. Which, with the way you need to squint and not look to closely to make fantasy economics work, is for me sufficient to keep immersion somewhat not broken.
If I am being honest I was hoping to find stargate style teleportation circles with Iris shields to close them. I would place this in a specialized building with a barrack of troops stationed there just in case.
I have come to another disturbing realization while researching this. Almost every single NPC wizard of 11th+ level is a litch, a ruler of their own country, or are in the service of a more powerful evil wizard. It appears that being an ambitious wizard rarely turns out well.
Yeah, since the adventurers who complete adventure paths are an amorphous mass of classes which cannot be pinned down to certain classes, all those potentially high level heroes existing on Golarion are politely ignored or written out of the setting (apparently going on an interplanar adventure is super interesting and happens all the time! ^^).
(apparently going on an interplanar adventure is super interesting and happens all the time! ^^).Or an interplanetary or interstellar adventure, or a Darklands adventure. . .
I'd specifically say that the Darklands adventure sounds the least fun of all of those options. :p
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I'd specifically say that the Darklands adventure sounds the least fun of all of those options. :p(apparently going on an interplanar adventure is super interesting and happens all the time! ^^).Or an interplanetary or interstellar adventure, or a Darklands adventure. . .
To each their own, I suppose.
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I'd specifically say that the Darklands adventure sounds the least fun of all of those options. :p(apparently going on an interplanar adventure is super interesting and happens all the time! ^^).Or an interplanetary or interstellar adventure, or a Darklands adventure. . .Are you talking about from the player's or character's perspective? Because I suspect most characters would take the Darklands over adventuring in literal Hell, for example.
Honestly not sure which I'd find most appealing from a player perspective, myself.
I could see an interesting adventure taking place in Dis. Maybe not so much in any of the other 8 layers, though.
Are you talking about from the player's or character's perspective? Because I suspect most characters would take the Darklands over adventuring in literal Hell, for example.
Honestly not sure which I'd find most appealing from a player perspective, myself.
Okay, Hell or the Outer Rifts are of course bad interplanar destinations, so I agree with you there. But there are a lot of planes which are just fascinating, some of them being also completely benign (to good-natured characters, at least...). The planes are also in many cases morally color-coded for your convenience, so you know what you can expect when you go there. For interplanetary adventures, visiting Castrovel or Nocturne would be super interesting as well, not to mention other star systems, see Starfinder.
The Darklands is full of mostly (formerly fully) evil-colored societies, natural dangers, aberrations, fleshwarps and mind-warping monsters like the Seugathi. And each layer gets progressively more dangerous. Maybe that will change when the inevitable new Darklands book gets released one day, but so far a long journey through the Darklands would be full of dangers you cannot easily anticipate and some of the worst fates you can imagine for your character, like getting transformed into an Irnakurse for an elf.