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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9616554" data-attributes="member: 7737">Commentary:…we haven’t translated our father’s notes on the planes of existence, which are “advanced magical topics”...On a failure (at 8), we realize we don’t know enough about the other planes of existence to control the spell.What, exactly, has OUR Carr Delling been learning for the last FIVE YEARS? He doesn't know demonology. He doesn't know about the planes. He’s only read the titles of his father’s super awesome spells.A cold sweat springs out on our forehead but we keep reading…An excellent illustration of WIS 3 at work. We realize that we don't know what we're doing, but we keep going anyway.As your insanity worsens…The risk of insanity from casting Contact Other Plane is in the rules as written. For each plane "removed" from the magic-user's home plane (normally the Material Plane), there is a cumulative 5% chance of insanity: 5% at 1 plane removed, 10% at 2 planes removed, up to 50% at 9 planes removed.Why would you want to contact a far removed plane? Because the chance of the contacted being's knowledge also increases with further removal, starting at 60% for 1 plane removed and increasing by 5% for each further plane removed, except it caps at 98% for 9 planes removed because screw you that's why. So does the chance that the being answers truthfully, from 65% at 1 plane removed up to 95% at 9 planes removed.Except for the elemental planes, which have a fixed 20% chance of insanity, 90% chance of knowledge, and 75% chance of insanity -- for no apparent reason. Although elementals only know stuff about the appropriate elemental plane, so unless you want to ask about air, earth, fire, or water why did you bother to contact an elemental plane anyway?(Contact Other Plane is AD&D at its worst: you can cast a high-level spell at risk to your own sanity and end up with either lies or “I don’t know” in response. Gygax hated player success almost as much as Morris Simon does.)The chance of insanity does get reduced by 5% for each point of Intelligence over 15, so OUR Carr Delling with INT 19 would subtract 20% from the listed chances. Thus he could contact any plane out to 4 removed at zero risk, out to 5 removed with only a 5% insanity chance, all the way out to 9 removed with a 30% chance of going insane.Apparently Carr contacted a far removed plane and rolled low on the insanity chance. Typical.---And what does it mean for a plane to be "removed" from the Material Plane? OUR Carr Delling never bothered to learn this, but 13-year-old Joshua did. By turning to page 120 of the Players Handbook we can consult APPENDIX IV: THE KNOWN PLANES OF EXISTENCE.Well. We can consult this appendix and then be confused, because the maximum number of planes of removal we can count is… 5. Not 9.[ATTACH=full]400244[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]400245[/ATTACH]An argument can be made that the distance from the Material Plane to the Astral Plane is 1 "removal", given this description of the Astral Plane on p. 120:The Astral Plane radiates from the Prime Material to a non-space where endless vortices spiral to the parallel Prime Material Planes and to the Outer Planes as well.Thus the distance from the Material Plane to any given Outer Plane is 2: Material to Astral to Outer.The other argument is that "SEE FIG. 1" in the second illustration encompasses every section of the first illustration, so you'd count from Material Plane to (Positive or Negative) to (an Elemental Plane) to Ethereal to Astral to (an Outer Plane), for a total of 5 removals.But there is no way to count up to 9 given these illustrations.I don't know why the PH spell description for Contact Other Plane features a table out to 9 planes removed. Maybe so that DMs could invent additional planes beyond the Outer? Maybe because the 5% increments of knowledge nicely reach 100% at 9 removals? (Although it's capped at 98% because screw you that's why.)</blockquote>

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