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View Full Version : Please Help me to understand Static Realms



Poppatomus
2007-07-16, 08:07 PM
I am looking into making a realm for the first time to participate in the competition on the homebrew side and am entrigued by the idea of a static plane. However, the idea of things being unchangable is fairly vauge to start and is kept vague by the SRD. I was hoping y'all could help me out by nailing down the specifics or maybe providing an example of such a plane. Some of my specific questions:

1.) Are static planes automatically dead to magic?

2.) If creatures living on those planes can't be changed, does that mean all creatures on the plane at a given time or just native creatures?

3.) is static something that can have a grade or an exception (mostly static, static with limited divinely morphic areas)?



Any and all help would be appreciated. Apologies if this should have been in Rules by Raw or the homebrew forum.

Raum
2007-07-16, 08:35 PM
An unchanging plane wouldn't necessarily be dead to all magic. In fact most magic would probably work close to normal (pretty much needs to if you're planning a standard campaign). I would say Transmutation magic wouldn't work and Evocation probably wouldn't work on anything native to the plane. Most other magics don't change substance, though you might consider having the plane negate Conjuration (Creation) spells as well if the plane's influence is significant.

Living inhabitants would probably be nearly unrecognizable or have their origins on more mutable planes. It might be interesting to build a completely unchanging life form though...I doubt it would have much combat capability but interacting with it at all would be a challenge. Probably more along the lines of a puzzle than combat.

Poppatomus
2007-07-16, 11:06 PM
An unchanging plane wouldn't necessarily be dead to all magic. In fact most magic would probably work close to normal (pretty much needs to if you're planning a standard campaign). I would say Transmutation magic wouldn't work and Evocation probably wouldn't work on anything native to the plane. Most other magics don't change substance, though you might consider having the plane negate Conjuration (Creation) spells as well if the plane's influence is significant.

Living inhabitants would probably be nearly unrecognizable or have their origins on more mutable planes. It might be interesting to build a completely unchanging life form though...I doubt it would have much combat capability but interacting with it at all would be a challenge. Probably more along the lines of a puzzle than combat.

That's the idea, I think it might be an interesting twist on the usual plane, especially an abyssal plane, but it's still somewhat a mystery. Does anyone know of any existing planes in the D&D 'verse that have this trait to use as a base? Its just wierd to me that they list it as a state in the SRD but don't explain it at all.

The magic assesment seems solid, not necessarily no magic, but fairly restricted based on the nature of the plane. Thanks for the help.

Poppatomus
2007-07-17, 01:02 PM
pretty please?

Matthew
2007-07-18, 03:41 PM
Where is this sort of Realm from?

ZeroNumerous
2007-07-18, 03:47 PM
I've always thought a static realm was more akin to Ravenloft. It remains constant from the outside, but changes based on the actions of beings inside it. Inside Ravenloft, only Teleportation and Plane-hopping magic does not function as it should.

technomancer
2007-07-19, 05:28 PM
If you've read the Wheel of Time books, I would imagine that the world of dreams could be considered a Static Realm. No matter what you do to it (short of the extremly powerful and dangerous Balefire), it just goes back to the way you found it. If you open a door, the moment you stop paying attention to it, the door is closed again. Things have an extreme tendency to move back to their base state, and how quickly they move back is determined by how much you are paying attention to it, and the magnitude of the change. Kind of like trying to dig a hole in the waters of a calm lake. You can make an indention, with enough work, but the moment you stop, it's gone.

Iudex Fatarum
2007-07-20, 12:52 AM
I like the ideas so far, I think of it more as if the visitors were ghosts, invisable to the people there (well not invisable but also not seen) they can't open doors without a lot of effort and the whole plain resists them changing anything. the world runs more or less like normal but perhaps there is no death, no decay, no birth and no renewal there is just no change. I'm thinking where people go to work, push paper and go home, they don't eat because life can't change, they go to sleep and then the next morning they go to work do the same job, with the same consequences and even the exact same paper work everything resets in the morning with a time loop. I would make the plain timeless too.

To quote the SRD, "Visitors cannot affect living residents" i would think even getting being seen would do that and so it doesn't happen.

I might run a campaing where one of these worlds exists because of this thread, cool idea.