D&D General Which material planes do you like in your cosmology?

[Li Shenron]

Like you I would throw them all in as separate planes with their own gods and afterlives.

When it comes to deities, I've always left a veil of mystery on them, so that nobody can tell for sure where a deity ends and the next begins, and this plays to my advantage when merging multiple settings. It means that if you move from Toril to another world with different deities, I don't have to cut a Cleric off her powers: maybe her deity is also another deity in the other universe.

For afterlives, at first it seemed a problem but eventually there isn't any. I can keep them mostly separate so that Faerunians go to their patron deity's domain and mortals from other worlds under the Great Wheel go to their alignment-based destination. There is no issue really.

One interesting question is how to treat an afterlife plane that exists with some differences in multiple cosmologies, for example Hell. Are there multiple Hells or is it the same one?

The bottom line is that all these questions are pointless until they are relevant for an adventure, and even then you do not need to set anything in stone.

 

[Rogerd1]

When it comes to deities, I've always left a veil of mystery on them, so that nobody can tell for sure where a deity ends and the next begins, and this plays to my advantage when merging multiple settings. It means that if you move from Toril to another world with different deities, I don't have to cut a Cleric off her powers: maybe her deity is also another deity in the other universe.

For afterlives, at first it seemed a problem but eventually there isn't any. I can keep them mostly separate so that Faerunians go to their patron deity's domain and mortals from other worlds under the Great Wheel go to their alignment-based destination. There is no issue really.

One interesting question is how to treat an afterlife plane that exists with some differences in multiple cosmologies, for example Hell. Are there multiple Hells or is it the same one?

The bottom line is that all these questions are pointless until they are relevant for an adventure, and even then you do not need to set anything in stone.

I don't use the Great Wheel, as I feel that has been done, and done better in DC comics than DnD ever has, or ever will do. The details are well fleshed out and the idea well thought out.

So deities can die, and they too enter an afterlife same as anyone else. Plus if players at epic level are challenging multiverse deities, then the gods cannot be very powerful. Multiverse Darkseid (DC) he was the size of a universe when he fell. Makes DnD deities a rather poor relation.

5D True Form Darkseid Falling onto DC Multiverse by Frisk863 on DeviantArt

www.deviantart.com

Each plane having a separate afterlife, then there would be multiple hells, depending upon the cosmology. Some may not have a conventional (burning type hell at all). Theros afterlife for example is super grim. And this is why I did it this way to create an atmosphere for players so that sometimes fleeing a confrontation is better than standing their ground. The afterlife there is bloody awful and you simply do not want to die on that plane.

And it makes it easier to have higher powers, above all the deities, that essentially work by different rules, and make all the planar powers look weak in comparison. But I wanted a Moorcock type feel.

EDIT: Another bonus to doing this, is that it allows me to use each of the DnD plane books, Manual of the Planes, Planar Handbook, Beyond Countless Doorways, Dark Roads and Golden Hells etc. - all together and at the same time. Each one applies to a particular plane.

Now in DC it is just one heaven, one hell. Everyone goes to one or the other.


But with things like this...YMMV I guess.

 

[SkidAce]

what is time bandits?

/gasp!

 

[SkidAce]

Let's see....I use a "all realms are worlds" concept for my cosmology, so some of these would seem to be Outer Planes to the rest of you, but are worlds floating in space for us.

Alfaysia (central nexus of homebrew cosmos)
Topaline (named after a mineral in a Dungeon adventure)
Bytopia (two worlds circling each other)
Oerth
Athas
Ysgard
Illithidae (mind flayer infested world)
Arvandor

are the most commonly used worlds...

 

[Li Shenron]

Ysgard

Mm... interesting, you use Ysgard as a material (mortal) world?

I think some outer planes feel more like mortal worlds than afterlives (I mentioned I used Arcadia and Acheron as such, but for instance also Mechanus doesn't feel like an afterlife at all to me), but Ysgard has this special feature that dying just make you come back next day, so it really works as a sort of heaven for warriors. How are you using it as a material plane?

 

[Rogerd1]

Mm... interesting, you use Ysgard as a material (mortal) world?

I think some outer planes feel more like mortal worlds than afterlives (I mentioned I used Arcadia and Acheron as such, but for instance also Mechanus doesn't feel like an afterlife at all to me), but Ysgard has this special feature that dying just make you come back next day, so it really works as a sort of heaven for warriors. How are you using it as a material plane?

Why not steal from Mutants and Masterminds, and have planes that work on science, and those that work on magic? And then you have nether realms that have been conquered by a Mage supreme?

 

[Hriston]

I like the idea of infinite parallel primes, but it hasn’t come up in any of my games that I can remember because the players, through their characters, have been invested in events taking place in the prime material plane they inhabit, so the focus stays there. I like to keep this concept around as a possibility though, in case it makes sense to switch over to an alternate universe to fix some problem in this one.

For the setting of my games, I like to have a prime material plane that has a place not too unlike Earth as its focal point. I also generally assume the existence of a positive material/plane of light/Feywild and a negative material/plane of shadow/Shadowfell that are echoes of the prime. For example, in my recent campaign, one of the player characters is a shadow sorcerer, so the plane of shadow is something that’s believed to exist, at least for that character.

A complicating factor is that, in the case of multiple parallel primes, I would assume the existence of multiple parallel Feywilds/Shadowfells to go with them.

 

[Li Shenron]

A complicating factor is that, in the case of multiple parallel primes, I would assume the existence of multiple parallel Feywilds/Shadowfells to go with them.

It can be a complication but also doesn't have to be.

Those 2 planes are 4e/5e constructs, but when you decide to use a fantasy setting, you can choose which edition version of it to use. It doesn't have to have a Feywild just because 5e has a bunch of spells or abilities that require it, just like it doesn't have to have Dragonborn or Warlocks just because they are in the PHB.

I would probably let the Ethereal, Feywild and Shadowfell be unique rather than multiple, and then decide if a material world is connected to each depending on whether it has for example ghosts and faeries.

 

[SkidAce]

Mm... interesting, you use Ysgard as a material (mortal) world?

I think some outer planes feel more like mortal worlds than afterlives (I mentioned I used Arcadia and Acheron as such, but for instance also Mechanus doesn't feel like an afterlife at all to me), but Ysgard has this special feature that dying just make you come back next day, so it really works as a sort of heaven for warriors. How are you using it as a material plane?

The area of Valhalla is a localized area on a mountain top where the effects you speak of occur. The rest of the world is just a Norse analogue of sorts.

Now to clarify, I am using outer planes as material worlds, but some of them do have the pantheons invested in that realm. Its their powerbase so to speak.

 

[Maxperson]

Not all worlds should be connected by Spelljammer. Ravenloft and other Domains of Dread are not a planet, they are connected through the Shadowfell only. Athas is probably a planet in a crystal sphere. Eberron is considered "remote" but is probably inside a crystal sphere somewhere, as is probably the case with Rokugan as well.

Not all crystal spheres are travelable to. I remember reading in Spelljammer that some were unreachable. I think Athas might have been one of them.