I’m reading the new Manual of the Planes and enjoying it a lot. I’m really the target audience for this one – I have every Planescape product I could ever get my hands on, and I have always loved this part of D&D. When 3e loosened up on the Planescape model I was ok with it (except for the fomorians – seriously, who thinks fomorians are cooler than modrons?) because things had been left intentionally fuzzy. You could still do Planescape if you wanted, but if you wanted the drunken cosmology of the Forgotten Realms, that was an option too.
4e has come in with a more concrete cosmology that’s a bit less out there, but it also had the promise of making the planes a valid avenue for play. Since this was something I loved about Planescape – that a planar campaign could start at level 1 – I was curious to see that promise delivered on. Now that the MoP is out, it doesn’t quite deliver what I expected, but what it does deliver is enough to make me content.
So, first and foremost you basically get enough Sigil that if you already have Planescape in your head, you’re good to go. I’m not sure how that entire section reads to someone who’s not a Planescape fan but I was happy for the nod, especially compared to the passing treatment it got in the 3e MoP.
Beyond that there seems to be a general assumption of progression that you can start adventuring in the Feywild and Shadowfell reasonably early on, and that Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea open up in Paragon play (with the caveat that all planes are available as one-offs). This is not a bad model, and they definitely have made the Feywild and Shadowfell vastly more interesting to me in this book, but I’m glad this guideline seems to be loose rather than an absolute underpinning.
Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea are full of neat stuff, which is what I would expect. Lots of useful and fun seeds. They’re fun to read and I have only so much to add (except that I’m trying to figure out why the illustration on page 95 looks so familiar).
The mechanical material is nice, but without too many surprises. A nice monster section, with a heavy emphasis on devils and demons, and a nice mix of classics (Dispater!, the Astral Behemoth), Planescape stuff (Keepers, Bladelings) with a few new additions like the demon lord Graz’zt . The levels skew high (Graz’zt is level 32) but that is no surprise, and it nicely fills out some gaps in the monster manual. Plus, as a bonus they offer the information to make Bladelings a playable race.
The Paragon paths are a little less exciting than I’d hoped, mostly because they have a little bit less flexibility than I look for. It’s basically one new Paragon Path per class, with warlocks & wizards smooshed together and rangers getting the hose unless they happen to be eladrin. These paths really showcase some of the real strengths and weaknesses of the Paragon path system. The strengths are that some of them are interesting and flavorful, but the weaknesses are that these are broadly flavorful in a way that makes one ask “Why can only fighters be doomguard?”
The rituals are mostly utilitarian in that they’re all the things you’d want to have in play for a planar game. They do their job, but with no real surprises, except perhaps for the welcome return of Rope Trick.
The magic items are fun, with a heavy emphasis on elemental and teleportation effects. Flipping through them looking for the big red flag (which is to say: encounter powers) the armors ended up worrying me. Driftmetal Armor grants resistance to psychic and radiant and also has a teleportation encounter power, and is only mitigated by the fact that it’s limited to crappy armor types (Chain & Scale). On the other hand, Feytouched armor is basically “Rogues make you dead” armor. Comes in leather and hide, grants a bonus to initiative, and as an encounter power it makes you invisible until the end of your next turn (though thankfully it is a standard action, so there’s a little mitigation). After those, I admit everything else looked much better, with a few stand outes. There are some very clever orbs that mess with teleportation and the welcome presence of Githyanki Silver Swords. There’s also a little more rogue love in the form of shadowstrike weapons, and an unfortunately named “loadstone” stands out a little. Round it all out with planar vehicles, like spelljammers and astral skiffs, and it’s a fun collection.
The overall quality of the content is quite high, with lots of useful, playable seeds. There are some nice easter eggs (The Isle of Dread is in the Feywild!) which are good to see. More importantly, there are only a few occasions where I feel like I’m being told about someone else’s game rather than being given material for mine. That’s always my big fear with setting books, so I breathed a sigh of relief at that one.
If I were to really sit down and try to put my finger on this book in the context of other planar material, what I think stands out most is the lack of dangling threads. One of the strengths (or weaknesses) of Planescape was a design that embraced some really whacked-out stuff, and which allowed for huge, impossible things to get dropped in places with no explanation and with an expectation that you woudl just roll with it. This new MoP has much less of that (and, in fact, quietly provides answers for a great many questions that Planescape left open) and it’s a double edged blade. The cosmology has fewer moving parts these days, and everything makes more sense, while still leaving room for weirdness. That’s pretty cool, but the tradeoff is that the planes no longer feel that big. They are finite and knowable, at least comparatively. I really don’t know how I feel about that – on one hand I miss the grander sweep of things, but on the other I really dig how well this syncs with the 30 level model and creates something the players can really sink their teeth into and own.
I think it really reflects a valuable lesson from Exalted, that the thing which will determine if your characters are truly world-shaking badasses is how the rest of the world is put together. Despite my long standing Planescape love, I suspect it’s a change for the better. And without a unified artistic vision of the kind Planescape had, I suspect it’s also an absolutely necessary change.
I’m pretty happy with it as a whole, so I leave with a few random thoughts:
- The Gnomes, Halflings and Dark Ones are all one race through different filters theory remains strong. In my heart, Dark Ones == Birthright Halflings.
- There are only two cities with maps in the book (The City of Brass in elemental chaos and Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell) which has the effect of making me zero in on them as places to use as the hub or starting point of a campaign. There are interesting places in the Feywild and the Astral Sea, but the lack of maps means I think of them as places to visit, not centers of play. It’s really crazy how powerful a good map can be.
- Man, if you are a Warlock and want to flesh out the details of your pact, this book is like a giant candy shop.
- Gith. All kinds.
- There is a nice emphasis on describing powerful bad guys in terms of how they can impact your whole campaign. The advice tends to be repetitive (face their cultists, then their servants, then their lieutenants, then the big bad) but it’s nice to see it given attention.
- The prospect of doing a “The Lies of Locke Lamora” game based in Gloomwrought will not leave my head. I have already started naming the streets.
- The Air Archons look like they will be incredibly fun to throw into a fight, and I think they’re my favorite monster in the book.
- The Astral Dreadnaught is cool and all, but as far as I can tell they best strategy for beating one is “Get swallowed” since it seems like you can pretty much attack the thing with impunity once you’re inside. Easily tweaked to fix, but a little funny.
- Unlike the Gloomwrought and City of Brass maps, the map of the nine hells is wasted space. It’s technically lovely – no slight to the cartographer – but it is neither useful nor inspiring. I wish the space had been used for almost anything else.
- Man, someone likes Graz’zt. His monster entry is 4 pages long, twice as long as Dispater or Baphomet. This isn’t a bad thing – he’s a little blandly evil but nothing too bad – but it leaves me wondering if he’s supposed to be a signature bad guy or what.
- Lots of nice Raven Queen tidbits throughout, though the story that she took the death slot from Nerull the Reaper is kind of funny and kind of, “er, what?”
- Tytherion, the realm of eternal night, home of Tiamat and Zehir is a bit too close to “Tritherion” for my tastes.
- The Astral Sea section makes a big deal about how everything important in the astral sea has been claimed by someone, but then about a third of the realms presented are unclaimed. I actually like that ratio, but it raised eyebrows as I read.
- Just a general shout out – the art in this one was really solid and fun, with a number of standout pieces, especialy among the chapter frontspieces. After the uneven art in Martial Power, that was welcome. I think the Shadowfell fronstpiece, while maybe not my favorite in the book, deserves points for managing to sell me on the Shadowfell as a cool place just by making me look at it differently..
- Baba Yaga’s in the Feywild, and that pleases me to no end.
- I apparently need to remember that Astral Stalkers are ‘Abominations’ to find them in the MM.
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