Interesting use of gate spell?

[CrazyCarppy]

In a recent combat test of some homebrew enemies mu level 20 abjuration wizard opened a 20ft gate horizontally 35 feet above and centered on the enemy. The other end was within the heart of a volcano on the plane of fire.
I left the effects completely up to the dm with the info that the dmg suggests 18d10 fire damage if submerged.
He ruled that the other pc at the edge of the gates diameter got a dex save for half. But the enemy at the center did not.
And he ruled it did a straight 99 damage.
Next round inused telekinesis to pick up 1000lbs of lava and drop it on the enemy, who had moved out of the range of the gate.
He ruled an opposed roll of mynspell attack bs his dex save. Which is an idea I really liked. This also did a straight 99 damage.

Thoughts on how you would have ruled this?
I don't think my dm ruled poorly. But 99 damage is a lot and made the encounter far easier than it might have been.

[Rukelnikov]

Its a cool use, I think the damage for being submerged in lava was ok, not only was your DM following the guideline, but also you used 9th level spell for damage, if you compare it to Meteor Swarm you did much less damage, but that's the price for getting the flexibility Gate offers.

I also would have required some kind of check for the TK attack, I'd probably have done spell attack vs AC, but what your DM did I think is fine too. The only thing I'd definitely think was too much was the 18d10 for the TK attack, that is for submersion, 1000 lb wouldn't even fill a 50 cm cube, and also roma mechanics perspective, that's something you could do every round while tk was active, effectively making spending a 5th lvl spell for an 14d10 damage a round (over the 4d10 firebolt would normally do), that's far too much damage for a 5th lvl spell that can be repeated over many rounds IMO. I'd probably have done 6d10, a bit better than using Firebolt, and about a third of being submerged.

tl;dr: I think it was s ok, a bit too much damage on the tk attack, but fine overall.

[kazaryu]

In a recent combat test of some homebrew enemies mu level 20 abjuration wizard opened a 20ft gate horizontally 35 feet above and centered on the enemy. The other end was within the heart of a volcano on the plane of fire.
I left the effects completely up to the dm with the info that the dmg suggests 18d10 fire damage if submerged.
He ruled that the other pc at the edge of the gates diameter got a dex save for half. But the enemy at the center did not.
And he ruled it did a straight 99 damage.
Next round inused telekinesis to pick up 1000lbs of lava and drop it on the enemy, who had moved out of the range of the gate.
He ruled an opposed roll of mynspell attack bs his dex save. Which is an idea I really liked. This also did a straight 99 damage.

Thoughts on how you would have ruled this?
I don't think my dm ruled poorly. But 99 damage is a lot and made the encounter far easier than it might have been.

i mean....99 is the average of 18d10, he probably jsut didn't want to roll all the dice. as far as the secondary damage...im not sure what the volume of 1000 lbs of lava is, but depending on the size of hte enemy, it may be reasonable to assume that it fully submerges them.


as far as how i'd rule it...i mean, for one, unless the location you opened the gate was somewhere you had either been before, or at least seen on some type of map, i wouldn't even let you open the gate there. for the damge, i definitely would have had some kind of roll, probably a dex save. but other than that, yeah, assuming you could even open the portal, i'd probably have run it rather similarly. although i may have let you roll the d10s

[Envyus]

I don't think this would normally work unless you are aware of a Volcano in the Plane of Fire. You can link the Gate to the Plane of Fire, but unless you have been to there and know a good location the portal would just lead to a random spot there.

[follacchioso]

In a recent combat test of some homebrew enemies mu level 20 abjuration wizard opened a 20ft gate horizontally 35 feet above and centered on the enemy. The other end was within the heart of a volcano on the plane of fire.
I left the effects completely up to the dm with the info that the dmg suggests 18d10 fire damage if submerged.

Let me see if I understand this correctly.
When the gate opens, the lava from the volcano falls onto the enemy, passing through the gate. The enemy gets completely submerged by lava, and they take 18d10 from that. The gate is conjured on an unoccupied space that you can see (above the enemy), and its exit side on the material plane must be at the bottom, otherwise the lava wouldn't fall.

- I am not totally sure that you can open the portal inside the volcano, as it is not an unoccupied space. The description of the spell does not say anything about the destination portal, it only mentions that the starting portal must be in an unoccupied space, so by RAW it could be ok.
- The enemy should still have been allowed a DEX check to halve the damage. The lava flows from a 20' hole and travels 35' down before reaching the target. This is the same radius as a Fireball, 20', and Fireball allows a save to halve damage. Meteor Swarm is another comparable 9th level spell and it allows for a save.

Next round I used telekinesis to pick up 1000lbs of lava and drop it on the enemy, who had moved out of the range of the gate.
He ruled an opposed roll of mynspell attack bs his dex save. Which is an idea I really liked. This also did a straight 99 damage.

Where did you get the 1000lbs lava from? Is it the lava that is already submerging the enemy? Or do you take it from the Elemental plane, through the portal? Note the 60' range for Telekinesis, you need to stay relatively close to the lava flow in order to do this.

I think the damage in this case is very generous. Telekinesis allows to move objects at 30' per round, which is not much to cause damage - compare it with Catapult. Psi Warriors can also move objects 30' per round, but this does not cause any damage.

[CrazyCarppy]

I agree that a dex save would have been reasonable, and honestly expected one.
The spell gives very specific restrictions to the other side of the gate. It does not have to be unoccupied and you don't have to have been there or have specific knowledge of it. Which is weird. For the sake of the test we decided that my wizard would have found a suitable volcano previously.

The target misty stepped out of the lava on his turn. Then I used the telekinesis to pick up the 1000lbs of lava out of that which had already come through the gate. I also thought the 99 damage was very generous here. I did like the opposed rolls idea. I've always been a fan of that mechanic.

[Darth Credence]

I doubt I would have even allowed the lava to flow through the gate, because the implications of that are pretty rough. Once you say that yes, inanimate objects that can flow will do so through a gate, then it will all flow through a gate. You could open a gate in an enclosed room to somewhere that was a vacuum, and eliminate the air in seconds. And you'd have to answer, what does a gate to the ethereal or astral do? Does the foggy atmosphere of the ethereal plane come through to the prime material? How much, how quickly? And while talking about how much, how quickly, lava on steep slopes might flow at 6 mph, or about 9 feet per second. That's slower than movement plus dash for most creatures, so I would think that they'd not only get a saving throw, but one with a pretty low DC as well. It also means that in the 6 seconds of the round, the total volume of lava that passed through would be 2826 cubic feet, which is roughly 550,000 pounds. Is the heat of the lava worse than getting 550,000 pounds dropped on you? And 1000 pounds of lava is about five cubic feet of it, not even close to submerging any medium sized creature, so the telekinesis part would be way off.

Far easier, IMO, to say that to pass through a gate, there has to be something choosing to go through. So creatures can go through, or someone shoveling lava through would work, but the general atmosphere of the places don't swap.