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.
Scott Schimmel @ 3:18 am
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.
Christopher J. Arthur @ 6:12 am
I recently finished my first pass through this book. Typically when I purchase a D&D resource I read through and pay close attention to the things I already expect and read anything interesting sounding that I come across. I ended up reading quite a bit in this book in the first pass, probably 85%.
Since 4th Edition was released I’ve been worried about game flavor in the books and the fact that in the 3 core rulebooks its seems to be mostly missing. Now that I’ve begun to read the further expansion books I realize that this was likely a design decision rather than a mistake. The Manual of the Planes is a very well organized and presented book and the writing is interesting. Each major plane has its own section and most of the things you need to know about are presented. Places like Sigil and the City of Brass are first class citizens of this book, and they are presented as bonafide destinations where parties may stay a bit and adventure.
Going in to this book I was worried that the D&D I knew and loved was falling away. After this book and the adventures they’ve released my worry has been replaced by excitement and interest. I find that I can’t wait for the next adventure and I pre-ordered Open Grave.
If you’ve been worried about 4th Edition just pick up the adventures or this book. Well heck, get both. They’ll remind you what it was you loved about D&D and make you think maybe 4th Edition will be just fine.
Admiral Ackbar @ 8:30 am
The Manuals of the Planes have traditionally been a way to try to explain the celestial universe of D&D. If that is what WotC was attempting to do with this latest version of the planes, then the book could be considered a success. Personally though, I just don’t like this book.
After reading it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the writers and editors had three goals. Each one they hit the nail on the head.
1) It’s meant to update the basic mechanics of the planes to 4th edition. Introduce a couple new powers, new definitions of how planes fuctions, the basic mechanics of traveling to the planes. It does that. It doesn’t do it too deeply, but it gets the basics of the basics explained for 4th E.
2) It appears, from my reading this book and the new Forgotten Realms book, (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, 4th Edition) That WotC has made an editorial decision that 4th E. settings should focus more on atmosphere and flavor than background and setting. There’s a lot of descriptions of what places are like. Just enough details to give a sense of flavor. But compared to previous books, especially 3rd E, there is much less content and background. This new manual has only half the content of the previous manual. Manual of the Planes (Dungeon & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying) There can be an argument made for this editorial change. But to me it feels like there’s been a major subtraction on the quality of the new book. It is more accessible, but much much less useful. I think that actually hurts a beginner.
3) The new book changes the nature of the planes from the 3rd edition in a subtle but important way. On one hand, it tries to simplify the cosmological structure. They eliminate the ethereal plane, introduce fey and shadow as parallel worlds, and a few other changes. But more importantly, it does so in such a way that if you know the history of D&D, it attempts to unify every campaign setting ever created by TSR or WotC. For example, the Astral Plane is now Spelljammer. The Shadowfell is the gateway to Ravenloft. They reintroduce Sigil for Planescape. Then you have the prime settings like FR, Greyhawk, Ebberon, and more. It tries to take all these settings and tie them up in a nice, neat, little cosmological bow.
On those three marks, if that’s what this book was trying to do, it was a success. But in every other aspect, the book is lacking. There are a number of core planes and how they interact. Say about 16 or 17. They only detail a handful. It’s hard for me to describe why I dislike it so much. Basically, it’s a quarter of previous books. It has nowhere near the detail or setting background that I would expect this type of book to have. Maybe it’s because the previous 3rd E books had so much detail that I have a hard time liking this book in that light. But to me, if I need to have the previous book to get any real use out of the new book, then I can’t do anything but call the new book a failure.
It’s my opinion they tried to make this book beginner friendly. But they made it too beginner friendly and so it doesn’t give the proper guidance for beginners. Also it doesn’t have the detail or plot ideas that veteran players really want to see. Thus, it’s not a good book for beginners, it’s not a good book for vetern players, it’s not a good standalone book at all. You really need to know the material from previous books to put this book to full use.
I ended up buying this book for $12 used. At that price I recommend it and the other manual. But I would highly recommend against anyone paying full price. It’s not worth it. get the previous book instead. It can be found used for around $15. Then, if you really want to update the setting, get this book next. But don’t start with this book.
Wyrmwood @ 8:47 am
So, back in the day before the death of AD&D 2nd edition and Wizards of the Coast swallowing up the faltering TSR, there was Planescape. One of the best campaign settings ever created for D&D. Planescape took place in the realms of Deities, Demigods, Devils, and Demons. What made the world different was the unique feel of planar culture, the hodge podge of settings (allowing you to play almost anything imaginable), and the focus on factional beliefs. Planescape had too many things that were wonderful about it to list here, and somewhere in cyberspace there is a site dedicated to keeping this setting alive and thriving. Go to [...] and you’ll enjoy even new 4e rules for Planescape. Now all of that said, Manual of the Planes is NOT Planescape. Rules heavy, story light, the Manual of the Planes has info on various planar locations, rules for planar encounters, and even various hazards that can be found there. What the book doesn’t have is heart. I feel no connection to this book, and in my own games have only used it for the various incidental rules that are only mildy more useful than something I could make up myself. This book is useful for 4e players wanting to explore the planes, but don’t look for depth here, just rules.
TheScientistDM @ 11:15 am
The Manual of the Planes is an interesting but short DM-friendly book that illustrates the 4th Edition D&D cosmology. It opens with five mechanics-lite chapters on planar travel and four important regions of the D&D universe that do a good job of inspiring creativity in DMs. These five chapters describe the general World Axis Cosmology of this edition of D&D, along with portals, hazards, and a great deal of specifics on the Feywild, the Shadowfell, the Elemental Chaos, and the Astral Sea. Unfortunately, only a few specific locations (like Sigil) are thoroughly described, and other locations, including separate demiplanes like the Plane of Dreams and different universes like the Far Realm, receive only a short page of coverage each. This is disappointing in that the book contains only 159 numbered pages of material, and I find it unacceptable that many interesting concepts are almost entirely ignored by this US $30 book. While I enjoy cooking up my own material, the book would have felt like a better read if it were simply more inclusive. The mechanics heavy chapters unfortunately suffer similarly.
Chapters six and seven of the Manual cover monsters, paragon paths, rituals, and items. This is the meat of the book for me, and it suffers from the same problems as the flavor chapters: it lacks length. Several useful and interesting monsters, including a few unique and powerful demons and devils, are presented, but overall only 22 pages of monsters are included. The player options are no better: the entire chapter spans only 21 pages. The saving grace to these last two chapters is the thought and flavor behind them. Some of the monsters are alluded to in the flavor chapters, and the character options are certainly easy to insert into a planar campaign. Items include the classic Githyanki Silver weapon and a few interesting vehicles, and the rituals include new versions of fun spells like Rope Trick.
With all the complaints included in this review, you might think I’d give the book a low score. The problem is that after reading it, I want to do nothing of the sort. What flavor material is included is a fun read, and the extra, well-balanced mechanical options for players and DMs to add to the game will be well-used on my part. The value of the book weighs heavily with me, though, and I cannot justify a better rating than three stars. If you’re looking for very general information on the planes, and you don’t mind paying for only a little, grab this title. If you’re a DM seeking more options for a campaign, I encourage you to look at Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead. In terms of format, length, and content quality, it is strictly superior to the Manual of the Planes.