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Grug
2007-10-12, 08:33 PM
I was reading the PHB when I noticed something interesting about greater teleport. It says that it's like regular teleport in every way, except lower mishap chance and infinite range. Any ideas on the possibilities this could have?

1. Point and click navigation. Pick a random spot in the sky and go there instantly. If you have a bottle of air and some kind of force shield, you can keep going until you find a planet with resources or natives to exploit. Planetary base of operations.

2. Kamikaze. same thing except take enemy with you, then leave him behind in the void. Let's see a troll regenerate when he explodes and his pieces fly out ina thousand directions. (Any unprotected person in space will either explode due to the much, much, much, much lower pressure or be sucked out through a breach in whatever protective device they use, and then possibly explode).

3. Orbital cannon. Teleport to the upper atmosphere and drop... whatever! Anything that can survive the turbulence is good. Real life militaries have experimented with I beams that shatter due to the high heat on reentry. also useful for finding new landmasses.

4. Screw this. Don't like the campaign? Greater teleport somewhere else. It's an infinite universe. The material plane should be able to give you anything you want.

UglyPanda
2007-10-12, 08:41 PM
you need not have seen the destination, but in that case you must have at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting.
This means you can't travel intergalactic distances.


Target: You and touched objects or other touched willing creatures
This shoots down your kamikaze idea, unless you've made your enemy pliable somehow, but those spells are save-or-die already.

goat
2007-10-12, 08:43 PM
Any unprotected person in space will either explode due to the much, much, much, much lower pressure or be sucked out through a breach in whatever protective device they use, and then possibly explode

Nah, you just swell a bit, capillaries in your skin burst so you bruise a bit, and the moisture in your eyes and mucus membranes flash-boils. The tension in your skin is more than enough to keep you together.

If you're trying to hold your breath it might be enough to rupture bits of your respiratory system, but you won't explode. Unless you're some sort of deep-sea fish-thing used to living at a few hundred atmospheres. I suppose you might then.

Dubie
2007-10-12, 08:49 PM
I don't think it can work quite that way. You must have at least a reliable description of where you want to go (Like a map). Range may be unlimited, but I'd still confine it to the world your on, as your not very likely to have a star chart outlining a reliable map of different inhabitable planets, and its not able to cross dimensions. However, the moon might be viable....

Dropping things from the upper atmosphere still capps the max damage in D&D, so its kind of pointless.

And no, a bottle of air will not allow you to survive in space. All the air in your lungs will be sucked out through your nose, and probably a good portion of your nice soft and squishey lungs....

Jack Mann
2007-10-12, 08:49 PM
You can actually survive a short time in vacuum. It's hardly the instant death depicted in Hollywood. Perhaps the most realistic movie in this regard is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Dubie
2007-10-12, 08:52 PM
I propose we petition NASA to send Munchkins and rule lawyers into outer space without any protective gear to test this theroy...As an added bonus, it'll keep them out of my games :smallbiggrin: ;p

Raolin_Fenix
2007-10-12, 08:53 PM
1. Point and click navigation. Pick a random spot in the sky and go there instantly. If you have a bottle of air and some kind of force shield, you can keep going until you find a planet with resources or natives to exploit. Planetary base of operations.

So what's protecting you from the horrors of space? That bottle of air lets you breathe in the vacuum. It doesn't prevent you from exploding, as you described so well. I mean, Otiluke's Telekinetic Sphere might work, and so would Rope Trick, but you gotta specify these things. Besides, I think a Bottle of Air constitutes an extradimensional space (link to the Plane of Air), and therefore does bad things to Rope Trick.

Dode
2007-10-12, 08:56 PM
This means you can't travel intergalactic distances. Well, unless you find a grimoire or scripture that describes something of intergalactic distance.
Which may be likelier then you think if there's Lords of Madness Lovecraftian-horror in the game.

Grug
2007-10-12, 09:03 PM
Of course, It does say you can use sight to go there. You can see the sky, and therefore out until you heat the universal wall.

Errata
2007-10-12, 09:07 PM
I don't think it can work quite that way. You must have at least a reliable description of where you want to go (Like a map). Range may be unlimited, but I'd still confine it to the world your on, as your not very likely to have a star chart outlining a reliable map of different inhabitable planets, and its not able to cross dimensions. However, the moon might be viable....

The point is that you don't get to your destination with a single cast. This technique requires multiple versions of the spell readied. No star charts required. First you teleport to a big empty space far above the planet. You don't need a description, because its visible to you. Then you pick an interesting looking star, and teleport to a big empty space near the star, which again, is visible. Get closer to the star until you can make out planets. Pick a promising looking planet and get in its orbit. Scope out the terrain yourself to get a reliable description of it, and move in. A primitive telescope will help you see better and require fewer jumps, but its not essential. When you start running low on teleports, you can immediately jump back to your well understood home planet, rest, and explore a new star the next day. In a sparsely populated galaxy, you could spend a lifetime doing this and never find anything interesting. But its a viable use of the spell. And who knows, a fantasy galaxy may not be so big and empty as our own.


And no, a bottle of air will not allow you to survive in space. All the air in your lungs will be sucked out through your nose, and probably a good portion of your nice soft and squishey lungs....

He didn't say just a bottle of air, he said a bottle of air and some sort of force shield. With all the magic available there are various ways to create a secure little bubble of air to withstand vacuum for a while. At very least some simple protective shell could be cobbled together with crafting and magic to fuse the gaps. Space vessels are a lot simpler if they don't need any form of propulsion and you have magic to help make them.

NecroRebel
2007-10-12, 09:11 PM
Arguably, the "Greater Teleport to a distant star" idea works. After all, you can see the first star on the right, so you get to be in the "Very Familiar" category of familiarity (for seeing it right now, even if that image is still coming from 10,000 years ago).

Add a Necklace of Adaption to your arsenal, and vacuum and exposure are no problem. IIRC, since the Necklace gives you a bubble of air you can even cast spells without Silencing them first.

I seem to remember Emperor Tippy suggesting Greater Teleport as one step in creating a truly unkillable Wizard Lich. He (or someone else, I forget quite who) suggested Greater Teleporting to a random star in the night sky, Greater Teleporting from there to somewhere above your galactic disk, Greater Teleporting from there to a random galaxy, Greater Teleporting around until you find a planet near a star, ideally a tectonically dead world under a red supergiant, then Shapeshifting into an Earth Elemental, Earth Gliding somewhere deep underground, using a Stilled Silent Disintegrate to open a small hole, creating a Prismatic Sphere in the hole (permanencied, of course), creating a Forcecage inside the Sphere (also permanencied), putting a solid lead box inside the Forcecage, scribing the interior of the box with dozens or hundreds of assorted permanencied Symbols set to trigger constantly, creating a permanent Mage's Sanctum around the Sphere (or ideally the whole star system), then making a pocket dimension which is only accessible through a doorframe inside the lead box inside the Forcecage inside the Prismatic Sphere inside the Mage's Sanctum inside a dead planet around a random star in a random galaxy far, far away, and finally making your phylactery and putting it inside the pocket dimension.

Bonus points if you're epic-level and can collapse the star into a black hole, so your phylactery is inside a pocket dimension inside a lead box inside a Forcecage inside a Prismatic Sphere inside a Mage's Sanctum inside a dead planet inside the event horizon of a black hole in a random galaxy far far away.

Koschei, eat your heart out.

NullAshton
2007-10-12, 09:32 PM
There have been reported incidents of people surviving up to 30 seconds in a vacuum. They don't explode, except maybe if you keep your breath inside.

Also several problems. Depending on the campaign you're in, there might not be any sort of space. Going into the sky, you eventually just smack into a solid surface, or you continue on for an infinite time with air. Alternatively, the DM may rule that other planets count as other planes.

You need not have seen the destination, but you need a reliable description. I doubt 'that start I'm pointing to' is a valid description, since you don't describe it in absolute terms, all stars look pretty much alike in the night sky. You might could get specific astrological coordinates to there and teleport that way, but you'd require a lot of research and possibly scrying attempts to do so...

Teleportation requires willing targets. Thus, you can't use it as a weapon as far as I know...well, except for teleporting people's items away.

Dubie
2007-10-12, 09:46 PM
Arguably, the "Greater Teleport to a distant star" idea works. After all, you can see the first star on the right, so you get to be in the "Very Familiar" category of familiarity (for seeing it right now, even if that image is still coming from 10,000 years ago).

Teleport, Greater
Conjuration (Teleportation)

Level: Sor/Wiz 7, Travel 7
This spell functions like teleport, except that there is no range limit and there is no chance you arrive off target. In addition, you need not have seen the destination, but in that case you must have at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. If you attempt to teleport with insufficient information (or with misleading information), you disappear and simply reappear in your original location. Interplanar travel is not possible.


10,000 year old information, when the star could be moved a few thousand light years since then, would have to cause me to rule this under insufficient or misleading information. End result, you and your little bubble of force will simply disapear and reappear...you would need a current star chart, that has been updated recently and has accurate information of what is where relitve to everything else....

NecroRebel
2007-10-12, 09:57 PM
10,000 year old information, when the star could be moved a few thousand light years since then, would have to cause me to rule this under insufficient or misleading information. End result, you and your little bubble of force will simply disapear and reappear...you would need a current star chart, that has been updated recently and has accurate information of what is where relitve to everything else....

Teleport
Conjuration (Teleportation)
Level: Sor/Wiz 5, Travel 5
Components: V
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal and touch
Target: You and touched objects or other touched willing creatures
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None and Will negates (object)
Spell Resistance: No and Yes (object)

This spell instantly transports you to a designated destination, which may be as distant as 100 miles per caster level. Interplanar travel is not possible. You can bring along objects as long as their weight doesn’t exceed your maximum load. You may also bring one additional willing Medium or smaller creature (carrying gear or objects up to its maximum load) or its equivalent (see below) per three caster levels. A Large creature counts as two Medium creatures, a Huge creature counts as two Large creatures, and so forth. All creatures to be transported must be in contact with one another, and at least one of those creatures must be in contact with you. As with all spells where the range is personal and the target is you, you need not make a saving throw, nor is spell resistance applicable to you. Only objects held or in use (attended) by another person receive saving throws and spell resistance.

You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination. The clearer your mental image, the more likely the teleportation works. Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

To see how well the teleportation works, roll d% and consult the Teleport table. Refer to the following information for definitions of the terms on the table.

Familiarity
“Very familiar” is a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. “Studied carefully” is a place you know well, either because you can currently see it, you’ve been there often, or you have used other means (such as scrying) to study the place for at least one hour. “Seen casually” is a place that you have seen more than once but with which you are not very familiar. “Viewed once” is a place that you have seen once, possibly using magic.


You can currently see it, so it is possible. I was mistaken, though... I missed the second section so I thought it was in the "Very Familiar" part.

Though, granted, your point is very much valid due to the next paragraph in Teleport's description:

“False destination” is a place that does not truly exist or if you are teleporting to an otherwise familiar location that no longer exists as such or has been so completely altered as to no longer be familiar to you. When traveling to a false destination, roll 1d20+80 to obtain results on the table, rather than rolling d%, since there is no real destination for you to hope to arrive at or even be off target from.

Incidentally, even if you treat a star that moved as a "False Destination," you still have a 60% chance of arriving in the nearest "similar location" safely (which, for a star is probably simply another star system within a few dozen light-years of your target, which was chosen at random anyway) and a 40% chance of arriving at the nearest "similar location" while taking some damage.

Further, the "False Destination" thing means that you don't even have to be able to look up. You can just Teleport to "the vicinity of the star commonly known as The Balor's Wingtip," and even if there is no star commonly known as The Balor's Wingtip you still will go to a star. Probably. :smallamused:

MMad
2007-10-12, 11:54 PM
I don't think teleporting to a stay would be kosher - I doubt a character would be able to gauge the distance at all, hence he has no idea where the star actually is. Sure he can see it, but he can't place it.

However, teleporting to the moon should work, I guess. Can't come up with a good argument against it..

deadseashoals
2007-10-13, 02:42 AM
Argh! The catgirls, they're dying!

Morty
2007-10-13, 05:18 AM
Who cares? Greater Teleport is overpowered enough even without devising cheesy ways to use it.

Awetugiw
2007-10-13, 05:43 AM
Further, the "False Destination" thing means that you don't even have to be able to look up. You can just Teleport to "the vicinity of the star commonly known as The Balor's Wingtip," and even if there is no star commonly known as The Balor's Wingtip you still will go to a star. Probably. :smallamused:

The range limit of teleport might be a problem there though. Greater teleport is useful for interplanetary travel because it has no range limit, but it doesn't have the similar target clause either.

Dode
2007-10-13, 05:47 AM
I don't think teleporting to a stay would be kosher - I doubt a character would be able to gauge the distance at all, hence he has no idea where the star actually is. Sure he can see it, but he can't place it.. Greater Teleport doesn't involve knowledge of distance. If John Q Wizardingly tied up, blindfolded and dragged off to who knows where and has no idea where he is, he can still teleport to his lair without problem, even if he doesn't know that it's 145.59241 degrees, 259 miles, 568 feet away from his present location. The only limitation is the character's ability to mentally conjure the image of where he wants to teleport to.

Dode
2007-10-13, 05:55 AM
10,000 year old information, when the star could be moved a few thousand light years since then, would have to cause me to rule this under insufficient or misleading information. End result, you and your little bubble of force will simply disapear and reappear...you would need a current star chart, that has been updated recently and has accurate information of what is where relitve to everything else....
Now this is a silly idea because it doesn't take into account that the planet the PCs are standing on and the sun said planet is orbiting around are hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour themselves. Thus, everyone who ever tried to teleport anywhere would materialize in deep space or simply not teleport at all; because the planet has moved tens of thousands of miles since yesterday and would be also be considered "misleading information".

And it also doesn't take into account that teleport is based on the caster's ability to accurately conceive of the location (as in, a description of what the place looks like), not geometrically computing the location. Based on magic. Not science.

Swooper
2007-10-13, 08:15 AM
Even if this would work (which I would think it doesn't, for reasons stated above)... If I were the DM: "Well, congratulations. You just teleported yourself to the surface of a sun, that is thousands of degrees hot. I suppose it's a pretty epic way to commit suicide... but other than that, it doesn't accomplish much."

Dode
2007-10-13, 08:21 AM
Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's a smart idea in the first place. There are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy, and you have no way of detecting which ones have habitable worlds orbiting them. Assuming you don't zap yourself into the corona of a star of course.

The moon though was a good idea. Just Greater Stone Shape up more affordable, airtight shelter. Toss in a bottle of air, some everburning torches, a throwrug here and there and that's a pretty kickass lair.

Anxe
2007-10-13, 08:32 AM
Greater Teleport isn't very good cheese because all it does is get you somewhere else. This idea of space travel is nice, but it's not super powerful. It just changed the way you are going to play the game. One more thing to add. The Material Plane doesn't have to actually have stars as we think of them in it. They could just be a covering of little dots right over the Earth's atmosphere.

And now I'd like to end this topic with a rousing rendition of NINE CORONAS!

"The girl looks good to me, good to me,
She looked like Pamela Lee
After nine coronas

I began to kiss her,
Undid her zipper,
She looked like Claudia Schiffer
After nine coronas

When I met her at the bar,
Se said she was on Baywatch,
When she got into my car,
She looked a lot like Sasquatch

BOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
Waaaaahhhhh"

daggaz
2007-10-13, 08:41 AM
As a DM, I picked up on the 'whats protecting you from the horrors of space' aspect the most.

Not cold. Not heat. Not vacuum.

Horrors.

You teleport into a big 'seemingly' empty space that is hundreds of lightyears away near a distant yet visible star. Fine. You encounter some horrible space amoeba/cthullu god of silent death/alien facehugger/etc/etc/etc... Roll to survive.

Oh, and while everybody is killing catgirls... The closest star is what, 26 lightyears away or something?` Most of the visible universe is on the order of thousands of lightyears away? That means that when you teleport near to some visible star, you are teleporting to that spot as it was MANY MANY years ago. 26 years ago, the star might have been right there. Who knows, anything could have been there. And if you decide to narrow down the risk factor by making shorter leaps, then you are increasing your travel time exponentially.

mostlyharmful
2007-10-13, 11:03 AM
once you get to casting greater teleport you can easily get hold of a scrying effect and have a look at anything you'd want to from the comfort of your own home. and then ping off without repeated castings or suffering vacuum or wandering around on boring dead worlds.:smallsmile:

Swooper
2007-10-13, 11:05 AM
Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's a smart idea in the first place. There are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy, and you have no way of detecting which ones have habitable worlds orbiting them. Assuming you don't zap yourself into the corona of a star of course.

The moon though was a good idea. Just Greater Stone Shape up more affordable, airtight shelter. Toss in a bottle of air, some everburning torches, a throwrug here and there and that's a pretty kickass lair.

There was a topic around here some months ago on what it would take for a wizard to set up a base on the moon. People started throwing around stuff like that - walls of force to keep the vacuum out and the air from a bottle of air in, all that jazz... But the topic was effectively killed when somone (alas, I can't remember who) who claimed something along the lines of: "Why bother with all that environmental protection stuff? The Moon is the wizard's natural habitat. It's made of cheese." :smallbiggrin:

Yahzi
2007-10-13, 11:17 AM
The closest star is what, 26 lightyears away or something?
4.3. And even if you wind up in dead space, a few billion miles from the star, you can just teleport again (and more accurately, since your closer now).

I think the real corkers are a) teleporting to the surface (oops!), and b) the Prime Material Plane isn't shaped like that. The stars are holes in the firmanent of heaven.

If you want to go to other planes, that's what plane shift is for. :smallbiggrin:

Chronos
2007-10-13, 12:10 PM
Lots of things to nitpick, there:

Greater Teleporting around until you find a planet near a star, ideally a tectonically dead world under a red supergiantBad idea, for a lich. A lich of this sort of power level actually has a pretty good chance of outliving any given red supergiant. You don't want to go to all that trouble to hide your phylactery if it's just going to get destroyed in a supernova in a few thousand years. A red dwarf would make a much better choice, though they're considerably harder to find (despite being the most common stars, they're so dim that none is visible to the naked eye).

Bonus points if you're epic-level and can collapse the star into a black hole, so your phylactery is inside a pocket dimension inside a lead box inside a Forcecage inside a Prismatic Sphere inside a Mage's Sanctum inside a dead planet inside the event horizon of a black hole in a random galaxy far far away.You're not going to end up inside the event horizon unless you start off right smack in the core of the star, which has its own problems (just how much energy resistance do you have, and to exactly which elements?). If you somehow manage to collapse the star gently enough that you don't destroy your phylactery in the process (hey, this is epic spellcasting we're talking about, here), you'll end up with a black hole a few kilometers across, and anything further than, say, 100 km won't even be able to tell the difference (aside from the lack of sunlight). And if you do decide to put the phylactery inside the event horizon, then you're going to need another epic spell to stop it from falling all the way to the singularity and being destroyed, and yet another immediate-action epic spell to get yourself out of the event horizon before you get pulled into the singularity. Isn't there a limit on the number of epic spells a caster can know? You wouldn't want to waste them all on this. Also remember that those Spellcraft DCs will be pretty darned high, since you won't be able to use multiple-spellcaster-ritual cheese to mitigate them.


10,000 year old information, when the star could be moved a few thousand light years since then, would have to cause me to rule this under insufficient or misleading information.Not even the most distant stars visible to the naked eye are that far away. 1000 Ly would be a very distant star (as visible stars go, at least), and most stars in the sky are less than 100. The closest star is only 4 Ly away, and there are several more less than 10. And stars move at much, much less than the speed of light, so they're not going to wander that far in that time.

Of course, this is all assuming that the universe is made up of space, which contains stars, and so on. This being D&D, though, all bets are off.

Lyinginbedmon
2007-10-13, 12:22 PM
Avoiding interstellar/planetary travel without serious thought is one of the reasons I created the Laws of Magic :smallsmile:

NecroRebel
2007-10-13, 12:54 PM
Lots of things to nitpick, there:
Bad idea, for a lich. A lich of this sort of power level actually has a pretty good chance of outliving any given red supergiant. You don't want to go to all that trouble to hide your phylactery if it's just going to get destroyed in a supernova in a few thousand years. A red dwarf would make a much better choice, though they're considerably harder to find (despite being the most common stars, they're so dim that none is visible to the naked eye).

That's sort of the idea, actually. The Prismatic Sphere and Forcecage protects the phylactery from the supernova, then you're either (relatively) near the black hole.


You're not going to end up inside the event horizon unless you start off right smack in the core of the star, which has its own problems (just how much energy resistance do you have, and to exactly which elements?). If you somehow manage to collapse the star gently enough that you don't destroy your phylactery in the process (hey, this is epic spellcasting we're talking about, here), you'll end up with a black hole a few kilometers across, and anything further than, say, 100 km won't even be able to tell the difference (aside from the lack of sunlight). And if you do decide to put the phylactery inside the event horizon, then you're going to need another epic spell to stop it from falling all the way to the singularity and being destroyed, and yet another immediate-action epic spell to get yourself out of the event horizon before you get pulled into the singularity. Isn't there a limit on the number of epic spells a caster can know? You wouldn't want to waste them all on this. Also remember that those Spellcraft DCs will be pretty darned high, since you won't be able to use multiple-spellcaster-ritual cheese to mitigate them.

You don't actually need epic spellcasting to protect your phylactery. Any gases from the blast will be warded off by the Prismatic Sphere and/or Forcecage around your phylactery, and even within the event horizon things still don't get crushed to oblivion for a couple hundred meters at least. Just wait until the Forcecage is, say, 100m within the event horizon, then trigger an Immovable Rod at a corner or four. No more falling, so no crushing. Probably.

You do have a good point about the size of the black hole, though... Not sure how one would get around that (though with epic spellcasting, it can't be TOO terribly hard). I don't think there's a limit to the number of epic spells a person can know, though, and I just looked at the srd to check. Besides, you can easily mitigate 200 DC by increasing the cast time to 100 days, since you have plenty of time to do this with. That's equivalent to ritual participants giving up 10 1/2 epic slots! Not too bad, right? :smallamused:

Lord Zentei
2007-10-13, 01:11 PM
I was reading the PHB when I noticed something interesting about greater teleport. It says that it's like regular teleport in every way, except lower mishap chance and infinite range. Any ideas on the possibilities this could have?

1. Point and click navigation. Pick a random spot in the sky and go there instantly. If you have a bottle of air and some kind of force shield, you can keep going until you find a planet with resources or natives to exploit. Planetary base of operations.

2. Kamikaze. same thing except take enemy with you, then leave him behind in the void. Let's see a troll regenerate when he explodes and his pieces fly out ina thousand directions. (Any unprotected person in space will either explode due to the much, much, much, much lower pressure or be sucked out through a breach in whatever protective device they use, and then possibly explode).

3. Orbital cannon. Teleport to the upper atmosphere and drop... whatever! Anything that can survive the turbulence is good. Real life militaries have experimented with I beams that shatter due to the high heat on reentry. also useful for finding new landmasses.

4. Screw this. Don't like the campaign? Greater teleport somewhere else. It's an infinite universe. The material plane should be able to give you anything you want.

Actually, the fact that the sundry campaign worlds have not created interstellar civilizations suggests that scenarios #1 and #4 are impossible.

By inference: if a wizard can shapechange to, say, an iron golem and greater teleport to planet XYZ, then create a permanent teleportation circle back again, rinse and repeat until he has created a SG:1 type network, the campaign worlds wouldn't be planetbound and medieval.

Even in Spelljammer, there are limitations on Greater Teleport to within a Crystal Sphere (basically a star system).

So, whenever a spell description in the player's handbook (or anywhere else for that matter) implies unlimited range (or unlimited anything else, for that matter), you have to consider something called context. After all, these are spells cast by mortal beings, hence they are ultimately limited in scope.

For instance:
Does permanency really make spell effects infinite in duration, or just "a whole lot longer than civilization has endured", say a million years or whatever?
Does a Wall of Force really have infinite Damage Reduction? For instance, could a Wall of Force stop a nuclear blast? A Death Star Superlaser blast? A collision with a neutron star moving at 99.9% of speed of light? If Thor stubs his toe on one, does it not collapse? Or is it simply that a WoF has far greater DR than is likely to occur within a game involving D&D spells and medieval technology?
On a related note, is a WoF really immobile, seeing as it is stuck on the surface of a planet that presumably rotates on its axis and revolves around its parent star?

The last point should emphasize above all else that the literal interpretation of spell descriptions do not make sense: you must consider context. An as for that: the context of Greater Teleport is that of a medieval fantasy planet. Therefore, you are limited to that planet (or other planets within the same system in the case of Spelljammer) -- "unlimited range" means "unlimited" within the context of the setting.

EDIT: as an aside, there is something known as a "no limits fallacy", which pertains to arguments regarding the claimed capabilities of whatever beyond the scope in which said capabilities are known and tested. :smallwink:

Chronos
2007-10-13, 01:30 PM
Just wait until the Forcecage is, say, 100m within the event horizon, then trigger an Immovable Rod at a corner or four. No more falling, so no crushing. Probably.Not good enough. An Immovable Rod explicitly has a limit on the amount of force it can withstand. I could look it up, but it's irrelevant: Just the fact that it has a limit means that an Immovable Rod (or four, or a thousand) is not enough to resist the black hole.

Likewise for most other non-epic magic vs. a black hole. I can only think of three spells which might have any interesting effect:
1: The "transport travelers" option of Wish explicitly says it can ignore planar barriers. I suppose that this might be interpreted as letting you out of the event horizon.

2: Genesis actually creates space. It might work inside a black hole, but I suspect that you'd have to cast it enough times that the demiplane grew to a size comparable to the Schwarzschild radius in order to do anything worthwhile.

3: If Reverse Gravity is to be taken literally, it might have some sort of effect on a black hole. But frankly, I don't even want to contemplate what that effect might be.

Jayabalard
2007-10-13, 01:37 PM
You can currently see it, so it is possible. I was mistaken, though... I missed the second section so I thought it was in the "Very Familiar" part.Nope; you can see where it was, but you cannot currently see it.

NecroRebel
2007-10-13, 02:33 PM
Not good enough. An Immovable Rod explicitly has a limit on the amount of force it can withstand. I could look it up, but it's irrelevant: Just the fact that it has a limit means that an Immovable Rod (or four, or a thousand) is not enough to resist the black hole.

Huh. Never noticed that before. I guess I just didn't look at the actual stats on an IR and just thought, "Hey, it's immovable. That means it can't be moved!" Apparently it only supports 8000 lbs and/or takes a DC30 str check to move. I suspect a black hole beats that. A lot.


Nope; you can see where it was, but you cannot currently see it.

Arguably, if you're looking at something 2 inches from you, you can see where it was, but cannot currently see it. This argument does not, in itself hold true unless you also define what a significant enough time delay is. Besides that, I already responded to that argument on page 1; even if you go to a place that isn't really there anymore, you still have go to the nearest similar place. Just attempt to Greater Teleport to any star, and you'll go to a star no matter what.

mroozee
2007-10-13, 02:58 PM
So you want to use Greater Teleport to boldly go where no man has gone before? There are a couple of points we'll have to address first.

1. How do I get there?
2. How do I survive once I'm there?

How do I get there?

If I ignore issues of the time delay for starlight to reach my eye, there are still major issues. "You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination." If I did not know better, I could not tell if I was looking at a planet at interplanetary distances, a star at interstellar distances, or a galaxy at intergalactic distances. This is not a big deal if I target the planet, star or galaxy, but what if I'm a little concerned about flying right through a star or bouncing too close to a super-nova (these, I am told, can end your trip real quick).

So I look up in the sky, pick out a shiny dot, then point to a spot "near" it and teleport. I have no idea how far away my target is and even less idea where this patch of empty space will be... so what do I see when I get there? The universe is VAST. Venus and Mars are right on top of us, cosmically speaking, but to the naked eye they look like bright stars. The odds are extremely high that after teleporting, I will be sitting in empty space, looking at pinpoints of light all around me with no sense of scale, direction or orientation. Commence vomiting (oh, the fun of zero gravity).

I teleport again. Same result. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. I honestly don't know how long it will take to find a planet if you did not directly target one initially... my guess is that it will take a very long, messy time.

How do I survive once I'm there?

A Wall of Force does not prevent things from passing through it. "it is immune to damage of all kinds, and it is unaffected by most spells" Light, and even the magic it carries, can pass back and forth with no problem. "Gaze attacks can operate through a wall of force." If I take a large magnifying lens on one side of a WoF, can I cook ants on the other side? Never seen it come up, but as the DM, I'd have to say, "yes". If I get too close to a star without some serious form of radiation protection, I have REAL, IMMEDIATE problems.

I have never played in a campaign where a Wall of Force blocks gravity and I suspect no one else has either. The mass in a black hole is concentrated at a singularity. Unless you want to be concentrated into a singularity (squished), you probably don't want to depend upon your WoF for protection inside a black hole. Even with sufficient sunblock, on the surface of stars, you're pretty screwed. The surface gravity of the Sun is about 28x that of the earth. The good news is that if you somehow hit a planet, you will probably survive for at least a little while; the surface gravity for Jupiter is the worst in our system at about 2.6x Earth's surface gravity. Within the planet itself, the gravitational force is lessened.