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Pathfinder 1E Critique my revision of the planes?

VelvetViolet

Adventurer
One thing that has irked me about the canonical model of the planes (otherwise known as "the great beyond") is that the Inner Planes are mostly hostile and the Outer Planes are too similar. In order to rectify this perceived problem, I scoured across 3pp and reordered the planes a bit. They're still recognizable, but the details are drastically different. An illustration is attached below:
revised outer planesv3.png
The major changes are as follows:
  • The Material Plane is where most fantasy campaign settings are located. It is a universe filled with suns and orbiting planets suspended in a void. It is encapsulated by the Vault of Stars, which is something of a mindbogglingly gigantic crystal sphere a la 2e's Spelljammer, where the stars are alive.
  • The Inner Planes are each absolute representations of the building blocks of reality. The elements and energies of acid, air, cold, earth, electricity, fire, gravity, negative, positive, psionics, sonic, time, water, and so on. These planes constantly conjunct, intersect and otherwise mingle with one another, creating a fantastical elemental wilderness where "floating continents of earth, rivers of fire, ice-choked oceans, and vast cyclones of churning clouds and lightning collide" a la 4e's Elemental Chaos. This merging is known as the Tempest and provides a more survivable environment for inner planar adventures without sacrificing the cosmopolitan nature--and, indeed, tries to increase it--of the canonical Inner Planes. A la 2e's Planescape, this is where you can find your acid elementals, smoke elementals, salt elementals, psionic elementals, time elementals, wood elementals, and whatnot.
  • The Preternatural Planes nominally include all Transitive Planes (Astral, Dream, Ethereal, Shadow, Spirit, World Ash, etc) as well as numerous Otherworlds and Underworlds that orbit the Material Plane like planets around a sun. The Fey are the most common inhabitants of these and many other nearby planes.
  • The Outer Planes are nine special planes that each loosely represent one of the nine alignments, though they are by no means limited to manifestations of that alignment. Unlike the canonical nine outer planes originally inherited from 2e's Manual of the Planes, these Outer Planes are not specifically afterlives for souls of their associated alignments; that said, the Infernum (the lower planes collectively) and the Afterworld are specifically the collective afterlives for individuals of evil and non-evil alignments, respectively. The Holy Mountain of Heaven serves the role of the upper planes as home to good gods and celestials, the Questing Grounds are a fairytale-esque land where stories are alive, Tarassein is the plane of random and churning chaos, Mâl is a plane of Lovecraftian nightmares, Chasm is the gaping rift that evil souls fall through on the way to the lower planes, and the Halls of Order are the plane of law and judging the souls of the deceased.
  • There are new Transitive Planes for spicing up planar adventures. More details and ideas can be found in the OGL sources listed therein.
I did have a few other ideas for adjusting the planes to my liking, but that's the gist of the overall change. What do you think?

EDIT: Currently, Pathfinder does not have any rules for space travel. I refer to the 3pp Aether & Flux: Sailing the Traverse for this purpose. This adds another factor to the Material Plane: aether, an (ordinarily) invisible, intangible substance that provides the motive force for space travel while magic is used to create atmosphere and gravity. Other than that, outer space works like it does in reality, aside from the occasional gravity and vacuum elementals that make their way from the Tempest.
 
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Kramodlog

Naked and living in a barrel
Where are the planes (or demiplanes?) or gravity an such in relations to the 4 elements and the 2 energy planes?

It is not clear "where" the preternatural planes "are" and what planes they link.

How does the vault of star acts with the outer planes and the inner planes in it? Are the outer and inner invisable? Can a resident of the outer access the vault?
 

VelvetViolet

Adventurer
Where are the planes (or demiplanes?) or gravity an such in relations to the 4 elements and the 2 energy planes?
The map doesn't display all the energy and elemental planes because there are an arbitrarily high number of them (including the paraplanes, quasiplanes and demiplanes). Hence the invention of the Tempest, which throws them all into a blender so you can fight psionic and smoke elementals in one adventuring day. In fact, the Outer Planes shown are just the major ones and there are numerous other outer demiplanes and layers not listed (the Infernum alone has infinite layers with unique properties and is inhabited by every imaginable and unimaginable manner of fiend).

It is not clear "where" the preternatural planes "are" and what planes they link.
The Preternatural Planes are all part of the Inner Planes, except for the Transitive Planes that connect the Inner and Outer Planes. They represent the various fairylands, otherworlds and underworlds found in world mythology as well as reflections and shadows of the Material Plane. More info can be found in The Faerie Ring.

How does the vault of star acts with the outer planes and the inner planes in it? Are the outer and inner invisable? Can a resident of the outer access the vault?
The stars can be seen from the Material Plane, but from the Vault's surface all that can be seen is an opaque cloud. Accessing the Vault generally requires magic or an astral barge, and it is coterminous will all the outer planes. More information can be found in The Book of the Planes.
 

DrunkonDuty

he/him
I like it. I have long thought that the Material plane needed to be at the centre and that the Astral and Ethereal planes needed to be folded into the one continuum. I like the way you have done this but still allow for different, um, versions/methodologies/mythologies such as World Trees, Dream Realms, etc.

I know this is stupid but... having Chaos on the left and Law on the right is breaking my brain. Not that that is a criticism, merely an admission of my own weirdness. :)
 

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