Planescape Help out a Clueless - Returning to the Material Plane from Sigil?!

[AnotherGuy]

Been playing a long time, but I've never explored Sigil.

I recently had one character end up in Sigil who is exploring avenues of returning to the Prime Material Plane. Currently playing through a heavily modified Doors to the Unknown.

So,
(1) How easy is it to buy (via money or services) the knowledge and use of a portal back to the Prime Material Plane? Specifically Toril, even more specifically the Sword Coast?
(2) Would the Trading/Merchant Guilds of Sigil offer such service?
(3) How about a connecting portal via another destination back to his home plane?

How would you play it essentially?

As an aside: Sigil is the next destination of the main campaign, so this is a taste of things to come with one character being able to fill the others in of this location and it allows me to build up some familiar NPCs when they do progress on to Sigil.

 

[cbwjm]

Seek out Lissandra the gate-seeker, she has the dark on portals.

 

[Distracted DM]

They call Sigil "the Cage" because it's hard to get in and out of, you can't teleport/plane shift- you need knowledge of the portals and their keys. If you read Planescape fiction from various books, people will spend their entire lives trying to escape and get back home. You can get out- but getting back to your home world is a completely different matter. We hear about Toril etc. all the time, but a lot of Planescape characters come from worlds we've never heard of, and they have almost no chance of getting back.

As I said, we hear about Toril, Oerth, and Krynn all the time- but that doesn't necessarily mean that in Sigil they're any more well-known than other random worlds. Realistically we hear about the characters from those places all the time, they're famous, so maybe the well-known worlds (to us) are easy to get to and back from if you know the right people. I'd prefer to say not, though.

 

[Queer Venger]

joining or negotiating with some of the Factions can help, but probably requires you to do something for them

 

[MonsterEnvy]

1. It's not easy. You either need to stumble on the right portal with the right key in hand, or find someone who keeps track of lots of portals and their keys and even then it's a crapshoot they would have the one you want, the more specific the less likely. Like it would probably be easier at a high level to find a portal to a random plane then try and plane shift back home from there.

2. Trading groups would probably know of some material plane portal depending on their nature, and origin. But the chances of them getting a portal to where you want is low.

 

[MarkB]

They call Sigil "the Cage" because it's hard to get in and out of, you can't teleport/plane shift- you need knowledge of the portals and their keys. If you read Planescape fiction from various books, people will spend their entire lives trying to escape and get back home. You can get out- but getting back to your home world is a completely different matter. We hear about Toril etc. all the time, but a lot of Planescape characters come from worlds we've never heard of, and they have almost no chance of getting back.

As I said, we hear about Toril, Oerth, and Krynn all the time- but that doesn't necessarily mean that in Sigil they're any more well-known than other random worlds. Realistically we hear about the characters from those places all the time, they're famous, so maybe the well-known worlds (to us) are easy to get to and back from if you know the right people. I'd prefer to say not, though.

So basically,

1. Find a portal to take you to literally any other planar location that isn't dimensionally locked, and then
2. Get someone to cast banishment on you and fail the save.

 

[Distracted DM]

So basically,

1. Find a portal to take you to literally any other planar location that isn't dimensionally locked, and then
2. Get someone to cast banishment on you and fail the save.

1. is supposed to be pretty difficult without connections/resources, buuut yeah iirc in 5e it sends you to your home plane.
In other editions it wasn't specified where the banished creature went, or there was a % roll to see if they were sent home or to a random plane

You're quite correct though, modern banishment is a guaranteed ticket home.

 

[MarkB]

1. is supposed to be pretty difficult without connections/resources, buuut yeah iirc in 5e it sends you to your home plane.
In other editions it wasn't specified where the banished creature went, or there was a % roll to see if they were sent home or to a random plane

You're quite correct though, modern banishment is a guaranteed ticket home.

Yeah, it's kinda convenient that way. I'm currently playing a Descent into Avernus campaign, and have used banishment a couple of times on friendly targets as a means of freeing them from the plane.

 

[Shiroiken]

In theory, there's a portal to anywhere in the City of Doors. Finding the right one and the right time, however... good luck! Toril is a more common place to return to, so you might be able to find one. The guilds and factions are your best bet, but everything has a price. Also note, there are permanent portals and temporary portals, so even if you hear about one, it might not be active by the time you get to it. If you don't mind a bit of meta-gaming, one of the immortal archmages of Toril has a home in Sigil, with a permanent portal back home.

In reality, you need to assume your DM has a plan, because they shouldn't send you to Sigil without one. Unless their plan was to permanently remove you from the campaign...

So basically,

1. Find a portal to take you to literally any other planar location that isn't dimensionally locked, and then
2. Get someone to cast banishment on you and fail the save.

Based on everything I've been reading on 5E, it looks like all the different setting are part of the Material Plane. Meaning Banishment wouldn't send you home, since it's the same plane. On the plus side, this would mean you could Teleport instead.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Unfortunately the Planescape lore is really lacking on this sort of thing. It really took more of a DM railroad (or heavily bounded sandbox) attitude towards planar travel. So despite the apparent promise of being able to go anywhere, it's really more you can go anywhere your DM wants you to go, when they want you to go, and how they want you to go.

As a DM, I'm not a fan of that. I actually like allowing my players to go anywhere they want to go that makes sense. To do to that I'm working on various random tables for locating portals and such. But we have to refine our own assumptions, because the books don't help much!

The way I would look at it is that:

Time to find portal = Rarity - (gold * contacts)

The rarer a portal is, the longer it will take you to find it, but money and/or contacts can reduce that substantially.

I would say, for a portal from Sigil to the Material Plane, Toril is literally the most common world. I base this on the amount of NPCs described as from their relative to other worlds.

That said, Material Plane portals are some of the most rare portals. If you have a lot of gold (from a planar perspective), you can have the location of the portal and info tomorrow, with your contact apologizing that he could only get you to Daggerford, but if you give him a couple more days he can find you one to Waterdeep like you wanted. No guarantee its not a temporary portal though.

If you lack money, then it's probably a matter of time and luck. If you are well connected with the right people, it could be quite easy, but you're unlikely to be that collected, so it's a matter of time and/ok money.

Now if you want a portal to a gate town on the Outlands, one or two permanent portals for each town are so well known you won't even have to pay to learn their locations and keys because all the locals know where they are. If you don't have friends yet, people will charge your Clueless self.

And it's a whole spectrum in-between.