Help me Brainstorm: Portal Magic for Bad Guys

[WizarDru]

So, here's the thing. On at least two occasions, my players have had an encounter with evil NPCs who had access to long and short range teleportation via summoned portals. The players have seen the process in action, but have no idea how it worked.

Thing is...neither do I.

I have supposed in my mind that this would be the product of an ability conferred upon the villains (The Legion of The Coming Storm and/or their masters, The Cruel Wizards) and a more powerful item. The facts are as follows:

• The portal is small, mostly the size of the user
• The portal is short-lived, suitable for creating an escape but not much more
• The short distance portal could go at least a few hundred feet
• The long distance portal opened to a remote location hundreds of miles away
• The portals can be summoned as a standard action
• The campaign is on the verge of going to the Paragon Tier

So this raises the question: how can the villains manage this? I'm leaning towards items with significant negative consequences or that are much more limited in scope than they first appear. The players clearly have an idea of what's available with magic and I prefer to avoid fiat, per se. If they manage to get their hands on one, what would it be like?

If it's something like a boon, how would that work? One consistent item in my game that the players really don't know much about are Rune-stones. Sometimes one-shot magic items and other times extremely powerful (but dangerous) ones...their commanding officer actually has one embedded in his chest (it's a curse, actually). They have encountered monsters transformed by them...again by having them attached or otherwise fused with the creature.

Any suggestions for how my bad guys can get around?

 

[MarkB]

One way to keep them useful but limited is to require them - long-range or short-range - to be keyed to a specific target destination. With that in mind, along with your rune-stones, how about this:

The short-range portal could be keyed to a specially-crafted rune-stone, so that the user would place the rune-stone in a nearby secure location (or leave it with a henchman) before going into battle. If he needs to retreat, he triggers the portal and it takes him back to the location of the rune-stone (so long as it's not too distant).

Long-range portals could require either fixed arrays of multiple rune-stones as their destination, or conventional teleportation circles.

Now, the downside of this is that sometimes (more frequently with the short-range version), these portals interact negatively with their destination rune-stones and/or any rune-stones the user is carrying. The most common negative reaction is to fuse the user with a rune-stone, but other possibilities include the user being imbued with the rune-stone's power and becoming warped and empowered by it, and sometimes the reverse happens - the subject is consumed, and his essence and power entrapped within the rune-stone, which may become sentient as a result.

The warped and rune-stone-fused creatures the PCs have encountered so far were mostly created through early testing of the portals, as the bad guys refined them to minimise the side effects, but they have also developed deliberately unstable portals, which create the side effects reliably, and are trying to use them to create new mutated beasts and more powerful rune-stones.

 

[LostSoul]

Since you're on the verge of Paragon, something tied to the Shadowfell or the Feywild would work. Let's go with the Feywild, based on the names of your organizations.

How about a Ritual. The caster waits until a storm is brewing, then creates a magic circle where the storm will hit. The circle focuses the energy of the storm on the caster, imbuing him with powerful energies. The caster sacrifices Healing Surges for the ability to open these portals. The sacrificed Surges can't be regained until the portals have been activated.

Once the Ritual is complete, activating the portal later on requires a Standard Action. The character steps through, into the Feywild where he's caught up in a storm that (short range) spits him back out a few seconds later, or (long range) he rides the storm's winds until he reaches a fey crossing.

 

[WizarDru]

Wow, these are both great ideas. The one NPC who is the player's acting sergeant is nicknamed 'Stoneheart', a term he hates. It's been established that he got a rune stone placed in his chest where his heart should be, but not why or how...other than it being tied to a mission that went terribly wrong. Tying it to the Legion of the Coming Storm and a portal accident....that's absolutely perfect. This gives me a story-hook into Stoneheart's past AND allows me to explain the mobility of the NPCs.

I also LOVE the idea of sacrificing healing surges to 'prime the pump' for the portal usage. It makes them dangerous to use while also giving them a powerful ability.

I had considered making the long-term tied to a physical spot, but not how to make it different from just a vanilla teleport circle. This fits the bill nicely. Also, I've been trying to push rituals as more useful. I'll need to brainstorm the stats for one that matches this idea.

 

[DracoSuave]

Tie it into why they are bad guys. Sounds like it's a faction thing, rather than just a handy contrivance, so go with that.

What's their villainous hook as villains?