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Visit New Dimensions

The most powerful adventurers know that great rewards--and great perils--await them beyond the world they call home. From the depths of Hell to the heights of Mount Celestia, from the clockwork world of Mechanus to the swirling chaos of Limbo, these strange and terrifying dimensions provide new challenges to adventurers who travel there. Manual of the Planes is your guidebook on a tour of the multiverse.

This supplement for the D&D game provides everything you need to know before you visit other planes of existence. Included are new prestige classes, spells, monsters, and magic items. Along with descriptions of dozens of new dimensions, Manual of the Planes includes rules for creating your own planes.

To use this supplement, a Dungeon Master also needs the Player's Handbook , the Dungeon Master 's Guide , and the Monster Manual . A player needs only the Player's Handbook .

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

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Wizards of the Coast

432 books436 followers
Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]

Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.

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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
Profile Image for Little Timmy.
7,426 reviews61 followers
April 3, 2019
Sometimes payers think have done and seen it all. Well I just let them roam around in the planes between the worlds for a while till them miss home! Great resource book for the game. Recommended
Profile Image for Dru.
646 reviews
July 11, 2016
As a DM of predominantly 1st edition campaigns (from the 1980s through this review, written in 2016), I found this book tremendously useful. The Planes (prior to the stupid "Planescape" and even stupider "Spelljammer" campaign settings) were always a bit underdeveloped in 1st edition, but also full of mystery. This book really provides a lot of good information for the DM to make use of them.

There are some VERY serious flaws though with this book, and these flaws generally require a DM to make up home rules to either fill in gaps or correct poorly detailed things.

1) Real Time versus Subjective Time. This is such a screwed up concept and so poorly described as to be almost useless. The attempt is to make time pass equally fast everywhere, but for your metabolism to slow down (or speed up) on some planes. Thus for every hour you spend on the Ethereal Plane, 1 hour passes on every other plane (including your Prime Material), but you only need to eat 1/10 as often, poison seeps into your body 1/10 as slow, your mana pool fills up 1/10 as fast. This is a pain in the ass, and when it was applied to adventures in OP1 (Tales of the Outer Planes), it is bungled up.

A more useful rule might be this -- REAL time passes slower on some planes than others. So, for example, if you spend 10 hours on the Ethereal Plane, only 1 hour passes on the Prime Material.

2) Leaving the Ethereal Plane -- Completely 100% skipped. The author missed a HUGE opportunity to outline the use of magic items like "Oil of Etherealness". So, say you do manage to get into the Ethereal Plane using said Oil...you can move between the border ethereal and the deep ethereal just by thinking it, sure...but in the Border Ethereal you can't enter the bordering plane! Can the Oil help? Maybe. But it's not discussed. How often can Oil of Etherealness move you in and out of the border Ethereal...once? twice? multiple times in a duration?

In the ASTRAL plane, one simply goes through the color pool without assistance, but going through the curtain of vaporous color in the Ethereal only gets you from deep ethereal to border ethereal only. There is 100% NO discussion of leaving the border ethereal for the bordering plane.

3) The Demi Plane of Shadow -- Considering how many Shadow based creatures are in the various monster manuals, it was troubling to see it get 1 paragraph in this book.

4) Actual levels of the outer planes and what deities are there -- The author got REALLY lazy if you read through the outer planes section...most deities in Deities and Demigods are NOT even referenced in MoP! And of those that ARE mentioned, he tends to "punt" and put them all on the 1st level of said outer plane. As if you'd have 5 greater gods of 5 different pantheons, all vying for space on the 1st level of the outer plane, when there are 2, 3, 7, etc layers available!

5) Ethereal "matter" -- The author talks about how everything is the same, so that you and the ground are the same and so while there IS "gravity", you "can not fall". HUH? WHAT? If there is gravity, YOU FALL. If he meant "you take no damage", then ok, but SAY THAT. And this raises the next question -- If a structure is in the Ethereal plane, and made of Ethereal stone, can you walk through that wall? If so, then how can you walk on the Ethereal "ground"? If not, then why not? All in all, a really piss-poor description of the mechanics of all things Ethereal.

Despite all that, the book is really useful, but could've used a LOT of editorial work.
Profile Image for Juho Pohjalainen.
Author 5 books350 followers
May 14, 2019
This is the moment when the comprehension of the world of D&D literally exploded millionfold.
Profile Image for Bradley.
Author 4 books2,411 followers
June 8, 2010
Very comprehensive storyline of the various AD&D dimensions. Many great plothooks inside! =)
Profile Image for Will Boncher.
626 reviews13 followers
December 17, 2017
Planeswalking is so cool. My goal is to eventually DM or play through all of them.
Profile Image for Jerry.
Author 11 books28 followers
July 4, 2020
Jeff Grubb, and I suspect his cowriters, as the writing style changes a bit throughout, really embraced the otherworldly nature of the planes in a manner that I always felt Spelljammer, in 2nd edition, failed at. Falling is pure magic in the elemental planes, for example, and even falling backward—rising—in the Plane of Elemental Water.

I don’t know where it happened in AD&D, but whoever decided that the positive and negative planes should be material planes just like the elements of air, earth, water, and fire, was inspired. It meant, in this book, that besides borders between the planes of Earth and Water creating mud, you’ve got borders between each of the elements and the positive and negative material planes, creating Salt, Minerals, Vacuum, and Radiance, among others.

Among the Outer Planes, the “Features of Hades” section reads like a travel guide. This is not a bad thing. These planes were meant to be visited by player characters, and they were meant to be wowed.

I was especially wowed by one of the demon lords of the Abyss:


The realm of Demogorgon spans several layers, yet each is a jungle filled with dinosaurs, wild apes, and bird-like monsters in addition to the standard complement of demonic life.


This Demogorgon sounds like my kind of guy.

The artwork is also interesting. It ranges from some semi-amateurish attempts to map the unmappable to some extraordinarily evocative black and white drawings of the unknowable, such as the warped castles of Pandemonium (p. 100), the bucolic, semi-intelligent animals of the Happy Hunting Grounds (p. 92), or the clockwork sky of Nirvana (p. 84).

According to the indicia, the interior illustrations were done by “Stephen Fabian with Jeff Easley”. The ones I see that are signed (which includes none of the above) are signed by Easley, so I suspect the bulk were done by Fabian (Possibly this guy). Sadly, I suspect most of the originals have been lost, as there’s been many a tale of rescuing artwork out of the old TSR trash bins.

Back in the day, I created a spell point system for AD&D—like just about everybody else (you can see mine in White Wolf #22 as “Classical Magic”). While categorizing the different types of spells, I discovered that there was one spell that was its own type. There was only one spell, “Magic Jar”, classed as a “possession” spell. I dropped it into the “necromantic” spell type. Having a single outlier made it difficult to use spell types for categorical effects. Grubb found the same problem. Each plane treats different types of spells differently, and so he had to dump magic jar somewhere, too.


The magic jar spell, originally listed as a possession spell, is really an enchantment/charm spell.


If you’re a dice historian, this contains a weird bit of dice rolling evolution. The Encounter Chart for each plane is rolled as 2 to 20, but not using a 2d10; it uses a d8+d12. It’s not that d10s were avoided; 2d10 rolls were common inside the text, for example to generate “2d10 subjective days”. There’s even a random number, 1d8, of d10s for lightning damage on the Plane of Lightning.

There’s a blank chart for encounters at the beginning that describes how to use the d8+d12 roll—that is, where to put Rare, Very Rare, Unique, Uncommon, and Common encounters in the table.

At one point I suspect more of the tables were on d8+12; the “elemental pocket” tables are all on d20, but the table in the section on the Elemental Plane of Air lists the dice as d8+d20; the table runs from 1 to 20, like the rest of the Pocket tables in the book.

The editing on this book was atrocious. Typos abounded; less misspelled words (though they were too common as well) than extra words from switching thought midstream. Fortunately, I don’t recall any of them making the sentences unclear. The scope of the work and the sheer joy of exploration more than makes up for it.
Profile Image for David.
881 reviews53 followers
May 26, 2019
Planescape was when I really started looking into the other planes of existences and got me really interested in the Great Wheel cosmology. This is the 3rd Edition's take on the planes of existences and it's a really meaty sourcebook, filled with lore, flavour, and fitting illustrations.

Chapter 1 starts off by presenting all the building blocks for planes in general, defining the plane types, and explaining planar traits. This is mostly as per Planescape - material planes, transitive planes, inner and outer planes, and demiplanes. The traits provide basic mechanical categorisations of the features of each plane, like gravity, time, alignment, energy, magic, etc.

Once that's established, it pulls back further in chapter 2 and starts explaining what are cosmologies - basically, how the planes are arranged and connected. The Great Wheel is presented here as an example cosmology.

Chapter 3 is like a side trip, going into character options. This is likely the weakest part of the sourcebook, but not due to its content, but due to how little it could devote to it. A couple of race options and about four prestige classes (of which they are rather too generic and will probably require tweaking to make them feel more like prestige classes). New spells are presented in this chapter as well, a lot of them dealing with planar travel and portals.

We go back to the planar definitions in chapter 4, starting with the material plane, i.e. the most likely home plane of any traditional D&D campaign. It provides some explanations on where a material plane sits relative to the other planes, as well as some rules on how outsiders deal with the material plane, and also exploring the idea of alternate or multiple material planes.

Next up are the Transitive Planes in chapter 5 - basically, the ethereal, the astral, and the shadow - which typically function as the "bridge" between other planes. These planes are defined, explained, and variants are explored.

The inner planes are described in chapter 6. These are the air, fire, earth, water, positive-energy, and negative-energy planes. Unlike Planescape, it appears that para-elemental and quasi-elemental planes were dropped from the Great Wheel cosmology. They do get mentioned, but just that they are no longer core. Basically, this chapter explains what you'd expect it to do.

The longest chapter is on outer planes, all of which are covered in sufficient detail in chapter 7. These are the homes of many deities and mythologies. It keeps the Planescape concept of petitioners - where souls go after they die. Obviously, the amount of detail cannot match the individual Planescape products, but there's enough here that can be expanded. I'm glad I can recognise many features or elements that came from that campaign setting - like Sigil.

Chapter 8 covers the last of the plane types - the demiplanes - which are basically small, usually "created" planes. The rules have been expanded from Planescape, in that you can now find demiplanes attached to any other plane. This chapter provides a demiplane-generator (i.e. tables), but it also comes with three interesting sample demiplanes.

Chapter 9 is a small section dealing with updated stat blocks of creatures from earlier editions as well as some outsiders not found in the Monster Manual. It has a little of everything, like chapter 3, and certainly feels like more would've been great.

And finally, an appendix is provided that offers up variant cosmologies and other planes. There's quite a few of it, so it's not like this is a short appendix.

Overall, I think this sourcebook lives up to the legacy of Planescape, while still staying somewhat campaign setting-agnostic. It's a great resource for any planar adventures beyond the material plane.
Profile Image for Tetra.
5 reviews
November 27, 2014
Jeff Grubb makes a point to mention that this book is in no way a complete compedium to the planes, and that additional fleshing out from the DM will be required in most cases.

This book is absolutely brilliant, even if you never end up using it. It creates enjoyable, rich backgrounds to people, monsters, and magic players might encounter along the way.

For people into druids, this expands on what happens to them and what they can do once they plane shift into the elemental planes.

For people into magic-users and clerics, this book is beneficial to these classes to use extra-planar resources they didn't know they had before, pending DM approval. As a DM I always let players read this book and allowed their characters to have knowledge of different dimensions, mainly because they are as dangerous as they are a curiosity.

For everyone else, this could be considered more of a survival manual than a travel brochure. The majority of the places described inside are NOT friendly and it is easy to die very quickly if you make the wrong turn. Especially if you don't have magic or some other method of escape.

As the precursor to the Planescape campaign setting, this book set the groundwork for years to come. It is the last hardback manual to mention devils, demons, The Nine Hells, and other hellish and demonic references. After this, AD&D 2nd Edition diluted these subjects as 'too satanic' and revised the names to made-up words. Although seasoned players and readers knew this was just a cheap cover up to satisfy yuppies, I'm not sure new players were fully aware of their true nature. I mean, they're still demons and devils, they just have stupid names now.
Profile Image for Taddow.
671 reviews7 followers
September 28, 2019
I still remember being blown away when I first got this book. It opened up my campaign to interesting and exciting realms. My first adventure using this source material had the players of my high-level campaign travel from their prime material world to one of the outer good-aligned planes. They were challenged with adjusting to how things worked; things that they took for granted, like movement and combat, became mini-adventures of themselves. Of course (because of the fabulous cover art), I had them face a Dreadnought, and I remembered house ruling the stats for one because I couldn't find any official ones back then.
Profile Image for Francisco Becerra.
882 reviews9 followers
January 30, 2014
One of the best 3rd ed. Books, yet it fails to live up to be the "legacy" of Planescape. Nevertheless, a must to update the Multiverse.
Profile Image for Jennifer.
778 reviews45 followers
April 26, 2015
I really like this one, mostly for the suggestion of other realms to explore. It always leaves me thinking of bizarre and wonderful places, and all the possibilities they hold.
Profile Image for Michael.
1,070 reviews9 followers
July 23, 2017
Who doesn't want to travel to other planes and fight monsters, especially the elementals.
53 reviews1 follower
August 22, 2020
The first in the series of "Manuals of the Planes". Usuallly revised for the following editions. I read this one a lot, daydreaming about all the great adventures high-level characters could have and do on the various planes (the common demeanor of all outer planes is their level of danger).

Unfortunately never used it much since my characters rarely got to that level.

Before you buy the book, check if it is of the corrct D&D edition.
Profile Image for Aldean.
105 reviews26 followers
December 10, 2008
My longest-lived roleplaying group included a DM with a deep affection for the old Plaenscape setting, so he hauled the old books along with this new tome and we had a plane-hopping good time. I am completely unfamiliar with the older version, but this 3rd Edition volume was a tremedous resource for both the DM and the players, and I wouldn't want to leave my home plane without it.
Profile Image for Duncan.
352 reviews
December 15, 2022
Another over-complicated, under-informative offering from the first edition of the AD&D game - this one so late in the game's first edition that one wonders whether the Planescape campaign setting was in development concurrently, and if so, why they didn't just publish THAT instead.
Profile Image for Juho Pohjalainen.
Author 5 books350 followers
May 14, 2019
A more than adequate update on the realms beyond the material world. It's no Planescape, of course, but plenty of it is still worth using and converting.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews

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