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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Chapter 3: Age of Lost Omens / The Planes

Planar Stat Blocks

Source GM Core pg. 174 2.0
Each of the planes listed in the following pages includes a short stat block of key information. The plane's type—whether it's a plane, dimension, or demiplane—appears in the stat block's heading, followed by the traits that define that plane. The following entries also provide important information about each plane.

Category: This indicates whether the plane is an Inner Plane, Outer Plane, Transitive Plane, or dimension.

Divinities: A list of all of the deities, demigods, and other powers that call this realm their home.

Native Inhabitants: A sample of typical inhabitants of the plane. Also listed are the plane's shades, the souls of dead mortals who have been judged and sent on to whichever plane reflects the life they led. More information on shades can be found in Monster Core.

Inner Sphere Planes

Source GM Core pg. 174 2.0
The planes of the Inner Sphere form the heart of the cosmos. They’re the home of mortal life, the focus of divine attention, the source of mortal souls, and the origin point of the great cycle of quintessence that fuels the motions and stability of reality itself. Arranged in a nested series of shells, like layers of an onion, the planes of the Inner Sphere include, from outer to inner: the elemental planes of fire, earth, metal, water, wood, and air; the mortal galaxies of the Universe; and at the very core of this cosmological ensemble, the raw forces of creation and destruction of Creation’s Forge and the Void overlap the Universe.

Enhanced and Impeded Magic

Some particularly potent areas can enhance magic related to the nature of the plane or impede magic inimical to it. For instance, a nexus of void energy in the Void might enhance void magic, and the unholy majesty of an archdevil's throne room might impede holy magic.

Enhanced Magic: Anyone Casting a Spell with the enhanced trait gains a +1 circumstance bonus to their spell DC or spell attack roll with that spell.

Impeded Magic: A character who Casts a Spell or activates an item with the specified trait must succeed at a DC 6 flat check or the spell or activation is disrupted

Transitive Planes

Source GM Core pg. 177 2.0
At a minimum, each Transitive Plane coexists with one or more other planes, a relationship oversimplified by stating that Transitive Planes are just used to get from one plane to another. The mists of the Ethereal Plane overlap the planes of the Inner Sphere, while the Astral Plane borders every other plane in existence like the backstage of the cosmos. Bright and dark mirrors of the Universe, the First World and the Netherworld overlap the mortal world, albeit often in bizarre ways such that a short distance in one might be a vast gulf in the other. The daring, wise, or desperate can utilize these planes to bypass barriers in the Universe or rapidly cross vast distances through much swifter travel.

Outer Sphere Planes

Source GM Core pg. 178 2.0
The planes of the Outer Sphere are the manifest realms of philosophy: good and evil, order and change, faith, and their admixtures, populated by celestials, fiends, monitors, and others who promote these moral concepts. These planes are the backdrop upon which the mortal afterlife reaches its apparent conclusion, and the end destination of the River of Souls. The Outer Planes are regions of stability adrift in the raw, chaotic quintessence of the primordial Maelstrom, its tides forever gnawing at their edges even as mortal souls sustain them. The Outer Rifts manifest as cracks in the Outer Sphere’s fabric. Rising from the metropolitan Axis is the Boneyard’s spire, the location where mortal souls are judged and then sent to their final destinations, be they reward, suffering, or oblivion. The Outer Planes are places of majesty, wonder, terror, and danger outstripping anything mortal adventurers might encounter anywhere else.

Dimensions

Source GM Core pg. 181 2.0
Existing in the metaphorical space between the Transitive Planes and smaller, finite demiplanes, dimensions are a category unto themselves, defying the neat categorization of planar scholars and adventurers. Seemingly infinite in scale, not necessarily spatial in the same way as a plane, and overlaying every other plane at once—including one another—dimensions and planes are most significantly differentiated in how each of them breaks the commonly held rules of the other. Although some scholars include other extraplanar realms within the ranks of dimensions, only two such realms are uniformly agreed upon and classified as such. The Dreamlands are readily accessed by mortal dreamers, while the Dimension of Time is notorious for the near impossibility of accessing it as well as the bizarre, often deadly restrictions upon travel to and within its bounds.