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Gate


Gate causes discontinuities in Euclidean space, warping dimensions to allow instantaneous passage to other places.

Gate backlash result indicates a random teleport. Your final location is up to the sadistic gamemaster, who will usually try as well as he can to be ingeniously sadistic. Did I mention that your gear might also be lost in transit?

The difficulty of Gate Sorcery depends on the distances to be bridged, according to the following table. The power of various Gate effects will be mentioned in the effect descriptions, below. Note that certain power ratings can reach into or even through the netherworld to other junctures. It is generally not possible to tunnel to a juncture that is not currently open.

Teleportation is "noisy", it has spectacular side effects and anyone with a Magic attribute near a teleport site will feel that something special has happened.

Power Distance Example
1 1 km
2 10 km Local Distances
3 100 km Regional Distances
4 1000 km New York, Cairo
5 10 000 km Anywhere on Earth
6 100 000 km
7 1 million km Luna
8 10 million km Gate to Netherworld
9 100 million km Mars, Venus when close
10 1 billion km Inner planets
11 10 billion km Outer planets
12 1014 m Netherworld tunnel
13 1015 m
14 1016 m
15 1017 m 1 Light Year
16 10 ly Nearby stars
17 100 ly Aldebaran
18 1 000 ly Most visible stars
19 10 000 ly
20 100 000 ly Entire Galaxy

Gate Effects

Combat Teleport

You teleport to a spot very close by, no more than your Magic meters away, and not across any difficult-to-cross barriers (use Line of Sight Teleport for that). The effect is a combination of defense and combat positioning effect.

When you use this effect, you disappear until your next shot comes up. You can do this as a 3-shot defensive action, giving you an active dodge value of Sorcery +5. Once you do appear, opponents are mildly surprised (unless the have some kind of spatial or extra-dimensional sense) and you get a +3 bonus on your first action after the teleport. Teleporting this way costs a Magic point.

Line of Sight Teleport

You can teleport to a spot nearby. It looks real cool because you disappear in a puff of smoke (or a flash of light, whatever you want). You must be able to see something of your destination, but you may ignore any intervening pits, transparent barriers, people etc. The difficulty of this check is 5, with penalties for cover and range (FS p. 277). A failed teleport causes backlash. Teleporting costs a Magic point.

Madrazgul the Magnificent is trying to teleport behind a nearby couch. The difficulty is ten, plus the couch 90% covers the area behind it. This increased the difficulty by 6, to 11.

Long Distance Teleport

You can teleport yourself and a small group of willing passengers over long distances. You have to pay a number of Magic points equal to the power of the teleport (see above), plus one more if you want to take passengers (no more than you Magic attribute). Halve the cost if you teleport from one Feng Shui site to another. You can only teleport to sites you know of. Any failed teleport is considered a backlash.

Familiarity Difficulty
Home
0
Familiar site 5
Studied site 10
Known Site 15
Described 20
Heard of 25
Add the Sorcery juncture modifiers for both the place you teleport from and the place you teleport to. If you teleport within a juncture, add it's Sorcery juncture modifier twice.

Be careful; teleportation may often disrupt a story, with appropriate penalties. Long distance teleporting is a ten shot action if you try it during combat, and you hang around until all those ten shots expire. You and your passengers suffer impairment and disorientation for some minutes after arriving. Hot teleports are not recommended.

Gates

Gates are arrangements of objects or lines in peculiar patterns, whose angles are non-Euclidean and madness-inducing. By harmonizing with these patterns, the gate can be activated, transporting the user to another, linked gate far away. A gate is as permanent as the substance it is made of; as long as the geometrical figures exist, anyone with a Magic attribute can activate the gate. Certain gates can have other effects as well, changing those transported into a form suitable for survival in the new environment, for example. Other gates lead to the Netherworld. These effects are best left to the gamemaster.

Gate Creation
Creating a gate is no easy matter. It requires complex calculations and the proper knowledge. Creating a gate also costs permanent experience points equal to the power of the gate. It also requires a period of study (days to months). Gates can only go to places whose exact location you know. It requires no die roll per se, but is very much subject to GM fiat.

Gates have a power rating, an indication of how far they go. In order to create a gate, the creator must have a Magic rating equal to the power rating.

The Divination effect Astral Sight, the Creature Power Sense Chi, Spatial Sense and similar effects can also sense gates.

Using a Gate
You don't need this schtick to activate an existing gate, but this is how you do it. It takes an Arcanowave device, Sorcery or Magic attribute roll with a difficulty equal to the Power of the gate to go through one. One character can take action penalties to send several people. Some gates have "passwords" or other protective measures, that require additional Arcanowave or Sorcery rolls to bypass.

Extradimensional Space

You can create small extradimensional spaces, either to store things in or to hide away. The basic extradimensional space lasta a a number of minutes equal to your magic atribute, and can hold a number of small objects equal to your Magic attribute. It is immobile, and can only e accessed from one point in space. This effect can be improved by spending Magic points, one for each improvement.

  • The duration can be extended (first to hours, then to days).
  • The capacity can be expended (to people, then to really big things like cars, then to huge things like airplanes)
  • The opening can be fixed in relation to some object rather than to a point space.

Spatial Sense

Distance is an illusion; it cannot restrict your perceptions.

Touch the Web
You can feel any disturbance in space, much like a spider feels movements in her web. Any attempt to use gate magics or similar teleport powers near you (within a distance of Magic *10 meters) is immediately obvious, and you can pinpoint where it took place. You cannot see where such a teleport went, only the end of the teleport close to you is felt this way.

Space Probe:
When at a spot where someone has recently teleported, you can probe the fabric of space to determine where he teleported to. The difficulty is the AV he used to teleport.

Finding Gates
This is the ability to locate already existing gates. Such portals can generally be felt when they are within a distance equal to the Sorcery Acting Value in meters, but a high Sorcery roll can often give a vague intuitive feeling at far greater range. "There is a gate nearby, in a wet place. Perhaps the sewers". This ability can also be used to find nether portals.

Remote Sense
You can create a limited gate, that only transmits sensory input, but does not allow teleportation. This works like a gate, but the magic point cost is half normal (with a minimum of one point). You can use all your senses this way, and sensory magic as well, but you cannot move the sensory point or affect the world at that point in any way.


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Copyright © 1998 and onwards, Carl Cramér. Page downloaded times. Last update Sat, May 25, 2002.