Can we explain why teleportation magic doesn't exit?

Each spell is either a manipulation of energy or matter, never a creation of new matter save the heal spells and that is just using energy to force the body's natural healing to speed up to abnormal levels. You might be able to perform teleportation with technology, but as of yet, magic cannot perform that function.

'But what about the elemental spells? You create fire/ice/lightning and fling it at people.'
Yeah, but fire is just the combustion of the air, ice is just the freezing of the ambient humidity in the air and lightning is just another form of pure energy.

This is my take on it.

And the elemental effects go away after the spell is cast.

As for teleportation, there is always Harlequin's "Disappear onto the astral plane" trick, and anybody with enough power, I suspect, could do that. The problem is teleportation through someplace that isn't the material plane, and isn't the astral plane, and it is there that a magician has no magic. So if you don't have any magic, then there is no spell.

If the "exit" wasn't a typo, then the problem is that you go to a place outside the astral plane, which has distance, and outside the physical plane, which also has distance, to a place between that doesn't have magic, so you can't put yourself back. You start out in the physical plane, which has the astral plane backing it up, but you don't have any magic in the other place to bring you back.

You can't teleport because FASA didn't want to make D&D with guns.

hyzmarca, why do you hate fun?

I think the challenge to making a teleportation spell will be finding another plane with magic on it that isn't the metaplanes. Obviously, if the challenge was to put yourself on the metaplanes, then we'd have teleportation magic already, since we can already pretty much go there, and there's magic on the metaplanes.

Maybe if you managed to take a sacrificial subject with you and kill them to power the spell taking you back...

Speaking of which, somebody should explain the metaplanes.

Maybe they're places of magic shaped by human belief. Maybe they're the source of all life, and therefore magic. And maybe they're just in our heads; after all, people can't journey together there unless they're part of the same magical group or are put there by the same astral gateway.

The actions of Darke, however, and the immortal elves combating him, support the notion that the metaplanes are indeed real.

Harlequin did teleport at the end of his first campaign book. No explanation of how he did it though. There could also be nasty complications: I imagine having your teleport cut short by a Barrier would be unpleasant. Don't really have that problem in D&D.

That depends on your definition of "teleport".

~J

It's my understanding that magic requires the Mage to visualize the spell effect through the Spell Formula and then impose it upon the world using Mana, so perhaps true Teleportation (Not physically entering the Astral or taking a Metaplanar Shourtcut, although the effects would be virtually the same to a Mundane bystander.) isn't possible because the entirely of Space/Time can't be envisioned in a Spell Formula that the meta-human mind could ever hope to use?

Just food for thought...

Karma

Karma is metaphysical change. It is both spiritual energy and information, and neither, all at once. It is mana captured and made consumable. It is completely modular and adaptable; a karma point can be used for anything.

The reason spirits can't gain karma on their own is because they are, on a basic level, cut off from the manasphere. Unlike NameGivers, which have bodies, they have no other way of preventing their essence from bleeding across astral space, dissipating them into nothingness. NameGivers exert a sort of gravity, so that very little outside of karma drain takes it away from them. Spirits lack this pull, and are unable to afford opening themselves to the astral plane in this manner.

FWIW, even purely astral Horrors have karma.

~J

Well, maybe they can exist without that barrier unlike spirits.

In Street Magic and the previous Magic Handbooks, there are rules for spell creation, though I'm not up to re-iterating them here. One of those though, is something to the effect that space-time can't be affected in any major way.

As for spells, the canon also states that each person's expression of a spell is different. One mage might cast manabolt and visualize it as a ball of light fired at the target while another might visualize a flaming skull hurtling at the target. A healing spell might be seen as a blue light infusing the wound and repairing them while another might actually visualize the wound closing up and healing in a more clinical sense. This is how a mage can be identified by the astral signiature of their spell.

True, although if I'm remembering correctly, the reason that Space/Time can't be twisted into weird 4th Diminsional knots by magic has never been explained so I'm offering my theory as to why. *winks*

Because mana isn't extradimensional, being utterly limited to this plane? I mean, life's limited to space and time, so it seems reasonable that magic's limited to time and space. If there were a way to contain a pocket of mana with you and bring a miniature manasphere wherever you went, now that would solve the problem.

And I don't think Horrors and spirits are the same thing. I think spirits are much less cohesive than Horrors, which I theorize absorb energy from their surroundings like a vacuum, while spirits breath energy like fish do to water.

Disciplines

In Earthdawn, a thief was not just a thief, he was a Thief. Same for Skyraiders and every other discipline. Whatever you did back then was your life, your very being. Now why was that?

I think it's because everything was infused with at least a bit of magic. Everything. Thieves could take lockpicks out of the air, cooks could start small fires in wood, etc. etc. It's the same reason why traditions are so important to magicians; magic is worked on not just by our hands and our thinking caps, but by the most basic parts of our beings. So when you did something back then, in order to keep up with everybody, you had to use magic, and to use magic, putting your heart into it isn't enough, your heart has to BECOME it.

What about all the health spells, or the spells that you can cast that are limited to only yourself? And what about magician's way adepts, who can make it so that the only thing special about them is the bigass fireball they can throw without drain?

The existence of magician's way adepts pretty much leaves only "There are permanent astral constructs that are semi-autonomous."

Plus, if the "visions are the core of how we use magic," then there'd be a lot more mystic adepts. Everybody has both visions of the world and themselves. Much of a magician's careers is spent understanding and mastering themselves, and much of an adept's career is spent looking at the world. Neither of them exclusively looks inwardly or outwardly.

The universal magical theory hermetics have proven that to a degree the method/tradition of a magician is a lens through which mana is formed and this lens can be changed. (mages being able to summon nature spirits)
So if there is a astral shadow that allows them to create astral constructs, these constructs are altered by their perceptions.
Another question to apply to this is do the European witches use of a spell matrix fall mid way between a spell construct and a metamagic construct like quickening?
(Though this stems heavily from Earthdawn's style/use of magic.)

Their all wrong that what I love about this game.