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Magic Circle has the following effect on creatures of a specified type:

The creature can't willingly enter the cylinder by nonmagical means. If the creature tries to use teleportation or interplanar travel to do so, it must first succeed on a Charisma saving throw.

Forcecage has a similar clause:

A creature inside the cage can’t leave it by nonmagical means. If the creature tries to use teleportation or interplanar travel to leave the cage, it must first make a Charisma saving throw.

On Does Otiluke's Resilient Sphere beat Magic Circle?, one insightful answer frame-challenged to suggest that any non-teleportation, non-interplanar-travel means of movement, so long as it were magical, could be used to enter a Magic Circle.

Is this correct? Could a creature unable to enter a Magic Circle use a non-teleportation spell, such as Levitate or Gaseous Form (which would then also allow escape from a cage-shape Forcecage), to move into it? This seems like it might go against the spirit of the spell, if all that is needed to escape is a bit of a magical "push".

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There is ambiguity in the English, leaving 'nonmagical' rather open to interpretation.

Consider the paragraph you quoted:

The creature can't willingly enter the cylinder by nonmagical means. If the creature tries to use teleportation or interplanar travel to do so, it must first succeed on a Charisma saving throw.

Given that the second sentence explicitly mentions teleportation and interplanar travel, it is reasonable to assume that magically entering the circle is really talking about magically appearing inside the circle from outside without crossing the intervening space. i.e. teleporting etc.

And from this we can take it to mean that nonmagical means of entering the circle means trying to cross from the outside to the inside physically even if your mode of travel or your current form is magically enhanced (by levitation, being in a gaseous form and so on). That is, even though you are, say, magically transformed into a gas you are still not entering the Circle magically.

So by this interpretation, you could still not levitate into a Magic circle or enter it in gaseous form.

Leaving a forcecage would work the same way as per the question/answer in PixelMaster's comment: Is escaping from a cage-shaped Forcecage really as ridiculously easy as it seems?)

As you say, this, to me, appears to be the spirit of the spell.

However, I can see that the paragraph can be read in another way and claim that any magical enhanced form of movement is - well - magical and would therefore allow you to enter the Magic Circle. A DM could possibly decide to interpret things this way (though I believe it would be against the intent).

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Nice answer! I believe the answer in rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/143620/… asserts the opposite of what you're suggesting it does. (And I think the suggestion that gaseous form would work in that case isn't supported by the rest of your answer) \$\endgroup\$
    – Vigil
    Apr 10, 2019 at 15:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Vigil. Oops you're right. I remember seeing that previous question but remembered the answer the wrong way round for "cage-shaped" cages (maybe thinking of a deleted answer). I will edit my answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – PJRZ
    Apr 10, 2019 at 15:32

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