Movement Spells - Transportation spells

Cret · Post by **Cret** » Mon May 28, 2007 9:33 am

I think we should incoporate our "knowledge-geog (Int,Wis)" skill into our transportation spells. This would give an increased use for tranportation spells:

You are familiar with the Woods of Sharp Teeth region.
You are familiar with the Cloak Wood region.
You are familiar with the Cloud Peaks region.
You are familiar with the Troll Mountains region.
You are familiar with the Snowflake Mountains region.
You are familiar with the Forest of Mir region.
You are familiar with the Calim Desert region.

Knowing these areas would alow us to transport ourselves/others to a room in these regions.

Forexampe, using the teleport command..

cast teleport area 'calim desert'

This would transport us somewhere in to that area.

Zilvryn · Post by **Zilvryn** » Mon May 28, 2007 3:15 pm

I think this is a great idea. It fits with the whole idea of visualising an area in your mind before 'porting to it, like most mages do in canon FR.

Great idea Cret.

Amalia · Post by **Amalia** » Mon May 28, 2007 4:00 pm

I concur, excellent thought-- though I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement with the way the code stands now. I imagine it'd require some sort of tag put on every room in each region, and the code of the teleport spell edited?

Zilvryn · Post by **Zilvryn** » Mon May 28, 2007 5:32 pm

As far as i'm aware the regional tags must already be in place for your knowledge of the region to increase as you move through it, i'd guess that you'd only have to edit the travel spells to implement this. Though I'm not a coder, so i'm only guessing..

Oghma · Post by **Oghma** » Mon May 28, 2007 7:55 pm

It does sound like a nice idea.

The current system I believe relies on mobiles or pc's acting as targets in the area. I would myself like to see this changed so that you can only teleport or transfer to areas you have been before instead of just utilizing a mobile or pc in an area. This way you would have to explore an area and become familiare with it. I could see this working in reguards to wilderness and geography skills. Maybe setting up markers that become visible to the viewer only when they are familare with an area for example.

The other use of Knowledge-geography might be to unlock certain quests or was one of the original intentions (I may be a bit off here). Using it for transport for those classes that can utilize travel spells and skills would be a interesting application.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Tue May 29, 2007 12:43 am

Could the mobiles used to grant knowledge geo. in an area be used as targets?

It would be nice to keep some degree of specificity, though, if one wanted to end up near a PC one knew in a particular area.

Rhianon · Post by **Rhianon** » Tue May 29, 2007 8:33 am

How are you going to know the Mobs in an area unless you have been there and know that they are there? Unless of course you learned of them from another character who is trying to be helpful and explaining where to get a good deal on something or whatever. I like the idea of being able to use a mob to get to a place and then you can explore. You can also die that way, happens all the time..........you never know where your gonna end up some days. I also like the idea of being to access an area too, but then again you could end up dead by landing right in front of something that wants to kill you. Where as if your targeting a certain mob your chances are a little better, than just a random landing.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Tue May 29, 2007 9:03 am

Very, very nice idea. I agree with it wholeheartedly. It would be nice to just gate to an area instead of a mob. Especially when, ICly, a PC that was targeted all the time would get pretty pissed off.

Tortus · Post by **Tortus** » Tue May 29, 2007 9:10 am

Yea. Imagine poor Robert Perrins atop Mt. WD, always having all kinds of fiendish people gating in everytime there's UM stuff going on. I'd tire pretty quickly.

I'm all for this idea, but would it be necessary to remove the ability to gate to mobs? Is there a Waterdeep region, for instance, if you should want to teleport into the city?
I think this idea would be better implemented more as an addition than a replacement.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Tue May 29, 2007 8:55 pm

Oh, I thought an addition was what he was referring to. It would be pretty hard for those guilds/classes that don't get direct-transport spells to get to specific places otherwise.

It would be nice if it was optional to gate to a mob or an area. Perhaps a mob you would have quotations around whereas a city would just be:

c teleport zhentilkeep
c teleport waterdeep
c teleport berdusk

Of course, IC reactions will still occur if an Evil somehow manages to penetrate something like Silverymoon. I believe those protections should remain in place.

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Tue May 29, 2007 10:20 pm

I'm not sure whether a satisfying technical solution could be found to do this (even though, at first glance, I like the idea).

It would be possible (and I remember Mask suggesting this idea when we revised the spells) to use keywords from the room name instead of using a mobile/PC. For example, c teleport kryptgarden would actually teleport you to a room whose name contains the keyword "kryptgarden".

My problem with it is this: for "Kryptgarden forest", that would be all fine. But what about "High Forest" or locales with names composed of similarly common words? What about areas whose name is not found in the room names (for example, no room in Applehill actually contains the word "Applehill" in its name, if I remember correctly).

Another problem would be that it would make some teleportation impossible. Let's say you want to teleport to the sewers in Waterdeep. What keyword are you going to use? "Junction"? "Muddy"? I can't think of any keyword that would be both effective and intuitive.

If there's to be a modification to teleportation spells, I would suggest the addition of 10 "anchor points" that could be set by the caster when (s)he is in the room. The "teleport" spell (and other teleportation spells) could then be used either with a mob/pc keyword [as currently] or with an anchor point number/designation.

For example, the caster could go to the Market square of Waterdeep and type "anchor market". That would associate the designation "market" to this room. He could then walk to his favourite tavern and type "anchor tavern". That would associate that tavern room with the name "tavern". Later on, the caster could use "cast teleport feebov", or "cast teleport market", or "cast teleport tavern".

There would be a limit on how many anchor points each caster can have, and we could even make it so that one of those anchor points has to called "recall" and is the room used for the "word of recall" spell.

Lathander · Post by **Lathander** » Tue May 29, 2007 11:25 pm

Nice. It also has the extra benefit of having those who would use a gate created by another to go to that location.

Kregor · Post by **Kregor** » Wed May 30, 2007 1:42 am

I like the thought of manually setting anchor points for teleportation/recall spells. This would have the added benefit of enforcing the requirement that you have to have seen a place to transport to it. ie, if you've never been to Berdusk, yet you know there's X mob there, you have nothing currently preventing you from transporting there, but if you physically have to set the point in Berdusk you want to go, then you have no choice but to go there physically at least ONCE and "study" the area (ie, set the anchor point.)