Finding the Rod of Seven Parts across the planes?

[Oryan77]

I'm trying to figure out how a segment of the Rod of Seven Parts could locate another segment across planes. Would it locate the nearest portal? Or if there is no direct portal, then would it locate a portal that would lead to a plane that would contain a portal leading to the destination plane? Or does that seem ludicrous?

 

[Crothian]

When I ran the box set I had it point toward portals or however it was that would lead the group to the next piece. Knowing where the portal was though was never enough one had to figure out how to open the portal and a smart person also tried to learn where that portal was taking them.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

I believe the Age of Worms adventure campaign has one of the Rod's pieces in another plane. I don't know how they played that out, but I'd imagine rules exist in that published material.

 

[Oryan77]

I haven't read the Age of Worms thoroughly. But I was under the impression that the PCs don't actually use any part of the rod to look for another segment. I thought there just happened to be a segment of the rod in the adventure path but that it didn't have any real impact to the plotline?

 

[pemerton]

There may be context here I'm not aware of, but my thought is - can't the Rod just tell it's wielder where the other bit is (eg in it's in such-and-such a cavern in Pandemonium)? I don't see why the Rod's senses are constrained by portal access, or even why it would sense portals at all.

 

[Oryan77]

I had considered using it like the Discern Location spell, but I liked the idea of it working more along the ways of it's original version. I think the idea of it acting sort of like an Arrow of Direction from the 1e DMG was more interesting. It leads you to the area the other piece is rather than just telling you where it is.

That's a small detail, but it seems like it would keep the players more involved & curious rather than a flat out statement about where to go next.

 

[TerraDave]

I guess the question is what is the more interesting challenge?

In a recent game, the players knew for a while they had to go to a certain part of Hades. The question was, how?

If the rod leads them along, maybe have points where it doesn't know? If you are doing a planar adventure, then the players should be high enough level to have resources to try and figure out what next in that case.

 

[Lwaxy]

The rod is indeed irrelevant for the AP but we used AoW once or twice to start collecting all parts of the rod.