Permanent Teleportation Circles

[DMJon]

A permanent teleportation circle has a unique sequence of magic sigils that one must know to access it through the Linked Portal or Planar Portal rituals. What methods are available to protect a teleportation circle from being used by anyone who knows this sequence? Is the Forbiddance ritual the only option?

In Manual of Planes there’s a sidebar that explains how Arcane Lock can be used to protect a portal but since a portal doesn’t exist until Linked Portal or Planar Portal is cast, I don’t believe this helps at all.

Thanks in advance.

[ThePurple]

One of the wonderful things about 4e is that it doesn't try to set rules for *everything* like 3.X did. 4e only sets hard rules for combat; non-combat stuff has few explicitly set rules so you, as GM, can basically set rules as you see fit for your campaign: if you want a physical key to be required, you can do that; if you want it to have it only work when someone of a specific bloodline is present, you can do that; if you want to have it only work during a specific time, you can do that.

Honestly, the ritual casting rules for 4e aren't particularly well thought out (or balanced) and I wouldn't feel compelled to hold to them too hard, as long as your players are aware of the restrictions and reinterpretations you're applying. As long as it serves the narrative, set whatever restriction you might need (especially since you could argue that the rules were written for the PCs, not for specialist NPCs that have been studying portal magic for the entire length of the PCs lives without ever delving into combat magic like the PCs do).

[Beoric]

I think it really depends on whether the character trying to "lock" the circle is a PC or an NPC. If an NPC, issues of game balance don't really come into play; 4e expressly has different rules for PCs and NPCs because they serve different purposes in the game. So giving an NPC a special ability doesn't really hurt anything because the GM can prevent the NPC from spamming some power he made up and completely dominating the game as a result.

With respect to PCs, I do not agree that blithely making up a rule is a good idea, nor do I agree that using the skill system to invent new effects on the spot is an appropriate way to deal with these things. Unlike the NPC, players of PCs will object if you take away their new power, and they will try to exploit said power, and posit logical extensions to said power, in every way imaginable. And really, that's their job.

This is an area where I think 4e falls down, by failing to provide either a sufficient number of useful and balanced rituals, or a baseline for out-of-combat effects that are not merely the adjudication of skill-related actions. This makes it harder to adjudicate attempts at such actions without the risk of affecting the power balance.

Incidentally, the the sidebar in MotP refers to the type of portal that is discussed on page 14 of that book, which may or may not include portals associated with teleportation circles, depending on how you interpret the "Circle Portals" entry on page 17.

But even if it does not, it is a good example of a baseline, which gives you a reference point (ritual to lock a permanent portal that can be operated without a ritual and cannot be created by PCs) when considering the effect of creating something similar (ritual to lock a permanent or temporary portal that can only be operated with a ritual and can be created by PCs). So there is a good chance you are safe using it that way.

[Yakk]

Usimg skill checks to improvise effects can work, as long as you describe the result as a jury-rigged and temporary hack. The next timemthey try it, mars may not be in proper alignment with pluto, so they'd have to try a different hack; and the one they did might fall apart unexpectedly.

"You *think* it might hold", not "nobody but you can use this".

Rituals would then be hacks that magicians have polished and found the problems with and made more reliable. They are the result of generations of iterative improvements over a hack, and their results are more predictable.

An improvisation is also susceptible to improvised attacks. You tried to restrict it to this group of 6; turns out someone could hack it with a drop of your blood and a face mask. Or by mimicing your stride. Or by drawing the portal using blood from your characters race. Or by using the glyphs upside down they also reverse your filter. You didn't know this, until someone worked it out. Maybe you can improvise a defence against it; but maybe not. If you do, it might change how the ritual works in other ways.

[Beoric]

And you don't think this is a kluge?

Sure, GMs can make a hack on the fly, and nerf it afterwards, but lets not pretend that is an elegant solution. if there were guidelines adjudicating those hacks would be much easier. Even a list of effects that should not be available before a certain level would be helpful (and as an experienced 4e user you can probably name a few off the top of your head).

[Leewei]

Completely submerse and lock the area with the portal. Anyone who teleports in without Water Breathing active will likely drown before they get out. Add in Magic Circle rituals to prevent anyone from mortal races from leaving the portal.

[Kurald Galain]

Completely submerse and lock the area with the portal. Anyone who teleports in without Water Breathing active will likely drown before they get out.

Nice idea but by RAW it won't work: you get three minutes under water before any adverse effects set in, and that's plenty of time to pick (or bash open) any lock.

[Leewei]

Nice idea but by RAW it won't work: you get three minutes under water before any adverse effects set in, and that's plenty of time to pick (or bash open) any lock.

Picking a lock might not count as strenuous, but bashing it open would -- resulting in a much shorter duration on holding breath. Layer a few such submerged doors together if need be.

You could also place the locked entry several feet above the water's surface, requiring Water Walk or flight to access it. Loads of other mundane engineering options are out there as well, I'm sure.

[ThePurple]

Picking a lock might not count as strenuous, but bashing it open would -- resulting in a much shorter duration on holding breath. Layer a few such submerged doors together if need be.

At which point you end up with grotesquely overengineered machines that exist because of arbitrarily set rules in a simulation rather than something that makes sense within the reality of the setting. I find it much less difficult to believe that an NPC's version of a ritual has some kind of passcode or system unmentioned in the ritual's entry or that an NPC specialized in portal magic might know some backdoor in than to believe that *all* portals *always* operate in the *exact* same way with *no* magical safeguards whatsoever other than the minute number of them that are specifically listed. There's like 40 different ways to create a fiery explosion with almost unimaginable variations but there's only one way to create a permanent teleportation circle and the only way to protect it is to overengineer in extremely specific ways?

[Excession]

At which point you end up with grotesquely overengineered machines that exist because of arbitrarily set rules in a simulation rather than something that makes sense within the reality of the setting. I find it much less difficult to believe that an NPC's version of a ritual has some kind of passcode or system unmentioned in the ritual's entry or that an NPC specialized in portal magic might know some backdoor in than to believe that *all* portals *always* operate in the *exact* same way with *no* magical safeguards whatsoever other than the minute number of them that are specifically listed. There's like 40 different ways to create a fiery explosion with almost unimaginable variations but there's only one way to create a permanent teleportation circle and the only way to protect it is to overengineer in extremely specific ways?

I agree that there would be varieties of portal, or portals with an Arcane Lock or Magic Circle type protections built in. Thinking about how to secure portals is fun though.

If you're building this portal inside your fortress, perhaps as a bolt hole or resupply rote in case of siege, you're going to want it as well protected as the fortress itself, if not more so because it isn't protected by distance. OTOH having those protections be lethal as a first option isn't ideal. You might want to avoid accidents, or capture invaders so you can question them.

[Yakk]

See, I like the idea that the glyphs must be kept secret.

That is your arcane lock. You keep your teleportation glyphs secret.

Public circles would be treated as threat vectors, so you'd place them outside the main defensive walls of your city or fortress.

Secret internal circles would exist. Semi-secret ones would have security, but the most secret of them (the king's private circle, for example) might be just security via obscurity.

[Beoric]

See, I like the idea that the glyphs must be kept secret.

That is your arcane lock. You keep your teleportation glyphs secret.

Public circles would be treated as threat vectors, so you'd place them outside the main defensive walls of your city or fortress.

Secret internal circles would exist. Semi-secret ones would have security, but the most secret of them (the king's private circle, for example) might be just security via obscurity.

An elegant solution, because it matches the crunch and fluff and it is flavourful. From the "Linked Portal" entry:

Most major temples, important wizards' guilds, and large cities have permanent teleportation circles, each of which has a unique set of magic sigils etched or inlaid into the ground. The exact sequence of sigils matters, because you've got to match it if you want to open a portal leading there. The sigils aren't any more complex than remembering a string of letters and numbers. You can use Linked Portal to any permanent teleportation circle whose sequence of sigils you know. [Emphasis added]

The truly paranoid would take precautions to obscure or disguise the sigils to prevent anyone who sees the circle from learning the sequence.

[obryn]

A permanent teleportation circle has a unique sequence of magic sigils that one must know to access it through the Linked Portal or Planar Portal rituals. What methods are available to protect a teleportation circle from being used by anyone who knows this sequence? Is the Forbiddance ritual the only option?

In Manual of Planes there’s a sidebar that explains how Arcane Lock can be used to protect a portal but since a portal doesn’t exist until Linked Portal or Planar Portal is cast, I don’t believe this helps at all.

Thanks in advance.

There's a number of them. The easiest is to use the buddy system; put a big ol' cover on top of the Circle, and use Sending to contact your trusty hench-being to raise it when you want to use it. (Or, leave the cover over it, and said hench-being could cut a rope if anyone but you enters, causing it to fall and crush the interloper.)

You can put the Circle in a secured, trapped room.

You can keep it in a private room and make sure nobody sees it.


And yes, public Circles should be treated like city gates and the like - a vulnerability as well as a convenience.

[Leewei]

At which point you end up with grotesquely overengineered machines that exist because of arbitrarily set rules in a simulation rather than something that makes sense within the reality of the setting. I find it much less difficult to believe that an NPC's version of a ritual has some kind of passcode or system unmentioned in the ritual's entry or that an NPC specialized in portal magic might know some backdoor in than to believe that *all* portals *always* operate in the *exact* same way with *no* magical safeguards whatsoever other than the minute number of them that are specifically listed. There's like 40 different ways to create a fiery explosion with almost unimaginable variations but there's only one way to create a permanent teleportation circle and the only way to protect it is to overengineer in extremely specific ways?

Everything you said is perfectly sensible. Since we're talking about 4E D&D here, though, I offered a solution that fits Rules as Written.

Discussing common sense, and convincing the DM that there should be something more elegant, is certainly possible - just not guaranteed to work. If that fails, though, don't write off the inelegant-but-effective approach.

[Yakk]

Private circles are just that -- private.

You don't want a way to kill people using it. You just want nobody else to know the Sigils. Maybe you rebuild them every generation to keep the Sigils secret.

Heck, you don't want the people who guard your keep to know about them. They are part of your backdoor plan to take the keep if it turns traitor or is overrun by enemies!

You must assume that if your Sigils are known, the circle is a public one, and public circles need to be fortified like city gates. And, like city gates, you have to accept that they can be bypassed.

If your Sigils leak on your secret circle, you destroy the circle, you don't set up traps around it. You then create a new one. The resident mage spends the year maintaining it.

[Leewei]

The potential problem here is how you become aware that the sigils leaked. I suppose that periodically re-enchanting could do the trick. This could get costly, unless the ritual caster had some cheese to reduce or negate the component requirement.

[Yakk]

Yes, that is a potential problem.

And not ever problem *should* have a solution. Magic shouldn't be "I want it I get it", it should involve tradeoffs.

You want an emergency teleportation circle in your inner sanctum that nobody knows about? There are risks.

[Beoric]

The potential problem here is how you become aware that the sigils leaked. I suppose that periodically re-enchanting could do the trick. This could get costly, unless the ritual caster had some cheese to reduce or negate the component requirement.

A potential problem for the characters is an opportunity for adventure for the players and GM.

[Leewei]

Yes, that is a potential problem.

And not ever problem *should* have a solution. Magic shouldn't be "I want it I get it", it should involve tradeoffs.

You want an emergency teleportation circle in your inner sanctum that nobody knows about? There are risks.

A potential problem for the characters is an opportunity for adventure for the players and GM.

This boils down to how much you trust your DM not to screw you over (or else how much you enjoy this kind of surprise).

Then again, I suppose a particularly determined DM could see this sort of thing as a challenge.

[Beoric]

This begs the question of whether you should be playing with a DM you don't trust. IMO, any accidental disclosure of the sigils should happen to the PCs ON CAMERA, and the means by which they lost it should eventually be discoverable.

So, for instance, it would be fine if the villain observed the temporary circle, drawn with the appropriate sigils, while the PCs escaped through it.

[Leewei]

This begs the question of whether you should be playing with a DM you don't trust.

Not every player has the luxury of choice. Also, otherwise good DMs might still have habits that needle their players.

[Beoric]

Also, otherwise good DMs might still have habits that needle their players.

IMO, not trusting your DM, to the extent that you object to teleportation circles with imperfect security because they might be abused, goes beyond "habits that needle their players".

I mean, its always a call you need to make, if your choice is crappy gaming or no gaming. But then I disagree with Mae West. I've had pizza that wasn't worth eating.

[Leewei]

I'd go back to a bad pizza place every couple of weeks to hang out with good friends I don't otherwise see. Also, over-engineering some home defenses seems pretty tame compared to pizza with horseradish or fish on it.