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View Full Version : Teleport, momentum, planets and... what's a location?



jseah
2010-12-22, 03:30 PM
Got an interesting question that came up when I was making my magic system and I thought the same would apply to D&D 3.5.

Of course, this is a very nitpicky question. I know about the Rule of Cool. That never satisfied me and I'm looking for a universally applicable answer.
Just because. Having arbitrary rules always irks me.

EDIT: rules that are "whatever the GM says" are even worse.

EDIT2:
I am looking for many different logical explanations for teleport. One is good, many is better; alternatives present different ways to work the magic.
And presenting my DM with many different examples might give him ideas for his own. Me as well, since I'm writing a magic system and might DM some day.

**************************************************

Teleportation when standing still, conceptually, should make the caster arrive standing still.
Assuming that the world is like our solar system, with a spherical planet and Mars does exist and so on...

If you teleport to the opposite side of a planet, you cannot retain your current momentum. That would make you go zooming off at supersonic speed. Conceptually wrong.
But then, how does that work at all? If the caster arrives at a speed relative to the surface that problem disappears.
Question: how far "up" does the caster have to go before the effect disappears? Obviously, if the caster teleports on Mars, he's not going to 'correct' for the Earth's rotation... That's a pretty extreme example though.
But the question stands, if you teleport close to the moon, then you should arrive relative to the moon. But how close is "close enough"?

Secondly, if you teleport across planets, you need to correct for the planets orbiting the sun. >.>
So if you teleport in space to space, say from Geostationary Orbit around Earth to Low Orbit around Mars... how does that work?

Of course, this question can't be answered by "The caster has to correct for it". Because if he can fail to do corrections for it, you could weaponize teleport! Also conceptually wrong.

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A second related question. To arrive stationary, you need to define "stationary".
Let's say we have a ship. It's sailing across an ocean of Faerun (a flat world) between two continents. Let's say there's a favourable tide and a good wind so it's going at a fair clip of 30kmph.
A mage teleports from Waterdeep to the ship. Does he arrive 'stationary' with respect to the ground? Then he appears on the ship and slams into the deck at 30kmph. Conceptually weird but perhaps acceptable.

Does he arrive 'stationary' with respect to the ship? Then you have a problem. What counts as a location for the teleport to arrive 'stationary' to?
A flying mountain from Netheril of old should surely count. And from the above, a ship should count.
How small can you get? Obviously you can't arrive 'stationary' with respect to a falling coconut even if you're an awakened squirrel wizard.
How about a farmer's cart? Or a charging chariot?
A moving Lightning Rail from Eberron? An elemental airship? Where's this magical cut-off point?

Keld Denar
2010-12-22, 03:52 PM
Its magic. It automatically adjusts for relativistic effects. Your frame of reference is relative only to you, and not your surroundings.

If you teleport from stationary onto the top of a speeding Lightning Rail car, you'd be stationary WRT the car. If you teleported from one LR car to another LR car that is traveling in the opposite direction, you won't be flung off.

Its magic, it defies physics. Otherwise casting ANY teleport effect would be like casting Dramaj's Instant Death, except that it also changes your name to Dramaj. The whole line of spells wouldn't exist because anyone who developed one would be instantly slain in the experimental phase.

Psyren
2010-12-22, 03:52 PM
When you teleport,the world effectively stands still from the moment you leave your point of origin until the moment you arrive at your point of destination. This is due to two reasons:

1)You "travel instantly" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleport.htm)per the Teleport description;

2)Teleportation takes you through the Astral Plane, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#theAstralPlane)which is timeless. So no matter how long your transit actually takes, nothing in the material is moving.This includes boats, horses, carriages,gusts of wind or the planet itself.

Drakevarg
2010-12-22, 03:52 PM
How small can you get? Obviously you can't arrive 'stationary' with respect to a falling coconut even if you're an awakened squirrel wizard.

Why not? Where is it said that you can't teleport onto a coconut?


How about a farmer's cart? Or a charging chariot?
A moving Lightning Rail from Eberron? An elemental airship? Where's this magical cut-off point?

I don't think there really is a "cut-off" point. It's just that your ability to succesfully estimate the location with enough accuracy to satisfy the spell is fairly slim. So if you're aiming for the coconut, for example, it's probable you'll miss and wind up three feet to the left of the coconut and wind up in free-fall. If not... well, the coconut's still falling. So instead of in free-fall by yourself, you're in free-fall on top of a coconut.

Gamer Girl
2010-12-22, 04:18 PM
I'd say that 'Teleport' just works.

The problem with questions like this is all the hard science. Yes, by the rule of science today, teleportation is impossible. But you never know what they might discover tomorrow.


I'd say that teleport can compensate for movement. so you could go from a ship to a tower no problem. The magic just absorbs and dissipates any momentum or such.

jseah
2010-12-22, 04:18 PM
Keld Denar:
The "it's magic!" solution isn't the one I'm looking for.

Besides, relative to yourself doesn't mean anything. You are always stationary wrt yourself.
In that case, the question becomes, is the world stationary wrt you?

The teleporting between Lightning Rails seems to be ok. But what if the Lightning Rail is really a giant battering ram? That's going really really fast?

Or maybe it's a lot smaller. Like walnut small. Can I teleport onto a diving falcon?
How about a flying arrow? If I teleport 2 inches in front of a flying arrow and match speeds with it, I could avoid getting hit by Mr. Pimped out Archer. (the arrow would be going slow enough relative to me to catch with bare hands. The ground however might not be so forgiving)

Or my buddy fires an arrow going very very fast (archers can shoot really far in D&D)
At the same time, I grab an enemy and teleport him to the arrow. Match speeds with the arrow? He goes splat on the mountainside then.

Psyren:
Sure, the world's stationary when you teleport. But it very quickly stops being stationary. =(
I'm not asking if you could accurately teleport to a flying airship. I'm assuming that the caster is good enough to do so.

The question is whether the caster ends up matching speeds or not.

Psycho:
Haha, nice one. Ok, now imagine a walnut is going at mach 2 to the east. And you teleport to it because as a squirrel, you REALLY want that walnut (watched Ice Age? Like that)

Match speeds with a supersonic walnut? =X

It also assumes that a coconut/walnut is a valid target for a teleport. I'm not even sure if it should count as a "location" you can teleport to at all.

**************************************************

The "what is a location" question appears to be conceptually similar to the question of "stationary" spells.

Everyone knows you can't move an Alarm spell. Ok, if I put the Alarm spell on a ship's door, does that work, or does it slide off the ship when it sets sail?

How about a Teleportation Circle? Or a rune circle?

EDIT: think about it. They're essentially the same question.

jseah
2010-12-22, 04:22 PM
I'd say that teleport can compensate for movement. so you could go from a ship to a tower no problem. The magic just absorbs and dissipates any momentum or such.
Yes, but what's a ship? Does flotsam count? Ship to Lightning Rail going in the opposite direction?

And for the above example, from tower to on top of a giant eagle going at full dive?
If I can go to anything and match speeds with it, no matter how big a thing I'm teleporting, I could use teleport to make anything go at any speed.

Teleport a floating mountaintop onto a small falling rock (just need high enough CL or someone with a high enough heavy load). Bamf! Instant meteor strike.

Saph
2010-12-22, 04:33 PM
As far as I can tell, teleportation in D&D works on a relativistic basis. You end up stationary relative to whatever you're using as a frame of reference. So if you teleport to a geographical location, you end up stationary relative to the location. If you teleport onto an airship, you end up stationary relative to the airship, and so on.

Shade Kerrin
2010-12-22, 04:51 PM
As I see it, your velocity becomes stationary relative to the point you teleport to. Support for this point is the fact that you tend to explicitly need to teleport on to a stable surface, regardless of whether you can fly or not, implying that the spell needs to align itself to something.

Drakevarg
2010-12-22, 04:56 PM
Psycho:
Haha, nice one. Ok, now imagine a walnut is going at mach 2 to the east. And you teleport to it because as a squirrel, you REALLY want that walnut (watched Ice Age? Like that)

Match speeds with a supersonic walnut? =X

Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's a good idea. :smallwink:


It also assumes that a coconut/walnut is a valid target for a teleport. I'm not even sure if it should count as a "location" you can teleport to at all.

Why not? In a universe where worlds are big rocks in space, what is the difference between the huge ball (the planet) and the tiny ball (the walnut) except scale? I can understand the idea of teleporting onto a walnut would be really hard for the same reason that trying to hit a bullet with another bullet from across a field while blindfolded is hard, but there's no real reason for one to qualify as a location and the other to not.

Re'ozul
2010-12-22, 05:24 PM
My opinion on teleportation is that you always switch places with the amount of space you then occupie (which in most cases is a volume of air).

The spell then gives you the same average movement (based on a percieved base movement of spacetime) as the material you switch with had.
That should usually make it possible to get where you want. Even interstellar space has enough rogue molecules (hydrogen mostly) per volume of a person to get a rough average.

Though If you teleport directly into an area that has strong winds you might go flying a bit or at least fall over and slide for a few feet.

jseah
2010-12-22, 05:24 PM
Psycho, Saph & Shade:
Can weaponize teleport that way? I could quite easily pick something going very very fast as the frame of reference.

An example would be the teleporting of an enemy to a flying arrow for lots of "effective" falling damage by the enemy suddenly flying into a wall very very fast.

Conceptually it seems weird and I'm sure my GM would hit me over the head with his PHB if I tried to pull that.
It's just that there's no solid definition of teleport that doesn't have SOME level of weirdness if I look at it sideways.

Then again, given that it's happened for lots of other bits of D&D magic, I suppose this is just a futile quest. Never mind then, perhaps I'll let my GM have his headache.

Drakevarg
2010-12-22, 05:31 PM
Psycho, Saph & Shade:
Can weaponize teleport that way? I could quite easily pick something going very very fast as the frame of reference.

An example would be the teleporting of an enemy to a flying arrow for lots of "effective" falling damage by the enemy suddenly flying into a wall very very fast.
.

I think I might allow you to teleport somone onto an arrow if they failed their saving throw or whatever. After all, what's the difference between that and just teleporting them off the top of a fjord? One's just more creative.

Saph
2010-12-22, 05:36 PM
Psycho, Saph & Shade:
Can weaponize teleport that way? I could quite easily pick something going very very fast as the frame of reference.

With D&D teleports, you don't get to pick the frame of reference: you pick a location, and that determines the reference.

With enough work you could probably weaponise it, but it'd almost certainly be more effort than it was worth - if you can get something flying in the right direction at the right speed, it's going to be easier to make that thing more dangerous than it is to try and teleport something else onto it at just the right time.

Shade Kerrin
2010-12-22, 05:43 PM
Again, Teles tends to require landing on a surface that can support your weight. Presumably because something that can't does not have enough latent momentum to handle the alignment.

As to weaponizing it, Teles also are either Willing only or Will Negates. One would require you to trick the target, the other takes in to account that it can be weaponized.

Edit: found the proof I was after,
A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.

Coidzor
2010-12-22, 05:44 PM
Why are you asking questions that can't be answered by the RAW explicitly due to the fact that they depend upon things that aren't defined in the game?


But the question stands, if you teleport close to the moon, then you should arrive relative to the moon. But how close is "close enough"?

Why are you asking for a theoretical framework to answer what is essentially a DMing call if the caster can't determine the distance between the point he's going for and the surface of the moon?


Secondly, if you teleport across planets, you need to correct for the planets orbiting the sun. >.>

Why? Why do you need to correct for each and every planet that's orbiting the sun? That's so "magic can't be magic" that it just seems asinine and would just bog down play without adding anything to the game.

It's the sort of thing you'd readily allow for a computer system for a technological teleporter to take care of for the user, so why does someone casting a magic spell have to take pains to deal with it rather than it being part of the operation of the spell to take care of those unknowable variables? (IIRC, in the time it would take for a character to get all of the relative figures... they'll have changed)


So if you teleport in space to space, say from Geostationary Orbit around Earth to Low Orbit around Mars... how does that work?

However the DM wants it to work. Or do you want to know whether appearing in low orbit around mars is sufficient to establish an orbit that won't degrade? Which depends more upon the nature of what forces are necessary to create a stable orbit of mars than it does on the ability to teleport.


Of course, this question can't be answered by "The caster has to correct for it". Because if he can fail to do corrections for it, you could weaponize teleport! Also conceptually wrong.


:smallconfused: The question can't be answered except for on a case by case basis known as DM adjudication.

Also, it's not so much conceptually wrong as it is mutually exclusive with the nature of the spell being able to accomplish its stated purpose.

Also, it's usually not conceptualized as "the caster" so much as the spell doing it, in a way analogous to a computer program.


How small can you get?

Again, this is entirely up to the DM. Because it's not defined. If I were DMing, I'd say it'd have to be a space large enough to contain the teleported.


Where's this magical cut-off point?

Wherever the DM puts it. So again I have to ask you, why are you asking this question, which is meaningless in the form you present it, rather than asking for advice for adjudicating the matter?

Because adjudicating this matter is fundamentally a matter of opinion and individual interpretations rather than RAW.

Keld Denar
2010-12-22, 05:50 PM
With the exception of Baleful Transposition, all teleports are willing targets only. If you tried to weaponize one, the spell simply wouldn't work on the target. Baleful Transposition is already weaponized, but it allows a will save to resist at least, and it certainly won't screw you over any harder than Glitterdust will, an equal level spell.

Shade Kerrin
2010-12-22, 05:55 PM
Keld....Did I just ninja someone?

Gamer Girl
2010-12-22, 05:57 PM
Keld Denar:
The "it's magic!" solution isn't the one I'm looking for.


The problem is that it IS magic. In a magical universe too.

The solutions you want are based on real world physics and science. Yes the real world has the teleport problem of momentum and intera and force and such.
But that is because your just tacking on teleportation to real world effects. If teleportation was real, there could be all sorts of unknown and unknowable effects.

Your question is a lot like the early anti space faring folks. Plenty of experts were convinced that 'if man went into space some type of energy/radiation would kill them'. Of course, people did go into space and low and behold, that did not happen.


And look at it from a magical universe mindset. Lets say the first couple of dozen teleporters became chunky salsa. Well, you can bet the next couple fized the problems...

KillianHawkeye
2010-12-22, 05:58 PM
I have to agree with Coidzor. If you asked this question to a computer that knew everything there was to know about D&D, its answer would be ERROR: undefined.

Hawkflight
2010-12-22, 06:29 PM
Here's what I think: When you teleport, you lock onto a specific point or object that the spell teleports you to. If the point or object is in motion, then the teleport spell itself is moving at this velocity, meaning you are moving at the same velocity as the targeted point or item when you materialize. Finally, note that all points are technically in motion, due to various circumstances.

Thus the teleportation process can be broken up into three stages:

1) Locking on. The make the spell lock onto a specific point. Since all points are in motion, the spot that the teleport spell lock onto is also in motion.

2) Dematerialization. You disappear from your present location. Weather or not this process cancels your momentum or not is irrelevant, because if step three.

3) Rematerialization. You rematerialize at the point the spell has locked onto. Since the spell locked onto a spot that is in motion, when you appear at your destination, you are also traveling at the same velocity in the same direction as the point you locked onto.

Skorj
2010-12-22, 07:08 PM
Teleport needs to shed a bunch of energy to work without you exploding in any case. If you're on a rotating planet, the velocity difference between two distant points on the surace would be significant. If you teleport up or down a significant amount relative to the core of the planet (as teleporting from the pole to the equator would do - because planets bulge a bit at the waist), that's a huge amount of gravitational potential energy to shed - the same as if you had fallen that distance.

Really, a moving carriage is the least of the concerns with that spell - very minor compared to travelling any real distance. Best to just roll with it (or be prepared to take d6 damage per exploding catgirl).

Keld Denar
2010-12-22, 07:40 PM
Hmmm, catgirls as a unit of measure...I like it!

Take catgirld6 damage.

Your teleport shananigans rate in the 3-5 catgirl range. The Distant Shot [Epic] feat, allowing you to fire arrows at the sun at several hundred times the speed of light causing relativistic collapses rates at about 10,000 catgirls. Minor Creation anti-osmium bombs clock in at a full 50,000 catgirls.

NichG
2010-12-22, 07:57 PM
This and related questions were actually very important in a campaign I ran that had elements of sci-fi and fantasy. The party had a space ship that traveled at reasonable space speeds (20 km/sec) but also had a teleporter array that could teleport the whole thing several lightyears if it was charged up first.

The issue I had to decide on before it came up was 'what is the frame of reference that stationary spells exist in?'. The teleport effect is answered by this question (you show up in the local stationary frame, whatever that is), but there are more severe issues. Namely, lets say the party wants to bubble their ship in a prismatic sphere. Now, they either:

1. Get a sphere that moves with them
2. Get a sphere that is moving at 20km/sec relative to them that obliterates the ship almost instantly
3. Get a sphere that initially moves with them but does not accelerate with them

Each of these possibilities are problematic. 2 is silly, and is very weaponizable (cast a prismatic sphere or wall of force while boarding an enemy ship and no more enemy ship). 1 is weaponizable as well (wall of force + ramming). So is 3 (prismatic sphere missiles).

The scale of the game was such that I didn't mind some weaponization (prismatic torpedoes instead of photon torpedoes, so what?), but you could core planets with the wall of force trick and that I didn't like. So I ended up ruling that everything has a local magical field based on the amount of mass present, and that just like solar winds there were magical winds extending from the sun, the planets, etc. If you were proportionally closer to a certain mass, that determined how much of its velocity you used and how much of, say, the nearest planet's velocity you used. So if you somehow launched a wall of force at an enemy ship, it would actually slow down and match velocity with the enemy ship when it got near enough.

You could use the same criteria to determine teleport frame of references. Don't do any math, just use a rule of thumb: make a list of all objects that you would be inside if you doubled their size; you are in the reference frame of the largest such object on the list.

Edit: Yes, this does mean that teleporting onto an airship is a bad idea. If you want to preserve that, you can of course just say 'the closest big thing to the target location.

Kuma Kode
2010-12-22, 08:26 PM
Again, Teles tends to require landing on a surface that can support your weight. Presumably because something that can't does not have enough latent momentum to handle the alignment.

As to weaponizing it, Teles also are either Willing only or Will Negates. One would require you to trick the target, the other takes in to account that it can be weaponized. What Shade has been saying is the right idea, in my opinion. Spells are kinda like computer wizards, they have defaults and scripts that handle most of the nitty gritty so you can just pick a location and teleport there rather than have to math it all out every time you want to cast, otherwise every instance of spellcasting would be very similar to researching the spell all over again.

It appears that teleport selects the reference frame for you based upon wherever you're going. It needs to pick an object that can support your weight, so it seems it needs to pick something bigger and more stable than you as a reference point, since you can't pick empty space and a coconut in freefall cannot support your weight. It then takes the physical traits of that object, such as velocity, and bestows them on you when you exit the Astral.

Think of the astral as a clean slate, which removes any velocity or inertia you possess because such things do not exist in the astral. Unlike in Portal, momentum is NOT conserved between portals.

jseah
2010-12-22, 08:37 PM
^NichG: o.O That... that's a good explanation. The nearest big thing one. As well as the other suggestion of "the biggest thing that you are inside the double radius of".

Of course, it does allow you build a big box to "carry" stationary spells around. Just as long as that qualifies as a "big thing".

Defining a "big thing" is easier than defining a location. Some arbitrary cutoff can be used, or something to do with size, mass and speed.


Gamergirl and Codizor:
I'm asking these question despite RAW not having an answer is because I figure I can find a new use for the spell no matter what answer is used.

For example, NichG's explanation above negates most teleport weirdness but allows you "box up" and carry away usually stationary spells.

And also, from the point of view of an IC philosopher, those kinds of question are very important.
Besides, I'm not defeatist about this. If there are downsides, then those can be used. ANYTHING can be used, you just need to know and define what those things are.

Which is why leaving them undefined and "whatever the DM says" isn't good enough. I need to know "what the DM will say" in order to use it at all.

Of course, I cannot know for sure what MY DM will say. But I'm fairly sure he hasn't worked this out. So I can point him to this thread and ask him to get ideas for it here. And once my character has experimented on the rules IC, then it's fair game to use.

ffone
2010-12-22, 10:54 PM
Maybe...

when you cast Teleport, the spell computes the average velocity of all the matter near the arrival point ('near' could be 'within a sphere of radius whatever, or with some diminishing 'smoothing function'), possibly tilted towards stuff 'below' the arrival point (if there's gravity, so 'below' is defined). When you arrive, you have this velocity. Thus you'll typically end up moving along with whatever surface you teleport onto; planet, ship, train, etc. (The air rushing above the ship has much less mass than the wooden deck you appear on, and has little effect on the 'average'.)

This obeys conservation of energy by stealing from elsewhere any gained energy, or transferring any lost energy elsewhere.

Teleport making sense is "impossible" in the same way that digital image face recognition is "impossible": you could never fully describe Facebook's face recognition algorithm with a few paragraphs of English, but it's programmable.

JKTrickster
2010-12-22, 10:58 PM
Oh actually TvTropes actually talked about this. It was in their secondary powers entry, and it mentioned this problem.

Wait...here (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers) it is. Just click on "the power covered by this trope" and crtl + find Teleportation. Near the ends it has several lines that basically try to explain how it might be able to work.

mootoall
2010-12-22, 11:04 PM
Keld Denar:
The "it's magic!" solution isn't the one I'm looking for.


But ... it's magic ... Its very existance precludes the hard physics you're using.


Also, in regards to weaponizing teleport, it's already doable. Teleport someone 1,000 feet in the air (1,000 miles up? Into space?). Watch them fall. That's ... pretty weaponizable. Provided, of course, they fail their Will save.

Skjaldbakka
2010-12-22, 11:07 PM
When you teleport, you visualize yourself in the location, this is part of why there is a chance of failure with your basic teleport spell. So you appear base on your mental image of the area, including orientation, relative velocity, etc.

Frame of reference for other spells is more significant. We shredded a moving ship with a blade barrier once, for example.

Bayar
2010-12-23, 05:29 AM
^NichG: o.O That... that's a good explanation. The nearest big thing one. As well as the other suggestion of "the biggest thing that you are inside the double radius of".

Of course, it does allow you build a big box to "carry" stationary spells around. Just as long as that qualifies as a "big thing".

Defining a "big thing" is easier than defining a location. Some arbitrary cutoff can be used, or something to do with size, mass and speed.


Gamergirl and Codizor:
I'm asking these question despite RAW not having an answer is because I figure I can find a new use for the spell no matter what answer is used.

For example, NichG's explanation above negates most teleport weirdness but allows you "box up" and carry away usually stationary spells.

And also, from the point of view of an IC philosopher, those kinds of question are very important.
Besides, I'm not defeatist about this. If there are downsides, then those can be used. ANYTHING can be used, you just need to know and define what those things are.

Which is why leaving them undefined and "whatever the DM says" isn't good enough. I need to know "what the DM will say" in order to use it at all.

Of course, I cannot know for sure what MY DM will say. But I'm fairly sure he hasn't worked this out. So I can point him to this thread and ask him to get ideas for it here. And once my character has experimented on the rules IC, then it's fair game to use.

I do believe you would need an OOC Psion or mindreader to acomplish this endeavour. Since the mind of a DM (or any human) for that matter is a complicated one.

If I was your DM, I would probably say that teleport wouldn't allow you to teleport yourself or any other being on top of a moving arrow. Or just tell you that a Truly immovable Rod (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Immovable_rod) intercepted you while you were abusing teleport and killed you.



Also, bringing real life physics into a D&D discussion is self-defeating since D&D does not work that way. In D&D commoners get killed by cats. In D&D you can avoid getting hit by a fireball while not moving out of it's blast radius sinply because you succeded your reflex save (and ignoring the fact that the fireball was centered at you). In D&D there is magic that does not work in real life (you know, like creating fireballs out of bat guano and gibberish words or conjuring food and water or creating walls of iron 5 sqare feet per level out of a small sheet of iron and gold dust or summoning extraplanar creatures or whatever else).

jseah
2010-12-23, 06:04 AM
But ... it's magic ... Its very existance precludes the hard physics you're using.
Bayar as well.

I keep seeing this. Is it so hard to imagine that magic has rules as well? At most, rules that the DM can come up with.
If your DM can keep OOC stuff OOC (ie. the fact that you just asked about how teleport would work in one weird case), then one would expect the world to make logical sense and internal rules to apply universally.
A character can very feasibly experiment to find out these rules. I could come up with an experimental plan that a wizard could pull off in three days that would highlight a good approximation of any individual explanation scheme suggested here. It's basic definitions, not quantum mechanics.

Sure, they're not the same kind of rules as we have in real life. But I'm not applying real life rules here... I asked about the definition of a location to match speeds for teleport. In RL, there's no such thing as a "location".

zzzz... Sorry, just a bit miffed at so many people saying the same thing. Can't a player have a good sitdown and puzzle out something in a game?

Also, Bayar, I don't need a mindreader. I just need the DM to tell me what he will say. That's simple enough to arrange I think.

Jan Mattys
2010-12-23, 06:25 AM
Seriously, it's magic. It works because it automatically adjusts itself to all the necessary failsafe procedures it needs to, to ensure your safety and the desided effect.

If you really feel like being picky, then I should point out that teleport wouldn't work because instantaneously occupying the same space as a few millions molecules of oxygen and nitrogen is likely to kill you or at least really mess you up.

Seriously, it's magic. The very definition of magic is that it violates the laws of physics, and in particular d&d spells break the conservation of mass-energy, the conservation of momentum and the first and second law of Thermodynamics on a regular basis.

Trying to explain magic with physics is more than futile. It's missing the point of it.

BrainFreeze
2010-12-23, 06:26 AM
If one of my players really wanted to delve into the meta-physics of teleport I would end up just having him and any of the targets affected by a destruction(per orb of annihilation) effect upon the casting of the spell causing them to all die since the spell can only effect willing targets.

After dying the "magic" of the spell reconstructs them and all equipment they had at the target site.

I realize that if they actually find out what is happening it will open the door to the players using Wish or Miracle to create copies of themselves from their previously deceased selves.

jseah
2010-12-23, 06:38 AM
Trying to explain magic with physics is more than futile. It's missing the point of it.
Please, it's not physics! It's definitions!
You can't even begin to properly use something until you define what it does. In this case, defining what teleport does, and what the edge cases are, can be very very useful.

Unless you're saying we can't even be logical about it.

olentu
2010-12-23, 06:57 AM
Please, it's not physics! It's definitions!
You can't even begin to properly use something until you define what it does. In this case, defining what teleport does, and what the edge cases are, can be very very useful.

Unless you're saying we can't even be logical about it.

So yeah just what is the actual question here. It seems that you are not asking for what he DM ruling on how the spell works is. Are you asking for a fluff explanation of how teleport could work given a particular way of working.

MickJay
2010-12-23, 07:14 AM
I'd visualize it thus: the spell catches whomever is being teleported in a bubble, and instantly moves it to a semi-demiplane (which exists only for that instant, and disappears immediately afterwards; real duration - nil); it then determines the exact location to which the person is being moved, by finding - within the range of the spell - the points of reference that the caster was thinking of when casting the spell. Meanwhile, the bubble created by the spell made the target inert, with the point of reference being the centre of the mass of the given plane. After the destination is found, the spell proceeds to adjust the target's velocity to match the velocity of the location to which it's being teleported (relative, again, to the centre of the mass of the given plane). The target arrives at its destination; from its perspective, he/she/it never physically moved, and had no time to notice any of the stages of the process.

Foryn Gilnith
2010-12-23, 08:21 AM
Can't a player have a good sitdown and puzzle out something in a game?

Puzzle it out in a game, with people whom you know and can trade ideas with quickly in real-time, instead of doing this on the internet where there's no hope of a consensus and any consensus reached would be absolutely useless outside of the thread (i.e. useless for all games).

mootoall
2010-12-23, 08:25 AM
Bayar as well.

I keep seeing this. Is it so hard to imagine that magic has rules as well? At most, rules that the DM can come up with.
If your DM can keep OOC stuff OOC (ie. the fact that you just asked about how teleport would work in one weird case), then one would expect the world to make logical sense and internal rules to apply universally.
A character can very feasibly experiment to find out these rules. I could come up with an experimental plan that a wizard could pull off in three days that would highlight a good approximation of any individual explanation scheme suggested here. It's basic definitions, not quantum mechanics.

Sure, they're not the same kind of rules as we have in real life. But I'm not applying real life rules here... I asked about the definition of a location to match speeds for teleport. In RL, there's no such thing as a "location".

zzzz... Sorry, just a bit miffed at so many people saying the same thing. Can't a player have a good sitdown and puzzle out something in a game?

Also, Bayar, I don't need a mindreader. I just need the DM to tell me what he will say. That's simple enough to arrange I think.

No, no, it's maaaaaaaaaagic. It breaks its own rules all the time. That's why wizards always seem to study it and still no one understands why it works. I mean, you could go with the "magic is self correcting and the nature of the spell adjusts itself to these conditions," but what's the point?

And no, you can't be logical about it. I repeat. Magic. Precludes common sense. Kinda the whole point of it ...

Psyx
2010-12-23, 09:00 AM
The "it's magic!" solution isn't the one I'm looking for.


Maybe high fantasy is not for you, then. You need to simply suspend your disbelief.
I encounter the same issue with super hero games, which is why I simply don't play them.

If you start trying to justify teleport with physics, you then have to do it with all the other spells. And... what happens to the air where you teleport to? Is it displaced? Instantaneously? What about the air where you leave? Is there a momentary vacuum? How about the fact that teleport is FTL and thus snaps the laws of Casualty over it's knee. Technically the spell is allowing time travel. At which point, you need to walk away... because you've just throw a large proportion of physics and scientific method out of the window, and destroyed the very 'rules' that you are trying to force magic to fit into.


Is it so hard to imagine that magic has rules as well?

Sure: Magical ones that lay outside of the collective sphere of knowledge. If it wasn't magic, it would be explainable. That's kinda the definition isn't it?

Jan Mattys
2010-12-23, 09:22 AM
Also: ignoring those who are born with magic in their blood, it takes literally years to the most intelligent people ever (Int being the key stat for wizards) to even have the slightest grasp about how it works.

If it had some kind of logical explanation, it would be much easier.
I suspect Teleport was invented after a few wizards got torn to pieces, got transported to the moon, died horribly or got turned into frogs. After that, someone wrote on a piece of paper: just think of a destination, say the magic words, move your fingers so and so, and relax, and believe with all your inner being that the flow of magic will take care of the rest. If you do so and keep concentration, you will end up being where you want to be.

The way I see it, being a wizard is like playing with tools far beyond your comprehension. That's the reason why there's only so many spells in "canon", among the literal millions you could possibly conceive with your imagination.

You learn the how-tos, but not the whys. And even understanding the how-tos is a challenge to the greatest intellects.

Skjaldbakka
2010-12-23, 10:30 AM
Magic can have rules, that really isn't an issue. The problem is that outside of game mechanics (actually, including those too), the rules for magic (fluff and crunch-wise) change from campaign to campaign.

Heck, deciding how magic works and what spells are allowed in the campaign is a big step for me in building the setting, along with the questions 'how common are spellcasters? What about high level spellcasters?"

Thespianus
2010-12-23, 02:15 PM
If you start trying to justify teleport with physics, you then have to do it with all the other spells.
Yeah, and don't get me started on how you'd explain mind altering spells with physics. Even a Level 1 spell like Charm Person would require some impressive manipulation of the neural pathways and neural signals of the target. You *really* don't want to try to explain that with physics. :)

NichG
2010-12-23, 03:49 PM
Its futile to try to come up with explanations for magical effects within the system of our physics, otherwise one could just go and build a machine that does it, etc.

On the other hand, it is not futile to try to come up with a system of physics for magic.

When you determine the physics you can make something different but self-consistent, that allows magic to be explained within its rules in such a way that weird cases can be resolved. Furthermore, if you're playing with very clever players, its a boon to be able to think that way as a DM, so that anything the players try do has a self-consistent result, no matter how outlandish the action might be.

The system of physics need not actually be anything like our physics. It could literally be something like 'story logic works' or that there are spirits responsible for gravity, light, everything, and that they can be persuaded to do things. I've run a game where the entire world was the dream of an external entity, so if you could influence the dreamer, you could get magical effects - the physics was the dreamer's psychology, and was a different sort of self-consistent system.

There are however certain things which will never work in any system of physics that isn't intentionally surreal or Far Realmsy (e.g. A and not A must simultaneously be true). Two colliding walls of force create a fundamental logical inconsistency if ruled by the book. So that tells you where you have to treat magic-by-the-book as a first approximation to something deeper. Thats where you put hidden things for clever wizards to find (and potentially create cataclysms with). When you slam two walls of force together, magic itself breaks, creating a dead magic zone; or you get reference frame shenanigans; or a plane of disintegration energy is launched out from the contact, as that is the only thing that can dissolve the walls and the walls must dissolve; or ...

I've played in a number of campaigns where you could actually figure stuff out by paying attention and poking the universe in the right way, and its very satisfying when you can put together a bunch of subtle clues and actually figure out what's going on (if the DM didn't have an internal model of how things worked, you'd just arrive at nonsensical conclusions).

Kuma Kode
2010-12-23, 04:10 PM
Yeah, and don't get me started on how you'd explain mind altering spells with physics. Even a Level 1 spell like Charm Person would require some impressive manipulation of the neural pathways and neural signals of the target. You *really* don't want to try to explain that with physics. :) I don't think the idea of wanting magic to follow a set of rules necessarily requires OUR rules. To us, magic is something tacked on, something separate from normal physical rules, but in a magic setting magic is incorporated into the physical rules. Perhaps magic is made up of subatomic particles like quarks that don't exist in our universe, and the interactions of these is what magic is all about.

After all, it takes very intelligent people years of study to achieve doctorates and beyond in their chosen fields of science, and even then, it's one field. Wizards go for a doctorate in every field of magic.

For instance, in my d20 Future campaign, psychic powers are controlled by psions, quark-like particles responsible for consciousness. All conscious creatures produce them in some way, shape, or form, whether or not they can control them, which provides a nice fluff reason for why mind-affecting attacks only work on creatures who have a consciousness (creatures with an intelligence score). Like light, these psions react differently with the world around them depending on their frequency, and a psychic character learns to manipulate and create psions of different frequencies to get them to interact with matter in certain, desirable ways.

Magic in my games similarly work that way. From there, you can build an entire physics of magic if you have a baseline for how it works, which can also open up new ideas for spells, items, or classes that wouldn't be possible or nearly as interesting with an "IT'S MAGIC!!!!1" campaign.

EDIT: Somewhat swordsaged/ninjaed/batman wizarded


I've played in a number of campaigns where you could actually figure stuff out by paying attention and poking the universe in the right way, and its very satisfying when you can put together a bunch of subtle clues and actually figure out what's going on (if the DM didn't have an internal model of how things worked, you'd just arrive at nonsensical conclusions). Likewise, being able to apply logic to a dungeon is also satisfying, while many stereotypical D&D dungeons, if analyzed in any rational way, becomes nonsensical. Why is that huge monster in here when all the doors are gnome-sized?

jseah
2010-12-23, 08:58 PM
Once again, sorry about that.
I sense some kind of... difference in meaning? Perhaps "magic" means different things to us.

Oulentu:
I am looking for many different logical explanations for teleport. One is good, many is better; alternatives present different ways to work the magic.
And presenting my DM with many different examples might give him ideas for his own. Me as well, since I'm writing a magic system and might DM some day.


Mootoall, Skjaldbakka, Jan Mattys:
Besides, there IS no such thing as "can't be logical" about it. At the very most, you just have to try gaming your DM's responses. I don't want to have to do that, so I'd rather come up with some alternatives that DMs can agree on.

Yes, building a system of magic is something usually done before setting creation. It can also be retconned in afterwards as well.

Jan Mattys, about playing with tools beyond comprehension.
Those are fundamentally beyond what is possible in a game. Namely because the DM is only human. Just need to think harder than he did.
Other than that, I'm sure you'd be surprised at how arbitrary and complicated something has to be before people can't do much about it. A few simple experiments on something that responds and has variables you can change will already tell you many many things about it.
If teleport only worked from exactly one location to another location, for only an exact weight and only worked the one time, then yes, you can't examine that. It's also not very useful.


Pysx:
The questions about air displacement and so on are a different question I could ask about teleport. I COULD ask it, but one at a time?
There also many answers, but it depends on the mechanics of teleport. Much like this question.

And besides, in a game, the various questions I raised about teleport could be tested. The various different explanations suggested so far could be differentiated by a few tests each. It is not farfetched to assume that some wizard spent the last year testing and detailing little bits of magic spells that intrigued him.
They've got do something while sitting in those towers of theirs no? Either your character goes and finds him to ask or you do it yourself.

Ormur
2010-12-23, 09:10 PM
Psycho, Saph & Shade:
Can weaponize teleport that way? I could quite easily pick something going very very fast as the frame of reference.

An example would be the teleporting of an enemy to a flying arrow for lots of "effective" falling damage by the enemy suddenly flying into a wall very very fast.

Conceptually it seems weird and I'm sure my GM would hit me over the head with his PHB if I tried to pull that.
It's just that there's no solid definition of teleport that doesn't have SOME level of weirdness if I look at it sideways.

Then again, given that it's happened for lots of other bits of D&D magic, I suppose this is just a futile quest. Never mind then, perhaps I'll let my GM have his headache.

I don't think we have to worry about planets and outer space since you can't teleport into thin air (or vacuum) and on the scale of celestial bodies we can be pretty sure that you'll arrive stationary relative to them.

Teleport specifies a location but you're not satisfied that a location is precise enough to be usable. Personally I'd simply rule it as something large enough to stand on. As to what's large enough to stand on I think that would have to be relative to the space occupied by the creature being teleported, in D&D you could use the already extant value for the space a creature takes, it has the advantage of being pretty generous. So you couldn't teleport a medium or small sized creature to anything smaller than a surface measuring 25 square feet. It would allow you to teleport onto a ship or a small moving platform with ease, but I can't see how that could be weaponized beyond the reasonable. Teleporting others is a pretty high level feat and sending someone to a hostile environment seems par for the course.

olentu
2010-12-23, 09:12 PM
Oh a fluff description. Well that seems plain enough. I suppose the advanced computing and subconscious visualization has been covered.

So I suppose one could take the mechanics as the physics. Then movement does not really happen in the way it does in real life. Rather stuff just pops around when "moving" and does not when they are not.

Eh there are other possibilities but that is the first that came to mind.

Dr Strangelove
2010-12-23, 10:50 PM
You said you were looking for multiple different explanations. Here is one.

"Teleportation is the most intuitively straightforward and the most intellectually nonsensical of the greater magics. What follows is an explanation that will satisfy any curious non-arcanists you may encounter; as such it is almost totally wrong.

A teleportation effect (ranging from dimension door to greater teleport) creates a controlled rift to the Astral Plane, which is not contiguous with the Material Plane. Once in the Astral Plane, a second rift is created back to the Material Plane at the desired destination. Fluctuations in the fabric of the Astral Plane may cause imprecision in the creation of the second rift, causing what is incorrectly termed 'teleportation error'. During the infinestimal period spent on the Astral Plane, the teleportee(s) are floating, and therefore arrive back on the Material Plane having lost all momentum; the fraction of a second spent on the Astral, and the accompanying weightlessness, are responsible for the nausea that some experience while teleporting.

Effects such as dimensional lock can therefore be ascribed to interference with the connection between the planes, preventing the creation of the second rift and therefore causing the effect to collapse upon its attempted inception (in accordance with Jovol's Primeval Self-Preservation principle)."

Orolde's Ninth Metaphysical Treatise

Thespianus
2010-12-24, 05:06 PM
I don't think the idea of wanting magic to follow a set of rules necessarily requires OUR rules. To us, magic is something tacked on, something separate from normal physical rules, but in a magic setting magic is incorporated into the physical rules.

Sure, I can totally agree on that. What I meant with "describing magic with physics" was "our physics". Naturally, it will become simpler to use setting-specific physics (Like Pratchett does in the Discworld) to incorporate magic into the world.

However, sooner or later, it *will* come down to "It's magic". ;) If the players start to poke and prod at the universe, the interactions between the "Magicions" and the electrons of the universe will be investigated, and it will end in "But, it's *magic*". I've played in these kind of campains and at some point this phrase will be uttered. ;)

Kuma Kode
2010-12-24, 07:41 PM
Sure, I can totally agree on that. What I meant with "describing magic with physics" was "our physics". Naturally, it will become simpler to use setting-specific physics (Like Pratchett does in the Discworld) to incorporate magic into the world.

However, sooner or later, it *will* come down to "It's magic". ;) If the players start to poke and prod at the universe, the interactions between the "Magicions" and the electrons of the universe will be investigated, and it will end in "But, it's *magic*". I've played in these kind of campains and at some point this phrase will be uttered. ;)

I've never had that happen. I agree, however, that eventually you will run into a certain amount of required suspension of disbelief, especially if you hit a purely academic and highly technical aspect of the physics that the setting maker simply doesn't have the expertise or the need to flesh out. "Unknown" is an acceptable answer, however. Just because something exists and its usage is well known does not mean everything is known about it. We use electricity all the time in our daily lives but there's quite a few WTF moments scientists have when you actually study the quantum nature of them.

Though I did have enchanted items have the pisons or magicons swapped for electrons in some of the atoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom), making the magic or psychic energy an integral part of the object.

I'm also the one in my group whose iconic line is, "This is real psuedoscience!"

Skjaldbakka
2010-12-25, 12:47 AM
I don't want to have to do that, so I'd rather come up with some alternatives that DMs can agree on.


Alternatives that DMs can agree on? Universally? When we are talking about flavor text? And this discussion is on a gaming forum? We can't agree on game mechanics, what makes you think we can agree on flavor text as a community of DMs?

Especially since flavor text can change from one campaign setting to another, even with the same DM?

jseah
2010-12-25, 01:29 AM
Skjaldbakka:
Nah, I'm not suicidal. =P

I'm not looking for a universal answer. Just many possible answers. You know, I have one almost-too-detailed answer (and only applicable to my magic system, which doesn't rely on defining objects and places). Just figured that more would be better?

There was one about "a supporting surface of a size defined by the thing teleporting" and the one about defining a "big object" and it's control field.
Good ideas I would never have thought of.

Thespianus & Kuma:
So far, I'm trying to avoid "it's magic" in the magic system I'm building by making a physics system and making it a simple physics system. There are still gaps, but they're incredibly tiny and I can fill them in easily if players look at it.

Of course, unknown in the setting is all right. Unknown when the players do something weird with the spell and you need to work out what it does is not so all right. About time to retcon in an explanation?

After all, the DM can change things about the world on the fly. Rewrite the rules of reality if you will. XD

Bayar
2010-12-25, 05:18 AM
Whenever someone casts a teleport spell, a magical gnome with a cardboard sign that has the word "Bamf" appears for a split second in the location of the caster, goes, BAMF ! and the whole party appears at their destination in a cloud of smoke that goes BAMF ! when they apear. That is my teleport fluff. Perfectly within the laws of physics as portraied in-game.

Flarp
2010-12-25, 10:21 AM
Teleporting to any object while maintaining relativity requires an arbitrary threshold of gravitational pull. Thus, you can teleport with relative motion to a planet, or even a satellite, but nothing much smaller than that.

Thespianus
2010-12-25, 10:24 AM
I've never had that happen.
Good for you, then. :)


I'm also the one in my group whose iconic line is, "This is real psuedoscience!"
Real pseudoscience is the only way to fly. :)