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Planar Adventures / Building a Planar Campaign / Presenting the Planes

Traveling the Planes

Source Planar Adventures pg. 84
A manageable planar adventure thrives on direction— especially as the PCs and players start to travel the planes for the first time. The more familiar the players become with all forms of planar exploration and the wider their circle of planar contacts becomes, the more flexibility you can provide.

Second to a compelling story, the best tool you have for steering the action is the difficulty of traveling from one plane to another. Most adventuring groups lack the means to move between planes independently until around 9th to 13th level, so they’re otherwise reliant on extant portals that the you introduce and control, favors from outsiders, and rare magic items. PCs in a planar campaign might receive one or more such tools as treasure above and beyond their expected wealth by level, with the understanding that these are plot-critical rewards that enable future adventures. The following is an overview of well-known tools that the PCs might acquire.

Amulet of the Planes: No item is as unambiguously effective for planar travel as this amulet, which allows an entire group to journey together to a wide range of destinations.

Cubic Gate: With only six possible destinations, a cubic gate is an ideal tool for planar campaigns of limited scope.

Flying Skiff: Few options are as luxurious and expensive as a flying skiff; entire campaigns might be built around this device. The PCs might serve as crew aboard a flying skiff and travel to sundry destinations under their employers’ commands, only to find themselves inheriting the ship when misfortune befalls the previous owner.

Obsidian Steed: This figurine of wondrous power is an excellent escape plan—as long as players account for the fact that it can carry only a single creature. The item’s tendency to deposit good-aligned riders in unpleasant places could also be the basis for a time-critical rescue mission.

Planar Keystones: These items make for a low-cost method to allow travel to and from specific planes. Since their destinations are limited and it takes time to activate them, planar keystones have no real use in combat. But as a method of transporting a group of PCs to or from a plane at any experience level, planar keystones are one of your best options.

Robe of Stars: A robe of stars allows only one creature to travel. However, because the robe physically transports the wearer to the Astral Plane, they’re neither protected by nor limited by the silver cord afforded by the astral projection spell, allowing limitless travel from there to any number of demiplanes and Outer Planes.

Staff of the Planes: When fully charged, this staff can transport a group to another plane and back or transport the group while protecting up to five of its members from dangerous planar traits. In an emergency, the staff is also a way to escape a dangerous or escalating situation. Keep in mind that only a fairly high-level spellcaster can recharge the staff, though for some campaigns, a limited resource like this is exactly what’s needed.

Well of Many Worlds: Particularly useful for sandbox-style campaigns, this portable gateway allows nearly limitless travel. However, it’s important to keep in mind that a well of many worlds can be closed or moved only from the side of its origin, not from the realm into which it opens. That means that if the PCs rely on the well for their return trip, they will be forced to leave it open and hope that no dangerous denizens slip through the gate (or worse, close the well and take it away) before they can return. Alternately, the first stage of a quest might require the PCs to navigate a hostile region to reach a well’s launching point.

Desperate Measures: Several other items facilitate planar travel but in extraordinarily dangerous and unpredictable ways. Even so, circumstances might leave the PCs no choice but to place a bag of holding inside a portable hole or destroy a staff of power in the hopes of going somewhere— anywhere—else.

Archives of Nethys

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Traveling the Planes