Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Ways to tackle etherealness
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7953574" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I straight up do not allow etherealness to work as simply glide through any object. They could and can use it to bypass anything of a transient nature, so you could use it to escape the effects of the weather, but seeing as soon as you hop over to the ethereal plan I'm rolling on an ethereal random encounter table and generally the ethereal plane is much more dangerous than the material I don't know why you'd bother.</p><p></p><p>The way the ethereal plane works for me is it is essentially a plane where everything is composed of the shadows and impressions of the material plane. So a wall that has been around for 400 years is pretty much going to be as solid on the ethereal plane as it is on the real one. One of the main exceptions to that is if you have an active ghost, then the ethereal plane will tend to be solid where the ghost remembers it being solid. But a door that is opened or closed every few hours or days is as flimsy on the ethereal plane as a curtain of beads.</p><p></p><p>There are some other problems with the ethereal. It tends to be dark wherever it is always dark, and twilight where it is sometimes light and sometimes dark. It's easy for the uninitiated to get lost in, because unlike the material where you can move in 6 directions (conceptually up, down, left, right, forward, and back), in the ethereal you can move in 8 directions (the same plus what is typically referred to as 'deeper' and 'shallower'), and that means if you take a wrong turn accidentally it's very very hard to find your way around or back. Most spells have a safety built into them, but there are things out there that can keep you trapped in the ethereal and many many more that trap you if you cross the border into the Astral. </p><p></p><p>Anyway, that's mostly advice on getting the PC's to not treat the Ethereal casually. As far as you actual problem goes, by the time the PC's are able to cast Etherealness, they are past the point where mundane travel threats represent much of a problem, so I think you are erroneously investing ego into an encounter that as a GM you should be resigned to not caring about. One of the worst mistakes a GM can make is fantasizing about how exciting an encounter is going to be. If it happens, it happens, but you are not the director of a movie. All you are doing is giving space for the players to be the protagonists, and if fleeing the storm by travelling through the ethereal is what the big heroes do, then it's what they do. Mostly what you need to do then is plan for what they find there.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7953574, member: 4937"] I straight up do not allow etherealness to work as simply glide through any object. They could and can use it to bypass anything of a transient nature, so you could use it to escape the effects of the weather, but seeing as soon as you hop over to the ethereal plan I'm rolling on an ethereal random encounter table and generally the ethereal plane is much more dangerous than the material I don't know why you'd bother. The way the ethereal plane works for me is it is essentially a plane where everything is composed of the shadows and impressions of the material plane. So a wall that has been around for 400 years is pretty much going to be as solid on the ethereal plane as it is on the real one. One of the main exceptions to that is if you have an active ghost, then the ethereal plane will tend to be solid where the ghost remembers it being solid. But a door that is opened or closed every few hours or days is as flimsy on the ethereal plane as a curtain of beads. There are some other problems with the ethereal. It tends to be dark wherever it is always dark, and twilight where it is sometimes light and sometimes dark. It's easy for the uninitiated to get lost in, because unlike the material where you can move in 6 directions (conceptually up, down, left, right, forward, and back), in the ethereal you can move in 8 directions (the same plus what is typically referred to as 'deeper' and 'shallower'), and that means if you take a wrong turn accidentally it's very very hard to find your way around or back. Most spells have a safety built into them, but there are things out there that can keep you trapped in the ethereal and many many more that trap you if you cross the border into the Astral. Anyway, that's mostly advice on getting the PC's to not treat the Ethereal casually. As far as you actual problem goes, by the time the PC's are able to cast Etherealness, they are past the point where mundane travel threats represent much of a problem, so I think you are erroneously investing ego into an encounter that as a GM you should be resigned to not caring about. One of the worst mistakes a GM can make is fantasizing about how exciting an encounter is going to be. If it happens, it happens, but you are not the director of a movie. All you are doing is giving space for the players to be the protagonists, and if fleeing the storm by travelling through the ethereal is what the big heroes do, then it's what they do. Mostly what you need to do then is plan for what they find there. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Ways to tackle etherealness
Top