by Wizards RPG Team
|
| List Price: | $29.95 |
| Amazon Price: | $19.77 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| You Save: | $10.18 (34%) |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $16.90 |
| Availablitiy: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
 |
|
Product Description
If you seek to stem this tide of chaos at its source, follow my lead--I set out for the dreaded Abyss on the morrow.
--Lord Amgar the Bold, Paladin of Bahamut
The planes have always been a place of great mystery and danger in the Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game, and the new array of planes debuting in 4th Edition continue that grand tradition. Home to gods and devils, demons and genies, fey and titans, these strange dimensions offer unlimited adventure opportunities for Dungeon Masters and their players.
This useful travel guide also comes in handy for players seeking to battle demons, devils, elementals, and other iconic D&D monsters native to the planes.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Average Customer Review:
5 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
 Overpriced, Unimaginative, 2008-12-23
Pros:
1. A few clever ideas like the ex-proxy of Vecna, and a backtracking on the Blood War. The 4e designers said it was a flaw in prior editions, but given the lack of cleverness in the book I'm not surprised they came around.
2. Sigil, a passing nod to spelljammers, inclusion of some of the Great Wheel planes.
Cons:
1. Way overpriced.
2. Poor artwork, with a few exceptions entering the acceptable range.
3. Crunch is only at the end, making the legal pdfs of planar supplements a much, much, much better buy.
4. How dull can you get? Most of the good stuff in this book was taken from the supposedly flawed cosmology of the past, and the rest is pretty much stuff you could come with by yourself over a lazy afternoon of brain storming.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 Short, but full of good ideas, 2008-12-18
Let me get my big criticism out of the way first.. When I see a suggested price on a book around $30, I expect it to be worth that much. I was right off put off by how it only has 159 pages. I mean the player's handbook was only $5 more and twice that size.
With that out of the way, I have to say the content if packed and full of fantastic ideas on how to run a planar campaign. It goes over and explains the new Cosmology within 4th edition, it's quite a bit different from previous editions. (however it also has tips on customizing the cosmology, and even examples of past cosmologies)
The details and descriptions in this book are priceless and there's little in the book I didn't ponder about how much fun it would be to have that happen mid game. If your big into dungeons and dragons, I suggest you take the $30 pill and get this book. It's one of the more useful books so far in 4th edition.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Inspiring, but I wish there were more., 2008-12-17
Manual of the Planes discusses the other planes of the Dungeons & Dragons world -- the areas of reality beyond the mortal world. Its goal is to allow for adventures set among these other realms -- primarily, the Shadowfell, the Feywild, the Elemental Chaos, and the Astral Sea. It mainly succeeds.
The first chapter of the book, Exploring the Planes, deals mainly with traveling to the planes and the characteristics of the planes. It includes a description of the basic cosmology of the D&D world, some advice for creating alternate cosmologies if you should desire to, and some notes about Sigil, the City of Doors, a location which can be used as a center for planar adventures (among other things).
Those who've played Planescape in earlier editions will recognize Sigil, and it's only one of many references to previous editions of the game. Veterans will notice new treatments of such things as the City of Brass, the Isle of Dread, the Demonweb, the Blood War, and spelljammers. Newer players need not worry; the book sets these elements adequately within 4e, so that no previous experience with them is necessary.
The next four chapters deal with the major planes suitable for adventuring: The Feywild, domain of faerie and preternatural wilderness; the Shadowfell, decayed echo of the mortal world shrouded in gloom; the Elemental Chaos, home to such locations as the City of Brass and the Abyss; and the Astral Sea, in which the domains of the great powers float like islands. Each of these chapters has four sections: traveling to the plane, exploring the plane, sample inhabitants of the plane, and sample locations within the plane.
The writeups about the inhabitants and locations are fairly brief. They're sufficient to give the flavor of the place, and hopefully to inspire a GM to flesh them out and adapt them to his game. They are not, however, fully detailed writeups that are able to simply be dropped right into the game. The book leaves much of the design work to the individual GM. Some people might consider this a weak point; I consider it a strength, because it fits my preferred style.
Chapters six and seven introduce more mechanics. Six is a collection of monsters from the planes for the GM to employ -- a little over a dozen of them, of which half are demons or devils. These are useful as adversaries, but there's nothing outstanding here. Still, nice to have.
Chapter seven is for players -- new paragon paths, rituals, and magic items. Here, too, there's not much that makes me pause and double-take, but nothing that leaps out at me as broken, either. It should serve its purpose well enough.
Overall, I'd say the usefulness of this book will depend on the GM using it -- and it is a book for GMs, with little that's of interest to players.
I think that it's the sort of book that will inspire me, even if I use relatively little of its content as-printed in my game. On the other hand, I wish that there was more: more about the Far Realms, more about some of those locations, more about the anomalous realms like the Plane of Mirrors and the Plane of Dreams. It's probably unfair to expect a 160-page book to cover all of those planes in depth, especially when I'd probably end up cheerfully ignoring most of that depth anyway and using my own creations, personally. Even so, it just feels too brief at times.
I like it, though. I like it a lot. This is a product that makes good use of the history of the game and its lore, without becoming a slave to it. It puts new twists on old friends like the Isle of Dread and the City of Doors, and it fits things like spelljammers into 4e without also bringing along the annoying parts like helm-related bookkeeping, phlogiston, and gravity wells. I've been satisfied with supplements that have done much less.
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
|
Store Categories
|