Dimension Door

[Casamir]

I wonder if there would be a way to bring dimension door into the game, maybe as the minor form of teleport or as a wizard/bard analogue for word of recall. Any ideas of a practical way this could be introduced?

[Vibius]

Perhaps you could input up to a limited amount of directions and you would appear there as if you walked following the given directions.

ie: cast 'dimension door' north east north gates east east south.

[Nylo]

An interesting suggestion, but it would be overpowered for those with a good memory, and almost useless for those without. I can think of one or two areas right off the top of my head that it could be used to bypass most, if not all of the dangerous areas.

[Casamir]

Perhaps it could function like walking without the stamina penalty and initiative in combat. You couldn't bypass anything you couldn't walk past normally, so its not abusable, you just do it quicker with a chance to surprise enemies. We send an invisible mob ahead of you, and it acts like a player character for the code, and if nothing interferes with it, the short range teleport triggers.

[Nylo]

That's a bit better, but it still has problems. A DM in tabletop can always compensate for a player doing the unexpected. In our setting we have defined locations for mobs, and if you can bypass those you can loot areas without the risk that should be involved. A death prog on the boss mob to load the treasure works in some cases, but not all. There might be a way to code the greet progs to challenge such a mob, but it would require hard code support. And with a wizinvis mob, you could bypass a lot of mobs you couldn't normally. If you use regular invis instead of wizinvis, you're basically spending a great deal of effort to give them the spell invisibility.

In short, it's a nice idea, but I think it's impracticable for our setting.

[Rhangalas]

Hmm... Maybe a modified 'word of recall' would help. You go into a room, cast the spell, the spell adds the vnum of the room to a variable and the spell is added to your affects list indefinitely until you 'activate' the recall with a command. This would allow you to teleport to specific rooms instead of having to use a mob as a target.

Dispel Magic could still cause you to lose the recall, so it isn't a sure thing. You would only be able to recall to rooms that you are able to reach normally to set up a waypoint and if it becomes an issue of people setting up recalls to bypass obstacles - abusively - then you could just flag those rooms as no-teleport.

It makes sense that the quarters near the boss-man and treasure rooms would be warded thusly.

[Nylo]

That would be fair, I think, and definitely useful.

[Grenwyn]

I agree. It sounds like it would take some hard code renovations, though.

[Casamir]

So you cast a spell, it drops an invisible mob with a keyword generated using the caster's name, so each mob has a unique target. Something like dimensiondoorCASTER. Then when you activate it, you are transferred to this temporary mob. I suppose you add checks for combat and no astral flags.. I imagine a version of this could be rather manageable. A low level escape spell for wizards and bards.

[Nylo]

If you're precasting the spell, and all that's left is a trigger word, then combat checks wouldn't be necessary. mptransfer can act directly on a vnum, no mob required, assuming there's a way to store variables from the spell code.

[Rhangalas]

A low level escape spell for wizards and bards.

Exactly. If all goes well and this makes the cut, then maybe it would open up the possibility of an advanced version that actually creates a door. So, after the dracolich pummels your party's paladin to death and eats the priest, the rest of you can 'tactically retreat'.

Maybe something like: Dimension Warp for the low-level, personal spell and the usual Dimension Door for the advanced, gate-like version.

EDIT:

Thinking about this further, I realized that you could set up a system of always having a teleport ready simply by precasting the spell in the room again once you've used it. If created, it should probably be subject to a concentration check when you attempt to trigger it in combat. Maybe a duration as well (albeit a reasonably long one so it can actually be utilized). I'm thinking a duration on par with summon mount... it lasts fairly long, even at low skill levels.