ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Teleportation is blocked in vaults currently, and attempting to use it will waste a turn along with whatever cooldown/resources you used. This would be bad enough, from a usability perspective, and should be changed - teleport attempts should never even get to the stage of 'fizzling', but just abort with no turn cost (the same applies to attempting to teleport while inside of ice - if it can never work, then it should never even be presented as an option).

However, this is compounded by what counts as a vault often not being clear. For several vaults, the no-teleport area extends beyond the area with locked doors (sometimes well beyond, as in the 'giant room' vault). The reasonable solutions for this separate problem would seem to be:

1) Allow teleporting into squares that aren't currently behind locked doors.

2) Allow teleporting into squares that have never been behind locked doors.

3) Make it clear which squares are no-teleport-into, such as a different floor design.

One idea I've had for no-teleport regions: instead of preventing teleports, only allow teleports within that region. Each vault generated (or special area) would get a designator (1, 2, 3, or whatever) that would only allow you to teleport within that area. That way, you could teleport to the opposite end of a vault or to the door, but you wouldn't be able to teleport out. It fits with the idea of undiggable walls. It would take a little work, but I think it makes a lot of sense.

Targeting should definitely make it clear when you can or can't teleport to a certain area, regardless of what is implemented.

Honestly, my understanding is that the only purpose of those zones is to keep players from entering / monsters from exiting the vault by mistake before it's opened.

So: Drop all vault restrictions the moment its sealed door is open. Simple, straightforward, and much less frustrating to classes like Temporal Wardens that rely on teleports. I don't mind them being challenged, but this feels like a challenge that comes from lazy design rather than anything logical about the game, and it just isn't interesting for every single vault to present them and only them with the exact same challenge -- it's like making every vault enemy immune to the same status ailment, or the same element. It's bad to totally shut down a valid strategy in every single vault.