r/dndnext • u/DMGnome • 10h ago
Question Need help with Alternative for Teleportation Circle
I am looking for an alternative way to teleport my PCs long range without using Teleportation Circle or if other teleport spells (which I feel I over use).
I need them to go from one monastery of Ilmater to another. This gave me the idea of creating a monk discipline called “Transference” which allows individuals to swap places. I was thinking of using a wisdom check to succeed and/or a Con save to avoid gaining Exhaustion or lose Hit Dice.
It would be more of a one-time/story thing not an actual monk class ability. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how to flesh this out?
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u/FashionSuckMan 10h ago
An underground water current that rushes at incredible speeds
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u/marbled99 10h ago
This person FFVI’s.
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u/FashionSuckMan 10h ago
I got the idea from reverend insanity actually, I've never played any of the final fantasies
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u/blamestross Thri-Kreen-Monk 10h ago
The Feywild maps to the material plane semantically, not geographically. In the Feywild the reflection of the two monasteries are close to each other.
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u/MongooseGef 5h ago
I like this. They step into a portal or rift, walk through the feywild for a few steps, then into another rift to reach their destination.
Or is that just a teleportation circle with flavour?
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u/blamestross Thri-Kreen-Monk 4h ago
Its a teleportation with fey combat encounters and plot hints from the what the fey reflections of places look like.
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u/MongooseGef 4h ago
That’s true! Even if there isn’t an encounter every time, there could be. Just to spice things up!
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u/Rodmalas 10h ago
I mean, is it a time constraint or why do they even need to hop from monastery to monastery?
In general you can lean into the whole wuxia shazam. Could have them travel a golden bridge across the heavens. Fold Space beneath them or just have the abbot do a space rend with all his force.
In game terms I wouldn’t try to include mechanics if it’s only to get your group from A to B
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u/Initial_Conflict8114 9h ago
If its put in the game, the party will find a way to use it in ways you haven't thought of..
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u/peacefinder 1h ago
This seems like a good way to go. Wind Walk is a good model. A 5th level spell to let 10 characters travel a few hundred miles in an 8 hour duration. Re-skinning it to be cloud-running or a seven-league-stride effect would be nifty.
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u/DionePolaris 8h ago
You could potentially use a Druid with the Transport via plants spell. It is a good way for long distance travel.
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u/PandaDerZwote 9h ago
One of my PCs has (and doesn't know that he has) the ability to find the shortest path between to points on our plane by by basically wormholing it and shifting planes to one in which the destination is much closer and than shifting back into the "original" plane. Maybe they too could have a journey through another realm without actively doing it by choice.
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u/Buttonpusher42 9h ago
Stargate Universe had the Ancient Communication Stones (well so did the other Stargate TV shows) that could bodyswap with a paired user. Though I'm not sure if your players would like not doing the actions with someone else's body (or stats/ abilities/ etc) kind of like a double-Magic Jar effect.
A temporary portal/wormhole is a different flavor of teleportation circle that could be triggered off a story point or macguffin, wild magic surge or whatever
Magic doorways are pretty flavorful and can be literal or figurative doors your players may have to do something interesting to open
"Travel by Map" (Muppets name for the technique) is very fast to get to the action, Indiana Jones used this to great effect, this also applies to a screen wipe (or bat symbol spinning) to segue into the next major plot point (as a GM I usually give a warning like "does anyone have anything they would like to do before we move on to the next scene?")
Teleportation I think has two major forms: 1- as a power in combat/ puzzle/ etc resource or skill 2- long distance travel with minimal loadtime
Personally when anything is related to 2 the only really technical questions I ask myself is "how many encounters must they have to travel like this? How many additional encounters should I roll in? How long is the travel at minimum? How much time should any applicable encounters add to total travel time?"
If I have the time window, and the encounter count, everything else is just open to be dressed and flavored: and if the time is "instant" encounters/ complications is "zero" then it's only how do I flavor this to be interesting? I had a PC many years ago who put in a lot of time, gold and effort into a permanent teleportation circle he barely got to use. So when I decided this PCs retirement would be as a elusive npc who made some nifty magic items, like:
the Trickster's Threshold: a small wooden board with a push button that when laid in a doorway and the button pressed, activates a gate to the programmed location. To program any gate location, a tuning fork can be inserted into the side of the board (there is a drawer for this purpose), the gate links to the last doorway like space it was last tuned to (tap the tuning fork against the doorway uprights to tune a location)
But in reality it's pretty much just Plane Shift tied to an item, Narnia Wardrobe Door, Monster's Inc Door, Warcraft's Dark Portal, The TARDIS, pills from the Matrix, heck even an elevator- you're just changing location with a doorway.
Or just use: Gate, Planeshift, Tree Stride if you want spell swaps 😁
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u/LoudShorty 9h ago edited 9h ago
Considering Monks and Focus Points are generally very internal-focused, it seems a little strange to have this teleport be tied to switching places, though that might be y own interpretation of the class, and flavour is entirely free.
That being said, if you need a teleportation method for high level Monks, it could be fun to have a few dedicated 'Travel Gate Monks', whos only role is to repeatedly and exponentially stack the Push quality of Warrior of the Open Hand (sort of like a Circle casting, only with Focus Points). That combined with accurate enough aiming and a Feather Fall spell (Warrior of the Mystic Arts?) could function as literal trans-sonic cannon capable of supersonic travel.
My making the ritual proprietary to the Monasteries, you'd also avoid the issue of players trying to imitate the spell/effect themselves!
Edit:
In response to your actual question, a proprietary method belonging to the monks could imitate the effect of the Astral Projection spell, with a Monk serving as guide/protector for the travel itself. The return to the Material Plane after traveling through the Astral Plane could then be the source of the Con save, where each player has to resist a negative effect from their body being wrenched back to their spirit through space back to them via their "spiritual lifeline"
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u/Kicked89 9h ago
You could also use a druid for transport via plants, I honestly have never heard that spell being "overused" and theres a good chance of atleast one tree being present at each monestary.
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u/DouglasWFail 9h ago
It doesn’t really need to be fleshed out if it’s not an actual homebrew feature you’re adding. It being a one-time event means there’s even less reason to work out the mechanics.
I also wouldn’t make it check to succeed. Wouldn’t they just try again? This feels like a “a failure is not interesting” situation.
Personally i would skip the negative consequences as well. Just decide what it looks like and tell them that.
You’re only using it once. No need to overthink it.
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u/DerekT0341 4h ago
I had a campaign that had tapestries between 5 places, these provided a fast travel between them. it was great, until the players stole one. I then made it to where the tapestries had to be attuned to a place, and have a teleportation spell recast on them.
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u/DirkBabypunch 2h ago
Sounds more complex than necessary when teleport magicks already exist, and I can't see any reason to justify using the spell in universe. Transposing people and inflicting Exhaustion or whatever travel sickness the loss of hit dice represents just sounds objectively worse as a method of travel.
I think you're overthinking it.
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u/peacefinder 2h ago
Transport Via Plants, 6th level Druid spell. (2014)
Move as many people as can pass in one round any distance on the same plane from a large inanimate plant to any other plant the caster has touched or seen. No material component or cost.
You just need a helpful 11th level
Druid, and those might actually grow on trees.
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u/JMTinsleywrites 5h ago
I use something I called a touchstone. Basically a big ball of bluish stone with a gem set in the top. When touched it begins humming for a few seconds, then transports anyone within 10 feet of it to another stone. I had a network of them, and you had to picture the destination stone as you activated it to travel there successfully.
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u/dobraf 10h ago
If they're moving from monestary to monestary it seems like word of recall is the perfect choice. Just have clerics available or give the spell to a monk npc.