Summary

  • Planar effects in D&D guide add intrigue to adventures, affecting characters in unique ways.
  • Effects range from immunity to hazards to transforming into creatures based on actions in specific planes.
  • Players must consider effects' impact on gameplay when planning planar expeditions.

The Dungeons & Dragons multiverse is vast, with each plane offering unique environments that affect travelers in unexpected ways. The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide introduced planar effects that add intrigue, danger, and flavor to adventures, shaping how characters navigate these otherworldly realms.

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From beneficial boosts to hazardous conditions, these effects create encounters that will stay in players' memories while encouraging creative problem-solving. Keep in mind that the most troublesome effects target players that stay too long in a given plane, so if you are planning a planar expedition, be sure to keep these effects in mind.

7 Arcadian Vitality

Feels Good To Be At Peace

Spring Festival by Ralph Horsley

Arcadia is a plane of lawful goodness, where the four Storm Kings keep the order and serenity that represents their realm. Visitors to this plane gain immunity to the frightened and poisoned conditions, since their health is bolstered to new limits.

While this effect is thematically appropriate, there is not much you can do with it while in Arcadia or somewhere influenced by it. If you have a build that relies on poison, for example, keep in mind that the denizens of Arcadia are likely immune to it as much as you are while there.

6 Blessed Beneficence

Bathe In The Light Of Celestia

Mount Celestia by Aleksi Briclot

Mount Celestia is a plane with an impossibly large mountain at its center, at the top of which shines a light of soothing brightness. Creatures that feel this light are under the constant effect of the Bless spell, and taking a long rest under it has the same benefit as the Lesser Restoration spell.

Being under the constant influence of the Bless spell is powerful indeed, but unless you are somehow facing a fiend or an undead, everyone else in Celestia has the same effect. This plane could be a great place to lure the final fight of an adventure, since that evil lich won't be able to get the Bless benefit your party gets.

5 Acheronian Bloodlust

Time For Slaughter

Shadowfell by Julian Kok

Acheron is a strange plane, made up of geometrical shapes the size of planets with constant battles being fought on top of them. The armies are made up of ghosts, souls of dead soldiers that have long forgotten what they were fighting for, and only know how to follow orders.

As a place of constant, unrelenting battles, the plane rewards those who bathe in the blood of their enemies. Should you reduce a creature to zero hit points, you would then gain half your hit point maximum as temporary hit points, an ideal boon for a place filled with battles.

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It isn’t clear if the Acheronian Bloodlust can affect the ghosts that are constantly fighting there. We hope it doesn’t, otherwise they could end up becoming mountains of health at the end of the day, becoming a slog to kill should the players need to fight them at some point.

4 Getting Turned Into A Beast

Be Careful What You Slay In The Beastlands

Art by Axel Defois

Players won't always get along with the locals of any given plane, with some being more prone to violence than others. That could turn against them in the Beastlands, since there is a high price to pay should a visitor slay a beast native to the plane.

That price is being turned into the beast that they killed, but only if they fail a fairly easy Charisma saving throw. They can repeat that saving throw after every long rest, but should they fail three times in a row, they stay as the beast until a spell like Remove Curse is cast on them.

3 Winds Of Pandemonium

Exhausting Winds

Art by Chris Rallis

Traveling through the plain of Pandemonium is supposed to be a grueling experience, but it can be somewhat hard to roleplay. The planar effect of the winds of Pandemonium can certainly help players understand how bad it is to traverse those winds, since they can gain a level of exhaustion for each hour they spend in that place.

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The exhaustion can only go up to level three in this way, but long resting in Pandemonium won’t reduce it, at least not when still being assailed by the howling winds. Players will need to find shelter to properly rest, or leave the plane as soon as they can.

2 Gehennan Cruelty

Hard To Help Each Other

Avernus by Kent Davis

When players think about the lower planes, they usually think about the demonic Abyss or the devilish Nine Hells, but there are other evil places beyond them. Gehenna is one such place, a plane that brings the worst out of people even when they don’t come across a single fiend.

The planar effect in play here, Gehennan Cruelty, makes it hard for players to help each other, having to pass a Charisma saving throw every time they cast a spell. The wording is odd in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, but we understand it as needing to roll the Charisma check whenever you try to cast a beneficial spell on someone else, not on every single spell cast.

1 Plane Of Doom

Exhausted Into A Larva

Art by Irina Nordsol

Many planar travels might be dangerous, but if there is one place you don’t want to stay long, it is Hades. Every long rest there will force you to do a Wisdom saving throw, gaining an exhaustion level if you fail; somehow, that isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is that, not only can you not remove this exhaustion while in Hades, you don’t die when you reach the sixth level of exhaustion. Instead, you get transformed into a larva, becoming a permanent denizen of the lower planes and, most likely, losing your character forever.

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