Do caster out of combat options matter?

[Unoriginal]

I have to say that a lot of people tend to overestimate the actual power of those out-of-combat options, when they talk about them.

Take the spell Teleport, for example.

Teleport can affect the caster + 8 willing targets at max. It cannot affect unwilling targets, and 9 individuals is a big number for a PC group but that's still fairly limited as far as transportation go.

Teleport has a 100% chances of success if and only if you have the code for a permanent circle or a tiny chunk of the place where you want to go.

Teleport has only 75% chances of success for a place the caster is very familiar with, including somewhere they're currently watching. It means that statistically, 1 out of 4 teleportation attempts to somewhere you're very familiar with will go wrong one way or another.

You have 12% chances the teleport is merely Off Target. How bad is Off Target? Well, it depends on what the dice says and the environment is at the end point, but you're ending up anywhere between 1% and 100% of the distance of your teleportation away from the end point you wanted to go to.

To put things in perspective, Waterdeep is about 500 miles from Baldur's Gate. In other words, attempting that Teleport has a significant chance of ending up with you thrown several dozens if not hundreds of miles in the Sea of Swords.

You have 8% chances the teleport brings you to a Similar Area. You arrive in any place that is "visually or thematically similar to the target area", with the spell description stating that while it's usually the closest area of that type, there is no guarantee to it and you could end up anywhere so long as it's on the same plane.

And you have 5% chances a Mishap happens. A Mishap will hurt everyone, though not a *huge* amount of damage for any character who can cast Teleport on their own, but keep in mind a Mishap means you have to re-roll on the table too and take that result. So, yeah.


Now take the "Seen Casually" chances. 56% chances to be on target, so slightly better than a coin toss. The mishap chances are now 33%, or 1 out of 3 attempts to use Teleport. 9% chances to end up in a similar area, anywhere on the plane. And off target is also 9%.

I dunno about you, but to me that makes clear teleportation via the Teleport spell is a *very* unreliable transportation method, unless you have a token of the place or the number for the right circle.

And yet, that unreliability is almost never talked about when people bring up how Teleport change the group's travel.

To be clear, I've no doubt Teleportation *does* change the group's travel, but let's not act as if getting where you want to go either demands to set things up in advance or is up to luck and DM's arbitration.