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The time travel thread got me pondering this. So lets say you have 3 types of travel available . . .
1) Space travel: Not necessarily starships but the teleport range of spells this allows you to travel to various different places in space and at higher levels even other planets (which gets odd as there's a specific spell to do this but greater teleport does it too unless there's an errata I'm unaware of).
2) Time travel: Discouraged by most DM's and allows travel forward or backward in time but remain in the same spot. Sceptre of ages artifact is the encouraged means if you do do this.
3) Planar travel: You travel to various different planes e.g. earth, nirvanna, the abyss and generally seem to have some ability to specify where in those planes you arrive.
So where would you put dimensional travel that is you travel from one prime material plane to another prime material plane that can be anything from almost identical (the ruler of Mendev had coffee instead of orange juice this morning) to startlingly different (Aroden didn't die for example or humanity never evolved and the serpent people are the only inhabitants of Golarion or even have fundamentally different natural laws and the entire plane just appears to be a frothing sea of madness in the few moments before your obliterated). Would it be planar travel, have its own seperate series of spells for how different the reality your visiting is?
Alternate prime material planes can be accessed by the usual means of planar travel, though those are generally significantly different. The usual settings don't have infinite near-identical copies for very good reasons - you could go and collect a dozen copies of yourself as allies, or loot the same dungeon a dozen times if you weren't present in the alternate, or experiment as to the best way to defeat the BBEG.
You could characterize it as moving from one "cycle" of reality to another. Pathfinder's lore states that the universe resets over time, and new universe is born from the remnants of the old one. Traveling to a different cycle- one in the past or future- would technically be time travel, as you're merely traveling forward or back far enough for the universe to reset, but it would appear to be a totally new reality. Of course, this kind of magic- the ability to survive the end of the universe- is probably too high-power for any but the most ambitious and powerful PCs.
I'm sure with some tweaking and enough buildup and preparation, you could organize something that works for your group.
Essentially, dimensional travel is the same as planar travel, to me. You just head in different... directions. If you say the Material plane is in the center and the outer planes are far around it, the alternate material planes can be stacked on top and below.
I think that's how the Manual of the Planes in 3rd edition (or 3.5?) put it?
You could characterize it as moving from one "cycle" of reality to another. Pathfinder's lore states that the universe resets over time, and new universe is born from the remnants of the old one. Traveling to a different cycle- one in the past or future- would technically be time travel, as you're merely traveling forward or back far enough for the universe to reset, but it would appear to be a totally new reality. Of course, this kind of magic- the ability to survive the end of the universe- is probably too high-power for any but the most ambitious and powerful PCs.
I'm sure with some tweaking and enough buildup and preparation, you could organize something that works for your group.
Canonically Pharasma is the only remnant from the previous existence of the multiverse. And she's training her "daughter" to be the survivor for the next one. Apparently Pharasma has to go down with this multiverse since she is the progenitor of this one.
Imagine the universe being a pizza. The material plane is the small doughball in the center. The inner planes are the cheese, the toppings are demi-planes, and the crust is the outer planes. Imagine you are a bacteria on the bread. Getting from one place on the pizza to another is already quite hard, you need strong magic for that. Statistically, you are almost certain to forever remain where you started.
Now, it's possible there are many pizzas. Say the pizza shop made a bunch of pizzas, ready for delivery. What are they gonna do? Well, they'll stack them. So one material plane is directly aligned on top of the other, and the other, and the other. But they don't touch, otherwise you'd crush the pizzas and make a greasy mess. Horrible. So you stack them in boxes. Now maybe if you were lucky, you had a little fruit fly get stuck in a box, and it could pick you up from your doughball and bring you to a pepperoni. But as unlikely as that is, imagine getting from one douchball to another, which requires you hitching an unlikely ride, somehow escaping your box, somehow entering another box, and then luckily going back to another suitable landing location. Practically impossible. And who knows, the pizza in the new box might be different, it might have pineapples.
That's the typical D&D multiverse. Moving horizontally requires relatively high power magic. Moving vertically, though, is another ballgame completely, reserved for epic/mythic/deific level power.
I'm not sure it's clearly laid out for Golarion, though. If the world setting matters to you, don't take anything I said as Truth(TM). I'm not overly familiar with the specifics of Golarion. And if you are homebrewing, you do whatever the hell you want. Maybe there's just one reality. Maybe there are infinite realities, or any specific number between the two. Maybe only the material plane gets duplicates, maybe they all do. Maybe there are exactly 3 material planes, and suddenly your world is having a lot of problems from an unknown evil god, because it turns out his followers on one of the other material planes managed to gain unlikely supremacy and empower him, allowing him to finally intervene in your material plane even if he had no presence until then, forcing your world into some interdimensional crusades.
Regardless of how you go, traveling between dimensions should be out of reach for the "average" level 20 character. It's an extra difficulty, if at all possible, and you have to figure out how it can be overcome in your world, if it's possible at all. "No new dimension without destroying the existing one first" is totally legitimate.
So it seems like the consensus is that planar travel would cover it but you would probably need a mythic version of the spells to do it.
I'm not sure that any two people in this thread have actually agreed. Con-sensus? What's that word mean?
The way I see it (because this is really going into homebrew realm) is that each material plane is simply its own planet, an interplanetary teleport will take you there... as long as you know where you're going.
Your homebrew version might have its own spelljammers to make the trip the old fashioned way if your current world happens to be really high magic.
Given the theory of the multiverse those other planets would likely worship the same gods and be able to access the same inner and outer planes, but would they know them under the same names? Perhaps not, but largely due to differences in linguistics.
Well it all depends on the setting.
Alternate realities need not "copy" the whole thing. You could have a universe (multiverse?) where only some planes have alternate versions. Possibly just the material plane. Possibly a few more, the transitive planes, the inner planes.
Piercing the barrier could only be possible through arcane magic, and thus out of access to the gods. Or perhaps the nature of the gods means that they could not survive severing their tether to their followers. Perhaps there are other gods on the other side that don't want intrusion. Perhaps the alternate material planes are cut off from the outer planes, and overall all magic. The gods might not want to go where they will be powerless. Or quite possibly, all alternate material planes ARE accessible to the gods, and so there's no real "escape" possible. This last explanation just requires something else to explain why mortals can't just all meet up in other planes and/or hop back and forth. Or maybe they can?
So where would you put dimensional travel that is you travel from one prime material plane to another prime material plane that can be anything from almost identical (the ruler of Mendev had coffee instead of orange juice this morning) to startlingly different (Aroden didn't die for example or humanity never evolved and the serpent people are the only inhabitants of Golarion or even have fundamentally different natural laws and the entire plane just appears to be a frothing sea of madness in the few moments before your obliterated). Would it be planar travel, have its own seperate series of spells for how different the reality your visiting is?
There is a magic item that does precisely what you're asking about, The Well of Many Worlds. Of course it's random, though IMO it should be possible to develop an item, device and/or spell series that is controllable. I actually ran a campaign based around the concept of jumping between alternate universes. Where each one was a different d20 system. I wrote a bunch of rules regarding character creation, etc. As well as a brief explanation section for how travel between universes works. I drew inspiration from M-Theory, Time Bandits, Sliders, Dr. Who and I'm sure others. The following is an excerpt from my twisted worlds ruleset.
Traveling Between Worlds
There are many different methods that have been developed and discovered to allow a person to travel between different universes. Below is a short description of each method.
The Well of Many Worlds
This is a very powerful magic item, generally created by accident. It resembles a portable hole in all aspects, except that any object or person passing inside is shifted to another universe. In this other universe there generally is an identical item that could conceivably be used to return. However, if the item is moved at all (which generally is the case with usage). Then the destination changes.
These items are often an accidental form of travel and are not used intentionally except in emergencies.
Dimensional Holes
As universes drift, they sometimes collide resulting in a dimensional hole of sorts, temporarily linking the two together. Where these holes will form is random at best and the duration of these holes is usually similarly unpredictable, lasting anywhere from seconds to millennia. The real trick to using such a traveling method is finding the holes. A number of methods have been developed to find these holes, but they are generally only used by pilgrims and raiders since such travel can be difficult to track, especially when a short-lived hole is used.
Dimensional Rift Generators
This is the most common type of device used to travel between universes. Many different races and cultures, with varying degrees of accuracy have created many such devices. These device work by intentionally causing dimensional friction in the fabric of spacetime causing a temporary dimensional hole to form between the universes. The size of this hole varies with each device. However, the destination universe needs to be in contact with the departure universe. If the two universes are not in contact, then depending on the strength of the generator, one of two things will happen. Either a temporary hole forms to the void that exists between universes, or nothing happens at all, possibly resulting in damage of the device. Because of this, most sophisticated devices have fail-safes preventing the opening of such a hole.
Dimensional Vessels
These are craft that have built in Dimensional Rift Generators. These vehicles intentionally enter the void between universes to get from one place to another. This has several advantages. A large amount of material can be transported between worlds without needing to maintain a large hole that could cause serious damage to the fabric of spacetime. Additionally, this method allows travel to any universe regardless of distance or isolation from the departure universe. These ships come in as much a variety of shapes, sizes and purposes as the dimensional rift generators themselves.
The campaign intentionally had a "sliders" vibe as I gave the party a damaged portable dimensional rift generator early on in the campaign. Which they used to travel "randomly" between universes (It had a logic to it but the players had to use trial and error to figure out how it worked and it had a recharge period that conveniently lasted a single adventure).
There is a magic item that does precisely what you're asking about, The Well of Many Worlds. Of course it's random, though IMO it should be possible to develop an item, device and/or spell series that is controllable. I actually ran a campaign based around the concept of jumping between alternate universes. Where each one was a different d20 system. I wrote a bunch of rules regarding character creation, etc. As well as a brief explanation section for how travel between universes works. I drew inspiration from M-Theory, Time Bandits, Sliders, Dr. Who and I'm sure others. The following is an excerpt from my twisted worlds ruleset.
That's... terrible. The item, I mean. I really don't like it at all, and don't think something like that should be craftable and have a price tag. That's artifact-level power. It's also campaign breaking. PCs shouldn't be able to exit your game world without needing you to enable it for them. Especially in a one-way travel like this? If you go through, you can only go back as long as someone doesn't close it from the other side? At which point, you can /never/ go back home, since even if you found another, the destination is random? And precisely since the destination is random, there's literally no reason to go in there unless you are compromised (need to escape certain death), which in turn pretty much means that your sole means of returning will be in enemy hands.
Unless you want to get pedantic and point out that the wording doesn't specify that creatures can go through, only items. But even then, why? The only purpose I could think of would be to send away powerful artifacts that are too hard to destroy. Which in turn completely invalidates artifacts to anyone with the proper wealth. Again, utterly terrible.
That's... terrible. The item, I mean. I really don't like it at all, and don't think something like that should be craftable and have a price tag. That's artifact-level power. It's also campaign breaking. PCs shouldn't be able to exit your game world without needing you to enable it for them. Especially in a one-way travel like this? If you go through, you can only go back as long as someone doesn't close it from the other side? At which point, you can /never/ go back home, since even if you found another, the destination is random? And precisely since the destination is random, there's literally no reason to go in there unless you are compromised (need to escape certain death), which in turn pretty much means that your sole means of returning will be in enemy hands.
Unless you want to get pedantic and point out that the wording doesn't specify that creatures can go through, only items. But even then, why? The only purpose I could think of would be to send away powerful artifacts that are too hard to destroy. Which in turn completely invalidates artifacts to anyone with the proper wealth. Again, utterly terrible.
Yeah, since it says it functions like a portable hole I've assumed creatures can pass though it. I agree that its the sort of thing that should only be introduced into a campaign by the DM, either as an interesting side adventure or as the basis of a campaign.
On the plus side if a character makes one and the DM doesn't want to deal with parallel worlds they can state that it only goes to random planes, making it like a sort of random cubic gate. It's expensive enough that this shouldn't be as disruptive to the game since the characters likely already have access to plane shift at that point.
Yeah, since it says it functions like a portable hole I've assumed creatures can pass though it. I agree that its the sort of thing that should only be introduced into a campaign by the DM, either as an interesting side adventure or as the basis of a campaign.On the plus side if a character makes one and the DM doesn't want to deal with parallel worlds they can state that it only goes to random planes, making it like a sort of random cubic gate. It's expensive enough that this shouldn't be as disruptive to the game since the characters likely already have access to plane shift at that point.
The randomness of it is the core of the problem. While I don't agree that an item that just requires a level 9 spell and costs less than 100k should be able to cross to other dimensions, I particularily loathe the fact that it is random and that it resets. If the players mess with a cubic gate or anything else that sends them to another plane, then that can just be a fun side adventure as they try to find their way back. There is absolutely no way to return from a resetted Well of Many Worlds, unless you GM decides that there are very, very few alternate dimensions. Also, the description says that it looks like a portable hole, not that it works like one.
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We obviously have different ideas about what is broken and bad for games.
Why do you assume that you can 'never go home again' if the opening is closed? And why do you assume that throwing stuff in a random hole is a good way to get rid of artifacts?
Why should PCs need 'enabling' to leave the campaign world?Also, the Well isn't one-way.
It's two-way until someone folds it back up, at which point it resets and will, statistically, never re-open to the same location ever again.
Well of Many Worlds
Source Ultimate Equipment pg. 325, PRPG Core Rulebook pg. 532
Aura strong conjuration; CL 17th
Slot none; Price 82,000 gp; Weight —
Description
This strange, interdimensional device looks just like a portable hole. Anything placed within it is immediately cast to another world—a parallel world, another planet, or a different plane (chosen randomly). If the well is moved, it opens to a new plane (also randomly determined). It can be picked up, folded, or rolled, just as a portable hole can be. Objects from the world the well touches can come through the opening just as easily— it is a two-way portal.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, gate; Cost 41,000 gp
If something is moved to another plane or another planet, fine, there are spells for that, level 9 for planets and lower for planes (which is somewhat bizarre, come to think of it). If something is moved to a "parallel world", however... that's the problem. There's no published means to find your way back as far as I'm aware. And as stated in my previous post: there's not really much reason to travel to a random destination like this, it can very well be suicide (it doesn't state the destination needs to be safe, such as, say, the interplanetary teleportation spell). So you either need to be stupid, reckless, or desperate to use it. Assuming stupidity and recklessness kills off most adventurers before they get powerful enough to build such an item, that leaves desperation. And assuming desperation, that means leaving the Well itself into enemy hands.
As soon as the Well is moved, it is reset. And as every time it is set up, it determines a new destination randomly, it will never ever re-open a portal to the same "parallel world" (unless your GM decides there are only two parallel worlds). At this point, you aren't into a "Ok, I guess I'll put aside all of the material I had prepped for this campaign for a few sessions" situation anymore, but a "Ok, guess I can throw all of that into garbage" situation.
For artifacts, sending it to a parallel world that will never re-connect to your world again is pretty much destroying it. For a mere 82k.
Again, for a mere 82k, and a mere Gate spell and one feat, you can craft an item that grants you the power to travel to a "parallel world", a power nothing else in the game that I can recall does.
I see several errors in your previous post, but honestly they don't alter your conclusions and so the specific errors don't matter.
For better or for worse the item doesn't really give details on how to handle it's randomness (IOW it doesn't provide any tables, it just states that its random). Instead its left completely up to the DM. Any result the DM doesn't like they can easily veto. Maybe it doesn't affect artifacts because its not an artifact its self. Maybe it does work on them, but artifacts can't be sent to parallel worlds meaning its literally as effective as using the gate spell and tossing the artifact in.
On the other hand, if tossing an item into a well of many worlds is the same as destroying it, why wouldn't the same apply to PCs?
"Oh? you went to the parallel world and can't get back? That's fine, roll up a new character."
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As for that well of many worlds it sounds like something a DM made up for a sliders style campaign of jumping between worlds randomly looking for a way home.
@Meirril
There's a difference between travelling from one reality to another and escaping a cage. I can walk out of my home easily and if I have the key walk into it but if I were locked into a cell by police I couldn't just leave it.
@AVR
Most of the early posts said planar travel woudld do it.
As for that well of many worlds it sounds like something a DM made up for a sliders style campaign of jumping between worlds randomly looking for a way home.
maybe... though its possible its the other way around since the item has existed since '79, predating the tv show by almost 15 years.
Well of Many Worlds: This strange inter-dimensional device is exactly the
same in appearance as a portable hole. Anything placed within it is immediately
cast into another world ~ a parallel earth, another planet, or a
different plane at your option or by random determination. If the well is
moved, the random factor again comes into play. It can be picked up,
folded, etc. just as a portable hole. Note that things from the world the
well touches can come through the opening, just as easily as from the
initiating place.
If the item was an artifact, then it'd just fall into the "you brought this upon yourself" category, as with the Deck of Many Things. And some campaigns could center around it, and still be interesting. Quantum Leap was based around a guy randomly switching realities (or time, or whatever, I don't really remember).
I've got no problems with such an item existing, it's just the combination of it having an unparalleled ability, it being random, and it being craftable without any special restriction. The low cost is just bonus absurdity.
Quantum Leap had him jumping into different people in his past to fix some terrible mistake they made I think.
Yea, going into bodies of others in the past, with the guidance of his buddy from the future/present trying to figure out what he's gotta do, trying to right past wrongs. Each time was a random jump to an unknown location, and he had limited time to fix stuff if he wanted to catch the next jump, and he was hoping that every next jump would be the jump home. Iirc.
I don't recall how they conceived the greater picture world lore-wise, though: is there just one reality/dimension? How does changing the past change the present?
I don't recall how they conceived the greater picture world lore-wise, though: is there just one reality/dimension? How does changing the past change the present?
It was simplified time travel. Change something in the past and it has an immediate effect on the future. Literal spoilers on the show,
Brutal, lol.