Thinking with Portals

[AvatarVecna]

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately for some reason, so I figured I'd ask the Playground as a whole their collective opinions, thoughts, and ideas. This isn't really a RAW question (unless for some odd reason there's actually a RAW answer), more of a "what do you think happens" question.

Let's say you have a Gate spell cast in midair; the edge of the gate is not in contact with any solid material on either side of the gate. A person flies up to the gate in such a way that the top half of their body is positioned correctly for flying through the opening the Gate makes between planes, while the bottom half of their body is positioned correctly for flying under the Gate's opening and staying on the same plane of existence. Three questions:

1) What happens?

2) Why do you say that?

3) What does that imply about the physics behind magic portals, and how could this interpretation be used in-game to a character's advantage?

Not all three questions need answers, but at the very least I'd appreciate hearing your answers for question 1.

[Cruiser1]

Let's say you have a Gate spell cast in midair; the edge of the gate is not in contact with any solid material on either side of the gate. A person flies up to the gate in such a way that the top half of their body is positioned correctly for flying through the opening the Gate makes between planes, while the bottom half of their body is positioned correctly for flying under the Gate's opening and staying on the same plane of existence. Three questions:
1) What happens?
2) Why do you say that?
3) What does that imply about the physics behind magic portals, and how could this interpretation be used in-game to a character's advantage?
A Gate spell (and other portals) aren't distortions, rips, or wormhole tunnels in space. Instead they're basically teleport or plane shift traps centered around an area of space. That's why you can't stick just your head through a Gate/portal to check what's on the other side, because you're either entirely on one side or the other. When "passing through" a Gate/portal, once over 50% of you is within the designated area, then you effectively are teleported/plane shifted to the other side. Therefore a Gate/portal won't split you in half or anything if you pass through off center, or allow you to see somebody's internal organs if they're entering from one side while you're on the backside or anything like that. To answer the original question, depending on how much of your body is within the normal Gate area and how much is below it, you'll either enter through the Gate normally, or pass through the area of space without activating the Gate.

[Bronk]

I would say that although portals aren't just distortions in space, since they have a physical edge (and per the 'portal well' spell have an interior), gates are, because, per the spell, the gate is a 'two-dimensional window', and 'anyone or anything that moves through is shunted instantly to the other side.'

If part of you moves through, your entire body would be instantly on the other side of the gate.

[BWR]

There is a spell that does this: Dimensional Folding (2e to the rescue!)


This spell allows the caster to selectively warp the fabric of space, folding it into higher dimensions.

This effect can be best explained through an example. If an ant crawling along the west edge of a map decided to travel to the east edge of the map, it would have to crawl the full width of the map. But if the map were folded in two so that the east and west edges were touching, the ant would travel almost no distance at all. The ant's world (the map) would have been folded through the third dimension. The dimensional folding spell does something similar with the three-dimensional world: it folds it through a higher dimension (the fourth), allowing instantaneous travel between two locales on the same plane of existence.

1. I would rule that you just sort of stop, the edges of the portal working as sort of saftey barrier. a maybe get a bit of a stomach pain if you smack into the edge. Alternatively, you would be shunted to one or the other side automatically (probably the best bet). The dimension folding sort of slips you along the edge to one side depending on which end has more mass or which direction you are headed. In the case of true balance (equal mass on both sides, no vector favoring one side) it would be random.

2. To avoid problems like Travel in Robert Jordan's WoT series (infinitesimally sharp edges of gates cutting through things). It's already a ridiculously overpowered spell for 4th level (I would up it to at least 7th level) and I wouldn't want it do be be abused for anything else. It might be possible to make it work like a cutting or tearing effect but maybe the designer of the spell didn't want to accidentally kill people when using it.

3. In the first case I suppose you could use it to hang things on, or let it work as a barrier of sorts. In the latter you could try to force people to travel to the other side.

[ahenobarbi]

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately for some reason, so I figured I'd ask the Playground as a whole their collective opinions, thoughts, and ideas. This isn't really a RAW question (unless for some odd reason there's actually a RAW answer), more of a "what do you think happens" question.

Let's say you have a Gate spell cast in midair; the edge of the gate is not in contact with any solid material on either side of the gate. A person flies up to the gate in such a way that the top half of their body is positioned correctly for flying through the opening the Gate makes between planes, while the bottom half of their body is positioned correctly for flying under the Gate's opening and staying on the same plane of existence. Three questions:

1) What happens?

Depends on DM. RAW you can't do that (Gate says what it allows you to do; this is not a presented option). DM I play with would probably have whole character transported through the gate. Maybe cut them in half if he'd be in bad mood.


2) Why do you say that?

RAW doesn't allow that, I've played with the DM for years so I think I know what to expect.


3) What does that imply about the physics behind magic portals, and how could this interpretation be used in-game to a character's advantage?

The physics of the game is made up and if you have access to spells like Gate you're probably better of abusing within rules instead of trying to act outside of them.