FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1076518328[/unixtime]]Exactly. Once you are casting spells on a specific character you are having an encounter - regardless of the fact that you may be too far away for them to fight back effectively. If you fly in to an area guarded by Ankhegs and mow them down with archery - that's still an encounter despite the fact that the manner you entered it precluded them from fighting back.
If you use divination magics to find out when the Minotaur will sleep, then sneak in and cut his throat - that's also an encounter.
Casting Demand on someone who is standing at the brink of a volcanic caldera to jump in is an encounter and you do get experience for it. Casting Gate to force someone to hand roll taquitos is also an encounter, or rather, it's the beginning of one.
If the manner of you entering combat makes your opponent worthless that does not make people get zero xp for it. You don't even get less, it's just good tactics.
-Username17
I'll concede that point for situations where the creature you gate in is a creature that you must face in order to complete some task necessary to the adventure. But this whole conversation is based on TKD's idea that you could pull this trick with a really high-HD creature that has nothing to do with the adventure just to get cheap XP. He didn't explicitly state it here but that's what he's been saying in other places. I'm arguing that this use of the spell in those circumstances wouldn't earn XP. AFAICT, based on my reading of the (admittedly 3.0) DMG, it's only an encounter if the DM has decided that it's part of the adventure.
I agree that Gate is well and truly broken, since it allows any party with a 17th-level wizard or 18th-level sorcerer to defeat almost any non-divine being in the universe, making any BBEG short of the god of ultimate evil no challenge whatsoever. But it doesn't allow you to get free XP just for the heck of it.