Planar Gestalt?

[Tvtyrant]

I had possibly the weirdest idea for a campaign of all time. One of the things that D&D has attempted in the past was "taint," with the implication that ones actions can alter them. However on the outer planes the plane itself is supposed to have an alignment, so spending time there could influence the people living there.

To show this kind of taint I was thinking about having a Gestalt with certain "taint" classes, which alter the person when they level on a certain plane. The gestalt class for the Beastlands would grant the person a more animal-like body and greater strength derived there-of. Mechanus would give the person construct like features, the Abyss a demonic aspect and demonic abilities, etc.

[Urpriest]

You might base these off of the Taint-based classes from Oriental Adventures (and/or their updates if there have been any).

[Lateral]

Sounds like fun, although for most of the game you'll generally be on the Prime so it won't do much. I'm a huge fan of Taint rules of any kind, so this sounds great.

[Luckmann]

So.. kinda like Planetouched classes? I love this idea.

[Tvtyrant]

Some of the planes I can't figure out what they would do; how would someone physically represent Pandemonium as different from Limbo?

[Lateral]

Simple: Limbo is bat-**** insane. Pandemonium is bat-**** insane, with demons kicking your ass the whole time. I'm sure there's a joke here, probably making fun of Chicago, Toronto, and/or Detroit.

[NineThePuma]

Nah, it's New Jersey. They got to pick before cali, so all cali had was lawyers.

On topic: I really really like this idea. =3

[Tvtyrant]

So maybe I should make 9 classes and then the other 7 alternate between their influences? So Pandemonium is the Abyss class + the Limbo class? And Acheron is Mechnus plus Baator?

[Eldan]

There are very different kinds of insanity, and Pandemonium and Limbo are pretty different in that regard.

How to say this...

Limbo is part cartoon insanity, part gleeful creative madness. It's a plane where you can literally create whatever you want when you think about it hard enough. Souls going there split their time between watching things grow from chaos and vanishing again and creating their own little pocket paradises.

Pandemonium is horrible, horrible insanity. It's paranoia, loneliness and depression. It's dark and cramped tunnels and endless howling winds. You walk forever in darkness that no light spell can pierce, when you aren't ripped off your feet by a gust of wind and slammed against a wall sixty feet away. The wind is always so loud that you have to shout to be heard an arm's length away, and it never stops. It's so bad that encountering the Wild Hunt, wandering deep giants or shadowfiends is seen as welcome change from the endless caves.

[Feytalist]

I have frequently played around with the idea of a "planeswalker" class, someone who is at home in all the planes. Perhaps you could just flip this idea on its side, and make one class who is at home on a single plane (/related set of planes).

So, give generic class features that differ based their actual plane. Ya'know, like +X bonus on social encounters with denizens on plane Y, and +X attack/damage bonus against denizens on plane (polar opposite of Y). Throw in some immunity to the plane's special characteristics or something. And, should the character somehow spend a lot of time on another plane, subtly change the class abilities to reflect the character's new "taint".

Something like that.

[Eldan]

Hmm. I just had an interesting idea: make it a Binder prestige class. Let them bind the essence of a plane.