Kinda, Sorta Portal

For this installment of Terrain Tuesday, we’re going to flush out the mechanics of a new portal reward that our adventuring party could receive from a quirky Waterdeep NPC. Let’s step through the shimmering light together.

Our 3D-printed Energy Portal terrain piece comes from Kraken 3D Studios and The Mole King’s Lair Kickstarter. This one was packed with all sorts of unique dungeon pieces in a DnD fantasy football stadium sorta theme – wacky stuff we know…but there was still plenty of bang for the buck here.

Kraken included several awesome stretch goal Props packs such as this series of different doors. We thought their Energy Portal STL would just be the perfect terrain piece for our upcoming quest reward. We’re also looking forward to printing some of the others!

Resident Painter, Kimmy Utah, gave us some nice vibrant colors here and the rune markings are so darn slick. The little accent pieces also help denote the mysterious, glistening movements.

So why do we need a portal for the group anyway? Let’s do a brief recap. There’s a resident town tinkering gnome named Tink Urbelle. She runs a very low-key business called “Gadgets and Gizmos.” However, she runs a clock shop as a front because she doesn’t like to attract a lot of attention. A lot of bad people would like her to create a lot of bad things so she’s very picky on who can ultimately become patrons for her special set of skills. However, this particular time she is in a bind because a key resource required for her inventions is drastically low. She transforms a particular lard into a unique grease component to ensure all her gears spin in a perfect, fluent manner.

Thus, ol’ Tink dropped a cryptic request on the Waterdeep city square job board: “Hunters needed! Capture three Wooly Mangalitza sows inside The High Forest and return them for a mechanical reward. Inquire at Waterdeep’s northern scrap heap.”

The special reward for this scarce grease is going to be a temperamental portal that can be activated from a special trigger mechanism Pocket Watch that Tink has crafted. The only problem is she doesn’t have this transport contraption running like a well-oiled machine…more like an it-will-get-where-you-need-to-go…most-of-the-time sorta portal.

The group is eager for such a contraption. They’re hoping to evict a witch near The High Forest and Omin Dran is willing to give them that cabin’s deed and surrounding land in exchange for “evicting” her permanently. A home base that they can port back to from time to time would be incredibly handy (and opens up all sorts of additional game scenarios).

So naturally, DM Ben needs some magic item mechanics here for this portal:

• The portal pocket watch holder has to be attuned to it.
• Its home coordinates can only be set once.
• The pocket watch can be activated once every long rest.
• It’s activated using a series of complicated dial combinations.
• The subsequent portal takes 2 rounds/12 seconds to fully activate and form.
• It has a 30% chance of failing and temporarily porting you somewhere else.
• The inadvertent portal stop lasts for 6 rounds/36 seconds.
• The casted portal location stays up for 3 rounds/18 seconds or til wearer exits.
• The constant, loud ticking sound creates disadvantage to holder’s stealth checks.
• Any creature can pass through the portal but the more folks, the riskier it gets.
• Travelers can take objects through but nothing beyond what they can carry.

Pretty slick, right? DM Ben will prep a series of mini scenarios for when the group blows the roll. Things like a spider cave, a Roc’s nest, a young dragon’s lair, etc. Some sort of table they can roll on would be neato.

So now we just need to create a Magic Item Treasure Card for the group that includes all these traits. More to come on that later this week!