I have been reading the rules but no matter how hard I try I still cant figure out how the dimensions work and it is kind of annoying, can some more experienced player/DM explain to me how it works?
I have been reading the rules but no matter how hard I try I still cant figure out how the dimensions work and it is kind of annoying, can some more experienced player/DM explain to me how it works?
Could you explain further what you are talking about? Are you asking about the diffrent planes and worlds in the D&D multiverse? Or what is ment by extradimensional spaces in some magic item descriptions? "Dimensions" do not actually come up in the game unless you are talking about the three dimensional nature of spell effects.
Those are called "Planes" in Dungeons and Dragons. Explaining all of them, and their organization and interconnections, is, well, a massive section of the DMG and PHB for that matter. So I will avoid trying to actually describe the entire Great Wheel, and focus on a more practical explanation...
First, the Prime Material Plane is where "most of" the action for most adventures takes place. It is, barring the magical and supernatural elements in a setting, the "Real World." Again, barring the magical parts, stuff like Gravity, Atmosphere, physics in general, etc., all work "As expected" compared to the real (our) world. So the "Material Plane" is your baseline.
All of the other planes are "alternate realities" that vary wildly in how much they are "like" the "real world." The PHB/DMG lays out a "metaphysical" way to think of which planes are "more like" the Material Plane and which are "Less Like" the Material Plane. So we can't just tell you how "other dimensions [sic]" work because they are all very different from each other. The Feywild and Shadowfell, are probably the "closest to" the Prime Material, while not always true, typically things like gravity, distance, etc., work more or less like they do in the material plane, though not always. Conversely a place like the Astral Sea has distances or time passage that is entirely alien to the material plane; how "far" you move and to where is based on your force of will alone, and things like "Gravity" don't exist. It can be complicated to run adventures in planes that greatly differ in their "basic rules" from normal.
In a narrative sense, all the other planes exist to explain the "cosmology" and supernatural forces/organization of the universe within each setting; many planes are associated with an Alignment. For example The Nine Hells are ruled by the archdevils (Lawful Evil) and are opposed by and fight both the Celestial planes and also the Infinite Abyss, which is ruled by Demon Lords (Chaotic Evil)
Now, if you mean this in a practical sense, as in, "in game, how do I go to and from planes and play in other planes:"
* Some spells explicitly allow you to travel to other planes.
* Fixed or dynamic "gates" exist between planes at all times, "naturally occurring" so to speak... for example, the deepest darkest reaches of the Ocean, where a Kraken might dwell, might have gates to the Elemental Plane of Water (and said Kraken may go back and forth to the Elemental Plane and the Material Plane using those gates).
* Gates to the Feywild and Shadowfell are the most common, sometimes known (such as a gate to the Feywild that opens during a full moon on a cloudless night).
Traveling to a plane, in itself, is pretty much a non-event... once you step through the gate/portal/teleport, whatever method, you are now "in" that other plane - the way back, the gate or whatever, may or may not exist directly behind you, that is, it might be a one-way gate that "disappears."
Depending on the plane you arrived on, not much might change or your party might need to be VERY prepared for what's next. Teleporting to the Elemental Plane of Fire, which is almost entirely taken up by, well, endless flame and heat, might require them to have some way to resist the heat. Going to the Feywild might just need them to be prepared not to accidentally get into a Fey Contract by violating the hospitality or etiquette rules of the locals.
Edit: FWIW, many planes (such as the Hells and Celestia, along with many others) typically have similar features to the Material Plane; so for the most part you can simply get teleported to, say, one of the Nine Hells and just wander around without simply immediately dying to the extraplanar atmosphere or lack thereof, though of course whatever Archdevil rules that particular hell may attempt to destroy you with Devilish minions or other environmental threats, as described in the PHB/DMG.
Does this help or is there a more specific thing you were looking to understand?
I mean realms like the Fey Wild for example I kinda forgot what it was called when typing it out.
I see. A bit simplified: The world we usually play on are in a plane called the prime material which is connected via the etheral plane to the inner elemental planes and via the astral plane to the outer planes where the gods dwell. The prime material world has two reflections, one which is dark and dreary and is called the Shadowfell and one that is whimsical and lively that is called the Feywild. Inside these reflections float like islands "domains of dread" like Ravenloft (Shadowfell) or "Domains of Delight" like Prismeer (Feywild). Both have means by which people from the prime material can cross or be drawn into them.
There is one prime material plane, but it is further subdivided into crystal spheres (in the same way that a planet is divided into continents).
These crystal spheres are the various 'worlds' of D&D. The World of Greyhawk is one, the Forgotten Realms is another, Ravenloft is a third, etc.
The way that these different worlds connect to the other planes can vary. Ravenloft has a stronger connection to the Shadowfell than a lot of the other worlds. Krynn (the world of Dragonlance) has a weaker connection to the outer planes (meaning less divine interference). Now, I'm not an expert on the cosmology of the different worlds, so I might get some things wrong, but this should still convey the general idea.
Planes can be thought of as water sources (it is more complicated than this since sometimes the water flows backwards and the prime material plane can influence how things appear on the other planes, but just go with the concept for a moment). Different worlds might have wider or narrower connections to those sources, which in turn affects aspects of those worlds.
So, when you refer to 'dimensions', you can also be talking about various spheres within the prime material plane where things are largely similar (gravity works pretty much the same everywhere, the primary species tend to be human or human+ rather than something further out such as Elementals, rain falls from the sky and forms streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, etc.) but there can still be substantial differences in how people live, the available technologies, and how certain things such as magic work.
These crystal spheres are the various 'worlds' of D&D. The World of Greyhawk is one, the Forgotten Realms is another, Ravenloft is a third, etc.<<<<<
The way that these different worlds connect to the other planes can vary. Ravenloft has a stronger connection to the Shadowfell than a lot of the other worlds.
Regardless of wether we consider crystal speheres to still be a thing or just call them diffrent worlds, Ravenloft isnt one of those. Ravenloft is a domain of dread in the Shadowfell, so not a prime material world (or crystal sphere if you still use them).
My bad, As I said, I'm not an expert on the cosmology of the different settings. None the less, the basic concept that most settings are 'spheres' and how the planes interact with them remains.
I bring this part up because this is where you might run into 'parallel dimensions' shenanigans like you might see in Star Trek.
Not to be overly pedantic but I believe that in the most recent spelljammer book, the various "Material" planes exist at the center of "Wildspace" regions which themselves simply exist in the Astral Plane. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense cosmologically but then, once you get into multiversal dieties it's hard to make ANY particular system make much sense.
In particular the Overgod concept is pretty fuzzy when you consider that those are (kind of) Creator Gods of a particular realm, and have dominion over deities in that realm... but then... the deities potentially exist in multiple realms... and particularly even sub-deity entities like very powerful elementals/genies exist in the "same" elemental plane connected across multiple Prime Materials... so why would the specific Creator deity of "just one of the silly little Prime Materials that are nearly irrelevant compared to the infinity of the planes" matter at all?
I guess you can basically use the excuse of something along the lines of "the overall force that resolves into 'a deity' for that Realm is a 'smaller infinity' of the larger cosmic force (e.g. Asmodeous as he exists in Forgotten Realms is a 'splinter' of "Lawful Evil deific force that exists everywhere and is usually called Asmodeous," but that's a huge stretch. (Maybe even Ao caused that splinter to exist as a specific entity in his realm, but again, that's a big leap from the RAW about this.)
My bad, As I said, I'm not an expert on the cosmology of the different settings. None the less, the basic concept that most settings are 'spheres' and how the planes interact with them remains.
I bring this part up because this is where you might run into 'parallel dimensions' shenanigans like you might see in Star Trek.
They dropped all mention of the crystal spheres in this edition. All the worlds are, more or less, in different solar systems connected by the astral sea, and you can hop on a spelljammer and travel between them to your hearts content. Or more correctly to your DM’s heart’s content. As I understand it, there no longer a “prime” material plane. There’s just the material plane, and all the various settings —published and homebrew alike — are on it.
To the OP, one place that hasn’t come up yet is The Far Realm. Its location in the cosmology is undetermined (afaik). It’s generally the home to aberrations (mind flayer, beholders, Aboleth) and other weird stuff. Experiencing it would drive a person insane.
Honestly, it feels like the relationships between the planes have changed in one way or another every time they publish something about the planes.
The original (1st AD+D) planes differed in significant ways. Sure, you still had the great wheel for the outer planes, but the outer planes weren't physical locations. They were made of ideas - sort of a shared sub-consciousness. (Similarly, the astral plane was a mental realm, which is why it has no gravity and willpower governs how fast you move. The D+D astral plane was functionally the same as the Marvel astral plane - and both derived from the same 'real world' mystics, magicians, and mystical beliefs, mostly early 20th and late 19th century occultists of various stripes.) This is why you couldn't travel physically to the outerplanes, but had to construct bodies which attached back to your bodies via silver cords. This is why demon/devil summoning created physical bodies for them in the material plane. And this is why everything in the Abyss glowed when you cast detect evil, because it isn't made of elements or physical things, the Abyss was literally made of evil and chaos. And this was required by the then lack of connection to the elemental planes. The metaphysics of D+D was that physical matter ultimately came from the elemental planes, so without connection to the ethereal (and through it the inner planes), no physical matter was possible. (And you couldn't form a portal directly to an inner plane without connection to the ethereal).
There was no Sigil back then, nor any chance of redeeming a devil - it was made of evil (and law). And there was a huge list of spells that worked differently (or didn't work at all) while on the outerplanes.
The inner planes had more detail than I think the modern elemental planes do, with interaction planes at the borders of each of the 6 major planes (earth, air, fire, water, positive, and negative). So we had planes of Radiance, Ash, Ice, Steam, etc... All the inner planes were also True Neutral, because there could be no alignment/morality without a connection to the astral/outer planes, and you couldn't connect to the astral or outer from the inner planes. (This did lead to questioning why mindless undead were inherently evil, since the negative energy plane from which the energy to animate them came was strictly true neutral).
There were an infinite number of prime material planes.
Demiplanes always existed as "islands" in the ethereal or the astral, not yet fully formed planes. (Ravenloft's demiplane was originally in the ethereal iirc).
Then stuff started getting added or changed. The Shadowfell was introduced first (originally the plane of shadows, or something like that). The Feywild came much later (might be as late as 4e, i don't remember if I ever saw that in a 3e book). Spelljammer (2nd) gave us Crystal Spheres. Planescape (2nd) gave us Sigil and non-alignment locked devils/demons/angels/etc... They also changed plane names and geographies over time. (Nirvana was the original name for what is now Mechanus, for example. Or originally, the Abyss had 666 layers). The original metaphysics was largely lost because it wasn't explicit, but implied. Various specific campaign worlds drew alternate topologies of the planes. (I remember seeing some FR setting planar maps that had nothing in common with the prior topography).
How the planes work in any given game is usually a function of when the DM started playing and what the planar geography looked like then, regardless of what the currently published rules say. I still go back to my 1st AD+D Manual of the Planes.
I have been reading the rules but no matter how hard I try I still cant figure out how the dimensions work and it is kind of annoying, can some more experienced player/DM explain to me how it works?
Could you explain further what you are talking about? Are you asking about the diffrent planes and worlds in the D&D multiverse? Or what is ment by extradimensional spaces in some magic item descriptions? "Dimensions" do not actually come up in the game unless you are talking about the three dimensional nature of spell effects.
I mean realms like the Fey Wild for example I kinda forgot what it was called when typing it out.
I mean realms like the Fey Wild for example I kinda forgot what it was called when typing it out.
Those are called "Planes" in Dungeons and Dragons. Explaining all of them, and their organization and interconnections, is, well, a massive section of the DMG and PHB for that matter. So I will avoid trying to actually describe the entire Great Wheel, and focus on a more practical explanation...
First, the Prime Material Plane is where "most of" the action for most adventures takes place. It is, barring the magical and supernatural elements in a setting, the "Real World." Again, barring the magical parts, stuff like Gravity, Atmosphere, physics in general, etc., all work "As expected" compared to the real (our) world. So the "Material Plane" is your baseline.
All of the other planes are "alternate realities" that vary wildly in how much they are "like" the "real world." The PHB/DMG lays out a "metaphysical" way to think of which planes are "more like" the Material Plane and which are "Less Like" the Material Plane. So we can't just tell you how "other dimensions [sic]" work because they are all very different from each other. The Feywild and Shadowfell, are probably the "closest to" the Prime Material, while not always true, typically things like gravity, distance, etc., work more or less like they do in the material plane, though not always. Conversely a place like the Astral Sea has distances or time passage that is entirely alien to the material plane; how "far" you move and to where is based on your force of will alone, and things like "Gravity" don't exist. It can be complicated to run adventures in planes that greatly differ in their "basic rules" from normal.
In a narrative sense, all the other planes exist to explain the "cosmology" and supernatural forces/organization of the universe within each setting; many planes are associated with an Alignment. For example The Nine Hells are ruled by the archdevils (Lawful Evil) and are opposed by and fight both the Celestial planes and also the Infinite Abyss, which is ruled by Demon Lords (Chaotic Evil)
Now, if you mean this in a practical sense, as in, "in game, how do I go to and from planes and play in other planes:"
* Some spells explicitly allow you to travel to other planes.
* Fixed or dynamic "gates" exist between planes at all times, "naturally occurring" so to speak... for example, the deepest darkest reaches of the Ocean, where a Kraken might dwell, might have gates to the Elemental Plane of Water (and said Kraken may go back and forth to the Elemental Plane and the Material Plane using those gates).
* Gates to the Feywild and Shadowfell are the most common, sometimes known (such as a gate to the Feywild that opens during a full moon on a cloudless night).
Traveling to a plane, in itself, is pretty much a non-event... once you step through the gate/portal/teleport, whatever method, you are now "in" that other plane - the way back, the gate or whatever, may or may not exist directly behind you, that is, it might be a one-way gate that "disappears."
Depending on the plane you arrived on, not much might change or your party might need to be VERY prepared for what's next. Teleporting to the Elemental Plane of Fire, which is almost entirely taken up by, well, endless flame and heat, might require them to have some way to resist the heat. Going to the Feywild might just need them to be prepared not to accidentally get into a Fey Contract by violating the hospitality or etiquette rules of the locals.
Edit: FWIW, many planes (such as the Hells and Celestia, along with many others) typically have similar features to the Material Plane; so for the most part you can simply get teleported to, say, one of the Nine Hells and just wander around without simply immediately dying to the extraplanar atmosphere or lack thereof, though of course whatever Archdevil rules that particular hell may attempt to destroy you with Devilish minions or other environmental threats, as described in the PHB/DMG.
Does this help or is there a more specific thing you were looking to understand?
This was super helpful and will definitely help me run campaigns. Thank you!
I see. A bit simplified: The world we usually play on are in a plane called the prime material which is connected via the etheral plane to the inner elemental planes and via the astral plane to the outer planes where the gods dwell. The prime material world has two reflections, one which is dark and dreary and is called the Shadowfell and one that is whimsical and lively that is called the Feywild. Inside these reflections float like islands "domains of dread" like Ravenloft (Shadowfell) or "Domains of Delight" like Prismeer (Feywild). Both have means by which people from the prime material can cross or be drawn into them.
Thanks!
There is one additional wrinkle to add to this;
There is one prime material plane, but it is further subdivided into crystal spheres (in the same way that a planet is divided into continents).
These crystal spheres are the various 'worlds' of D&D. The World of Greyhawk is one, the Forgotten Realms is another, Ravenloft is a third, etc.
The way that these different worlds connect to the other planes can vary. Ravenloft has a stronger connection to the Shadowfell than a lot of the other worlds. Krynn (the world of Dragonlance) has a weaker connection to the outer planes (meaning less divine interference). Now, I'm not an expert on the cosmology of the different worlds, so I might get some things wrong, but this should still convey the general idea.
Planes can be thought of as water sources (it is more complicated than this since sometimes the water flows backwards and the prime material plane can influence how things appear on the other planes, but just go with the concept for a moment). Different worlds might have wider or narrower connections to those sources, which in turn affects aspects of those worlds.
So, when you refer to 'dimensions', you can also be talking about various spheres within the prime material plane where things are largely similar (gravity works pretty much the same everywhere, the primary species tend to be human or human+ rather than something further out such as Elementals, rain falls from the sky and forms streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, etc.) but there can still be substantial differences in how people live, the available technologies, and how certain things such as magic work.
Regardless of wether we consider crystal speheres to still be a thing or just call them diffrent worlds, Ravenloft isnt one of those. Ravenloft is a domain of dread in the Shadowfell, so not a prime material world (or crystal sphere if you still use them).
My bad, As I said, I'm not an expert on the cosmology of the different settings. None the less, the basic concept that most settings are 'spheres' and how the planes interact with them remains.
I bring this part up because this is where you might run into 'parallel dimensions' shenanigans like you might see in Star Trek.
ok
Not to be overly pedantic but I believe that in the most recent spelljammer book, the various "Material" planes exist at the center of "Wildspace" regions which themselves simply exist in the Astral Plane. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense cosmologically but then, once you get into multiversal dieties it's hard to make ANY particular system make much sense.
In particular the Overgod concept is pretty fuzzy when you consider that those are (kind of) Creator Gods of a particular realm, and have dominion over deities in that realm... but then... the deities potentially exist in multiple realms... and particularly even sub-deity entities like very powerful elementals/genies exist in the "same" elemental plane connected across multiple Prime Materials... so why would the specific Creator deity of "just one of the silly little Prime Materials that are nearly irrelevant compared to the infinity of the planes" matter at all?
I guess you can basically use the excuse of something along the lines of "the overall force that resolves into 'a deity' for that Realm is a 'smaller infinity' of the larger cosmic force (e.g. Asmodeous as he exists in Forgotten Realms is a 'splinter' of "Lawful Evil deific force that exists everywhere and is usually called Asmodeous," but that's a huge stretch. (Maybe even Ao caused that splinter to exist as a specific entity in his realm, but again, that's a big leap from the RAW about this.)
They dropped all mention of the crystal spheres in this edition. All the worlds are, more or less, in different solar systems connected by the astral sea, and you can hop on a spelljammer and travel between them to your hearts content. Or more correctly to your DM’s heart’s content.
As I understand it, there no longer a “prime” material plane. There’s just the material plane, and all the various settings —published and homebrew alike — are on it.
To the OP, one place that hasn’t come up yet is The Far Realm. Its location in the cosmology is undetermined (afaik). It’s generally the home to aberrations (mind flayer, beholders, Aboleth) and other weird stuff. Experiencing it would drive a person insane.
Honestly, it feels like the relationships between the planes have changed in one way or another every time they publish something about the planes.
The original (1st AD+D) planes differed in significant ways. Sure, you still had the great wheel for the outer planes, but the outer planes weren't physical locations. They were made of ideas - sort of a shared sub-consciousness. (Similarly, the astral plane was a mental realm, which is why it has no gravity and willpower governs how fast you move. The D+D astral plane was functionally the same as the Marvel astral plane - and both derived from the same 'real world' mystics, magicians, and mystical beliefs, mostly early 20th and late 19th century occultists of various stripes.) This is why you couldn't travel physically to the outerplanes, but had to construct bodies which attached back to your bodies via silver cords. This is why demon/devil summoning created physical bodies for them in the material plane. And this is why everything in the Abyss glowed when you cast detect evil, because it isn't made of elements or physical things, the Abyss was literally made of evil and chaos. And this was required by the then lack of connection to the elemental planes. The metaphysics of D+D was that physical matter ultimately came from the elemental planes, so without connection to the ethereal (and through it the inner planes), no physical matter was possible. (And you couldn't form a portal directly to an inner plane without connection to the ethereal).
There was no Sigil back then, nor any chance of redeeming a devil - it was made of evil (and law). And there was a huge list of spells that worked differently (or didn't work at all) while on the outerplanes.
The inner planes had more detail than I think the modern elemental planes do, with interaction planes at the borders of each of the 6 major planes (earth, air, fire, water, positive, and negative). So we had planes of Radiance, Ash, Ice, Steam, etc... All the inner planes were also True Neutral, because there could be no alignment/morality without a connection to the astral/outer planes, and you couldn't connect to the astral or outer from the inner planes. (This did lead to questioning why mindless undead were inherently evil, since the negative energy plane from which the energy to animate them came was strictly true neutral).
There were an infinite number of prime material planes.
Demiplanes always existed as "islands" in the ethereal or the astral, not yet fully formed planes. (Ravenloft's demiplane was originally in the ethereal iirc).
Then stuff started getting added or changed. The Shadowfell was introduced first (originally the plane of shadows, or something like that). The Feywild came much later (might be as late as 4e, i don't remember if I ever saw that in a 3e book). Spelljammer (2nd) gave us Crystal Spheres. Planescape (2nd) gave us Sigil and non-alignment locked devils/demons/angels/etc... They also changed plane names and geographies over time. (Nirvana was the original name for what is now Mechanus, for example. Or originally, the Abyss had 666 layers). The original metaphysics was largely lost because it wasn't explicit, but implied. Various specific campaign worlds drew alternate topologies of the planes. (I remember seeing some FR setting planar maps that had nothing in common with the prior topography).
How the planes work in any given game is usually a function of when the DM started playing and what the planar geography looked like then, regardless of what the currently published rules say. I still go back to my 1st AD+D Manual of the Planes.