Global Teleportation: How?

[Sunday_Gamer]

Hey guys,

 

Global teleportation, that is to say, the ability to teleport pretty much anywhere on Earth. Granted this will land you with awesome super hero names like "Captain Mass Transit" and Cabman, but that's not here or there.

 

Easy enough to get the megascale teleport to cover the distance but how do you actually use it?

 

Cabman is in New-York... he needs to go to Paris. How does he do it?

 

Assuming he's never been to Paris before and he doesn't have 5000 floating locations bought to cover the globe with, what's he do?

 

My only two ideas are down to one. I wanted to use megascale clainsentience with scads of telescopic vision to get an impressive view from above and zoom in to whatever area (Paris in this case) find a suitable spot to land and whammo... but I can't use teleport through clairsentience and I can't set a floating location through clairsentience... kinda kicks that idea in the crotch.

 

Idea two was scads of telescopic N-Ray vision, with enough range to see right through the planet. Limited so the only thing it sees through is the planet itself.

 

I'm out of ideas... how can I pull this off?

 

Sunday.

[Robyn]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Assuming he's never been to Paris before and he doesn't have 5000 floating locations bought to cover the globe with' date=' what's he do?[/quote']

 

Perhaps a Megascaled Detect, location as named? Roll is based on how many people know it to be there, with that name? That way you can't find the Lost City but you can find the most popular areas easily, albeit with a half mile or so margin of error in teleporting there to any particular spot.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Why are you thinking you can't use Clairsentience to target Teleportation?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

I think you guys might be overcomplicating the issue.

 

Say the character has 10" of Teleport with at least 4 levels of megascale plus variable effect and safe blind teleport. This works out to 1"= 1,000 km.

 

Give the character some basic world geography and Bump of Direction and he should be able to reach any major city in 3-4 jumps using 'blind teleports'. Since this is really just a plot device power (the character can't teleport to Times Square in NY but he could definitely reach 'some part' of NY) it's not that big a deal.

 

my 2 1/2 cents

[Sunday_Gamer]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

p141 of the 5th Ed book states: Clairsentience, even when a targetting sense, cannot establish line of sight. (Barring special GM permission)

 

Therefore I cannot teleport to a location I am seing through clairsentience. My only choice is therefore to use the clairsentience to set a floating location and THEN teleport... however:

 

Fixed Location definitions under teleport on page 233 says "He cannot study a new location via clairsentience unless the GM permits it.

 

So really... assuming the GM does NOT... what are my other options?

 

Sunday

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

At risk of sounding sarcastic ('cause I don't mean to), if the GM isn't going to allow you to use Clairsentience to target a global Teleport power, he or she probably isn't going to allow you to have the global Teleport power at all. So it's probably a moot point.

 

Using Clairsentience is definitely to most reasonable path. 5ER itself does that in the "Television Teleport" example power on page 233.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

If the GM okays Clairsentience to set Floating Locations, there's your answer. If not, try Safe Blind Teleport, Bump of Direction and a really large AK: Earth Skill (in the realm of 20-).

[Zeropoint]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

In his initial writeup, Special Agent Trent had a PK multipower slot that was 7 inches of teleport, safe blind teleport, x2048 non-combat multiplier. Yes, you read that right: times two thousand forty-eight. It might have been a little more expensive than using Megascale to get the same distance, but there was a much smaller margin of error.

 

For long-distance travel, he'd simply fly up a couple hundred feet (because it sucks to teleport right in front of a speeding truck), make his best guess as to distance and direction, and go. If he was off, he'd correct and teleport again.

 

But, he still drove to work every morning, because commuting via superpowers is something a superhero would do.

 

Zeropoint

[tesuji]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Buy some long range n-ray vision, like say by a lot of telescoping sense bonuses for it. Assuming your teleport is planned to move you to/from more or less big waypoints and not "into 1412 seventh street" you can probably look for and find your destination close enough fairly quickly.

 

Sure, sometimes lead or whatever other effect you choose will get in the way, but that might give you an idea for a lim on the teleport power itself, one the Gm might be very happy to see given the potential scope of the power. giving your Gm handles to help keep things in line is a good approach when asking for really scaled up things he might be unsure of.

 

Again, depending on your SFX, if the Nray power tyhing is really meant to be "flawless teleport" then your Gm would likely be really easily convinced to allow a lim on the nray vision and telescoping sense for "only to target teleport, not to actually "look around"" weighing in at easily -1 to -2 given the usual potency of "look around" n-ray vision.

 

I might buy this with my "not see thru" being something like "force fields and anything i cannot teleport thru" or something similar.

 

 

 

EDIT: at 13K KM diameter for earh, if my math is correct, you need 21 doses of telescopic sense "for N-ray vision sense only" to offset all the range penalties. At 1 pt each for a single sense, thats only 21 plus the N-Ray vision cost to get your targetting.

 

Depending on SFX, some limitations such as concentration to start, endurance cost, inc endurance cost, extra time to start and such can reduce the price for this if need be (and again provide your Gm with handles which might move him away from all his saying no to Gm permission items.)

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Standing back from the mechanics, however, how many characters in the source material seem to need these extrasensory abilities to use their world-spanning movement powers?

 

I'm inclined to handwave the sennsory abilities. The power is hardly a gamebreaker - it's a mass transit utility power that explains how the character(s) get to the adventure site, not a combat dealbreaker.

 

Plus, if you tell me I need a hugely expensive sensory suite to use my Teleport, what will you tell the guy with Megascale Teleport Usable as an attack? If Capt Mass Transit is at risk of materializing in front of a bus, or 100" in the air, so are Send Them to the Cornfield Man's targets.

 

This isn't to say CMT can Teleport to Dr. Destroyer's hidden base, but locating Paris isn't that diofficult a task if you can access a globe or a public library.

[OddHat]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Using Clairsentience is definitely to most reasonable path. 5ER itself does that in the "Television Teleport" example power on page 233.

 

Yup. The exception is right there in the rulebook. The rule against LOS through Clair powers is meant to make snipers more expensive and prevent possible scenario breaking power use; if a GM wants LOS Clair in his campaign, it's perfectly viable.

 

If the GM won't allow Clairsentience for this, use Safe Blind Teleport, Bump of Direction, Absolute Range Sense, Navigation, and a few AK (World, Major Cities, Major Landmarks, etc). Make the initial jumps as an attack using a non-targetting sense at 1/2 OCV. If the GM says no to that and won't offer his own solution, he's not going to allow the power at all.

[OddHat]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Standing back from the mechanics

 

Not obsess pointlessly over mechanics?!? Think in terms of the source material? That's just crazy talk.

 

[Bloodstone]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

For the record, N Ray Vision and enough Telescopic vision to see right through the earth would cost a base of 73 pts.

 

According to my spread sheet, that's 42 levels of Telescopic for Sight Group (63 pts) and then 10 pts for the N-ray vision.

 

'Course, this is the ability to look up/through the skirts of girls in Asia while sitting in NYC traffic jams, so it may well be worth it

[Outsider]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

The real question is, once you have enough mass adders to teleport the globe, does it take all the people on it along?

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

The real question is' date=' once you have enough mass adders to teleport the globe, does it take all the people on it along?[/quote']Only if you also buy it Usable As Attack and Area Effect.

[Outsider]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Exactly... seems like a good "kill everyone" power. Well, except the few who have a bunch of Life Support...

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Exactly... seems like a good "kill everyone" power. Well' date=' except the few who have a bunch of Life Support...[/quote']Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? It's cheaper to kill everyone on Earth than it is to not kill them.

 

 

And you have to buy "Usable As Attack" if you don't want them to die.

[OddHat]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? It's cheaper to kill everyone on Earth than it is to not kill them.

 

 

And you have to buy "Usable As Attack" if you don't want them to die.

 

At which point, the sane GM interprets the power as automatically carrying the inhabitants of the ported world along.

 

Not that "Sane" and "GM" really go together that well.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Buy some long range n-ray vision, like say by a lot of telescoping sense bonuses for it. Assuming your teleport is planned to move you to/from more or less big waypoints and not "into 1412 seventh street" you can probably look for and find your destination close enough fairly quickly.

 

Sure, sometimes lead or whatever other effect you choose will get in the way, but that might give you an idea for a lim on the teleport power itself, one the Gm might be very happy to see given the potential scope of the power. giving your Gm handles to help keep things in line is a good approach when asking for really scaled up things he might be unsure of.

 

Again, depending on your SFX, if the Nray power tyhing is really meant to be "flawless teleport" then your Gm would likely be really easily convinced to allow a lim on the nray vision and telescoping sense for "only to target teleport, not to actually "look around"" weighing in at easily -1 to -2 given the usual potency of "look around" n-ray vision.

 

I might buy this with my "not see thru" being something like "force fields and anything i cannot teleport thru" or something similar.

 

As a GM, I would allow Clairsentience to establish LOS before making a player jump through hoops like this just for the ability to port off to Paris every other weekend.

 

As a few others have suggested, it's probably more appropriate, and consistant with the source material, that such characters not have any special senses for "finding" their far off location. It's one of the reasons I suggested Safe Blind Teleport earlier. If you've been there before, you can teleport there with a reasonable amount of accuracy, usually appearing in the most familiar location in the area. If you've never been there, there's a good chance you'll be off by quite a bit, but hopefully in sight of your target. But in any case, with SBT you'll get there without appearing in a wall (and unless the character is really clumsy, not in the middle of traffic... at least not without enough time to get off the road before splat time).

[tesuji]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

 

Standing back from the mechanics, however, how many characters in the source material seem to need these extrasensory abilities to use their world-spanning movement powers?

thats why I am looking for my option to be relatively cheap and not useful as a "sensory ability" except as a teleport sense.

 

Basically, if someone can pop all over the world, whatever "targetting system" he is using needs to be represented easily, cheaply and so on.

 

It isn't something i would handwave because i wouldn't be inclined to get into "cannot go anywhere" as a lim.

 

I'm inclined to handwave the sennsory abilities. The power is hardly a gamebreaker - it's a mass transit utility power that explains how the character(s) get to the adventure site, not a combat dealbreaker.

life support doesn't need to breath isn't a game breaker either, but i charge for it if its useful in the campaign.

 

I would charge someone 5cp for a single floating location, I ought to charge them for not needing fixed or floating locations period.

 

By my count, the cost for 21 levels of telescoping n-ray is 15 for n-ray plus 21 for the tele. If i allow -2 for "only for teleporting, not to look around" which seems very reasonable given the actual power of looking thru things whenever you want, that drops to...5+7 = 12 cp. if i am whimpy and say -1 then its only 17 cp.

 

Compare those to their weight in floating anf=d fexed points.

 

Thats not out of whack, IMO.

[OddHat]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

Try this instead of N-Ray with limits:

 

38 Global Floating Location: Detect Teleport Target Location A Class Of Things 11- (Unusual Group), Range, Sense, Targeting, Telescopic: +32

 

The N-Ray aspect of the sense is considered a freebie, as per other exotic senses. As a GM, I'd say that this could find any location that the character knows about (a simple AK roll, a picture or having been there once would do), but that's just a GM's call.

[radioKAOS]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

USPD II uses Clairsentience for this build. Modifiers for -Only to find teleportation locations...

 

The key I think is the addition of targeting to the Clairsentience.

[OddHat]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

USPD II uses Clairsentience for this build. Modifiers for -Only to find teleportation locations...

 

The key I think is the addition of targeting to the Clairsentience.

 

Yup. There are multiple examples of official power builds that wave the "no LOS/No Targetting through Clairsentience" rule. LOS Clair should probably have been given a STOP sign rather than the "GM's Permission Only" note; fewer posters would get bent out of shape over it.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

thats why I am looking for my option to be relatively cheap and not useful as a "sensory ability" except as a teleport sense.

 

Basically, if someone can pop all over the world, whatever "targetting system" he is using needs to be represented easily, cheaply and so on.

 

It isn't something i would handwave because i wouldn't be inclined to get into "cannot go anywhere" as a lim.

 

life support doesn't need to breath isn't a game breaker either, but i charge for it if its useful in the campaign.

 

What do you charge for 1" = 1,000 km megascale if the character has no ability to target where he will land? I have no problem with the concept that you need to pay points to get a benefit. However, if you have paid points, you should get a benefit. Without the targeting sense, what is the benefit of that Megascale Teleport?

 

Unlike the ability to breathe water, which stands alone.

[tesuji]

Re: Global Teleportation: How?

 

What do you charge for 1" = 1,000 km megascale if the character has no ability to target where he will land?

 

MAJOR NOTE: the power you are describing is what... 3 ap?

How useful is it supposed to be?

lets see...

 

1" teleport, +1/4 scalable, +1.75 for 100000KM = 6 cp for teleporting worldwide.

 

Color me silly but for the price of a single floating location you get world wide teleport and if the Gm handwaves the sensroy hit thats it?

 

First thought, to teleport to a fixed or floating teleport point.

 

Teleport allows you to buy the ability to teleport farther than you can see or into areas you cannot see, and this creates blind teleport options.

 

Teleport also allows you to purchase directly the ability to have safe places to teleport to even if out of sight. These are done by buying fixed or floating points and cost points.

 

This "teleport sense" we ar describing here is simply a sort of "universal floating point" where you can go anywhere you know of or have been etc. That ability sounds better than a floating point and better than a fixed point so... it should cost more.

 

or do you handwave the floating and fixed point costs too?

 

Well, if you mean the bought without the +1/4 scale down, so he can only teleport 100km period, then i would say thats a great example of a deliberately built-to-fail power as we cannot uually see 100km.

 

Just like i can buy N-ray vision (cannot see thru air) and effectively have that sense be blinded almost all the time.

 

if the power were bought sensibly, as the same power +1/4 scalable, then he could use it for long range teleports wherever he could see and then some blind teleports.

 

but simply put, "Percieving where you are going" HERO 5er pg 264 describes the issues of using megamovement in general without some special sensory power and recommends using some form of megascaled targetting sense or you run into problems of, well, running into things.

 

So, following those guidelines, someone with mega running 2ould need to pay points for a megasense to see where e is going or risk getting pancaked.

 

I don't see a compelling reason to charge the runner for it and let the teleporter get a pass on the cost for his megascaled movement by handwaving it.

 

or do you handwave the sensory needs for all the other megascaled senses for movements too?

 

I have no problem with the concept that you need to pay points to get a benefit. However, if you have paid points, you should get a benefit. Without the targeting sense, what is the benefit of that Megascale Teleport?

Again, if bought reasonably it is a useful power. It can be bought to be useless, like say buying NND Eb with the common defense being "has body", but you don't have to. One could buy megascale running and have such a high risk of slamming into objects that it was life threatening... but thats why he buys the sense for it to.

 

with either fixed or floating points or a "can see that far range" like say 1"=1km" megascale teleport isn't useless as bought. Its a perfectly fine power for its extremely cheap cost.

 

Consider, how useful is 100000km 1" non-scalable teleport on earth without LS for living in space since anywhere 100000km from a point on earth is in space?

 

simply put, your example is a good example for showing "you can build useless powers in HERO if you want to" not an example of "reason why teleport should not require some point cost for "anywhere on earth".

 

Unlike the ability to breathe water, which stands alone.

 

Megascale as an advantage is built to cover a wide range of powers and levels. It as a single advantage covers everything from 1km to astronomical distances.

 

the baseline they chose was "do not include in the base cost the sensory powers needed" and since you might not need those at low distances like 1"=1km or 1"= 100m". They could have chosen to include those costs and then require the 1"=1Km boys to buy it off as a lim, but they chose to take the lowest version and let you, the player or GM, add th other things needed for the high end.

 

Note the decision you would have went with maybe? Seems reasonable to me.

 

But simply put, if ai am gonna charge you 1 cp each for "can teleport to my basement, can teleport to my girlfriend, and can teleport to my dad's house" as fixed points... then I ain't gonna tell the guy bext to you he can teleport anywhere in the world for free.

 

Charging somewhere around the price of three floating points or fifteen fixed points (or some combo in between) for "going anywhere" sounds about right to me.

 

YMMV.