Teleportation, as a game element, is too powerful and should be severely limited. As is, teleportation is damaging to the game and, if followed to its logical conclusion, will unbalance a fantasy world.
Teleportation is a phenomenon that has permeated science fiction and fantasy for a long time. In does have it's place... sometimes. The transporters on Star Trek are one of the defining technologies of that show. D&D and other fantasy games have various flavors of teleport. Some games even allow a psionic version of teleportation. Teleportation does have a place in sci-fi and fantasy. But it's availability and use should not take away from the game.
For the sake of argument, I am basing this on the 5th level teleportation spell in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. In that game, teleportation is so common and easy that any major city will have several practitioners of magic capable of this feat. Such wide spread use of long range movement spells would, realistically, have a profound impact on society.
Wide spread effective communication would be an achievable goal. Kingdoms could set up teleport stations and move people, materials, finished goods and information at a dizzying pace. Technology and innovation would be evenly spread across vast regions. Cultural contamination would result in the blending of languages and culture. Kingdoms near and far would begin to look and act alike. Wars would be fought with teleporting storm troopers and bombs beamed into enemy fortresses. Rapid long distance travel would allow infectious diseases to spread at a hugely accelerated pace. Imagine if the black plague had swept across Europe from city to city at the speed of a teleporting mage.
These are just a few of the effects if teleportation is too easy and too accessible.
One of the greatest adventures of the ancient past was simply traveling. Seeing what lay over the horizon, beyond the mountains, across the sea. If you give the characters the ability to quickly and safely whisk themselves off to another continent, you rob them of the chance to explore your world as they gallop across golden fields or roll down a dusty road in a rickety wagon. The characters miss out on the opportunity to really experience your world. Travel should not merely be the journey to the adventure. Travel should be a big part of the adventure. Think of all the encounters they'll miss by teleporting. The wonderful tavern they find at a cross roads. Getting caught in a sudden storm and having to take cover in a cave. Consider the classic fantasy adventure described in The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. That entire book was a journey. Mr. Bilbo Baggins was going to title his Memoirs "There and Back Again" and with good reason.
That said, I’d like to propose the following limitations on all forms of instantaneous travel spells and abilities, especially teleport. In my gaming, I limit the use of teleport in a variety of ways detailed below. The idea isn't to make teleportation impossible. Just costly. So costly, that it is, once again, a rare and wondrous kind of magic that the players will have to pay dearly for.
Magic, like physics or chemistry, must follow certain laws of nature. Teleportation is no exception. With teleportation, you are physically displacing an object from one point in space to another. This is accomplished by pushing a certain amount of mass through some sort of sub-dimension or wormhole between two points in the space-time continuum. The energy requirements for accomplishing a feat like this should be staggering. Very few wizards should be capable of this level of magic.
Exactly how you implement these limitations is up to you, your role playing game of choice and your own personal playing style. In may gaming sessions, I use the following four general guidelines:
1. The initial energy requirements of a teleport spell are significant. The initial cost for tapping that sub-dimension or opening a wormhole should be quite large. That is, just to open the wormhole should require a massive amount of energy even before you calculate in range and mass. This spell is no small matter and should be enjoyed by only the very best wizards. A large energy output will also prevent the wizard from casting it lightly.
2. The greater the distance that the object is displaced, the great the energy requirements. This one is straight forward. It might even be argued that such energy requirements increase exponentially. This would prevent very powerful wizards from regularly teleporting to other continents. Let's keep those distant continents mysterious and make the ship's voyage to them worth while. In AD&D, two miles per level might be a good rule. That will allow a teleport-capable mage to magically transport himself from one village to the next, but not to the next continent.
3. The greater the mass displaced, the greater the energy requirements. Some sort of maximum teleport weight should be instituted. (To be accurate and proper, the rule should apply to mass, not weight). Make this rule whatever you are comfortable with. Keep in mind that players will creatively abuse any teleport ability they have. If a wizard can teleport a few hundred pounds of rock a few hundred meters, he has an effective siege weapon In AD&D, one hundred pounds per level is a good rule of thumb.
4. A wizard can only teleport to a place that he is familiar with. This idea is fairly common in most game systems. In order to properly target his entry coordinates, a wizard must be familiar with the exact location he is teleporting to in relation to where he is teleporting from. I take this rule to an extreme. My house rule is that a wizard can only teleport to a place that he has actually been to. This greatly limits the spell and prevents a wizard from teleporting to a continent or kingdom he has only heard of. Not only must the wizard have been there, he must know where the destination is in relation to other familiar places. In other words, if you blindfold a wizard and take him to the secret bandit lair in the north valley, he will not be able to teleport there later on, because he doesn't know where it is in his "mental map" (i.e. in relation to other places he has been).
Of course, anything can be attempted. If a player really wants his wizard to attempt to teleport to a unfamiliar destination, he should be allowed to. Perhaps the wizard has no choice. However, teleporting to an unfamiliar place should be dangerous in the extreme. Wizards attempting this risk their lives and the odds should be frighteningly bad. A reckless wizard might materialize inside solid rock or be forever lost between dimensions.
5. Transcription Errors - This one might seem too extreme for some people, but I like it. When a mage teleports, he is disassembling his body at the quantum level, transporting that energy, and then reconstructing his body. Sometimes, due to fluctuations in the background radiation, the reconstruction phase will be less than perfect. That is, microscopic errors will occur in the reconstruction of the person or object. These errors occur at the cellular level and are very small. A single transcription error is not noticeable. However, transcription errors are permanent. They accumulate, like radiation exposure. Each time a wizard teleports, there is a small chance (about 5%) that he will accumulate more transcription errors. If enough errors occur, physical ailments will develop. Such ailments might include nervous disorders, a loss of strength, deafness in one ear or moderate chest pain. Because of the low risk and slow buildup of transcription errors and their effects, this is not a major deterrent and most mages don't worry about it. However, this rule is good because it prevents the teleport spell from being severely abused. A mage won't teleport to the bathroom three times a day if doing so will damage his health in the long run.
It is likely that mages, many of whom are able to research and develop new spells, would produce various derivatives to the basic teleport spell. Such teleport-based spells might include some of the following:
Targeting Spells. Some wizards might develop spells to help target their teleport spells and decrease the risk of arriving "off target".
Teleport Shields. In response to the possibility of teleport based incursions, a variety of preventive "teleport purge" spells would be developed. This might take the form of magical shields that would prevent other wizards from teleporting into protected areas. Likewise, other mages would develop ways to penetrate such teleport shields.
Teleport Gate Networks. With enough resources (money, wizards, laborers), a government could construct a network of teleport gates. Like nodes on a network, these would all be linked. This limits where the wizard can teleport too, but might increase range and mass. Also, these would be safer. Of course, the initial investment to create something like this would be huge. As a matter of fact, the Thullian Empire was in the process of building such a teleport gate network before the start of the Great War.
Hopefully, this discussion has given you some thoughts to chew on. I'm not arguing that we ban teleportation outright. I just think teleport spells and similar spells of large scale movement should be limited to keep game balance in check. We don't have to do things a certain way just because TSR/WotC tells us to.
This page last updated Wednesday, December 24, 2008. Copyright 1990-2009 David M. Roomes.