Plane Shift: how to let a PC be awesome without breaking the plot

[Samuel Cole]

One of the PCs in my group has gotten deep into planar magic - she's an elemental warlock skyseer with the planeshifter PP and the planeshaper ED. (They're currently level 24 and are in the second half of adventure 10.) This gives her a lot of teleportation powers, including several ways to remove someone from the battlefield by temporarily depositing them in a pocket plane she's built (Astral Critical), or hopping them around to various planes to do elemental damage (Planar Cascade). Her Paragon Path also gives her the Planar Portal ritual, but this requires her to have a teleportation circle at her destination, so we've mostly used this for plot-relevant things like bringing the party into the Bleak Gate facility at Cauldron Hill.

However, at level 24 she's decided to take the Ritual Caster feat, which opens up a whole lot of utility options, including a level 18 ritual called Plane Shift (mechanics below). This is a pretty big game changer, allowing the party (and their flying ship) to immediately hop to any dimension they like, even ones they haven't visited before.

On one hand, this removes a lot of the effort of plane-hopping involved in Adventure 12 and part of me is inclined to disallow it. On the other hand, this ritual is pretty clearly the culmination of the character's story trajectory, and I'd be sad to say no. (Also, I'm of the opinion that PCs doing things is always better than NPCs doing things, so I'm not inherently opposed to having this PC teleport their ship around the multiverse.)

Here are a couple options I'm considering:

• Allow it, but make it a level 24 ritual and increase the component cost to $25,000. Going to another plane in the Zeitgeist world is a big deal, and shouldn't be easy.
• Allow it, but make it a level 28 ritual, ensuring that the party doesn't get access to it until Adventure 12.
• Allow it, but state that you can only travel from Lanjyr to planes that its already connected to. In other words, Jiese and Fourmyle are fair game, but Nem is not. (If they decided to go visit Av, I'd probably just build a side quest that foreshadows Av's imminent demise.)
• Allow it, but say that you can only teleport to places you've already been. Just like regular teleportation, if you want to go somewhere, you have to go there the hard way first.
• Allow it and just see what happens. We're three years into this game, after all, and the players have earned some agency.

What are your thoughts on it? How would you handle this ritual? Are there other ways that this ritual would change the metaplot that I haven't considered yet?

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Plane Shift

You move a vehicle (including the vehicle’s pilot, crew, and load) that has the navigation focus trait from one plane to another.
At the ritual’s conclusion, you name a location you have previously visited. The location must be a fixed place, and it must be in the same location it was when you last visited it. Once the location is named, make an Arcana check. The check determines the distance between your vehicle and your destination when you arrive on the plane.

Arcana Check Result	Destination Location
19 or lower	100 miles from the destination
20–29	50 miles from the destination
30–39	10 miles from the destination
40 or higher	Arrive at destination

Instead of choosing a specific location, you can also choose a plane as a general destination. In this case, the vehicle appears in a random location on that plane (no Arcana check necessary). It’s not necessary for you to have visited the destination plane to use the ritual in this manner.

 

[efreund]

The most satisfactory solution (in my mind) would be the divide destinations into three-or-four categories:
1) Locations previously visited: you can just go here, whereever they may be. If attempting to visit a location that has been destroyed by the Gyre (i.e. Clover after the intro of adv 12), then you open a portal to the Gyre and have to deal with an exciting trap-event. Also, I would make sure the PC understand that "locations previously visited" does not mean that once they've been to a plane, they can Plane Shift to any location on that plane: only the regions thereof that they've visited.
2.1) Locations bound to Lanjyr (while you're on Lanjyr; i.e advs 10,11,13). Sure, teleport to these. Jiese, Fourmyle, etc.
2.2) Locations tied up in the Gyre (while you're in the Gyre, i.e. adv 12). I would suggest requiring the Gidim Scannerthingie (also known as the Vortex Array, given as treasure given for completing the Ber-quest in adv11) as a focus-component. If your PC can pick it up on the scanner, per the existing scanner rules, then she can use Plane Shift to go there. If not, then no.
3) Locations neither bound nor in the Gyre (e.g. the Nine Layers of Hell, or Mt Celestia, or Fearun). Nope. Sorry. Out of bounds, mostly because it would damage the "theme" and narrative feel, more than anything else. Open up a Gyre trap for her efforts.

-my 2 cents

 

[efreund]

One additional thought: if you go for the split-soul adventure-in-parallel technique for advs 12 & 13, you'll want to make sure your PC doesn't find a clever way to merge the parties, and let everyone control two copies of themselves at the same place at the same time.

 

[hirou]

I mostly agree with what efreund said. One more point of consideration: rituals are stupidly expensive in 4e. By partaking in those, PC will soon severely hinder her expected wealth per level if you increase the ritual level to 24. If you want to limit the usage of rituals, consider including healing surges as part of component cost, with number proportional to "planar distance" however you define that (for highest numbers, your PC may need additional ritual Comrade's succor to borrow surges from other party members or some other clever workarounds)

 

[RangerWickett]

I'd tweak your list a bit, Erik. And add the caveat that the ritual opens a visible portal that takes a few minutes to manifest on both ends, so it doesn't give you the ability to teleport in and kill people by surprise. The trick is to let the Ob actually do their 'take over the world' stuff without the PCs being Johnny-on-the-Spot and immediately stopping everything. Importantly, the trip to the Gyre can be used to enforce a period of missing time to let the Ob actually be in a position of power. Here's how I'd do it.

1) Known Close. Locations previously visited in Lanjyr. You can just go here. It's no different than normal teleportation rituals.

2) Known Far. Locations previously visited on other planes, including locations in the Dreaming or Bleak Gate that are coterminous with your current location. You can also just go here. Make it clear that this is normally not possible, and the PC is probably the only person in the world who can do this. The Ob spent years developing the Wayfarer's Lantern to make this possible, and you're probably riffing on some of their innovations to pull this off in a ritual.

3) Unknown Close. Somewhere in the same world that you've never been? Nope, you've got to fly there.

4) Unknown Far. Choose one of the planets in the sky, and teleport to a random spot there. Additionally, it takes you at least some time to figure out how to adjust the ritual, to give the GM time to plan something interesting. If you rush it, you'll end up somewhere uninteresting. That's just how the cosmos go, apparently.

{{We didn't write anything for these locations in the adventures, so what to do here is up to you.}}

5) The Gyre. You can go here, but it's complicated. We'll get to that.

6) Anywhere Else in the Multiverse. Sorry, no. Your world has been calved off from the rest of reality, and getting back requires creating a new link (i.e., going to the Gyre and getting the right components for the Axis Seal ritual). You can't go to the Nine Hells, etc.

.

Okay, so, The Gyre. You can spot the Gyre in the distance, but you don't know what's there. Planeshifting there blindly is perilous, since it's less of a 'place' and more of a metaphysical construct of 'the demise of things that used to be places.' If you combine this with some divination, you might get a vague hint of planes you could teleport to. (I think. I don't recall what sorts of divinations epic 4e includes, and if they say things like, "You know all and see all.") [[If you don't pick anywhere in particular, the first time you get to the Gyre, you arrive at Urim, like in adventure 12]].

However, when you try to planeshift to the Gyre, you end up on Av, in the Bleak Gate. From there you can planeshift home, or if you travel through the planet's crystal shell to the Dreaming side, you can planeshift to the Gyre, which does work. Then if you try to go home from the Gyre, you first require a 'layover' on Av, and need to trek from the Dreaming to the Bleak Gate, and then can planeshift to the real world.

You can do this several times, but if you start to try to cross from the Southern Gyre to the Northern Gyre, the lighthouse on Ascetia shines a beam, which illuminates Av hurtling toward the Gyre. Somehow your trespass pulls the world out of its orbit and toward destruction. You've got {insert time period here that is necessary to resolve any loose threads in the real world, like finishing adventure 11} before it hits. This could be as long as a couple days, to as short as a few minutes. After Av hits, the Golden Legion swoops in and abducts people, and moreover, if you planeshift to or from Av, it feels like it both works and fails. You get the weird dream that shows up in adventure 12, and then stick with the PCs on the Gyre.

Basically, this method lets the PCs explore the Gyre and hop back to the real world, but once they go to the northern Gyre the next time they go back to the real world, they arrive after the Ob has won.

 

[RangerWickett]

Also, serious props to you, Samuel Cole, for getting your party to epic level in 4e. As always, I love hearing about people playing ZEITGEIST.

 

[efreund]

I just realized one very small wrinkle in all of our proposals: Gidim.

Starting from adv 10, Lanjyr has been cast into the Gyre (not the teeth, but Gyre-space). From here, it cannot access the rest of the multiverse. (This is most clearly exemplified by the Golden Legion being unable to return to the Nine Hells.) Yet, somehow, off-screen during adv 12, the Ob manage to link up with Gidim, which is how they have mind-controlled the world in adv 13.

Is this a plot hole? Maybe. But it's also a salient question for your plane-hopping PC. If she can't plane shift to the Nine Hells, why can (or can't) she plane shift to Gidim?

 

[gideonpepys]

Also, serious props to you, Samuel Cole, for getting your party to epic level in 4e. As always, I love hearing about people playing ZEITGEIST.

Yeah. I'm jealous. (Of the epic 4e bit that is.) One of my players was heading for that exact same Epic Destiny.

 

[RangerWickett]

You cannot send matter out to the rest of the multiverse, but Gidim is just thought energy. It's like, you can't deliver physical goods past a blockade, but the Internet gets through.

 

[Samuel Cole]

Also, serious props to you, Samuel Cole, for getting your party to epic level in 4e. As always, I love hearing about people playing ZEITGEIST.

Thanks for the detailed reply, Ranger! I essentially went with your ideas verbatim, with a few story-specific caveats regarding how, exactly, she's going to learn and/or invent this ritual.

And yeah, it's been quite a journey from level 1 to level 24, and epic tier play has been completely bananas. Just for fun, here are some pictures of our epic battles against the fey titans.

Battling She Who Writhes:


Battling the Father of Thunder:


Battling Granny Allswell: