I come from a long background of using planes and portals in my RPGs. It probably started with my enjoyment of the various Elric novels by Michael Moorcock with the hero traveling through different planes via boat, tower, and gate. Various RPG classics like the Portals of Torsh and other Portal series from Judges Guild, carried over into classics like Tales of the Outer Planes and more recently via 2nd edition, Planescape. With that background, what does Portals & Planes offer?
It offers a wide range of ideas and game mechanics that don't rely on the standard D&D cosmology without invalidating previous material. This includes standards that most players expect from their books like PrCs and Feats, as well as new monsters.
The ideas on Planar Adventuring for example, give you ideas on which character classes should take which roles and how they best do that. Like Citiworks, a lot of material here struck me as somewhat obvious. The fighter for example, “your job is to protect the other characters and beat down the monsters.” Does that really need to be stated? No options for customizing the core classes just some skill selections and ability notes. Not the best part of the book.
More interesting and useful is the section on Planar Races where their racial abilities are assigned points which can be traded for planar abilities. So if you're a dwarf and want to drop your dodge bonus against giants, you get a point which can be used purchase energy resistance of 2 against a specific energy type. Other abilities include casting three 0 level wizard spells per day as a 1st level caster or martial training, gaining weapon proficiencies. It's a brief but good section that allows a GM to create not only planar variants but local ones.
For those drowning in Prestige Classes, there are only five in this book with no new core classes. Each is a full ten level PrC that includes background and campaign seeds to get the characters introduced into the game. My personal favorite is the Master of a Thousand Blades, a master of fighting styles who incorporates the materials of his enemies into his armor and weapons in addition to mimicking their fighting styles for bonuses to attack, initiative, and even dodge bonuses. It's an interesting take on using some of the real world methods of creating martial arts and weapons into an extremely different territory.
The Keeper of Forbidden Lore and Investigator of Hidden Secrets on the other hand, didn't strike me as anything the d20 system is missing right now. For the former, how many hunters of demon knowledge do we need while the latter deals with outsiders on the out, another topic covered several times. More impressive to me was the Tender of Worlds, a druid based PrC that doesn't worry about the wilderness but the planes, and the World Walker, a monk based PrC with martial and movement powers. Nice and different. For those who've never seen a wizard based on demonology or a clerical order that hunts demons, you'll probably like the ones I didn't.
The other crunchy bits are doled out in small amounts so once again, there isn't a lot to worry about as far as integrating it into the campaign. Take Combat Sense, a fighter or general feat that grants a +2 bonus to initiative and allows you to draw and weapon and not be flat-footed if surprised. Exotic Fighting Style fits in nicely with the user able to use strange stances to gain a +1 bonus to either attack or defense while others help.
There aren't a lot of spells, most of them having to do with movement. Dimension Portal, Dimensional Hop, Dimensional Slip, Dimensional Warp, etc... Useful for moving around the planes and all purposes spells but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that whole schools based around planar themes could be explored.
As with feats and spells, there are only a few magic items. One, the Scroll Door, is a nice way to move from one plane to another while others like the Aethership, grant another form of planar transportation.
What then, if not player focused, is the book's major interest? I'd say the GM. Chapter Two, Gates to Other Worlds, provides a good run down on the basics of using portals, breaking it down into three categories, gateway, malignancy, and mingling. The gateways are doors, similar to the many portals from Planescape, while malignancies are rips in the planar fabric that mingle two planes with one overcoming the other. The last, mingling forms a bond between two planes allowing you to say, enter a city on one plane and exit that city on another. Useful idea if you plan on making say, Freeport multi-dimensional similar to Tanelorn from Moorcock's work.
My personal favorite part of this chapter is the “Worlds Between”, mini-planes that can take the place of the astral or ethereal to move between worlds. This includes The River of Worlds, the Vortex and the Wormholes, each one with it's own issues and problems to navigate, each one briefly detailed and described, and each one leaving me hungry for more.
Chapter Three, Worlds Beyond, gives the reader ideas on how to build planes with a creation checklist and ideas on how to tie things together. The important questions, like food, disease, light, gravity and other main subjects are asked, but not detailed, left for the GM. If a GM has
Morningstar, some of the rules for Signatures can easily be layered with the ideas here as there are broad categories like Evil, Chaos, Good, Law, Life and others with levels ranging from Faint to Overwhelming. One idea I like is the Technology Level where there are rules for a Technological Virus, perfect for adding to say, the
Clockwork Heart.
For those who don't have a lot of time to fiddle with the different ratings, there are sample planes: Chaos Mountain, The Fens, Great Machine, Hell, Nightlands, Savage Forest, Shattered Sphere, Underkingdom of Nepentra, Vestrial and the Wastelands. Each has a summary, some background information, and traits. It's enough to get the brain thinking but not suitable for long term campaigns unless the GM is willing to put a lot of work into it. My personal favorite here is probably the Great Machine as it allows me a new way to throw things like the constructs into my campaign from two directions.
Chapter Four, Threats & Civilizations, allows a GM to populate those planes he's just created. A big part of this book is new monsters. These range from the Automatons, planar constructs designed for conquest, to the Avatars of Thought and Action, primal forces that are shadows of the forces they represent. These Avatars would make nice contrasts to the Aspects of different gods and outsider lords from the
Miniatures Handbook. Imagine the look on the Aspect of Orcus' face when he has to fight the Avatar of Death.
I was excited when I saw the heading, Chaos Lords. I thought perhaps we'd get some unique and primal entities of Chaos for D20 at least to match those of the Warhammer setting or Moorcock's work, but instead, we get different levels of chaos minions, including the chaos spawn template. Nice and allows a high degree of customization, but not what I was looking for. I can use it to flesh out those poor mutant deviants whose prayers to the Old Ones haven't gone unanswered though so it's not a complete waste. Just to be fair, the author gives equal time to the forces of law.
In terms of layout, the book uses a simple weathered page look, utilizing the trusty two-column standard. Art is right up there with some of the best books on the market, especially in the monster section. Editing is fair.
While the first chapter didn't hit the spot for me, the rest of the book got my juices flowing. I could see several ways to tie this product into to numerous products already on the market, as well as using parts of it exclusively if some major changes happened. For example, what if I'm using Requiem for a God, and all of the sudden, due to that deity's death, the astral and ethereal are closed? I know have a way to get players to move through the planes in a different fashion.
The book provides a lot of ideas and several of the ideas here could easily fill their own sourcebooks. If you want a companion book for the Manual of the Planes, you should pick up Portals and Planes.
