What if going to the ethereal/astral plane killed you?

Druids will be the most mobile of all the spellcasters, with their access to Transport via Plants, Tree Stride, and Wind Walk.

Yeah, I know they're Conjuration (teleportation) spells, but I'd allow that these spells don't get interfered with since they deal with the natural world, plants and the like; I wouldn't have these spells make PCs go through the Astral.
 

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You know an overlooked spell for transport is Phantom Steed, at 20'/lv, up to 240'/move, a high level caster will have steeds that really cook. Plus they last 1hr/lvl. Even from a 10th lv caster you're doing 200' and at 12th they can bypass all but the largest gorges with air walk. At 14th they will fly at 240'/move.
 

If you wanted to make teleport hostile, I could see something with the Astral where the color pools (literally holes in the fabric of the plane) began to leak an unknown and debilitating energy, or they might fragment the substance of any person whose teleport spell caused them to link to the plane.

Or perhaps even Anubis / The Guardian of Dead Gods finally had enough with non-natives entering the Astral plane and mucking with the godisles, and either he directly, or his servants the Astral Dreadnaughts, began to take action to prevent such intrusion by spells or by people physically entering the plane.
 

paradox42 said:
Last session, we got a particularly amusing result- they ended up over open ocean, and thus got dumped in the salty drink before they Teleported to the real destination- they arrived soaking wet. :lol: I had a good chuckle over that one! But, that's what you (sometimes) get for trying to Plane Shift to a coastal destination...

And never, ever try Plane Shifting to a floating island or any other flying structure.

Let me tell ya, that's a lesson you only have to learn once.
 

RangerWickett said:
Oh, fooey. If it's astral, then I've got to change a bunch of stuff. The point is that I wanted to make teleportation dangerous in the short term. I want something that will provide an interesting challenge without seeming like I'm trying just to keep the party from using their spells.

If your goal is to make teleportation dangerous, use an astral storm or something similar- it's worked for hyperspace in scifi for decades :)

While the storm is in place, people travelling through the astral plane take 1d12 damage per level of the spell they used to transit (higher level spells penetrate more deeply through the plane, or something). Or you could tie it to distance travelled, instead, somehow. Or just have it increase the odds of a mis-teleport, and make greater teleport operate like regular teleport for the duration. Or do mental stat damage instead of hps. Or many of the above.

If you're using the spells from the core books, you should note that this could logically affect Summoned Monsters, too, since they get called through the astral plane. There are probably other spells, but teleport-type and Summoning are probably the most common. Is there still an Astral Projection spell? That would probably get pretty dangerous, too.

Gate, being a 9th-level spell, should probably be unaffected by a mere astral storm.
 

I already know what the cause of this problem is. Right now I'm looking for the effects.

So the astral is going to be amiss, and deal damage to anyone passing through it. Would this actually affect summon spells? What about conjuration (creation) spells, or conjuration (calling) spells?

Blink would be alright?

I don't particularly want to get rid of summoning and calling spells, because that gives me a more limited set of spellcasting tricks to pull. Kind of hard to have nasty demons as minions at high level if they're, um, dead.

I wish I knew where my Manual of the Planes had runnoft to.
 


RangerWickett said:
I already know what the cause of this problem is. Right now I'm looking for the effects.

So the astral is going to be amiss, and deal damage to anyone passing through it. Would this actually affect summon spells? What about conjuration (creation) spells, or conjuration (calling) spells?

Blink would be alright?

I don't particularly want to get rid of summoning and calling spells, because that gives me a more limited set of spellcasting tricks to pull. Kind of hard to have nasty demons as minions at high level if they're, um, dead.

I wish I knew where my Manual of the Planes had runnoft to.

It would be less likely to affect summoning spells, since those generate a copy of a creature, rather than bringing an actual creature... You might do something like giving summoned creatures some sort of weird template that could alter their abilities a little bit, just to maintain the flavor of the astral scariness...

Calling spells, on the other hand, are just like teleports, and would probably have detrimental effects upon those that are called. I can see that making for some interesing scenarios, where you blot out a planar binding and end up negotiating with a royally pissed off devil (or whatever you called). Not to mention the fact that they'd still have the return trip to look forward to. In fact, if it were dangerous enough, you could kill an outsider by repeatedly calling and dismissing it. How mean.

Later
silver
 

If you are looking to make teleporation travel difficult, but still allow creatures like the Blink Dog consider the following.

Perhapse the Astral environment isnt immediately deadly, but long term exposure is. This may only effect creatures not native to the environment. Even short range spells like blink or dimentional door may cause no injury (or subdual damage). Once you start traveling over longer distances the damage may increase (say 1d6 / mile).

If we want to allow planar travel (and the summoning of creatures) you could say that moving between two points on a plane is 'going against the grain' while trans planar travel 'goes with the grain'
 

I have been working on a similar model for my campaign setting.

I am using the Taint rules from Heroes of Horror that pertain to spells with the Evil descriptor (HoH pg125), and applying them to spells that breach planar boundaries. The spells affected are listed under the Dimensional Anchor spell in the PHB (pg221).

Creatures summoned could resonate with Taint if desired, making them hazzardous to be around for extended periods.
 

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