Grek wrote:There's a couple good answers here:
These are all good story ideas. My question (badly put, I don't include enough context in these things), was more along the lines of:
A) if she's a demi-goddess, she should be immune from scrying to some degree, her palace should be teleport-proof, etc. The PCs could try to teleport to an area near the palace or something, but that could raise a lot of alarms if they don't take other precautions. Adventures could be built around whether the PCs try to sneak in, bribe their way in, sabotage the defenses, etc.
B) I'd hope the demi-goddess isn't the same as most NPCs in video games, where they sit in the same spot 24/7/365. So the players can't just "gate in to the throne room" (if that's even possible), because she might not even be there. She might be on the 664th plane visiting a friend. How do the PCs learn her whereabouts? There's whole gobs of story and adventure wrapped up in those details that I wouldn't want to skip over, as a player or GM.
So yes, IF the players have a ton of adventures digging up the demi-goddess's whereabouts and schedule, and maybe have an adventure where they sabotage the teleport-proofness of her palace, then I see no problem letting them gate in to her chambers, "bypassing" guards and whatnot. They just had a huge series of adventures all their own, and hopefully had fun doing it. Then again, they could try kicking in the front door and fighting all takers. Whatever your group enjoys most.
Last time I GM'd (Shadowrun), the players would accept a job from a Johnson and then sit around and talk about it for hours, planning this and discussing if this or that could work. I just took notes on what they were discussing so that I could do some preparation for next session. Seemed to work pretty well.
It's a sad fact of life that areas and encounters you put a lot of time in to as a GM will be immediately skipped by the players, in favor of areas and encounters you did almost no planning for.