Amulet of the Planes

[OB1]

So, my just entering Tier IV party consisting of a Ranger, Cleric and Rogue got themselves an Amulet of the Planes from my random rolling in the DMG. As I was planning on going planar in Tier IV anyhow, I think this may have turned out to be a fortunate occurrence, but I do have one question. Should I allow my players an Arcana check to make the DC15 Int check to use the Amulet? The highest intelligence in the group is a 13, but are trained in arcana, so it's either +1 or +6 to the check. Either way, if they use it, they are going to be spending quite a bit of time in places they didn't mean to be.

 

[MarkB]

Just how much of your campaign do you want to consist of random wandering? This is pretty much equivalent to requiring characters to make Survival checks when navigating through wilderness, except that the range of potential random encounters is nigh-infinite.

I'd suggest giving your characters access to a more reliable, but more limited means of planar travel (if they don't already have access to Plane Shift as a spell), and encouraging them towards thinking of the amulet as an emergency escape device.

 

[The Thrasson]

You can alter the properties of the amulet to suit your needs.

 

[AmerginLiath]

Are they Quantum Leap fans? Oh boy...

 

[SkidAce]

Sure, let them use Arcana! Sounds like fun.


I advise pre-building a dossier of planar locations however...

 

[OB1]

Just realized that the amulet doesn’t have charged or work once a day. It basically can be used every six seconds. So I’m keeping the pure Int check since they can just roll a few times in a row to get where they mean. I’ll have a random table ready to roll to give them little glimpses of where they end up. Should be fun!

 

[Lanefan]

If you like your players and-or want to keep your game going you might want to somehow find a way to warn them that some of the places they might end up could be insta-TPK - the elemental plane of fire for instance (the whole party does a Gollum and jumps into Mt. Doom), or water (which is all water), or earth (which is all stone)...

I have to worry about this as I had the same thing happen recently: a party found one for sale thanks to my random item generator. They've become very adept at using Augury spells to figure out bits about what setting takes them where, though they're nowhere near knowing all of it yet. They've figured out enough to be able to use it as an emergency getaway car to somewhere safe if they have to, but they haven't yet figured out how to use it to get back to their own world once they leave...

And they're still a fair way from having Planeshift as a field-castable spell.