can Jumper (Tunnel) cause harm?

[Fred Brackin]

[QUOTE=Not another shrubbery;2391155. My preferred default would be that the portal closes *behind* you, so you'd always make it through if you were touching it when it closed.

).[/QUOTE]

My reading of the rules for the Jumper+Tunnel combination has always been that the Tunnel _opens_ with your body and then closes behind you 3D6 seconds later. When making some sort of "Prince of Amber" like character I would add Area Effect so the Tunnel opens in front of your horse's head. Add lots of levels to let the bowsprit of your ship be where the Tunnel starts. Add Extended Duration to let an army march through behind you.

Having the tunnel begin at some place in front of you and let other people go before you and then have it close behind you is nowhere close to the default rules. You'd need probably Area Effect as well as Usable at Range and some sort of Cosmic too.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by RyanW

My first thought was that it would be hard to game, because anything that blocks the tunnel from closing also blocks anything else from going through (the tunnel seals around it, but can't fully close until the block is removed). I don't see it as something like an iris that can be held open from the edge.

That feels fiddly to me, and even with that restriction in place, it seems like PCs (being an inventive lot) would still find ways to make it useful. Do you mean it to be just a special effect of the portal closing behind you?

Assuming you can't open a new tunnel until the first one closes, there are many ways that this would be more a nuisance than a boon.

That's been mentioned before, but I don't recall a ruling supporting it. Do you know of one? It would be unusual for an enhancement to limit a normal application of an ability without being explicit.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

My reading of the rules for the Jumper+Tunnel combination has always been that the Tunnel _opens_ with your body and then closes behind you 3D6 seconds later. When making some sort of "Prince of Amber" like character I would add Area Effect so the Tunnel opens in front of your horse's head. Add lots of levels to let the bowsprit of your ship be where the Tunnel starts. Add Extended Duration to let an army march through behind you.

Having the tunnel begin at some place in front of you and let other people go before you and then have it close behind you is nowhere close to the default rules. You'd need probably Area Effect as well as Usable at Range and some sort of Cosmic too.

Just to be clear, I meant "you, the last character through the Portal when its duration expired" rather then "you, the creator of the Portal".

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

That feels fiddly to me, and even with that restriction in place, it seems like PCs (being an inventive lot) would still find ways to make it useful.

An obvious option is to shove a cylinder partially through the portal, such that you can continue using it by walking/crawling through the cylinder. If it only stays open where the cylinder is (rather than for the air the cylinder contains), use a cylinder filled with water and swim through. If liquid can't keep the portal open, it's back to a closing portal being a weapon, as it cuts off the target's blood supply. There's also pretty serious issues if the target has any sort of irregular shape to it, including for a human - if it closes with your neck in it, sure you aren't decapitated now, but you're also stuck, as the new portal is only as wide as your neck and thus you can't pull your head through (as your skull is wider than your neck, at least for the vast majority of people) and can't push the rest of your body through either (thanks to your torso being wider than your neck). Unless the portal can stretch to accommodate the rest of whatever was stuck through... but then you just need a container with a rope going through the portal, and you can pull whatever you've put in the container through (put a rope at both ends and you can keep the portal open, going back and forth as needed).