Longtime lurker here looking for some advice on a campaign setting I'm trying to flesh out based on the Create Demiplane spell.
The world of Golarion has some cataclysmic end - another Starfall-type event has utterly destroyed the entire planet. Luckily, a few powerful casters could see it coming and prepared by evacuating as many people as they could. The most powerful casters did not go to other planes, but opted instead to cast "Create Demiplane" in its greater or lesser version.
Hundreds of years have passed and now multiple generations have lived and died in these demiplanes originally made by the escaping casters.
I have a few questions about how to build this out while trying to keep in line with the rules. Assume the initial caster of the demiplane only gets 1 cast before the cataclysm hit and 200 years have passed.
1. How big are the demiplanes now and how many people are in them?
2. How do they get enough gold to expand the demiplane with Permanency?
3. How do they defend themselves from threats?
4. Which npc casters from the world of Golarion would be willing and able to make these demiplanes?
5. Do you have any cool ideas for a demiplane created in this way that I might want to include in the world?
6. Anything else to add, maybe flavor-wise?
Here are some of my thoughts on the above 5 questions:
1. How big are the demiplanes now and how many people are in them?
While the initial exodus only allowed a small group of people to survive in the demiplane (max 20 assuming required sustenance satisfied through bountiful trait), over time the first group recruited other survivors who managed to escape the cataclysm by other means. So the pool of people potentially living there could have grown to be substantially larger than those who made it in on day one. Given that, the size of the demiplane is the limiting factor.
The demiplane volume starts out as 20 10-foot cubes. Then the starting group cobbles enough money together to craft a magic item of Create Demiplane, Greater that can cast 1/day, costing 90,000. This way the initial caster doesn't have to be around casting the spell every day. Now the limiting factor is cost of Permanency (around 22k). Since the group has a way of casting the spell every day, the limiting factor is now gold, leading us to...
2. How do they get enough gold to expand the demiplane with Permancy?
Function as a magic item foundry while making ample use of the Timeless trait and Time Stop? Become a bread basket through 2x time and bountiful and sell off the crops - but where do they sell them since Golarion is gone? Become interplanar mercenaries, how much money would that make?
3. How do they defend themselves from threats?
Since the demiplane is created in either the astral or ethereal plane, they have to worry about potential incursions from natives. This means a permanency on force wall around the whole thing and probably some other permanency spells like alarm. Any suggestions on other defenses from in-plane attackers?
Another vulnerability comes from anyone who wants to plane-shift in once they have a tuning fork attuned somehow to the plane(which should be difficult to obtain, but possible). Probably a kind of foyer demi-plane with golems and no magic, and maybe more.
Finally if they make enemies with anyone who has access to Limited Wish, mage's disjunction, Wish, or Miracle they are basically screwed if that person can find the demiplane in the astral/ethereal plane since those can destroy the plane (although as GM I'll probably rule that each disjunction/wish destroys one casting-worth size of the demiplane). Any way to defend against this?
4. Which npc casters from the world of Golarion would be willing and able to make these demiplanes?
I've been browsing lists of sufficiently highly leveled casters in the Golarion world and am seeing that most mages of that level are evil? I'd like to keep close the the Golarion world as the jumping off point and will make some custom high level NPCs to fit the bill, but feel like I'm missing something here. I'm hoping to have a distribution of alignments and several demi-plane communities. Obviously at least one is ruled by a lich, but there should be diversity.
5. Do you have any cool ideas or references for a demiplane created in this way that I might want to include in the world?
I've seen some great ideas from previous posts here and there with good suggestions, and would love to see more!
6. Anything else to add, maybe flavor-wise?
Maybe as the demiplane grows larger and individuals accrue wealth, they rent out the Create Demiplane magic item and make their own demiplane for housing with links the the original. Any other ideas on how a demiplane society would evolve over time?
Hespirus wrote: (max 20 assuming required sustenance satisfied through bountiful trait) The size for Greater Create Demiplane is 20 10-ft cubes per level. So if your CL is 20 that's four hundred 10-ft cubes with one casting and 400 people who can survive.
Hespirus wrote: 1. How big are the demiplanes now and how many people are in them? Let's say a 15th level Wizard escapes by casting Create Demiplane. They have an intelligence bonus high enough to gain two lv 8 spell slots per day, but no gold. Their first casting made a demiplane with a size equal to 150 10-ft cubes, and lasts for 15 days. With the second cast they gave it the bountiful feature to sustain 150 medium sized creatures with food and water.
So they'll have 27 Create Demiplane Spells up and running without relying on Permanency, and use the extra casting to improve upon one of the areas once every 15 days. The penniless Wizard can still sustain an area of 4050 10-ft cubes, feed an equal amount of medium sized creatures, and entertain their tenants by tweaking with gravity/shape/structure. They must spend 8 hours every day for this, but what else do they have going on, tbh.
If they had the money for a use of Permanency, it would be wiser to buy a Greater Metamagic Rod of Extend. For just 24,500 GP their sustainable space would double to 8100 10-ft cubes.
Hespirus wrote: 6. Anything else to add, maybe flavor-wise? About this:
Hespirus wrote: Hundreds of years have passed and now multiple generations have lived and died in these demiplanes originally made by the escaping casters. You don't make it to 7-9th level spells and allow something stupid like age to kill you. Those escaping casters should all be alive unless they have a philosophical aversion to prolonging their life, or they got killed.
Wonderstell wrote: The size for Greater Create Demiplane is 20 10-ft cubes per level. Hey thanks for pointing out my mistake on reading the spell! So it looks like it would be possible, RAR, to feed 8,100 people indefinitely as a single 15th level caster if they spend 8 hours/day doing so. Or, if the caster prefers to use an extend metamagic rod to sustain the original size rather than expand, they will have a lot more free time while still keeping 4050 people alive.
Wonderstell wrote: You don't make it to 7-9th level spells and allow something stupid like age to kill you. I agree that 15th+ caster without philosophical aversion to prolonging life could survive for that whole period, that is probably not true for all the other prime material plane refugees they took with them or gathered up from their larger scale exodus to other planes or something. Perhaps the original caster is still alive, while the people he took with him have had children, grown old, and died.
The next generation would grow up without ever having known what it was like to live in the prime material plane, and by the time the players come around it will have faded from the living memory of the common people (though perhaps not immortal/longlived casters).
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So the easiest answer if you can get Greater Create Demiplane is to create a demiplane that is Timeless with respect to magic. Timeless wrote: If a plane is timeless with respect to magic, any spell cast with a noninstantaneous duration is permanent until dispelled. Like, say, Create Demiplane. So you only need to make one demiplane permanent and cast every other spell on that plane. It will effectively become a keystone because if anyone ever manages to destroy that plane the duration on the other planes will probably run out instantly. Of course, as defenses you can basically just put any summon or spell you want since they last forever.
1. Assuming one cast a day, 200 ft by 200 ft times 365 days times 200 years... like 100 square miles? It's a good sized city, that's about it. You could probably do it faster with Miracle duplicating the spell (and skipping the casting time). That's not including any extra features you want to add. More casters would make it go faster.
2. No need for gold with a Timeless (magic) demiplane.
3. Trap planes, basically. Usually using dead magic planes. My favorite I've seen (or made, I forget) used objective directional gravity and an unsolvable, moving maze. So the whole plane was a floor to ceiling maze filled with golems who would move around the walls. The trick was that in the upper half of the room gravity went up and the only exit was a hidden trap door on the ceiling. Sprinkle in some fake portals to death planes and monsters to taste.
5&6. Honestly, every plane should be its own unique thing. There's probably an original plane where the survivors first settled in that's grown to some kind of hub but everything after that should be completely and utterly unique. Why would the Structure option exist if not for that exact reason? You can either pick the survivors and design a plane around them or pick a cool plane idea and figure out who would live there. Think of it like interior design, only with magic instantly making whatever you feel like. It's also mutable, maybe in a year you remove the desert and replace it with an ocean. And maybe there's trends, open concept no walled structures are the new hotness this year. Maybe last year it was only using wood for your plane. Stuff like that.
As for death, well, here's the rest of Timeless. Timeless wrote: On planes with this trait, time still passes, but the effects of time are diminished. How the timeless trait affects certain activities or conditions such as hunger, thirst, aging, the effects of poison, and healing varies from plane to plane. The danger of a timeless plane is that once an individual leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging occur retroactively. So no, nobody, caster or otherwise, need ever die of old age or lack of food, apparently. If they stay too long they might never be able to leave though, so potentially there's an elder class of people who live on this plane who are permanently stuck there because leaving would cause them to shrivel up from age, hunger, and thirst.
Oh I really like that Timeless would apply to casting Create Demiplane. This probably means that the hub demiplane would be Timeless. It also opens up all kinds of potential shenanigans for people who accidentally or maliciously cast spells of any duration, so there would have to be a magic police that is constantly running around dispelling those infinite-duration spells.
Or because there are so many shenanigans that could happen in a large city area with Timeless Magic, the caster rulers add the Impeded Magic to cut down on these kinds of magic disruptions. This would mean most people could not successfully cast their spells, but that higher level casters could cast whatever they want, given they can pass the DC 20+spell level check to overcome Impeded Magic. Even so, living in this area would be pretty risky for most people, since it would open them up to terrifying, permanent duration enchantments like Crime Wave or even just Charm Person. A determined 1st level sorcerer casting Charm Person 1/day would eventually overcome Impeded Magic, and could charm a lot of people over the course of their potentially unlimited lifespan.
I guess one way to prevent this kind of abuse would be to have the high level casters put Mind Blank and Protection from Spells on all the residents, thought that could become pretty annoying for the high level casters in charge. Another solution might be to cast Antimagic Field everywhere, though that could make the caster kind of vulnerable in their own hub plane.
Another advantage is that the area of the hub plane could be permanently protected from divination spells with Screen and Dimensional Lock.
Bob Bob Bob wrote: So no, nobody, caster or otherwise, need ever die of old age or lack of food, apparently. If they stay too long they might never be able to leave though, so potentially there's an elder class of people who live on this plane who are permanently stuck there because leaving would cause them to shrivel up from age, hunger, and thirst. I'm glad you pointed out that no one would age with the Timeless trait, because it brings up a problem with having kids. You could not bear children in this plane because nothing ages, so anyone who wanted kids would have to leave. And since you could only stay on the demiplane so long before leaving would age you into death, the society would probably be split between those who wanted to stay and live forever (but never leave), and those who want to have children (and give up eternal life).
Bob Bob Bob wrote: Think of it like interior design, only with magic instantly making whatever you feel like. It's also mutable, maybe in a year you remove the desert and replace it with an ocean. And maybe there's trends, open concept no walled structures are the new hotness this year. Maybe last year it was only using wood for your plane. Stuff like that. This honestly is exciting and just such an imagination-overload for me. It is going to take a while to flesh out some ideas for this, and I look forward to both taking the time to do so and hearing what ideas others may have.
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