Question: In my story, there is a character that is capable of using magic or an ability that allows them to "teleport" as long as they are in contact with the ground or the area that they want to use it on with at least one hand.

For example, in the middle of a circular arena 100m in diameter, as long as they are touching the floor (with a hand), they can teleport anywhere as long as it is "connected" or still physically part of the arena (which means that any floating rocks won't count, and they wouldn't be able to use it to get away from the arena in the case that it is floating).

What limitations can be set on it to avoid being too powerful, and with limitations in mind (or not), what would be the best type of magic/ability to use with it? (disregarding earth magic/manipulation)

My thoughts were to limit it to 75-100m and only usable every second or two, and to be used with wind magic mainly (if mist or fog can be made using wind magic).

Answer: 
**Limitations in other places**

Positioning is powerful. Incredibly, insanely powerful. In any engagement this is more important that the weapon your holding, as the position in regards to your opponents dictate what is effective.

If you let someone teleport at will with some items every few seconds as long as they have contact with solid ground in even just a 50m distance, they are very hard to stop. They can move out of range, get a knife, gun or crossbow and teleport closeby to fire at the target. Before they can react effectively you're gone. You can get behind them with a knife or club and the target has so little time to react. In the movies they often teleport about with high predictability for the audience. Your teleporting person won't do that. She/he can just teleport away so the target doesn't know when you'll teleport back with whatever assortment of weapons they deem most appropriate.

Now imagine teleporting only the person. All clothes and weapons left behind. It might be more fair, but thus person is still Incredibly dangerous. Teleporting to weapons and firing/throwing them from a distance is still very powerful. Even at unarmed combat they'll be dangerous, lije a boxer that always can start behind the opponent. Medieval armour? Push them over or hit the knee from the back. Then attack at leasure with close combat for armoured and immobilised prey. More modern armour? They are still very vulnerable to many unarmed attacks.

Don't get me wrong. Being naked drastically decreases your chances. Still it has such great potential for someone learning to use this telepotation in fighting. It can even be a last resort. Fighting normally until *surprise* all clothes and weapons fall empty on the ground. While the target is confused about what just happened, the neck is twisted or a rock is banged to the head.

To decrease the effectiveness of teleportation you can do many things. A few here:

* Naked.
* Costs physical energy.
* Costs mental energy.
* Causes temporary disorientation, as the mind isn't where it expects to be.
* Telegraphing the teleport on both starting and ending locations.
* Damages the teleporter.
* Requires immense concentration.
* Can be dangerous and possibly end up inside the solid stuff that's being touched, so to reduve this chance teleportation is done sparingly.
* Decrease frequency.
* Decrease area.
* More limitations in general for teleportation.
One of the easy ways to eliminate the more extreme abuses is a line-of-sight limitation. You can only teleport to a location if you can currently see it. That puts a hard cap on the range of the effect, and introduces opportunities for opponents to disrupt it (fight indoors, obscure their vision, etc). Teleporting somewhere you can't see isn't a really good idea anyway, because you have no idea if the laws of physics will even permit you to exist in that space (ending up inside a solid object would be game over for you).

For an extra twist, you can limit how close you arrive to your target point to be dependent on how clearly you can see that point. For example, stick out your thumb and hold it at arm's length, covering up your target. The area of your thumbnail represents the size of the area in which you might end up. When teleporting across the room, that area is only a few square inches so accuracy isn't really an issue. Teleporting to that hill far in the distance could be a problem, though. That same thumbnail-sized area is bigger than the apparent size of the hill, so you might miss your target completely and end up somewhere undesirable.

Any sort of teleportation is going to be rather overpowered in combat, simply because it lets you evade attacks nearly perfectly. The most straightforward way to reign in the usefulness would be to make teleportation not an instantaneous process. The caster has to focus/concentrate/channel for a period of time before teleporting. This prevents it from being used *reactively*, which is where most of its overpowered nature comes from. It also leaves your caster vulnerable just before they teleport, which means it has to be used much more strategically. Great for sneak attacks or initiating fights but once the fight starts, you can't fight invincibly like Nightcrawler in X-Men United.

You can even incorporate this into the lore if you want. Teleportation is a form of shadow magic. The caster channels their magic to send their shadow to a distant target location. Once the shadow reaches the destination, the caster will suddenly find themselves there as well (like how you can travel to the other room and turn on the light to make your shadow appear at *your* location, only it works the other way around). The shadow travels at a certain speed, say, 10x the speed of the caster. The caster would then have to channel for some brief minimum length of time *plus* however long it takes for the shadow to travel from A to B. That won't completely preclude its use as a combat escape mechanism, but will require your character to earn themselves enough breathing room to complete the cast.