What if Portals had a small but non 0 chance of misfire?

[Apokriphos]

Imagine for a moment that the quasi interplanar magics we rely on for convenience day to day wasnt 'completely ' perfect. What if there was an extremely small, but not 0 chance of accidentally going to another portal exit when you meant Bendir Dale?

What sort of roleplay would that bring? Teleporting accidentally to hostile territory might make players more cautious about how often they use the miraculous technology we rely on. Every once in a while everyone could use a healthy dose of running for your life.

It would certainly make life in Arelith more interesting.

[Void]

Imagine for a moment that the quasi interplanar magics we rely on for convenience day to day wasnt 'completely ' perfect. What if there was an extremely small, but not 0 chance of accidentally going to another portal exit when you meant Bendir Dale?

What sort of roleplay would that bring? Teleporting accidentally to hostile territory might make players more cautious about how often they use the miraculous technology we rely on. Every once in a while everyone could use a healthy dose of running for your life.

It would certainly make life in Arelith more interesting.

... Somebody will make a white haired bearded human male with two swords who will ride around on a horse, drink a lot of potions and complain how much he hates portals. And they'll call him Ge.... Harold.

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Rather than healthy dose of running this will be a possibly unhealthy does of quick death. I have no idea where all the portals spots are but there is more than one place where you can accidentally end up while not be strong enough to handle what's in there. There are exit-only spots that can have enemies standing in wait right next to them. Also people teleport one person at a time, so it'll scatter parties all over the island.

Optional unstable portals could make sense, but if you're gonna break every normal portal this way, this won't be much fun.

[Wuthering]

Maybe if it was only to a portal from your list of destinations, so you'd only be sent somewhere you'd been before (and presumably could handle/know how to get back from.)

A permanently unstable portal that could send a party literally anywhere would be fun as well (not changing normal portals but make one broken portal a landmark for parties wanting a random adventure)

[Liareth]

Imagine for a moment that the quasi interplanar magics we rely on for convenience day to day wasnt 'completely ' perfect. What if there was an extremely small, but not 0 chance of accidentally going to another portal exit when you meant Bendir Dale?

What sort of roleplay would that bring? Teleporting accidentally to hostile territory might make players more cautious about how often they use the miraculous technology we rely on. Every once in a while everyone could use a healthy dose of running for your life.

It would certainly make life in Arelith more interesting.

Most likely, absolutely nothing would change in the interaction between players and portals, except to accept that 1 in every 1000 portal usages will result in a healthy waste of time for everyone involved, plus either one of two fantastic prizes:

* Unnecessary lens tax of 3.5k. (double bonus option here: what if your LENS also misfires?)
* Unnecessary exp loss and death penalties.

A permanently unstable portal that could send a party literally anywhere would be fun as well (not changing normal portals but make one broken portal a landmark for parties wanting a random adventure)

This would be very cool if it teleported everyone in the party to the same place.

[Archnon]

This sounds like it would make a really fun large scale dm event to solve a mystery but not a fun normal state of things.

[Drogo Gyslain]

While this idea sounds interesting, that level of interaction with the portals and the fact that it may cause unstable reactions in the weave would present a neat game play mechanic that would be both abused and detested in time.

With the number of times people use portals or move from area to area, it would not take long for events to occur where people are popping up in places they should not be appearing and getting insta-killbashed, causing fights or battles by just accidentally appearing where they shouldn't be.

It also hurts roleplay ability because randomly getting dumped when you are trying to go with your party somewhere and having to find your way back, sometimes from a 1 way trip is a hassle in and of itself. Not to mention the problem that would then arise if you got portaled in on somewhere that you REALLY shouldn't be like a lvl 5 Surfacer accidentally getting niped into the hub.

It would lead to an influx of random killbashing out of suprise and alarm, and a general unease that while may be an interesting caveat, would constitute a very unstable amount of misfires on the server proportionate to how many times portals are used every day.

TL;DR, Cool Idea, but it presents an unstable element that would not be suited for this server. If this were 40K and warp instability were a thing, sure. But the Weave hasn't really exhibited that level of instability within D&D Canon.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

A permanently unstable portal that could send a party literally anywhere would be fun as well (not changing normal portals but make one broken portal a landmark for parties wanting a random adventure)

I like this idea, plus Liareth's caveat to send an entire party to the same place, with a small chance to arrive to exclusive portal locations and dungeons only accessible through the busted portal to justify the risk.


As for the initial post- in my experience random teleportation at awkward moments through no doing of your own is already an occasional feature that's happened to my characters multiple times over the years- not sure I want more of it.

[Apokriphos]

A permanently unstable portal that could send a party literally anywhere would be fun as well (not changing normal portals but make one broken portal a landmark for parties wanting a random adventure)

I like this idea, plus Liareth's caveat to send an entire party to the same place, with a small chance to arrive to exclusive portal locations and dungeons only accessible through the busted portal to justify the risk.

I like this idea as well. Maybe have a few of these warped portals around in mysterious places, perhaps spawning at random, like in a treasure room of a dungeon normally without portals or something like that, where it could be a benefit with risk.

[Echohawk]

Rift crisis wasn't good enough I guess.

[Zavandar]

no thank you

[JustMonika]

I think portals all going to completely random destinations would be a good April Fools day.

[Kuma]

as the IC lore/justification for end-game raid dungeons (like fractals in GW2)? sure. though using the astrolabe would be better.

in daily life? no thanks, for reasons well-elaborated on earlier