Making the chaos planes more... chaotic

[CRGreathouse]

First, if you're playing in the Band of Dwarven Brothers campaign, get out lest your DM smite you.

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Hi EN World, long time no post. Anyone from the olden days remember me?

I have a high-level group which just found themselves dumped on a plane of chaos following a failed plane shift attempt. Not coincidentally it's the same plane that's on a collision course with the Material following... well, a plot the PCs never quite picked up on.

They've tousled with the plane before, but only insofar as portals have opened to it, allowing creatures and plane-stuff through to their home plane. This will be the first time they've been there -- and they'll leave as soon as they're physically able. (They've already cast all three of their plane travel spells for the day.)

What they've seen so far -- the effect of a portal to this plane on the Material -- was pretty substantial: geometry became discontinuous (allowing, among other things, creatures to attack nonadjacent PCs); objects appeared* and disappeared; gravity was altered; etc. I'm looking for ideas for what else I can do when they're actually on the plane itself. Clearly the effects should be much stronger!

I'm looking for things which will create the right sensation and feeling of the plane more than anything else. But I don't want just descriptive text, which is easy to ignore, but also things which change the way things work for the PCs, especially combat. It doesn't have to make it harder, in some cases making it unexpectedly easy would be nice. But I want it to come off as harsh and alien, to drive home the importance of their quest to stop the planar disaster.

Any ideas? I have all the standard resources (Manual of the Planes, Lords of Madness, Planar Handbook, Complete Book of Eldritch Might, Beyond Countless Doorways) and the high-level stuff (Epic Level Handbook, Deities and Demigods, Epic Monsters, [Denizens and] Legends of Avadnu, Quirin Mythology) should those be needed.

I don't need suggestions on what creatures live there, though if you have suggestions I wouldn't turn them down. I'm mainly looking for "environmental" effects: how strange I can make the plane itself.

* Including an homage to Douglas Adams in which a whale fell on the party. The campaign is actually serious rather than humorous, but elemental Chaos gives me a bit of wiggle-room.

 

[Herobizkit]

Just a 'random' thought, but how about make every attack roll generate an effect as per the Rod/Wand of Wonder?

That usually keeps the room entertained for at least a few hours.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Add the ability to see through people/creatures as they step into "distortion bubbles" that violate typical 3D space. Stepping into such a distortion doesn't actually hurt you or alter you in any way, but it does expose your insides to the outside visually. Use this as the ability to bypass armor and natural AC, allow a Rogue to Sneak Attack no matter of flanking, Flat foooted, etc, because the liver is right there to stab, etc. Have PC's lure enemies towards these distortion bubbles to better attack, but you move the bubble 5' per round.

Vary lighting. Pockets of darkness and blinding light, with no logical source, dot the ladscape.

Vary humidity. Pockets of dry, transitioning to humid, transitioning to "swampy" air that you wade thru & hampers movement to actually swimming... all while walking along the ground.

"Portal" (like the computer game) style portals. Openings in space that empty to nearby other openings.

 

[DanotheSlender]

As the party spends more time in the plane they get infected with the chaos...not alignment changing but physical and mental effects..they change race or sex, sudden temporary level increase or reduction, same with character age...their items undergo changes..warriors longsword tosses a fireball...clerics mace becomes vorpal..healing spells cause sudden incontinence...overall weirdness...random 2am thoughts...can't get much more chaotic than that...LOL

Game on!!

 

[Empirate]

You might want to look at the description for the Limbo plane in the Great Wheel cosmology, some good stuff there (Manual of the Planes has this but is a really obscure book by this point, maybe the less obscure Planar Handbook has some ideas for you as well).

Basically, the plane is in a suspended state of "in-between" everything: pure potential, very little of it actually realized. That means that most matter is in its rawest, most shapeable form, and in a cosmology based on the four elements this means that everything is a mix of pure water, pure earth, pure air, and pure fire, with much mixing between them, but also big (unstable) pockets of only one element, or two of them.

Effects include: breathing might randomly become really difficult if you suddenly enter a small earth-dominant or water-dominant pocket. Visibility varies a lot based on local conditions (think weather, but changing rapidly). You might suffer sudden burns from coming into contact with rather a lot of pure fire element all at once. What are you even standing on? You're not sure, and as soon as the thought enters your head, you realize you've been falling/soaring/gliding the whole time. Wherever your feet are, there is "down", but this is purely subjective. There's no way to tell place or time. The chaos matter might at times spawn more refined matter (objects, even creatures), but these break down after a while into their component elements.

Living beings can control the chaos after a fashion, forming small pockets of livable conditions around them (IIRC, the MotP suggests Wis checks or Will saves or something like that, which aren't hard, but can randomly fail at the wrong time). The more powerful the being, the more local stability it can create, up to the point of "thinking up" a place to live complete with walls, a roof, furniture, a garden... but it's hard to maintain, you gotta sleep at some point - and you don't want the plane to emulate your dreams!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Hi EN World, long time no post. Anyone from the olden days remember me?

Yes, actually, and it has been quite a while. On to business...

Making physical distance non-Euclidean and affected by the mind would be pretty funky. Say you can make something nearer or farther just by thinking about it. If you concentrate on a distant location you're traveling to then you get there faster. If you're in combat and you think about an enemy across the room hard enough then your distance to him (and only to him, not the stuff around him) becomes small enough to put you in melee range. The strength of the effect is governed by willpower, and hence wisdom. If you spend long enough in the place to spend the equivalent of a skill point in your system of choice then you can get better at doing it.

 

[Rune]

Do without initiative. Don't let characters act more often than they otherwise would in a single round, but just don't keep track of initiative. In fact, don't roll it at all. Everyone just acts when they act. The more participants in the combat, the more chaotic it is!

 

[CRGreathouse]

Just a 'random' thought, but how about make every attack roll generate an effect as per the Rod/Wand of Wonder?

Interesting.

Add the ability to see through people/creatures as they step into "distortion bubbles" that violate typical 3D space. Stepping into such a distortion doesn't actually hurt you or alter you in any way, but it does expose your insides to the outside visually. Use this as the ability to bypass armor and natural AC, allow a Rogue to Sneak Attack no matter of flanking, Flat foooted, etc, because the liver is right there to stab, etc. Have PC's lure enemies towards these distortion bubbles to better attack, but you move the bubble 5' per round.

Very nice.

Vary lighting. Pockets of darkness and blinding light, with no logical source, dot the ladscape.

Vary humidity. Pockets of dry, transitioning to humid, transitioning to "swampy" air that you wade thru & hampers movement to actually swimming... all while walking along the ground.

Good, good.

"Portal" (like the computer game) style portals. Openings in space that empty to nearby other openings.

Used that one already, actually -- though I haven't played Portal, the idea is the same I trust.

As the party spends more time in the plane they get infected with the chaos...not alignment changing but physical and mental effects..they change race or sex, sudden temporary level increase or reduction, same with character age...their items undergo changes..warriors longsword tosses a fireball...clerics mace becomes vorpal..healing spells cause sudden incontinence...overall weirdness...

That should keep them on their toes.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Synesthesia is an interesting concept: when sensory signals get confused and one sensory experience gets combined with another.

In general, you might consider researching the effects of psychedelics and looking for inspiration there.

 

[the Jester]

Distort distances. Since you're playing 3e/PF, you could rule that straight movement costs 1-2-1 and diagonals always count as 1 or something like it.