What is to stop by kill-team using Gate of Infinity to do the following:

Create a gate underneath a, for example, hive tyrant

Nominate the exit point to be about 50km up.

Watch the Hive Tyrant disappear, then freeze, suffocate, and finally get an accute case of 'concrete poisoning'?

Hieronimo said:

Range: Self.

Alex

I shall rephrase:

The Libarian runs up to the Hive Tyrant / Land Raider / Dreadnought, and then creates the gate underneath said object.

And I imagine it would be hard for the librarian to be adjacent to the tyrant, and push him inside.

Although if my players tried this, I would be open, as long as they succeed on opposed strength tests to push it in.

It wouldn't even need an opposed strength test - manoeuvre would do this nicely. An opposed WS skill test and you can force your target 1m in any direction.

Granted, your Tyrant is going to be tough to beat at 70+, but your Tau Commander is going to be rather easy prey.

If falling damage is 1d10+1 per meter, then falling even 1km is going to be 1000d10+1000. In other words, splat.

Well I imagine an XV8 can actually survive alright (what with its jetpack)

Actually, what would worry me is the difference in pressure on both sides of the gate, I would say its like being exposed to the void. Probably not very pleasent for the adjacent librarian.

If they can make it to the target and hold it in place for the 3 full actions it takes to manifest the power without dying then fair play to them.

EDIT - ADDITIONAL: Would dodging an angry Hive Tyrant's talons count as an interruption for the purposes of carrying out an extended action?

Khouri said:

Not sure, maybe.

For example, if you aim, but then use a reaction (to do whatever, dodge, parry, etc.), you lose the aiming bonus.

I would probably force a WP test to maintain concentration (+0 at first, but cumulative -10 for each hit suffered since start of concentration)

Hieronimo said:

You can't because the gate has height and width and not depth and width; it's standing upright as gates normally do. Range 'Self' means that the spell has no range - the psyker creates the gate right in front him.

Alex

The reason I ask is that towards the end of the last session of DW I ran, the players were working out how to take out a large... archaeo-robotic... thing.

The librarian offered the following solutions:

1) Create a gate in front of him on a train-track, with the exit point 2km above the robot. Drive a train through at maximum speed, and hop out at the last moment. You're going to be able to get a lot of maglev train through a gate that size. Maybe not all of it, but I figured that those bits of the train that can't fit through would be 'shaved off' - kind of like a tall bus going under a low bridge. Regardless, you're going to have a lot of high-speed metal falling on something. When they started talking about this, one player remarked that a Baneblade superheavy is ~8.5m wide and ~6.5m high. Meaning that you could have 320 tonnes 90km up in reasonably short order.

2) Create a gate in front of him and the end-point inside the robot, and then have the predator fire its autocannon through the gate, or toss the a few plasma grenades through. Or basically anthing materialising inside the target is going to be ... unpleasant.

3) Create a gate behind or under (see my view on dimension and orientation below) the robot and push it through or wait for it to fall.

4) Spend a few rounds upsetting the robot (calling it names, doing obscene things with toasters) to have it charge them. On the third round, once it has built up a great deal of momentum, pop the gate in front of it. Kind of like a matador. Fortunately for me (and the robot), the abstraction of the DW combat system means that it can move on a dime.

5) Unrelated to the robot - when in space combat, create a gate in front of the librarian with the destination being the other ship's plasma drives / bridge / vulernables and then toss a wide variety of explosive toys through it. Granted, the range would have to be close (30 / 60 km for a rank 1 librarian).

I ended the session before they could put any of these ideas into practice, because I had absolutely no idea how to handle it.

The range: self thing is problematic. If it were summoned directly on the psyker, then the psyker would immediately transport through it. The gate itself will appear as a square of [PR]m x [PR]m. The book uses the words height and width, but these terms are meaningless to a dimensional object (that is to say, the gate probably doesn't have any thickness). In the event that the librarian was trying to extract himself and his team from being shot at, it seems entirely reasonable to me to summon a gate parallel to the ground - you don't run the risk of being shot on the far side of the gate. Or, for that matter, when you're in micro-gravity when up and down do not exist.

Unintended consequences of the current rules:

1) Poor man's orbital bombardment. The ifference between dropping a something from 36,000km (geostationary orbit) and 30km (what a level 1 librarian is going to be reasonably able to achieve) is going to be the difference in how dead you want something to be.

2) Terminal Bungee Experience. If you can move your target through the gate, either through reasons of being unable to decelerate, or tactical use of manoeuvre, or other Cunning Plan, you've just worked out a way to inflict [1,000xPR] d10 + [1,000xPR] points of damage on something.

3) Guaranteed armour penetration. If you can put the gate anywhere, then you can entirely avoid armour. Want to kill that pesky tank? Create a gate and then toss a frag grenade through it. Want to kil that hive tyrant? Open a gate direclty into its head and then shoot through it.

Doesn't GoI have a rank min of 4 or 5. I don't have a book handy, but I'm pretty sure it does....

Rank 5 power you should have plasma canon and what not at this point... but word for word yeah you could do it. Probably would give a resist roll of some kind against Psyker effect...

Personally given you have to be rank 5 to use it, it has a range of self, and takes 3 rounds. I'm not exactly worried. You are opening a gate through the warp. People are going to notice. Besides it's 3 rounds if something can take 3 rounds of fire from a multi-melta, being beat on by power fists or the like that rank 5 characters are likely to be packing. I'd say being teleported to a few km straight up isn't going to cause it that much of an issue.

Besides at rank 5 we are also talking a psi of 7. At that point smite damage is 1d10 x7 or 1d10x10 (if pushed) . Not to mention Vortex of Doom. Both of can be done in one round. Then there is Hammer of the Emperor which appears to be the psyker equivalent of an orbital strike. It does 3d10 x 3-10 (depending on how risky you want to get) to a 100 x 3-10 meter radius. Sure it takes 5 rounds to do, but you can be 3-10 km away. Short of using GoI and pushing a nuke through you simply can't beat the Hammer.

The hammer specifically states it does 3d10 x PR damage to Structures only. However, at the GM's discretion, anyone caught in the radius will take 3d10 I damage if they fail a Challenging (+0) Agility test as they are hit by falling debris.

The Warden's Hammer of The Emperor is a pocket Earthquake, not an orbital strike.

For the portal, I'll definitely introduce some house rules to prevent the gate-******.

-The portal always stands up, like a doorway. (debatable)

-The portal is only slightly larger than the casting librarian.

-The portals have to be cast where they can stand 'free', i.e. NOT inside a mechanical construct or in the belly of the beast.

-The Librarion has to 'know' the destination point, either by having been there before or by using some sort of psychic or mechanical remote viewing first.

I think all of these can be checked off as common sense without needing too much explanation, no?

You're also not going to do unlimited damage, logically- whatever you're dropping through the portal is going to hit terminal velocity at some point and stop increasing the damage dice. Even if you do allow it, you'd have to figure out how long it would take for the creature to hit TV, then figure out how far of a fall that is, then apply that portion of the damage (say 10-15 seconds to hit TV, you'd fall maybe 1500 ft or 457m), that's not even considering the rest of the overly complicated equation. Still a ridiculous amount of dice, but less then a bajillion.

I also think Meph's common sense ideas make...well...sense. Even without the first point (vertical portal), can you really argue the others? To me the damage and attempt at clever use doesn't bother me, but the twisting of the mechanics and spirit of powers like that smacks of nonsense to me (not that my players aren't the kings and queens of doing crap like this).

Personally as a GM if you want to stand right next to the big bad for 3 rounds* bringing up the GoI. I says go for it. It sounds like pulling it off will be an epic tale. Because if I'm the big bad I'm not going to just stand there. I'm going to try to kill the psyker, or get out of the way. You're going to need to have attle bothers throwing themselves in front of hits/shots. Or have a grappling match to keep it in place. Then there is the required rolls for the battle brother(s) not to fall in, and you know the big bad is going to grab someone or something...

Honestly though I can't see PCs trying this as an easy kill. We are talking 3-4 rounds of combat. I don't anything surviving that long against a rank 5 kill team. And if it can last 3-4 rounds then I salute the PCs for trying this method.

*Really more like 4 round as you have to spend a round moving up.