Teleport

Gregal · Post by **Gregal** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 7:42 pm

In a recent RP I encountered a wizard that used the teleport spell, not knowing my name or what I look like, because my character wears a mask when venturing to other cities and the such. I would like to ask if this is icly appropriate, and do the wizards that are high enough lvl know the rules to such powerful spells such as teleport and the such?

Argentia · Post by **Argentia** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 8:59 pm

Well, I don't think you have to know a person's name or face just to teleport to them. As long as you know where they are via divination, ie magic mirror(though I suppose you could teleport without that first, though it would be risky; you wouldn't know if you're teleporting into Waterdeep, the middle of the orc camp, or underwater), you should be able to concentrate on them so long as you know say, their clothes, their hair colour, their overall body shape, their voice, ect.

Gwain · Post by **Gwain** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:05 pm

I agree, to teleport to someone it takes more than just knowing a face, you need to work from the mannerisms and traits of the subject to find them, so it would be possible to pick them out on minimal information, as long as it is rp'd and the wizard is sufficiently powered.

Lerytha · Post by **Lerytha** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:37 pm

I think the main ruling is not concerning people, but about the location. If you have never been there before, you should not teleport there at all. So, ICly, the wizard in question would be able to teleport to you whether he knows what you look like or not, as long as he is ICly familiar with the area. Even if you are the brother of the mage, he cannot teleport to you if you are somewhere he has never been.

At least, the above is what I have been informed, and it is how I RP the spell.

Gregal · Post by **Gregal** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:42 pm

Alright then what are the restrictions on such a spell as Magic Mirror, I mean you can't just chant some words and ask to see a person you don't even know, or only had minimal experience with if that. Scrying for someone is very hard to do, it takes a lot of energy and you need something to scry off of. Just my personal opinion, I don't think Wizards are so strong they can just scry any person in the whole world and teleport to them.

Natasha · Post by **Natasha** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 8:52 pm

Magic Mirror is more of a Crystal Ball style divination spell, not a transportation spell like Teleport, which operates on a person keeping the knowledge on where they are going in their head, whereas magic mirror reveals the unseen to the caster.

Natasha

Nearraba · Post by **Nearraba** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 8:56 pm

To use Magic Mirror, the such person must have greeted you, so not anyone person can look at the who list and say, Hmm… I think I want to look for Andy today. I usually only cast magic mirror, if I have known the person for awhile therefore know what they look like or if they are in grave danger. I think it all depends on how the wizard\spell caster wishes to RP and wither or not he\she is using the best of there Rping abilities. Everyone has differnt ideas, I think about how to roleplay casting and learning spells.

Cret · Post by **Cret** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 11:56 pm

To target a player you dont have to have been greeted. You can also use their adj. So if someone were to look up where I am they might:

c 'magic mirror' ' male gnome'

That would target any Players, if none the go to NPC.. but should they do:

c 'magic mirror' venerable they would find me.

So, if you have seen someone in the MS that you remember their ADJ then you can mirror them.

Elenthis · Post by **Elenthis** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:53 am

Actually, as a minor correction, and it may not even be 100% correct...

I'm pretty sure the code checks for "target" of magic mirror spells by alphabetical order first, and ignores class of NPC or PC. I've had NPC's come up about 10 times before I hit a player.

~Elenthis.

Theillik · Post by **Theillik** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:35 pm

Teleport help file...

This spell if you FAIL takes you from your current location to a random location somewhere in the world. As the energies involved are difficult to control, there is no sure way of determining your destination. Therefore, caution and planning should be in the forefront when considering whether to use this spell. If you do not fail the spell it will take you to the PC or mobile you specify as target.

Gwain said...

I agree, to teleport to someone it takes more than just knowing a face, you need to work from the mannerisms and traits of the subject to find them, so it would be possible to pick them out on minimal information, as long as it is rp'd and the wizard is sufficiently powered.

Lerytha said...

I think the main ruling is not concerning people, but about the location. If you have never been there before, you should not teleport there at all. So, ICly, the wizard in question would be able to teleport to you whether he knows what you look like or not, as long as he is ICly familiar with the area. Even if you are the brother of the mage, he cannot teleport to you if you are somewhere he has never been.

Summed facts...

I agree with Gwain and Lerytha on this. Teleport takes an extreme amount of concentration and an intricate amount of detailed information about the target area you are teleporting to.

The PHB, whether 2nd ed or 3rd ed, discusses familiarity, as the help file discusses difficulty in control and time for caution and preparation. How many details you know of the desired location, directly affects the final location of where you land. The PHB even suggests that a wizard could s Cr a mBLe their body by casting this spell.

In other words, a wizard must know the location they are going to with complete accuracy. If not, there is a very high chance that they teleport hundreds of miles away, hundreds of feet in the air (long fall), or possibly even materialize inside a wall, a tree, a PERSON, or half in the ground!

In my opinion...

A wizard could never teleport to "a person", never. It would not matter how much he knew what the person looked like, because what matters is how well he knows the area the person is in. If the wizard used a scrying spell, such as, Magic Mirror, then he glimpses the actual location of the character. In this case, the wizard has a detailed and immediate visual to use for teleportation.

I think this spell should only allow a person to teleport to a location, not a person. And because of this, extreme thought in RP is needed for a wizard using this spell. The Player needs to remember what locations the wizard knows extremely well, or make sure they use Magic Mirror or Clairvoyance (which allows the wizard to see into a specific room), before they cast their spell.

In conclusion, time, effort, and detailed planning must occur if the Wizard is to cast teleport...and not end up Sc r am Bl Ed

This is not an easy spell to be RPed.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:05 pm

By the time a wizard CAN teleport (whether lvl 40+ in FK or lvl 5ish in D&D), chances are that he has been to all the major cities in the land, a fair number of forests, deserts, mountains, plains, etc. over a decade or more (I know my wizard didn't get teleport until he had aged 15 years in code and been pretty much around the world w/o it). Wizards have to search for their spells, whether for a trainer, spellbook, or other source of magic; they don't just sit down in the font of knowledge and learn everything from one trainer. Therefore, a wizard who is powerful enough to teleport quite probably has amassed a great deal of geographical knowledge by that time and therefore can get to at least all the major cities and probably to major forests such as Ardeep or Tethir.

Teleporting to a character off in the middle of the ocean without scrying their location might be a problem, yes, but wizards can normally reach most locations by some means or other (if not by teleporting to the plains outside a city, then by transporting themselves to the city and walking to the location).

Rhytania · Post by **Rhytania** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:47 pm

You could possibly make a requirment that you cannot pass plant or teleport to an area that is not in your knowledge geography list. That would insure everyone has a fair amount of knowledge of the area before they use it.

Boe · Post by **Boe** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:03 pm

I think this would be a good way to utilize the knowledge-geographical skill for one. However, not every area in the game is coded with a knowledge geographical point, so, perhaps instead of checking if the char has that particular area's point, when teleporting your success rate is not only based on your level in the teleport spell, but also your level in the knowledge-geo skill too?

-Kyle

Rhytania · Post by **Rhytania** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:21 pm

Only problem with tieing it to the skill and not to the knowledge of the region is that one can GM the skill with barely getting HALF of the regions. maybe a dual skill check where it uses both the skill level of knowledge-geography and checks for the specific region knowledge would lessen or greater your risk of failure.

ie If you have a GM in knowledge geography but dont specifically have the
Forgotten Forest listed in your familar regions you would have a greater chance of failing or getting telleported somewhere else, than if you have them both.

This way it doesnt penalize you fully for not having the specific region, and you also dont get to reap the benefit of having a high Knowledge Geography skill without knowing the specific region.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:33 pm

But teleport is bound to mobs, not regions, so (imo) checking the location of the mob/PC and then making a check seems a bit unnecessarily complicated (and, compared to other things which need to be put in the game, not too useful a change) when one could just make teleport have a fail % to reflect not knowing a region. Presumably (and yes, this may not be true for all cases), a lvl 40+ wiz will have visited most areas and have a high knowledge Geo skill.

Rhytania · Post by **Rhytania** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:27 pm

Hviti: Thats the complaint though. Its too easy for people to teleport to mobs/pc's without even having been to the Area once. Which stemmed from people complaining about Wizzies teleporting to people they dont even know, just met. Teleport is actually tied to a place, but becuase of the nature of the beast with this being a mud and not DnD Tabletop, it has to be tied to a mob/pc.

Kelemvor · Post by **Kelemvor** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:05 pm

Discussions such as this one come up now and then and unfortunately dont always come to a satisfactory conclusion for all concerned.

The conflict is basically one of code meets handbook meets player...

The code requires certain spells to have a PC or NPC as a target in order to mimic its effects in table top or canon D&D. There isn't always an easier way around this than the one that is already coded

The handbooks note requirements and stipulations which the code can not check or that would be too onerous to implement

The player may or may not be aware of the handbooks when they make use of a spell which is coded this way

Theilliks original concern was that a player had teleported to him without having been greeted or ICly knowing enough about the location or the person they were teleporting to.

Where does the line sit on this? Difficult to say. It would be hard work to ensure that all spell users met such stringent RP 'rules' when casting teleport or magic mirror when the code tempts them to interpret it other ways.

My own personal opinion is that you should never use magic mirror or teleport or pass plant if you the character have not at the very least met an individual or been to a place in character.

Wizards who happily work their way down the 'who' list guessing race or adjective in order to see where everyone is... that isn't really acceptable

Any character using a transport spell who blithely nods to a quest mob and simply types out their spell or prayer and the name given for them to find... if they havent actually met that mob previously they are abusing the code and bypassing the work put in by the quest writer.

Doing something using knowledge gained on other characters or otherwise OOCly or doing something because the code lets you does not make for a compelling reason to applaud a character's roleplay.

Adding checks and balances often takes more work than simply encouraging players to read up on a subject or asking them to consider less code-based ways of playing.

Balek · Post by **Balek** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:03 am

Out of curiosity, would it be possible to code a command for mortals so that they can check the vnum of a room, then allow teleport to be targeted to vnums? This could be combined with the current no_astral flags so that if you try to check a vnum in a noastral area you would get a nice OOC echo saying you can't teleport to this location.

This would allow wizards to teleport to locations they had been to, rather then only teleporting to mobs and players.

Kelemvor · Post by **Kelemvor** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 6:47 am

That would likely expand the problem of unIC teleporting rather than reduce it. A player would still not have had to visit a place ICly in order to type in a vnum. I know vnum 50111 is in an area I want to go to, its an area of 50 vnums say... I can pretty much type anything from 50100 to 50149 if I want to.

Timaeus · Post by **Timaeus** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 4:22 pm

One possibility is to to code teleport to use 'markers'. They would be placed ICly and only by physically being in a room(vnum) with a command and would then mark a specific room as an available location. When the wizard wishes to teleport they would have to use a number to designate which location they want to go to. You could even tie the number of available markers to the actual spell level. One marker per spell level. A grandmaster level giving a total of 25 markers available at any one time. These markers would have to be removeable but only if you are physically in a room you have previously marked. A list would show the room name that you marked and how many available markers you have. A no astral room would prevent a mark being placed.

command: markers
1) Bradigans
2) Brians
------------------
Markers 2/13

command: placemark - adds a location to your list
command: removemark - removes a location from your list
command: cast 'teleport' 1 - sends you to your marker 1 location
command: cast 'teleport' 2 - sends you to your marker 2 location