Plane of Shadow -- does anyone use it?

[Shemeska]

YIAAHPF?

Yes I Am A Harcore Planar Fanatic

 

[green slime]

I use it in lieu of the Ethereal Plane, its super-boring older brother. (Seriously, except for the most hardcore planar fanatics, there's nothing intrinsically more interesting about the Ethereal than the Plane of Shadow, to the extent that I can't figure why it's necessary to even have the Ethereal around.)

Whenever there's a chance to use Etherealness, I use Shadow instead. It hasn't come up much (although it has come up, even when my group was level 1), but it will, more and more, along with the Plane of Mirrors, the other cool transitive plane. (Astral is OK, but it's way behind the other two, IMO.)

I second that sentiment on the Ethereal, and also use the Shadow Plane in its stead. The Plane of Mirrors is not used either, but we use the Dreamscape as a means of manifesting nightmares and sending messages

 

[Jdvn1]

I'm not very good with planes, so I don't use them very much.

In EN Arsenal: Flails, Maces, and Morningstars (or whatever the order is) there's a prestige class that uses the plane of shadow. I'd still allow planar stuff, but I won't make it a focus of the game since I don't know much about them.

 

[Dog Moon]

Yes I Am A Harcore Planar Fanatic

Ah. I never would have guess THAT.

Edit: I meant what the letters stand for. I think EVERYONE knows you're a Hardcore Planar Fanatic.

 

[Psion]

I second that sentiment on the Ethereal, and also use the Shadow Plane in its stead.

I mix the Ethereal up with the spirit world (somewhat similar to the version discussed in MotP, but with other tweaks). In essence, the standard ethereal is like described in the books; my "deep ethereal" is the spirit world.

I also place the spirit world betwixt the prime and the upper planes, and place the shadow plane betwixt the prime and the lower planes.

 

[Odhanan]

I use it in lieu of the Ethereal Plane, its super-boring older brother. (Seriously, except for the most hardcore planar fanatics, there's nothing intrinsically more interesting about the Ethereal than the Plane of Shadow, to the extent that I can't figure why it's necessary to even have the Ethereal around.)

Weird. The Ethereal plane is my favorite, but then, the main experiences of knowledgeable and traditional arcanists speak of an Ethereal plane akin to Moorcock's depiction of limbo, where you can sail with ethereal ships created by special rituals and travel between the planes.

These same spellcasters and scholars theorize that Astral and Ethereal planes are nearly the same thing. The Ether would represent a sort of a physical manifestation of the Astral, in the sense that Etherealness is bound to form through its special connection or "proximity" to the Material plane. The farther away you move into the Ethereal, the more you leave the bonds of form and travel to a plane of archetypes and ideas, and what lies between them, which is, in substance, the Astral itself, or what this concept is rather supposed to represent. But then, nobody in the Seven Spires is even sure this main stream theory is true, even if it certainly explain most of the experiences of plane travellers and spellcasters who have had contacts with the Multiverse.

As for the plane of shadow, I use it in my campaign, but it is still a deep mystery waiting to be fully understood. The theories abound as to its nature and links with the Astral, the Ethereal, and all of their relations toward the Deep, a force that is thought to be the origin of sentience and psionic powers, part of a spiritual Triad with the Green and the Dark (as per Arcana Unearthed/Evolved).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Trust me, they're two totally different things.

I'm aware. I own the relevant inner plane stuff for Planescape and got the 1E Manual of Planes the first month it came out (the 3E one too, for that matter). All of the stuff that's swell about the Ethereal Plane could be divvied up between the Astral and Plane of Shadow, with no one but a handful of people (including you) caring or possibly even noticing.

D&D has way too many transitive planes as it is -- we don't need three or more different ways to walk/fly to another plane -- and as it is, the cool stuff is mostly sitting in the Plane of Shadow. The Astral has some neat stuff with silver cords and corpses of gods and the zero gravity thing, and could easily accomodate the neat stuff from the Ethereal Plane (and Realm of Dreams, for that matter) and be stronger for it.

One of the things I love most about the current Manual of Planes is that it explicitly talks about what mechanical things rely on each plane, so it's not a big chore to move the things that link into the Ethereal to other planes.

The Ethereal isn't alone with this problem, though, for what it's worth: I find the Great Wheel's Limbo to really pale in comparison to the Far Realm as a realm of mind-bending chaos and am thinking of just merging the two, if I can figure out where to stick the damn froggy bastards for the rare times I want to use them. (Probably Pandemonium.)

Unless someone's running a "planar campaign," life's too short to bore your players with also-ran planes.

(And wtf does YIAAHPF mean?)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mix the Ethereal up with the spirit world (somewhat similar to the version discussed in MotP, but with other tweaks). In essence, the standard ethereal is like described in the books; my "deep ethereal" is the spirit world.

I also place the spirit world betwixt the prime and the upper planes, and place the shadow plane betwixt the prime and the lower planes.

Sounds like the Umbra in the (old) World of Darkness, which was pretty fun, despite a pretty messy cosmology in the case of the oWoD. (Your arrangement sounds like it works a lot better.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Weird. The Ethereal plane is my favorite, but then, the main experiences of knowledgeable and traditional arcanists speak of an Ethereal plane akin to Moorcock's depiction of limbo, where you can sail with ethereal ships created by special rituals and travel between the planes.

I gather it's used the same way in Ptolus, where it's called the Ethereal Sea. Honestly, that might be enough of a change to get me to use it periodically.

 

[Odhanan]

I gather it's used the same way in Ptolus, where it's called the Ethereal Sea. Honestly, that might be enough of a change to get me to use it periodically.

I'm unclear as to how the Ethereal Sea appears/looks like in Ptolus. If it's anything more than a name, that is. We'd have to ask Monte if the name itself has a relation to Moorcock's limbo (with the travels of the Eternal Champions leading to their confrontation with Agak and Gagak). This is where my version comes from, originally.