Setting:Planescape Improvement Project

This is a fan rework of the Planescape, intended to fix problems with the setting. The director of this project is User:BalanceIsDumb. Feel free to make suggestions

Goal

I want to expand and rewrite the setting to fix the things that people criticize about it. See Planescape#Critique

Every plane of existence in Planescape must be interesting, adventure friendly, and properly and fully represent the niche they are meant to fill. The same goes for the races that populate the planes.

Material Planes

Prime Material

No changes needed.

Shadowfell

undecided

Feywild

undecided

Inner Planes

I actually haven't read a lot of the lore about the inner planes, so for now I won't be focusing on them because I may change my mind about my changes when I read the lore and possibly realize my changes are unnecessary.

The negative and positive planes are to be removed, as they are not adventure friendly at all. Creatures that are native to them shall either be removed or moved to other planes. The closest equivalents to them shall be the #Middle Planes).

All of the elemental planes are now arranged in a rough sphere surrounding the material planes. The planes of fire, water, air, and earth are spaced apart from each other like the corners of a tetrahedron so that all of them are equally distant from each other. All of the other elemental planes exist between them.

Primary Elemental Planes

Fire

The plane of fire is the most problematic of the primary elemental planes. How can a place be made of fire, but also be adventure friendly? One possibility is that it is made of fire, but fire here isn't necessarily hot there. Or maybe ways of protecting yourself from fire are easily accessible.

Water

I like the idea of the plane of water being an infinite ocean with no surface or bottom, broken up only by giant bubbles of air with islands in them, but that would not be very adventure friendly because you would then only be able to travel by submarine, and submarines are not as fun as ships, and harder to get.

Secondary and Tertiary Elemental Planes

I have not yet decided what they should be. Secondary planes exist in between two primary planes, and tertiary planes exist between three. Ice should no longer be the plane between Water and Air. It does not make sense. Ice should just be a region of the plane of water.

Middle Planes

The middle planes exist in between the inner and outer planes. They are not quite spiritual planes and are not quite elemental planes either, but have traits of both. They are not strongly tied to any alignment, but people can end up in them as their afterlife. They have few outsiders or elementals native to them. Currently the only two middle planes I am certainly including are the plane of bone, and the plane of wood.

Bone/Death

Imagine the negative energy plane, Hueco Mundo from Bleach, the Shinigami world from Death Note, the Soul Cairn from TES, and every other world of the undead you can think of rolled into one.

An entire plane made of bones and the ruins of destroyed civilizations. Unlike the negative energy plane, which this plane is the replacement of, it is not instantly deadly to the living, but it is very hostile to them. Undead creatures are the dominant form of "life" here. Every kind of undead creature is found here, as well as some scavenging animals, and decomposing fungi. The undead form whole ecosystems here with stronger undead monsters preying on the weak. The majority of undead creatures here are of the corporeal kind, but ghosts and other incorporeal undead are common as well. Vampires and other blood dependent undead can survive here, as there is a vast river of fresh blood that flows across the plane. The plane of bone is not all wilderness and ruins. There are many large cities of undead here, and a few of them are tolerant enough of the living to be nice places to visit. But many powerful villains also make their homes here. The infinite supply of bones and naturally occurring undead makes it a perfect place to raise an undead army. Several powerful fiends have tried to conquer the plane, but have always been repelled, both by rebellious undead not wanting to lose their territory, and by living heroes. This plane may have some connection with the Elder Evil Atropus. Maybe he was once a part of this plane, or perhaps he is imprisoned in the plane's core, or he acts as the plane's moon when he isn't out destroying worlds.

Traits

• The atmosphere is hard to breath
• Plants (except undead ones) struggle to grow here because it is never daytime and there is little water
• Casting certain spells, particularly healing and resurrection and some spells that affect plants, attract the attention of nearby undead creatures and have a chance of failing. This effect gets stronger while underground.
• Most necromancy spells and some spells that harm the living are strengthened and easier to cast. This effect gets stronger while underground.
• Soulless undead creature that survive here long enough can eventually awaken and develop a new soul. They tend to copy the alignment of the people they have been around. Attempting to resurrect an undead creature that is inhabited by a soul that isn't the original has unpredictable and possibly dangerous result.
• Undead creatures can also over time transform into other kinds of undead. A simple skeleton may eventually become a lich, although without a phylactery. Non-corporeal undead can also slowly form bodies for themselves out of the bones and rotting flesh of the plane.
• Souls that end up on this plane first appear as weak ghosts.
• Living things that die here immediately come back as undead, usually as a zombie. Corporeal undead with souls, and living things whose bodies are destroyed, come back as incorporeal undead.
• Incorporeal undead cannot move on to their proper afterlife unless they leave the plane.
• It is always night time and the full moon is always in the middle of the sky no matter where you are on the plane. This full moon strangely does not trigger the transformation of lycanthropes. Occasionally, the moon turns red, and bad things happen.

Wood/Life

Partially a replacement for the positive energy plane. Also known as the world tree. The whole plane is one giant tree with many other trees and plants growing on it. The roots and branches of this tree are spread out across all of the planes, where they appear as ordinary trees until you climb them just the right way. You can find most any kind of plant monster here. The dead can also find there afterlife on this plane, but all become plants, plant spirits, and plant monsters. But the plane of wood is not a paradise. Many of the plant monsters are very hostile to non-plant creatures, seeing them as prey or threats to the world tree. The plane is also populated by many animals, but mostly herbivores and insects. It is also the home of many powerful nature gods.

Because the world tree is connected to all the other planes, it is very useful as a trade route, and so many roads have been built on it by planar travelers, and many settlements can be found along the roads. The traits of the plane also make farming easier, and so some people live their whole lives here.

Traits

• When you are standing on any large enough branch of the tree, gravity will always be towards the branch.
• It is always daytime. The sun is always moving in circles above the tree.
• Healing spells, and some spells that affect plants are stronger and easier to cast. This effect is stronger inside of the tree.
• Some necromancy spells and other spells harmful to the living attract the attention of the tree's guardians and have a chance of failing. This effect is stronger inside of the tree.
• It is more difficult to start fires and fire and lightning magic are weakened.
• Dead things rot away much more quickly than normal and if left undisturbed will sink into the wood of the tree in an hour. This include undead beings, corporeal or not.
• Souls that end up here reincarnate as intelligent plants, and retain memories of their previous life. Souls that die here are trapped and reincarnate as plants in one month.
• Living things grow more quickly and also live longer.

Under consideration

I think that there should be six middle planes total, but I haven't decided what the other four should be. One possibility I am considering is to change the Shadowfell and Feywild to make them part of the middle planes.

Outer Planes

The structure of the outer planes is unchanged.

Biology of Outsiders

I have come up with some new ideas for the biology of creatures of the outer planes. Creatures of the outer planes are physical souls. Even though they have biology that is in many ways similar to that of material creatures, their bodies are actually made of spiritual matter that closely imitates organic matter. One of the consequences of being physical souls is that creatures of the outer planes cannot reproduce without sacrificing some of their power because entirely new souls can only come into existence in material matter. But they can get around this by breeding with a material being, which requires the outsider to sacrifice only a tiny fraction of the power they would if reproducing alone or with another outsider partner. Because of this, the vast majority of outsiders are formed from the souls of the dead instead of being naturally born, as turning souls into more of their kind comes at far less of a cost.

When a soul arrives on the outer planes, there are two possible forms that they may immediately take. Most souls fail to retain memories of their previous life and end up as soul larvae, a helpless and nearly mindless form. Larva are easily converted into the lowest rank of the native outsiders of that plane. On good aligned planes, larvae are converted as soon as they are found by a good outsider capable of promoting them because of how vulnerable they are. Petitioners are the souls of people who do manage to retain their identity after arriving on the outer planes. Petitioners usually retain the same shape they did in life, but are not always recognizable. Petitioners may keep some of the abilities they had in life, but usually are far weaker than they originally were. A fighter petitioner will go down much more quickly than they did in life, and a wizard petitioner will still be able to cast high level spells, but will only be able to cast one or two spells per day. Petitioners are more difficult to promote, or demote, into the form of a native outsider than larvae, and if changed will lose the abilities they had in life. Powerful creatures like dragons can also become petitioners and larvae but

Outlands

The environment of the outlands needs no changes.

The outlands need more native races to represent causes that are neutral other than balance and neutrality itself, which is covered by the Rilmani.

Rilmani

The Rilmani's are to be expanded upon and will have a much bigger role in the setting. They work to preserve the balance of all of the planes. They can played as both regular neutral, and Stupid Neutral. Most of Rilmani believe that if one of the planes were to become too powerful, or if one of the major planes got completely destroyed or absorbed by another, it would cause the multiverse to break apart and either fall into the Far Realm, or be forced to restructure itself into something unrecognizable. They try to police the balance of the outer planes, but also the middle and inner planes. There efforts to keep the universe in balance this way has made them many enemies across all of the planes.

There are some extremist Rilmani who interpret the cause of neutrality very differently. These heretic Rilmani want to force neutrality upon all of the planes and make the outlands the only outer plane.

Over the last few thousand years, a new idea has started catching on with the Rilmani. There is a theory that aberrations represent a 5th force of alignment outside of good, evil, law, and chaos, that does not have an opposite and is slowly tainting the multiverse as aberrations die and their souls go to the outer planes. The addition of an unbalanced 3rd dimension to the alignment chart thus threatens the balance of the multiverse, and if not stopped will eventually cause the outer planes to be consumed by the Far Realm, followed by the rest of the planes. Rilmani who believe in this theory have formed alliances with representatives of races from every outer plane to work together to wipe out all aberrations on the planes and remove all aberration souls from the outer planes. The Tanar'ri who have joined this alliance don't really care and are just using it as an opportunity to finally wipe out the last of the Obyriths. The theory may or may not actually be true.

Unnamed new races

All names are currently placeholders.

(The Punishers)

This new race of the Outlands are formed from the souls of mortals who were obsessed with revenge in their life but were not evil enough for the lower planes, and not lawful or chaotic enough for anything else. While the Punishers have no or very little memories of their previous lives, they continue with their obsession with balancing all wrongs according to their morals. They will hunt down and punish anybody regardless of alignment if they believe that person has done something to wrong another person and escaped from justice. While their targets are usually evil people who have committed great acts of evil, they cannot be called lawful or good because they are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way, and willing to ignore all other rules that would hinder them. They only restraint that they do have is that they won't commit a greater act of evil than the one they are trying to punish against somebody other than the target who isn't actively hindering them. Anybody, both good and evil, who is seeking revenge or justice against someone else can approach them and request help, and the punishers will judge if the crime is worthy of their attention. They may simply hunt down and kill the target, or they may instead use complex schemes to ruin the target's life.

Sigil

I need to read up on Sigil's lore a bit more before I make any decisions.

Celestia

No changes needed.

Bytopia

Needs a unique native race. Undecided about environmental changes.

Elysium

I am thinking about moving the Guardinals to the beast lands and replacing them with something else for Elysium.

Beastlands

Maybe bring the Guardinals here.

Arborea

Come back to this later.

Ysgard

Needs a unique race, maybe two, but mostly should be unchanged. I am considering taking the Asuras and rewriting them and putting them here.

Limbo

(Going to work on this section next.)

The Slaad badly need more development. I feel that they do not properly represent pure chaos the way they currently are.

The environment of limbo could use some small changes to make it more adventure friendly. I would like to also expand on the people other than Slaads and Githzerai that live there. Chaotic alligned people with strong wills could create whole worlds in limbo for players to explore.

I may also add a second native race to limbo to represent aspects of chaos that the Slaadi are lacking in.

Slaads

The slaads are not evil. They are destructive and dangerous, but they are not motivated by malice. The stable and unchanging universe offends them, so they seek to spread change wherever they go.

While slaads are able to reproduce by transforming other creatures into slaads, or impregnating other creatures to make slaads xenomorph style, their goal is not to make slaads the dominate form of life in the multiverse because that would actually be too orderly. This is also the reason why the slaad lords coded the rule that no slaad can make more of the same kind of slaad, as one kind of slaad becoming dominant would also be too orderly. So slaads do not reproduce indiscriminately.

Slaads generally fall into two group in terms of their behavior. Those that religiously work to spread the cause of chaos on a large scale, and those who cause chaos just because of their nature, but it can often be hard to tell the two apart, as they both hate all things orderly. The main difference is that the former have the goal of making the whole multiverse more like limbo and restrain their impulses if it means causing more chaos in the long run, while the latter just go around doing what amuses them, which usually is also causing chaos.

Slaads steal things for fun, destroy stuff for fun, start fights for fun, work to break up empires, tear down oppressive governments (which to slaads is nearly all of them), play jokes on people who are too serious, set prisoners free, and anything else that goes against an orderly world. But remember, slaads are not stupid. They do in fact take time to think about the consequences of their actions.

I am currently working on a slaad family tree. I may completely change all this later. Every type of slaad can reproduce but should all use very different methods and can't produce their own color slaad.

Blue slaads can create red slaads and green slaads by infecting other creatures.

Red slaads can create blue slaads and green slaads by implanting tadpoles into other creatures.

Green slaads can give birth to brown slaads or to grey slaads if they consume the flesh of a powerful creature.

Grey slaads can give birth to brown or white slaads. Grey slaads that gain the favor of Ygorl are promoted into death slaads.

Brown slaads are a weaker form of slaad. A large number of brown slaads can choose to merge together to form a black slaad.

Black slaads can create purple slaads.

Purple slaads can create red slaads.

White Slaads can create blue slaads.

Prismatic slaads can form when a group of slaads of at least 3 colors fight with each other and become fused into one. Prismatic slaads can only

There is such thing as half-slaads. Half slaads grow up looking like their non-slaad parent, but if their alignment is chaotic, they will mutate into a slaad of a different color than their slaad parent when they reach adulthood.

Pandemonium

Needs a unique native race. It also needs some changes to make it more adventure friendly. Probably add more cities to it.

Abyss

No changes needed.

Carceri

Demodands badly need developement. I also am thinking about changing the structure of the plane because it seems too lawful the way it currently is or maybe its position should be switched with Gehenna.

Hades

The Yugoloths really badly need more development, and need to have their character rewritten to make them better represent neutral evil. I may also add some new native creatures to hades. I have a few ideas.

Gehenna

Badly needs a unique race. And the structure of the plane doesn't seem very lawful. I have thought of designs for a new fiendish race that could work here but I don't know what they should be called.

Baator

No changes needed.

Acheron

Needs a unique native race, and should be made easier to explore to be more adventure friendly.

Mechanus

I would like to make some small changes to the Modrons and other existing natives, but the environment is fine.

Arcadia

Needs a unique native race.

Other Planes

Far Realm

Creatures that die in the far realm do not go to the outer planes on death because it is outside of the multiverse. Their souls wander as disembodies spirits until they either get eaten by some far realm monster, or get reincarnated as an aberration. The far realm is extremely dangerous even for high level players unless they find a way to disguise themselves as far realm natives convincingly. This includes disguising not just their bodies but also their souls, as souls from the multiverse are distinct from those in the far realm and will attract curious monsters that can detect them.