My fellow players have a Teleportarium onboard their ship, which according to the book is able to send them many thousands of kilometres away. Has anyone come up some rules which control the over use of the Teleportarium, or its limitations, which at present dont seem to be much. I am finding that my sessions are slightly turning into yet another Beam me up Scotty cliche. Any ideas apart from the obvious solar activity excuse, or magnetic storms in high orbit would be grateful.

In reading the listing in the book, it seems like a get out of jail free card. If you don't want it to work for story purposes, just tell them it wont work (sorry DM privledge) or that it is too dangrous to risk using it. I'd only do this when its important for the story or logical for some reason. They have after all paid for it and chosen it for their ship, because it was game element they wanted to explore.

I have read that teleport use normally requires Teleport Homers or Locator Beacons so I suppose that the use of Teleport Homers and Locator Beacons would be used within Imperium ports, or such facilities that date back thousands of years. This would grant a more safer use of the Teleportarium and would also mean that the players arrive at a specific location within the Spaceport or City. This location would be under control of Port Authorities, of the Administratum, or the Adeptus Mechanicus. And considering that teleport technology has long been lost from the Imperium, it wouldn't be commonly found on most worlds.

With a blind use of the Teleportarium - arriving without the benefits of a Homer device or Locator Beacon I think that a Challenging +0 Tech Use roll would be required. And I liked the idea of mishap rolls with 95-00 invoking warp Phenomena effects and the possibility of Perils of the warp.

I know that most Gamemasters are interested in the rule use of Hit and Run and Murder Servitors, but I feel the use of the Teleportarium out of ship combat and in game to be a considerable factor, of cause the final rulings over its abuse or control are clearly in the hands of the Gamemaster. But Knowing players, once they see the evident dangers of its use without the Homer or Locator Beacons I feel that they will use it more sparingly.

Into The Storm has an option that limits its out of combat use to once per game session without the use of a teleport homer. Keep in mind that teleportariums can't punch through a void shield and would need a pretty decent success on an augur scan to lock on to a specific location within a large underground fortress or somesuch. I used to institute a 1d10+10 round countdown on teleport activation as the ship had to recite the appropriate cants and litanies of activation.

I'm toying with a house rule: each time you teleport, WP roll or gain 1 corruption point. Exposure to the warp aint fun after all!

Random google trawling turned up http://darktrader.wikidot.com/equipment

Teleportarium Mishaps

Roll 1d100 and apply the result from this table

My group has a Teleportarium but rarely uses it due to it being a notoriously dangerous and cantankerous piece of equipment. If in danger of overuse I'd indeed go for the rule in 'Into the Storm' and make sure that they realize that a Dark Ages of Technology piece of tech is difficult to maintain and keep in perfect working order. Repair tests by the Magos and Forbidden Lore tests galore!

Best tip I got: talk to the players, that it really is not the 'mood' of the game.

I was under the impression that teleporters were not good for normal people, hence you seldom see their use by anyone other than space marines and then, usually, only terminators. Their primary use being for moving high security sealed cargo.

My group doesn't have access to a teleporter currently. If they had taken one as their option I was going to rule that it is for emergency use only. With the restriction of:

Teleportation Sickness:
Any living creature using the teleporter without being in a void sealed suit or container must make a Challenging (+0) Toughness test or gain 1d10-TB levels of fatigue. This does not affect Servitors.

Certainly discuss with your players.

I like the idea of a teleportarium being an exceptional cantankerous piece of kit. Maybe tended by a few utterly crazy tech-priests who barely understand its workings (but nonetheless know far more than any OTHER tech-priests about such things). Teleporting once every now and then is not a problem. Let them make an occasional escape (although require teleport homers for successful extraction. But if they use it too often, start introducing the error table posted by Errant. Even better would be to tell the players something along the lines of

"Ok, having used the teleportarium twice within an hour, the ancient and eldritch machinery starts to give under the strain of handling such collosal and deadly energies. Your crazy tech-priests leap into action to try and save the revered machine, oh, and the people currently being teleported. I'm gonna roll a D100. If i get under 25%, i roll on a mishaps table"

Your players will, guaranteed, start doing anything to avoid the mishap table. Even if they haven't seen it. The 25% rule will also add some massive tensions as they imagine their beloved PCs being turned inside out. If they use it again without a good cooldown period, up the roll to 50%. They will get the message.

Thanks everyone, all your comments have been a lot of help, and I believe that with the aide of your ideas the grand Teleportarium will only be used in dire times, as is fitting with the setting. Thanks to Errant for the mishap table which is just perfect, and I liked the WP roll, it will make them think before its use.

"Beam me up" becomes something best left for that other game in the final frontier

Teleportariums already covered in-depth here:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Sna said:

Being one of Sna's players, the teleporter usually doesn't even get mentioned in any plans apart from the 'lets beam a leman russ/murder servitor over there'.

Secondly, I would not, ever, teleport into a situation(or out of) that I could walk/fly/drive out of(into). Once that dark eldar cruiser engines go kabloom though I'll take my emergency exit...

Rift said:

It deserves mentioning that the very loyal but highly superstitious House Guardsmen (including the group Arch Militant) are very distrustful of the thing, so even if they want to transport material through the Teleportatium the crews prefer to in by shuttle. It is a great mood-setter.

My players have a teleportarium in their ship but the use of it is really "controlled".

If you want to go somewhere you need to know how it's done (by scanning vith ship augur or auspex reading) with a scrutiny test and get as many DoS you can each 2DoS giving +10 to tech-use test, same way every 2 DoF -10 to the test.

If they already been there and one of the team member make a scrutiny test with an auspex the data collected there can be used for the teleportation.

Try to keep a listing for the different place already visited by your team and the succes they made.

If they want to be pick up by the teleportarium they need to get a personnal beacon and wait for 10 turn - DoS or +1 each 2 DoF of the tech-use roll from the operator. Failled roll do not stop the teleportation just get longer time to calibrate the machine spirit. +10 tech-use roll. Critical failure will delay the teleportation for 1d10 turn.

The beacon is a piece of equipement that can be stole, damage and/or destroy.

If they don't have the beacon they need to find any apparatus that can emit a signal. Then the technician roll scrutiny at +0 test to calibrate the teleportarium DoS or DoF will give bonus or malus to the tech-use at +0 roll to activate the teleportarium. Failure means an other try is needed more or less half a hour later.teleportation occur 10 -1 each 2DoS or +1 each DoF. Critical failure means the teleportarium need repair for a hour.

If they got nothing it's pretty hardcalibrate the teleportarium become a -10 to -30 depending where the players are(in the middle of aplain with nothing else or the centre of a hive spear. Success means a tech-use roll at -10 to activate the teleportarium, each DoF give -10 to the test. FAilure indicate the teleportarium just don't work and some repair have to be made more or less a hour.Critical failure Means that's something go wrong and roll peril of the warp +5 for each DoF.

Errant said:

I like this. I might make the first use free but any additional use in a single session risks this.

There is also a table from the "ancient" Rouge trader book, but It is so lethal that its basically fate point time as soon as you get a mishap (mostly concerned with getting put together wrong on arrival, cut in half, everyone is combined into a horrible monstrosity, you become mirrored (right handed -> left handed). Actually, mirrored dont seem to be in there...

The whole dying due to teleporter mishap thing rubs me the wrong way. If you make a teleporter deadly to use they wont use it, and if they do and you kill them off for it, well that was an exciting end to the campaign...

Teleporters are supposed to be really sought after because they are so useful. Putting certain limits on them such as they cant be used through shields makes sense and is supported by the fluff. But if you are going to put limits on the teleporter you should tell your players before they get it. Or allow them to get a different archeotech system to replace it.

I don't know about your campaigns but in mine archeotech components and teleporters in particular do not grow on trees. As the GM I control totally what is available for the players to get their hands on and if I let them have a teleporter (which I have not, even with their starting components) it is my job to deal with it. Would I let them get one eventually if they earn it.. sure but it is one of the penultimate pieces of archeotech out there, it is extremely powerful and I treat it as such.

In the game that I'm the Rogue Trader of, we use the Teleportarium sparingly, mainly due that having it is a large advantage in ship to ship combat and and dealing with many situations outside of regular combat. So we tend to keep the fact that we have one quiet to get a trump card available.

What about this change:

In Hit and Run situation, replace the Pilot test with a Tech Use test of the same difficulty. Modify it by the Void Shield rating instead of the Turret rating (I have to imagine the Emporer's void shields were in the high dozens, which would require a complete shutdown for Horus to penetrate, whereas modern ships would only interfere with the teleportarium slightly) with the same consequences for failure (4+ DoF = dead).

In non-combat, lower stress situations, still go with the Tech Use test, making it harder each time after the first per session. Accuracy without a teleport homer comes down to successes or failures, with something like 4 failures actually causing a mishap of some sort. Alternately someone could whip up something along the lines of the Fear table, with randomness modified by how badly you failed.

In my current campaign the Explorers have had access to a Teleportarium from the start. I have one house rule that keeps use of the device from getting out of hand and being used as a free escape card.

Any use of the Teleportarium outside of starship combat requires a successful Tech-Use test. This is generally no problem when the Explorers want to get into trouble. Two of them have high Tech-Use scores and often take extra time to make sure they get a firm "lock" on the target location. The trick comes when they want to use the Teleportarium to get out of trouble. A Tech-Use test is still required, but as the Explorers are in the thick of it it's left to their crew to operate the Teleportarium, meaning the Tech-Use test is based on Crew Competence. As a result, the Teleportarium becomes highly unreliable in a crisis situation. With a Competence of 30, it can take several combat rounds before the Explores are teleported out of the fray. There are things they can do to improve the odds such modify their vox-caster to function as a beacon (time consuming) or hold still in an open area to make locking on easier (almost impossible and prohibitively risky in a fight).

This house rule has served the campaign well. It's worked so well that when an archeotech teleportarium remote control was introduced into the campaign the Explorers did not become any more likely to use the teleportarium to escape a fray.

I personally take the view that the Teleportarium is a huge boon, but risky. As well as requiring the ships crew to successfully "lock on" as it were (chant relevent chants, annoint the machine with holy oils etc, not an immediate process, so no get out of imminent death free card there, unless you plan ahead. I like it when players have a plan.), I personally use the following house rule as well:

Perils of the Teleporatium

Every time the players use the Teleporatium roll 2 d10s. Anything but a double, nothing happens.

Double 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5: Each player must make a Willpower check (at +10) or suffer a random effect (roll once on Psychic phenomena with a -25 to the result, 0 or less is a feeling of "Wrongness" but with no other harm.) The effect only effects the character (so for instance, the Walls Bleed result causes the character to think the walls are bleeding. They're not actually bleeding, just in the characters mind. Of course some things, such as spectral breezes/chill etc will be visible to others by their effect on the character (windswept hair/frost etc).

Double 6, 7, 8 or 9: Each player must mke a Willpower check or suffer a random effect (roll once on Psychic phenomena).

Players with Psychic shielding get to roll versus its field rating (if successful, theres no effect), untouchables get the benefit of a +30 to their Willpower test (after all, they're much less likely to attract attention) and psykers take -20 to the Willpower test.

The Teleporatium itself is warded and reinforced against failures (I normally treat it as having armour 12 if anything goes drastically wrong, i.e a reality quake), but if it does take damage it will need time to be repaired (a lot of time, its not exactly like the tech priests will know what every bit even does, let alone have spare components)..

Quite simply put, it doesn't kill the Teleporatiums usefulness, but it does quite nicely discourage overuse. After all, if you keep insisting on travelling unprotected through warpspace, something bad is going to happen to you, be it something minor (like a few insanity points) or something a bit more serious (like a Daemon manifesting where you were standing, splat). And theres something mildly satisfying when something goes wrong, and a character doesn't materialise (Chronological Inconsistencies, peril of the warp table) or goes a bit "mad" for a while (i.e. they believe all the food they encounter is rotten, when it isn't)

We simply rule that ours is limited to one use per session, usually in teleporting FROM our ship to a target location we have scans of. To teleport back requires, as was mentioned, something that can emit a signal, but also requires us to be stationary, or rather not moving at vehicular speeds.

Once obtained, a teleport homer would allow us multiple uses per game session, and also negate the stationary requirement. All uses however require a Tech-use test, and quite often a Forbidden Lore [Archaeotech] roll too see if our Explorator can not only teleport us correctly but also to see how insane he goes from exposure to such an ancient and warp-dependant machine spirit.

PantsCommander said:

This isn't bad, but I find that Tech-Use Tests are laughably easy to a moderately experienced group. Our Explorator has 14,000 xp and that's gotten him Int 66, Tech-Use +20, Talented (Tech-Use), Electro-Graft Use, a Good-Craftsmanship MIU, and a Good-craftsmanship Utility Mechadendrite. Together, that makes it very hard for Tech-Use Tests to be challenging.

Your system has merit, but there need to be some added penalties that can suitably modify the difficulty considering how **** good characters can get in a fairly short time.

HappyDaze said:

Erm, thematically there would be very few interfaces that would allow all 3 types of interface to be used. Most MIU are very rare, so possibly usable with a teleportarium (what with it being so ancient), but the fiction tends to show mutually exclusive interface types.

As such i would rule that only the highest bonus can be used, rather than allowing the Explorator to stack all of their talents together. After all, with the advent of the Rite of Duplescence from Into the Storm, their class is the one with earliest access to an Unnatural attribute that applies to virtually all of their role's skills. Considering that the system has a built in cap of +/-60 on test difficulties unless you use expanded rules, i find this only fair.

I tend to limit teleportation not through the use of nasty mishaps (although the potential for them is there, if the roll gets botched enough),even by playing up the "it's a short jaunt through hell " aspect (although, again, I do have that aspect playing around in the background- teleporting too much stuff,teleporting too often will grant people CP,act as a Weaken Veil effect), but by pointing out that teleportation is not an exact science.

Most of the time, peoplemateriel sent via teleportarium will appear slightly above ground,stuck maybe knee-deep in it,there's no guarantee that they'll appear in an upright position relative to their destination (although exactly how awkward a position they appear in,how close to their destination is a slightly arbitrary function based on the number of successes they get on a Tech-Use test, representing how diligent they are with the calculations/prayers to the Machine God). Unless they've seriously botched the roll, arriving via teleporter is not directly hazardous to one's health, merely undignified, annoyingusually distracting- so attempts to use it as an assault tactic can backfire, if an enemy is not stunned by the shockwave of displaced air as you arrived: while Explorers pick themselves uppull themselves out of the displaced craters they've landed in, a bad guy can set up a heavy weapon pointed at themhose them with lead/las while they dust themselves off...

Coming back, that lack of fine accuracy can be a bit of a problem again: my personal house rule is that if it's a contiguous objectat least partly in the teleportarium field, the teleportarium will trybring it all. Even if it's a titan. This can result in Very Bad Things™ happening, ranging from the teleportarium overloadingshutting down/blowing up to the extra mass throwing off calculationscausing serious damage to people (whether they are successfully teleportednot) to everyone being stuck in the Warp.
Knowing this, my players have tended to either run to bare earth before calling for pick-up (so they only have to have the teleportarium chamber swept out after beaming aboard)deploy cutting/demolition charges to break up what they're standing onminimise the risk.
Obviously, using a teleport homera strong vox signal is a pre-requisite for their ship to lock onto them (they don't have Star Trek style everything-sensors aboard Imperial starships),making sure they have both an active homerseveral powerful vox beacons to make **** sure they're locked onto is preferable.