Planescape General and Q&A
Thread starter questions: Would anyone be interested in a dedicated Planescape RPG with integrated 2e/3.X setting lore and rules-medium mechanicsif it was also a Touhoufied version of the setting, with foxboy/girl arcanaloths and kemonomimi guardinals standing alongside more monstrous-looking specimens of the exact same species?
Discuss Planescape and the Great Wheel here, whether the original AD&D 2e version, the 3.X version, the 4e version (yes, it exists in 4e, down to the baernaloths, the yugoloths, the Heart of Darkness, Maeldur et Kavurik, Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word all being canon as of Dragon #417), the 5e version, or your own original blend.
I am exceedingly well-lanned on Planescape canon under a holistic blend of 2e, 3.X, and sometimes even 4e lore. If you have any questions at all about the setting's lore, feel free to ask, and I will give you direct quotes and citations from as many primary sources as I can, unlike afroakuma. I will note when something is open to GM interpretation, and explicitly note whenever I give merely my own personal interpretation.
>Basic setting summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape
>Comprehensive Planescape reference index: http://www.rilmani.org/psIndex.txt
>Planewalker.com planar encyclopedia: http://mimir.planewalker.com/encyclopedia/plane
>Canonfire.com planar encyclopedia: http://canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Outer_Planes
>Rilmani.org planar encyclopedia (contains unmarked fanon, so beware): http://www.rilmani.org/timaresh/Outer_Planes
>List of all the multiverse's gods (contains all gods mentioned in D&D products, but also has plenty of speculation and fanon for mythological deities and for powers with few details on them): http://mimir.planewalker.com/forum/list-dead-gods#comment-58090
Old threads with previous questions and comprehensive answers: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/search/text/%22comprehensive%20planescape%22/
>>46787023
Still trying to figure out a non-miracle-based healing system for Athar. One of my big complaints about DnD in general is the assumption that no other form of medicine would ever be developed besides organized religion's fucking monopoly.
Surely somewhere out there someone's developed something, right? Any good systems you've seen brewed up, or is it just "You picked Athar now deal with it"
>>46787305
This is a heavily system-dependent matter. D&D 3.X, Pathfinder, D&D 4e, D&D 5e, 13th Age, Strike!, Dungeon World, and all manner of fantasy heartbreakers have a wide variety of non-divine healing abilities.
For that matter, I have always thought that the Athar should provide some sort of civil service to Sigil, seeing how the majority of the factions do so. It would be interesting if the Athar ran the Cage's healthcare system (via non-divine means, obviously) so as to undermine divine healing.
I've been thinking a lot about Baatezu politics recently, and could someone please remind me what's special about Glasya again?
Something about her not being 'bound to hell' that Asmodeus wants to exploit, or something like that; I don't quite remember.
>>46787474
As per page 61 of 3.5's Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, Glasya is Asmodeus's daughter. The same page points out that she is important to Asmodeus's plans, but also that "What exactly Asmodeus’s plans are for his daughter after she cements her hold on the still-changing terrain of Malbolge remain to be seen."
It is also important to note that as per page 55 of the same book, Asmodeus's ancient consort, Bensozia, was slain by Levistus, who is now the imprisoned archduke of Stygia. Page 151 points out that Glasya considers it top-priority to exact revenge upon Levistus for her mother's death.
It is thus reasonable to infer that Asmodeus has some sort of stake in the plotting of Glasya against his dead wife's murderer, Levistus.
I have never heard of anything regarding Glasya not being bound to Baator; where might you have heard such a thing from?
>>46787513
Come now, we both know that that Levistus didn't /actually/ kill Bensozia.
>>46787540
I acknowledge 4e in the opening post, although it exists on a different "level of canon," being set in another multiverse (one that started off decidedly non-Planescape, then but had more and more Planescape elements trickled into it).
Levistus having been framed by Glasya is a 4e-ism from Dungeon Magazine #197.
4e, of course, has many interesting bits and pieces of planar lore that can be easily ported over to the 2.X/3e/5e Great Wheel.
My favorite piece of Great Wheel-applicable lore from 4e is the nature of the slaad lord Ygorl, which I discuss with another person here:
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/43168673/#43181390
My second favorite would be the various implications of baatezu one-upping yugoloths, which counterbalances the yugoloths being the 2e writer's "pet" fiend type. For instance, page 104 of the 4e Manual of the Planes tells us that gelugons were once mezzoloths:
>Mephistopheles’s great strength lies in his command of the ice devils, or gelugons. These were once a mercenary race of demons akin to mezzodemons, but he entrapped them in perpetual servitude millennia ago, transforming them into denizens of the Nine Hells. Although Mephistopheles permits ice devils to serve other archdevils, they are bound to obey him before any others—a significant bit of insurance for the lord of Cania.
And page 58 of the 4e Monster Manual 3 claims that hellwasp devils (a new type of devil introduced in 4e, but perhaps translatable to hellwasp swarms in 3.X) were likewise once mezzoloths:
>Hellwasp devils were once demons akin to mezzodemons. While in the Abyss, Glasya defeated their master and took them back to the Nine Hells. There, she transformed them into devils, making them shock troops and bodyguards.
>>46787342
>I have always thought that the Athar should provide some sort of civil service to Sigil, seeing how the majority of the factions do so.
I couldn't agree more. If the Bleak Cabal can be bothered to do something productive then the Athar should be tripping over each other to compete with the temples.
>>46787342
>>46788869
Now that I think about it, this is my next Planescape character's overarcing motivation- an Athar who wants to start a hospital/medical school!
>>46788869
>>46788880
This is perhaps something that is much too system-dependent to assess the feasibility of, as I mention in >>46787342
Perhaps the most noteworthy instance of advanced "medicine," so to speak, in 2e Planescape is how the night hags of the Gray Waste create bioaugmented "altraloths" to serve as their champions, as per pages 104-111 of Dragon Annual #2. These altraloths are *stupendously* powerful by 2e standards, vastly outclassing even Graz'zt as he was statted in Planes of Chaos:
http://www.lomion.de/cmm/grazzt.php
I could imagine a "Deus Ex: Yugoloth Revolution" scenario occurring in Gehenna and the Gray Waste, wherein the night hags perfect their bioaugmentations for the mass market and provoke backlash from the local yugoloths, who perceive this as tainting their profane purity (something very important to yugoloths judging from their origins in the Heart of Darkness as per page 10 of Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War) and as an opportunity for the night hags to take control over the yugoloths.
>>46787305
>One of my big complaints about DnD in general is the assumption that no other form of medicine would ever be developed besides organized religion's fucking monopoly.
Wasn't it "Magic can heal flesh and repair muscle but can't replace blood and replenish nutrients"? medical advances would involve transferring of blood and long term storage.
>>46787305
House Jorasco, from the Eberron Campaign Setting uses their Dragonmark of Healing to provide non-divine magical healing services. Perhaps a member of them managed to find a portal to Sigil, and promptly set up shop selling healing magic?
>>46789392
3.X Eberron does not exist in the 3.X Great Wheel, but it *could* exist in the 2e Great Wheel.
3.X's policy was to have each individual setting be self-contained in an isolated "Material Plane" (which stilled contained other worlds, but never any other setting's worlds), and for each setting to have its own cosmology. Thus, Oerth had the Great Wheel, Toril had the shoddily-written World Tree, Eberron had its planar orrery, and even the quasi-first-party Krynn sourcebooks had their own cosmology.
Under 3.X's style of cosmology, such alternate cosmologies can be reached through the Plane of Shadow as per pages 60-62 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. If you were to use 2e's style of cosmology, on the other hand, which has but a single, unified Prime Material Plane with many crystal spheres, then Eberron's cosmology would have to be jettisoned in favor of the Great Wheel's, bringing it in line with 2e Toril and 2e Krynn.
3.X made the Plane of Shadow a full-fledged transitive plane (not just a demiplane), and just about the only consistently macroversal facet of the cosmology as well.
Thus, in order to get from 3.X Eberron to Sigil, one would have to traverse the Plane of Shadow and *then* stumble across a portal to Sigil.
That said, this is wholly superfluous when, again, D&D 3.X, Pathfinder, D&D 4e, D&D 5e, 13th Age, Strike!, Dungeon World, and all manner of fantasy heartbreakers have a wide variety of non-divine healing abilities.
Even so, Athar can be priests of the Great Unknown as per page 46 of On Hallowed Ground, Believers of the Source can be priests of the Source according to the same page, and Dustmen can be priests of Death as per page 47.
Page 14 of the Factol's Manifesto points out that the Athars' restriction against receiving divine aid applies only to priests of "specific deities," which the Great Unknown, the Source, and Death are not.
There is no reason why a Defier could not accept an Athar, Godsman, or Dustman priest's aid.
>>46789515
If you're using 3.X/2e then you can also have the role of healing taken over by druids.
Of course, the sort of druids that end up living in Sigil (just about completely divorced from any sort of nature you'd want a connection with) probably aren't going to be volunteering their services as healers terribly often, but they'd be capable of doing it. They're not the only ones, either. Ur-Priests, some psionicists (system dependent) and alchemists could all provide alternative healing without having to pray to a Power, and having them all work together could be a campaign in and of itself. There'd be other classes capable of providing healing services to things that don't benefit from stock standard cure spells too.
>Artificers handling construct repairs
>Necromancers helping out various undead
>Arguments between druids and other Athar over who worships the least
>Getting forced to assign guards to prevent sensates faking illnesses just so they can try different types of medicine
It'd make a fun backdrop to a campaign based on Scrubs or something.
>>46790166
Druids are technically divine in 3.X and 2e, and indeed, they fall under the priest class category in 2e.
Urban druids certainly exist.
One of the more brutally efficient (yet risky) methods of healthcare in Sigil is simply watching over a portal to the Positive Energy Plane and casting planar protection magic (system-dependent, of course) upon any who enter it. In fact, as per page 63 of the 2e Inner Planes book and page 84 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes, there are at least two hospital-like facilities within the Positive Energy Plane itself, one of which collects "lifepearls" that are extremely powerful healing consumables.
Remember that under the strictest reading of 3.5's planar rules:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#positiveDominant
Undead are not harmed by being in the Positive Energy Plane in any way, shape, or form, and in fact, gain fast healing from it.
>>46790246
They're technically divine but druids aren't usually worshippers of a specific power, and thus get to skate on by like clerics of the Great Unknown or the Source.
First off, thanks for these threads. They've been great at getting me interested in planescape and giving me motivation to learn the setting.
I'm wondering if anyone with a copy of the Planewalker's Handbook can do me a favor. I got a pdf of the book, but some of the pages are corrupted (see pic for an example). Is anyone willing to scan these pages?
I tried the trove in OSR general and an AD&D torrent. I even tried #rpg-bookz on dejatoons IRC, but they're all the same file.
These pages have significant blocks of unreadable text:
18, 20, 22, 49, 61, 95, 100
These pages are corrupted, but still mostly readable:
47, 119
>>46790417
That is true, save for druids who worship a god.
Thus, in 2e, we have clerics of the Great Unknown, the Source, the Death, and whatever other non-deity-embodied faiths exist, as well as druids. There is the Positive Energy Plane too.
In many other fantasy RPGs, there are various alternative sources of healing.
>>46790627
Oh. Also, I'll be monitoring the archives in case anyone is willing to help and the thread falls off the board before I can properly say thank you.
So I'll say it in advance
Thanks!
>>46790627
>>46790664
You can have my copy of the Planewalker's Handbook, which should be fully readable:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/bggut2
I must depart from the day. This thread will likely be dead by the time I return; I might create a new thread some time afterwards.
>>46790734
You sir are the hero the multiverse deserves.
I'm just getting into Planescape, and I regret not starting sooner. Quick question:
Do spelljammer ships exist in planescape canonically?
I get that they would be pretty inefficient compared to portals, but you could move large amounts of cargo and travel to places that don't typically have portals (Like Athas)
>>46790734
I love you! The copy I have is complete shit with pages all corrupted, and they always seem to be the pages that I want to fucking read.
>>46793461
Bump for answers
>>46793461
yes. i believe they are specifically mentioned in the Planes of Law booklet for Acheron and that in the Mines of Marseilan (sp?) that slag ones can be found there, which implies they exist in the multiverse.
they would be for travel between crystal spheres in the phlogiston of the prime material plane. see image in >>46787023 for what i mean.
>>46787883
That theory has existed long before 4e was a thing; it was just that 4e was the first time it was actually acknowledged.
>>46793461
Spelljammers do exist, but they're most often used to travel between the various material planes than between other planes of existence.
>>46794636
>>46794437
Thanks. I figured that's what they were used for, because unless you have no other option they are the shittiest method of planar travel, except maybe using the mists of Ravenloft Vecna style.
Do Cagers count as Planars or Primes? And where can I find info on the weapons of Mechanus that the Planewalkers handbook eludes to.
>>46794959
depends on where they were born. if you're born in the cage, you're a planar.
if you were born on a prime material you might be a prime.
For things about Mechanus you might consider the Planes of Law boxed set. There is whole booklet devoted to that plane.
>>46794918
>using the mists of Ravenloft Vecna style
HA!
Using the Mists as a form of transportation is like going to prison for 20 years as an easier way of buying orange jumpsuits.
>>46795036
Bullshit. The planes don't work like countries, where being born there automatically makes you a citizen. If you're an elf, you're native to the prime. Id doesn't matter if your family's been in Sigin for 12 generations
>>46795036
So if someone is born in sigil, and they are on another plane when someone banishes them, what happens? Do they come up in the outlands? Because you can't just planeshift into Sigil right?
>>46795065
Hey it worked for Vecna, before he was butchered by player characters at the behest of the lady of pain...
And as far as banishment is concerned, it does matter where you were born. Otherwise no one is 'native' to Sigil. Except maybe the Dabus.
>>46795065
then how come NPC humans elves etc are listed as planars?
>>46795108
Yeah. Vecna was able to break the laws of the universe, spit in the face of the Overdeities, and do all of this while increasing the power of his divine spark. Make no mistake, this was absolutely a one-time thing.
Although, I guess bending the laws of the universe isn't that hard when you have pic related as an ally.
>>46795183
I almost fancy the idea that Vecna doesn't have the serpent as an ally, but 'the serpent' is really just his own madness whispering back to him.
But seriously what happens when people who are native to Sigil get banished?
>>46795231
Epic Level Handbook page 238 proves that The Serpent is an actual guy.
That, or Vecna and Sharlee just happen to have the same imaginary friend. And this imaginary friend just happens to be able to shit out powerful artifacts like it ain't no thing.
>>46795326
Yeah, I know. Die Vecna Die pretty much confirms that if I recall because if it weren't for the serpent the Lady could have just obliterated Vecna and then moved on with her life. So Vecna would have to have a pretty good imagination.
In my campaign the serpent is actually kinda a power player, but I've never thought that was as interesting, as him being imaginary.
