Simplifying the D&D Cosmology a bit

[Deepbluediver]

To skip all the intro, I'm wondering what the overall effect on the game would be if I combined the Ethereal and Astral Planes, and maybe the plane of Shadow as well The Ethereal, Astral, and Shadow planes in some fashion. Any two or all three put together or remixed, as necessary.


The Manual of the Planes describes all 3 as transitional planes, mostly used for getting around on the material plane or passing through on the way to elsewhere. I know ghosts and incorporeal beings also like to hang out there on one of them (can never remember exactly which one though).
But beyond that, they don't seem terribly interesting or detailed.

What would be the most drastic effects if I tried to combine the fluff and mechanics from 2 or even all 3 of these planes? Would it break anything to terribly? Or requiring rejiggering a lot of other mechanics? I'm asking because honestly I don't have a lot of experience and I want to know what the major obstacles might be before I attempt something like this.

[Eldan]

Planescape did not have Shadow and got along just fine without it. Now, Astral and Ethereal have a lot of very interesting fluff to them. The Ethereal is the plane of creation ideas and protoplasm and the astral the plane of the pure mind and the void outside the multiverse. You could probably combine them into one, but you would lose interesting things.

[vasharanpaladin]

Why go to the effort? Just use what you need and ignore the rest unless and until it's needed. That's your prerogative as DM. Other than that...

Ghosts and most incorporeal creatures hang out on the Ethereal. Generally speaking, if the word "ectoplasm" comes up in the description of something (i.e. most psionic powers), you're dealing with the Ethereal. This one can be described as "just a few seconds to the left of right now." It's not normally in phase with the plane you're on, you usually can't interact with it or see into it, but creatures inside it can peek out and interact with you. Spells and powers exist to interact with it.

The Astral Plane is, conversely to all other planes, not infinite but infinitesimal. Going onto the Astral is like a mental journey. Githyanki live here, as do a few nastier things, and this is generally your gateway to the Outer Planes. Spells interact with this.

The Plane of Shadow, on the other hand, I like to think of as not a transitive plane (phooey on the Manual), but as the dark mirror of the Prime Material. Where the Prime is defined by light and life, joy and hope, the Shadow is darkness and death, apathy and despair. Everything that exists on the Prime also exists on the Shadow, but decayed and forsaken, ruined husks of their Material forms. This plane is more often called upon in class features than magic.

In the absence of the Ethereal, you have no source of ectoplasm and no real channel to the Inner Planes; ectoplasm can be shifted to, perhaps, more general "dreamstuff" or thought-construct, and elementals could be made up of matter or energy found near the summoner. A water elemental might coalesce out of the rain, or a fire elemental might now require a light tinder thrown onto kindling, which it consumes to create its form.

In the absence of the Astral, you lose your gate to the Outer Planes. Outsiders can thus become constructs of magic, with celestials representing more positive emotional input and fiends being born from negative mindstates.

In the absence of the Shadow, nothing really changes, but you'll have to work with certain classes and PrC's (shadowcasters, shadow dancers, et al) to figure out where they're going or drawing from.

[Deepbluediver]

Thanks for the feedback! I always appreciate it.


Planescape did not have Shadow and got along just fine without it.

In the absence of the Shadow, nothing really changes...
That's a ringing endorsement right there. :smallbiggrin:


...but you'll have to work with certain classes and PrC's (shadowcasters, shadow dancers, et al) to figure out where they're going or drawing from.

I like the idea behind Shadowcasters, but I felt their execution and fluff was a little lacking. "Drawing on the power of the plane of shadow" doesn't really explain very much; why can't I just draw on the material plane or the plane of fire? (plus the whole "mysteries per day" thing was kind of off-kilter, but that's not relevant ATM)

Giving the Plane of Shadow elements of creation and mental-ism (need a better word) could possibly help that issue.


You could probably combine them [astral and ethereal] into one, but you would lose interesting things.
Of the two, the Astral is sounding more appealing to me to keep. Frankly, I would almost rather expand it into an entirely psionic-based plane with it's own special rules.


Why go to the effort?
Well originally I was hoping I could just scrap 2/3 of it and redirect a few minor thing into what remained. But otherwise, I didn't really like the way they functioned.
Part of that was that I didn't know a whole lot about the differences; I was also hoping some one would put it into easy-to-understand-and-compare language for me.


This one [the ethereal] can be described as "just a few seconds to the left of right now." It's not normally in phase with the plane you're on, you usually can't interact with it or see into it, but creatures inside it can peek out and interact with you.
....
The Plane of Shadow, on the other hand, I like to think of as not a transitive plane (phooey on the Manual), but as the dark mirror of the Prime Material. Where the Prime is defined by light and life, joy and hope, the Shadow is darkness and death, apathy and despair. Everything that exists on the Prime also exists on the Shadow, but decayed and forsaken, ruined husks of their Material forms. This plane is more often called upon in class features than magic.
Your description of the plane of Shadow sounds more like a negative energy plane, to me.
And phooey on the manual for that one, IMO. An empty featureless expanse of nothing but pure negative energy? Really, that's the best you could come up with? I take bathroom breaks more creative than that.

But I do like the idea of having a plane that is similar to, but slightly out of sync with, the material plane. Major geographic features are the same, perhaps even long-standing buildings, but it's much more sparsely populated.
If ghosts and spirits still hang out here, then we can explain it's anomalous properties as being stuck or weirdly balanced between creation and death.
The players can decided for themselves whether it's a dying material plane, a material plane gone wrong, a material plane under construction, or something else entirely.

I'm kind of liking this now. :smallamused:


In the absence of the Ethereal, you have no source of ectoplasm and no real channel to the Inner Planes; ectoplasm can be shifted to, perhaps, more general "dreamstuff" or thought-construct, and elementals could be made up of matter or energy found near the summoner. A water elemental might coalesce out of the rain, or a fire elemental might now require a light tinder thrown onto kindling, which it consumes to create its form.

I wouldn't scrap any of them entirely, I think; just combine the best and most interesting pieces of each.


The Astral Plane is, conversely to all other planes, not infinite but infinitesimal. Going onto the Astral is like a mental journey. Githyanki live here, as do a few nastier things, and this is generally your gateway to the Outer Planes. Spells interact with this.
If it can be a home-plane to anything than it doesn't seem entirely mental; it actually exists as a location somewhere, that you can get to and from. How do inhabitants of the astral plane typically react when showing up on the material plane for the first time?


In the absence of the Astral, you lose your gate to the Outer Planes. Outsiders can thus become constructs of magic, with celestials representing more positive emotional input and fiends being born from negative mindstates.
Would it specifically prevent you from traveling between planes? Can I refluff it so I can just go straight from the material plane to wherever else I want to be?

[Eldan]

In the fluff, all kinds of teleportation and planeshift to the outer planes take you through the astral. If you want to keep that is of course your decision.

[drack]

Woah woah woah woah woah.

well you read the book, so I'm sue you already know this, but I may as well reiterate since I'm used to doing so when these sorts of things come up in my games. Astral links between planes. I guess I'll use the radio metaphor (with the laws of physics changing with every channel) So, when you cross planes you change the frequency. The white static in between is the astral plane, and the stations are all the planes in the cosmology. further our you have the deep astral beyond the outer planes where epic things live far from your known world. Now when you walk through the plane of shadow you are taking your radio out of range of those towers to a place where there are none of the same stations. When you go through the ethereal plane you're still half on you plane, or rather ethereal and material overlap in more then just geographical location. They both exist upon another like one layer of paint above another where there is a thin layer of mixing.

... I'm going back to my way of describing it. You have a piece of paper. You can draw whatever shapes and such you want on it. Those are planes. A plane can be an island floating in nothingness a solar system, a universe, or just an arbitrary chunk of land. When you are done drawn shapes, the space in between is the astral plane, space that has not yet been shaped by the gods left as raw reality with nothing to fill it. The ethereal plane is one of the few planes that actually overlays others. Any point on the ethereal is really a point on another plane, and it's more expressive of a shift in your own being then a shift in your location. Now, your piece of paper s a "multiverse", a cosmology with it's own planes and pantheon. Now put it on another piece of paper. Just as there is a gap at the end of a galaxy before the start of the next, the plane of shadow is the dark "nothingness" between cosmologies, "the void" if you care to use Norse mythological names. It houses a unique sort of life, an shadow creatures, but at the end of the day it is the space between worlds, and could be argued to be like the astral plane, but more so. So your first piece of paper is the D&D cosmology, another is Eberon, Fearun, The Far Realms, and so on. The reason most people think the plane of shadow is irrelevant is because usually they're not crossing between cosmologies. to mix them all together would be to make the material plane stretch across all settings and all planes with all manner of bizarre creatures from the far ends of the D&D cosmology roaming the material plane in an ethereal form that they shouldn't have. Albeit it would be an interesting way to boost CR on some, it seems a wee bit odd.

Hope this helps. :smallbiggrin:

[erikun]

If you plan on combining all three planes, then probably 99% of the game will behave the same way (especially if you aren't travelling between planes). However, that 1% can cause you quite a number of headaches.

Plane of Shadow:
The Plane of Shadow is basically a shadowy copy of the real world. Objects on the Shadow Plane look like they do in the real world, and changes in the real world will become reflected in the Shadow Plane. This is why shadow illusion spells like Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation exist, but you don't have shadow spells like Evard's Black Tentacles; a shadow spell is a phantom copy of a real spell, and so the illusionist is just grabbing a phantom copy of the spell they want from the Shadow Plane.

Most stuff dealing with shadows could be handwaved into magic in general, but some effects like Shadow Walk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowWalk.htm) or the Shadowdancer's Shadow Jump ability cause problems. Turning them into travel-through-Ethereal effects would keep most of the similarities, but there are several big advantages that passing through Ethereal has that passing through Shadow does not. You could just handwave it all away with magic, saying that they create a "Shadow path", but that just brings up questions as to how it works at all.

Ethereal Plane:
The Ethereal is a transitive and bordering the real world. What this means is that, when you are in the Ethereal Plane, you can see and hear what's going on in the real world. You are invisible to people in the real world, as they cannot see nor hear you. You (in general) cannot interact with the real world, and the real world (in general) cannot interact with you. This also means that you don't interact with real objects unless there is something in the Ethereal Plane preventing you from doing so, and there is very little in the Ethereal Plane. As such, Ethereal travels can pass right through solid matter in the real world, "fly" wherever they wish, and watch people virtually unobserved. (These are the "big advantages" to Ethereal travel over Shadow travel.)

There are ways to stop an Ethereal traveller, of course. Any Ethereal object will act like a physical obstacle to an Ethereal character - several D&D books mention teleporting a mountain into the Ethereal, then building a stronghold in the location, to prevent Ethereal trespassers. Some spells will ward and prevent Ethereal entry, and and Force effects work against Ethereal creatures just as well as everything else. This means a Wall of Force cast in the real world blocks Ethereal creatures from passing through. It also means that, if you can see them, then you can hit Ethereal creatures with the Magic Missile spell. Note that Ethereal creatures cannot do anything to something in the real world, not even with a Force spell.

There isn't much direct conflict with Ethereal-Astral, actually. Most Ethereal comes from interactions with the real world, and the "deep Ethereal" (that is, using it to travel between planes) isn't very well explored. It does cause confusion, though, with the Silver Cords you find in Astral travel not appearing in Ethereal travel.

Astral Plane:
Astral travel, as mentioned for Ethereal, generally does not parallel the real world. That is, when you're on the Astral Plane, you generally will not be interacting with the real world at all. The Astral is sort of the gateway between planes, and teleportation effects pass through it. As such, it probably won't conflict directly with being merged into Shadow or Ethereal; one would just be the "local" travel, or what happens when travelling nearby the real world, while Astral would be "foreign" travel, or what happens when travel away from the real world.

The biggest problem is how things interact with Astral, most notably the Silver Cord. As mentioned in the Astral Projection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/astralProjection.htm) spell, most travellers to the Astral Plane who aren't physically there have a Silver Cord attached from their Astral body and connected to their real body; basically, it's a soul-tether. If the Silver Cord gets cut, the character dies. If the character's Astral body dies, though, the Silver Cord pulls them back into their real body (not dead, thankfully).

The reason for the confusion is that it brings questions as to why a character would have a Silver Cord in the Astral but not in the more local Ethereal/Shadow, especially when you realize that characters would try causing the two to interact. What happens if someone uses Astral Projection and travels to the local "Ethereal", gets trapped inside a Forcecage, and dies? What about using Shadow Walk to travel to other planes? You'd want to make it a point to answer the questions, or at least be sure that your players don't try testing them too hard, if you're going to be merging all three planes.

[Deepbluediver]

Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner; It's been very helpful reading all the replies though.


In the fluff, all kinds of teleportation and planeshift to the outer planes take you through the astral. If you want to keep that is of course your decision.

I just don't really see the need to have a truck stop on the astral highway on my way to Heaven and/or Hell.
...does that sound like a country-style song to anyone else?

Woah woah woah woah woah.

well you read the book so I'm sure you already know this...
More like I skimmed the into, they flipped through looking at the pictures. Please tell me anything you feel is important that I'm not accounting for.


If you plan on combining all three planes, then probably 99% of the game will behave the same way (especially if you aren't travelling between planes). However, that 1% can cause you quite a number of headaches.

Yeah, it's that last 1% that had me worried.


but I may as well reiterate since I'm used to doing so when these sorts of things come up in my games. Astral links between planes. I guess I'll use the radio metaphor (with the laws of physics changing with every channel) So, when you cross planes you change the frequency. The white static in between is the astral plane, and the stations are all the planes in the cosmology. further our you have the deep astral beyond the outer planes where epic things live far from your known world. Now when you walk through the plane of shadow you are taking your radio out of range of those towers to a place where there are none of the same stations. When you go through the ethereal plane you're still half on you plane, or rather ethereal and material overlap in more then just geographical location. They both exist upon another like one layer of paint above another where there is a thin layer of mixing.

... I'm going back to my way of describing it. You have a piece of paper. You can draw whatever shapes and such you want on it. Those are planes. A plane can be an island floating in nothingness a solar system, a universe, or just an arbitrary chunk of land. When you are done drawn shapes, the space in between is the astral plane, space that has not yet been shaped by the gods left as raw reality with nothing to fill it. The ethereal plane is one of the few planes that actually overlays others. Any point on the ethereal is really a point on another plane, and it's more expressive of a shift in your own being then a shift in your location. Now, your piece of paper s a "multiverse", a cosmology with it's own planes and pantheon. Now put it on another piece of paper. Just as there is a gap at the end of a galaxy before the start of the next, the plane of shadow is the dark "nothingness" between cosmologies, "the void" if you care to use Norse mythological names. It houses a unique sort of life, an shadow creatures, but at the end of the day it is the space between worlds, and could be argued to be like the astral plane, but more so. So your first piece of paper is the D&D cosmology, another is Eberon, Fearun, The Far Realms, and so on. The reason most people think the plane of shadow is irrelevant is because usually they're not crossing between cosmologies. to mix them all together would be to make the material plane stretch across all settings and all planes with all manner of bizarre creatures from the far ends of the D&D cosmology roaming the material plane in an ethereal form that they shouldn't have. Albeit it would be an interesting way to boost CR on some, it seems a wee bit odd.


Plane of Shadow:
The Plane of Shadow is basically a shadowy copy of the real world. Objects on the Shadow Plane look like they do in the real world, and changes in the real world will become reflected in the Shadow Plane. This is why shadow illusion spells like Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation exist, but you don't have shadow spells like Evard's Black Tentacles; a shadow spell is a phantom copy of a real spell, and so the illusionist is just grabbing a phantom copy of the spell they want from the Shadow Plane.

Most stuff dealing with shadows could be handwaved into magic in general, but some effects like Shadow Walk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowWalk.htm) or the Shadowdancer's Shadow Jump ability cause problems. Turning them into travel-through-Ethereal effects would keep most of the similarities, but there are several big advantages that passing through Ethereal has that passing through Shadow does not. You could just handwave it all away with magic, saying that they create a "Shadow path", but that just brings up questions as to how it works at all.

Ethereal Plane:
The Ethereal is a transitive and bordering the real world. What this means is that, when you are in the Ethereal Plane, you can see and hear what's going on in the real world. You are invisible to people in the real world, as they cannot see nor hear you. You (in general) cannot interact with the real world, and the real world (in general) cannot interact with you. This also means that you don't interact with real objects unless there is something in the Ethereal Plane preventing you from doing so, and there is very little in the Ethereal Plane. As such, Ethereal travels can pass right through solid matter in the real world, "fly" wherever they wish, and watch people virtually unobserved. (These are the "big advantages" to Ethereal travel over Shadow travel.)

There are ways to stop an Ethereal traveller, of course. Any Ethereal object will act like a physical obstacle to an Ethereal character - several D&D books mention teleporting a mountain into the Ethereal, then building a stronghold in the location, to prevent Ethereal trespassers. Some spells will ward and prevent Ethereal entry, and and Force effects work against Ethereal creatures just as well as everything else. This means a Wall of Force cast in the real world blocks Ethereal creatures from passing through. It also means that, if you can see them, then you can hit Ethereal creatures with the Magic Missile spell. Note that Ethereal creatures cannot do anything to something in the real world, not even with a Force spell.

There isn't much direct conflict with Ethereal-Astral, actually. Most Ethereal comes from interactions with the real world, and the "deep Ethereal" (that is, using it to travel between planes) isn't very well explored. It does cause confusion, though, with the Silver Cords you find in Astral travel not appearing in Ethereal travel.

Astral Plane:
Astral travel, as mentioned for Ethereal, generally does not parallel the real world. That is, when you're on the Astral Plane, you generally will not be interacting with the real world at all. The Astral is sort of the gateway between planes, and teleportation effects pass through it. As such, it probably won't conflict directly with being merged into Shadow or Ethereal; one would just be the "local" travel, or what happens when travelling nearby the real world, while Astral would be "foreign" travel, or what happens when travel away from the real world.

The biggest problem is how things interact with Astral, most notably the Silver Cord. As mentioned in the Astral Projection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/astralProjection.htm) spell, most travellers to the Astral Plane who aren't physically there have a Silver Cord attached from their Astral body and connected to their real body; basically, it's a soul-tether. If the Silver Cord gets cut, the character dies. If the character's Astral body dies, though, the Silver Cord pulls them back into their real body (not dead, thankfully).

The reason for the confusion is that it brings questions as to why a character would have a Silver Cord in the Astral but not in the more local Ethereal/Shadow, especially when you realize that characters would try causing the two to interact. What happens if someone uses Astral Projection and travels to the local "Ethereal", gets trapped inside a Forcecage, and dies? What about using Shadow Walk to travel to other planes? You'd want to make it a point to answer the questions, or at least be sure that your players don't try testing them too hard, if you're going to be merging all three planes.

The analogies comparing the various planes are very helpful, thank you.

What I'm hearing is, that both the Ethereal Plane and the Plane of Shadow interact with the material plane to a large degree. One is a mimicry, the other lets you view and hear the material plane.

What I think I would like to do is combine them into one plane that has both those aspects. This new plane would be similar in physical structure to the material plane, in that it has a similar landscape and some of the same rules, but on a sort of time-delay. The longer something exists on the material plane, the more it shows up on the astral plane. Mountains, rivers, and other geographic shapes are similar, but structures won't appear unless they are sturdy enough to last several decades, maybe centuries. Forests might exist, but none of the pathways or trees will be in the same places.

Since time doesn't flow the same, you wouldn't age while on the plane (or would do so very slowly), and you need to eat, sleep, and even breathe much less than normal. At the same time, you couldn't rest or heal either.
The plane is very sparsely populated since it doesn't have a working ecosystem (again, things don't need to eat or sleep, but they also don't really reproduce). Ghosts and a few other spirits hang out on the ethereal plane, where they can interact with it the same as living creatures do on the material plane.

Rather than being able to see onto the material plane at all times, there would be some mechanic requiring effort or concentration. Instead of being able to fly about at will, visitors to this plane can pass through supposedly solid objects with some effort, albeit slowly. There may be exceptions to this rule, such as anything charged with certain types of magical energy, like a Wall of Force.
Positive and Negative energy may be suppressed; I haven't decided yet.

If there are any major problems that jump out of that description, please let me know.


The Astral plane is more problematic. The part where the analogies break down is the planes aren't actually physical objects; there is only this so-called "space" or "static" between them because the creators decided that there needed to be. We can just as easily declare that the planes all bump right up against one another or overlap to some degree, and it's just as logical.

What I'm thinking is that, like I mentioned earlier, the astral plane will be it's own separate plane, fluffed any way you like, with a heavy influence on mental aspects and psionics. Because of this mental pull, creatures occasionally have dream-like visions of the astral plane (usually while sleeping, though also under the influence of certain alchemical concoctions or during traumatic experiences).

Unlike the new ethereal/shadow plane, time will flow normally, though other things like gravity might be strange. Rather than having one large planet with continents, mini-planets composed of various combinations of other elements, floating in an easily transversible ether sounds like a fun thing to play around with. Everything from small strongholds for single, powerful entities to large settlements and colonies.
Perhaps everyone who is in the Astral plane will get a set of boilerplate spell-like/psionic abilities based on their mental stats to help them navigate this landscape. I could also make it so that travel from the Astral plane to other areas is easier, though the reverse is not necessarily true.
I would probably scrap the whole "silver cord" thing, or re purpose it elsewhere.

Again, I'm just sort of throwing this out there for the moment, to see what will stick.

[Eldan]

The Astral isn't a truck stop. It's the street you drive on. Except you drive so fast, you never even see the road.

Planescape especially called out that the Astral is sort of the backdrop of the multiverse. The backstage. No one was ever supposed to see it or go there. The outer planes are in it, but by itself, it is nothing. It's void, it has no space, no time, nothing. Falling into it is a problem. The only things here are things that didn't have a space in the real universe. The eldritch abominations from outside that were later put into the Far Realm, the dead gods, lost souls, wild ideas and hungry dreams.

Also, I was confused for a moment because you're using hte 3E ethereal, of course, which is a bit more boring than the full deep/border ethereal of Planescape. The new ethereal, yeah, you can probably combine that with shadow, no problem. In fact, even the full ethereal is a bit similar to shadow.

There's one aspect I'd emphasize with the ethereal: that unlike the astral plane, which is a plane of the mind, this is a plane of potential. It is where raw matter is turned into objects. Where you find protoplasm, drifing half-formed objects and immaterial, illusion-like objects everywhere, which I think where it ties in well with shadow. The crucible of worlds, where ideas become real.

[Deepbluediver]

The Astral isn't a truck stop. It's the street you drive on. Except you drive so fast, you never even see the road.

Planescape especially called out that the Astral is sort of the backdrop of the multiverse. The backstage. No one was ever supposed to see it or go there. The outer planes are in it, but by itself, it is nothing. It's void, it has no space, no time, nothing. Falling into it is a problem. The only things here are things that didn't have a space in the real universe. The eldritch abominations from outside that were later put into the Far Realm, the dead gods, lost souls, wild ideas and hungry dreams.

Is the Astral plane a replacement for the Far Realm? (home of Aberrations and the like)

I thought they where two separate places, but it sounds like they are kind of similar. And again, is it necessary to have this so-called backdrop? Something that starts out weird, mysterious and deadly eventually ends up with native races, monsters, and whole books written about it, and then it's not so weird and mysterious any more.


There's one aspect I'd emphasize with the ethereal: that unlike the astral plane, which is a plane of the mind, this is a plane of potential. It is where raw matter is turned into objects. Where you find protoplasm, drifing half-formed objects and immaterial, illusion-like objects everywhere, which I think where it ties in well with shadow. The crucible of worlds, where ideas become real.
Having a plane based around ideas becoming reality seems like it would fit in very well with the mental aspects of the astral plane though. A "think it, and it shall be", sort of thing. :smallconfused:

Guess I'm gonna have to dig out the old books and work my way through them afterall. I was hoping I can make a few simple changes and be done with it. Oh well, at the very least, this is helping my understands the difference better. I frequently find that 5 minutes of conversation with a knowledgeable person is more enlightening than 3 hours spent studying the splatbooks.

[Yora]

I merged Ethereal Plane and Shadow Plane together into a Shadow World, and the Astral Plane with the Far Realm (and Limbo and Abyss) for the Void. I think it works just fine.

Ethereal and Shadow plane both seem to be different takes on the same concept of a borderworld or wraith world, that has been part of generic fantasy since Lord of the Rings. I don't really see why there should be two of them. The only real difference is that one has a floor and the other one doesn't.

I think the Astral Plane preceeds the Far Realm in the great wheel cosmology by quite some time. I would assume that at some point, one writer, who didn't really understand the planes, simply thought "what about a space even more outside than the space outside of the planes, which is even more weird?". It's basically just the astral plane on steroids, from what I can tell. Or maybe a region of the astral plane where planar travelers usually don't pop up when they fall outside the multiverse. Though that shouldn't really matter in a realm without space and time.

Edit: I looked it up and that person happens to have been Bruce Cordell, whose work on D&D I usually regard very highly. Though the description of the original version of the far realm makes it sound a lot more like an alternative multiverse, rather than the space sorrounding the astral plane (as it's in 3rd Edition, I think).

[drack]

bold :smallcool:

I just don't really see the need to have a truck stop on the astral highway on my way to Heaven and/or Hell.
...does that sound like a country-style song to anyone else?
It's more just that that's how the spells work. Like saying I don't see why I need to disappear from here to appear there when I teleport. It's because you're passing through that plane that you can travel so quickly, so it's not so much the truck stop as the truck itself.
More like I skimmed the into, they flipped through looking at the pictures. Please tell me anything you feel is important that I'm not accounting for.
Oh boy...


Yeah, it's that last 1% that had me worried.
It should, I'd say it's more then 1, though you could argue that being a type of reality at all is 99% of it :smalltongue:


The analogies comparing the various planes are very helpful, thank you.

What I'm hearing is, that both the Ethereal Plane and the Plane of Shadow interact with the material plane to a large degree. One is a mimicry, the other lets you view and hear the material plane.

Nope, shadow isn't a mimicry, it's a separate one like the elemental plane fo wood or hell, it just happens to be separated by a third dimension rather then being alongside everything.

What I think I would like to do is combine them into one plane that has both those aspects. This new plane would be similar in physical structure to the material plane, in that it has a similar landscape and some of the same rules, but on a sort of time-delay. The longer something exists on the material plane, the more it shows up on the astral plane. Mountains, rivers, and other geographic shapes are similar, but structures won't appear unless they are sturdy enough to last several decades, maybe centuries. Forests might exist, but none of the pathways or trees will be in the same places.

see the other comments

Since time doesn't flow the same, you wouldn't age while on the plane (or would do so very slowly), and you need to eat, sleep, and even breathe much less than normal. At the same time, you couldn't rest or heal either.
The plane is very sparsely populated since it doesn't have a working ecosystem (again, things don't need to eat or sleep, but they also don't really reproduce). Ghosts and a few other spirits hang out on the astral plane, where they can interact with it the same as living creatures do on the material plane.
sounds like you're just thinking of the astrial
Rather than being able to see onto the material plane at all times, there would be some mechanic requiring effort or concentration. Instead of being able to fly about at will, visitors to this plane can pass through supposedly solid objects with some effort, albeit slowly. There may be exceptions to this rule, such as anything charged with certain types of magical energy, like a Wall of Force.
Well n astrial and eathreal there is no up, own, left, right, or even solid ground. So you walk in all directions
Positive and Negative energy may be suppressed; I haven't decided yet.
sounds like you just want a new plane, why not just add it in addition to them if you're looking for new planer traits?
If there are any major problems that jump out of that description, please let me know.


The Astral plane is more problematic. The part where the analogies break down is the planes aren't actually physical objects; there is only this so-called "space" or "static" between them because the creators decided that there needed to be. We can just as easily declare that the planes all bump right up against one another or overlap to some degree, and it's just as logical.
I believe that's what ravenloft is here you can literally walk on and find yourself in a new plane where a land of fire sits there and one of water beside it with the material on the other side, and so on. (I don't recall the orders or if they're cemented, but it gives an idea.)
What I'm thinking is that, like I mentioned earlier, the astral plane will be it's own separate plane, fluffed any way you like, with a heavy influence on mental aspects and psionics. Because of this mental pull, creatures occasionally have dream-like visions of the astral plane (usually while sleeping, though also under the influence of certain alchemical concoctions or during traumatic experiences).
Meh, it is a place where people travel from their bodies, but that's a spell not a power. Better to think of it as the magical pathway that connects all worlds, cloudy and formless with portals all over the pace to all the planes one could ever dream of.
Unlike the new ethereal/shadow plane, time will flow normally, though other things like gravity might be strange. Rather than having one large planet with continents, mini-planets composed of various combinations of other elements, floating in an easily transversible ether sounds like a fun thing to play around with. Everything from small strongholds for single, powerful entities to large settlements and colonies.
Uh... Well those kinds of strongholds exist on all sorts of planes, but often on the astrial plane it's an old wizard taking advantage of the fact that time doesn't pass there to study endlessly without aging. :smallconfused: Why are we reversing the two again?
Perhaps everyone who is in the Astral plane will get a set of boilerplate spell-like/psionic abilities based on their mental stats to help them navigate this landscape. I could also make it so that travel from the Astral plane to other areas is easier, though the reverse is not necessarily true.
I would probably scrap the whole "silver cord" thing, or re purpose it elsewhere.
silver cords are just from the spell, anyone taking a portal or plane shift spell doesn't get one. Also powers/spells don't recover on this plane. I get this feeling you may be more interested with the plane of dreams. A small distance there is a long distance on the material plane, but the dreams of everyone asleep are reality to you, and their nightmares can tear you to ribbons with ease.
Again, I'm just sort of throwing this out there for the moment, to see what will stick.
I can tell :smalltongue:


I merged Ethereal Plane and Shadow Plane together into a Shadow World, and the Astral Plane with the Far Realm (and Limbo and Abyss) for the Void. I think it works just fine.

Ethereal and Shadow plane both seem to be different takes on the same concept of a borderworld or wraith world, that has been part of generic fantasy since Lord of the Rings. I don't really see why there should be two of them. The only real difference is that one has a floor and the other one doesn't.
That's a pretty nifty idea. Anywho Deep, a good place to start is reading the book. :smallwink:



I think the Astral Plane preceeds the Far Realm in the great wheel cosmology by quite some time. I would assume that at some point, one writer, who didn't really understand the planes, simply thought "what about a space even more outside than the space outside of the planes, which is even more weird?". It's basically just the astral plane on steroids, from what I can tell. Or maybe a region of the astral plane where planar travelers usually don't pop up when they fall outside the multiverse. Though that shouldn't really matter in a realm without space and time.
Nope, through the plane of shadow you can cross into worlds like eberon. the far realms in another such world it's just closer to the setting it's from then the settings are to each other, and contains things that can be said to be from another world on even a higher level scale where elementals start seeming normal

[Eldan]

Ultimately, it's your decision if you need transitive planes at all. Or anything else, in your world. I like them all.

The Far realm, unless I'm mistaken, is a third edition invention.

Edit: Wiki says it showed up in one AD&D adventure first, in 1996. But then it didn't really show up again until the middle of third edition.

Before that, the Lovecraftian went into the Astral, mostly.

[Yora]

Well, Manual of the Planes, which was written very early 3rd Edition. :smallwink:

(Among others by Bruce Cordell. That probably explains everything.)

[Deepbluediver]

The Astral isn't a truck stop. It's the street you drive on. Except you drive so fast, you never even see the road.
.....
Ultimately, it's your decision if you need transitive planes at all. Or anything else, in your world. I like them all.

Yeah...I'm just not seeing the need for it to be a requirement. If I have an astral plane, then it will be it's own destination, I think.

Why, exactly, do you like having various transitive planes?


Planescape especially called out that the Astral is sort of the backdrop of the multiverse. The backstage. No one was ever supposed to see it or go there. The outer planes are in it, but by itself, it is nothing. It's void, it has no space, no time, nothing. Falling into it is a problem. The only things here are things that didn't have a space in the real universe. The eldritch abominations from outside that were later put into the Far Realm, the dead gods, lost souls, wild ideas and hungry dreams.

Something like that sounds interesting, but again, as it's own separate area. Or at the very least, it's not a sea or space that the rest of the planes are floating in.

Like I said, this is sort of the theoretical quantum mechanics of magic, and it doesn't need to fit into some nice little analogy the way physical substances do. In fact, if its sort-of impossible to wrap your head around, I think that could help it feel a bit more like magic.


I merged Ethereal Plane and Shadow Plane together into a Shadow World...

Ethereal and Shadow plane both seem to be different takes on the same concept of a borderworld or wraith world, that has been part of generic fantasy since Lord of the Rings. I don't really see why there should be two of them. The only real difference is that one has a floor and the other one doesn't.

That was my thought, originally.


I think the Astral Plane preceeds the Far Realm in the great wheel cosmology by quite some time. I would assume that at some point, one writer, who didn't really understand the planes, simply thought "what about a space even more outside than the space outside of the planes, which is even more weird?". It's basically just the astral plane on steroids, from what I can tell. Or maybe a region of the astral plane where planar travelers usually don't pop up when they fall outside the multiverse. Though that shouldn't really matter in a realm without space and time.

Edit: I looked it up and that person happens to have been Bruce Cordell, whose work on D&D I usually regard very highly. Though the description of the original version of the far realm makes it sound a lot more like an alternative multiverse, rather than the space sorrounding the astral plane (as it's in 3rd Edition, I think).

Something that exists as a "space-between-the-worlds" is a concept I could accept, but then I'd want it to be truly love-craftian in nature, and not home to ANYTHING even vaguely humanoid, like the Githyanki or even Illithids.

I'd want it to be something so terrible, that it can best be summarized as "if you end up here, you're ****ed".


It's more just that that's how the spells work. Like saying I don't see why I need to disappear from here to appear there when I teleport. It's because you're passing through that plane that you can travel so quickly, so it's not so much the truck stop as the truck itself. I sort of get it, I think. It's basically saying that passing through the astral plane is the equivalent of traveling some distance along a road.

I'd rather just have a teleportation effect simply be like a gate from one world to the next though, and save myself the hassle of dealing with all the implications of going through another plane.


Nope, shadow isn't a mimicry, it's a separate one like the elemental plane fo wood or hell, it just happens to be separated by a third dimension rather then being alongside everything.
Ah ok, I see. Still, I think having it actually be a mimic of the material plane makes for a more interesting setting. Plus it explains why it's "shadowy" instead of just being it's own less-real dimension.


sounds like you're just thinking of the astrial
In that paragraph, I meant to say "ethereal". Again, if the shadow plane is a sort-of copy of the material plane, than ghosts and spirits can be sort-of copies of real people (or former people).

I think it actually makes for an interesting question if players pick up on it, and start wondering "what would it take to make a ghost out of an entire dimension?"


sounds like you just want a new plane, why not just add it in addition to them if you're looking for new planer traits?
Because I think there are to many ill-defined planes already. I'd prefer to have maybe a half-dozen or so that are well known (by players) and not have to have the entire group stop and consult some tome every time something comes up that isn't material-plane based.


Meh, it is a place where people travel from their bodies, but that's a spell not a power. Better to think of it as the magical pathway that connects all worlds, cloudy and formless with portals all over the pace to all the planes one could ever dream of.
If it connects everything, why does it have to have it's own portals?
I don't object having a plane that facilitates other inter-planar travel, but from what I'm hearing the astral plane seems to be a weird combination of a regular plane and something else.


Uh... Well those kinds of strongholds exist on all sorts of planes, but often on the astrial plane it's an old wizard taking advantage of the fact that time doesn't pass there to study endlessly without aging. Why are we reversing the two again?
Just tossing out ideas. I don't mind a plane where time doesn't pass normally, but then I don't think players (or characters) should be able to hang out there and accumulate timeless benefits. To many ways that can muck things up.


Well, Manual of the Planes, which was written very early 3rd Edition. :smallwink:

(Among others by Bruce Cordell. That probably explains everything.)

I'm trying to get actually read through the entire MotP. It's actually a lot of fun reading about the various alignment-based outer planes. There's to many of them, given that each one seems to have it's own rules you need to learn before visiting. If they where a little easier to access and play around in, maybe GMs would be more willing to set an adventure there.
But there are still some very interesting ideas. If I ever got around to it, I'd probably do the same thing for those that I'm doing for the transitive planes: narrow down the differences and keep the most interesting parts.
For example, make some of the good-aligned planes each one part of the "seven heavens" or something like that.



So at this point, I've basically decided that I would like to have a "Shadow World" that mimics the material plane to a degree, but things don't work quite the same, as I described earlier. It will likely be easier to travel here from the material plane than it will be to get from the material plane anywhere else. At the same time, I might limit travel to this ethereal plane ONLY from the material plane.

The Astral plane will likely be the plane of the mind; of thoughts, ideas, and dreams, even the mental made real. It will be home to some humanoids and some weirder things, but most of it won't be inherently deadly or madness-inducing; just unusual. It won't necessarily be the point of origin for every psionic race, but it will be attractive for a lot of them.

If there is a "space between dimensions", say for example where the Binder's vestiges hang out, it likely won't be visit-able or viewable by PCs. It would be like trying to cram yourself in-between the walls of a house, which are already filled with insulation.

If I decided I needed or wanted a "Far Realms" style dimension, the I think it WILL be particularly deadly to any character who ends up there. The idea of a living universe, who's existence and intellect is far outside the scope of PC's, but nonetheless is inherently hostile and malicious to anything non-native sounds like fun.


Next time, lets see how much I can screw up the Outer Planes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Plane). :smallwink:

[Eldan]

If oyu want more on the outer planes and how to make them more accessible, 2nd Ed's Planescape was an entire series of books on the outer planes and how to make them accessible from level 1.

[drack]

Bold :smallbiggrin:

I sort of get it, I think. It's basically saying that passing through the astral plane is the equivalent of traveling some distance along a road.

I'd rather just have a teleportation effect simply be like a gate from one world to the next though, and save myself the hassle of dealing with all the implications of going through another plane.
Trust me your players do to, it means less risk of something bad happening. Doing so would also make the lower level spells that shut down teleportation not shut it down

Ah ok, I see. Still, I think having it actually be a mimic of the material plane makes for a more interesting setting. Plus it explains why it's "shadowy" instead of just being it's own less-real dimension.
you call I guess. I mean GM makes up how it works anyways, but normally it's the equivalent of deep space. pitch black and alien.

In that paragraph, I meant to say "ethereal". Again, if the shadow plane is a sort-of copy of the material plane, than ghosts and spirits can be sort-of copies of real people (or former people).
it's really mostly used to pass through walls and such. Like the plane of dreams it's more for spell effects, just that it happens to also apply to a range of creatures. Most anything without a body.
I think it actually makes for an interesting question if players pick up on it, and start wondering "what would it take to make a ghost out of an entire dimension?"
meh, simpler to have them just cast genesis

Because I think there are to many ill-defined planes already. I'd prefer to have maybe a half-dozen or so that are well known (by players) and not have to have the entire group stop and consult some tome every time something comes up that isn't material-plane based.
That's when you tell your players you're using a homebrewed cosmology. Best to just pick a handful of planes like celestia hells, elementals. Usually plane of shadow, eathereal, and astral are among the first that people choose to keep along with the material because there's just so much attached to them. Honnestly it's ones like hell, celestia, abyss, elemental planes beyond the basic four, planes of law/chaos, ect that are the filer ones mostly made for intresting adventures. Four elementals, the ones that "overlap" with material (perhaps excluding the dream one), pos/neg energy ones (unless you choose to just say this stuff seeps off gods, and the astrial (unless you choose to have planes right next to each other) are the only ones you really "need".

If it connects everything, why does it have to have it's own portals?
I don't object having a plane that facilitates other inter-planar travel, but from what I'm hearing the astral plane seems to be a weird combination of a regular plane and something else.
It is a swiss cheese of portals floating in the substance of unformed planes (like a nebula if you do astrology). The idea is that when you walk up to the elemental plane of fire, you don't see fire and brimstone, you see the cloudiness of the plane you're still in just solid with a portal to the elemental plane. This is done for two reason. one so that bob the level 1 commoner can't brag about traveling to the plane of fire and coming back, because he'd need a portal for that, not a pair of feet. The other reason is because the game lets the GM decide if planes are infinity big. Well some can be infinitely big at least. Material plane, elemental planes, and a few others. To be infinite there is no edge, so portals make more sense.

Just tossing out ideas. I don't mind a plane where time doesn't pass normally, but then I don't think players (or characters) should be able to hang out there and accumulate timeless benefits. To many ways that can muck things up.
Eh, actually it's not beneficial in terms of game mechanics. It makes good fluff, but HP don't restore, 24 hours have never passed so you can never prepare new spells, and there is a race that wizards designed specifically to travel around the astral as pirates of a sort killing people and stealing their loot. You stay there forever you need to take infinite encounters without taking a hit or casting a spell. Hardly beneficial. :smallwink:

[TuggyNE]

What I think I would like to do is combine them into one plane that has both those aspects. This new plane would be similar in physical structure to the material plane, in that it has a similar landscape and some of the same rules, but on a sort of time-delay. The longer something exists on the material plane, the more it shows up on the astral plane. Mountains, rivers, and other geographic shapes are similar, but structures won't appear unless they are sturdy enough to last several decades, maybe centuries. Forests might exist, but none of the pathways or trees will be in the same places.

Since time doesn't flow the same, you wouldn't age while on the plane (or would do so very slowly), and you need to eat, sleep, and even breathe much less than normal. At the same time, you couldn't rest or heal either.
The plane is very sparsely populated since it doesn't have a working ecosystem (again, things don't need to eat or sleep, but they also don't really reproduce). Ghosts and a few other spirits hang out on the ethereal plane, where they can interact with it the same as living creatures do on the material plane.

Rather than being able to see onto the material plane at all times, there would be some mechanic requiring effort or concentration. Instead of being able to fly about at will, visitors to this plane can pass through supposedly solid objects with some effort, albeit slowly. There may be exceptions to this rule, such as anything charged with certain types of magical energy, like a Wall of Force.

This sounds a lot like Wheel of Time's Tel'aran'rhiod. Could work well, I think.