What do we need to do to enjoy 3.5e-like Portal Magic in Pathfinder?

Question

In 3.5 play, WotC published a bunch of game-mechanic rules for portals and portal magic. You could find them in Manual of the Planes, Planar Handbook, some of the F.R. sourcebooks and even spell reprints/cleanups in the Spell Compendium.

Now that my group is fully transitioning into a homebrew hybrid Pathfinder-&-3.5 system (3.P?) and kicking it off with Golarion as our new campaign world, we'd like to bring over a lot of the those portals mechanics to our new system and campaign world.

Golarion's Elf Gates are probably the closest corollary to 3.5's portals.

Do any of you know if Paizo (or reputable Pathfinder 3PP company) has published any good rule systems, magic spells/items or cultural info on these Elf Gates? And if so, where would we find them?

Also, we loved using 3.5 spells like Scramble Portal, Analyze Portal, Seal Portal, etc. Will we still be able to use these spells as is ... or will they require some mechanical or flavor tweaking to make them usable for Golarion's Elf Gates?

Answer 1

James Jacobs (Paizo's Creative Director) has once declared that there are as many ways to create gates as necessary for the adventure being written:

Are there other ways to create portals?

Yes. There are as many ways to create portals as the writer of an adventure or supplement that requires portals to play a role can make up.

With that said, there is really nothing that prevents, or will cause trouble, when making a direct conversion from 3.5's rules for creating portals to Pathfinder. If Paizo does release some rules about creating portals, those will not be the only acceptable method for creating them, but just another method.

And this is, in fact, explored in the setting. There are dozens of portals created by different races, from aboleth to elves, using magic or technology. One thing they try to make sure is that the methods are not common knowledge, the knowledge of making portals is either kept secret or is a lost knowledge from an ancient civilization.

The Second Darkness adventure path explores the elf gates to a certain extent, but most of that information is available on the wiki. It is worth checking the second book though, Children of the Void, as it precedes the book about the other planets and shows us the first information about using gates and planetary travel in the setting.

James Jacobs words are confirmed on the Distant Worlds setting book (page 53):

From a game perspective, portals are the easiest means of travel for GMs to manage, as it allows them to control when such travel is possible and where on a given world a party appears, as well as creating natural adventure hooks. Whether they’ve been carefully searching for such a gateway or simply stumble upon it in the center of a dungeon, it’s hard for PCs to resist stepping through a portal and seeing what’s on the other side.

Every planet on the book has a short list of adventure hooks, nearly all of them have at least one entry related to the gate on that planet.

Answer 2

Nothing really prevents nor causes trouble with directly implementing 3.5 rules with Pathfinder, as they were made with almost identical concepts in mind (ignoring class make-up changes, the tweaks to feats, and the combination of certain skills). All existing 3.5 portal rules and spells should work flawlessly with Pathfinder as is, and while I'm not overly familiar with Elf Gates, I see no reason why you couldn't use it as well.

Creating a permanent portal isn't cheap (and requires the Create Portal feat, if you're using Forgotten Realms feats) nor a simple standard action; and the use of Scramble Portal and Seal portal (both standard actions) sound more like a really good plot progression point than some clever combat tactics. Nothing game breaking there. Analyze portal is one minute to cast, and probably not something done inside a melee anyway unless (again) a good plot progression point (like "where does this ancient portal lead, it might be our only escape from the army at our heels"), so again, no unbalancing power added.

Unfortunately, Paizo has not decided to print the repertoire of portal associated content that WotC did (the only "portal" spell they've released is Hold Portal, which refers to doors and the like, not actual portals). The Manual of the Planes and Planar Handbook were printed to boost planar travel and portals just happened to be a part of it. Forgotten Realms printed portal material exists because of the extensive portal network Toril had prior to 4th edition collapse, and thus needed content.

Answer 3

Ring Gates still exist, so yes, portals are a thing.