Monday, February 8, 2010

It looks Plane Shifty to me

OK… (Sound of DM rolling up his sleeves.)

'Plane shift' is another useful but flawed spell.

Eolar can only cast the 5th level spell 4 times per day.
It can carry up to 8 people per use to another/different dimension.
(It doesn't mention size constraints, so let's just assume (for now) that it doesn't matter...)

Eolar has to travel with the group transported so ends up in a similar predicament as Bodush.
Because he has to go backwards and forwards, he can only transport 14 people per day. Therefore it would take him two days just to get the whole Party to the other dimension.

And that’s IF he reappears anywhere near the remainder of the Party.)

'Plane shift' takes you safely into another dimension but is quite appalling at getting close to your intended location.

You will end up between 5 and 500 miles away from where you want to be!

Now it gets even more interesting…

It would take Eolar another two days to transfer everyone back to ‘our’ dimension AND the distance calculator would have to be applied again.

The Party would on average be about 250miles from target and you would probably end up in the sea again!

(You could in theory end up 1000 miles from Estaban's mansion!)

The real clincher though is that whatever happens, Eolar’s spell would be certain to split up the Party (by hundreds of miles!)

So in conclusion:

You do NOT want to split up the Party regardless of mental commands. As a DM it would be unfair of me to kill the characters piecemeal rather than all in one go.
;)

3 comments:

TieDye said...

The logic here is quite sound and Kirk makes a good point. It sounds like teleporting/plane-shifting is designed for short-distance/small party transportation when normal methods won't cut it; also, Sven's amazing dice rolling skills when it comes to spell-casting don't help the "plane-shift" argument, either.

The only question now is whether Kirk make the giants less sympathetic/more evil so that those of us with "good" alignments won't feel conflicted about murdering them?

Joebroesel said...

You are right that it takes a few trips since I can take 7 ppl/day (4 plane shifts get me there and back since I need one to get to the other plane and one to get back to the material plane).
Eolar would do the total trip for one group and then get the next, leaving the party perhaps close to Shalala until we are all back together.

And no, I can end up a maximum of 500miles off Shalala since it's not accumulative (so on average 250 miles). I would be within 500 miles of my target on the other plane (most likely near the Bastion of Law of St.Cuthbert on Abellio) which wouldn't matter as long as it's not hazardous.

It would mean splitting up the party but so would teleport. If both spellcasters take people we would be done in half the time with varying amounts of risk :)

Hedzor said...

That's assuming that your target on the 'Plane of Law' is precisely where Estaban's mansion is on the 'Prime-material plane'.

I'm not convinced this plane would be even remotely safe for the more 'Chaotic' amongst the Party.
;)

I'm also still not sure how you plan to get each group of seven together when they can theoretically be 1000 miles from each other each time you 'Plane-shift'.
(500 miles in opposite directions from the target point.)
:)