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Old 11-29-2011, 07:48 AM   #1
Bruno
 
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Default Teleport-walking?

I'm talking about extremely short range, line-of-sight only teleportation performed as a Move action with no special skill checks or chance of being turned inside out, stunned, or accidentally teleported to the Himalayas - Teleportation that is able to be used as a regular, reliable movement mode that covers ground no faster than regular old walking or jogging, not as a long-range rapid transport, nor as a fortification-bypassing intrusion power.

What's the point of this sort of teleportation? After all, it seems to be stripping out all the "Fun" bits, for both the player (teleporting over and around all your GM's carefully placed puzzles and problems) and for the GM (chance to have the player teleport right into a situation they could have seen coming if they'd bothered walking, or waiting for the inevitable critical failure and a chance to cackle maniacally).

I've got a character in a D&D game with the ability to teleport 4 yards as a move action, at will, indefinitely (with all her magic items - without them she goes 1 yard per port). And having seen it in play for months, I can identify some benefits.

1) Pure Style. Being able to sneer at NPCs about how the petty bonds of time and space are beneath you is perfect for some characters; this is a source of endless entertainment for myself. Even if I'm really only bip-ing around a few yards at a time, it gives my gnome something amusingly trivial to be snooty about.

2) As good as short duration flight for bypassing some hazards or obstacles, without bypassing the entire fun of the adventure. Most GMs can forgive you for skipping over pits, traps, and up to the tops of short walls. Most GMs can't forgive you for teleporting into the heart of the supervillains/evil-high-priests/whatevers lair and skipping the rest of the adventure. Planning adventures around having a teleporter in the party takes special work - the teleport-walker mostly avoids that problem for the GM.

NB: A teleport-walker may be able to skip through some barriers - a barred gate doesn't block line of sight, glass doors or doors with windows may also count depending on the GM and/or exactly which limitations are on your power. But generally these are the kinds of barriers that pcs could eventually open on their own - splitting up the party so the teleporter can get mugged on the other side of the barrier while trying to find a way to open it is usually a GM-friendly tactic.

3) Opening up interesting, but mostly modest, combat tactics. It's good for penetrating an enemies front line, but is unlikely to get into their actual back ranks or completely out of reach of the front line fighters (if they're willing to retreat or abandon the front line....) It might bypass some Wait actions, chances to be Tripped/Armed Inderdicted, etc. but it's not going to deal with every Wait action, and unless the entire party can do it, you'll have to be very careful not to get yourself too isolated or you'll give the enemy a chance to shoot you in the back.

So I'm trying to price this out in GURPS, but I need help with some (almost all) of the modifiers.

The base is clearly Warp.
  • Gyroscopic is clearly required, and is about the only limitation I'm sure about :)
  • Range Limit canonically caps out at 10 yards for -50% but I'm looking for even shorter - 3 yards for -55% seem reasonable?
  • Normally Warp requires a lot of concentration time and a skill roll - but you can trade preparation time for skill penalties and reduce it down to "instant". I'm looking to fix this as "counts as movement for Move, Move and Attack, and All Out Attack" with no attached skill roll. There are no modifiers to do this simply. The only way around the roll-and-penalties situation that I can see is Cosmic: No Roll Required combined with just enough Reliable or some inverted version of Reliable to get the characters modified IQ-5ish+(Anti-)Reliable for 1 second down to an effective skill of 7 or less (to enable 1 Second and prevent No Time teleportation)... starts at +100%, for an IQ 10 character no further modifications are required.
  • ... But that would still require a Concentrate action and precludes Move and Attack and All Out Attacks, where the movement is provided by a teleport instead of running or flying or whatever. "Counts as movement" Is an unpriced enhancement, I'll pencil it in as +50% as a "cosmic", which if it removes the Concentrate requirements seems sort of reasonable.
  • Having to perceive the destination directly - not being able to use CCTV, ESP, scrying, etc OR to use your own memories to reach a location seems like a big limitation. Bigger if you can't teleport through "sealed" barriers, like glass doors, or require a minimum "gap" size beyond a peephole in order to "see" through something.
  • Add an optional Power modifier to taste.


Optional, and interesting to contemplate, is something to allow a "teleport step" - as in a 1-yard step that can be used for "Step and" actions, or in Retreating, or so-forth.

Even more speculatively, for higher "speed" teleport-walking, that might go to 2-yards and so forth, following the same progression as regular Move.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:13 AM   #2
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
The base is clearly Warp.
This might actually be simpler to build as Flight with an enhancement Doesn't Traverse Space (maybe +100%) and limitations to slow it down (-?%) and a harsh variant of Requires Surface from Powers p.50 (instead of every 5 seconds on any surface, make it every second and a surface you can stand on; I'd call it -60%).

Even if you don't want to build it as Flight, might be a nice cost comparison to a Warp build.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:16 AM   #3
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

You can get Teleport down to a free action, with max penalties. You still get your normal maneuver, including move if your maneuver allows it, so it counting as a step is probably a -5% nuisance effect, and counting as full move ought to be around double that.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:31 AM   #4
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

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Originally Posted by Dustin View Post
This might actually be simpler to build as Flight with an enhancement Doesn't Traverse Space (maybe +100%) and limitations to slow it down (-?%) and a harsh variant of Requires Surface from Powers p.50 (instead of every 5 seconds on any surface, make it every second and a surface you can stand on; I'd call it -60%).

Even if you don't want to build it as Flight, might be a nice cost comparison to a Warp build.
I agree, but I'd use Move or Walk on Air with Doesn't Traverse Space.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:32 AM   #5
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
  • Range Limit canonically caps out at 10 yards for -50% but I'm looking for even shorter - 3 yards for -55% seem reasonable?
RPK puts Reduced Range on top of Range Limit (Psionic Powers, pp. 68, 70) to reduce Warp down to 1 yard. A limit of 3-5 yards would be Range Limit, 10 yards, -50%; Reduced Range, ×1/2, -10%.

You won't need it for Warp, but interestingly RPK also uses Nuisance Effect in Psionic Powers (pp. 36, 40) to reduce range further than the maximum ×1/10 for Reduced Range. He prices a further halving of range at -10% just like Reduced Range would if it kept going.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:49 AM   #6
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

I know building it RAW is a lot of fun, but eyeballing it my gut says somewhere around 10-20 pts. As you said, most of the game breaking is gone.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:53 AM   #7
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

Warp (Cannot Exceed Basic Move, -2%;Cosmic, No Roll Required, +100%; Extra Carrying Capacity, Extra-Heavy, +50%; Gyroscopic, +10%; Limited Extra Time, None, -50%; Limited Range, 10 yards, -50%; No Second-Hand Viewing, -20%; Reliable 7, +35%; Temporary Disadvantage, Reduce Move by 1 yard per yard teleported, -28%) [140 or 59 with multiplicative modifiers]

Limited Extra Time, None is based on Limited Range, 10 yards. No Second-Hand Viewing is vaguely based on Accessibility.

Cannot Exceed Basic Move is priced negligibly, because it's easy enough to get around, and you already have the range limit. Temporary Disadvantage is calculated the same way as GURPS Powers suggests calculating Costs Fatigue for Variable attacks (p. 101). The maximum Move loss is 10, so the average loss is 5.5. The value is -5% per Move 1 lost, so that's -28%.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:55 AM   #8
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

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Warp (Cannot Exceed Basic Move, -2%;Cosmic, No Roll Required, +100%; Extra Carrying Capacity, Extra-Heavy, +50%; Gyroscopic, +10%; Limited Extra Time, None, -50%; Limited Range, 10 yards, -50%; No Second-Hand Viewing, -20%; Reliable 7, +35%; Temporary Disadvantage, Reduce Move by 1 yard per yard teleported, -28%) [140 or 59 with multiplicative modifiers]

Limited Extra Time, None is based on Limited Range, 10 yards. No Second-Hand Viewing is vaguely based on Accessibility.

Cannot Exceed Basic Move is priced negligibly, because it's easy enough to get around, and you already have the range limit. Temporary Disadvantage is calculated the same way as GURPS Powers suggests calculating Costs Fatigue for Variable attacks (p. 101). The maximum Move loss is 10, so the average loss is 5.5. The value is -5% per Move 1 lost, so that's -28%.
This must be a wrong build because it takes a trivial benefit and makes it cost more than having vanilla Warp.
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Old 11-29-2011, 08:57 AM   #9
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

Isn't there a "where I could logically get to" limitation/enhancement in Horror for Warp that replaces skill penalties with tools/effort required to get there. For your purposes this will mostly be no modifier, unless you're jumping to the tops of walls or through small holes in doors or through closed (but easily openable) gates etc. I cant recall the exact mechanics and costs as I'm AFB atm, but it might be worth looking at.
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Old 11-29-2011, 09:00 AM   #10
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Default Re: Teleport-walking?

It's important to remember that Warp does not require a Concentrate maneuver. Warp is a free action that requires an IQ-10 success roll, but preparation can give you a compensating bonus. If you are not allowed to prepare beforehand, I'd call that Can't Prepare, -10%. Combine that with Reliable or Cosmic, No Die Roll Required for whatever level of reliability you want.

Only being able to use it during movement maneuvers, but having it use up your movement, I'd call Accessibility, movement maneuvers, -10%; Temporary Disadvantage, Basic Move -5, Taboo Trait (Basic Move), -25% (I'd leave it at that for a grab-and-go pre-build ability, but adjust the disadvantage level as necessary if you're building for a particular character).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
  • Having to perceive the destination directly - not being able to use CCTV, ESP, scrying, etc OR to use your own memories to reach a location seems like a big limitation. Bigger if you can't teleport through "sealed" barriers, like glass doors, or require a minimum "gap" size beyond a peephole in order to "see" through something.
I'd just keep it simple and call this Vision-Based, -20%.

If you can only teleport to places that you could get to by normal movement, this is Accessibility, Only places you could walk/climb to, given time, -20% (GURPS Horror, p. 20) or RPK's Must Traverse Distance, -30%. The former allows you to get to places that would usually require opening locked doors, etc., while the latter is for just regular movement.

Last edited by munin; 11-29-2011 at 09:04 AM.
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