Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Samurai View Post
Yeah see... this assumes like the tuning fork is a nonissue, but the portal will be an issue.'
No, it assumes that the character with Plane Shift wants to use the spell and likely would have looked into getting tuning forks, thus starting with more than zero information. Also the bit I was responding to was about a game where the party decided to try going to another plane to solve something, not a preplanned off-plane adventure. Without people moving goal posts, yes it does need more GM work & intervention to add in the typical non-caster enabling portal mini adventure and travel than just finding a tuning fork.

If the GM wants to go totally off into "no you can't" or "yes and scene change you're there now" they can do so with equal ease for either case. They can demand that you have to have a tuning fork made of metal from the plane of fire and there are none on the prime just, as easily as they can have the party fall down a random hole through a portal to the plane of fire. But most won't do that level of absolute yes/no.

The question wasn't about whether the GM can be equally railroading scuzz or total floormat in either case. It was about if the GM had to do more to enable some party traveling to the planes. The GM when faced with "the party wants to travel to plane X" has two cases here; the party has the core PH rulebook spell that says yes and the GM decides how hard they want to make it, or the party has no inherent means and the GM uses an optional bit from the DMG including possibly having to change worldbuilding & setting before they decide how hard they want to make it.

I'm not interested in shuffling through every possible detail of someone else's hypothetic goal shifting scenario. The game's default by the core rules is that there's a Plane Shift spell and tuning forks that can be bought, found, or made. The optional stuff for portals is not an assumed default always on option and involves more work & intervention bt the GM to enable the party to go off into the planes. If I were running a game where I didn't pre-plan extraplanar stuff and the players got a bug to go off to the plane of whatever then if they have Plane Shift all I have to do it OK finding the tuning fork. If they don't then I have work to do just to enable them to get to another plane before they can do anything else.

This applies to pretty much everything beyond being able to just walk/sail to a location. If there are flying castles the GM adds extra stuff so the noncaster party can adventure there. If there is an underwater kingdom the GM adds extra stuff so the noncaster party can adventure there. Even if some adventure point is just far away the GM has to deal with the noncaster party possibly taking months just to get from point A to B and possibly never completing the trip at all. Its not better, or worse, or right, or wrong. Its just that the party with casters has more and better travel, investigation, social manipulation, and infiltration options by default of the PH being packed with spells to do that stuff.