Waypoint Style Teleportation (3.5e Variant Rule)

Author: Tarkisflux (talk) Co-Authors: Wildmage Date Created: 08-01-2012 Status: Complete Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Alternate Teleportation Rules

Introduction

Teleportation is a wondrous ability that allows instantaneous and relatively safe transit between two known locations. Unfortunately, its form in Dungeons and Dragons supports narrative elements that we don't much care for. Teleport makes for an amazing last moment escape spell and can rob you of a complete victory over your foes, or them a complete victory over you, with little cost or drama. In combination with scrying, it can become an ambush spell. The ability to travel to any place you've seen means that you can scry a location or enemy, prepare for them, teleport there and deal with them while they're surprised, and then teleport back. And while there are certainly countermeasures for this sort of tactic, they are often unreasonable to apply for every enemy the characters may have or for all of the characters and their friends to have these defenses against their enemies. Aside from that, the ability to find a location remotely and travel there instantly eliminates exploration aspects from stories. In a number of stories and games the journey to a place is half of the entertainment, and it is lost if you can just cast around it.

In many games these issues don't arise, and that's fine. But we feel that there's room for improvement with teleportation style effects, improvements that allow us to retain the narrative elements we like while removing some of the potentially problematic elements. These rules are intended to be those improvements.

General Rules

A large portion of the issues with teleport arise not from the transit itself, but from the ability to select your destination from literally anywhere. So the core changes here will be to remove the ability of teleportion spells to travel to any location, and instead limit the destinations. We do this by creating a new descriptor for teleportation spells and updating the rules for all spells of this type. To address the narrative issues with teleport retreats we will add minor updates to some spells and replace others, eliminating the Teleport line of spells in favor of the new Warp line of spells. The new spells require additional time to use and can be followed relatively easily, so they are much more difficult to use for ambushes or last minute escapes. We will also add a few new offensive, defensive, and simply narrative utility effects that work with these new rules. Lastly, we will also provide conversion information for existing characters and monsters, so that those who could previously teleport all over the battlefield don't lose too much ability.

[Teleportation] Descriptor

Any spell that causes you to instantly travel across some distance within a world or plane is a [Teleportation] spell. These spells generally do not achieve this by using planar shortcuts, and are unaffected by having any particular plane cut off from a space. A [Teleportation] effect can only transport a target to a specific location within long range or a location that has been "anchored". An anchored location may be one with an anchor sigil (in the case of arcane teleportation), it may be a location with a sufficiently similar object as the location you are starting at (in the case of druidic teleportation via plants), or it may simply be a location with strong symbolism and faith sustaining it (in the case of divine teleportation via word of recall).

With this addition, we can eliminate the Teleportation Subschool, as it no longer serves a purpose. All spells that were previously in this subschool lose this classification. Most gain the [Teleportation] Descriptor and the above restrictions. Maze and plane shift are exceptions, and do not gain this descriptor.

Anchor Sigils

Anchor sigils are arcane markings at a fixed location that allow for direct and error free travel to their location. They are unique symbols that are determined by their location, their creator, and the ambient magical conditions at the time of their creation. They are visible to anyone with the ability to detect magic. Most anchor sigils are copied into a notebook to be referenced during casting.

Finding New Anchor Sigils

Because they can be used as a relatively cost effective travel mechanism, and also serve to funnel new arrivals into a specific area, many cities and towns have public and well known anchor sigils. These are generally printed or posted in a public place; some may even be drawn on the area that they anchor. Vendors even sell maps with corresponding anchor Sigils depicted near the cities they serve.

Private anchor sigils also exist of course, but knowledge of them is harder to come by. These sigils can easily be given to trusted companions or family members as a way to come home more quickly. Pieces from personal libraries may contain recorded anchor symbols that were relevant to the owner. And of course detect magic will also reveal an anchor sigil in an area (yes, even while scrying), so any spellcaster with access to an area can just look around to find any existing anchor Sigils.

Creating An Anchor Sigil

Creating anchor sigils is a simple ritual; knowledge of an arcane [Teleportation] spell is not required to create these sigils, but knowledge of the spell automatically confers knowledge of the ritual. The process requires a gemstone of semiprecious or greater value to serve as a focus that is not expended. Making an anchor sigil requires four successful DC 20 knowledge (arcana) or knowledge (religion) checks to set the sigil. The first check is made 15 minutes after beginning the ritual, with another check every 15 minutes until you have reached four successes. Anchor sigils are unique, as much a product of location as creator, and some special or magically unique areas may require more difficult checks, more successful checks, allow fewer failures, or be entirely unanchorable (many areas deep underground are in this last category).

Anchor sigils may also be strengthened by making an additional four successful checks, the DC for these checks is equal to the previous create / strengthen DC +2. Anchor sigils can be strengthened in this fashion up to 11 additional times. The strength of an anchor sigil is obvious to anyone viewing it with detect magic. Strengthening is generally performed on public anchors to make them resistant to pranksters removing them, since a sigil strengthened 11 times requires at least two hours to remove. It is less common on private sigils.

If removed, an anchor sigil can be remade on the same location using the standard creation above; remade sigils are similar but not identical to the old sigil and thus cannot be reached without knowing the updated sigil. Someone attempting to recreate the old sigil can do so, but must have a copy of it available for reference, and the initial creation DC increases by 5. This increased DC does not apply to later strengthening attempts.

Destroying An Anchor Sigil

Once made, anchor sigils are not especially difficult to remove. Permanently destroying an anchor sigil requires one or more knowledge (arcana) checks. The DC for these checks begins at 15, plus 2 for each level of strengthening that the anchor sigil has received. Each check to weaken an anchor sigil requires 10 minutes and a gemstone of semiprecious or greater value to serve as a focus that is not destroyed in the attempt. If you succeed one layer of strengthening is removed and the DC is reduced by 2 sigils. When the DC has been reduced to 15, a successful check destroys the anchor sigil. You receive a +3 bonus to these checks if you created the anchor sigil.

Stopping Here

If all that you're worried about with teleportation is the ability to go anywhere at any time, the above changes should address your concerns. We're going to go a bit farther here, because we want to further reduce the combat utility of teleport to better support a different type of story.

Existing Spell Updates

Rewriting every [Teleportation] spell, or spell that interacts with a [Teleportation] spell, to fit with these rules changes would be quite difficult and generally unnecessary. Instead we list the spells and their changes here.

Spell Name	Updates

New Spells

Replace the following spells with their new counterparts. In many cases, the new spell level will be lower than the old spell level. This is intentional, as the spells include more drawbacks than they previously did.

Old Spell	Old Spell Level	New Spell	New Spell Level
Teleport	Sor/Wiz 5, Travel 5	Warp	Sor/Wiz 4, Travel 5
Greater Teleport	Sor/Wiz 7, Travel 7	Greater Warp	Sor/Wiz 6, Travel 7
Teleport Object	Sor/Wiz 7	Greater Warp	Sor/Wiz 6
Teleportation Circle	Sor/Wiz 9, Rune 9	Warp Circle	Sor/Wiz, Rune 9

A fourth level teleport spell?

Yes, a fourth level teleport spell. One that requires one round to cast, has a 4+ round delay even after casting is complete, and only takes you to specific locations. It's a teleport spell that you can't use to take you exactly where you need to go, not without DM fiat or significant planning, so you generally can't skip game sections. It's a teleport spell that you can't use to immediately skip out of a fight when things turn bad, and it's possible people might get stuck behind. And on top of all that, it's a teleport spell that offers a substantial chance to break or cancel. It's less a combat utility spell, and more a "hey, let's go to that town over there" plot utility spell, and placing it a level after you get tactical flight is completely reasonable. This spell is potentially balanced to an even lower level actually, but placing it below level 4 cuts off the "now fight your way out" stories earlier than a lot of people seem to want. If you're comfortable with those stories being removed in favor of delaying standoffs, or simple scene shifts via pursue warp, you could even set this spell at level 1 if you wanted. You may want to adjust the target scaling in that case, however.

Other Conversions

Finally, any creature or item that had the ability to use any of the replaced teleport spells innately loses those abilities. They instead gain access to the equivalent warp with the same usage restrictions.

As these replacements lack any of the previous combat ability they used to possess, creatures or items also gain an additional ability. If they previously possessed teleport innately, they gain the ability to use dimension door with the same usage restrictions. If they previously possessed greater teleport innately, they gain the ability to use improved dimension door with the same usage restrictions. These abilities are in addition to the warp replacement described above.

Rule Impact

Aside from the obvious spell changes, there are a few less obvious changes that come with these rules.

Teleport Ambushes

It's important to understand that these changes do not eliminate the ability of a character to perform a warp ambush. It is more difficult now since they can only perform the ambush at certain locations, but there is nothing stopping someone from anchoring a location in advance and using it as an ambush point. The added warp delay at lower levels also means that the ambush may not occur exactly when intended, but keeping your targets in a particular area for up to a minute is rarely a problem. And even if your targets discover the anchor, it would take them longer to remove it than for the ambusher to warp in.

In short, the large change of these rules is to make a warp ambush require a bit more work and planning, not eliminate them. This additional cost simply reduces their likelihood. They are complicated enough to complete that you don't need to justify to your players or yourself why the party wasn't warp ambushed long before they learned who the villain behind the scenes was. It might still happen, and that's fine. It's now a tactic that requires forethought, preparation, work, and a bit of luck, like most other good adventuring plans.

Teleport Retreats

Again, these are also still in the game. For arcane casters, they are no longer the simple "cast to flee" spells that they used to be. The lengthened cast time and the delay before transport leave anyone attempting to flee with them in a position of delaying for a few rounds. Divine casters, however, still have access to instant teleportation spells with which to flee, though they have a much smaller range of destinations to choose from.

The addition of pursue teleport makes any attempted retreat a less certain thing, as your foes could simply follow you. So while you can flee to escape overwhelming odds or to find a more beneficial location for the fight, the certainty that you are safe simply because you used a teleportation effect to flee is no longer present.

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