What Are Some Good Encounters for Different Planes? - OG Myth-Weavers

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What Are Some Good Encounters for Different Planes?

   
What Are Some Good Encounters for Different Planes?

I am going to be planning a 5th Level adventure for my group and we are going to be plane hopping a bit. We are going to be using Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. I read about the Sigil in the 3rd edition and wanted our characters to go their. Not sure what type of encounters they could face trying to get back to the material plane. Any suggestions?

Your first problem is that Outsiders are, in general, much stronger than Material Plane creatures (with a few exceptions). The CRs will climb rather quickly, and your party will likely find themselves outmatched by most possible encounters.

There is the option for fiendish versions of normal creatures, but that may seem like a cop-out.

Some encounters might be with the planes themselves; after all, not all encounters (or PC deaths) involve combat.


If you want some cannon fodder to throw at them, there are an infinite number of demons available to you. Just stat something up that performs similar to a Material Plane creature, give it a funky name, and sic it on your players.

Trying to get back to the material plane is tricky, sigil is in the outer planes which means that it is cointerminous to the astral plane, centrally located in the outlands, and in the city spellcasting is almost completely suppressed as a feature of the plane itself. once you get to the astral plane, the trouble is even more apparent as it is nearly featureless and everything but time is subjective to the observer, once there you are looking for the place where the plane of shadow and the ethereal plane overlap it, because these are only attached to material planes. Whether or not they are attached to your ORIGINAL material plane is another story.

The astral plane is (cities aside) completely devoid of food, water, and land so make sure your party is prepared to go when they have managed to cheese off all the locals and the lady of pain is looking for blood

Or just hurl dretches and quasits at them. CR 3 monsters are pretty easy for a smart 5th level group to handle.

You could also slap the fiendish template on things and just give them completely new fluff descriptions. Unless your players are reading over your shoulder, they should have a pretty hard time figuring out just what you did.\

If you want to do something unique, arm some quasits or imps with bows and describe them as fallen cupids. I did that once. It was fun.

Sigil is a slightly whacky urban environment, so anything that the characters could run into in any other city, they can also run into in Sigil, in addition, they can also run into any sort of intelligent outsider.

Make sure that you take full advantage of the weirdness. Have angels and demons and far-out chaos guys hanging out in the same place. Make sure, too that your players know that fighting is not necessarily the answer to all (or any) of their problems. If they end up in the outer planes, set up some encounters with petitioners (those deceased that have come to their afterlife). Just, be sure that the characters have some interesting ways to do stuff and interact with.

Also, do not be afraid to make up your own critters, or to slightly reflavor different types of critters to fit your immediate needs. A troll or an umber hulk works just as well as a lesser demon, hobgoblins make fine minor devils, and so on.

A trip to Ysgard might be fun, if your characters are of that particular mentality. You'd be using a lot of class-advanced petitioners, but in the worst case scenario, the party ends up on the losing side and gets a few jokes made at their expense at the evening feast.

Unless the whole "come back to life for feasting and another day of battle" only applies to the petitioners, in which case that would NOT be a good place for them to visit.

There are several "playable" outside races which could fit right in. Check out the Manual of the Planes and Planar Handbook. Spikers, Shadowswyfts, Neraphim, Bariurs, Aasimars, Tieflings, and other planetouched (Genasi of Faerun, those from Fiend Folio, etc) can all be fairly low-level. Even things like Githyanki and Githzerai, Azers, etc could work well. Then you can just put weird and wacky folk there too. Araneae, Barghests, Centaurs, young Dragons, Blink Dogs, Doppelgangers, Hags, Harpies and Hell Hounds, Ogres, weirdo magical beasts like Krenshars - or how about a Sphinx? - odd outsiders like Mephits and Magmin, or Salamanders, or even just playable races from other settings (e.g. Warforged/Changelings/Shifters). These are all CR5 and lower, and perfectly acceptable in somewhere like Sigil. Most of those are MM, too; if you crack open some of the other books, I'm sure you can find even more unusual stuff.

Perhaps turn your game from 5th level to 15th level ... then you can bring them up against some of the "big" stuff





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