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Mystic Portal is one-way - you create it, and you can go through. But no one on the other side can come in. I know that there's the Hull-Breacher Missiles which claim to decompress the compartment they target, so they work in the opposite direction it seems. They also mention uses as creating an opening for combat troops to enter, which is the normal direction.

So does regular Mystic Portal only allow creating an opening, but no decompression? Are the missiles special in that they can create a "reverse" Mystic Portal? I'm mostly trying to figure out what will happen if a Mystic Portal is used in outer space from the outside of a ship to enter it. Does the air rush out (which would mean it's bi-directional), or is the hull still sealed from the inside - just not from the outside? What if it's used from one ship to another, rather than from outer space to inside a ship? What if it's used from inside a ship to outer space? So many questions.

narcissus wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:37 pm Mystic Portal is one-way - you create it, and you can go through. But no one on the other side can come in. I know that there's the Hull-Breacher Missiles which claim to decompress the compartment they target, so they work in the opposite direction it seems. They also mention uses as creating an opening for combat troops to enter, which is the normal direction.

So does regular Mystic Portal only allow creating an opening, but no decompression? Are the missiles special in that they can create a "reverse" Mystic Portal? I'm mostly trying to figure out what will happen if a Mystic Portal is used in outer space from the outside of a ship to enter it. Does the air rush out (which would mean it's bi-directional), or is the hull still sealed from the inside - just not from the outside? What if it's used from one ship to another, rather than from outer space to inside a ship? What if it's used from inside a ship to outer space? So many questions.

Mystic Portals can explictly be either one way or two way, depending on if you open a passage or opt for the teleportation option.

one actually creates a temporary hole in the hull, which air will flow through.

The other merely teleports those who touch it to the location visible on the other side of the portal within the 100' per level range.

So the answer is: both. The caster chooses weather it decompresses or not, because the spell has two modes of operation.

Not gonna lie. I interpret Mystic Portal differently than what you cited here.

I've reviewed RUE Mystic Portal wording, and it's somewhat ambiguous. Or maybe that's just my interpretation. But I've always used it as one-way. Whether it's teleportation or passing through walls, it's one way. I think I probably interpreted the "One-way passage" paragraph as how the spell works. So I'm not sold on you can make it one-way or two-way or whichever way you want. For me, as a GM, it's always been directed - that is, the caster is on the outside going in. Anything else is an extension/modification (TW or otherwise) of the spell. "Teleportation" still reads to me as unidirectional.

Am I the only one that feels this way? Am I misinterpreting? I'd love other people's opinions on the spell as written in RUE. And let's be honest - it's super ambiguous as written. First paragraph has no bolding for "Pass through solid walls". Second paragrpaph bolds "Teleportation" but then limits it extensively. And third paragraph says "One-way passage", which I interpret to be a limitation on all of the above, not a tertiary function.

So what are other peoples' opinions?

I would suggest applying Occam's Razor here to slice the ambiguity:

What is the simpler explanation?

That most canon example of the spell's use is a heavy modification of the default spell, to the point we rarely see the default spell used,

or,

The spell works in those ways by default, and the author wrote a multifaceted spell?

There's room for reasonable people to disagree on the answer to that, but for myself, I feel that it's more likely that the default spell works in those ways, simply because if it is a modification, the modification would have replaced the original in common circulation by now. Because if you are right, and the original only worked one way, and someone made a modification that worked in a bunch of ways, and it began spreading all around to other TW's/Item Crafters, then at a certain point: who'd even bother learning the unmodified spell anymore?

I am not sure that air/water etc will pass through a mystic portal.
I used to... but then we got the Rifts Underseas telling us that enviromental factors dont travel.
And the use of Mystic Portal as breaching systems would be...fraught if you had to fight the hurricane force winds of decompression.
I also note that none of the missiles or forces that use MP to board talk about the SIGNIFICANT effect of depressurizing the ship