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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 2011488" data-attributes="member: 10913">The Manual of the Planes is a 223 page hardcover book with a price tag of 29.95$ for D&D 3E (not 3.5E). Owners of the revised edition DMG already have a substantial section (22 pages) devoted to the planes – what does the MotP add? Is it 3.5E compatible? And is it worth the cost? Well, the answer may depend on what you are looking for. Here is my personal opinion on the work.    The first chapter (10 pages) explains the nature of the planes and planar traits. This information is essentially provided in the 3.5 DMG. The second chapter is 8 pages long, and talks about connecting the planes. Much of it is touched upon in the 3.5 DMG, but I find this presentation superior and it also includes more information and inspiring text on portals and other planar travel means – but at 8 pages, this clearly is not much of a difference.    The first main addition comes at chapter three, Characters and Magic. In 18 pages it describes 4 prestige classes and 26 spells (and a few other things), all new. The prestige classes are fitting and clearly designed to fit a wide variety of aspirants (I particularly like the Gatecrusher, that hacks planar portals and travel). The spells include useful ones like improved alarm (alerting from ethereal intruders etc.), and others of lesser utility (portal beacon, for example, allows a wizard to inform the party of the location of a portal he is Close to for a few hours). I find these additions seem reasonably useful and interesting for a planes-heavy campaign.     Chapter 4, the material plane, is only 4 pages long, and really – there is not much to discuss; I think it does it as well as it could. Chapter five involves the Transitive Planes, and is 20 pages long. This is an excellent chapter, giving a good feel for each transitive plane (ethereal, astral, and shadow) with about 5 pages on each. Now, each of these is described over 1/2 a page in the DMG, but these descriptions are superior. I especially liked the idea regarding shadow walk weak-spots. The locations given in the DMG are not described herein, so the two books complement each other to a large degree here.    Chapter six discusses the inner planes (in about 20 pages), and is again very good. Again it expands on the 1/2 page of the DMG to about 2 or 3 pages per plane. It manages to capture a good feel of each plane, and nearly every one had one location or idea that I thought could easily spawn an adventure. While some sites mentioned in the DMG are repeated to some degree, many are not so again the two complement each other nicely.    Chapter seven is the meat of the book, 68 pages of outer-plane descriptions, and it is the part I found most disappointing. The MotP versions of these planes seemed to me to be too much involved with the deities and petitioners on them, too vague and rehearsed, almost dry. Although there are still good places to go to and idea-spawning sites, overall I found the outer places to be disappointingly cliché and trivial. Instead of listing interesting place to go to, they list the places where gods are and their worshippers go to – and there is a big difference.    Chapter eight, demiplanes, is not much better. The writers give us in 6 pages the planes of Neth (a sentient plane), which is a nice and interesting idea, and then the other two are the Observatoriun where god-servants record the goings on in the real-world (an interesting place to describe as a part of myth, but as a place to wage an adventure in?), and the Common Ground, a place where gods can meat on neutral ground. These are good places for myth-building, but less good for adventure-building – the same problem with the outer planes.    Chapter nine includes 42 pages of monster goodness. I find some too banal to be seriously used (bariur – “looks like a centaur, but it mixes the forms of human and ram”), but most are good and ingrained well in their respective planes. I am particularly pleased that they include many templates (shadow-creatures, axiomatic creatures, petitioners – worshipers post death, and more) and ideas such as paraelementals and energons (sort of positive and negative energy elementals). This is a good, useful, chapter.   MotP finishes off with a bang with the appendix, 21 pages describing more planes and possible cosmologies. Released from the shackles of the historical D&D cosmology and divine presence considerations, the designers finally show a burst of creativity. They present gems such as the region of dreams (including rules for dream travel and lucid dreaming), the plane of mirros, wood or cold as an element, the faerie plane, and the far realm (including the pseudonatural template), the orrery cosmology (used in Eberron – the idea of ascendant and waning planes, changing in some complex cycle), and more. This chapter demonstrates, to me, exactly what makes planes interesting – each new plane allows for an interesting place to visit or use in an adventure (not “I went to Valhalla and had a beer with Kord!”, but rather “the good wizard suddenly turns evil; it’s mirror self has taken over his life!”). If only the entire book would have been like this.    The MotP is two things: it is a toolkit to construct new planes and cosmologies, and it is a tour de force of the Great Wheel cosmology of D&D. As a toolkit, the revised DMG provides you with all the tools it contains, but the MotP also has a host of more planes, advice, and ideas to help you beyond the bare tools. As a tour of the D&D cosmology, however, the book is largely disappointing, but still has some useful material. In short, this book does its job very well and should enrich any planes-related campaign. Its weak spot is the weak treatment of the Great Wheel, but even a DM that intends to use it will still be benefited by the expanded descriptions and occasional inspirational idea.    I gave this product a 4-start rating. As a 3.5E product, however, the MotP deserves a 3-star score. The core of it is available anyway in the core rulebooks, and the expansions of the Great Wheel are largely disappointing. It has good content, especially as a toolkit and springboard for ideas, but for 30$ is just too expensive to merit the benefit. I have no doubt that if it were released under 3.5E, it would have been different – it would have provided more, or would have been cheaper and smaller. For the owner of a 3.5E DMG, I recommend its purchase only to those heavily involved in a planar campaign.</blockquote>

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