I snaffled the Pathfinder Planar Adventures book up one time I saw it in passing and having read through it now (some years hence) I do not regret my purchase.
(photo of own copy showing cover art by Wayne Reynolds)
In contrast to most, this planar guide puts the character options up front - who you can play on the planes ahead of what the planes are like. It fits for Pathfinders character forward ethos but is quite different to other planar guides. Design wise the book is a chunky hardback with the expected Paizo polish. I find the usual 'stat block for everything' approach in many PF books somewhat inefficient but here it is handy for plane stat blocks. The variation from one plane to another is so large that all of the traits in a stat block can swing wildly from one place to the next. Having this stat block as a first point of reference for every plane is useful. Does gravity work here? How about magic? Time? Who are the major denizens? 1/3 of 1 page column and you have a good handle on this new place.
So what is in the content? By sections we have:
~ 2 pages of intro
~ 40 pages of character archetypes, feats, spells and magic items
~ 34 pages on running planar adventures
~ 130 pages of gazetteer of the planes and demiplanes
~ 34 page Bestiary
In the character options section we have 10 pages each of archetypes, feats, spells and items. Plenty to like in here - particular favourites are the prehensile tail feat chain and the magic items. There are a couple of pieces of sensible utility magic such as a piece of armour that allows multiple attuned people to come alone when the wearer gets teleported, gated or otherwise transported across the planes. The archetypes give some good 'why roam the planes' insights that could also be the basis for NPCs, adversaries or even whole organisations if required.
In the running planar adventures section we find a guide to the souls journey after death (6 pages), a discussion on using deities and their realms (12 pages) and advice on running planar campaigns (8 pages). I find the souls journey great, walking through what happens and effectively providing an ecosystem overview for the entire cosmology since souls are the fuel for everything. The divine are portrayed as having a 'hands off' approach in a celestial cold war which gives a good frame for why anything against a gods view point is happening. I would have loved to see more in the planar campaign section on how to make planar campaigns unique. More seeds or additional discussion of ways to present the planes to deliver on the nudge in this section to 'make planes more than slightly larger dungeons' would have been helpful. Perhaps something like the discussions of 'rules of three' and competing philosophies seen in other planar guides. There is a good discussion of alternative cosmologies that could well serve as the inspirational fuel to do this. I know reading these that I viscerally disagree that some of the possible cosmologies could be the way the planes run in my world, which is good - if it inspires that kind of 'the planes should work like this!' reaction in readers then good campaigns should spring from that.
In the Great Beyond section we get a break down of that cosmology. To use classic D&D speak we have 9 outer planes corresponding to the alignment grid, the 2 classic transitive planes (ethereal and astral), light and dark fey realms, 6 elemental planes and 10 example demiplanes. The fey realms of the First World and Shadow Plane are nice to have - when they originally popped up I was not so impressed but have come to appreciate the potential they add to story-telling a lot more. Here we have a planar conditions and a collection of sites gathered around the primary dwellers. More sites and locations from any of number of Feywild / Shadowfell set adventures could be easily slotted in. I liked the treatment of the elemental planes a lot - it seemed to do a better job than many planar manuals in capturing the richness and variety of things that could exist on each elemental themed infinite plane. Similarly for the 9 outer planes we get lots of interesting seeds for each along with major hazards and denizens to be encountered.
We have many sites that are independent realms not just part of the ruling power structure and multiple different slices through how people are inhabiting these places. All this gives a broad range of inspiration for places to visit and people to meet for a planar party. Each of these sites gets a paragraph or two but then each plane also includes a 'planar hub' that gets a more detailed treatment. This is a good touch - some realms are easier to traverse than others but it is a good point that a party will probably attempt to go to the least hostile place on a dangerous plane. This was an element missing from quite a few of the elemental planes of Planescape era - any guidance on going to some of them would have begun and ended with "don't".
At the end of the section we get a set of 10 very interesting demiplanes that I think maybe the best such collection I have encountered. Normally I find demi-planes un-inspiring, possibly because they suffer from 'slightly exotic dungeon' feel without really conveying a spark that explains why these are in a planar guide as opposed to part of a wizards tower dungeoncrawl module. The demiplanes here manage to convey the scale and mystery of the planes that I want to see. There are lots of obvious reasons why some or other of these would need to be visited and they have their own coherent reasons for being. This makes it straightforward to imagine the welcome that travellers will receive there. From the dimensions of Dream or Time which give the space for adventures along those self-referential or meta aspects to more solid places such as the Akashic Record or Xibalba these demiplanes give interesting places to visit or accidentally wander into and serve as the setting for adventure.
The Bestiary section has some interesting critters, some that are very simple combat profiles for a realm guardian or a plant which is fine. This is combined with a few that are likely to be drivers or action who get double spread write ups (such as Irii of the demiplane of Time) or apocalypse creatures like the Leviathan or Wrackworm who are more living natural disasters than anything else. Judging by the encounter tables, Bestiary 5 is where most of the planar beasts are to be found so you may want to have access to that. I do not think it would be difficult to find or substitute in any thematic encounter table from other sources if you did not have access to Bestiary 5.
Overall I liked this guide - easy to go through with lots of interesting content. It is naturally Golarion focused as the setting for Pathfinder but those sites can be supplemented with whatever you may want for your own campaign. The simplified cosmology could be viewed as a boon by some - you can get most of the interesting aspects of alignment associated planes for half the complexity. I would have loved to have seen a little more on 'whats makes a planar campaign more than a high level dungeon crawl' such as how to bring gods and the divine to the table in an interesting way. Those points are a challenge if you are starting out on the planes; the old factions and philosophers disputes from Planescape served as a good frame for 'what motivates everyone out here' even if you did not use it so much at the table. However this is nit-picking after Planar Adventures gets a lot of things right. I think if you have a solid idea of how your planes work and what you want for planar campaigns then there is lots and lots of feedstock here for inspiration.
For another review see Roll for Combat.
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