D&D 5E The D&D Multiverse How it Was and How They Might Be Screwing it Up.

[ccs]

Per Jeremy Crawford for 5E D&D: all the D&D worlds are on the same material plane and you only need a sufficiently powerful Teleport spell or Teleportation Circle to travel between them. The Planeshift spell will not take you from the Realms to any of the other settings, only to the higher and lower Planes.

And so what if he does says so? I'm still the DM....

 

[cbwjm]

That's new. Never used to be able to teleport between worlds.

Yeah you could. 2e allowed it, presumably 3e did as well. You just needed the teleport or maybe teleport without error spell so it wasn't common but it was doable.

 

[cbwjm]

And so what if he does says so? I'm still the DM....

All he's saying is what the status quo is for the standard DnD cosmology. Frankly, your game doesn't matter, neither does mine, we can do what we like with them bit it doesn't change the fact that the story the DnD team is telling links all of the settings together.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah you could. 2e allowed it, presumably 3e did as well. You just needed the teleport or maybe teleport without error spell so it wasn't common but it was doable.

Nope page 83 and 84 Spelljammer boxed set: Concordance of Arcane Space. Teleport and Teleport without Error you can't teleport between worlds. Why Spelljam if you can teleport its a lot quicker. Changes like that are stupid IMHO any level 13 wizard now can teleport form sphere to sphere so why bother jamming except to build a teleport circle if you can't borrow one.

IDK if they think things like this through they butchered Darksun the same way in 4E I suppose. The links where there in 2E but it was very tenuous/hard/semi impossible in 2E for some world and some if it is major things for the setting (Ravenloft, Darksun and Spelljammer come to mind).

Ravenloft is a prison basically, easy to escape though if you're a 13th level wizard.

 

[cbwjm]

Nope page 83 and 84 Spelljammer boxed set: Concordance of Arcane Space. Teleport and Teleport without Error you can't teleport between worlds. Why Spelljam if you can teleport its a lot quicker. Changes like that are stupid IMHO any level 13 wizard now can teleport form sphere to sphere so why bother jamming except to build a teleport circle if you can't borrow one.

IDK if they think things like this through they butchered Darksun the same way in 4E I suppose. The links where there in 2E but it was very tenuous/hard/semi impossible in 2E for some world and some if it is major things for the setting (Ravenloft, Darksun and Spelljammer come to mind).

Ravenloft is a prison basically, easy to escape though if you're a 13th level wizard.

If it's a change, it's a change made specifically by spelljammer. Before then, any wizard with enough experience and knowledge of the teleport without error spell could teleport to any known location on their home plane. So I guess if people don't use spelljammer then the old rules are still in effect. Besides. It isn't like there would be a heap of wizards offering teleport services to just anybody. They also have to know the location so spelljamming would still be useful just to visit a place first.

 

[Zardnaar]

If it's a change, it's a change made specifically by spelljammer. Before then, any wizard with enough experience and knowledge of the teleport without error spell could teleport to any known location on their home plane. So I guess if people don't use spelljammer then the old rules are still in effect. Besides. It isn't like there would be a heap of wizards offering teleport services to just anybody. They also have to know the location so spelljamming would still be useful just to visit a place first.

Yeah thats what I mean they changed the rules in the settings for a reason. Helms are expensive and changing rules like that kinda ruins the internal logic of those settings IMHO. Its like letting warfiorged into Darksun which will be doable under the new rules. It gets around the environment rules and inferior materials things.

So you can have Spelljamming/teleporting to worlds like that loading up on metal or whatever. When you mash everything together it waters done key concepts of the worlds IMHO.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

He tweeted about it a couple of days ago:

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1022240968647442432

Here is the text, for those not wanting to look at Twitter:

"The different worlds of the Material Plane are, indeed, on the same plane of existence. Teleportation is possible between the worlds, but the DM decides whether such travel is reliable/safe and whether sigil sequences are available for teleportation circles."

I personally am not at all a fan of this idea that there is explicitly one true cosmology (the 5E Great Wheel) that all campaign settings share. Even 4E allowed Eberron to have its own unique cosmology rather than force it into following the World Axis model. If I understand correctly, in 5E Eberron the true cosmology is the Great Wheel, and Eberron's unique planes of existence are part of some kind of inferior sub-cosmology contained within one Crystal Sphere.

I similarly dislike the idea that all worlds share the same Feywild and Shadowfell (although to be fair this detail popped-up late in 4E).

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes also says that all elves in all worlds of the Multiverse were created by Corellon, even if a given world's elves no longer remember their creator. Basically, any campaign setting whose origin for elves does not involve Corellon is now non-canon. It's not too much of a stretch to say that the Forgotten Realms' cosmology in 5E is now the cosmology of all D&D campaign settings, and any source that contradicts it is unaware of the true nature of the Multiverse.

 

[cbwjm]

Yeah thats what I mean they changed the rules in the settings for a reason. Helms are expensive and changing rules like that kinda ruins the internal logic of those settings IMHO. Its like letting warfiorged into Darksun which will be doable under the new rules. It gets around the environment rules and inferior materials things.

So you can have Spelljamming/teleporting to worlds like that loading up on metal or whatever. When you mash everything together it waters done key concepts of the worlds IMHO.

I'm all for restrictions for settings, I don't think it is a big issue to have people travelling to the worlds of Athas from other realms, assuming they even know how to find it. Most games, this isn't even going to be an issue, it is only if the game being run is itself travelling throughout all of these worlds. Besides, for something like dark sun, it had a bunch of restrictions on getting in and out so it might not even be possible to get there via spelljamming/teleporting.

It also doesn't matter that helms are expensive, it is far easier to move large amounts of troops via spelljamming vessels and you don't need to rely on a powerful wizard to get around.

 

[Mirtek]

It's not too much of a stretch to say that the Forgotten Realms' cosmology in 5E is now the cosmology of all D&D campaign settings, and any source that contradicts it is unaware of the true nature of the Multiverse.

Actually the great wheel predates the FR campaign setting. FR just apdated to it as soon as it became a published D&D setting (actually even a little prior to that, when Ed released little glimpses Dragon articles he already used the etablished D&D planes).

 

[MarkB]

I personally am not at all a fan of this idea that there is explicitly one true cosmology (the 5E Great Wheel) that all campaign settings share. Even 4E allowed Eberron to have its own unique cosmology rather than force it into following the World Axis model. If I understand correctly, in 5E Eberron the true cosmology is the Great Wheel, and Eberron's unique planes of existence are part of some kind of inferior sub-cosmology contained within one Crystal Sphere.

I similarly dislike the idea that all worlds share the same Feywild and Shadowfell (although to be fair this detail popped-up late in 4E).

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes also says that all elves in all worlds of the Multiverse were created by Corellon, even if a given world's elves no longer remember their creator. Basically, any campaign setting whose origin for elves does not involve Corellon is now non-canon. It's not too much of a stretch to say that the Forgotten Realms' cosmology in 5E is now the cosmology of all D&D campaign settings, and any source that contradicts it is unaware of the true nature of the Multiverse.

Very well put. I just don't get the mindset that all D&D worlds need or ought to be part of some interconnected planar universe just because they share the same real-world ruleset. Allow a specific setting to define its own cosmology, and if that cosmology is different from that of other settings, don't use convoluted metaphysical retcons to hammer that square peg into a round hole and call it a fix. It wasn't broken in the first place.