Base Requirements

• Races: Any
• Sub-Classes: Any
• Ability Requirements: none
• Alignments: Any
• Starting Cash: by class

Weapon Proficiencies

• Weapon Slots: By class
• Bonus Weapon Proficiencies: none
• Required Weapon Proficiencies: none
• Allowed Weapons: By class
• Allowed Armors: By class

Non-Weapon Proficiencies:

• Non-weapon Slots: By class
• Available Categories: By class
• Bonus Non-weapon Proficiencies: Modern Language (Planar Slang), Netherworld Knowledge, Direction Sense, Survival (specify any one plane)
• Required Proficiencies: Planar Sense, Portal Feel
• Recommended Proficiencies: Ancient History, Appraisal, Disguise, Planology, Religion, Spell Recovery, Survival, Weather Sense
• Forbidden Proficiencies: All Pastoral Proficiencies, All Craft Proficiencies

Overview: When an adventurer from the Prime comes to Sigil, they’re often disappointed to find out that on the planes, a trained adventurer is just another berk. No special treatment, no particular status-just another magic-using cutter. On the great ring, even the weakest fiend has magical powers, and more folk have magic resistance than not (or so it seems), so prime adventurers can pike their haughty attitudes.

Planewalkers, on the other hand, know the chant. They’re in on the fact that it’s not so much how many fireballs a body can toss, but knowing when to cast fireball and when to cast rock to mud instead. More important, they know not to rely on their magical talents, because magic is like a tiefling hireling-it won’s always work just ’cause you want it to.

Characters who’ve seen the different planes and traveled the Great Road know a little of the dark of things. They’re privy to a few secrets that the average basher doesn’t know. If a planewalker has a bit of an attitude, it’s not because of what they can do; rather, it’s because of what they’ve seen, what they’ve done, and (most importantly) what they know.

Description:

Role-Playing: Planewalkers are experienced adventurers who know that bashing someone with an axe doesn’t solve every problem. They’ve heard tales and seen firsthand what the multiverse holds, and they know they can’t defeat everything that comes along. There’s always somebody, or something, tougher out there. Nevertheless, they have the skill, the style, and the knowledge that enables them to get out of virtually any scrape.

Most planewalkers are at least a little interested in acquiring jink-economics is, of necessity, an important concept in any cutter’s mind-and they often use their skills and strength to earn their keep. These planewalkers looking for work can easily find employment guarding a merchant caravan through a portal, escorting wealthy travelers, or watching over someone’s tower. Planewalkers are also hired to retrieve things-anything stolen, lost, or just sought.

On prime worlds, a typical adventurer might be a former blacksmith, butcher, or barkeep. On the planes, most are professional warriors. Oh, they might have had to learn to sail a ship, build a wall, or some other such skill on one of their many adventures, but for the most part, they’re not common sods who decided to don some armor and call themselves fighters.

Most importantly, Planeswalkers know that most Primes’ ideas about the morality and alignments of planars is complete bubkis. Even an inexperienced Planeswalker will have met greedy Angels, murderous Eladrin, love-struck Demons, and devils who are just doing their damnedest to follow the rules. Yes, there are metaphysical wars raging across the planes all the time, but those wars involve and affect your average planar about as much as wars between Prime countries affect their inhabitants…most beings just want to get on with their lives and not cause a fuss. All this talk about demons being ‘Inherently Evil’ or devas being ‘Embodiments of Good’ is complete horse-shit thought up by Prime theologians who likely never talked to one in their lives.

Special Abilities:

• Planewalkers begin with a simple portal key connecting two locations of the player’s choice (which may or may not be anywhere near where the campaign begins).
• Planewalkers know the dark of various planar entities that can only be hit by magical weapons. They reduce the required enhancement to strike a creature by one step-to a minimum required enhancement of +1 (they still can’t harm creatures requiring magic weapons with a mundane weapon).
• Planewalkers have contacts scattered throughout the planes. The player should pick three planes where his character “knows someone”. These contacts may be friends, mere acquaintances, or even bashers that the planewalker knows only through mutual acquaintances. Nevertheless, they can be sources of information and help. The player should work with the DM to flesh out these contacts as NPCs (see planar contacts for some examples).
• Having dealt with the races and creatures native to the planes since their first days as apprentices, planewalker spellcasters have had to cope with magical resistance. When casting a spell at a creature with magic resistance, the planewalker reduces the resistance by 5%, plus 1% per level of the planewalker.
• Since a planewalking caster cannot rely on his spells working as he moves about the planes, planewalkers tend to hone their combat abilities. On any plane where his spellcasting powers are diminished, a planewalker gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls. Non-caster planewalkers do not receive this benefit.
• Planewalkers can use a Climbing check as a more general “get around in nonstandard or nonhorizontal environments” check. The character has the same chance to wend his way through the mechanisms of Mechanus, climb along the jagged mountains of Gehenna, or navigate plains of broken volcanic glass on Baator.

Special Disadvantages:

• There is always a plane that a body can’t quite get the hang of-no matter what. To reflect this, the player should decide on one plane (subject to DM approval) where the planewalker can’t make any spell keys work. No matter what, the planewalker will never be able to understand how magic on that particular plane works, even with the proper keys.

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Beginning Planeswalkers

Even highly experienced Planeswalkers seldom travel to all of the planes—some are too dangerous (like the Elemental Plane of Fire or Quasielemental Plane of Vaccuum), some are too hard to reach without very specialized magic (like the Pesudoelemental of Time), and others the character simply may have no business in. The number of Planeswalkers who have been to more than a dozen planes in their lifetime (not counting immortal beings) is likely in the low hundreds

Newly introduced Planeswalkers (regardless of the level they begin at) are assumed to have personally visited a number of planes (not counting their Prime of origin) equal to their class level¹. Thus a 1st level Planeswalker, despite his vaunted title, has only visited 1 other plane of existence—though this is far more than most other characters ever manage. For Planes with multiple layers (such as the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia, or the Infinite Layers of the Abyss), the character may choose at most 2 specific layers to have visited.

The first Plane that a Planeswalker visited must be the one associated with his Planar Survival non-weapon proficiency.

After the character’s initial introduction, he may visit any number of planes through normal adventuring methods.

¹ Note: Multi-class characters user the Lower of their Class levels to determine the number of planes they have previously visited.

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