Manual of the Planes

Illus. by A. Swekelhe planes are lands of opportunity for braveadventurers, and those who travel them are foreverchanged by the experience. Players whowant extraplanar creatures as player characters getguidelines in this chapter for the bariaur, githyanki,githzerai, and other monsters. Four new prestige classesare presented for those who wish to walk the paths ofnew worlds, pierce the veils of reality, and serve thegreater powers that lie beyond. And new spells aidplanar travelers in moving between the worlds and survivingwhat they find there.MONSTERS AS RACESSome of the races described in this book are suitable foruse as player character races. However, they are significantlymore powerful than the races in the Player’sHandbook. If you decide to use these races in your game,adjustments are necessary to maintain the balance ofpower between player characters using the commonraces and player characters with more exotic races.Even then, the approval of the DM is required beforeany race is deemed suitable for a player character.LEVEL ADJUSTMENTSNonstandard races that are candidates for playercharacters are assigned a level adjustment or levelequivalent. This concept is touched on in Chapter2 of the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide. In a way, alevel adjustment can be thought of as a race’s“monster class.”Thus, player characters using one of theseraces who pick up their first level of a standardclass are actually multiclassing in a way. But themulticlass rules and restrictions don’t apply(except for one noted below), and these charactersonly get the special abilities naturallyattributed to their “monster class”: naturalarmor, natural weapons, special attacks, andany extraordinary, spell-like, or supernaturalabilities the creature has.When creating a character using a nonstandardrace, add that race’s level adjustmentto the character’s class level (or levels) todetermine the character’s effective characterlevel (ECL). For instance, a tiefling with alevel adjustment of 1 who is also a 1st-levelsorcerer has an ECL of 2.Races suitable for characters from theManual of the Planes (and the Monster Manual,in the case of the tiefling and aasimar) aresummarized below, listed with their leveladjustments.23