3.x - Teleporting With Every Step

[unseenmage]

Could one arrange teleportation circles in a hallway in such a way that each step one takes teleports them?

For travel it's less useful than just using two usefully placed circles.
But as a trap or a puzzle? Yeah, that could be interesting.

I had a daydream about a Harry Potter esque scene with long coats and robes fluttering as mages hurry down two sides of a corridor.
On one side they walk and chat normally. On the other they step onto teleportation points that blink then down the corridor.

Much expense to just move down a hallway faster.

Then I wondered, what could it be good for; assembling an array of many teleportation circles rather than just two?

You could virtually travel down all the hallways in a structure at once so long as your senses could keep up with the rapid teleporting with every footstep.

What would the Playground do with nigh limitless teleportation circles or similar that is painfully mundane and uselessly extravagant?

[pabelfly]

What would the Playground do with nigh limitless teleportation circles or similar that is painfully mundane and uselessly extravagant?

A puzzle where players are randomly teleported into various rooms and they have to find their way to the end of the puzzle.

[Silly Name]

What would the Playground do with nigh limitless teleportation circles or similar that is painfully mundane and uselessly extravagant?

Having flashbacks to playing the first Final Fantasy and having to navigate the Citadel of Trials, personally. Jokes aside, I'm having trouble imagining this as anything but a puzzle, or as a way to display how far gone is a wizard who spends time and resources setting up this stuff.

[Telonius]

Having flashbacks to playing the first Final Fantasy

Was going to say exactly this.

[Saintheart]

What would the Playground do with nigh limitless teleportation circles or similar that is painfully mundane and uselessly extravagant?

Clearly, design a very expensive construct and build a stronghold.

https://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/39600000/Glados-portal-the-game-39640487-1024-768.jpg

[Fouredged Sword]

The real fun comes when your BBEG sets up a selective spell teleportation circle that excludes himself, then sets up a regular teleportation circle inside of it. It sends him to is safehouse when he steps into the square. It sends everyone else to the other side of the planet.

[zlefin]

huh, I didn't even remember ff1 having a teleporter maze like that. It admittedly has been a long while since I played it.

I think teleporter trap mazes work better in a video game environment. It seems like they wouldn't work well in a live game because of the difference in how you get feedback about the situation. It's far easier to respond to, and visualize, the ones you see in a video game.

I remember there being some in bard's tale, that was back when you had to draw your own maps, so it could mess that up if you weren't careful.

[Teth]

Could use Teleportation Circle that way if you had a long, long time to build the place. Maybe a weird order of mages that does it over several generations. Or if you got heavy into soul sacrifices and economy bursting.

It'd also be 5ft radius circles, which, layout and space issues.

Best way AFAIK is to go Cleric 2+ / Runecaster 8 / Dweomerkeeper 4+ and make use of the fact that inscribing a rune is an act of spellcasting, such that both the costs of the spell and of crafting the rune can be negated by Supernatural Spell. Throw whatever teleport rune you want on floor tiles before they're glued down.

You'll still need to make probably thousands of those divided by 1-4 castings a day, but that's now only a matter of a few years to finish a reasonably sized teleport puzzle, with no cost beyond the construction itself.

Technically that combination is useful enough for augmenting key structures and strongholds that you'd have major power groups deliberately raising a few, at least insofar as they're compatible with protecting the Weave and passing on knowledge of magic.

You can also force Rc 8 / Dw 10 to fit via some early lycanthrope HD, and for organizations of that size and power, jumping some level 1 cleric with too many HD past the point where you can remove curse is a matter of sending a few subordinates to take them to do routine cleaning of few crypts.

[Telonius]

huh, I didn't even remember ff1 having a teleporter maze like that. It admittedly has been a long while since I played it.

I think teleporter trap mazes work better in a video game environment. It seems like they wouldn't work well in a live game because of the difference in how you get feedback about the situation. It's far easier to respond to, and visualize, the ones you see in a video game.

I remember there being some in bard's tale, that was back when you had to draw your own maps, so it could mess that up if you weren't careful.

For FF1, it's from the Temple of Ordeal. You had to step into particular pillars to teleport to the next section. If you stepped on the wrong one, it would send you back to the beginning.

[Buufreak]

Having flashbacks to playing the first Final Fantasy and having to navigate the Citadel of Trials, personally. Jokes aside, I'm having trouble imagining this as anything but a puzzle, or as a way to display how far gone is a wizard who spends time and resources setting up this stuff.

I was thinking bbs sleeping beauty level with ventus. Same concept, but in 3d.

But yea, it works. Its a puzzle, and down this and that path, you can put walls, mobs, items. Whatever suits you.

[EliDupree]

What would the Playground do with nigh limitless teleportation circles or similar that is painfully mundane and uselessly extravagant?

Lay out my storage rooms efficiently! With ordinary physical space, if you take N steps to fetch something from storage, there are only O(N^3) possible storage rooms you could've reached in that many steps. But with teleportation circles, you can reach O(2^N) different storage rooms, which is vastly bigger! If you have a modest arrangement where each room has four circles taking you into deeper rooms and one circle taking you back out, then after ten steps, you can end up in any of 1048576 different storage rooms. Also, you no longer have to have doors between them, although that's less of a gain than you might hope.

[Telonius]

What would the Playground do with nigh limitless teleportation circles or similar that is painfully mundane and uselessly extravagant?

https://i.imgflip.com/4dwcei.jpg

[Maat Mons]

If I were running an Evil cult, I'd build our secret temple such that Teleportation Circles were the only way to get anywhere. And I'd also blanket the place in Unhallow effects with Dimensional Anchor tied to them. Naturally, the Unhallow effects would be set up to only apply the Dimensional Anchor to those of different faiths. If you're not one of us, you're stuck.

If I understand correctly, flying above a Teleportation Circle doesn't set it off. You have to step on it. This makes it ineffective as a trap against anyone who flies. Which should be everyone at high levels. Constantly flying is also a good way to avoid setting off pressure plates for mechanical traps.

If you have the Craft Wonderous Item feat, you can craft Portals. (Ignore the 3.0 Craft Portal feat, it's defunct in 3.5.) Portals have the built-in capability to do lots of fun things. For example, they can explicitly be built to transport the user's clothing and equipment to a secure storage facility, but transport the user himself to an inescapable dungeon on another plane. Fun fact, Plane Shift requires a focus, so even a caster can't get back without gear. Portals can also explicitly be built to do one thing to some creatures, and a different thing to others.

[Teth]

If I understand correctly, flying above a Teleportation Circle doesn't set it off. You have to step on it. This makes it ineffective as a trap against anyone who flies. Which should be everyone at high levels. Constantly flying is also a good way to avoid setting off pressure plates for mechanical traps.

That's why you pair it with wingbind. Or reverse gravity them into a different circle on the ceiling.

Or slam down a 50 ton stone gate behind them, before filling the corridor with cloudkill and mind fog and have the area filled with alternating blasphemy and holy word traps.

If you see what you think is a trap, and it's a 9th level spell, congratulating yourself on trivially overcoming it using only common low-level abilities tends to be a sign that you've failed to notice the real danger.

[Jack_Simth]

Fun fact, Plane Shift requires a focus, so even a caster can't get back without gear.Plane Shift requires a focus (unless you've found one of the workarounds, such as Dweomerkeeper). However: Shadow Walk and Dismissal don't have that issue.