Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 realmarkp Jan 23, 2009 15:03:08	I'm at a loss here. I read about the scattered portals in Faerun and how one uses then (through activation, materials, etc) but I'm wondering, what goes into making one of these portals? Are there materials involved? Are they expensive/rare/artifacts? Any info on this is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
#2 lord_karsus Jan 23, 2009 15:45:25	-The same way portals elsewhere are created? They weaken the barriers between planes, if they are planar portals, and take the individual from Faerûn to where ever plane the portal goes to. They simply transport people and things from one place to another, if they go from one place on Faerûn to another. Either way, known ones definitely would be coveted, yes.
#3 Stigger Jan 23, 2009 15:49:21	Well, you used to be able to create them like a magical item, but I doubt that's the case with the 4e ruleset, at least not yet. Druids used to sort of have their own version, Crossroads I think they were called, that were sort of a fey/nature variant that seemed to be naturally occuring, but which could be created via a spell if the druid were powerful enough. Only canon versions I'm aware of. Not sure if the traditional portals are naturally occuring or not though, but I kind of doubt it.
#4 realmarkp Jan 23, 2009 15:54:36	Well, I'm still using 3.5e, if that makes a difference. Also, These portals are permanent, I think, and some are activated by certain items (ie. dragon's breath weapon). I would like to wrap a section of my story arc around creating one of these portals.
#5 Stigger Jan 23, 2009 16:02:43	Ah, well that makes things a bit easier. Magic of Faerun, for 3e, should have a decent section on it, though it might be hard to come by these days. Secrets of the Magister, for 2e had a section on portals as I recall, though it was very limited in scope and not very useful unless you were talking about a fairly specific portal network created by one of the magisters. Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, which should be available from the older edition download page, which the FR Links thread should have a link to, had a brief section on them I think. About all I can think of when it comes to lore on portals that's FR specific.
#6 faraer Jan 23, 2009 19:19:44	What the portal rules in the FRCS neglected to make clear (because of the then-current 'PCs can do everything' dogma) is that the secrets of their construction are almost lost in the modern Realms. Anyone desiring to make a new one would first have to gain the knowledge somehow, and then go through the complex, difficult, and probably dangerous process. Other major gate-lore sources are "From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass" (The Dragon #37), Ruins of Undermountain pp. 13–14, and Ed's Candlekeep.com replies.
#7 gray_richardson Jan 23, 2009 23:39:48	In 3e you needed the feat "craft portal" in 3.5 they simplified it so that it used the same feat as "craft wondrous item". You must also have the ability to cast the Gate spell (for a planar portal) or either Greater Teleport or Teleportation Circle (for travel within the same plane). You pretty much follow the same steps for crafting any wondrous item. You basically are just making a permanent Gate or Teleport. Portals go only one-way. To make it two-way you need to craft two portals. The two portals may need to be attuned somehow once completed. The 3e FRCS had pretty specific guidelines on how to make portals. In 3.5 they just rolled portal creation into wondrous item creation so the costs and requirements are exactly the same as making any other wondrous item. I don't yet know how to do it in 4.0. But I am sure the rules are exactly the same as making any wondrous item for 4.0, check the 4.0 Players Handbook for guidelines. A brief glance makes me think you will need the 8th level "Linked Portal" ritual on page 307 for local portals. There is an 18th level ritual "Planar Portal" for traveling to other planes. There is also a 28th level "True Portal" ritual. The text mentions "teleportation circles" as well, but I haven't found yet where it says how to make those.
#8 Stigger Jan 24, 2009 0:25:12	What the portal rules in the FRCS neglected to make clear (because of the then-current 'PCs can do everything' dogma) is that the secrets of their construction are almost lost in the modern Realms. Anyone desiring to make a new one would first have to gain the knowledge somehow, and then go through the complex, difficult, and probably dangerous process. Not sure that flies well in the face of Magic of Faerun mentioning that the Silverymoon Guild gives annual demonstrations on the creation of portal crafting to its members... certainly Silverymoon is a repository of information, but if they know it there well enough to give annual classes, it seems likely the information is at least somewhat widespread. Things like Magefair make its being a lost art all that much more unlikely. My own personal take on it is that while its relatively easy to make them, the troubles that come with them make them undesireable things to possess if they become widely known... more trouble than they're worth in otherwards.
#9 sfdragon Jan 24, 2009 2:09:01	ummm you will also need someone to make the arch or find an existing arch of sorts....
#10 Stigger Jan 24, 2009 2:46:12	Not sure I'm ever going to look at McDonalds the same way... :D Seriously though, I don't think a portal really requires a specific shape or the like, but there is definitely a tradition of how they 'should' look.
#11 sfdragon Jan 24, 2009 4:57:19	no, they didnt. two trees two colums a doorway a Cave entrance Mcdonalds Golden arches a well it just has to be big enough for transporting through it.
#12 gray_richardson Jan 24, 2009 9:52:03	Ed has said that portals are kept secret by the people who make them because, well, you don't want the local lord, thieves guild, or goblin horde showing up at your door with a few hundred cohorts asking to traipse through your living room on their way to invade Sembia, Shou Lung, or Malbolge, or wherever your portal goes. Not to mention the sheer cost of portal creation indicates you are the kind of person who has that kind of money lying around which would make you a target for every lowlife thief, gang lord, bureaucrat, liege lord looking to make some money off you. It is likely that Wizards TELL everyone they meet that the craft of portal creation is a long lost art. They probably don't want everyone knowing they can do that kind of thing for fear of being kidnapped and forced to work in the "portal mines" crafting portals to god-knows-where for the rest of their lives in bondage to some dark warlord or lich with dreams of empire-building. The wizard that can hold his tongue can hold on to the head it's attached to! ;)
#13 faraer Jan 24, 2009 12:24:41	We have a very consistent picture, across dozens of sources published over 25 years, that gates are overwhelmingly ancient and mysterious relics of past civilizations. That's their well-established literary and worldbuilding role. The greatest archmages and power groups of Toril and other worlds vie for knowledge and control of the gate networks; this dynamic, which couldn't be more fundamental to the Realms and underlies a lot of visible politics, wouldn't occur if one could instead just create new gates with anything but great difficulty even for the most powerful mortal beings in the multiverse. That would also throw out of whack the delicate magical and social dynamics Ed's worked out that limit the role of the gates in everyday life, communication and trade. Against all that you have a couple of recent references, based on a past rules artefact, written by people who either didn't understand or didn't care too much about their incompatibility with the rest of Realmslore. Gray's point that the secrets of gate-making may be somewhat more widespread than some think because those who hold them keep quiet about it is still good.
#14 Stigger Jan 24, 2009 16:09:06	Well, one thing I recall is that they were "unstable", due to Mystra's interference, since she didn't want to see them used to move armies and allow someone to swiftly conquer everything in their path, or by unscrupulous merchants. That she let Aurora get away with it says quite a bit about Aurora I think... Beyond that, its a good excuse for that DM's plot device and keeping things at a certain 'level' in terms of communication and trade.
#15 lord_karsus Jan 24, 2009 20:07:06	-Also, of note, is that "time portals" (Time Conduits) exist.
#16 Stigger Jan 25, 2009 10:08:14	A whole island of them in the Pirate Isles as I recall... along with several others spread out in out of the way places.
#17 gray_richardson Jan 26, 2009 1:11:10	Here is a post by The Hooded One (a player from Ed's home Realms) about Ed's thoughts regarding portals: Posted - 25 Oct 2004 : Hello, all. I can spin an answer of sorts for tauster, from my own experiences in the 'home' Realms campaign. Ed always thought that gates (3e "portals") and battles for control of them, or battles against the activities of power groups who already controlled them, was a logical focus of high-level campaigning. If your PCs founded their kingdoms and their players wondered what to do with them next, and didn't rise to the bait of stumbling across strangely numerous and hitherto unnoticed gates, the users of said gates would start coming after the PCs. That's where the "Forgotten" part of the name comes from: the idea that Faerun exists on a Prime Material Plane parallel to our own 'real world' (and that there are many other Prime planes, such as the fantasy settings of any fantasy authors a DM and group of players like, as well as the 'fabled' Planes of Existence such as the Abyss, Hell or the Nine Hells, and so on). This isn't a new idea; Michael Moorcock envisaged a Multiverse of parallel planes, and Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers series explored a battle between power groups for control of gates and the worlds connected to them. Ed adapted some of these fictional concepts to the D&D game back in issue 37 of The Dragon (as the magazine was then called); I believe it was the first-ever DRAGON article with footnotes. TSR, of course, didn't want the possible lawsuits a 'real-world connection' might invite, nor the design headaches of linking Oerth and Krynn to this new uber-setting, and so edited out almost all of the gates material from the early Realms products. Some of Ed's notes were later used (albeit in an almost unrecognizable form) in the Planescape line. The Company of Crazed Venturers got into plane-hopping (it was the only way Ed could justify inclusion of some of the science-fictional elements he swiped from the Barrier Peaks adventure for those PCs to encounter) briefly, and so did we Knights (even more briefly). Interestingly, Ed always discouraged creation of new gates (3e “portals”) in the Realms by postulating that they weaken the planar fabric, so that the act of opening a new one often causes rifts, temporary (or even worse, persistent and widening, if you happen to create a gate too close to an unknown/forgotten pre-existing one) that “leak” predatory otherplanar beasts of great power. In other words, BEEG trouble on thy hands - - plus, of course, the immediate interest of all sorts of existing Realms power groups (“Oooh, a new gate! To where? We must control it, and slay all who learn of it so that ‘tis our secret, and ours alone!”). I do know that Ed has suggested doing Realms novels that involve such concepts on several occasions, and been firmly turned down by the TSR book publishing editors on every occasion. This even came up in discussion (uttered by TSR staffers, not Ed) at a long-ago GenCon Realms panel. It's interesting to note, over the years, how strong the fascination of the idea is; it never really goes away.
#18 gray_richardson Jan 26, 2009 1:27:10	Here is another interesting portal quote from Ed Greenwood from 19 March 2004: Among the elite magically-powerful groups (and lone, studious mages) in Faerun there’s a lot of knowledge OF THE EXISTENCE OF these ‘other worlds,’ but very little about passing events in the other places. Those groups and individuals who have the means to travel and know about such events regard this knowledge as power giving them a trade and power advantage over everyone else, and guard it jealously, even within the hierarchies of their own groups. They also tend to spread ‘disinformation’ (um, flat lies and exaggerations) about the dangers of portals and other worlds (such as: “anyone who uses a portal will be tracked, from that moment one, by an invisible stalking creature who will always be with you, who will watch you eat, sleep, make love, fight, study, EVERYTHING -- and aid your enemies and foes by revealing your whereabouts and intentions for its own amusement, as it SLOWLY feeds off you, draining just a tiny bit of your life-force, milking you for as long as possible, and thus ensuring that your life is long . . . but miserable”) so that no one else will try to use them. Moreover, most plane-hopping groups try to actively suppress practical “portals are here, here, and here, and this is how to use them” information. Getting it shouldn’t be easy, which is why a majority of Faerunian beings discover portals by blundering through one, or seeing another creature emerge from, or vanish through, one.
#19 ody_seraph_of_cyric_dup Jan 26, 2009 2:11:13	Interesting.
#20 sfdragon Jan 26, 2009 5:04:07	in other words its very time consuming to make a portal these days. both in making sure there is no preexisting portals... and costructinga new one. better off just to use teleportation magic to get around
#21 Stigger Jan 26, 2009 9:00:41	Officially anyway. No reason you couldn't change that dynamic for your own campaigns... hells, create a portal network between the major cities and towns of a kingdom if you really want to, for travel and trade, or whatever. Or use them as an excuse to bring Batman to Waterdeep... its your game afterall.
#22 markustay63 Jan 28, 2009 11:36:59	Many of the ancient portals were created by the Creator races - mainly the Batrachi and Fey - but all of them dabbled in them to some extent. The Imaskari were also great builders of Portals, and it appears the Netherease also dabbled in that sort of magic (didn't they invade the Outlands at one point?) Of the demi-humans, only the Elves seemed proficient at creating portals, but they pretty-much limited themselves to portals that existed between two points on the same world - they avoided any sort of inter-dimensional stuff, for whatever reason.
#23 lord_karsus Jan 28, 2009 11:43:28	...(didn't they invade the Outlands at one point?) -Yes. The Cat's Gate (Cat's Eye?) Portal, mentioned in Finder's Bane.