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The same method available to every other author.
Use a P.L.O.T. device.
A caster level GMth invisibility sphere? Spell level PLOTDEVICEth?
The same method available to every other author.
Use a P.L.O.T. device.
** spoiler omitted **
Can't disagree with anything written, here. Also, if you absolutely need a RAW solution, then just say they casted wish to do it.
Can't disagree with anything written, here. Also, if you absolutely need a RAW solution, then just say they casted wish to do it.The same method available to every other author.
Use a P.L.O.T. device.
** spoiler omitted **
I don't think a 45,000,000 ft. Invisibility spell is in the range of power of a 9th level spell (which is what a wish is supposed to replicate), but you're th DM.
I don't think a 45,000,000 ft. Invisibility spell is in the range of power of a 9th level spell (which is what a wish is supposed to replicate), but you're th DM.Can't disagree with anything written, here. Also, if you absolutely need a RAW solution, then just say they casted wish to do it.The same method available to every other author.
Use a P.L.O.T. device.
** spoiler omitted **
Read the end of the spell, about how you can create more powerful effects. After that it's the GM's discretion.
Honestly, does the OP expect blowback from his players if he cannot justify his setting?
Now, if he is trying to find arguable loopholes and side-effects, that is still part of the "Because the GM says so" but might be a more fun approach to the topic.
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A series of giant Obelisks equidistant around the planet that encircle the planet in a shell that blocks divination and remders the contents invisible. Sight is not hindered Looking out through the shell. Once you pass the shell everything works normally.
Now if one of the obelisks is damaged or what not a portion of the planet is vulnerable. Possible story arc.
Create some maintenance task or ritual if you'd like.
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Does it have to be a Planet? A Plane is more easily cut off from the rest of the multiverse, and can resemble a planet in all meaningful ways.
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Ok. This is a super cool idea. Imma make something up. Here we go.
Obviously to hide anything from a deity is super hard. To hide an entire planet, and all the souls on it, is impossible for mortals. So. The arcane cabal captured a deity (though probably just a powerful demi-god rather than a full on God). The deity is warped, mutated, and twisted into some sort of excessively powerful artifact. This artifact has three main functions. A planet sized Dimensional Lock/Forbiddance, a planet sized Source Severance set to divine, and a planet sized Nondetection/Mages Private Sanctum/Mindblank. That should about cover it.
Now, as for repercussions. After doing this, the mages realized that conjuration became a largely useless school, as the vast majority of it's spells relied on extraplanar manipulation. So teleportation and summoning are all the way out.
As you said, souls cannot enter the River of Souls via the normal progression, and so are stuck. But in that same fashion, neither can new souls be entered in, since the Positive Energy Plane is blocked too. So the old souls get perpetually reincarnated, at least until the soul itself is destroyed. Some ways to play with this would be that the birthrate is slowed, to equal the rate at which people die. Another option is that people are starting to be born without souls, which you can probably take interesting places. Even if it happens but rarely, souls do get destroyed occasionally. Eventually there will be very very few actual souls left. Again, another interesting thing to play with.
One possible recourse the mages might take is to attempt to set up their own planar structure (ie. create their own ethereal/positive/shadow/astral/negative planes) within their planet (similar to how Golarion core is also a demiplane for Rovagug's prison). This would potentially solve a lot of the above-mentioned problems, if it could be done.
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As you said, souls cannot enter the River of Souls via the normal progression, and so are stuck. But in that same fashion, neither can new souls be entered in, since the Positive Energy Plane is blocked too. So the old souls get perpetually reincarnated, at least until the soul itself is destroyed. Some ways to play with this would be that the birthrate is slowed, to equal the rate at which people die. Another option is that people are starting to be born without souls, which you can probably take interesting places. Even if it happens but rarely, souls do get destroyed occasionally. Eventually there will be very very few actual souls left. Again, another interesting thing to play with.
I cannot get rid of the image of a group of existential "god-parents" trying to get dibs on a soul like the "Big Bang Theory" boys trying to get Comic-Con tickets.
Dot for cool idea (though soldier 1st got most of the things I was starting to think of better than I had them in my head!).
Also consider: all positive and negative energy would be basically worthless, if the planes were genuinely severed. That means reliance upon reincarnate or regenerate or other similar Transmutation effects for any kind of healing (which are, I believe, available to arcane witches - creature very likely to make covens with said hex, and maybe join with bag covens, too...), not to mention basically eliminating undead (which, honestly, was my first thought to suggest increasing instead upon reading this). A tertiary element to all of this: while the various reincarnate spells do not wipe the mind - it's possible, however, that the amnesia affliction is considered mandatory to those going through a rebirth process... especially the animals, because this same stasis affects them, too. Hunt an animal enough times, and no matter how dumb, it'll eventually either cop on to your strategies (making you get new ones or just rely on overwhelming force), become suuuuper traumatized (and thus either more dangerous or entirely passive/resigned), or both, or something else, or some combination of any of the above.
How would this affect plants? They can't be affected by most transmutations - do they have souls? They are technically by-rules objects, but they are alive; and living plant creatures are fundamentally weird in how they interact with things anyway.
Also, bear in mind the limits of the reincarnate-line spells: negative levels and eventual CON drain. You're going to need restoration effects somehow.
This is looking more and more like witches did a thing and now rule the world.
It's possible that wizards were the ones to do it with their super powerful magic but now witches - with their non-divine transmutation-based healing and life bringing - might well have stepped in to become either the defacto rulers or defacto spiritual guidance.
Doesn't even have to be a bad thing - think Rashemen in FR.
Either way, transmutation beasivslky becomes king with illusion as a close second (with fake conjurations and simulacrum... unless those don't work because you're severed from the plain of shadows...).
Most of the above is from memory, by the way - I'm very possibly wrong on some of it.
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Bards and possibly witches become the only healers, since Infernal and Celestial healing go away with banning outsider influence and positive and negative energies. Are Witch Patrons affected by your ban? If they aren't, witches will gain a huge bonus to popularity.
Its actually going to be mostly witches and their hexes - hard healing requires the cure spells which are Conjuration and pull from the positive energy plane, thus are banned, right?
Edit: nevermind; I was ninja'd by the OP - I was responding to Daw's thing of bards before the inner planes were not verboten.
Follow up question related to this: are the elemental planes allowed or not? If they are, your society can function quite well with the infinite power of simulacra wishes... but it's also a huge liability in that now you have a massive swath of reality that can mention the plant to those verboten gods. Also, Zon Kuthon has a chance of finding you through the plane of shadow (negative is "inside" of shadow as positive is "inside" the materal).
I don't know how much of Golarion's stuff you're adapting or how much you're rejecting, but each plane permitted is another weakness in the void of knowledge your world otherwise represents. And if gods get wind of it and that they are being blocked from it, they will begin manipulating events to get back.
On the other hand: eternally reincarnating souls in a semi-static world with eternal bodies: sounds like androids to me... (or Samsarran).
Also consider there are actual angles whose responsibilities it is to wander the ethereal and elemental planes: these will very likely stumble across the world at some point. Plus, there are various divine servants in shadow and the negative that would likely make things known to evil gods (and, I think, one Empyreal lord).
Allowing the positive to access the world means that new souls can be born, but old souls can never leave.
Gosh, Isaac Arthur was right: it really is tough to hide a planet.
Also, consider the possible issues with phantoms and Eidolons.
Couldn't they move into the dark tapestry? Closer to the outer gods and fluff it as beyond the influence of the traditional pantheon, you'd still have divine casters but only empowered by great old ones and outer gods. Might be interesting.
Aside from that I'm a big fan of mass sacrifice rituals, perhaps there was a massive cabal with say 10 lead mages, they contstructed a huge magical ritual without telling the majority of the cabal that the material component was a s!~% tone of dark wizards for world wide divine severance.
And or raise a child from birth to be a Golding, evelvate it and groom it for ascension then at the moment of the ascension ritualistically sacrifice the godling and in doing so severe the worlds connection to the other gods.
Just some fluffy stuff that occurred to me
Also consider there are actual angles whose responsibilities it is to wander the ethereal and elemental planes: these will very likely stumble across the world at some point. Plus, there are various divine servants in shadow and the negative that would likely make things known to evil gods (and, I think, one Empyreal lord).
Allowing the positive to access the world means that new souls can be born, but old souls can never leave.
Gosh, Isaac Arthur was right: it really is tough to hide a planet.
Also, consider the possible issues with phantoms and Eidolons.
Actually, with the world being blocked to Outsiders, it may well be undetectable by their "patrols". If the Outsider cannot perceive the excitation-state/direction of the world, it really has no likely way to ever notice it on its own from the Ethereal/Astral Realms. This is not a three dimensional issue. Now, if Elementals can pass to and from Wheel'sWorld, it is unlikely to have remained a secret for any great length of time. There WILL be clever people risking everything to smuggle things in and out. If the creators are no longer actively running the show, some of those smugglers will have succeeded by now, but probably not on a large enough scale to invalidate the concept.
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Just use a SEP(Somebody Else's Problem) Field from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Just paint it pink and turn on the field.
I don't know how much of Golarion's stuff you're adapting or how much you're rejecting...if gods get wind of it and that they are being blocked from it, they will begin manipulating events to get back.
For all intents and purposes my world is independent of Golarion, but will be using its mechanics. I will be pulling from the pantheon, or at least some version of it, but the gods themselves are not of particular importance, only how they interact with the world.
Cool. So it doesn't matter where they canonically reside?
Here's one for ya: if nobody is there to pray to the gods, will the gods cease to exist, or be weakened?
If you're using PF mechanics: no, not at all. Gods are independent super-creatures. The only thing that's "weakened" is that they have no worshipers to serve their interests, locally, which opens up the door for other things - like demon lords or corrupt elemental princes or fey monstrosities or aberrant evils - to come in and do that instead.
Note: the aboleths consider all the gods their enemies and consider themselves worthy rivals of said entities.
I feel like I need the energy and transitive planes, or life just doesn't make sense. Either that or cherry pick what I want from them and place that into the material and/or transitive.
As far as where positive/negative energy comes from, it's simple: they're already present, just cut off - so nothing comes in, nothing comes out: a closed system. You don't have to do that, of course, it's just the initial impression I got of what you were looking for.
If this is your personal setting, you can feel free to go nuts and entirely rework how the planes function.
In Core mechanics, it's assumed:
{the other outer planes - {astral -
- {ethereal -> }
{elemental: fire - {earth - {water - {air - {
- material - {positive}fey
- {shadow {negative}}
} - elemental: air} - water} - earth} - fire}
- {ethereal <- }
- astral } - the other outer planes
That is:
- the positive is inside the material and first world (with the first world closer to the positive than any other)
- - > the shadow is parallel to the material and contains the negative in the same way the material contains the positive
- the material is inside elemental air
- elemental air is inside elemental water
- elemental water is inside elemental earth
- elemental earth is inside elemental fire
- - > the ethereal runs through all of these; may or may not be connected to the region of dreams, and may or may not be connected (distantly) to Leng "the nightmare plateau"
- elemental fire is inside the astral
- the astral is inside the other outer planes
Here are some others used in various similar games:
- one and two (the last is the same as the above)
- three
- four
- variant on one
- five
- another variant on one
- six
- still a variant on one
- seven
- inner planes option
- alignment sphere
- eight
- nine
- ten, eleven, and twelve
- thirteen
- yet another variant on one (they liked it a lot)
- fourteen
- variant FR cosmology
- another variant FR cosmology
- the newest one
- it's not a cosmology but it claimed to be in Google search
- same deal
- okay this is ridiculous on multiple levels and she is not a cosmology
There are more out there, but I'm basically done, for now. Hope that helps inspire!
I realize I am already hamstringing the party with all this mumbo-jumbo, and I don't want to push it too far. It could be interesting if they figure out how to manipulate their souls to the point where death could be but a impedance and they can pick up where they left off by commandeering another host, similar to magic jar. But now I'm just getting off topic.
To some extent, this can be represented by androids (with samsaran just gaining new bodies; also keep in mind, Rakshasa are likely a thing). To another, simply transforming them into psychic imprint/essences, akin to the 20th level psychic sorcerer bloodline thing might work as well.
Aside from that I'm a big fan of mass sacrifice rituals, perhaps there was a massive cabal with say 10 lead mages, they contstructed a huge magical ritual without telling the majority of the cabal that the material component was a s*## tone of dark wizards for world wide divine severance.
And or raise a child from birth to be a Golding, evelvate it and groom it for ascension then at the moment of the ascension ritualistically sacrifice the godling and in doing so severe the worlds connection to the other gods.
If you're willing to bend the rules enough to treat the sundering effect as an occult ritual [see Occult Adventures] equivalent to a spell of greater than 9th level, then it become very easy to justify this. Boosting the range and area will push the DC even higher, so require a LOT of sacrifices (= expensive material components), and pile on a ton of backlash effects. But keep the DC high enough that only a group of gods or mythic characters could hit it, to make sure it can't be undone or repeated without some seriously epic effort.
If any records still exist of this ritual, even fragmented ones, then it might be possible for the PCs to reverse-engineer a counter-ritual once they reach the higher mythic tiers themselves.
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Thinking about it, the Occult Adventures content is going to be huge. Mediums and Spiritualists will have worked out the existance of the limited souls problem pretty quick. Occultists will have stockpiled surviving items of extra-worldly energy and significance. Some will try and make things better, some will try and make profits, some will try and rule the world.
On Druids, do the ones who worship Nature only still function? It could be argued that their power source is still available. Eliminating a lot of Outsider influence could very well give the druids an upper hand in several things. It would certainly underscore and simplify the Balance issue. There would likely be less energy resources available, so Druids would tend to be rarer and much more secretive, carefully husbanding their resources. They will keep as many souls out of the Civilised Races "pool" as they can, to roll back the incursions into the Wildlands that they draw all their power from. Urban Druids might be defenders of mankind, or they might be much more sinister.
The Occult crowd and the Druids are unlikely to be friends, but open warfare would be damaging to both of them.
The easiest way to hide a planet from the gods is to get the help of a trickster deity. There are no exact stats for interactions between deities, but it would be easy to decide that a trickster deity intent on hiding a world just might trump the efforts of other deities to find it.
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The easiest way to hide a planet from the gods is to get the help of a trickster deity. There are no exact stats for interactions between deities, but it would be easy to decide that a trickster deity intent on hiding a world just might trump the efforts of other deities to find it.
Easiest does not equal best. If you are on a quest to free yourself from the vagaries and petty tyrannies of the gods... (Are Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless here?)... I can not imagine that leaving yourself entirely at the mercy of a trickster god is going to be an acceptable option.
My idea places some assumptions on what deities can and can't do, but my idea is that your cabal of arcane casters were able to affect the planet's orbit, possibly shifting its position on the planet's orbital axis. From an astrological perspective, this messes up the planetary alignment, which is needed for deities and their agents to detect a planet. Again, this is a lot of assumptions about deities' capabilities and the way planes are connected in your campaign.
Let's say that the planet's orbit was slowed down. This would increase the planet's year, affecting the seasons, and possibly the weather patterns, allowing for coastal communities to eventually shift underwater, verdant areas to become deserts, etc. Then, after hundreds (thousands? dozens?) of years, the planet could circle back around on its orbit (in relation to the rest of the solar system) to just the exact point it would have been if its orbit had never been affected. A group of PCs now have to defeat this arcane cabal and perform some ritual that will give the planet enough energy to restore its orbital speed so that the planet is back in astrological alignment, allowing the deities to see the planet once again and restoring planar connections.
Just a thought, but maybe it will help prompt some ideas.
Easiest does not equal best. If you are on a quest to free yourself from the vagaries and petty tyrannies of the gods... (Are Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless here?)... I can not imagine that leaving yourself entirely at the mercy of a trickster god is going to be an acceptable option.The easiest way to hide a planet from the gods is to get the help of a trickster deity. There are no exact stats for interactions between deities, but it would be easy to decide that a trickster deity intent on hiding a world just might trump the efforts of other deities to find it.
In that case, a far more drastic method (such as relocating the world to a demiplane where divine magic doesn't work) is called for. In that case, the gods would be able to find the world, but they wouldn't be able to do much to it.
More to the point, you could consider making the demiplane have properties similar to the city of Sigil in the D&D Planescape setting. There, the major restriction was that deities could not enter. Their clerics could enter Sigil with full spells and powers, but direct divine intervention there was literally impossible.
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You know, we are all going on the assumption that the final effect here was deliberate...
"Students, pay close attention here. As I adjust the parameters of our micro-plane, you will notice that the Celestial and Fiendish animals will fade and eventually lose cohesion. Odd, nothing appears to be happening. Now, why is someone pounding on the lab doors?..."
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You know, we are all going on the assumption that the final effect here was deliberate...
This has just reminded me of the premise of Green Ronin's Spaceship Zero RPG (based on The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets' album of the same name). A miscalculation by the inventor of the "Better Than Light" drive results in the ship's maiden voyage destroying the universe. The ship, protected by the field that powered the drive, survives to see the creation of a new universe. The crew then puts themselves and the ship into stasis for a few billion years until the reset universe reaches the point it was at before. When they're revived, they find that their presence in the new universe has skewed Earth history into something rather more dangerous than the previous version.
There is another topic where the world is sealed. Conventional astral travel was blocked, so what happens to souls? My answer, is they are on a ledge of sorts. Their ghostly backs are against the magical wall. Pure energy such as positive and negative energy can leak through, so you can have your healing spells(powered by philosophy, not gods) and animate dead, but no calling up yag zigs or whatever.
Destroyed souls are sundered, so many people claim to be reincarnations of King Tut. Actually, they are reincarnations of different parts of his soul. Some of these tattered shreds are able to slip past the wall, or through the wall, but this results in creatures with only vague memories. The soul is made of emotions, ideas, and inspiration. Each is less solid than the previous.
I think the lamias are secretly behind this, and provided the great wish ritual that called up this strange situation. Is the Lamia bloodline an option? It's always fun to have an adventurer discover they are part of the problem.:)