Creating a Scroll of Town Portal from Diablo

[DrowPiratRobrts]

So if you've played Diablo you know where this is going. What's the approach you would take if you wanted to give your party a scroll of town portal? Have you done this before? If so, how did it go and what did they do to get it? Or is this simple enough that you'd probably just give it to them kind of like you just get it randomly in Diablo?

Something they could use at will to either open a portal to or allow them to teleport to their base of operations, be it a city, hideout, or cave at the bottom of the ocean and then come back to where they cast it. This would be a fixed location though. I'm wanting it to take time, maybe 10 minutes or even an hour, so they can't use it in combat. I also don't want it to take up their spell slots though, so it could be a "once-day" thing.

[Willie the Duck]

D&D has had this for decades. It is the spell Word of Recall. I'm AFB right now, so I don't know if the current spell specifics match what you are looking for, but conceptually, it's spot on. If you want it to be a 10 min. casting time, and not use a slot, just make it a ritual spell. As a magic item, just make it a magic scroll that 1/day allows anyone (not requiring specific spellcasting class or level) to ritual cast WoR.

[DMThac0]

There are a lot of ways you can do this, either with game tools like teleportation circles, or via homebrew, like a town portal scroll.

The approach is purely on your discretion, I like the idea of having an item tied to it's use. A rune stone that is tied to a teleportation circle. The Stone can be attuned to other portals working like a key. If the players lose it, that sucks, and opens up the possibility of nefarious deeds. As it's an item, you can give it charges and a casting time.

[nickl_2000]

Why not make it a paired set of magical items.

Crossing Stones
When placed together theses stone join together to create a single arcane sigal that resembles a teleportation circle. When the stones are separated, you are able to invoke a ritual once a day that will allow you, every living being you are touching, and all their objects to be teleported to the location of the other piece of the stone. You can invoke this ritual for variable times, but how long you spend depends on the result of the teleportation. If you spend 10 minutes focusing on the other stone, it will flawlessly teleport you. 1 minute gives you a 90% change of being success. 1 Round gives you a 15% chance of success.

On failure, you are teleported to a different location from the original stone of the DMs choice. You are placed on the ground and land prone.

[kaoskonfety]

General Cautions on this:

The Town Portal in Diablo exists as a simple convinince, to allow the player to not have to walk back and keep the action going. In D&D this is just as easily achieved with "you return to town", so unless there is clear and present time pressure this doesn't *do* anything.

If you are set on making "go home and back down later" the spell/item/whatever the D2 and D3 wayshrine mechanic and teleportation circles fit the bill with no kit bashing. Teleport circles are around in the dark and lucrative bits of the world and many cities because *REASONS* - pick your reasons with some care, but that shouldn't matter *TOO* much. Once you've found it you can go back at whatever number of times per day you feel is needed on the thing that we are activating them with (or make them expendables but common-ish magic items, or, or, or)

Alternativly I like the paired items idea: leave one in town, take one with you - like teleportation circle but 2 wonderous items - again, x uses per day and such. With this I would strongly suggest a range of "fairly local" and some use restrictions - something like the "town" end is on a wagon as its large, very heavy and unweildly and you *have to* use the dungeon end before you can use the town end. Apply some thought to how this is about to be abused by whatever PC's you are going to hand it to, or come to a truce with the players in advance "This is for town portal like in Diablo, don't get cute with using it, or I'll get cute with using it against you"

[hymer]

In my most recent campaign, the players had access to a Rune of Teleportation. We played a sandbox with shifting constellations of PCs each session, so it was very useful to be able to get the party back to their base of operations at the end of each session.
The PCs helped research and develop the rune early in the campaign, by helping the local wizard. She made the runes and sold each rune for 100gp, and it took ten minutes to activate a rune, consuming the rune. The PCs did not understand the rune's functions and capabilities fully, but were aware that the wizard screened incoming people, since the return spot was her personal teleportation circle.
One tripping point was when they had taken about a dozen mixed goblinoids prisoner, and they had to decide between going back the long way with them, or letting them go and activating a rune.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I gave a mid-level party of mine an item that could be used to cast teleport circle 1x/day as a ritual (10 min cast time). This setting had a bunch of fixed portals (stargate style)--these were the only destinations for the item. They found it on the corpse of a lieutenant to the arc-BBEG about 2/3 of the way through that arc. Since you couldn't easily come back to where you were when you used it, it was for getting home quickly between adventures.

I didn't see a problem with it.

[Vogie]

You could do this with a not-quite-homebrew less-powerful version of Rod of Security. Lets call it the Rod of Convenience.

Instead of transporting all touching it to an idyllic demiplane where you magically heal while eating a buffet for up to hundreds of days, it takes you back to a specific location, that is real, on the same plane, and only for a brief period of time.

You could even make it so the Rod of Convenience just kind of hangs around at the location you used it from, allowing it to occasionally be stolen while the party is back selling things, thus they'll appear inside an encounter as soon as they BAMF back over.

[DrowPiratRobrts]

You could even make it so the Rod of Convenience just kind of hangs around at the location you used it from, allowing it to occasionally be stolen while the party is back selling things, thus they'll appear inside an encounter as soon as they BAMF back over.

Thanks for all the ideas and advice so far everyone. This idea is particularly appealing to me. Because whether it's this Rod of Convenience or the stones above or whatever, I like the idea that they should probably hide it if they're going to take a while back at the home front. Otherwise, who knows what they'll stumble into... ;)

[KorvinStarmast]

Instead of transporting all touching it to an idyllic demiplane where you magically heal while eating a buffet for up to hundreds of days, it takes you back to a specific location, that is real, on the same plane, and only for a brief period of time. If you add in a brunch (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0981.html), it's perfect. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin: