[SPELL] Teleportation revision

[Necalli]

Not overly important, but I was thinking, maybe the teleportation spells: Shadow Walk, Teleport, Astral Walk, and Gate could be tied into Knowledge: Geography and cities/villages be added to Knowledge: Geography. That way, once your PC is knowledgeable in the geography of a place, they would be able to use the teleportation spells without a PC/NPC as a target destination.

e.g. A PC knows an area like the backs of their hands so all they would have to do is "cast <teleport spell> <area>" and they would be teleported to the first room of the area. So a PC could either use places as general waypoints to move about or specify a target for precision traveling like it is now.

(Also... completely unrelated, but just thought I'd give kudos for the new character sheet layouts, the new vision system, and the new website. Much awesome to be had there. Still need low-light in the mix though.)

Edit: Apparently low-light is already in. My apologies.

[Bellayana]

I like this idea, I think a room can be flagged as a teleport area. I mean it also promotes people go around and learn of the various areas in the game. This obviously would be great for druids and rangers as they learn of certain woods and forests they can pass between them.

[Necalli]

It would also allow for "portal merchants" as well. A PC that is efficient with gate and has a good knowledge of Faerun could run a business as a travel agent. Similar to the caravans, but quicker, no waiting for the schedule, more destination options, minions/carts would be able to travel with the owner, and most likely more costly. The components are expensive and most of the teleportation spells themselves are not widely known.

[Rictinta]

I don't think it's a bad idea... except for Rangers... that's a little too much of a powerful spell for a ranger. Druid... ok... but I think adding that to a ranger class would be taking away from the balance between classes and such. And I definitely think that for the area transfers there should be some skill level of the area that would have to be attained before you could teleport there, since you would have the ability to instantly travel... that way it's not unfair to those of us who still have to ride.

[Brar]

I'll be honest, I don't like that idea...

It is your job as a mage to explore and make your list of place you can teleport/gate/blabla to.

I have the sentiment that more and more everything need to be automated for me instead of trying to find out myself and having to think to make it works, I know I'm old school and everything but having to make your brain works a little is not that bad from time to time.
Let's the player have some thinking and earn his right to teleport here and there by writing down the name of a simple npc instead of automating everything to the point where we are all mindless mmo players that can't even count 1+1 correctly...

Brar

[Enig]

This seems like a legitimate proposal on the basis that it will allow players to teleport into areas that don't actually have mobs, which could come in pretty handy.

As for the 1+1 thing I would say that a player earns his right to teleport by finding a teacher (if there is one), buying dozens or hundreds of platinums worth of components, and casting it repeatedly until it stops throwing him into active volcanoes. It's not like these spells are handed out on silver platters and the need to have a list of transit-terminal-esque-mobs handy is not the only thing keeping the spell from being used by everyone and their brothers and sisters.

[Solaghar]

Uh correct me if I'm wrong, but can't one already do this for the most part? Pretty much every area that you can learn the geography of has a geography mob there, even if you can't see it. Try teleporting to tethyr or anauroch and see if it works, I'm pretty sure it does. You just need to have a fairly unique name for where you're trying to go.

[Brar]

This seems like a legitimate proposal on the basis that it will allow players to teleport into areas that don't actually have mobs, which could come in pretty handy.

As for the 1+1 thing I would say that a player earns his right to teleport by finding a teacher (if there is one), buying dozens or hundreds of platinums worth of components, and casting it repeatedly until it stops throwing him into active volcanoes. It's not like these spells are handed out on silver platters and the need to have a list of transit-terminal-esque-mobs handy is not the only thing keeping the spell from being used by everyone and their brothers and sisters.

True for teleport, btu what about shadow walk, astral walk, ect domain spells of clerics...
I would rather see coded Greater Teleport (level 7 spells) for mages then
As for me, mages should still be the major teleporting guys around, and today it's the priests due to domain spells which seems wrong to me.

[Zorinar]

Shadow walk, as I understand it, does teleport you to named PC's. I've talked to people that say they have used it for such. So, I would assume that the other minor teleport spells work just the same way. Basically Im of the belief that, in a way, the teleport spells already work in the suggested way. You still need to travel around to meet the NPC's in question before you know of their existence and teleport to them. I would suggest keeping it the way it is, and adding a greater teleport spell, one that allows you to go to a location, and MARK it, then you can teleport to the mark. You get so many MARKed spots depending on your INT score. So maybe with an int of 20, you get 5 marks you can place and teleport to any of them you choose, and players should be able to remove a mark and place it in a new location if they choose to do so.

[Necalli]

Rangers only get pass plant, which is a teleportation spell, true, but it has a conditional restriction placed upon it, that the destination has to have a significant amount of plants for it to work. Not all areas have plants. And like teleport, I'd suspect pass plant isn't that easy to learn or afford.

[Selveem]

It is your job as a mage to explore and make your list of place you can teleport/gate/blabla to.

I'm with you on this one. However, I think that a lot of areas need more 'named' mobs. I know some places aren't really meant to be hugely populated by adventurers, but accidentally astral walking to the wrong place does kind of suck. Places like 'Villages of the Kingdoms' should have more named mobs in each little village, imo. I don't think we need changes to the spells to police where people can magic to.

[Brar]

It is your job as a mage to explore and make your list of place you can teleport/gate/blabla to.

I'm with you on this one. However, I think that a lot of areas need more 'named' mobs. I know some places aren't really meant to be hugely populated by adventurers, but accidentally astral walking to the wrong place does kind of suck. Places like 'Villages of the Kingdoms' should have more named mobs in each little village, imo. I don't think we need changes to the spells to police where people can magic to.

Scrying is your friend...

And I like the idea of "mark" but would tie that to spell practice level instead of a stat.

I would even see quite easily the removal of all the FK only priestly teleportation spells to give those mages an edge again, they should be the master of instant transportation again!

Brar

[Selveem]

Scrying is your friend...

Scrying is also very expensive (as it should be). Having to go through 20 'generic-named' mobs just to find the correct place you're trying to teleport to shouldn't be considered the norm.

And I like the idea of "mark" but would tie that to spell practice level instead of a stat.

Agreed. This was once suggested for Recall; I'd like that.

I would even see quite easily the removal of all the FK only priestly teleportation spells to give those mages an edge again, they should be the master of instant transportation again!

Disagree. Wizards should be smacked with the ugly stick for even hoping it, instead! I like sticking to D&D rules; Priests get transportation spells just like Wizards do. Wizards aren't the only class deserving love.

[Brar]

Scrying is also very expensive (as it should be). Having to go through 20 'generic-named' mobs just to find the correct place you're trying to teleport to shouldn't be considered the norm.

Then perhaps making a list of areas where a named mob addition could be required (I'm saying could, because I'm still not convinced about the "it's hard" part of this argument) would be good and would allow to have a more precise view about the work of making named mob against making hard code change.

Disagree. Wizards should be smacked with the ugly stick for even hoping it, instead! I like sticking to D&D rules; Priests get transportation spells just like Wizards do. Wizards aren't the only class deserving love.

I said FK only for the sake of the "stick to DnD", the majority of our transportation spells are FK only and were created for bad reason at the time they were made, but feel free to enlighten me about those priests teleportation spells in DnD.

Edit: And I forgot, change Gate to Teleportation Circle also

[Zuldere]

Honestly I think the spells work fine as it is. I have a nice long list of npc in the different village-town-city-areas that I use to get around it come from traveling around and exploring. Granted not all areas have a npc with a name but theres enough near by to get where your going easily.

[Rictinta]

I have to agree with the majority here... I think things are fine the way they are and Brar... I'm old school too, and having everything boosted up is kind of getting annoying with all these requests for such. Agreed, that if you learn an area enough, you can find a specific mob to teleport to anyways... I don't really see the need for this to be changed. Plus it's more coding our builders have to do, when we could be looking into opening new areas and such instead. So yeah, that's my feeling on it, boosting all this stuff up with the requests is kind of annoying... I like the classic D&D base... and following closely to the campaign settings, with a few changes. So, that is my piece... done ranting.

[Necalli]

I sometimes just feel odd when I use NPC's as some sort of waypoint to bounce around the map with. This is supposed to be an RP mud. Wouldn't you find it out of the norm if you were a tavern keeper and this guy just kept appearing in a blinding flash of light all the time?

It would also be a plus if Knowledge: Geography was tied into magic mirror as well. That way, using the syntax: cast magic mirror <area> would show the first room of that area. Just so you would be able to check your destination ahead of time.