Teleportation and Planeshifting

Topic: Magical travel — folding space and crossing between planes Traditions that can do it: Arcane, Infernal, Fae Rule of thumb: Teleportation is hard. Planeshifting is very nearly impossible.

Teleportation is a difficult feat

In this world, folding space is rare and demanding. Three traditions can manage it — Arcane, Infernal, and Fae — by entirely different methods and at wildly different cost and risk. There is no cheap, universal "teleport" spell, and reaching another plane is harder still.

Short-Range Teleportation — Arcane

Short hops are the sole province of Arcane magic. An arcane teleport works by superimposing a person on two locations at once and then resolving the paradox by collapsing them into the new location. With a skilled caster and line of sight, this is relatively easy — which is why Misty Step and its kin are reliable battlefield magic.

Beyond line of sight, the difficulty climbs steeply.

Long-Range Teleportation — Arcane

Long-range arcane teleportation is vastly harder than a short hop, and is only possible by one of two means.

Guided Teleport — 5th level

Teleportation from any location to a prepared destination. The Wizard's Guild and the Collegium of Salyrene maintain arrival platforms in major cities; these rooms act as dimensional beacons an arcanist can lock onto.

Teleporting to a platform requires a Teleportation Tuning Crystal holding that platform's dimensional signature. Crystals are expensive (roughly 5,000 gp or more, depending on the destination) and are consumed by the spell.
The caster must also prepare the departure point with a 1-hour ritual.
In exchange, a guided teleport has no chance of mishap and can move several people (one traveler at base; one more per level the spell is upcast).

Guided Teleport is the standard long-range arcane teleport. It can only deliver you to a prepared platform — never to an open location.

Targeted Teleport — 7th level

For a destination with no prepared beacon — a vastly more difficult and dangerous art. It can be attempted two ways:

Blind: the caster teleports from intimate personal knowledge of the location, accepting a significant chance of mischance.
Scried: the caster spends at least three hours calibrating a scrying apparatus to the target and uses the scrying sensor as a targeting vector. This greatly lowers the chance of the spell going wrong.

No other long-range arcane teleportation exists.

Infernal Teleportation — Shadow Step & Shadow Jaunt

Infernal teleportation is by far the easiest and fastest in the world — and carries its own peculiar dangers. The mechanism is the same for both spells: the caster attunes two locations from memory and uses infernal energy to bore a hole linking them; conjured shadow seals the rift behind them as they step through. (This spatial fold is the textbook case of infernomancy's shadow jump.)

Shadow Step (3rd level) — any location in line of sight, regardless of distance.
Shadow Jaunt (5th level) — any distance, to any location the caster clearly remembers (no line of sight needed).

Both carry only the caster — never a second passenger — and cannot be upcast. Two risks attend every crossing:

Infernal leakage: a low chance of stray infernal energy producing random infernal effects at both the origin and the destination.
A traceable path: unlike arcane teleportation, an infernal crossing leaves a trace. A sufficiently skilled infernal or fae caster can follow someone through a shadow step or jaunt.

Fae "Teleportation" — Windstep

Fae teleportation is not teleportation at all. As an 8th-level boon, a powerful Fae may grant the spell Windstep, in which the caster conjures a wind spirit that rapidly ferries them from one place to another. Depending on distance the journey can take up to an hour.

Windstep is the safest form of magical travel — but extremely rare. Fae casters of that strength are few, and only a handful have built the relationships with the Fae required to be granted it.

Planeshifting

Planeshifting is another matter entirely. No spell or item grants easy passage between planes. It is an incredibly rare and difficult thing to accomplish by any means. There are only a handful of exceptions.

Hell Gates

The most prominent are Hell Gates — permanent rifts from the Material Plane into the Hells. They can be opened by powerful infernal casters, but the conditions are extreme: a paired ritual performed simultaneously by casters standing at the same location on both planes, over the course of several days, radiating dangerous infernal energy throughout. A newly opened gate is unstable at first and may still be closed; if it is not, it sets into a permanent rift. The few such rifts known on the continent are closely guarded by the Imperial military (Tiraan Empire). (See the Hell Gate spell, 7th level.)

The Astral Plane — reached by Dreaming

A Fae practitioner can use Dreaming (5th level) to project their consciousness — never their body — into the Astral Plane. From there they can reach into others' dreams to communicate, influence, or send messages. A number of complex magical transformations can likewise be performed only upon a person's astral projection.

The Ethereal Plane

Educated mages are taught that the Ethereal Plane exists: a desolate mirror of the Material whose exact purpose is unknown, and which cannot be entered by normal means. Some powerful magical effects weaken the dimensional membrane of the Material and, in doing so, almost always brush against the Ethereal. Little is known of it, though it is thought to be tied somehow to Chaos and Death.

The Spells at a Glance

Spell	Level	Tradition	Range / Use
Misty Step	2	Arcane	Short hop, line of sight
Guided Teleport	5	Arcane	To a prepared arrival platform (tuning crystal + ritual)
Targeted Teleport	7	Arcane	To an unprepared location (blind or scry-assisted)
Shadow Step	3	Infernal	Line of sight, any distance; self only
Shadow Jaunt	5	Infernal	Any distance to a remembered place; self only
Windstep	8	Fae	Wind-spirit ferry; slow but safest
Dreaming	5	Fae	Project the mind into the Astral
Hell Gate	7	Infernal	Permanent rift to the Hells (ritual)