Limitations of teleporting stuff/Escort mission

[HoboKnight]

Hey guys,
I need to create an escort mission for my party, which is lvl 12(4xpaladin, 1x highly optimised ranged fighter). My players are very industrious guys and are currently residing in a large city of Iriaebor and have acess to a lot of magic items, ressurections spells and other shenanigans. I want to give them an escort mission, but item must not be just teleportable to antoher location. What are teleportation spell limits in 5e? What can not be just teleported to another location? A really big safe(too big to be carried by a flock of pegasi/adult dragon?

How do I make this sensible for needing lvl 12 party escort by covering most of magical/shenannigan bases?

thanks!

[Skrum]

I think the place to start is who you intend to threaten them with. Presumably, the party is going to be intercepted enroute. By what? That will guide what this'll look like.

Since the party is pretty high level and it sounds like it's a high magic world where they have access to lots of spells/powers beyond their base class, what is the suitable threat? Cause it obviously can't be bandits.

My first thought is a hag, lich, demon, or powerful fey entity. Something that would plausibly be able to track the use of magic and set some kind of trap if the party attempts to teleport. Thus the party is left to move this thing the old fashioned way, where they get ambushed by the minions of the <creature>

[titi]

Maybe just say it's a magic item that disrupt conjuration magic in it's vicinity (teleportation is conjuration, right ?)

[Amnestic]

Teleporting objects requires that they be no larger than a 10ft cube, so an 11ft tall statue wouldn't be a viable target, for instance.

Of course, Teleport isn't a guaranteed 'hit' unless you've got a pre-made teleport circle or an object from your destination. Otherwise you're risking being off target (or even, potentially, destroying the object).

[Dualight]

Does the party have an item that lets them cast teleport? Otherwise, just have it be part of the deal that they not use teleportation. Perhaps the item would destabilise if teleported(If the party can initiate teleportation at the relevant range).
Needing some level of secrecy could shut down any teleportation circles, and simply needing to go to a location no-one in the party is familiar enough with should also complicate matters, especially if you make it so that a teleportation accident is an auto-fail.

Really, this party should still be low-level enough that they have no open-ended teleportation without you having given it to them.
Since you describe the party as 4 paladins and a fighter, I assume that none of them have access to spells above 3rd level.
Even if they had access to 6th level spells, you could still shut down teleportation by making the destination someplace they have never been to, so they cannot use spells like transport via plants(6th level spell, druid), and spells that make going somewhere you have never been possible start at 7th level spells(teleport, as far as I know.

You might be over thinking things. Simply requiring that the party can't call for help from a teleporter+ not having been to the destination before should be enough, unless you have given the party the tools to bypass travel altogether.

[Sigreid]

A holy relic that the entire point is the stops along the way to show off to the people.

[Corran]

Teleporting objects requires that they be no larger than a 10ft cube, so an 11ft tall statue wouldn't be a viable target, for instance.

Of course, Teleport isn't a guaranteed 'hit' unless you've got a pre-made teleport circle or an object from your destination. Otherwise you're risking being off target (or even, potentially, destroying the object).
They can use reduce (ie spell enlarge/reduce)on it. Or chop it into smaller pieces and reassemble it upon getting it where it needs to go.


Maybe just say it's a magic item that disrupt conjuration magic in it's vicinity (teleportation is conjuration, right ?)
That's the safest bet. Though I would not restrict it just to conjuration magic (but somehow have it bound to the material plane) just in case we are missing anything.

@OP: I'd go with a cage/box the interior of which would be guarded by a (modified) private sanctum spell (cause the spell as written wouldn't work on something portable). And I'd have a very dangerous creature inside. You are transporting it to a place where it can be destroyed/imprisoned/banished/whatever (maybe the process is site specific, maybe the participants are not willing to travel to you or it's safer for you to go to them). I'd give a very faint idea to the pc's but the in-character information they would get would just be "it's of the outmost important for the box to reach X place; do NOT open it". Just for a little bit of mystery and potential decision conflict. As to why the pc's are the ones to transfer the box instead of, say, having a squad of pegasi do it. Well, maybe a squad of pegasi is transporting a fake box, and the pc's are one of many groups doing the same (only the PC's are transporting the real thing, because they are the most skilled/trustworthy and/or the less likely to be identified by whoever it is that would threaten this mission). Or maybe an inside man changed the details of the plan and now the pc's are accidentally carrying the real thing and they are heading to a trap!

[JackPhoenix]

Teleport is pretty inaccurate, unless you're going to an existing Teleportation Circle or have an item associated with the area. Nobody wants to end up 50 miles in a random direction from target, especially when "random direction" does not exclude "above".

Then there's the Underdark, where teleportation gets wonky thanks to faezress or however is the weird radiation called.

[Unoriginal]

Unless I'm mistaken, Teleport does not work on the unwilling.

You could make the item sapient, or containing a sapient prisoner, and say they do not want to be transported to the place the PCs have to travel to.

Also gives you a lot more opportunities for entertaining events if the item/the entity in the item is trying to make the PCs fail any way they can.

[Anymage]

Teleportation Circle, the fifth level spell, only works if you have a specific destination circle you want to reach. This lets you pop home if you have to or travel between major locales, but only between fixed points. So either there isn't a teleportation circle at the destination, or you're trying to smuggle in an item and you don't want to be noticed by whoever would be watching the local circle.

Teleport, the seventh level spell, has a mishap chance if you aren't either targeting a specific destination circle or have a key piece of a location in hand. If the object is fragile, a mishap might destroy it and the chance of mishap might mean that anything not assured is considered a no-go. Note that in theory the party could get around this with ginormous gobs of money (teleportation circle for themselves to the destination, a couple of days to look around and find some out of the way place to grab a stone from to key a teleport spell to, teleportation circle to get back, and then teleport directly to their destination safely), but presumably the reason that the party is being hired is because they're cheaper than having all these spells cast.

If you've already set caster service pricing and adventure reward scales such that it would be economically feasible to just brute force the issue with hired spellcasters, you really only have two options. the first is to DM fiat and say that the target region has some magical effects that prevent/redirect teleportation or at least draw down unwanted attention for doing so. (Quite possibly with the general powers that be in the area being unfriendly, so the item needs to be smuggled in and the party has reason to keep a low profile.) The other is to say that the object is antimagic/magically chaotic/magically fragile, such that the item would mess up teleportation spells or that teleportation spells would mess up the item.

[HoboKnight]

Okay boys, this is great. In fact, your mechanical ideas also gave great lore ideas for the fluff.
Red Wizard of Thay(a lich) wants to harvest a soul of a Solar. This will majorly shift the power balance among Red Wizards(does this make sense, since Shazz Tam made Thay undead? Is rivalry among factions still sensible?) Problem is, such souls can only be harvested in an abandoned magic forge of Empire of Netheril.

Lich's competition wants to prevent this. Lich organized several caravans to make their way toward the heavily fortified forge. Only one carries actual imprisoned Solar, others are meant as a distraction and a drain on his opponents' resources.

Players are protecting one of the fake cages on its way. They are attacked by mercenaries(mercenaries in this case being strong brutes, casters and dragons). There are 3 encounters as PCs approach the forge and task ends when they hand over the box to the forge.

Whaddya think?

[Sigreid]

Okay boys, this is great. In fact, your mechanical ideas also gave great lore ideas for the fluff.
Red Wizard of Thay(a lich) wants to harvest a soul of a Solar. This will majorly shift the power balance among Red Wizards(does this make sense, since Shazz Tam made Thay undead? Is rivalry among factions still sensible?) Problem is, such souls can only be harvested in an abandoned magic forge of Empire of Netheril.

Lich's competition wants to prevent this. Lich organized several caravans to make their way toward the heavily fortified forge. Only one carries actual imprisoned Solar, others are meant as a distraction and a drain on his opponents' resources.

Players are protecting one of the fake cages on its way. They are attacked by mercenaries(mercenaries in this case being strong brutes, casters and dragons). There are 3 encounters as PCs approach the forge and task ends when they hand over the box to the forge.

Whaddya think?
So the "we're going to tie a pork chop around your neck so the dog will play with you" story line. 🤔

[Zhorn]

I was going to suggest a sealed-evil-in-a-can, but yeah an imprisoned solar fits the bill just as well. Sentient creature / lifeforce that would be unwilling does put a nix on most teleports.
Teleportation Circle can still get around that, but that's easily justified with not having a sigil at the destination for security reasons (always the best explainer of why teleportation circles are not everywhere, authorities crack down on them and destroy them if they are known since and enemy only needs to know the sigil to be able to lock on and teleport gods-know-what past city defences).

Plus being a lv12 party the power scale justifies the party's involvement.
(I'd have raised concerns if this was a tier 1 escort mission, but tier 3 makes sense)

[Corran]

Teleportation Circle can still get around that, but that's easily justified with not having a sigil at the destination for security reasons (always the best explainer of why teleportation circles are not everywhere, authorities crack down on them and destroy them if they are known since and enemy only needs to know the sigil to be able to lock on and teleport gods-know-what past city defences).
Not sure if it complies with the spell, but from a world building perspective I also like the idea of having teleportation circles be consisted of multiple tiles with drawings (like a mosaic) that you can re arrange in various ways so that the sigil of the teleportation circle can be different. And whenever it needs to be used, you have the person in possession of the available combinations choose which will be used and communicate it to the corresponding person at the other side (so that as few people -ideally only two- know of this info). And of course you build on that by having more layers of protection (such as a cage, glyphs and whatever else). Similarly the ones doing the travelling could send a familiar first in, or an arcane eye, or whatever. And of course you then have social implications, such as having the host neglect any of these procedural stuff when someone very important is visiting, the head of security whining about skipping all procedure and having the tc without any precaution activate at the grand hall, etc etc.

[tieren]

There are ways to block teleportation at the destination too. Maybe the target area is in a huge forbiddance or private sanctum effect. Or you need to take a demon through a hallowed area, etc...

[Segev]

I take it the party is evil, or at least neutral with enough caring about evil to be okay with helping a rich harvest the soul of a Solar? Otherwise, they may balk at the quest entirely.


It is a good quest, if the party will bite, though.



Before I read that you'd found your solution, my suggestion was going to be a silver bastard sword that the part is warned under no circumstances could come into contact with the astral plane. This is because it is a stolen githyanki silver sword and the lich queen has her best wizards and with hunting for it. If it enters the astral plane, even momentarily as via a teleport spell, the time in the Astral will elongate and a massive party of githyanki riding red dragons will be there to fight for it.

[Unoriginal]

Okay boys, this is great. In fact, your mechanical ideas also gave great lore ideas for the fluff.
Red Wizard of Thay(a lich) wants to harvest a soul of a Solar. This will majorly shift the power balance among Red Wizards(does this make sense, since Shazz Tam made Thay undead? Is rivalry among factions still sensible?) Problem is, such souls can only be harvested in an abandoned magic forge of Empire of Netheril.

Lich's competition wants to prevent this. Lich organized several caravans to make their way toward the heavily fortified forge. Only one carries actual imprisoned Solar, others are meant as a distraction and a drain on his opponents' resources.

Players are protecting one of the fake cages on its way. They are attacked by mercenaries(mercenaries in this case being strong brutes, casters and dragons). There are 3 encounters as PCs approach the forge and task ends when they hand over the box to the forge.

Whaddya think?

Can be interesting if the PCs' main obstacle are good people trying to rescue the Solar, with the evil rivals of the Lich sending just enough bad guys after them to make the PCs doubt the good guys are legit.

Quest giver could warn them that the people they must protect the item against include a powerful trickster (and minions) who won't hesitate to try anything to get their guard to drop, be it lies, disguises, seemingly random coincidences and events. That way, it'll make things harder when an angel shows up and explains what is really going on.