My and a friend are developing on original campaign setting, and are toying with the idea of changing how the planar cosmology works. This campaign setting's also for E6 games, so that limits most planar adventuring anyhow, but the question remains - in terms of game mechanics, what abilities / spells available to characters of 6th level and below would need modification if the planar cosmology was completely rewritten?
what is an E6 game ? I doubt much will have to be rewritten, flavourwise more than mechanically I suppose. it has more to do with the concept of your cosmology than the actual planes, most spells would only be adapted flavourwise
I've been working on a setting for an E6 game in my spare time, and have some cosmology ideas hashed out.
The basics ideas are thus:
- Outer Planes: These are based on sentience, belief, etc. It's where the "soul" or "mind" goes when the body dies (well, unless it gets trapped of course). This is why the gods exist here (highest form of sentience), and why they are based on alignments.
- Inner Planes: These are the basic building blocks of existence (elements). Any sentient creatures here run mostly on instinct (unless they are from another plane and/or taking advantage of the physical aspects of the realm).
- Planes of Existence: This is where life and death happens. Life flows from the Positive Energy plane on one end, to the Negative Energy plane on the other, like this:
Negative Energy <- Shadow <- Material <- Nature <- Positive Energy
- Ethereal and Astral: The Ethereal plane contains the planes of existence and inner planes. Each realm is just another section of that plane, although the part that overlaps the Material plane is just a sort of "ghost world".
The Astral is where the outer planes reside, and travel to and through each of the realms in the outer planes means traveling through the astral.
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What makes this fit E6 better is that all the planes are essentially rubbing up against each other. The Material plane exists at the center, as sort of the "result" or culmination of everything put together.
This means there are places in the Material plane, where the "idea" of what the other planes are are so strong/similar, that travel between the planes is as simple as walking.
So, deep in an ancient forest untouched by civilization, a part of the forest actually exists in both the Material and Nature planes at the same time, allowing things to walk in and out.
Same for the Shadow plane, and the realm of the dead.
This allows for things like Greek mythology, that Hel was an actual place deep underground, where the souls of those who've died are collected by Hades. This would be the place where souls go before they travel to the outer planes (unless they never held to strong a belief in any particular philosophy, or maybe they are trapped).
The dead need to be blessed by a ritual (burial, burning, placed in a tomb, etc) to prevent ghosts (the dead residing in the shadow/ethereal) from inhabiting them to terrorize or accidentally injure the living.
The elemental planes might be accessed through a volcano erupting, deep in an ocean or the earth, or in the middle of a storm or hurricane.
Particular planes of belief might be accessed at a church or holy site during a particularly strong congregation by like-minded people (perhaps a mass pilgrimage at a specific occasion might cause this).
Basically, you don't need to worry so much about spells to travel, and treat it more like rituals, with maybe some magic to help you survive the event (especially for the elements).
what is an E6 game?
It's quite simple actually. Play regular D&D (or Pathfinder) and just cap levels at 6th. Continued experience gives you only feats, not levels.
There are some websites and some threads over at ENWorld (and RPGNet I think), that talk about the reasons for doing this, and the impact on gamestyle. If you type E6 into Google I think you can find a PDF of the "rules" someplace.
Basically, it makes it so the disparity between someone being "the best" at something and someone who is "the worst" at something isn't quite as big. It solves the problem of making an encounter to challenge the guy who is best at something, and have that encounter basically tear through anyone else.
It makes the d20 roll more important, even at the highest levels.
It keeps the Heroes closer to the realistic norms of a person (there's a great article that details how in d20, the "best" normal person is 5th level, since that's all you need for skill and ability checks to do anything that is humanly possible).
Ultimately, I feel it's meant to be played more like you would play a Supers game, where you pick the level of power you want (in this case E6), and play your adventures at that level.
Spiderman or Hercules, they never really "leveled".. they just adventured.
E6 creates that kind of feel.
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It does limit what spells you'll know. Raise Dead is a 5th level spell (9th caster level in regular D&D). So you need to account for things like bringing someone back from the dead in a game that barely reaches 3rd level spells.
My cosmology allows for going into Hel and bringing someone back, simply by going to the right place and conquering the obstacles. That's how E6 might affect it.
Haha, my "planar experimentation" is going to be a little different.
Basically, there are no planes. There's the real world, and then there's a "spirit world" parallel to ours where magical creatures reside - at some points they intersect, allowing the worlds to spill into each other a bit, but otherwise, that's all there is to planes.
Also, raising people from the dead will be more or less impossible. The rules for death will change to accommodate this.
Interesting concept, radical changes though..
Spirit world sounds a bit generic still, personally I like the idea of a dream realm, which might or might not be the spirit world.
You will not need much more than that I think, basically you can assume everything otherworldy has a place in the spiritworld.
You can divide it into realms of powerful spirits that rule those realms, like gods, but no need to further distinguish.
You might also add a shadowlands or nightmare realm, having a dark and light side usually works well in D&D ^_^
Ha, well, it's kind of an oversimplification... it's not exactly a different world, but more like the normal world viewed from a different angle. "World of Dreams" works as a name for it as well.
The fact of the matter is, though, any spell, creature, or mechanic that relies on plane-shifting is going to have to get retooled, and I want to know which ones...