How to use Portals
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
For those wishing to travel the outer and inner planes, setting off on an adventuring career that sees the many sights of the multiverse, a portal will be their best friend. Portals are passages from one place to another, some may simply deposit you a few hundred feet forward while others can have you crossing all of the multiverse in the blink of an eye.
We are going to look at what portals are, how they can be used in a campaign, as well as a few new spells to help control such powerful connections.
Types of Portals
There are three main types of portals, each with its own benefits and dangers. These portals might link different planes, or perhaps exist on a single plane but connect two distant locations. Some portals might require keys to unlock them, like having to provide smoke burnt from expensive incense to activate a portal to the plane of smoke or one of the outer planes.
The three types of portals are Permanent, Temporary, and Shifting portals.
Permanent Portals
Permanent portals never change their location or where they lead to. They are the most reliable of all portals and you can use them with certainty that you will end up where you are expecting. These portals are often well known, at least by the planar travelers who document such portals and can have settlements built up around them or be important paths for a trading route. In a city like Sigil, taverns, shops, and more are often built over these portals to have a monopoly on the use of such portals.
These portals are also often two-way portals, meaning that you can travel back and forth freely, without worrying about being stuck on one side of it. If the portal is one-way, it’ll be well documented if the portal is known by others.
In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil, 1995 TSR Inc.
Temporary Portals
Temporary portals form as they please, sometimes they might only link a place for a few seconds to a few years, but they aren’t reliable and they may disappear just as soon as you arrive to use it. No one knows when and how these portals form naturally, though things like gate spells are types of temporary portals that can be utilized by a spellcaster.
More often than not, temporary portals are one way, sending travelers to a destination they might not be aware of. A rare few are two-way, allowing travelers to come and go while the portal remains, but a traveler won’t know that unless they first go through and try to come back. This means temporary portals can be quite useful, especially for those stirring up trouble and then heading through the portal right before it closes.
Temporary portals also include portals that appear and reappear but only during certain times. It could be that they only appear under a harvest moon, or that they require the exact alignment of certain celestial bodies to form. While they are permanent in that they only appear when certain events happen, they are not always available to travelers.
Those who do claim to be able to sense when a temporary portal might appear or where it leads to often disappear. While they might be liars, many factions throughout the planes would like such knowledge and will go to great lengths to track such people down to exploit any ‘abilities’ they might have.
Shifting Portals
Shifting portals could be permanent, they could be temporary, but they rarely stick around in the same place for very long. A permanent shifting portal might have an entrance that never changes, like say in Sigil, and then it deposits travelers to different locations. It could be a set pattern it deposits travelers in, like slowly ticking down through the different planes and repeats the cycle over and over. Then again, it might be completely random where you will end up, with some showing up in someone’s outhouse while others who use it appear in the middle of the ocean.
Though, a shifting portal doesn’t have to have a permanent entrance. Instead, it could simply shift its entire entrance and exit from different places, but in such a set pattern as to be recognizable. This could mean that an entrance in the Nine Hells only leads to the Abyss and then when it shifts, everything shifts as well so that it now appears in Acheron and now leads to Carceri. Typically these shifting portals can only be spotted by those who make a study of portals and their constant positions, and may even take years or centuries before such patterns emerge.
Shifting portals can be one-way or two-way, all depending on the portal. Some shifting portals can even switch between being a one- or two-way portal, making them rather dangerous to explore when you are unaware of the portal’s properties.
Accessing Portals
Planescape Campaign Setting, 1994 TSR Inc.
Not every portal can be utilized by just anyone who walks through it. Some portals can be freely navigated through by just walking through them, while other portals require special keys, rituals, or people to first activate them. Each portal is different and those who track portals keep notes about how to activate them, which requires experimenting since portals rarely provide that information upfront.
Typically, a portal doesn’t appear until the conditions for traveling through it are met.
Keys
The most common requirement from a portal is that any traveler must each provide a key. This could be something from the mundane, like a bird’s feather to travel to the plane of air or something exotic and rare like the heart of a pit fiend who died from a broken heart. Typically, a key has something to do with the destination of the portal or has something to do with where they are located, like a portal that starts in a fountain may require a traveler to first toss a coin into the water and make a genuine wish.
Most portals require mundane or simple things that can be found without going on an epic quest but still requires some backtracking or searching marketplaces. A portal to the plane of fire may ask for 20 gold of charcoal from a specific tree, while a portal to Mount Celestia may require a scroll of heroism written by the hand of a lawful good paladin.
Other portals, typically ones that are immense or lead to exotic locations, like a demiplane on the Astral plane, may require even more expensive materials that could take years to find. A portal to an ancient, drifting settlement on the Astral might require the crown of the last emperor of the settlement, meaning that those who wish to use it must first know about the emperors of the settlement, where the last one died, and have to clear out a dungeon of monsters who were sworn to protect it for all eternity only to find out that a dragon, long ago, stole the crown from the dungeon and now they must take on an ancient dragon to finally claim the crown.
For other portals, they simply require a command word to be spoken to them. This command word often has something to do with the destination of the portal or about whatever event, person, or thing first created the portal.
Puzzles
Portals may even require puzzles before opening, like offering a vague poem or phrase that the traveler must decipher. This could lead them to finding a key or by pulling a certain number of levers in the right order, ensures that the portal will take them to the right destination.
Time
Dependent on seasons, the movement of celestial bodies, and more; these portals refuse to open except at specific times. They might only appear under the light of a full moon, though if it is cloudy that night, it may mean that a portal won’t open up if it requires the light to fall upon it. Other portals may only open during a fall festival, linking the material world with the plane of faeries, or perhaps a portal will only open up every 100 years to the realm of kings, a mythical place where ancient and powerful kings were buried in massive and elaborate tombs created by angels.
These portals rarely stay open for long, often reliant on whatever it was that opened them up in the first place. If it is simply by moonlight, then they may only be open for eight to ten hours, or maybe they stay open for much longer. If they open and close every 100 years, it could mean that it stays open for 100 years and then closes for 100 years, continuing to repeat the cycle until the multiverse crumbles.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
Utilizing Portals
Portals have a wide variety of uses, especially for a GM to use in their game. If you like the idea of having planar monsters entering into your world, or want an excuse to drag a demon into a dungeon, having a one-way portal is a great way to ensure a steady supply of demons but with no way for the party to completely derail your plot by trying to join in on the Blood War. Then again, maybe you want a planar spanning campaign, in which case you can sprinkle in these portals in a wide variety of locations, or have a shifting portal that randomly changes what place it sends a brave group of adventurers through every week, allowing you to explore more planes!
Looking Through
Portals rarely ever show what is on the other side. If a portal does offer a view through it, and you can see what’s waiting on the opposite side, it is typically a temporary portal that is more akin to a gash in the multiverse than a proper pathway. These portals rarely require keys or passwords to enter, though the multiverse quickly repairs them and so they won’t last for very long.
Typically, when a traveler looks through a portal, all they see is a brilliant glare of color. Sometimes the destination can be determined by the color of the portal, like on the Astral plane where the color pool of sapphire blue always means that it is a portal to Arborea. Other times the portal might show what is on the other side, but blur it out so all you can see are the vague mixed colors that it is showing, like looking through several layers of stained glass.
Timeline
A way to use portals in your games is by using a timed portal that only has a specific amount of time it is active before it collapses. This provides a countdown clock for the party, making it so that they only have a few hours or days or weeks to complete their task and make it back before they are shunted off into a demiplane alone for untold years. This type of countdown is useful so you can limit the number of rests that the party gets, forcing them to dig deeper into the dungeon and expending resources for a truly epic encounter at the end of it all.
Traveling
If you want a campaign focused on travel or exploration, portals are known for taking travelers to all new places across the multiverse. They can be invaluable tools, especially for lower-level characters who haven’t yet earned powerful spells to help them navigate the worlds. A portal to the Ethereal plane allows travelers to visit any of the inner planes by finding the proper color curtains in the Deep Ethereal, giving the party freedom to visit any elemental plane.
Then again, you could instead have a portal that constantly shifts after the party goes back and forth through it once, so that they can hop into the portal visit distant lands, deal with baddies, and then the next time they want to utilize it again, they head off somewhere new. This allows you to keep the portal magical and strange, it takes them where the portal thinks they need to go, not always where they want to go.
Sealing a Portal
The other uses of a portal can be simply to close it down like if one has opened up on the lower levels of the Abyss and demons are piling into the world. Closing a portal is highly dependent on what type of portal you are trying to close, and how much effort a traveler is willing to invest into it. Temporary portals are easy to close, sometimes all that is required to close one of them is to simply use them. Shifting portals can be trickier, but a sufficiently powerful spellcaster can cast magic over the portal to shift it to a new pattern. Permanent portals are the hardest to close as they are permanent in nature. There are magics to help close the portal, but they don't always work against very large and set portals. The older, and larger a portal is, the harder it is to close it.
Portals created by deities can not be closed except by other deities or powerful artifacts.
Planewalker’s Handbook, 1996 TSR Inc.
Portal Spells
Spells designed to control portals are highly sought after on the planes and any traveler worth their salt will jump at a chance to learn one. These spells are highly valuable and few are willing to share their knowledge, especially for free.
These spells are highly restricted and jealously guarded by any who find the spells. To gain access to one of these spells, it requires a traveler to locate someone willing to teach them and often providing services or goods in exchange to learn one of these spells. Even clerics who are granted spells by their gods are restricted as the powers only trust a select few with them, clerics must prove themselves to get access to a portal spell.
Greater Sign of Sealing
8th-level abjuration
Class: Bard, Cleric, Wizard
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (rare chalks and powdered diamond worth at least 5,000 gp, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Until dispelled
As you cast the spell, you draw arcane symbols on the ground in front of a planar portal that is up to a 30 foot radius or less and it closes and seals the portal. If you cast this on an object, the arcane symbols are drawn directly on the object like a chest, door or similar object that has a lid or a latch, it becomes permanently fused shut. It is completely impassable unless it is broken open or the spell is dispelled or suppressed. Casting knock on an object, or the physical location where the planar portal used to be, has no effect.
While affected by this spell, the object is more difficult to break or force open; the DC to break it or pick any locks on it increases by 20. If a creature breaks the object or portal open, either through dispel magic or similar magic, or by forcing it physically open, the spell explodes out and every creature within a 50-foot-radius sphere centered on the object must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 8d10 points of force damage. On a successful save, they take half damage.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 9th level, the size of the portal affected by this spell can be up to 50 feet radius or less.
Hold Portal
2nd-level abjuration
Class: Artificer, Wizard
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (platinum dust worth at least 25 gp, which the spell consumes)
Duration: 1 hour
You touch a planar portal and it becomes blocked for the duration of the spell by an almost transparent field of force. You can set a password that, when spoken within 5 feet of the portal, suppresses this spell for 1 minute. Otherwise, it is impassable until the spell is dispelled or suppressed. Casting knock on the portal has no effect.
A creature can attempt to destroy the field of force by dealing 15 points of bludgeoning damage with a magical weapon against it in one turn. A disintegrate spell destroys the field of force instantly, however.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the amount of bludgeoning damage a creature must deal in one turn increases by 5 points for each slot level above 2nd.
Lesser Sign of Sealing
4th-level abjuration
Class: Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Wizard
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (rare chalks and powdered diamond worth at least 300 gp, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Until dispelled
As you cast the spell, you draw arcane symbols on the ground in front of a temporary planar portal that is 10 ft radius or less, or on an object like a chest, door or similar object that has a lid or a latch and it becomes closed or locked. It is impassable unless it is broken open or the spell is dispelled or suppressed. Casting knock on an object, or the physical location where the planar portal used to be, suppresses the spell for 1 minute.
While affected by this spell, the object is more difficult to break or force open; the DC to break it or pick any locks on it increases by 15. If a creature breaks the object or portal open, either through dispel magic, knock or similar magic, or by forcing it physically open, the spell explodes out and every creature within a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on the object must make a Constitution saving throw or take 4d8 points of force damage. On a successful save, they take half damage.
If you cast this spell on a permanent or shifting portal, it is closed for 8 hours unless something breaks it open first. This only works on portals that are 10 ft radius or less.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the damage it deals increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 4th.
Summon Portal
Player’s Handbook, 2014 WotC
5th-level conjuration
Class: Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 20 feet
Components: V, S, M (a rare gem worth at least 250 gp which the spell consumes, the gem required is based on your location)
Duration: 1 Minute, concentration
You conjure a portal linking an unoccupied space you can see within range to a random location on a different plane of existence. The portal is a circular opening, which you can make 5 to 10 feet in diameter. You can orient the portal in any direction you choose. The portal remains open for the duration.
The portal has a front and a back on each plane where it appears. Travel through the portal is only one way and requires you to move through its front. Anything that does so is instantly transported to the other plane, appearing in the unoccupied space nearest to the portal.
Deities and other planar rulers can prevent portals created by this spell from opening in their presence or anywhere within their domains.
When you cast this spell, you can only create a portal to an adjacent plane of existence and the end of the portal appears at a random location on the top layer of the plane. If you are in the Outer Planes, you can only create a portal to an adjacent Outer Plane, if you were on Mechanus, you could only create a portal to Acheron or Arcadia.
If you are in the Inner Planes, you can only create a portal to the Elemental Chaos, another major Inner Plane you are adjacent to or one of the minor Inner Planes that make up the major Inner Plane you are on. If you cast this spell while on the Material Plane, you can only create a portal to the Feywild or the Shadowfell.
You can not create a portal to the Astral Plane, Ethereal Plane, the Outlands, or to Sigil.
The rare gem required depends on where you are traveling to per the chart below.
Gem Required / Plane of Existence
Outer Planes
Diamond / Good Aligned, Arcadia to Ysgard
Quartz / Neutral Aligned, Mechanus and Limbo
Opal / Evil Aligned, Acheron to Pandemonium
Inner Planes
Topaz / Plane of Air
Jade / Plane of Earth
Ruby / Plane of Fire
Sapphire / Plane of Water
Reflective Planes
Emerald / Feywild
Jet / Shadowfell
Tiger's Eye / Material World
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