Contingency and teleportation

[Sutremaine]

If a wizard sets up a Contingency to instantly transport him to the nearest safe spot when he is attacked, who decides where he ends up?

[Jasdoif]

The wizard chooses the safe spot when he creates the contingency.

[Indon]

The Contingency spell does. It's not very smart. Expect to be moved to the nearest location not being Fireballed or in an enemy's reach.

And that's even if the DM lets you get away with that. Could you even cast Teleport under normal circumstances with such a criteria _without_ it doing something like that?

Edit: Jasdoif; I think the point is the caster is _not_ specifying a location for the spell.

[Orzel]

The Contingency spell does. It's not very smart. Expect to be moved to the nearest location not being Fireballed or in an enemy's reach.

And that's even if the DM lets you get away with that. Could you even cast Teleport under normal circumstances with such a criteria _without_ it doing something like that?

Edit: Jasdoif; I think the point is the caster is _not_ specifying a location for the spell.

If you just state "Teleport me to the nearest safe spot when I'm attacked" the spell will take you the nearest area where the danger it lower than the place you are... like in melee range with the archer ranger who controls the attacking bear.

The less info, the worse the placing.

[TheOOB]

Teleport goes to specific locations, not something vauge like a "safe spot".

With contignancy I'd imagine you have to choose the exact location you are going to teleport to when you are making the spell contignant, which would probally be your home/lair/inner sanctum, or at least somewhere with a extra spellbook or scroll of teleport so you can get back to where you where.

[Jasdoif]

Edit: Jasdoif; I think the point is the caster is _not_ specifying a location for the spell.

In that case, we're talking about a failed spell. There's no "nearest safe spot" clause in the teleport spell that I can see.

The contingency will trigger the attached teleport spell, but the teleport spell doesn't have a valid target, so it fails.

[PaladinBoy]

If the caster says, "Teleport me to X location.", then that's what's going to happen.

If the caster says, "Teleport me to the nearest safe spot.", well, then, let's see....... which spot is not under direct attack? He's going to end up there.

Edit: ninja'd...... yeah, you're right about teleport. Okay, it would fail.

[Raum]

Even Greater Teleport requires a "reliable description" of your destination to work. And since "safe spot" is hardly a description, the teleport should simply fail. At most, it would be a completely random teleport...and might put you in worse trouble.

[Emperor Tippy]

Thats why you set the condition as "Teleport me to a location of my choosing, to be chosen at the time this contingency activates" :D

[Sutremaine]

That reminds me -- what constitutes a convoluted or complicated condition?

[PaladinBoy]

Actually, I just checked the spell. Contingency just activates a certain spell under certain conditions. The conditions have to be specific; you don't have to decide exactly how the spell is going to work until it activates.

Since the location to travel to is decided when the spell is cast, you would always decide the teleport location when the contingency activated.

[TheOOB]

That reminds me -- what constitutes a convoluted or complicated condition?

This

"Teleport me to a location of my choosing, to be chosen at the time this contingency activates"

In all seriousness though, a convoluted or complicated condition would be one that relies on too many factors, or relies on factors which are not readily apparent.

"Activate the spell when I am seriously injured(at or below 3/4 hp)" is a good condition.

"Activate the spell when I am seriously injured, my life is immediatly threatened, and I do not have a friendly cleric with healing spells avaible within 20' of me" is not a good condition.

Also, since you cast the spell at the same time as contignancy all, conditions for the spell must be made upon casting contignancy, so once you cast contignancy they teleport location is fixed. You could have the condition "Teleport me home when I say "Run Away!", but not the condition "Teleport me to the place my choosing when I say "Take me to *blank*""

[iceman]

The "nearest" safe spot would be 5 feet in a direction of your choice (meaning the DM, although this is only if attacked via melee or ranged attack). If attacked with an AoE spell then I'd say the wizard would be teleported to just outside of the area of effect. In a random direction of course.

The Contingency spell is a spell that you need to be fairly specific with. While it allows the caster to be a little vague, if the caster is too vague the spell could backfire on the caster a bit.

Also don't forget that teleport is not perfect, there is always a chance for error. I also just read the teleport spell and it says that you must have some idea of where you are attempting to travel to.

[Tor the Fallen]

Dimension Door would be a better choice.