Manual of the Planes

CHAPTER 2:CONNECTINGTHE PLANEScan still breathe. Nor does excising the Plane of NegativeEnergy get rid of energy drain or the undead.In the core cosmology, the Inner Planes consist offour elemental planes and two energy planes. Chapter 6discusses what happens if you remove any or all of themfrom your cosmology. In addition, you can add new InnerPlanes as you see fit. The Appendix describes what theElemental Plane of Wood might look like.Outer Planes: These planes are generally wheredeities live and where spirits go when the physical bodydies. Neither function is absolutely required for your cosmology.Deities may be far removed from the MaterialPlane or inhabit a distant or difficult-to-reach part of theMaterial Plane (such as a mountaintop). The deities maynot exist at all; your clerics may venerate alignmentideals, abstract principles, and the domains themselves.Outer Planes are also the home of fiendish and celestialanimals, as well as such outsiders as archons, devils, anddemons. Eliminating the Outer Planes from your cosmologymay eliminate these creatures, or at least movethem to a new home.On the Outer Planes, you set whatever limits you’recomfortable with. You can have as many or as few OuterPlanes as you wish. You can have Outer Planes that driftinto your campaign after it has started, bringing withthem new creatures and deities. Or perhaps some OuterPlanes have always been there but don’t appear on anyplanar maps of the sages, just waiting to be discovered.Demiplanes: These are the least important planes formost campaigns. If you want something specific foryour cosmology, you can make it a full-fledged plane atthe outset. Demiplanes are usually limited in size andaccess, so they are ideal locations for self-containedadventures. You can pick the planar traits to fit theneeds of your adventure.Demiplanes provide an area where you can expand, setadventures, and put things that don’t belong elsewhere. Awizard’s closet that is larger on the inside than the outside,the prison of a lost (and angry) demon prince, or asmall empire of the undead sealed off generations ago areall good uses for a demiplane.A SAMPLE COSMOLOGY: THE OMNIVERSEThe D&D cosmology is rather large because it’s designedfor wide variety of options and playing styles. As anexample, here’s a simpler cosmology for a campaign.The planes that make up this simple cosmology, theOmniverse, are as follows:• A Material Plane. This is the home of the playercharacters.• An Astral Plane, an Ethereal Plane, and a Plane ofShadow. We want to use the spells and items that referto these planes.• A single Elemental Plane, which is made up of all fourelemental types (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water).• Overheaven. This Outer Plane is where most of the goodaligneddeities live, along with outsiders such as archons.• Darkunder. This Outer Plane is where most of the evilaligneddeities live, along with demons, devils, andother evil outsiders.Even such basic choices raise questions. Where do thelawful neutral outsiders such as formians and the chaoticneutral outsiders such as slaadi go? You could just put themaside for the moment, or assign the formians to a lawfulalignedpiece of Overheaven and the slaadi to a particularlychaotic chunk of Darkunder.This cosmology also has no energy planes, so creaturesfrom those planes probably won’t be in your campaign.pqqqqrs18SWITCHING COSMOLOGIES IN MIDSTREAMIf your existing campaign is set in the D&D cosmology, youmay want to shuffle things about to create a planar arrangementall your own.But how does it affect the players? If the player charactersare deeply involved with the planes, then the changes thataffect them directly should be minimized or only implementedafter discussion with the players. A player whose characterowns a fortress in the Outlands would be extremely displeasedif that plane ceased to exist—or if it suddenly slid into theAbyss, ruining property values. A character venerating theNorse pantheon of deities may be confused or angry if thosedeities were suddenly replaced with Greek deities; worshipingZeus is a lot different from worshiping Odin.Before moving the planar furniture around, determine whichparts affect your player characters the most, and treat thoseaspects with care. Here are a number of ways to shuffle things:players how things are different. This tactic works best if youhave made small changes to the planes that do not affect theplayer characters directly.• Crisis among the Planes. This approach is suitable for highlevelcharacters. Launch a quest for a cosmology-changing artifact,or have a pantheon of demigods invade. Or perhaps anevil deity seeks to remake the cosmos in her own image. Thecharacters may save the universe, but change the campaign’scosmology in the process. This technique works well if thereare radical changes between the old cosmology and the new.• Working with the Players. This method works very well withexperienced players. Propose the changes you want to make,and let the players tweak them. Let your players contributeto your planar arrangements, and make the creation of theworlds beyond the Material Plane a shared experience. Theplayers may have good ideas to contribute, and they’llcertainly feel better about a cosmology they helped build.You get the final decision on what goes into your world, butit helps the players understand how the planes function ifthey have a hand in building them.• Quiet Retrofit. Things simply change in the middle of thenight. At the beginning of a new play session, explain to thepqqqqrs