Planescape 4E - Chaos Incarnate, The Plane of Limbo

I’m going to attempt to tackle Limbo today. As part of the planar ecology, I’m going to need planar traits, horizon effects, and possibly secondary effects. I’d like to add some info similar to what I did here, as that seemed to really stoke people’s imaginations. Hopefully, this will also make this information more useful to DMs looking to use this material for their campaigns.

Chaos into Order

So Limbo is chaos, literally (and I do mean literally). The plane is a soup of chaos matter. In order to have a chance of surviving here, our heroes are going to need a way to shape that matter into something meaningful. Impose order on chaos, as it were. Thankfully, the 4e Manual of the Planes already has this mechanic (you might have missed it, I certainly did on first reading). I think this will be the planar effect, although it is different from the planar effects to date. That’s okay, the planes are (and should be) strange, berk! Maybe something like the following:

Anarchist Mind

Pre-req: Wis 15+

Benefit: You gain the ability to affect mutable planes with your Wisdom modifier rather than your Intelligence modifier.

Anarchist Training

You have learned techniques for more effectively shaping the planes to your will.

Pre-reg: Int 15+

Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on checks made to affect a mutable plane.

Order into Chaos

Another thing to consider for Limbo is the effect it has on magic. This is an area where we have to be careful. How do we make interesting effects without handicapping or overpowering the arcane and divine power sources? For now, I think we’re okay with what I’m going to propose. Let’s just use the sorcerer’s Wild Magic class feature. For any arcane or divine power, roll a d10 to determine what damage type it is. I know this will probably result in some “swingy” results, but hey, it’s Limbo!

How Can You Possibly Live Here?

What about the denizens of Limbo? What creatures occur here naturally? The first ones that comes to mind are the slaadi (think intelligent, evil frog of chaos for those not familiar). Luckily, we’ve got several slaadi already thanks to some compendium browsing (seriously, just search for slaad). There’s also the githzerai, but there’s only a few of these. I might try and give them a treatment sometime soon, as there are no epic-level ones, and they don’t seem to have a defining racial trait.

Conclusion

Next time, we’ll talk a little bit about secondary effects, adventure seeds, and maybe some adventuring locales.