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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4634994" data-attributes="member: 32536">This paragraph reflects an attitude about the new planar cosmology that I just don't think is justifiable.The new planes don't have giant welcome mats in front of every portal. They are not safe, and they are not even remotely "PC-centric". Sure, the new planes are engineered by the game designers to be adventuring grounds, but that is no different from the goal of the people who designed the old planes. The Great Wheel is a giant organized system of adventuring sites, and always has been. At the same time, from the perspective of the actual world and the characters who dwell there, the planes are just as unknown, mysterious, and dangerous as they always have been (or not been, I guess). In this sense there has not been any change at all between cosmologies.The difference is that the challenges presented by the planes are no longer on/off switches. In order to explore the Plane of Water, you pretty much had to either grow gills or give up. If you have gills, then the basic challenge of the plane is gone, and all that is left is a fairly homogenous and relatively mundane place. If you don't have gills, then all you can do is either find the closest portal out or drown. There is no middle ground, and the middle ground is where things are interesting. As a comparison, think of a kingdom in which, unless you cast a certain spell, every citizen of the kingdom would be compelled to kill you on sight, but if you cast that spell then every citizen of the kingdom would treat you as if they were your best friend. It is certainly weird and novel at first, but ultimately it is not as interesting as a kingdom with complex political divisions and people with unknown motivations who may or may not try to kill you depending on complex factors. I mean, ignore your interpretations of various WotC comments and just look at the Elemental Chaos as it is presented. It contains every last challenge and cool place that the old Inner Planes did, except now you are forced to deal with these threats all at once, with the addition of a lot of demons. It is not the "Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience", it is a place where you may find yourself slogging your way through a morass of slime and mud, when suddenly giant fireballs the size of houses start crashing down around you, and you look up to realize that the fireballs are carrying an army of Fire Archons desperately trying to flee from a giant, partially-frozen ocean that will smash right into the mudball you are on and drown you unless you do something quickly. It is not inherently "PC-centric" or "PC-friendly", it is an alien, unpredictable, and indescribably dangerous place, and unlike in older editions of the game you don't have a wizard who can just cast any spell you need in order to solve any problems as they occur. If you get hit by an ocean out of the blue, you won't have time for the Wizard to pull open his ritual book and take ten minutes to cast a water-breathing ritual. It is not safe by any stretch of the imagination.</blockquote>

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