Campaign Setting Idea

[torrasque666]

I had a recent idea for a home campaign setting. The easiest way to describe it is basically... there's no Astral Plane. The Plane of Shadows is limited to surrounding only the Material Plane. The Elemental Planes and the Aligned Planes orbit the Material, occasionally intersecting with portions of it. The "speed" of each plane will be unique to its orbit. Some will move quickly and may only intersect for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Some will move slowly and intersect for years at a time. Only when and where the planes intersect (as a plane won't necessarily intersect with the whole of the Material, likely none will.) is planar travel possible. When the planes are intersecting some of their traits might leak through, such as gravity or time. Spells that have an energy descriptor rely on the plane of that specific energy to function. (With Acid relying on the Plane of Earth, and Cold relying on Water, Electricity on Air, Fire on Fire, and Sonic on the Material) or supplying a substitute energy source when you lack access to the plane itself (vials of acid, chilled water, charged metal, a torch, or making sound) [Force] effects are basically just raw magical energy and work regardless of the plane but cannot last more than 2*CL rounds (even Instantaneous Conjuration spells are subject to this)

I know that this kicks most Conjuration spells in the groin, as most [calling] spells get neutered depending on location, and all [teleportation] spells are dead without the Astral, but I'm curious as to some other critiques of this idea and how it may influence the game. I'd probably just crib Detect Manifest Zone to detect which planes are intersecting within so many miles, and how fast they are moving.


Soo..... thoughts?

[GilesTheCleric]

This sounds really neat! It's a great way to keep the setting dynamic without resorting to politics or rolling on a table of random events, and it lets you use all sorts of foes for the PCs. My only suggestion is to consider how the planes overlap. Planes in the usual canon don't follow all of the rules of physics -- they're infinite planes, and travel across them is as much about willpower and knowing the way as it is about actually moving in space.

So, you could decide that the ways in which a plane is coterminous with another might not be 1:1 -- for example, the elemental plane of water might intersect the material plane at only on point on the plane of water, but at several points on the material plane (say, the skies above Amn, throughout most of the Moonsea, and the entirety of Kara-Tur).

It could even be more complicated; say that the elemental plane of fire has several points that intersect the material plane, but they correspond with only a single point on the material plane, but at different places in time. One is at -9000 DR, another at 1374, and a third at 1377. All of them happen in the southern deserts of Anauroch, though.

[DrMotives]

Summon Monster spells with the fiendish or celestial templates would be flaky too, although it seems replacing those with either the Dark Creature or Shadow Creature templates would always work. You might apply something like the corruption mechanic to anyone who summons things from the Plane of Shadow though, since it looks like you're trying to nerf this sort of magic hard. Heroes of Horror could be a very good book for you to build into your campaign, it's about as close as WotC has come to reprinting the Ravenloft setting. Ravenloft also was a world closed off from almost every other plane, and magic was extremely hampered as a result. It's probably a great source for you to mine for fluff & ideas.

[torrasque666]

So, you could decide that the ways in which a plane is coterminous with another might not be 1:1 -- for example, the elemental plane of water might intersect the material plane at only on point on the plane of water, but at several points on the material plane (say, the skies above Amn, throughout most of the Moonsea, and the entirety of Kara-Tur).

It could even be more complicated; say that the elemental plane of fire has several points that intersect the material plane, but they correspond with only a single point on the material plane, but at different places in time. One is at -9000 DR, another at 1374, and a third at 1377. All of them happen in the southern deserts of Anauroch, though.

Hmm.... interesting idea with the multiple points thing. Multiple times might be a bit wonky though. Maybe the portals are close together, but not exactly the same one, just to prevent accidentally splitting the party (because I know that having some sort of randomness would make me want to roll to decide)


Summon Monster spells with the fiendish or celestial templates would be flaky too, although it seems replacing those with either the Dark Creature or Shadow Creature templates would always work. You might apply something like the corruption mechanic to anyone who summons things from the Plane of Shadow though, since it looks like you're trying to nerf this sort of magic hard. Heroes of Horror could be a very good book for you to build into your campaign, it's about as close as WotC has come to reprinting the Ravenloft setting. Ravenloft also was a world closed off from almost every other plane, and magic was extremely hampered as a result. It's probably a great source for you to mine for fluff & ideas.
I was thinking either not using the Fiendish/Celestial templates, just using the normal creature stats for summons. Though corruption is a nice idea. Maybe also use the Sanity rules. I'm actually relatively familiar with Ravenloft (using what Swords and Sorcery has provided for our current campaign) though the concept actually kinda came from the Apocalypse Stone adventure from 2E. (Basically players pull out the lynchpin of the universe and the planes all become severed)

[GilesTheCleric]

The benefit to having them at different points in time is that it allows for your characters to learn about them from the lore, and to be able to prepare for the future. If you wanted to, you could make the time frame much smaller -- ie, portals open up/ close every few weeks. I'd let anyone with the Portal Awareness feat or even just spellcraft, K:planes or K:arcana be able to make a check to guess when the portal might open up again. PCs like to make complex plans.

[Kol Korran]

You might want time check the Eberron cosmology, they did something similar:
While it still has the astral plane, the other 14 planes (they differ somewhat from the core planes) sort of travel through the astral, and according to their distance from Eberron, they are considered remote or conterminous. When they are close, their affect is more felt in the world. Each plane has it's own schedule, and they quite differ. Some places in the world have Manifest Zones, in which the effect of a planes is either constant or more often (the main example is the biggest city called Sharn, which is built on a zone linked to the plane of Azure Sky, making flight easier in it's limits, or holy site for the children of winter, which is connected you Mabar, the eternal night.
One of the major history points even revolves around a planare invasion, and drastic measures used to divert a whole plane away from "orbit".
It probably isn't exactly what you're looking for, but might be worth a look.

[torrasque666]

I actually did crib most of my notes from Eberron.