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Howdy folks.
I want to run a series of adventures on each of the four elemental planes, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water.
Basically, my party will be looking for "elemental gems of power" and each gem is somewhere on the corresponding elemental plane. They need to find them and bring them back to the Prime Material Plane where they will be used to destroy an artifact.
I'm looking for encounter ideas, maps, rules concerning survival on each of the planes, and so on. I have the Manual of the Planes and I'll definitely be reviewing that, but I've never run a module that involved heavy planar travel so I'd like some guidance on things to keep an eye out for.
I mentioned Dungeon Magazine in the thread title because I own all of them (well, except for about a dozen; something happened to my subscription and I didn't catch it so I'm missing a few). So references to any of those would be a great help. Otherwise, I'm too broke right now to spend money on gaming supplies. :(
Any help would be appreciated!
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Not really any info from the dragon mag's, but from playing in a long-term campaign with literally 3 plane shift spells per session at minimum, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Planeshift is innaccurate. 5-500 miles away from intended target sucks, but also adds a very intersting avenue of unknown. Gate is accurrate, it opens to a specific point, but is two-way.
Planeshift may be a common spell (its in the core book), but how rare are the focus rods? Rules for these foci don't exist, and the material by which each one is made adds for another avenue of adventure.
Clerics may have a bunch of spell slots tied up for plane shifting, increasing reluctance to heal and buff/debuff. Also, make sure your players understand the importance of spells like Attune Form and Planar Tolerance. Mitigating base planar effects are a key to surviving on out of the way realms.
Casters in general need to be aware of how their spells will interact with various planes. What happens when they find the fire crystal, and a gleugon teleports in, nabs the loot, and uses a one-time only gate spell opening to Cania to escape? Going from a plane with hindered magic of one kind to hindered magic of another kind can gimp the back-line support of the group.
Weapon swingers need to be aware of DR. Barring the built-in resistance overcoming of PF-RPG, the party's melee and ranged warriors need to have plenty of magic, cold iron, silver, bane, or aligned weapons at their disposal to combat any sort of extraplanar threat. As a side, some player needs to have intimate relations with the Knowledge (the Planes) skill, else the weapon swingers will have to figure out what hurts said outsider the good ol' fashioned way.
Also, Planar Handbook (the 3.5 half-update to Manual of the Planes) is a good piece of reference material.
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For elemental based or at least themed adventures from dungeon I can think of a couple...
Diplomacy's main NPC's are Jann, Bright Mountain King is a good earth adventure, The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb is an obvious water/earth overlap, Seekers of the Silver Forge is an aquatic adventure, Vlindarian's Vault is on the Plane of Fire.
For Air either the Whispering Cairn or a Gathering of Winds are both set in an Air Themed Dungeon complex.
--Vrock Garden
You might think about posting this in the Dungeon magazine forums...
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You might think about posting this in the Dungeon magazine forums...
Doh! I didn't even think of that for some reason ... I just spend all my time over here, I guess.
I want to say "thank you" to the excellent notes about planar travel (and I'll look for that Planar Handbook; my FLGS has a good-sized "used books" section) and the advice about particular adventures.
I'm off to post in the other forums!