Rules Index | GM Screen

Planar Terrains

Source Planar Adventures pg. 9
A staggering array of terrains await exploration in the Great Beyond. Some are akin to the forests, mountains, oceans, and plains of Material Plane worlds, but others are unlike anything found there, such as the ghostly reaches of the Ethereal Plane, the living and horrific reaches of the deep Abyss, the constantly burning inferno of the Plane of Fire, and the life-draining nothingness of the Negative Energy Plane.

Some classes, like the ranger, interact directly with terrain, and class abilities like favored terrain can become complicated in a plane-hopping campaign. In games that are largely limited to the Material Plane, the planes terrain category works fine, but if you intend to run a game set on another plane, you should consider breaking up that category into specific planes (thus, a ranger would choose Heaven or Ethereal Plane, or even a demiplane like Leng as a favored terrain), or simply doing away with the planes category entirely. With this latter solution, you should work with ranger players to help them anticipate the terrains featured in your upcoming campaign, with new categories like crystalline (for realms in the Plane of Earth or under Elysium, where immense crystal formations are common), living (for truly sentient realms like portions of the Abyss), or void (for empty reaches in the Astral Plane or the energy planes) potentially becoming new options for rangers to select from.

Archives of Nethys

Rules Index | GM Screen

Planar Terrains