10% dimensional teleport doesn't seem that crippling at all - what am I missing?

[Plane]

Dimension Book 11 (Dyval) page 60's right column describes the natural abilities of the Imp, a lesser resident of Dyval.

In it the low 10+1/lvl teleportation ability is lamented as a great trageddy...

"which means Imps typically rely on others to take them from one dimension or world to another"

That alone is suspect... like yeah it might take 10 attempts to get a success but it seems like you can still manage that independently...

Furthermore...

"an Imp who has gotten separated from his companions, is likely to be stuck on that world until someone sends him away or the Imp takes a leap of faith through a Rift."

I don't understand how this would work at all unless an imp was in a world with strong dimensional fabric which can induce a penalty of up to -30% on dimensional teleports - if they bottom out at 0% then they can't bruteforce it...

But there are plenty of neutral fabrics which don't penalize it, or even "weak" fabrics which give a bonus to teleport...

In fact you can get up to a maximum of +20% to teleport TO a weakest-fabric dimension, ie 31% at first level, which could offset -30% in penalties even if you're beginning in a maximum-strong-fabric dimension, giving you a 1-in-100 chance of teleporting out of it.

Then once you're in the weak-fabric dimension it should be easier to teleport from there to other weak dimensions (+40% total) so having been to a place like this seems very important.

Dark Conversions has these teleports take 1 melee action and be attempted once per round, so at 4 per minute, even a 1 in 100 chance should be escapable within 25 minutes.

I'm just not seeing why this would be such a big problem for imps. The Hades lesser demon Couril (DB10p52) have the same skill in dimensional teleporting yet no whiny note like this...

[Grazzik]

You are right. Though context matters. Cowardly demons may want to d-teleport from danger, particularly if they were summoned and escaped the battle of wills. Circumstances may be that to spend 25 minutes trying to squeeze out a d-hop may not be the most prudent thing to focus on. So they feel trapped. As beings of emotion, this feeling may be amplified to a level of personal tragedy.

That said a well traveled imp with a solid awareness of the megaverse should have no problems using some of the dimensional backroads, as you suggest.

[Plane]

Ah I understand that much, since random destinations could be dangerous you might want to reliably be able to exit there within around a minute instead of possibly three.

I had thought about a situation like "what if I end up in a strong-fabric dimension by accident" but Hades says demons can't teleport to dimensions they didn't visit before, so having been there they might have found a way to get some lore about the fabric.

In theory Shifters are the ones who sense that, but you'd think with experiencing going to/from a place over time a teleporter might gradually understand intuitively how thin/thick the membrane is.

Like a bunch of imps sharing notes "wow that Heroes Unlimited Earth sure is difficult to get to and from" vs "wow it's super easy to teleport to earth"

Imps are 3ft tall, can fly at 18mph (spd 22+) and prowl at 65% while hovering so I'd imagine they would have some skill at escaping initial dangers...

I notice that have WP knife so it makes me wonder when they teleport if they're able to bring weapons along or not... teleporting never went into much detail in RCC descriptions.

I might check the spell, there might be some 'works like the spell' note as a precedent?

[glitterboy2098]

One thing to keep in mind is "what is the failure state of a dimensional teleport". Because it is possible that rather than "nothing happens, try again", something bad happens to them. Like they make the teleport, but don't arrive in the universe they were aiming for. Or they fail, and suffer some sort of harmful backlash. Etc.

also it is worth noting that the "10%" is deceptive.. first, because it isn't a case of "roll ten times, and you'll get it".. the odds don't work that was in palladium and the 'take twenty' approach doesn't apply. it is very possible to roll 10, 20, even a hundred times and never roll what you need.
because that 10% is the target number on a percentile die, not the probability. the actual odds of rolling a 01 through 10 on a pair of percentile dice is (iirc) about 1%. which means that they could easily take many hundreds of tries for them to get where they are going. that is a lot of work, and a lot of failure states.

[Grazzik]

Not sure of the math on that. Not my strong suit, but would be very surprised to hear that it is not a chance of 10% using two D10 dice to determine percentiles. Every roll is independent of all others and the odds do not change.

If you use 1d100, the odds are literally 10% on any given roll. I know because I have a physical 1d100 die and I use a digital die.

Remember any number between 1 and 10 is a success...

[Plane]

One thing to keep in mind is "what is the failure state of a dimensional teleport". Because it is possible that rather than "nothing happens, try again", something bad happens to them. Like they make the teleport, but don't arrive in the universe they were aiming for. Or they fail, and suffer some sort of harmful backlash. Etc.

This is the kind of thing which would indeed solve it but unlike normal teleports (just teleport into an object and die LOL) dimensional teleports never seem to have interesting outcomes like this.

BOM pg 152's spell version (6% per level) just has "If the spell caster is unsuccessful nothing happens" and Dark Conversion 12 is just "A failed roll means no teleport."

The highest risk only ever seems to be "you spent a melee action doing nothing" since that's explicitly how long it takes to teleport back to Hades on page 12.

Maybe if it were something like a % to initiate and then use the same % to navigate without problems, that could be more fun but it'd be a house rule.

DB7 pg 27 lets Dimensional Malestroms hit people using the dimensional teleport spell so I assume it can hit demons too but that has nothing to do with your % to activate the ability at all that I can see, the % of it happening is based on how recently there'd been a ley line storm in the areas you're teleporting from and to.

also it is worth noting that the "10%" is deceptive.. first, because it isn't a case of "roll ten times, and you'll get it".. the odds don't work that was in palladium and the 'take twenty' approach doesn't apply. it is very possible to roll 10, 20, even a hundred times and never roll what you need.
because that 10% is the target number on a percentile die, not the probability. the actual odds of rolling a 01 through 10 on a pair of percentile dice is (iirc) about 1%. which means that they could easily take many hundreds of tries for them to get where they are going. that is a lot of work, and a lot of failure states.

This is why I phrased it 'might take ten', like yeah even with 99% teleport you might never ever activate the ability because you roll 100 thousands of times in a row, I'm just generalizing regarding overwhelming probability.

To fail at 10% consecutively you use the odds to succeed at 90% consecutively, which gradually diminishes to 81%, 73%, 66%, 59%, and so on. Although the % approaches 0 at smaller increments each time, it does consistently approach it. There's only a 34% chance you'll fail a 10% teleport ten times in a row, 12% for 20 times, 4% for 30 times, 1.4% for 40 times, etc.

[Grazzik]

DB7 pg 27 lets Dimensional Malestroms hit people using the dimensional teleport spell so I assume it can hit demons too

Isn't this the premise (though on a much larger scale) of how some of the Minion War demons/deevils ended up in Chaos Earth... part of their attack force was diverted during teleport as a result of ripples through the Megaverse from Earth becoming a super-nexus?

Suggests that you may be onto something here...

[Plane]

yeah I'm just thinking what we need is something where the % skill in teleporting might factor into an enhanced chance of getting sucked into maelstroms explaining why the 10%ers are loathe to attempt it aside from the timewasting