Bleak Generation

None of my players have played Planescape before, so it seemed a shame to hand-wave the journey from Chariamur to the Norns. Ask your players how much they are interested in travelling encounters, if at all. Mine averaged out at wanting a maximum of 3 encounters per day. T ravel’s also a great time for roleplaying prompts. Ask your players what are your characters’ bad habits? What do they talk about? Who does the cooking? Do they share any secrets? How did they become a wizard? And so on. Travel Encounters Using a d100, I rolled 3 checks for encounters in a day. There’s a 35% chance of an encounter at any time of day. For every period where no encounter occurs, the odds of an encounter increases by 30%. If an encounter occurs, the odds decrease by 30%, to a minimum of 35%. Roll once a night for night-time encounters, with a 35% chance of an encounter at night. If you only have one encounter in a day, don’t always put a combat at the end of the day, where players know they can go nova...

These monsters are a great challenge for a lower level party travelling the wilderness. Wastrels resemble dishevelled ravens, with red beaks and claws. They are thought to originate from the hopeless lands of the Gray Wastes, but have since spread to Prime worlds and Neutral planes like the Outlands. Wastrels are a migratory species: any healthy territory they roost in withers and dies after a few months. A species of cowardly predators, swarms of wastrels will attempt to surprise opponents with hit-and-run attacks before retreating. The swarm will then rely on its Malevolent Persistence ability to follow its prey at a distance, patiently pursuing them until they succumb to its curse. Swarm of Wastrels Medium swarm of tiny monstrosities, neutral evil AC 13 HP 36     STR 6 (-2) DEX 16 (+3) CON 10 (+0) INT 4 (-3) WIS 12 (+1) CHA 6 (-2) Skills: Perception +5 Damage Resistances: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing Condition Immunities: charmed, frightened, grappled, paralyzed,...

Spell Keys Spell keys are an incredibly vague part of Planescape, but like portal keys, they can be anything from items, to words, gestures, thoughts, spells, or augmentations to spells so they work the way they should. All planar spellcasters would realistically know that spell keys exist, even if they don’t know specific keys. If you want to use spell keys for your arcane casters, the Outlands is a good place to introduce them. The Outlands are a common enough area that you can give players the answers without them having to invest too much time; and the keys for spells all have a very low cost. Maggots, fire, some water, a handful of dirt. Find my curated Outlands rules here . PCs whose faction alignment or background grants them access to a library or information network (Guvners, and perhaps Indeps and Anarchists?) will fare best at finding spell key information; but any adventurer can hang out at a planewalkers’ tavern like the Ubiquitous Wayfarer and try and probe others for...

Encounters Check for encounters three times a day by rolling a d100. For the first roll each day, there is a 35% chance of an encounter. If no encounter occurs, the chances of an encounter on the next roll increase by 30%. If an encounter does occur, the chance of an encounter on the next roll that day decreases by 30%, to a minimum of 35%. Check for encounters once a night, again with a 35% chance. More information about the Planescape-specific monsters on these tables can be found in the AD&D book Monstrous Compendium: Planescape Appendix II. The below table is a modified version of an Outlands encounter table found on reddit . Roll 2d10: 2. Earth-berg. Floating chunks of earth and a scarred landscape remain after a chunk of land from the Outlands recently slid into another plane. Echoes of the other plane may remain. 3. Lost Blood War Patrol. A ragtag group of demons (MM), devils (MM), or yugoloths (MM) that fought in the Blood War and was cut off from the rest of the...