Planar Level Limits

[Ursus Spelaeus]

This houserule is intended as a compromise design between Epic 6 campaigns and the traditional 1 to Epic.

The Prime Material plane has a level limit of 6.
The transitive planes have level limits of 12.
The inner and outer planes have no level limits.

Planar level limits cap caster levels. Spells, spell-like abilities, and magic items if the caster-level required to cast/create them exceeds the level limit.

When a higher-level character enters a plane with a lower planar level limit, they suffer the difference in lost levels until they leave the plane.

What are some potential ramifications of this?

[Climowitz]

You can define whether divine forces, arcane energy or connection to astral plane are, so a plane could be of strong divine forces that allow divine casters more power than those who extract the arcane energies around. You can also change gravity to modify speed and power, more gravity means slower but stronger creatures, while low gravity means faster but slower creatures. I'm not sure if this was what you were asking, but it is what i answered

[Anymage]

You might have the occasional martial/skillmonkey who decides to camp out in the material as the big fish in a small pond. But PCs being PCs they'll probably want to go where the action is, and NPCs can do whatever's dramatically convenient. (Plus, martials/skillmonkeys who do decide to make enough of a mess on the prime can attract the attention of even bigger fish who have been getting that sweet outerplanar XP - complete with still relevant HP, BAB, and the like - who'll tell them to knock it off.)

Players might use the prime as a hidey hole when they've pissed off a planar caster type, and/or to use it as a spot to spring a trap. Still, the overall idea does work pretty well to highlight why high level PC types and their high magic goodies don't change base campaign worlds too radically.

[johnbragg]

I like the idea.

What allowances (if any) are made for monsters? Or are we capping dragons and devils and demons and archfey at CL 6 when they're operating in the Prime plane? (That's definitely an option--but it sort of reduces them to 6th level casters stapled to big/enormous sacks of hit points.)

Does this also mean no "lean upward"? If planar travelers can't cast 4th level spells or feat their way to CL 8 etc, I don't think the PCs can either.

Or we could say, lean upward except for spellcasting and caster levels.

[Dragovon]

Interesting ideas here. My current campaign is like 16th level though...but they do a great deal of plane travelling and travelling to alternate worlds. I think they are likely to start finding some alternate worlds where something like this happens. Mwahahahaha. :)