A question on telepathy

[King Atticus]

I've got a quick question on the telepathy supernatural ability, does it only work within the confines of the plane you are currently on? I have telepathy and a party-mate of mine has the ability to hop back and forth between the material and ethereal planes do I have the ability to talk with him when he's ethereal? I've looked up the telepathy definition and the (su) description and have been unable to pin anything down.

I kind of lean towards it having planar limits but I'm looking for a citation of RAW that I've been unable to find so far. Any and all help is appreciated

[Curmudgeon]

Telepathy works for the range specified. It will only cross planar boundaries if you can get a specific distance measurement across planes. I don't know of any such measurement.

[Vorr]

It should be simple enough...telepathy works at the set range. And even 'close' planes are far, far away from each other.

So unless there is a portal to the plane nearby, telepathy can't reach a person on another plane, the same way any spell effect could not reach them.

[Khedrac]

As a good comparison the spell Telepathic Bond gives telepathy anywhere on the same plane (it's close range for casting but thereafter...).

So the general case will be "no".

[Keld Denar]

Telepathy works for the range specified. It will only cross planar boundaries if you can get a specific distance measurement across planes. I don't know of any such measurement.

Some planes are co-planar. The Ethereal, for example, is co-planar with the Prime. For every location on the Prime, there is an equal location on the Ethereal. There is no distance between the two, they are, for all intents and purposes, in the same place at the same time, just out of phase with one another. It would be similar to if you drew two figures on two sheets of paper and placed the pieces of paper over one another so that the figures overlapped. They aren't both in the same place because they are on separate pieces of paper, but they are both in the same place. Planes are a bit more complicated than that, and dealing with more than 3 (or 4) dimensions is hard on the brain.

I actually agree that it wouldn't work, though, but under different terms. Magic only extends into the ethereal plane in the case of [Force] effects, abjurations, and a few other explicitly indicated instances (some gaze attacks, magic weapons half of the time, etc). SUs are magical, and do not bear any sort of exception.

It does sound like your friend is Blinking (per the spell). Blinking depends on flickering back and forth between the Ethereal and the Prime, much like a strobe light. Any speech conveyed via telepathy would be broken and choppy. Like a strobe light, however, how easy it is to interpret depends entirely on the frequency of the blinking. A strobe light at 1 Hz is noticeable and disorienting to the human eye. A computer screen at 60-120 Hz is not. An effect occurring at 1000 Hz would be indistinguishable as an otherwise solid object. Unfortunately, Blinking doesn't give a frequency, or anything to even gauge the frequency by other than you can sometimes walk through solid objects, but you don't naturally fall through floors. For simplicity, I think it would be just easiest to say that a person who is Blinking can convey messages without any noticeable impact, but a person who is fully ethereal (due to Ethereal Jaunt or Plane Shift) can not.

[King Atticus]

As a good comparison the spell Telepathic Bond gives telepathy anywhere on the same plane (it's close range for casting but thereafter...).

This makes perfect sense and is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, it never occurred to me to check spell equivalents.


Thanks for the help everybody.

[Yora]

I have to agree with the others that in this case the answer is "almost certainly no".
However as a DM, I think I would make an exception for the material and ethereal plane since they are exactly matching and the extremely closeness of these two is a major feature unique to them. If it makes the game more exciting and fascinating, I would make a special addition to the rules for telepathy that they work across the border of these two specific planes.

[King Atticus]

It does sound like your friend is Blinking (per the spell). Blinking depends on flickering back and forth between the Ethereal and the Prime, much like a strobe light. Any speech conveyed via telepathy would be broken and choppy. Like a strobe light, however, how easy it is to interpret depends entirely on the frequency of the blinking. A strobe light at 1 Hz is noticeable and disorienting to the human eye. A computer screen at 60-120 Hz is not. An effect occurring at 1000 Hz would be indistinguishable as an otherwise solid object. Unfortunately, Blinking doesn't give a frequency, or anything to even gauge the frequency by other than you can sometimes walk through solid objects, but you don't naturally fall through floors. For simplicity, I think it would be just easiest to say that a person who is Blinking can convey messages without any noticeable impact, but a person who is fully ethereal (due to Ethereal Jaunt or Plane Shift) can not.

He has what is basically an "at will" etherealness (as the spell) ability that he got from the Fiend of Possession PrC (with DM loosened prerecs) at this point about all he can do is go ethereal...and he does it a lot :smallbiggrin: