Plane of Shadow -- does anyone use it?

[Ripzerai]

I guess a better analogy would be to compare someone who posts to a thread saying, "I don't use halflings in my campaign; I take what's interesting about halflings and give those traits to gnomes" to someone who posts saying, "Halflings are boring; only fanatics would use them."

Yes. I feel better about that one.

 

[Joshua Randall]

There's a pretty interesting Dungeon magazine adventure set in the Plane of Shadow. Damned if I know what it's called or what issue it was in, but if you go to Paizo's website and do a search for "shadow", I bet you will find it.

Also, one of the Dragon magazine Ecologies was of the Shadar-Kai, those weird spiked-chain wielding elf-type guys. Prior to that article, I though the Shadar-Kai were incredibly lame. Post that article, I think they are begging to see some time in my adventures. And, yup, they tie into the Plane of Shadow.

Creatures with the shadow template (or umbral, or whatever it's called) are also cool. I wouldn't overuse them, because they can be annoying to the PCs ("I hit it! No wait, it shadow-shifted out of the way. Argh!"). But used sparingly they make a nice change of pace.

 

[Sammael]

I've used both the Plane of Shadow and the Ethereal to great effect. I kept the 2e Great Wheel connections IMC; Ethereal is the plane of protomatter, so it makes sense that it connects to the Inner Planes.

The Plane of Shadow is a scar place, because it is so damn similar to the Prime, yet... behind every corner, there is a twist. When they are on the Plane of Shadow, my players should half-expect to be ambushed by their shadowstuff-doppelgangers. I also drew a bit of inspiration from Zelazny's Amber chronicles in making my Plane of Shadow more interesting. It is, thus, the most accessible way to travel from one Prime world to another.

Ethereal, on the other hand, should confuse. In the Borderline Ethereal, it is difficult to tell where the Prime stops and where the Ethereal starts. A creature could be here... or there. It all depends on perspective. Once you get to the Deep Ethereal, though, anything is fair game. After all, it is a plane of potential, unrealized things.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Ah, the Plane of Shadow. It is the biggest change I've made to the Great Wheel cosmology in my home games. I made the Plane of Shadow an analogue to every Plane in existance; every Plane has a Shadow side. There are rumors that a "Deep Shadow" connects all the Shadow Planes to each other, but no one has been able to prove this, because those who explore what they think to be the Deep Shadow rarely return, and no one has ever made it to another Plane via that rout.

The Plane of Shadow serves its main purpose of simplifying my Planescape game. Hardcore PSers might not like it, but I use it as an alterante to the normal Astral/Ethereal using spells. Normally certain spells or abilities will access either the Astral or Ethereal, and normally they become useless when on either the Outer Planes (which have no connection to the Ethereal) or the Inner Planes (which have no connections to the Astral).

Instead, those spells and such which would normally try to access the inaccessable Astral/Ethereal access the Plane of Shadow instead. This allows the spells to be used and saves me from having to remember and adjudicate the changes based on where the PCs are.

It also opens up the possibility of adventuring in the Plane of Shadow in a larger variety of contexts. Part of the problem with the Plane of Shadow in 2E was that it was hidden away on the Ethereal and difficult to reach. With each Plane having its own Shadow Plane, it means the Plane of Shadow is always nearby and always different, a strange reflection of the Plane that this particular Shadow Plane is connected to. Sometimes it looks just like where they came from, sometimes it is the opposite, all depending on the relationship that particular area has with its alternate area.

Plus the mysterious "Deep Shadow" has opened up some interesting possibilities for the campaign to take. Where does it go? What is it for? Does it really connect to other Planes of existance, and if so, how does it relate to the Astral and Ethereal Plane? Would it qualify as the Third transitive plane, ala the Rule of Threes? Plot hooks galore.

 

[ForceUser]

Does anyone use the Plane of Shadow extensively in their games? What stuff did you focus on?

The plane of shadow is the only transitive plane in my cosmology.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For most Prime Material campaigns, I'd say we have way too many planes in general. There's only a limited amount of things you want going on, plane-wise, in a Material campaign. Some fiends, some celestials, perhaps robots or madness or something "alien," something to handle the teleportation and long-distance travel, something to handle the ghosts and things out-of-phase, someplace to stick the grand villain for eternity (or until his minions bring him back!), really just some basic needs.

Really, for most Material campaigns, there's a lot of virtue in just combining all the transitive planes, all the upper planes, and all the lower planes and presenting, like, three or four outer planes (a heaven, a hell, and a world "beside" this one, and maybe some untouchable things beyond it). And you really don't loose anything.

But planar adventures have long been a part of D&D, and Planescape gave us one of the first real attempts at a planar *campaign*. So now you have people who will rather justifiably feel that their favorite thing about the game is reduced to over-simplistic unusability and that their own needs were ignored if such a thing were to become core.

The planar variety of D&D is one of it's strengths, I'd say. There's an unlimited number of places to put stuff, should you want to. And if you don't need to, melding planes together is always easier than ripping them apart. Which is why I'd support two different "feminine wiles" fiends in MM1, and why I'd support the separation of the Ethereal and the Shadow in the core rules, but at the same time say, heck, no one is making you keep 'em separate, and if you don't run a heavily planar campaign, it's a good idea to join them.

So it's a good idea to join them. But not a good idea to present them initially as joined. If that makes sense.

 

[tahsin]

YIAAHPF

Trust me, they're two totally different things. 3e just doesn't do a good job detailing it as much more than 'you can use it with spells to move through walls, and ghosts are somethings there, spooky!'

The ethereal is the plane of manifest potential and probability. Dreams become manifest on its border between near and deep ethereal, welling up like glistening soap bubbles, maturing and bursting with the circadian rhythms mortal slumber. The depths of the ethereal sea is the birthplace of demiplanes and quite possibly the birthplace of -all- of the planes.

And the deeper you go, the stranger it gets with bizarre tales of things seen swimming the depths, things lost therein, ether gaps that might be holes in the structure of reality or the threshold of dead or collapsed timelines. The ethereal deep might be the unifying common link between mutually abberant realities (the Great Wheel and the Far Realm being two such), themselves just overgrown bubbles rising up from the metaphysical potential.

Edit: And for what it's worth, the 'Plane of Dreams' optional plane in the 3e MotP is largely ripped from the 2e details on manifest dreams in the ethereal from the 2e 'Ethereal Plane' book by Bruce Cordell. In fact the sample dreamscapes in the 3e MotP are virtually word for word from the 2e material.

Take it easy, the guy was just looking for a general consensus.

If the "Plane of Shadow" doesn't get much use in your campaign because you don't like the concept, change it.

I run d20 Modern campaign with D&D creatures as creatures of Shadow and I could see using the Plane of Shadow as a more random Astral plane, sucking in creatures from all over the multiverse to the world the PCs are on. Just remember, anything in D&D can be what you want it to be and the planes, since they changed them the cosmologies to be campaign world dependent, are completely up to the DM's view of the world.

 

[sckeener]

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.)

IMC Limbo is just the weakest of the planes (structurally) and the Far Realm frequently does spill into Limbo. My players know that if they want to punch a hole to the Far Realm, Limbo is the easiest spot. Admittedly the hole they punch will be closed fairly quickly by Limbo itself (destroying/creating the hole/patch)

Limbo in my universe sites on the edge of the Far Realm and the leaks are frequent both ways. Now Mechanus as the least and is near impossible to access the Far Realm from there. I haven't decided how to handle the Far Realm and the plane of Outlands/concordant plane. My gut feel is the Far Realm shouldn't have any power in the 'center' of the universe.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think there's no point to the spell Shadow Walk. Why use it when Teleport without Error is ten times better? It's only useful if, for some reason, you can't access the Astral Plane.

Going to Shadow means you're in danger. I think a lot of DMs aren't going to have Shadow encounters ready for just such an instance, so maybe it'll be mysterious, but not dangerous.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Going to Shadow means you're in danger. I think a lot of DMs aren't going to have Shadow encounters ready for just such an instance, so maybe it'll be mysterious, but not dangerous.

Toss the Shadow template on some monster, describe it as scary and strange, and you're good to go.