Wondrous places are not a rarity when traveling throughout ENterplanetary DimENsions but few are as wild and unusual as the curious realm known as Inphasmada!
Illustration by Ben Berlin.
Inphasmada is a place where expression, ideas, and intention literally take form, the very dimension itself shaping to the thoughts of the creatures within it. There’s a great amount of speculation among sages as to how this dimension came to exist at all, and though there is a growing consensus that it is the graveyard of a pantheon of gods destroyed by reason it is truly impossible to know. The reverberations of past thoughts echo into the landscape, constantly changing it so it is never quite the same twice. While time has the same meaning it has everywhere else it quickly loses that for most creatures when they realize the breadth of control they have over the environment, making the world a stream of consciousness from which few can ever really escape.
There are no natives in Inphasmada in the same sense that there are no visitors—no matter where you go there you are, and what is before you is all there is and has ever been or will be. Until of course it isn’t. The struggles and conflicts of the dwellers of this dimension are ever shifting but constant, and wherever one looks there is always a movement or other grand narrative going on. Sometimes violent, sometimes political, sometimes artistic, sometimes comedic, and changing often, yet ever present.
Planar Traits. Inphasmada has the following planar traits and the Narrator should make use of the crowd, dense smoke, heavy precipitation, memory crystals, miring ground, strong winds, and webs encounter elements. When it is possible to do so, noticing one of these encounter elements before it is too close to avoid requires a DC 18 Insight check.
Dispel Magic. A small localized disruption from a casting of dispel magic causes unpleasant reverberations in a 30-foot radius around both the caster and the target of the spell. For the next 1d4 rounds, ability checks and attack rolls made by creatures within the areas have disadvantage.
Antimagic Field. The effects of antimagic field are even more pronounced and catastrophic. Instead of the spell’s normal effects, antimagic field warps and transforms the environment into a sphere of annihilation for 1 hour before it reverts to a random prior state. Unlike normal, an Arcana check cannot be used to determine what the sphere of annihilation is.
Minor Magics
While in Inphasmada a creature knows the druidcraft, mage hand, mending, prestidigitation, and thaumaturgy cantrips, and can innately cast them without material components. A creature uses its highest ability score as its spellcasting ability for these cantrips.
The interplay between mind and arcana requires tenuous connections that must fray before they can be manifested again, and after you use any form of ideocana you cannot manifest a form of ideocana that uses a different ability score for 1 minute. Unless otherwise noted, after being manifested ideocana lasts for as long as you maintain it or for up to a number of minutes equal to 1d4 + your proficiency bonus. Manifesting and maintaining a thought requires concentration just like concentrating on a spell, using the same ability score for maintaining it as you used to manifest the thought. You are only able to maintain a single thought at a time, but you are able to concentrate on a thought and a spell at the same time. While concentrating and maintaining a thought, you have disadvantage on concentration checks and on a failure lose both the thought and the spell.
You impart sentience in the target, granting it an Intelligence of 10 and proficiency in a language you know. The target also gains the ability to move, as well as senses identical to those of a human. The Narrator determines how a creature’s statistics are changed depending on the object it was created from.
The target is charmed by you for 10 minutes or until you or your companions harm it. Depending on how you treated the target while it was charmed, when the condition ends the creature may choose to remain friendly to you.
Table: Instilled Thinking
Table: Presence Blast
The higher your Charisma score, the more seeming ideocana you can access: Charisma 12 (minor illusion), Charisma 14 (silent image), Charisma 16 (blur), Charisma 18 (major image), Charisma 20 (hallucinatory terrain). You are able to manifest this ideocana as if innately casting it without material components.
Illustration by Ben Berlin.
Inphasmada is a place where expression, ideas, and intention literally take form, the very dimension itself shaping to the thoughts of the creatures within it. There’s a great amount of speculation among sages as to how this dimension came to exist at all, and though there is a growing consensus that it is the graveyard of a pantheon of gods destroyed by reason it is truly impossible to know. The reverberations of past thoughts echo into the landscape, constantly changing it so it is never quite the same twice. While time has the same meaning it has everywhere else it quickly loses that for most creatures when they realize the breadth of control they have over the environment, making the world a stream of consciousness from which few can ever really escape.
There are no natives in Inphasmada in the same sense that there are no visitors—no matter where you go there you are, and what is before you is all there is and has ever been or will be. Until of course it isn’t. The struggles and conflicts of the dwellers of this dimension are ever shifting but constant, and wherever one looks there is always a movement or other grand narrative going on. Sometimes violent, sometimes political, sometimes artistic, sometimes comedic, and changing often, yet ever present.
Planar Traits. Inphasmada has the following planar traits and the Narrator should make use of the crowd, dense smoke, heavy precipitation, memory crystals, miring ground, strong winds, and webs encounter elements. When it is possible to do so, noticing one of these encounter elements before it is too close to avoid requires a DC 18 Insight check.
Antimagic Annihilation
Magic is infused into every bit of the fabric of Inphasmada and when disrupted can have terrible effects.Dispel Magic. A small localized disruption from a casting of dispel magic causes unpleasant reverberations in a 30-foot radius around both the caster and the target of the spell. For the next 1d4 rounds, ability checks and attack rolls made by creatures within the areas have disadvantage.
Antimagic Field. The effects of antimagic field are even more pronounced and catastrophic. Instead of the spell’s normal effects, antimagic field warps and transforms the environment into a sphere of annihilation for 1 hour before it reverts to a random prior state. Unlike normal, an Arcana check cannot be used to determine what the sphere of annihilation is.
Fulfillment and Famine
For all the wonders of ideocana there are two things it simply cannot be used to do: believe in fulfilling food, think up perishable water, or true living creatures (such as beasts or plants). With the constant illusions, figments, and seemings everywhere across Inphasmada it is practically impossible to find a reliable source of nourishment. When using a feature, property, or trait that finds Supply in Inphasmada, roll 1d20. On a result of 19 or less no Supply is found, and on a 20 half as much Supply is found as normal (minimum 1 Supply).Interminable Illusions
Extremely few things are precisely what they appear to be in Inphasmada. Even the smallest of minds are able to alter the appearance of the bodies containing them so all sorts of creatures from aberrations and beasts to undead appear differently from one another or how they look on the Material Plane. These are usually subconscious changes—adding feathers or scales, having different hues, seeming a bit smaller or larger, with claws longer or shorter—but when collected together can make it difficult to realize what something is with only observation. When observing a creature, a bonus action and Insight check (DC 8 + the creature’s CR or class level) is required to determine what the creature actually is. On a failed check, any determinations on what a creature is are left only to be based upon the Narrator’s description.Minor Magics
While in Inphasmada a creature knows the druidcraft, mage hand, mending, prestidigitation, and thaumaturgy cantrips, and can innately cast them without material components. A creature uses its highest ability score as its spellcasting ability for these cantrips.
Strange Structures
Practically all of Inphasmada is covered by buildings and sculptures, the work of unfettered minds run amok in a dimension where the physical laws of matter can be bent, cajoled, and twisted into shapes impossible to construct elsewhere. Impressive and awe-inspiring as these may be, the conjured substances are weaker than their counterparts in the realms material. Any object or structure created in Inphasmada using magic (including ideocana and spells) has half as many hit points as normal and its AC is reduced by 5.Impossible Ideocana
What makes this dimension of expression unique is ideocana, a fundamental magic that responds to thought itself. How a thought manifests itself to affect the environment—through a creature’s Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma—determines what can be done with it and how much power it has. Wondrous and impossible as the creations of ideocana might be, any attempts to transport manifested thoughts out of Inphasmada automatically fail.The interplay between mind and arcana requires tenuous connections that must fray before they can be manifested again, and after you use any form of ideocana you cannot manifest a form of ideocana that uses a different ability score for 1 minute. Unless otherwise noted, after being manifested ideocana lasts for as long as you maintain it or for up to a number of minutes equal to 1d4 + your proficiency bonus. Manifesting and maintaining a thought requires concentration just like concentrating on a spell, using the same ability score for maintaining it as you used to manifest the thought. You are only able to maintain a single thought at a time, but you are able to concentrate on a thought and a spell at the same time. While concentrating and maintaining a thought, you have disadvantage on concentration checks and on a failure lose both the thought and the spell.
Strength: Simple Creation
You can use an action while thinking of or touching a simple object with no moving parts, manifesting it out of nothing. The item you manifest must fit within an area equal to 1-cubic foot × your Strength score. You can manifest a number of items equal to your proficiency bonus + double your Strength modifier. By spending 10 minutes maintaining these thoughts, you can make one or more manifested objects permanent. This ideocana otherwise manifests as the creation spell.Dexterity: Merging
You can use a bonus action to merge your form into and through objects. You take 3 (1d6) force damage if you end your turn with part of your body inside an object.Dexterity: Stretching
You can use an action or bonus action to stretch your form. Until the end of your turn, your reach increases by up to a number of feet equal to 5 × your proficiency bonus.Constitution: Dilation and Diminution
You can innately cast enlarge/reduce without material components as if manifesting a thought. You are able to cast it as a 4th-level spell if your proficiency bonus is +4 or higher, or if your Constitution is 15 or higher. Alternatively, you are able to cast it as a 6th-level spell that decreases or increases your size by 3 size categories if your proficiency bonus is +6 or if your Constitution is 20, though this has no additional effects than when it is cast as a 4th-level spell.Constitution: Division
You can spend 1 minute dividing a willing creature or yourself. A divided creature has the same personality, memories, abilities, equipment, and all other statistics of the original creature, but its size is reduced by one size category, its reach is reduced by 5 ft. (minimum reach 5 ft.), its hit point maximum is halved, its Strength is reduced by 1d4 (minimum Strength 1), and its Dexterity is increased by 1d4. A creature can be divided until it is Tiny-sized. If the creature being divided has exertion, spell slots, or limited use features, traits, or magic items with properties, you decide which divided creature has how much of each resource.Intelligence: Complex Creation
You can use an action while thinking of or touching a complex object, manifesting it out of nothing. The item you manifest must fit within an area equal to 2-cubic feet × your Intelligence score. The target can have a number of complex pieces (such as a hinge, latch, piston, and so on) equal to your Intelligence score – 10 (minimum 1 complex piece). The maximum complexity of an object you can manifest is determined by the Narrator. By spending 10 minutes maintaining this thought, you can make a manifested complex object permanent. This ideocana otherwise manifests as the creation spell.Wisdom: Instill Thinking
You gain a number of instilling points equal to your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier. You can spend 1 minute touching an object to instill it with 1 or more instilling points depending on its size. Though its damage vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities, and its traits and attacks may change (often to a slam), an object instilled with sentience is a construct that uses the statistics listed on Table: Instilled Thinking.You impart sentience in the target, granting it an Intelligence of 10 and proficiency in a language you know. The target also gains the ability to move, as well as senses identical to those of a human. The Narrator determines how a creature’s statistics are changed depending on the object it was created from.
The target is charmed by you for 10 minutes or until you or your companions harm it. Depending on how you treated the target while it was charmed, when the condition ends the creature may choose to remain friendly to you.
Table: Instilled Thinking
Object Size | Instilling Points | Creature |
Tiny | 1 | |
Small | 2 | |
Medium | 3 | |
Large | 6 | |
Huge | 8 | |
Gargantuan | 11 |
Charisma: Pure Presence
You can use an action or bonus action to manifest a bit of your very essence into a beam of power. Make a ranged spell attack against a creature or object within 200 feet. On a hit, you deal an amount and type of damage determined by your proficiency bonus and Charisma score (as on the Presence Blast table).Table: Presence Blast
| Proficiency Bonus | Damage Die | Damage Types | | Charisma | Number of Dice |
+2 | d4 | Psychic | | 1–13 | 1 |
+3 | d6 | Psychic or thunder | | 14–15 | 2 |
+4 | d8 | Acid, psychic, or thunder | | 16–17 | 3 |
+5 | d10 | Acid, cold, psychic, or thunder | | 18–19 | 4 |
+6 | d12 | Acid, cold, force, psychic, or thunder | | 20 | 5 |
Charisma: Seeming
You can think of a different appearance for yourself and change the way you look to match it (as the disguise self spell, but it functions regardless of creature type). Altering your appearance in this way does not require maintaining the thought.The higher your Charisma score, the more seeming ideocana you can access: Charisma 12 (minor illusion), Charisma 14 (silent image), Charisma 16 (blur), Charisma 18 (major image), Charisma 20 (hallucinatory terrain). You are able to manifest this ideocana as if innately casting it without material components.
