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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 9551729" data-attributes="member: 1465">Upper planes might be useless for combat encounters (except as you say in case of invasion - also including PCs being the invaders) but they are certainly not useless for adventures. You can have a whole adventure without combat, therefore you can have a whole adventure in an upper plane. Or you can set one part of a larger adventure on an upper plane, perhaps the part that involves investigations, explorations, social interation, finding items or information, but not necessarily combat.However, some upper planes actually lend themselves well enough for combat. Ysgard is perfect: it's the warriors' heavens where heroes of the past want to continue enjoying fighting, but it's only a sport because nobody really dies. But this might mean that the PCs are forced to face hard fights to complete their quest, even if they are resurrected each time those fights are obstacles. The Beastlands might have animal denizens who aggressively defend their heaven from intruders because they may sense outsiders but maybe won't be able to understand if they are welcome guests or invaders. Formians were mentioned and they are possible territorial hostiles even if they live in Arcadia (which personally I rather use in my game as an alternate material plane rather than an afterlife, but I do that to many planes of the Great Wheel because IMHO they truly do not fit the bill of being someone's afterlife).The traditional upper planes in the Great Wheel do suffer from not being different enough, and that's because of the nerd-ish &quot;gapfilling design principle&quot; chosen by designers at that time, which required themselves to have a plane for every alignment combination plus intermediate ones. &quot;Heaven&quot; can be a single plane in your game with as many interesting regions as you can think about, without having to check all the alignment boxes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 9551729, member: 1465"] Upper planes might be useless for [I]combat encounters[/I] (except as you say in case of invasion - also including PCs being the invaders) but they are certainly not useless for [I]adventures[/I]. You can have a whole adventure without combat, therefore you can have a whole adventure in an upper plane. Or you can set one part of a larger adventure on an upper plane, perhaps the part that involves investigations, explorations, social interation, finding items or information, but not necessarily combat. However, [I]some[/I] upper planes actually lend themselves well enough for combat. Ysgard is perfect: it's the warriors' heavens where heroes of the past want to continue enjoying fighting, but it's only a sport because nobody really dies. But this might mean that the PCs are forced to face hard fights to complete their quest, even if they are resurrected each time those fights are obstacles. The Beastlands might have animal denizens who aggressively defend their heaven from intruders because they may sense outsiders but maybe won't be able to understand if they are welcome guests or invaders. Formians were mentioned and they are possible territorial hostiles even if they live in Arcadia (which personally I rather use in my game as an alternate material plane rather than an afterlife, but I do that to [B]many [/B]planes of the Great Wheel because IMHO they truly do not fit the bill of being someone's afterlife). The traditional upper planes in the Great Wheel do suffer from not being different enough, and that's because of the nerd-ish "gapfilling design principle" chosen by designers at that time, which required themselves to have a plane for every alignment combination plus intermediate ones. "Heaven" can be a single plane in your game with as many interesting regions as you can think about, without having to check all the alignment boxes. [/QUOTE]

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