Jester of the FoS wrote:And while magic prevents people from leaving Ravenloft there's nothing in the rules that say someone can't be pulled out.
Nothing except the lack of a spell that would do so. All the "teleport" spells I know of require the caster to be in contact with any person being teleported. Is there a spell that allows you to fish into other planes without going there?
The closest I can see would be
gate, a 9th level spell that would allow a prime-plane caster to open a gateway into a plane he specifies. The key here is the word "specifies." Getting the actual name of the demiplane would be a near-impossible thing. Inferring from the alterations to the
discern location spell, the demiplane doesn't have a name, and therefore can't be specified.
Other possibilities for escape with outside help may exist. I can't find a 3.5 version of the old
succor spell, but using it from outside the plane would probably require the caster opening a
gate into RL (see above) or--slightly easier--finding one...and throwing the token through it for someone on the other side to use. Since gates into RL could lead to lots of places, the token could land anywhere, and the party requesting help would have to find it, possibly with the help of the spellcaster scrying into RL. Finally, the DM would be free to rule that while the token was created outside RL, it was really more like a magical device, and therefore bound by the laws of RL. Back to square one.
A quick sending spell could make escape a breeze.
"Help, I'm caught in a demiplane in the deep etherial. Please teleport me out as soon as possible. My name is <first name> <last name>. Thank you."
"No problem, I'll just teleport to your location, and then teleport you back out!"
Er...wait...
Now a smart DM would simply rule that you can't be teleported or gated out by someone, but the rules don't explicitly forbid it anymore than contacting someone else.
I'd say the rules don't need to say anything about teleportation out by an outsider, at least until someone writes the "kidnap teleportation" spell. I think it goes without saying that DM-created spells would require the DM to come up with his own ruling.
Personally, I think that unless the character is an outlander they wouldn't assume there'd be anyone out there that wasn't a demon or other inhuman creature.
I totally agree. They'd have to have contact with outlanders or be outlanders themselves in order to even think of it. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to using
sending in this manner is that the target must be clearly specified. I can see the traveler from Forgotten Realms who tries to contact Drizz't Do'urden, but doesn't know his real last name!
So it sounds to me like contacting someone outside RL may make things interesting, but not necessarily easy with regards to escape. If I were designing a situation like in the OP, I might start with a simple
sending and then complicate things at other points. OTOH, if I didn't want it to be so easy, there are plenty of other options. IMC some of Azalin's agents made it out during the GC, but getting them more instructions was a real pain. Some of this did eventually lead to the PC's getting pulled into RL.