D&D General How early is too early for planar adventures?

[Urriak Uruk]

Personally, I think some planes can be introduced in the first session at level 1.

The most obvious option is the Feywild; Alice in Wonderland is essentially the adventure of a child with no abilities being lost in the Feywild.

 

[robus]

I'm looking forward to preparing the next adventure for them, and I would like something different from the previous, which have all been pretty much about investigating a remote area to find a dungeon, and then clear such dungeon of its monsters.

There's plenty of middle ground between dungeons and planes! It seems like these characters have earned their reputation and it's now time for them to go on a grand adventure. Perhaps that will lead to extra-planar travel or not. But getting them out of dungeons and into the larger world would probably be enough to scratch their itch. They're probably looking for something akin to the Zelda adventures rather than Darkest Dungeon

Give them a mission that takes them to fantastic locations and interesting people (with obstacles in the way of course). Old school dungeon crawls have not aged well I think (I hated the PotA game I was a player in, for example, because it all seemed so relentlessly similar and pointless).

 

[Eltab]

If the characters cannot survive the experience, it is too early to go plane-hopping. Going to the Plane of Water without swim gear and Potions of Water Breathing and a way back to the exit is not "a fun planar adventure", it is "we got TPK'ed by the environment".

For this reason I recommend a quick 'fetch quest' on the Elemental Plane of Air, using those wings from Princes of the Apocalypse, and the dragon hot-air balloon in Storm King's Thunder. Maybe a wizard needs a 55-gal drum full of the air (pressurized of course) and a basketfull of arrowhawk feathers.