Hold Portal

With a quiet word, the threshold hardens against all hands, denying entry until strength, magic, or ruin breaks the spell.

1st-Level Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V
Duration: 1 minute

Effect

Choose a closed door, gate, window, shutter, or similar portal within range. For the duration, the portal is magically held shut.

The portal cannot be opened by ordinary means. A creature can use its action to try to force it open, making a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, the portal opens and the spell ends.

The portal can still be broken by dealing damage to it, and it can still be opened by magic such as Knock.

Overview

Hold Portal is a modest spell, but a useful one. It does not make a barrier indestructible, nor does it truly seal it beyond reach. What it does is impose delay. In play, that delay is often enough to change the shape of a pursuit, interrupt an assault, or give a spellcaster the few heartbeats needed to prepare a stronger defense.

Because the spell works on simple thresholds rather than elaborate magical structures, it is most valuable when used decisively and at the right moment. A held door in a corridor, stairwell, tower room, or dungeon passage can buy time far out of proportion to the spell’s level.

Uses

The spell is most often used to slow pursuit, protect a resting place, or briefly secure a room during negotiation, ritual, or escape. It is especially effective in confined environments where enemies cannot easily go around the barrier and must either force it, destroy it, or answer magic with magic.

Tactics

Hold Portal works best when it is part of a larger plan. On its own, it delays. Combined with distance, darkness, terrain, or another spell, it creates real advantage. A fleeing party can cast it behind them to force pursuers to lose momentum. A defender can use it to deny entry to a chamber long enough to reposition or prepare. In dungeons and urban interiors, where doors and gates define movement, the spell becomes far more useful than its simple text suggests.

Good Combinations

Alarm pairs naturally with Hold Portal, warning you the instant the barrier is tested or breached. Glyph of Warding turns a forced opening into a costly mistake. Grease and Web can turn the doorway beyond into an immediate hazard once the portal finally gives way. Arcane Lock also complements it well, especially in a layered defence where one spell delays and the other strengthens.

DM Notes

This spell is most effective when treated as pressure rather than permanence. The interest lies in what happens while the barrier holds: the pounding on the far side, the splintering frame, the hurried spellcasting, the desperate escape. It should create tension, not certainty.

Hold Portal

This material is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

This spell magically holds shut a door, gate, window, or shutter of wood, metal, or stone.

Abjuration

Level Sorcerer/Wizard 1
Component V
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target One portal, up to 20 sq. ft./level
Duration 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw None
Spell Resistance No

The magic affects the portal just as if it were securely closed and normally locked. A knock spell or a successful dispel magic spell can negate a hold portal spell.

For a portal affected by this spell, add 5 to the normal DC for forcing open the portal.