OOTS 1223: Bird's Eye View

[hamishspence]

1223 Bird's Eye View - Giant in the Playground Games

Been a while, but Blackwing is still funny.

 

[Dioltach]

The Kill Skeleton!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Any operating theories on what hey heck is going on?

 

[Rune]

Any operating theories on what hey heck is going on?

Seems pretty clear. The Order bypassed the teleport trap, so they’re probably about to find the gate.

 

[MarkB]

Any operating theories on what hey heck is going on?

It seems like the whole "multiple doors" thing is a misdirection. Basically any of the doors will lead you into the real Gate location, if you can bypass the initial portal misdirection/trap.

But the trap doesn't seem like it should be something that can stand up to high-level-spellcaster scrutiny. Showing a projection of the location on the far side of the portal isn't only a Divination effect, it's also an Illusion, and any character with True Seeing active should see right through it.

 

[Rune]

It didn't ping as illusion in V’s detect magic. And I don’t see why it would have to be, since it’s revealing something that’s really there. We just don’t know where the “there” is.

Also, we can infer that the layout is the same (within sight), because the Order didn’t notice a difference when they bypassed the trap.

As far as I can tell, the divination exists so that anyone in your party who gets teleported in front you still looks like they’re in the same passage as you. And, if you’re coming the other way, you see the exit instead of the dead end.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

These rules lawying DMs... "Technically, this is not an illusion, because you see something that actually exist" Rat Bastard DM from Hell, right there!

 

[Rune]

These rules lawying DMs... "Technically, this is not an illusion, because you see something that actually exist" Rat Bastard DM from Hell, right there!

First of all, how did you know I was a member of the RBDM club? It’s been defunct for years!

Second, the trap wouldn’t have been an effective design if it had used illusion, precisely for the reason mentioned above. True Sight would see right through it. And it wasn’t even that high of a level in 3.5. I wanna say, 5th?

It’s less a technicality and more a critical component of the design.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I actually used something similar, once. Except the trap was also designed to randomly teleport each person passing through to one of six different corridors elsewhere in the dungeon. And there were eight traps spread throughout the dungeon, with slightly different destination lists*. Two of the PCs literally ran into each other when one of them got teleported in front of the other headed in opposite directions.


* Each trap only worked once on a particular PC, so once each one had "collected them all" they could go where they wanted...