FormerlyHemlock
Hero
I didn't realize that the bonuses didn't reset if you re-entered the original plane. I assumed that if you went elsewhere, and then back to the Prime, the bonuses would just be the Prime bonuses.
Oerth/Krynn were normally considered different Primes, unless you went through the phlogiston. Your +3 sword would revert to +5 if you went back to Oerth.
The differences between phlogiston and planar travel had some interesting cosmological implications.
The primary attraction of the Phlogiston has always seemed to me that it's difficult to move an entire ship through the planes, so there is the cargo issue. Also, casters high enough level to utilize planar travel are rarer than ships, crew, and low-level casters. Since there is an entire demographic of space-farers, its only natural that they'd use their "normal" means of transport, rather than high-level magic, just like land-bound merchants and travelers are more likely to take ships or highways than to hire a high level caster to teleport them.
Interestingly, thouh, this whole demographic is utterly dependent on a third party source pumping out nigh-artifact-level (nigh-indestructible) magic items on a regular basis: the Arcane and spelljamming helms. What do the Arcane want, and why did they choose this means of getting it?
In my game, the Arcane impose a different price on every planet they agree to supply with spelljamming helms. In some cases, it's the hair on every citizen's head; in other cases, it's gold and gems; in other cases, the firstborn child of the planetary monarch; in others, an annual quota of brightly-colored stones from a particular beach. No one knows why.
Except me. I know that they don't really care much about the payment; their real agenda is making sure everyone is totally reliant on their spelljamming helms instead of developing their own sources of transportation. And of course, all the helms have a Chinese-style backdoor built into them. What the Arcane are really interested in is security--their racial psychology is very similar to Pierson's Puppeteers. This way, other races naturally expand to fill any power vacuums, but that race is not an existential threat to the Arcane because they have a kill switch in reserve. Beholders predate the Arcane and don't rely on helms, so reducing beholder influence via puppet races like humans and goblinoids is a major hidden agenda for the Arcane.
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