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Sourcemaster2
Senior Scribe
USA
361 Posts |
 Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 04:08:27
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When using the teleport spell, the caster must have some knowledge of the target area. What happens if the destination point is mobile? For example, if a wizard has studied a room on a ship, can he teleport to it despite the fact that it has moved?
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But what have all the passing years/Done, but breed new angers, fears?/Show me now an equal worth/To innocence I earned at birth. |
Edited by - Sourcemaster2 on 05 Nov 2004 04:09:11
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Dracandos the Spellsage
Senior Scribe
466 Posts |
Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 05:18:44
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hmm...intriguing. the ship has changed its location yet the room itself in the ship stays the same. good ? but i think i would have 2 say since the room in the ship is the destination, it is irrelivent where the ship itself is. the destination is not where in the realms the ship is, but the room inside the ship which is always constant. unless of course the ship was rebuilt or magically altered! |
Death strips away the masks men don to hide their true nature - The Slayer's Guide to Undead
The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown from their passage - So Sayeth the Wise Alaundo
Whenever magic one doth weave, 'tis never ever wise to deceive - Elminster
Strength and power come from knowing and controlling what others do not, but never reveal all that you know - Vecna
I have been known to cast a blue mage spell now and again - Dracandos the Spellsage |
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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 06:00:11
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In the book Pegasus In Space, Anne McCaffery continues her prequel of the Talents series, where some humans have the ability to manifest teleportation, telepathy, and telekinesis. (I understand that this is known as the triad in paranormal "science.") These Talents are the backbone of civilization, and without them ships, people, and information can't move faster than light. McCaffery "solves" the power issue by letting them tap into special generators, but we don't need to go into those problems. Fortunately, there aren't too many problems because she doesn't go into the science too much.
Except in this prequel I mentioned, where Talents have become strong enough and numerous enough (and their generators powerful enough) to start moving things around the Sol system. In this novel, McCaffery makes the mistake of trying to explain how things work. Personally, I think that if you want to marry this to quantum physics, you need to know more about it. I wouldn't try to do as much as she did, and I'd bet real money I know more about quantum physics and chaos theory than she does. (Unless, of course, she got lots of corrective fan mail after this novel, which means she'd be more educated.)
Now, in this, somehow, all you needed was a picture. Now, she'd worked with pictures as teleport focuses before -- her Dragonriders of Pern series requires it, the human rider helping the teleporting dragon to focus on the destination. But there they always knew the relative distance to the target. In the third [/i]Pegasus[/i] novel, one of the main characters tricks another Talent to teleport something to the moon to prove that that person's power would work that far. The man had thought he was teleporting to Earth from their orbiting station. Those are very different distances, aren't they?
I don't buy it. You would need an outside force making certain that the target is the one you want, even if you don't know exactly where it is. If you're working with magic, that's one thing -- magic is magic because it's magic -- unexplainable.
Now, many here will remember I am in favor of the laws of magic and laws of physics coexisting. That's because for magic to be more than just chaos, you need rules, and even the Realms work just fine when no one's casting a spell. Magic, in that system, makes the laws of physics work differently in some way, subtle or not. It doesn't replace them. (I first got on this stance when an old member claimed that the light spell only shed light up to the limit of the spell, and that it couldn't go beyond and be seen by others, which not only makes no sense in terms of the spell description, it also means that you've got a cantrip that every rogue would take a level of wizard for.)
However, I would still object to a magic-based teleport doing this, just as with a psionic/science-based one. I think there should be an extra point put in, such as the casting time is longer as the caster "searches" for the ship. Or, at the very least, has to know the relative distance. Speed wouldn't be much of an issue, though. Why? Well, obviously alternate speeds are built into the spell. If you teleport from Waterdeep to Calimport, Calimport is moving faster as Toril rotates on its axis, so the teleport spell has to speed you up to match -- or bleed off kinetic energy if you're going the other way. A ship is moving in a significantly different way, but the most the PCs should get is a DC 30 Balance check or something. |
Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
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DDH_101
Master of Realmslore
Canada
1272 Posts |
Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 06:21:51
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| As Bookwyrm has said, teleportation would require a mental picture. In many novels, the caster of the spell often conjures a mental picture of a place that he wants to get to. For example, in Dawn of Night of the Erevis Cale trilogy, Erevis is sent a mental picture by a psionicist and using the image, he uses his shade ability to teleport and arrives at a place that he has never even been to before. |
"Trust in the shadows, for the bright way makes you an easy target." -Mask |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36876 Posts |
Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 06:39:15
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| I am of the opinion that if you are familiar with a moving target, you can still teleport to it normally. |
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Capn Charlie
Senior Scribe
USA
418 Posts |
Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 09:19:59
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In my game I have had to accomodate for teleportation quite a bit, due two Pc wizards, and two NPc wizard/sorcerers in the party.
Thus far, I have worked teleportation as functioning by the wizard locating that obkject in space, and it essentially being a kind of grid coordinate in his mind, but represented abstractly by what the place looks like.
most of the system I worked out was intended for a more generic fantasy world, so the weave was not present, and I used a form of le lines, harmonic convergences, fey crossroads, and other mismatched supernatural concepts for the description from spellcasters trained in ddifferent manners.
I was planning on doing some research into feng shui, but I moved to the realms for my campaign setting at that point, and it was far easier to just use the weave as the explanation. However, much like Andromeda style slipstream, it isn't a perfect system, and the weave is not uniform, making teleportation an artform. Problem was, it was dang near automatic as a 5th level spell, with minor chances of mishaps, so I was working out lower level spells that required skillchecks(akin to how scrying worked in 3.0), or jsut plain "nerfing" teleport like I did with raise dead and ressurection spells.
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Dracandos the Spellsage
Senior Scribe
466 Posts |
Posted - 05 Nov 2004 : 21:17:39
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quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
I am of the opinion that if you are familiar with a moving target, you can still teleport to it normally.
aye i agree |
Death strips away the masks men don to hide their true nature - The Slayer's Guide to Undead
The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown from their passage - So Sayeth the Wise Alaundo
Whenever magic one doth weave, 'tis never ever wise to deceive - Elminster
Strength and power come from knowing and controlling what others do not, but never reveal all that you know - Vecna
I have been known to cast a blue mage spell now and again - Dracandos the Spellsage |
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Targeting a Teleport
