I have a Big Bad Oppressive Government (BBOG) semi-inspired by the Roman Empire with the conceit that “all portals lead to Mul Khuldir,” i.e., that they’ve figured out super-fast logistics based on a central cluster of permanent Teleportation Circles that can be connected to scroll-cast Teleportation Circles near the battlefield ( (Every warmage has Sending to coordinate and then a few Teleportation Circle scrolls to bring in the first support platoon and additional warmages). The Great Mustering Hall in the ancient Dwarven citadel of Mul Khuldir is where they’ve been refining the martial exploitation of portals for hundreds of year and the Magisterium of Arcana has blah-blah tried to suppress all non-government-sanctioned learning / exploitation of magic.
Anyhow, the party has now made contact with the potentially-revolutionary enslaved dwarves inside the citadel and I’m fleshing out what the defenses of the citadel might be. Since portal magic is central to the BBOG and the citadel’s near a thousand years old, I’ve wondered if one thing you could do is: 100’ vertical shaft with a permanent teleportation circle on the ceiling and floor. The floor’s teleportation circle is connected to a vertical (or even pitched up) circle on the walls. You drop a rock or cannon ball down the shaft, it emerges horizontally at speed.
Thoughts?
Re. “creatures only”: Do you have a reference for that? I assume it’s “creatures and possessions” and not “Terminator”-style naked?
Well, the premise is that the BBOG is aware and paranoid of magical overthrow and does everything in its power to discover and “re-educate” or kill casters. They have a Stasi-like “Magisterium of Arcana” with a monopoly on spell books and rare components, informers and spies, etc. The party time-traveled back to this era and even the 6th-level Cleric, Warlock, and Sorcerer (in particular) would be considered major threats and are being pursued by a Hans Landa-esque character who knows they exist, but no details. (Kind of off-topic, but it’s been a really fun couple of sessions at the table developing this… :-) )
Teleportation spells that function for creatures such as Dimension Door, Misty Step, etc. also transport objects that the creatures are wearing or carrying.
As to the source the spell specifically states creature.
This is a fairly important distinction as there are other higher lvl spells, specifically Gate, that allow for the transport of anything.
That said your strategy might allow for the use of heavily armored kamakazi Kobolds carrying dynamite.
lol, I only just understood your joke that for the portal cannon you could drop cannon-fodder creatures down the shaft. Shades of “Holy Grail”!
Thanks for that! I was going to talk about siege provisions moving through the
portalsTeleportation Circle, so good to know it’s restricted on that.Re. exploits from enemies, my idea is that there are 32 “Teleportation Circle Traps” that are isolated corridors with two permanent circles at either end, an “external” circle that is to be connected to the external environment and an “internal” circle that is connected to the Mustering Hall itself. So you have your highly disciplined troops moving at a precise jog go through an external->trap temp circle in 1 round before it closes and then mages in the Mustering Hall open another internal->trap temp circle. The thought is that if bad guys get into one of these traps, they still don’t have immediate access to the citadel. (If I can figure out a good encounter for the players, I might trap them in one of these and throw in a “can be flooded” vs. maintenance tunnels or air shaftts, maybe a passage above with murder holes, etc. But if I can’t do something with it, it’s just going to be dungeon-dressing and its okay if it’s not 100% logical.)