i ban teleporting as a form of travel. teleport 90 ft. to get the drop on an enemy, fine. Want an airship. also fine. I just don't want to not have adventures because, the wizard can go to whatever continent he likes. I don't care that it isn't actually that simple, i know the rules and what not. But, i'd rather ban those kinds of spells than have to come up with 90 reasons the party can't teleport straight to heaven to kill god. I just want an adventure damnit, and teleporting kills adventures. It's the one thing that makes high level play unappealing to me. Does this make a jerk?
Yes. Not for disliking teleportation, but for how you present your mindset toward it.
Whether or not you know the "official" rules, it's easy to handicap teleportation such that players are less likely to use it, or to transform it into an opportunity for high level adventures. DM Homebrew and Houserules are something to celebrate, but sweeping policy that restricts player choice without adding anything certainly isn't a positive choice. There are so many great ways to safely build Teleportation right into the lore/mechanics of a Homebrew world that banning it outright makes the world a much smaller place.
There are so many great ways to safely build Teleportation right into the lore/mechanics of a Homebrew world that banning it outright makes the world a much smaller place.
I agree. You could say that teleportation is banned, and if you break the rules an interplanar police force comes and gives you fines, or sends you on quests to retrieve artifacts, negotiate with crime lords, or other things. Also, unless your players are high-ish level, long-distance teleportation isn't a viable option in most scenarios. If they are high level, avoiding some bandits on the road isn't much of a problem, and many of the big evil monsters can just block teleportation in and out of their domain.
the party can't teleport straight to heaven to kill god. I just want an adventure damnit
Those two statements seem in opposition of each other.....
But as the others have said, when your party is high level and has access to the instant teleports, the adventure is not camping on the side of the road and being attacked by bandits. The adventure IS teleporting to the outer plane to kill a god, but landing about 60 miles outside their city and a whole bunch of Planatar are now bearing down on them for entering the domain of their god without permission.
Teleportation does not end adventure, it makes it different and has different problems. I do not seeing need to be on a city on the other side of the map and having to RP out WEEKS of travel more fun than teleporting to the new city and instead having the time to RP exploring the new area! IF you don't like teleporting because it ruins adventure, I should warn you about the other spells that stop random encounters on the roads and stop all means of travel related problems.
I ran a Primeval Thule game (think the world of Conan, but a thousand years earlier) a couple of years ago. It is a horror-filled low-magic world, based on the writings of Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith.
In the game I flat out banned long-range teleportation magic. It didn't fit the genre and it trivialised adventures when mages could travel across the world instantaneously.
Short-range stuff (blink, misty step) was fine, however. You can't run the thronw room fight scene from Red Sonja without it. :-)
i hear what people are saying. I have a few reponses.
I don't like spending tonnes of time handy-capping spells or circumnavigating them. I've done that before and it can be cool, but speaking purely in terms of the mechanical, it's easier to ban than nerf/errata a spell for both me and the players. It way easier to say we aren't doing teleporting from the start.
additionally i don't want to put anti-teleportation shields around every villain lair, its lame and not fair to the players because every villain has to have the same magic item or whatever and they have to deal with that same obstacle every time or else the campaign becomes a boss rush or worse a one shot. There are multiple obstacles against flying, brute force, climbing, digging, swimming and even phasing through walls. There are only 3 obstacles against teleportation, me saying it doesn't work because magic item, it malfunctioning because magic item or maybe a bad dice roll. And let's be frank those aren't real obstacles, that's just me saying "no" or "no and i'm going screw with you for trying" and that's bad improv.
Thirdly, travel doesn't need to take weeks, it only lasts as long as long as i say it does or they want it too, in terms of both in and out of game time. i am more than happy to give them as fast a conventional vehicle as the lore allows, and i can make travel as fast need to. I merely object to instantaneous travel. I will even say, i am fine with them rolling up to the dungeon, using intangibility to walk through all the walls and cut the baddy's throat because at least we still get to RP a scene which we can't with a successful teleport. And they should be able to successfully teleport, if i allow it into the game. The reason i don't it want in the game is because, successful teleports are boring. Cake walking through a dungeon is fun, players want to cake walk the dungeon every now and then. I'm not trying to make the game harder, i'm trying to maintain the game. Teleportation just robs the players of a perfectly good obstacle they want to overcome.
Your options are only limited by your creativity. If you want easy solutions, feel free to post a thread asking for suggestions. There are many, many, many options that take no time, and add little to no complication.
i hear what people are saying. I have a few reponses.
I don't like spending tonnes of time handy-capping spells or circumnavigating them. I've done that before and it can be cool, but speaking purely in terms of the mechanical, it's easier to ban than nerf/errata a spell for both me and the players. It way easier to say we aren't doing teleporting from the start.
additionally i don't want to put anti-teleportation shields around every villain lair, its lame and not fair to the players because every villain has to have the same magic item or whatever and they have to deal with that same obstacle every time or else the campaign becomes a boss rush or worse a one shot. There are multiple obstacles against flying, brute force, climbing, digging, swimming and even phasing through walls. There are only 3 obstacles against teleportation, me saying it doesn't work because magic item, it malfunctioning because magic item or maybe a bad dice roll. And let's be frank those aren't real obstacles, that's just me saying "no" or "no and i'm going screw with you for trying" and that's bad improv.
Thirdly, travel doesn't need to take weeks, it only lasts as long as long as i say it does or they want it too, in terms of both in and out of game time. i am more than happy to give them as fast a conventional vehicle as the lore allows, and i can make travel as fast need to. I merely object to instantaneous travel. I will even say, i am fine with them rolling up to the dungeon, using intangibility to walk through all the walls and cut the baddy's throat because at least we still get to RP a scene which we can't with a successful teleport. And they should be able to successfully teleport, if i allow it into the game. The reason i don't it want in the game is because, successful teleports are boring. Cake walking through a dungeon is fun, players want to cake walk the dungeon every now and then. I'm not trying to make the game harder, i'm trying to maintain the game. Teleportation just robs the players of a perfectly good obstacle they want to overcome.
You really don't make any sense in this.
You say you don't mind players cake waking through a dungeon or phasing through every wall and killing the big bad because they over came a challenge..... but think teleporting is to easy? YOU will let your players skip every trap in a dungeon and sneak kill the BBEG, but teleporting past the dungeon is a nono? Honestly I think you need to revaluate and really look at why you dislike teleportation, because right now it seems hypocritical that you want to ban teleports but don't mind if the trivialize your adventures in other ways.
If you don't care about travel time, why is teleporting bad then? And btw you don't need to have your BBEG having magic items to prevent teleporting, there are several ways to do it. Also most intelligent villains SHOULD have things that prevent scrying or teleportation. But besides that fact relook at RAW because very few of the teleport spells allow for a person to bamf directly with pinpoint accuracy into a place they have never been before.
IMO it's your game and you can ban any spells you want. Ban Shillelagh if you find it too difficult to spell or pronounce, for all I care.
The balance of a spell like Teleportation really depends what kind of game you're running. Sure, there's not much point running highway bandit encounters with a level 15 party, but you might not want to allow a party to teleport past the border guards of a hostile kingdom without a fight.
There's a lot to nerf Teleport already. Just be aware of that. Unless you've been to the destination before, or know someone who has, there's at least a 50% chance of something going anywhere between a little bit and horribly wrong. Read the description of "off target". You might end up lost at sea. "Oh, I'll just make sure I have two spell slots so I can teleport back." Bad luck, you teleported into heavy seas and can't see your whole party at once to teleport back. At a minimum, you're going to have an encounter to deal with that problem before you can get back on track, let alone to your destination.
But, if taking that into account, teleport is still likely to ruin your plots, go ahead and ban it.
Even Star Trek frequently banned the transporter for an episode because the plot wouldn't have worked if they could just beam up.
Lyxen is right on. There's a lot of things at higher levels that make it hard to create meaningful challenges, which is why I usually end my campaigns around level 5. (My current group, at only level 7, averages 20 with Invisibility on any given stealth check, which makes it insanely hard to create encounters they can't just sneak past. Plus, two of my players are powergamers, which my old group weren't, and it gets more frustrating with each new toy they get.) So no, you're not the *******.
That said, back in older editions of the game, a teleportation mishap had a chance to put the characters underground, and if there wasn't a convenient cave, they were instantly killed, no matter how high level they were. Maybe bringing that back for teleports over a given distance would make for a good compromise—the players could use it in a dramatically appropriate pinch, but they'd avoid using it unless they really have to.
On the one hand, I agree that spells like Teleport can take some of the traditional fun out of a D&D adventure -- that traditional fun including the travel through dangerous territory to get to the enemy. Being able to just "bamf" there without having to get through the various challenges the DM may have set in between point A and point B does mean that certain elements of the game end up going by the wayside.
However, by the time the players can cast teleport they are into the teen levels. I would think that by this point, the PCs have done a whole lot of that traditional adventuring. As the campaign moves into the higher levels, it seems to me that the adventure should be about something else, and just getting from A to B is, well, kind of old hat.
I think the problem here is that high-level spells and character abilities in D&D make it so that low-level types of challenges and stories just will not have any power to do anything against a high level party. The PCs can take out a whole company of troops in one spell at high level... they can (unless you ban it) poof from one side of the world to another... heck if you allow it they can even dream themselves into another campaign world altogether now (I, for one, do NOT allow it). All of this implies that high-level adventures should be about different things, and should be structured in entirely different ways, from lower level ones.
The question is -- what? We all know this is true, but if you look at sourcebooks and adventure books, there is literally exactly one -- count it, one -- that takes you into these high level regions of character growth. All the others take you from 1-10, 1-11, 1-13, 1-15 max. Which means that as DMs, we have no real examples of how to design and execute high level game-play, or even what high-level game-play is supposed to look like. What do the PCs do at level 17? What sorts of challenges that are not regular old dungeons and traps, regular old travel over land to an adventure site, would one create for the high level game? WOTC is mute on this subject -- you have to look to 3rd party producers for this (on DM Guild, perhaps, or watching a show like Crit Role season 1 which eventually will get you to the upper levels, if you watch long enough).
So to a certain extent DMs like the OP, and frankly like myself, are left holding the bag, trying to figure out just what the heck do we do to challenge higher level parties. All I've ever personally experienced is low level gameplay. My current party at level 5 is rapidly approaching the highest level D&D that I ever have played in person (back in the day with AD&D, I believe we got our one party to around level 5 or 6 -- I know for sure it didn't go any higher). I played high level NWN but that is not quite the same. And except for video games like that, I have never personally experienced as a player, nor run as a DM, even mid level, let alone high level game play. So I know, conceptually, that challenges should be different at the upper levels -- but what are they?
I don't really have an answer for this right now, and I suspect the OP doesn't as well. I know that even at lower levels, doing something like setting up a simple murder mystery can be utterly foiled by spells (Speak with Dead, ask the victim "who killed you?" -- adventure over.) Let alone high level ones. So this means that as DMs we have to do out-of-the-box thinking, and this is made much more difficult by the fact that there are no real official published examples on which to base our high level adventure designs. It's easy enough to say, "challenge the PCs in other ways." The question becomes how.
And so the OP has done something not entirely unreasonable... ban a spell (or maybe several spells) that make "traditional adventuring" less likely. This allows the DM to keep producing what he or she knows how to do -- the more traditional adventures. But it's a kludge that doesn't fix the actual problem -- which is that many of us have no real idea how to change the game for the upper level. In the old days, the PCs stopped adventuring and started doing things like running keeps and castles, but unless you get a 3rd party supplement like Strongholds and Followers, officially D&D doesn't have any real systems for doing this, and the game no longer assumes you should become a Lord of a Manor after 10th or 12th level. Maybe it should go back to that assumption. When there is an army facing your army, teleport may not do you any good.
I agree to an extent that teleportation can kill adventure. It short circuits the travel time and can short circuit the adventure entirely if as a DM you like to have travel based adventures.
I get it. However my workaround to it this is usually that you have to see a place before you teleport to it. Scrying works for this but there are defenses against scrying in higher tier dungeons and realms, it only makes sense that if you’re a lich and you don’t want to get your neckbone chopped and phylactery rocked, you hide.
In this way the focus shifts from “getting there, is half the battle/fun” to “finding out where, is half the battle/fun”
I even ruled that if a drawing or painting was of sufficient quality it could be used as a teleportation focus. So those castle tapestries just got important and could even be the focus of the adventure, “It’s a castle, it has Tapestries!!” But that’s just how I handle it.
So I hope this helps, but I for one don’t think you’re wrong.
I agree to an extent that teleportation can kill adventure. It short circuits the travel time and can short circuit the adventure entirely if as a DM you like to have travel based adventures.
I get it. However my workaround to it this is usually that you have to see a place before you teleport to it. Scrying works for this but there are defenses against scrying in higher tier dungeons and realms, it only makes sense that if you’re a lich and you don’t want to get your neckbone chopped and phylactery rocked, you hide.
In this way the focus shifts from “getting there, is half the battle/fun” to “finding out where, is half the battle/fun”
I even ruled that if a drawing or painting was of sufficient quality it could be used as a teleportation focus. So those castle tapestries just got important and could even be the focus of the adventure, “It’s a castle, it has Tapestries!!” But that’s just how I handle it.
So I hope this helps, but I for one don’t think you’re wrong.
This is basically RAW.
"'Viewed once' is a place you have seen once, possibly using magic. 'Description' is a place whose location and appearance you know through someone else's description, perhaps from a map."
However, you have a 43% chance to take damage, and then approximately a 50% chance to end up in the wrong place.
The only reason teleport disrupts anything is if the DM doesn't want to take it into account when designing content. "Well. I want to create adventures along the entire road but then I am ok with the party having a fast conventional vehicle and nothing happening but no way will I let them teleport." What?
If the DM knows the resources available to the party, and they should, then the content the DM builds will take that into account. Since teleport is a 7th level spell - we are already talking high level. The opponents likely know that whoever comes after them WILL have access to such spells because, honestly, anyone less powerful isn't likely to be a threat - this is a major opponent remember. So logically, if the bad guy has a place they like to stay then they WILL design it to defend against other creatures with such capabilities, assuming they are intelligent opponents. As Lyxen said, the intelligent opponent WILL have defenses ... it won't be as easy as "teleport to throne room, stab, teleport out" ... and it isn't cheating for the DM to implement defenses that might not be possible for the PCs - it is the nature of the game.
So, I don't get it. Teleport is just another tool and generally a risky one to use that requires you to have been to the location or to have seen it or had it described. There are a lot of limitations built into the teleport spell and the only time it can "short-circuit" an adventure is if the DM specifically designed the adventure that way to allow it to do so or the DM decided to ignore something they know the characters can do. In either case, the issue isn't the spell but the DM. It is like creating an encounter with a dozen high level opponents and forgetting that the bard with an instrument of the bards also has mass suggestion. Hey - 12 creatures decide they need to be elsewhere with disadvantage on their saves.
High level play is exciting and fun due to the many options available to both the players and DMs. Why pick on teleport?
P.S. By the way, every DM is welcome to decide what they want and don't want in their games. What features fit the world or the genre and what don't. There are worlds where a common ability to cross vast distances instantly would disrupt the world design and economy so by all means exclude them. However, leaving out teleport because a DM decides it prevents adventure is mostly the DM deciding they don't want to take it into account when designing adventures which is also absolutely ok ... but the issue doesn't have anything to do with the teleport spell itself.
Personally, spells like misty step and dimension door tend to be much more useful than teleport anyway. Plane shift can also be a good spell to bypass constraints in the prime material plane. The shadow monk ability to teleport 60' in dim light or darkness is also awesome. How much teleportation gets banned or is it only the teleport spell itself (and possibly teleportation circle?).
"Because the DM doesn't want to deal with it," is a perfectly legitimate reason. DMing is hard, and it's okay if a DM wants to focus on other aspects of the game besides designing a foolproof boss lair.
I don't see why there would be a need to ban Teleportation Circle, as it's pretty much under DM control in the first place. You decide if there are any permanent circles in your world and where. Unless your campaign involves downtime periods of a year, there aren't going to be any the DM didn't create. At worst it's a get-out-of-jail-free card that potentially puts the party miles from where they really intended to be. And even that takes a minute to cast, so it's not like they can use it when combat turns against them.
Something that hasn't been mentioned yet that probably makes this all much more simple is the availability of Legendary Resistances.
A BBEG appropriate for a 13th level party is probably going to have a few resistances, and can simply choose to succeed against Scrying, and the caster can't try again for a full 24 hours. If the BBEG is aware of being Scry'd upon, they could lay a trap for the next attempt. (Scrying sensors are visible to creatures that can See Invisibility or have True Sight. A Lantern of Revealing is a great way to increase the risk associated with Scry/Teleport shenanigans.)
Without the ability to scry on the BBEG, the party either needs to obtain a plot device, to scout the lair themselves, or to effectively exploit a minion of the BBEG. (Introduction of a new Adventure)
Taking away all of the other fancy options, Legendary Resistances are a great tool for controlling issues like this. (It's easy to forget that the LR exist outside of combat.)
The second and third opportunities are Lair Actions and Regional Effects.
"Fog lightly obscures the land within 6 miles of the lair."
"Lightly Obscured" grants disadvantage on perception checks, which would likely interfere with Familiarity gained from Scrying.
"The land within 6 miles of the lair.... the plants grow thick and twisted..."
The land itself is changed, so even if a caster has previously successfully scry'd the area around a lair, they may lose familiarity due to a shifting landscape. Increasing the chance of mishap.
This is to say, against any major opponent, there are easy obstacles against Teleportation that are built right into the rules.
Anything on the tier of a Beholder or Adult Dragon can be assumed to have similar boons either due to raw magical nature, choice of lair, or paranoia and access to magic.
Edit: For a more direct balancing mechanic, one might simply add a temporary condition penalty to long distance Teleportation. For example, have the party stunned for one round after arriving at a destination.
Outside of combat, this is of no consequence, so the party could still flit about from town to town. However, if they BAMF into an enemy lair, being stunned for one round negates surprise, and makes the party extra vulnerable to attack. They automatically fail Dexterity Saving Throws against a dragon's breath weapon, and all attacks have advantage.
Additionally or Alternatively, Teleportation could be noisy. If Teleport produces a loud booming sound upon arrival, (opposite of Thunder Step), then everything within 300ft will be alerted to their presence.
One change that puts the burden of Teleportation on the shoulders of the players, rather than the DM.
What I'm wondering is were the Players aware of this ban, from the initial Session Zero ( if any ), or are they now aware that the GM wishes to ban teleportation, and have agreed to it?
If so - then I don't see an issue. It's the game that's been agreed upon, and you can run with it. Problem solved; everyone is still happy.
If not - then as a Player - I'd be pissed. In my way of viewing the game, there is/was an implicit social contract here that if I - as a Player in such a game - complete adventures, overcome bad guys, rescue the beautiful monsters from the ravening princesses, jump through the GM's hoops, etc., that I get to go up in level & get cool new abilities - which, more likely than not, includes some fast travel option. My Character progresses along the development path laid out in the PHB, and that I literally have been able to see from day one ( unless changed on day one, and in Session Zero ). To have the GM unilaterally, without warning, without negotiation, and without compensation, nerf my Character abilities for the sole reason that they can't be bothered to deal with the implications of those abilities - either explicitly by banning aspects of the game, or implicitly though the bad guys "coincidently" always being immune to teleportation - is a violation of that social contract, IMO. That's if-and-only-if that's what is happening here. Like I said: negotiated and agreed upon by everyone = zero issues.
I homebrew and warp the rules into pretzel shapes all the time to get the game results that I want - but I never do so without discussing it with the Players ahead of time, and getting their buy in.
And we're talking about nerfing only Spellcasters. The Paladin or the Barbarian aren't losing any of their toys.
Personally, I categorically disagree with the sentiment ""Because the DM doesn't want to deal with it" is a valid reason to cut things out of the game. That is, however, only my own opinion - yet, I'm firmly in the "if you didn't want to put in the effort to make it work, why'd you take on the job" camp.
GMs are supposed to be the creative ones at the table. Yet all I'm seeing is hand wringing over "we don't know how to design around this problem" and "there are no published examples, or guidelines in the DMG for building adventures at this level", and "this is hard". This is all absolutely true - and it's yet another facet of 5e that's broken - but this doesn't mean that the problem is insolvable.
Figure out ways to make it work. Build the ability of the Party to teleport into the requirements of what they need to do to solve the Adventure.
How many 100s of thousands of hours of fantasy media are there in books, films, games, etc. to pull for inspiration? You've literally got a group of Playtesters at your beck and call in your game - and what's more, they're likely creative people in their own right. Has no one asked their Players what they think would still be challenging for their Characters if they could teleport ( or <insert problematic ability here> )? What would still be fun for them? They're probably experts on what they think is fun.
If physical distance and travel is now no longer an issue, build adventures where distance and travel aren't a factor: there's a secret cabal of doppelgangers spread out in the cities of the North that the Characters need to root out ( social and investigative, where the ability to flit between cities is actually an advantage ), or the Campaign takes off across the planes ( pocket dimensions like The Happy Fun Ball - if you watch Critical Role - could be used, and teleportation is of limited use there), or involves a fleet of pirate vessels whose locations are constantly shifting, or involves Spelljammers ( if you like that idea, not everyone liked that supplement ), or the BBEG is so incredibly powerful that bampfing into their stronghold is suicide ( "maybe let's not teleport into Barad-dûr today" ).
That's just off the top of my head, without any sit down thinking time, or mining any fantasy literature or movies for ideas. I'm sure that almost any GM with some time and effort could do much better than that.
It's rare that the easiest way out, and the best way out are the same thing.
At the end of the day, it's your game.
Add, delete, edit as you and your Players see fit. The only people who have any right to criticize how you run the game are your Players, and they're the only ones who have any right to have input on how you run your table.
The opinions of some random Internet ass^#$^ shouldn't matter.
But I think there are possibilities for some really amazing sessions, if you can push forward and learn to build new types of adventures for your Players around their new abilities - and that hamstringing those Character abilities so that you go back to merely recycling the same adventure types that they've been doing up to this point, over-and-over, is a real lost opportunity
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Personally, spells like misty step and dimension door tend to be much more useful than teleport anyway. Plane shift can also be a good spell to bypass constraints in the prime material plane. The shadow monk ability to teleport 60' in dim light or darkness is also awesome. How much teleportation gets banned or is it only the teleport spell itself (and possibly teleportation circle?).
To clarify, i ban the action of teleporting long distances. That involves banning multiple spells that serve that function. I have allowed teleportation circles in a more limited capacity for under 1 mile. (i don't have them permanently established in most worlds i homebrew). planeshifting is a sticky subject for me, i don't like them and i don't write campaigns around it, i tend to limit my adventures to a single plane. But that's a more personal pet peeve for me.
"Because the DM doesn't want to deal with it," is a perfectly legitimate reason. DMing is hard, and it's okay if a DM wants to focus on other aspects of the game besides designing a foolproof boss lair.
I don't see why there would be a need to ban Teleportation Circle, as it's pretty much under DM control in the first place. You decide if there are any permanent circles in your world and where. Unless your campaign involves downtime periods of a year, there aren't going to be any the DM didn't create. At worst it's a get-out-of-jail-free card that potentially puts the party miles from where they really intended to be. And even that takes a minute to cast, so it's not like they can use it when combat turns against them.
I here you on that and i generally don't have permanent ones in place. I honestly think they are dumb. Would you put one of those things in the middle of your city or god forbid your home for random wizards to use? just seems dangerous. and what am i going but a customs station on top of one? This raises to many questions!
I don't see why there would be a need to ban Teleportation Circle...
I here you on that and i generally don't have permanent ones in place. I honestly think they are dumb. Would you put one of those things in the middle of your city or god forbid your home for random wizards to use? just seems dangerous. and what am i going but a customs station on top of one? This raises to many questions!
Absolutely! We already have train stations, airports, subways, sea ports, and more in the real world. Teleportation Hubs are next in line.
Any wizard of 11th level or higher already presents a serious risk, so there are lots of advantages to controlling when and where one shows up. A "Permanent Teleportation Circle" doesn't need to be Permanently Active. An anti-magic field, Leomund's Tiny Hut, or perhaps even a mechanical disconnect could be incorporated to prevent free travel without first calling ahead.
Heck, put the damn thing on an elevator platform and submerge it in a sealed pool of acid. If anyone tries to invade without an invitation, they'll take 20d6 acid damage every round or worse.
With magic, there is a solution for every problem.
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i ban teleporting as a form of travel. teleport 90 ft. to get the drop on an enemy, fine. Want an airship. also fine. I just don't want to not have adventures because, the wizard can go to whatever continent he likes. I don't care that it isn't actually that simple, i know the rules and what not. But, i'd rather ban those kinds of spells than have to come up with 90 reasons the party can't teleport straight to heaven to kill god. I just want an adventure damnit, and teleporting kills adventures. It's the one thing that makes high level play unappealing to me. Does this make a jerk?
Yes. Not for disliking teleportation, but for how you present your mindset toward it.
Whether or not you know the "official" rules, it's easy to handicap teleportation such that players are less likely to use it, or to transform it into an opportunity for high level adventures. DM Homebrew and Houserules are something to celebrate, but sweeping policy that restricts player choice without adding anything certainly isn't a positive choice. There are so many great ways to safely build Teleportation right into the lore/mechanics of a Homebrew world that banning it outright makes the world a much smaller place.
I agree. You could say that teleportation is banned, and if you break the rules an interplanar police force comes and gives you fines, or sends you on quests to retrieve artifacts, negotiate with crime lords, or other things. Also, unless your players are high-ish level, long-distance teleportation isn't a viable option in most scenarios. If they are high level, avoiding some bandits on the road isn't much of a problem, and many of the big evil monsters can just block teleportation in and out of their domain.
Those two statements seem in opposition of each other.....
But as the others have said, when your party is high level and has access to the instant teleports, the adventure is not camping on the side of the road and being attacked by bandits. The adventure IS teleporting to the outer plane to kill a god, but landing about 60 miles outside their city and a whole bunch of Planatar are now bearing down on them for entering the domain of their god without permission.
Teleportation does not end adventure, it makes it different and has different problems. I do not seeing need to be on a city on the other side of the map and having to RP out WEEKS of travel more fun than teleporting to the new city and instead having the time to RP exploring the new area! IF you don't like teleporting because it ruins adventure, I should warn you about the other spells that stop random encounters on the roads and stop all means of travel related problems.
I ran a Primeval Thule game (think the world of Conan, but a thousand years earlier) a couple of years ago. It is a horror-filled low-magic world, based on the writings of Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith.
In the game I flat out banned long-range teleportation magic. It didn't fit the genre and it trivialised adventures when mages could travel across the world instantaneously.
Short-range stuff (blink, misty step) was fine, however. You can't run the thronw room fight scene from Red Sonja without it. :-)
i hear what people are saying. I have a few reponses.
I don't like spending tonnes of time handy-capping spells or circumnavigating them. I've done that before and it can be cool, but speaking purely in terms of the mechanical, it's easier to ban than nerf/errata a spell for both me and the players. It way easier to say we aren't doing teleporting from the start.
additionally i don't want to put anti-teleportation shields around every villain lair, its lame and not fair to the players because every villain has to have the same magic item or whatever and they have to deal with that same obstacle every time or else the campaign becomes a boss rush or worse a one shot. There are multiple obstacles against flying, brute force, climbing, digging, swimming and even phasing through walls. There are only 3 obstacles against teleportation, me saying it doesn't work because magic item, it malfunctioning because magic item or maybe a bad dice roll. And let's be frank those aren't real obstacles, that's just me saying "no" or "no and i'm going screw with you for trying" and that's bad improv.
Thirdly, travel doesn't need to take weeks, it only lasts as long as long as i say it does or they want it too, in terms of both in and out of game time. i am more than happy to give them as fast a conventional vehicle as the lore allows, and i can make travel as fast need to. I merely object to instantaneous travel. I will even say, i am fine with them rolling up to the dungeon, using intangibility to walk through all the walls and cut the baddy's throat because at least we still get to RP a scene which we can't with a successful teleport. And they should be able to successfully teleport, if i allow it into the game. The reason i don't it want in the game is because, successful teleports are boring. Cake walking through a dungeon is fun, players want to cake walk the dungeon every now and then. I'm not trying to make the game harder, i'm trying to maintain the game. Teleportation just robs the players of a perfectly good obstacle they want to overcome.
Your options are only limited by your creativity. If you want easy solutions, feel free to post a thread asking for suggestions. There are many, many, many options that take no time, and add little to no complication.
You really don't make any sense in this.
You say you don't mind players cake waking through a dungeon or phasing through every wall and killing the big bad because they over came a challenge..... but think teleporting is to easy? YOU will let your players skip every trap in a dungeon and sneak kill the BBEG, but teleporting past the dungeon is a nono? Honestly I think you need to revaluate and really look at why you dislike teleportation, because right now it seems hypocritical that you want to ban teleports but don't mind if the trivialize your adventures in other ways.
If you don't care about travel time, why is teleporting bad then? And btw you don't need to have your BBEG having magic items to prevent teleporting, there are several ways to do it. Also most intelligent villains SHOULD have things that prevent scrying or teleportation. But besides that fact relook at RAW because very few of the teleport spells allow for a person to bamf directly with pinpoint accuracy into a place they have never been before.
IMO it's your game and you can ban any spells you want. Ban Shillelagh if you find it too difficult to spell or pronounce, for all I care.
The balance of a spell like Teleportation really depends what kind of game you're running. Sure, there's not much point running highway bandit encounters with a level 15 party, but you might not want to allow a party to teleport past the border guards of a hostile kingdom without a fight.
There's a lot to nerf Teleport already. Just be aware of that. Unless you've been to the destination before, or know someone who has, there's at least a 50% chance of something going anywhere between a little bit and horribly wrong. Read the description of "off target". You might end up lost at sea. "Oh, I'll just make sure I have two spell slots so I can teleport back." Bad luck, you teleported into heavy seas and can't see your whole party at once to teleport back. At a minimum, you're going to have an encounter to deal with that problem before you can get back on track, let alone to your destination.
But, if taking that into account, teleport is still likely to ruin your plots, go ahead and ban it.
Even Star Trek frequently banned the transporter for an episode because the plot wouldn't have worked if they could just beam up.
Lyxen is right on. There's a lot of things at higher levels that make it hard to create meaningful challenges, which is why I usually end my campaigns around level 5. (My current group, at only level 7, averages 20 with Invisibility on any given stealth check, which makes it insanely hard to create encounters they can't just sneak past. Plus, two of my players are powergamers, which my old group weren't, and it gets more frustrating with each new toy they get.) So no, you're not the *******.
That said, back in older editions of the game, a teleportation mishap had a chance to put the characters underground, and if there wasn't a convenient cave, they were instantly killed, no matter how high level they were. Maybe bringing that back for teleports over a given distance would make for a good compromise—the players could use it in a dramatically appropriate pinch, but they'd avoid using it unless they really have to.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
On the one hand, I agree that spells like Teleport can take some of the traditional fun out of a D&D adventure -- that traditional fun including the travel through dangerous territory to get to the enemy. Being able to just "bamf" there without having to get through the various challenges the DM may have set in between point A and point B does mean that certain elements of the game end up going by the wayside.
However, by the time the players can cast teleport they are into the teen levels. I would think that by this point, the PCs have done a whole lot of that traditional adventuring. As the campaign moves into the higher levels, it seems to me that the adventure should be about something else, and just getting from A to B is, well, kind of old hat.
I think the problem here is that high-level spells and character abilities in D&D make it so that low-level types of challenges and stories just will not have any power to do anything against a high level party. The PCs can take out a whole company of troops in one spell at high level... they can (unless you ban it) poof from one side of the world to another... heck if you allow it they can even dream themselves into another campaign world altogether now (I, for one, do NOT allow it). All of this implies that high-level adventures should be about different things, and should be structured in entirely different ways, from lower level ones.
The question is -- what? We all know this is true, but if you look at sourcebooks and adventure books, there is literally exactly one -- count it, one -- that takes you into these high level regions of character growth. All the others take you from 1-10, 1-11, 1-13, 1-15 max. Which means that as DMs, we have no real examples of how to design and execute high level game-play, or even what high-level game-play is supposed to look like. What do the PCs do at level 17? What sorts of challenges that are not regular old dungeons and traps, regular old travel over land to an adventure site, would one create for the high level game? WOTC is mute on this subject -- you have to look to 3rd party producers for this (on DM Guild, perhaps, or watching a show like Crit Role season 1 which eventually will get you to the upper levels, if you watch long enough).
So to a certain extent DMs like the OP, and frankly like myself, are left holding the bag, trying to figure out just what the heck do we do to challenge higher level parties. All I've ever personally experienced is low level gameplay. My current party at level 5 is rapidly approaching the highest level D&D that I ever have played in person (back in the day with AD&D, I believe we got our one party to around level 5 or 6 -- I know for sure it didn't go any higher). I played high level NWN but that is not quite the same. And except for video games like that, I have never personally experienced as a player, nor run as a DM, even mid level, let alone high level game play. So I know, conceptually, that challenges should be different at the upper levels -- but what are they?
I don't really have an answer for this right now, and I suspect the OP doesn't as well. I know that even at lower levels, doing something like setting up a simple murder mystery can be utterly foiled by spells (Speak with Dead, ask the victim "who killed you?" -- adventure over.) Let alone high level ones. So this means that as DMs we have to do out-of-the-box thinking, and this is made much more difficult by the fact that there are no real official published examples on which to base our high level adventure designs. It's easy enough to say, "challenge the PCs in other ways." The question becomes how.
And so the OP has done something not entirely unreasonable... ban a spell (or maybe several spells) that make "traditional adventuring" less likely. This allows the DM to keep producing what he or she knows how to do -- the more traditional adventures. But it's a kludge that doesn't fix the actual problem -- which is that many of us have no real idea how to change the game for the upper level. In the old days, the PCs stopped adventuring and started doing things like running keeps and castles, but unless you get a 3rd party supplement like Strongholds and Followers, officially D&D doesn't have any real systems for doing this, and the game no longer assumes you should become a Lord of a Manor after 10th or 12th level. Maybe it should go back to that assumption. When there is an army facing your army, teleport may not do you any good.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
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I agree to an extent that teleportation can kill adventure. It short circuits the travel time and can short circuit the adventure entirely if as a DM you like to have travel based adventures.
I get it. However my workaround to it this is usually that you have to see a place before you teleport to it. Scrying works for this but there are defenses against scrying in higher tier dungeons and realms, it only makes sense that if you’re a lich and you don’t want to get your neckbone chopped and phylactery rocked, you hide.
In this way the focus shifts from “getting there, is half the battle/fun” to “finding out where, is half the battle/fun”
I even ruled that if a drawing or painting was of sufficient quality it could be used as a teleportation focus. So those castle tapestries just got important and could even be the focus of the adventure, “It’s a castle, it has Tapestries!!” But that’s just how I handle it.
So I hope this helps, but I for one don’t think you’re wrong.
This is basically RAW.
"'Viewed once' is a place you have seen once, possibly using magic. 'Description' is a place whose location and appearance you know through someone else's description, perhaps from a map."
However, you have a 43% chance to take damage, and then approximately a 50% chance to end up in the wrong place.
There seems to be a key disconnect.
The only reason teleport disrupts anything is if the DM doesn't want to take it into account when designing content. "Well. I want to create adventures along the entire road but then I am ok with the party having a fast conventional vehicle and nothing happening but no way will I let them teleport." What?
If the DM knows the resources available to the party, and they should, then the content the DM builds will take that into account. Since teleport is a 7th level spell - we are already talking high level. The opponents likely know that whoever comes after them WILL have access to such spells because, honestly, anyone less powerful isn't likely to be a threat - this is a major opponent remember. So logically, if the bad guy has a place they like to stay then they WILL design it to defend against other creatures with such capabilities, assuming they are intelligent opponents. As Lyxen said, the intelligent opponent WILL have defenses ... it won't be as easy as "teleport to throne room, stab, teleport out" ... and it isn't cheating for the DM to implement defenses that might not be possible for the PCs - it is the nature of the game.
So, I don't get it. Teleport is just another tool and generally a risky one to use that requires you to have been to the location or to have seen it or had it described. There are a lot of limitations built into the teleport spell and the only time it can "short-circuit" an adventure is if the DM specifically designed the adventure that way to allow it to do so or the DM decided to ignore something they know the characters can do. In either case, the issue isn't the spell but the DM. It is like creating an encounter with a dozen high level opponents and forgetting that the bard with an instrument of the bards also has mass suggestion. Hey - 12 creatures decide they need to be elsewhere with disadvantage on their saves.
High level play is exciting and fun due to the many options available to both the players and DMs. Why pick on teleport?
P.S. By the way, every DM is welcome to decide what they want and don't want in their games. What features fit the world or the genre and what don't. There are worlds where a common ability to cross vast distances instantly would disrupt the world design and economy so by all means exclude them. However, leaving out teleport because a DM decides it prevents adventure is mostly the DM deciding they don't want to take it into account when designing adventures which is also absolutely ok ... but the issue doesn't have anything to do with the teleport spell itself.
Personally, spells like misty step and dimension door tend to be much more useful than teleport anyway. Plane shift can also be a good spell to bypass constraints in the prime material plane. The shadow monk ability to teleport 60' in dim light or darkness is also awesome. How much teleportation gets banned or is it only the teleport spell itself (and possibly teleportation circle?).
"Because the DM doesn't want to deal with it," is a perfectly legitimate reason. DMing is hard, and it's okay if a DM wants to focus on other aspects of the game besides designing a foolproof boss lair.
I don't see why there would be a need to ban Teleportation Circle, as it's pretty much under DM control in the first place. You decide if there are any permanent circles in your world and where. Unless your campaign involves downtime periods of a year, there aren't going to be any the DM didn't create. At worst it's a get-out-of-jail-free card that potentially puts the party miles from where they really intended to be. And even that takes a minute to cast, so it's not like they can use it when combat turns against them.
Something that hasn't been mentioned yet that probably makes this all much more simple is the availability of Legendary Resistances.
A BBEG appropriate for a 13th level party is probably going to have a few resistances, and can simply choose to succeed against Scrying, and the caster can't try again for a full 24 hours. If the BBEG is aware of being Scry'd upon, they could lay a trap for the next attempt. (Scrying sensors are visible to creatures that can See Invisibility or have True Sight. A Lantern of Revealing is a great way to increase the risk associated with Scry/Teleport shenanigans.)
Without the ability to scry on the BBEG, the party either needs to obtain a plot device, to scout the lair themselves, or to effectively exploit a minion of the BBEG. (Introduction of a new Adventure)
Taking away all of the other fancy options, Legendary Resistances are a great tool for controlling issues like this.
(It's easy to forget that the LR exist outside of combat.)
The second and third opportunities are Lair Actions and Regional Effects.
Taking the Regional Effects of the Adult Black Dragon as an example:
"Fog lightly obscures the land within 6 miles of the lair."
"Lightly Obscured" grants disadvantage on perception checks, which would likely interfere with Familiarity gained from Scrying.
"The land within 6 miles of the lair.... the plants grow thick and twisted..."
The land itself is changed, so even if a caster has previously successfully scry'd the area around a lair, they may lose familiarity due to a shifting landscape. Increasing the chance of mishap.
This is to say, against any major opponent, there are easy obstacles against Teleportation that are built right into the rules.
Anything on the tier of a Beholder or Adult Dragon can be assumed to have similar boons either due to raw magical nature, choice of lair, or paranoia and access to magic.
Edit: For a more direct balancing mechanic, one might simply add a temporary condition penalty to long distance Teleportation. For example, have the party stunned for one round after arriving at a destination.
Outside of combat, this is of no consequence, so the party could still flit about from town to town. However, if they BAMF into an enemy lair, being stunned for one round negates surprise, and makes the party extra vulnerable to attack. They automatically fail Dexterity Saving Throws against a dragon's breath weapon, and all attacks have advantage.
Additionally or Alternatively, Teleportation could be noisy. If Teleport produces a loud booming sound upon arrival, (opposite of Thunder Step), then everything within 300ft will be alerted to their presence.
One change that puts the burden of Teleportation on the shoulders of the players, rather than the DM.
I like the idea of making it really loud.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
What I'm wondering is were the Players aware of this ban, from the initial Session Zero ( if any ), or are they now aware that the GM wishes to ban teleportation, and have agreed to it?
If so - then I don't see an issue. It's the game that's been agreed upon, and you can run with it. Problem solved; everyone is still happy.
If not - then as a Player - I'd be pissed. In my way of viewing the game, there is/was an implicit social contract here that if I - as a Player in such a game - complete adventures, overcome bad guys, rescue the beautiful monsters from the ravening princesses, jump through the GM's hoops, etc., that I get to go up in level & get cool new abilities - which, more likely than not, includes some fast travel option. My Character progresses along the development path laid out in the PHB, and that I literally have been able to see from day one ( unless changed on day one, and in Session Zero ). To have the GM unilaterally, without warning, without negotiation, and without compensation, nerf my Character abilities for the sole reason that they can't be bothered to deal with the implications of those abilities - either explicitly by banning aspects of the game, or implicitly though the bad guys "coincidently" always being immune to teleportation - is a violation of that social contract, IMO. That's if-and-only-if that's what is happening here. Like I said: negotiated and agreed upon by everyone = zero issues.
I homebrew and warp the rules into pretzel shapes all the time to get the game results that I want - but I never do so without discussing it with the Players ahead of time, and getting their buy in.
And we're talking about nerfing only Spellcasters. The Paladin or the Barbarian aren't losing any of their toys.
Personally, I categorically disagree with the sentiment ""Because the DM doesn't want to deal with it" is a valid reason to cut things out of the game. That is, however, only my own opinion - yet, I'm firmly in the "if you didn't want to put in the effort to make it work, why'd you take on the job" camp.
GMs are supposed to be the creative ones at the table. Yet all I'm seeing is hand wringing over "we don't know how to design around this problem" and "there are no published examples, or guidelines in the DMG for building adventures at this level", and "this is hard". This is all absolutely true - and it's yet another facet of 5e that's broken - but this doesn't mean that the problem is insolvable.
Figure out ways to make it work. Build the ability of the Party to teleport into the requirements of what they need to do to solve the Adventure.
How many 100s of thousands of hours of fantasy media are there in books, films, games, etc. to pull for inspiration? You've literally got a group of Playtesters at your beck and call in your game - and what's more, they're likely creative people in their own right. Has no one asked their Players what they think would still be challenging for their Characters if they could teleport ( or <insert problematic ability here> )? What would still be fun for them? They're probably experts on what they think is fun.
If physical distance and travel is now no longer an issue, build adventures where distance and travel aren't a factor: there's a secret cabal of doppelgangers spread out in the cities of the North that the Characters need to root out ( social and investigative, where the ability to flit between cities is actually an advantage ), or the Campaign takes off across the planes ( pocket dimensions like The Happy Fun Ball - if you watch Critical Role - could be used, and teleportation is of limited use there), or involves a fleet of pirate vessels whose locations are constantly shifting, or involves Spelljammers ( if you like that idea, not everyone liked that supplement ), or the BBEG is so incredibly powerful that bampfing into their stronghold is suicide ( "maybe let's not teleport into Barad-dûr today" ).
That's just off the top of my head, without any sit down thinking time, or mining any fantasy literature or movies for ideas. I'm sure that almost any GM with some time and effort could do much better than that.
It's rare that the easiest way out, and the best way out are the same thing.
At the end of the day, it's your game.
Add, delete, edit as you and your Players see fit. The only people who have any right to criticize how you run the game are your Players, and they're the only ones who have any right to have input on how you run your table.
The opinions of some random Internet ass^#$^ shouldn't matter.
But I think there are possibilities for some really amazing sessions, if you can push forward and learn to build new types of adventures for your Players around their new abilities - and that hamstringing those Character abilities so that you go back to merely recycling the same adventure types that they've been doing up to this point, over-and-over, is a real lost opportunity
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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To clarify, i ban the action of teleporting long distances. That involves banning multiple spells that serve that function. I have allowed teleportation circles in a more limited capacity for under 1 mile. (i don't have them permanently established in most worlds i homebrew). planeshifting is a sticky subject for me, i don't like them and i don't write campaigns around it, i tend to limit my adventures to a single plane. But that's a more personal pet peeve for me.
I here you on that and i generally don't have permanent ones in place. I honestly think they are dumb. Would you put one of those things in the middle of your city or god forbid your home for random wizards to use? just seems dangerous. and what am i going but a customs station on top of one? This raises to many questions!
Absolutely! We already have train stations, airports, subways, sea ports, and more in the real world. Teleportation Hubs are next in line.
Any wizard of 11th level or higher already presents a serious risk, so there are lots of advantages to controlling when and where one shows up. A "Permanent Teleportation Circle" doesn't need to be Permanently Active. An anti-magic field, Leomund's Tiny Hut, or perhaps even a mechanical disconnect could be incorporated to prevent free travel without first calling ahead.
Heck, put the damn thing on an elevator platform and submerge it in a sealed pool of acid. If anyone tries to invade without an invitation, they'll take 20d6 acid damage every round or worse.
With magic, there is a solution for every problem.