Yesterday I described the components of Planar Trappings: ‘manifestation building blocks’, ‘trait manifestations’, and ‘sample planes’.
Since planes are described using traits, and traits have manifestations built from common blocks, I’m starting there.
Existing Art
First, let’s look at the references I’m working from.
Manual of the Planes from Wizards of the Coast (the 3e version) has traits with three general types.
- Elemental traits are mostly binary: a plane is fire dominant, or not.
- Energy traits and alignment traits are generally three-state: basically like the prime plane, minor dominant, or major dominant.
- Other traits — gravity, time, shape and size, morphic, and magic — have more varied options.
Classic Play: Book of the Planes from Mongoose Publishing expands on this. Classic Play: Book of the Planes ranks traits from 0 to 20 or from -10 to +10. I like the increased granularity at first, but later decided it was too much. On the other hand, it’s wonderful for giving examples of what larger traits can look like.
Portals & Planes from Fantasy Flight Game (now EDGE Games) hits the sweet spot for me. It expands on the list of traits, and provides a five-grade system for the trait manifestations. I’ll want to emulate that, and will be using some of their manifestations as starting points.
Trait Manifestation Structure
In Portals & Planes, each trait has several possible manifestations. These manifestations have a consistent structure and presentation. Some traits have unique manifestations, but some traits have manifestations that are much like manifestations of other traits.
All traits have five grades. I’m still working up how I want to characterize the grades, but I’m starting with:
- Faint, which is noticeable but will not particularly affect PCs.
- Light, which can have some minor benefit or detriment, but is easily mitigated or avoided.
- Medium, which can be more significant: more inconvenient, or harder to avoid.
- Heavy, which even if generally positive, can be troublesome.
- Overwhelming, which can be a serious problem even if it is desirable.
(Names are from the book, I’m just trying to describe them.)
Nik suggested an alternate interpretation. I like this interpretation also, since it illustrates how much effect is has on the environment. I’d focused on the effect of the manifestation on PCs.
- Faint, ambient effect on the environment.
- Light, minor effect on the environment.
- Medium, significant effect on the environment.
- Heavy, major component of the environment.
- Overwhelming, the environment.
Hmm. Actually, Ravenloft curses severity looks even closer to what I have in mind. Even if the words are wrong for this purpose. I especially like that the Ravenloft curse severity descriptions suggest the size of the mechanical effect.
- Embarrassing, sometimes cosmetic only.
- Frustrating, interferes with the victim’s life. Can be cosmetic to the point it causes problems (but can be hidden), or changes behavior, or the like.
- Troublesome, does not directly harm the victim but causes great inconvenience.
- Dangerous, can harm the victim in some circumstances. Changes not only behavior, but lifestyle.
- Lethal, basically ruins the victim’s life. Can actually cause death, or make the victim wish for death.
The words are basically wrong for my purpose, but the examples for each severity give solid guidelines for manifestation grades.
My Takeaways
Each manifestation will have five grades, with some guidelines for how severely they affect creatures. Or at least, PCs; locals probably are inured to them.
Sample Manifestation Building Blocks
I’ll use a few simple examples, taken almost directly out of Portals & Planes.
Obstructed Vision
The Cold trait in Powers & Planes has a ‘Blizzard Conditions’ manifestation. This manifestation applies increasing degrees of concealment at shorter and shorter distances.
| Grade | 1/4 (10%) | 1/2 (20%) | 3/4 (40%) | 9/10 (50%) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Faint | 101+ ft. | ||||
| Light | 60-100 ft. | 101+ ft. | |||
| Medium | 21-40 ft. | 41-80 ft. | 81-150 ft. | 150+ ft. | |
| Heavy | 0-20 ft. | 21-40 ft. | 41-80 ft. | 81-150 ft. | 150+ ft |
| Overwhelming | 0-4 ft. | 5-10 ft. | 21-40 ft. | 41-60 ft. | 60+ ft. |
(Concealment rules changed between 3e and 3.5; 3.5 simplified things.)
This is listed specifically under the Cold trait, but I can imagine it working for other traits. Off the top of my head…
- Chaos can have fluctuations in the air (think like heat shimmer, writ large) that make distance viewing useless.
- Darkness suppresses light, obviously.
- Fire can of course can have clouds of ash.
- Light can be blinding; have you ever had trouble seeing the other side of a brightly-lit room?
- Life can have dense living things — plants, clouds of insects, or what have you — that can obstruct vision.
Metamagic
Magic is a wonderful source of planar differentiation. Metamagic can be a very easy way to manifest a trait. It can be that all magic of a certain type gains a certain amount of metamagic. Depending on circumstances, this can be good… or it can be bad. A surprise widened fireball, for example, can absolutely ruin someone’s day.
That’s even before taking into account negative metamagics that reduce a spell’s efficacy. Imagine finding a fiery plane that suppresses abjuration magic, applying the Fleeting Spell metamagic. Instead of protection from energy or resist energy lasting 10 minutes per level, it lasts 1 round per 5 levels.
That… would suck.
I can imagine this one would work along the lines of “metamagic takes effect unless caster prevents it”. If not known, it happens automatically. If known, a caster can make a check to cast normally.
The simplest approach here can be
| Grade | Metamagic | DC to Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Faint | +1 or -1 | 5 + spell level |
| Light | +2 or -2 | 10 + spell level |
| Medium | +3 or -3 | 15 + spell level |
| Heavy | +4 or -4 | 20 + 2 * spell level |
| Overwhelming | +5 or -5 | 25 + 3 * spell level |
The ‘metamagic’ column indicates how many levels of metamagic are applied to each spell cast that meets criteria.
Closing Comments
There are common elements that can be used as trait manifestations. I have provided only a couple examples here, and they’ll need refinement, but I hope they show where I’m going.
How to apply these building blocks will be a topic for another post.