Plane Shift's Focus

[Lysander]

I've never noticed this before:

Focus

A small, forked metal rod. The size and metal type dictates to which plane of existence or alternate dimension the spell sends the affected creatures.

Which metals are required for which planes? Is there a rule for it or does the DM get to assign whichever metals they like? This could potentially vastly limit plane shift's power if you need a particularly rare substance to access the plane of your choice, maybe even a metal only mined on that plane. It also makes holding onto the various focuses very important.

[Optimystik]

It can't be that rare, there's no GP cost.

The DM gets to assign anything they want.

[Douglas]

By technical RAW, there is no listed cost or even suggestion that it might have a significant cost, so all casters are assumed to have whatever foci they need as long as they have a spell component pouch.

[Lysander]

That doesn't necessarily mean cheap, just unspecified. And it might be less a matter of price than accessibility. A tiny stick of Abyssal Bloodiron might not cost that much, but finding a place to buy it on the material plane could be difficult.

[cheezewizz2000]

This list of alchemical metals may provide some inspiration, if that's your thing.

Sun - Positive energy - Gold
Moon - Negative energy - Silver
Venus - Earth? -Copper
Mars - Fire? - Iron
Jupiter - Air? - Tin
Mercury - Water? - Quicksilver (good luck making a fork)
Saturn - Outer planes, maybe? - Lead

YMMV

[Douglas]

As with material components, the cost for a focus is negligible unless a price is given. Assume that focus components of negligible cost are in your spell component pouch.

[Lysander]

Ok, so by RAW you should have tiny sticks of metal for all the standard planes in your component pouch. But that means that to travel to any less known plane, like a deity or wizard's private universe or any other demiplane, you'd probably need to discover what metal to use and how long to make the fork.

It also means that a magician exiled to a plane without a component pouch is completely stranded, even if they have plane shift prepared, unless they can cast wish, gate, or miracle to escape. Maybe on some planes they could find the appropriate metal and create a new stick, but in others the metal might simply not exist.

[Eldan]

I think the people over on Planewalker started making a list once, but never got it finished. I remember that I liked the recommendation of Lead for the grey wastes, though. It felt fitting. I think there was also Silver (Purity) for Elysium, Greensteel for Baator and... hmm. I forgot the others. Iron makes sense for Acheron, though.

[Lysander]

I wonder what the material plane's metal is....

[Douglas]

Ok, so by RAW you should have tiny sticks of metal for all the standard planes in your component pouch. But that means that to travel to any less known plane, like a deity or wizard's private universe or any other demiplane, you'd probably need to discover what metal to use and how long to make the fork.

By logic, rules as makes sense, and so on, that is correct. By technical RAW, it's all covered by the spell component pouch. Private demiplane of obscure ancient wizard #342? If you've got your spell component pouch, you've got the focus to go there.

I would not advocate actually playing it that way, and I'd rule in my own games that the pouch only covers standard planes, but that's RAW for you.

It also means that a magician exiled to a plane without a component pouch is completely stranded, even if they have plane shift prepared, unless they can cast wish, gate, or miracle to escape. Maybe on some planes they could find the appropriate metal and create a new stick, but in others the metal might simply not exist.

The magician could also just have the right focus outside of a spell component pouch, but yes, a magician without a pouch or separate focus is probably stuck in his current plane. He would presumably know the required composition and shape for each of the standard planes, though, and being completely stranded would require that ALL of them be impossible to acquire.

[Irreverent Fool]

Ok, so by RAW you should have tiny sticks of metal for all the standard planes in your component pouch. But that means that to travel to any less known plane, like a deity or wizard's private universe or any other demiplane, you'd probably need to discover what metal to use and how long to make the fork.

It also means that a magician exiled to a plane without a component pouch is completely stranded, even if they have plane shift prepared, unless they can cast wish, gate, or miracle to escape. Maybe on some planes they could find the appropriate metal and create a new stick, but in others the metal might simply not exist.

Or they burn a feat on Eschew Materials.

obnoxious
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[Lysander]

Or they burn a feat on Eschew Materials.

obnoxious
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Except the rod is a focus, rather than a spell component, and eschew materials doesn't apply to it.

I had an idea how a DM (if they wanted) could say that by RAW a spell component pouch won't hold the metal rods for plane shift:

Spell Component Pouch

A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn’t fit in a pouch.

Since there's one rod for every universe, and there are many if not an infinite number of universes, there's no way your pouch can hold all of them, even if each rod is by itself small. Therefore, focuses for plane shift aren't included in the pouch.

[DragoonWraith]

I'm just going to make my usual comment in these threads: making players keep track of negligible material/focus components is not an effective nerf, it just makes the class unfun. This is a terrible solution to the problem of wizards being overpowered, and you should come up with almost anything else. Spell components are a joke (literally), and trying to make them anything more than that just makes playing such a character a headache (or implements a feat tax). It's being anal and it's unnecessary.

[Lysander]

I'm just going to make my usual comment in these threads: making players keep track of negligible material/focus components is not an effective nerf, it just makes the class unfun. This is a terrible solution to the problem of wizards being overpowered, and you should come up with almost anything else. Spell components are a joke (literally), and trying to make them anything more than that just makes playing such a character a headache (or implements a feat tax). It's being anal and it's unnecessary.

For most spells yes, but if you want planar travel to be a bigger deal, it could make sense to limit access to Plane Shift's focuses.

Heck, it could even be the focus of the campaign, the good guys trying to outrace the BBEG in an attempt to get a rare metal rod that is the only way to access some obscure plane that contains an artifact.

[DragoonWraith]

OK, that I'll buy, I didn't really think of it like that. I was thinking in terms of attempting to balance Plane Shift, as opposed to a plot device.

[ericgrau]

IIRC there are spells listed with components that are obviously difficult to obtain, so not having a cost doesn't mean it's 0 gp. It could just as easily be priceless.

I haven't seen another ruling on the matter so who knows whether it takes a lot of research to make the forked metal rod the right length, or if all spell-casters know how. I always thought it would be a cool plotwise to force the PCs to hunt down the right forked metal rod before going to a particular plane. Or you could say, "Screw the book-keeping, it's already in your spell component pouch."

[Jack_Simth]

IIRC there are spells listed with components that are obviously difficult to obtain, so not having a cost doesn't mean it's 0 gp. It could just as easily be priceless.

Such as, say, (Tensor's) Transformation? They don't list the price of a Potion of Bull's Strength in the spell description... that means you've got an infinite number of them in your spell component pouch, right?

Ditto for the Detect Thoughts focus.

I haven't seen another ruling on the matter so who knows whether it takes a lot of research to make the forked metal rod the right length, or if all spell-casters know how. I always thought it would be a cool plotwise to force the PCs to hunt down the right forked metal rod before going to a particular plane. Or you could say, "Screw the book-keeping, it's already in your spell component pouch."

As a DM, I treat it thusly:
Certain commonly-visited planes are included in your spell components pouch (the elemental, positive, negative, ethereal, astral, shadow, plus your native material plane, and any others that seem appropriate or likely commonly visited, based on DM fiat and the needs of the plot at the time the caster wants to go there).

For others (Demiplanes, alternate material planes, uncivilized planes, planes with exceedingly useful non-normal properties, layers of the abyss, or whatever), you need to either find the matching fork, or find/research the instructions for making the matching fork (which is handled by way of "arcane formula" - possibly needing a spellcraft check, knowledge(the planes) check, Decipher Script check, or whatever based on DM fiat and the needs of the plot at the time). As it's a focus, you only need to do this once per rarer plane.

So if someone makes a demiplane, and you need to get to it with Plane Shift, you first need to make a fork for it - the person who made the demiplane knows how to do so by default, but you don't necessarily know how to do so. If you just need to send an opponent somewhere inconvenient, or just want to use the spell to escape combat, it's no problem.

[Optimystik]

Such as, say, (Tensor's) Transformation? They don't list the price of a Potion of Bull's Strength in the spell description... that means you've got an infinite number of them in your spell component pouch, right?

That's what I call a bad analogy - a Potion of Bull's Strength does have a listed cost. It just isn't listed in the spell description. It is listed elsewhere.

As for the plane shift, the outer planes represent the extremes of what is possible. Why shouldn't combining metals - say to an alloy, or holding more than one at once - lead to a composite plane or demiplane?

[Irreverent Fool]

That's what I call a bad analogy - a Potion of Bull's Strength does have a listed cost. It just isn't listed in the spell description. It is listed elsewhere.

As for the plane shift, the outer planes represent the extremes of what is possible. Why shouldn't combining metals - say to an alloy, or holding more than one at once - lead to a composite plane or demiplane?

And the costs for metals are listed elsewhere.

obnoxious
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[Kobold-Bard]

Fire should obviously be Brass.

[Jack_Simth]

That's what I call a bad analogy - a Potion of Bull's Strength does have a listed cost. It just isn't listed in the spell description. It is listed elsewhere.

So you prefer using the portion of the target needed for Simulacrum or Clone as an example, then? Or possibly the optional focus for Banishment? Or... ah, I've got it; the natural pool of water needed for a Druid to cast Scrying (try justifying carrying THAT around in a spell components pouch...).

As for the plane shift, the outer planes represent the extremes of what is possible. Why shouldn't combining metals - say to an alloy, or holding more than one at once - lead to a composite plane or demiplane?

It might... if you're lucky. Tell me: How many possible combinations of length and composition are theoretically possible in a world that doesn't have the limits of the atom's size defined? Is that infinity larger or smaller than the infinity represented by the planes? By what magnitude?

Basically, with questions like THAT, you're in complete and utter DM fiat territory, and the only person you can ask who'll have any noticeable chance of being correct is the DM that runs your table.

[DarknessLord]

Or... ah, I've got it; the natural pool of water needed for a Druid to cast Scrying (try justifying carrying THAT around in a spell components pouch...).

Of course you don't get that, that's RAW.

A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn’t fit in a pouch.

Edit: Actually, I realized, by RAW (srd anyways,AFB) you still get material components that wouldn't fit, just not focuses. That's silly.

[Yuki Akuma]

It might... if you're lucky. Tell me: How many possible combinations of length and composition are theoretically possible in a world that doesn't have the limits of the atom's size defined? Is that infinity larger or smaller than the infinity represented by the planes? By what magnitude?

It would be infinity multiplied by the number of metals squared*.

So, is the number of planes just infinity?

(*Actually not quite. This requires the order in which the metals are alloyed in actually matters. It's slightly less than that if Iron-Aluminium is the same as Aluminium-Iron.)

[Fayd]

I wonder what the material plane's metal is....

Aluminum. It's the most common metal in Earth's crust.

[Jack_Simth]

It would be infinity multiplied by the number of metals squared*.

You've made a few assumptions in that statement.

Here's a few of them:
1) That only two metals can go into each tuning fork.
2) That relative proportions of said metals doesn't matter.
3) Order is important... oh, you mentioned that one; still, that only cuts down the number of combinations by rouhly half, given the first two assumptions I mentioned.

Of course you don't get that, that's RAW.


Edit: Actually, I realized, by RAW (srd anyways,AFB) you still get material components that wouldn't fit, just not focuses. That's silly.

Here's an interestingly silly question for you: What's the minimum size of a natural pool of water? Where, exactly, do you draw the line between a drop of water and a pool? Surely there is one....

Also: Yes, there are a lot of silly things in RAW, when you look at them from a real-world standpoint.

[Yuki Akuma]

You've made a few assumptions in that statement.

Here's two of them:
1) That only two metals can go into each tuning fork.
2) That relative proportions of said metals doesn't matter.

...Darn simplistic math!

You're totally right.

Okay, multiply it by another aleph-one.

[ericgrau]

That's what I call a bad analogy - a Potion of Bull's Strength does have a listed cost. It just isn't listed in the spell description. It is listed elsewhere.

I was thinking more like macguffins, something you must seek out, which plane shift forks might also fall under. For example major creation requires a tiny bit of whatever you want to create, with no listed value. Is it now assumed that you carry around every material in existence in your spell component pouch?

[Jack_Simth]

I was thinking more like macguffins, something you must seek out, which plane shift forks might also fall under. For example major creation requires a tiny bit of whatever you want to create, with no listed value. Is it now assumed that you carry around every material in existence in your spell component pouch?

Apparently. And as you don't have to track them, you have an effective infinite number of a tiny piece of every material in existence in your spell component pouch.

What do you mean, I don't have enough gold? It's a component for Major Creation, there's no listed cost for the tiny amount I need for that, and I don't have to track it....

[Felyndiira]

Plane shift's description text somewhat suggests that you'd be able to use the spell to travel to any plane that you know; since it doesn't list components specifically in the text and "unspecified rod" has no material cost, I'd imagine that it wouldn't matter (unless if your GM made you track spell components, etc.)

I'd assume that there's no reason that the metal rod (however infinitely many number of combination are possible) wouldn't be assumed to be in the spell component pouch, since the precise metals required and the precise size is not specified; hence, they're covered by the pouch. Major creation, I'd think, would work in the same way - even if you want to create gold, you can have so little gold that it's not even worth 1 chicken - which would then be righteously covered by a spell component pouch.

I mean, you can cast fireball for as long as you live with one pouch. Does that mean that it's filled to the brim with bat poop ?

Okay, multiply it by another aleph-one.

Isn't that exactly the same as infinity x metals^2, though, since continuum x continuum = cardinality continuum?

[Kalirren]

Agreeing with the Planeshift Focus being an important plot point.

I once played a rather long campaign where we got banished from our home plane, (like really really far from the home plane) and had to travel through several coterminous planes, all the while carrying this damned compass that some random mage had given us way back around level 5 which had been attuned to our plane, which served as the focus for our interplanar journey. We almost made it back home around level 15.

Then we lost the compass while crawling through the Demonweb Pits and had to get it back from ****in' Carceri. We didn't make it back for another 4 levels...