Would Exploring a Forming Demiplane Be Hazardous?

[unseenmage]

Would exploring new and actively forming demiplane be hazardous?
If so then howso?

Is there precedent?

Should the threats just emulate a bunch of magic traps?

What level PCs should be expected to be able to survive a hazardous demiplane formation? What CR should the threats be?

Feel free to ponder and discuss these questions and more. I'm looking for best guesses if nothing else.

[Fouredged Sword]

Depends how it is forming. If it is expanding from a point, then the center should be relatively stable. As the rim expands, new material comes into being and is safe to explore as normal.

[unseenmage]

Depends how it is forming. If it is expanding from a point, then the center should be relatively stable. As the rim expands, new material comes into being and is safe to explore as normal.

For the one I'm thinking of it comes into being when the first portal forms. Then changes to adapt as new portals are linked to it. New portals form as quickly as they can be crafted. But in the right circumstances I think they can be crafted rather quickly.

[Millennium]

It also depends on the nature of the demiplane's borders. A demiplane surrounded by stone walls would be pretty safe, as stone walls don't present much of a hazard. More dangerous walls -fire, perhaps- are obviously more problematic.

Demiplanes where the border wraps around itself (think a torus, or your standard video-game RPG map) provide an interesting case. It doesn't present any physical hazards, and if the demiplane is already a fair size, then I wouldn't suggest any psychological hazards either. But if the demiplane is small enough that your line-of-sight wraps back around and you can see yourself, that probably shouldn't be very good for the average humanoid psyche.

And then there are demiplanes that just drop off into infinity, with no walls or anything. The hazard of falling off is present, of course. But one of my favorite tricks is describing what the characters see beyond: nothing. Not empty sky, not blackness or space, not whiteness or glowing Genesis, not gray mist or ether, not swirls of chaos or phlogiston... just nothing. Tell your players this, and watch their faces contort as they struggle to visualize it. It's one of those great moments of DM-fun.

(By the way, don't try to visualize this. I can't do it either.)

[Telonius]

Is X hazardous?

Yes. :smallbiggrin: