Re: Understanding Mystic Portal Physics
Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:53 am
A few things:
- For passing through solid surfaces, the mystic portal can be up to 12' per level: if you only want to pass through a 2 foot thick wall, it can still do it; you don't end up 120' inside the building past the wall you were trying to bypass.
- For both teleportation and passing through solid surfaces it is a one-way passage. The one-way passage phrase must apply to them, because on its own, the phrase doesn't refer to anything. From the casting side, you can see & pass through the portal. Once you've passed through it, or to people at the other end/side, there is nothing to see/interact with, and to people at the other end, anyone/thing passing through the portal appears to come from nowhere. The point of origin doesn't disappear, just access to it from that end of the portal doesn't exist. For the duration of the magic, more people could come through the mystic portal behind the caster, but no one can go back without a separate casting.
The TW hull-breacher missiles aren't good support of you 2-way corridor interpretation, because TW devices regularly tweak the incorporated spells' standard effects, and I would argue that that has been the case here. How they function invalidates the 'one way passage' portion of the spell description. That's fine for a TW item - their whole reason for being is to alter spell effects - but not evidence of how a standard casting functions.
- For passing through solid surfaces, the mystic portal can be up to 12' per level: if you only want to pass through a 2 foot thick wall, it can still do it; you don't end up 120' inside the building past the wall you were trying to bypass.
- For both teleportation and passing through solid surfaces it is a one-way passage. The one-way passage phrase must apply to them, because on its own, the phrase doesn't refer to anything. From the casting side, you can see & pass through the portal. Once you've passed through it, or to people at the other end/side, there is nothing to see/interact with, and to people at the other end, anyone/thing passing through the portal appears to come from nowhere. The point of origin doesn't disappear, just access to it from that end of the portal doesn't exist. For the duration of the magic, more people could come through the mystic portal behind the caster, but no one can go back without a separate casting.
The TW hull-breacher missiles aren't good support of you 2-way corridor interpretation, because TW devices regularly tweak the incorporated spells' standard effects, and I would argue that that has been the case here. How they function invalidates the 'one way passage' portion of the spell description. That's fine for a TW item - their whole reason for being is to alter spell effects - but not evidence of how a standard casting functions.