Steinbjorn: On the Strategic Deficiencies of Teleportation

Of all the schools of magic, it is arguable that none is more versatile than Conjuration. I would argue, in fact, that none is more versatile both in its ability to be very useful and it's ability to cause a massive amount of trouble.

On the one hand, it is nice to be able to, say, summon a wall of stone or iron between yourself and someone who would like to see you dead. It's nice to be under the protection of magical armor that doesn't get in the way of my casting. It's nice to be able to sling acid at things unaffected by magic, and see them actually harmed.

It's less nice to find one's self in debt to a vast, inter-planar criminal organization, desperately trying to spend your entire life paying a planar lord off for one minor service performed by a minor functionary of theirs, which was done in a half-assed fashion and didn't really accomplish what you wanted in the first place. Sure, there are conjurers who swear that they've made friends with extra-planar beings, but the whole thing just seems a bit dangerous.

But it's hard to write off the entire school of magic as being problematic, because of the bits that are so damn useful. It is not uncommon, however, to discover that even those useful bits can be extremely problematic.

Consider, for instance, teleportation.

On paper, a Greater Teleportation seems like a fine thing: think of a place, any place, anywhere on this plane of existence, and picture it clearly in your mind. Hold hands with a few closest friends, say a few words, blink, and you're there. Great, right?

Unless you happen to be fighting a vast, global conspiracy that's attempting to take over the world, and you find yourself teleported to a formerly friendly city that is now run by those very enemies you went to that city to avoid. And the friends you've brought with you are paladins, who couldn't lie if someone found them suspicious and questioned them, and one of them is my wife, so I can't even strongly recommend that she stay in the inn and not talk to anyone. And, should anyone get suspicious, it will be three against an entire city full of enemies, and if that happens the best that can be done is teleport back to a tiny, island where we will be under attack constantly until we either runaway, find someplace else to resupply, or die.

On a boat, we at least would not have been inside the city when we found all this out. Also, we could have taken everyone, and not just most.

Though, to be fair, if it weren't for the Enchantment school and it's psionic equivalent, we wouldn't be having this problem at all.