Planar Travel & Gating (sage study)
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Planar travel & gating is a sage study in the fields of Black Magic and Unreality, providing knowledge of how one may travel from one plane of existence to another within the Planescape Universe. While this can be performed by spells, it can also be done through magical portals called "gates," which exist in scattered places throughout the Prime Material plane.
These connect different planes of existence, imbued with powerful magic and often looked after by gatekeepers whose role is to protect travellers with warnings and advice, rather than to bar their way. While these gates may exist anywhere, most are profoundly remote and difficult to reach; many require intricate methods to activate, such as uttering incantations, using a special key or performing a ritual. Most importantly, gates provide access to exotic items not readily available on the character's home plane. Additionally each plane in the universe has it's own knowledge and mysteries. Those wishing to make use of phenomenal power must sometime travel whence through these gates to places beyond imagination.
The gate of one plane of existence always connects directly with its counterpart elsewhere, working as a conduit back-and-forth for travellers. Eventually, however, the character learns how to circumvent this limitation.
Sage Abilities
The sage abilities below are those acquired by a character through the study, according to status.
Amateur Status
- Gate Recognition: The character is able to identify a gate when its encountered, as well as having a feel for it's location once coming within 500 feet of it. The ability does not, however, provide knowledge of where the gate leads nor how to activate it — but should something be preparing to come through the gate, the character would have knowledge of that.
- Rumoured Gate: the character has begun to learn about the existence of gates, beginning with one that is located within 500 miles. This knowledge might be gotten through three sources — the character has had a vision; the character has ciphered the text of a holy book; and the character has received a message from a colleague who is now deceased. The character doesn't know precisely where a gate is, but does suggest where to search and puzzle it out. The knowledge of a new gate is gained for every 10 points of knowledge possessed by the character.
Authority Status
- Gatekeeper's Mastery: the character is able to steady self and others through the actual journey, ensuring safe passage over the Astral Plane, reducing the chances of complications or side effects. Likewise, once the character has passed through, he or she retains complete knowledge of the accompanying gate's location.
- Gate Navigation: the character is wholly able to make a gate functional, travel through it and know in advance to which plane it leads.
Expert Status
- Celestial Insight: the character's studies grants a connection to a benevolent celestial entity in the target plane who can be contacted and beseeched for guidance and aid, primarily in the form of sustaining the party's wellbeing and adaptation to the new planar existence.
- Passage Insight: grants the opportunity to move in an ethereal state through a gate to the other side, to observe the setting that awaits on the other side, though this doesn't allow moving beyond 20 feet of the complimentary gate. The ability does allow the character to fetch anything that can be carried back from that plane, so long as it can be reached given the ability's limitations.
- Phase Healing: allows the healing of 50% of lost hit points for the character and those accompanying every time a gate is passed through.
Sage Status
- Arcane Gate Mastery: enables the character to use any gate to travel to any other gate, thus choosing to arrive at the destination of the character's choice, regardless of the usual connection provided by a single gate.
- Ephermeral Guardian: the character is able to call an entity within the destination plane of existence that can act as a guide and an individual to parley and negotiate with others. This guardian may be of a supernatural nature, and its form may be chosen by the caster from those native to the plane of existence; but it may not have more than half the number of hit dice of the caster. The guardian is not available on the Prime Material, Ethereal or Astral planes.
- Harmonic Attunement: this allows the character to make use of the rules and powers offered by other planes of existence, such as flight, immunities to atmosphere or lack thereof, resistance to heat, cold, gas or substance while upon that plane and so on. This ability can be granted to other recipients in the company of the character.
