Post/Author/DateTime	Post
tiercel 04-12-05, 04:35 PM	Two topics of inquiry. First of all, SRD excerpt:You conjure up an extradimensional dwelling that has a single entrance on the plane from which the spell was cast. The entry point looks like a faint shimmering in the air that is 4 feet wide and 8 feet high. Only those you designate may enter the mansion, and the portal is shut and made invisible behind you when you enter. You may open it again from your own side at will. While it is pretty clear that the caster controls who can enter, I was wondering about exiting: "you" may open it from your side, so does that mean that once the mansion door is shut, only the caster can open it again to let other occupants out? (Keeps your caster busy letting party members in and out in the middle of the night - better hope nothing happens to your caster while you're inside, eh? Say, devious little monsters that hitch rides inside your Official Party Treasure Sack (tm) to wreak havoc at night....) Second of all, if someone detects your entry portal, and puts a wall over it, do you either have to dismiss the mansion or plane shift in order to get out? --That is, can the wall be placed flush up against the portal, so that you can't actually "reach out" of the mansion in order to affect the wall with a spell (spells in general don't cross transdimensional interfaces, modulo the Transdimensional Spell feat - or whatever it's called)? Presumably, if you aren't the caster, you could attempt to dispel the mansion from inside it? (What would an antimagic field do? Cause everything within 10' of the field's caster to "fall out" of the mansion?)
Heironymus_Vann 04-13-05, 12:58 AM	It can be dispelled from the outside - the "shimmering portal" can be targeted. As far as creatures hitching rides, I would say "no" because they aren't objects. Yes, blocking the entry portal with a wall of force (or surrounding it with a forcecage) can be a big problem for the occupants, who are now stuc there unless they can squeeze trough the narrow barrier (in gaseous form, maybe) between the "wall" and the portal... it does have a distinct "doorway". While you could exit with plane shift in such a situation, the spell is so inaccurate that you would be far from the portal area - plane shift places you from 5-500 miles from your "intended destination". I guess you could "gate" out accurately. Naturally since the spell is dismissable you can handle the blockage that way, in which case the occupants all show up around the square where the portal was. Finally yes, an antimagic field in the vicinity of the portal would suppress the "mansion" for the duration of the antimagic field, depositing the occupants around the portal square per dispelling. HV
tiercel 04-13-05, 02:24 AM	Thanks for the replies... some follow-ups... It makes sense that it can be dispelled from the outside. Can it be dispelled from the *inside*? If the creature hitched a ride, not on party member, but inside an extradimensional space, would that work? (Can the portal exclusion work on something inside of ED spaces?) What if someone cast an antimagic field, not in the vicinity of the portal, but while *inside* the mansion?
Heironymus_Vann 04-13-05, 03:25 AM	Sure, it could be dispelled from the inside - you just need to be able to target the spell effect and it's right there all around you. The spell specifies "only those you designate may enter the mansion" - this means if something hides in a bag of holding then either (1) the bag simply cannot be brought into the mansion or (2) the bag can be brought in but the creature cannot exit the bag (since that means entering the mansion). Note that there is no air in a bag of holding, and a creature foolish or hapless enough to be in the bag of holding and unable to get out will likely suffocate in the many hours a Mansion persists! Casting an antimagic field inside the Mansion is tricky... the big question is, what exactly does "10 feet" mean in a MMM? The Mansion itself is huge "inside", but takes no space outside beyond the portal signature. MMM indicates that "conditions inside it do not pass to the plane beyond" so I'd be tempted to rule that the antimagic field would suppress magic WITHIN the MMM, but wouldn't affect the MMM itself (since causing people to emerge from the MMM would constitute a condition "passing to the plane beyond") so in a sense you are simply in "another place". The third point is interesting and sure to generate debate! HV
tiercel 04-13-05, 09:15 PM	It makes sense that the mansion can be dispelled from the inside... though that bears on the question of what happens with the antimagic field.... When a MMM gets dispelled, do all the occupants and contents just get unceremoniously dumped out into the host plane as close as possible to the original entry portal? Yeah I was uncertain what to do with the "stowaway" problem. I think your second conjecture makes sense -- most spells/effects can't affect the interior of a bag of holding or similar, because, well, it's not there. I'm not sure how the mansion would prevent a bag with a stowaway from entering, since it can't "see" the stowaway.... but that doesn't mean the stowaway would be able to leave the bag without an invitation, since there's only one way into the mansion per se. The antimagic field question has been bamboozling me a bit as well. The mansion itself is an effect, and the field suppresses all effects within its radius. Does that mean casting the antimagic field rips a hole in the mansion, which disappears as soon as the antimagic's target (along with anything within 10') "falls out" of the mansion? But conditions don't pass to and from the MMM normally, so, as you point out, maybe the mansion will stay up, but with a normal antimagic bubble in? Or perhaps even the antimagic will indeed suppress the MMM, ripping a hole in it, but since the MMM doesn't allow conditions to pass to and fro, the entire thing becomes unstable, pops, and dumps everybody out as near the point of the entry portal as possible? Hmmmm.....