Planescape General and Q&A

Where is Sigil?

somewhere

What could be some examples of unusual planetouched?

Atop Mount Celestia, right above cantalot.

Well there's your clockwork eyes of those whose parents found someway to make boning a modron work, there's antennae and even wings from half-formori, there's the grey-folk who inherited a touch of the grey waste's ability to suck colors and energy from things. Half-Hitors often grow exceedingly long "chain-hair" out of their back that they have some concious control over the movement of.
Then there's the quasi-slaadi, who have froglike characteristics and grow bigger in size with every fight they win and lose size with every fight they lose.

Plus the half-fae catboys of the beastlands.

And of course, the demo-men of carceri, who are half-demodan, half-scotsman, and can on purpose explode themselves in a great blast, reducing themselves to a thin paste that can be collected and stored so they can reform at some later date.

According to the AD&D 2e entry on modrons, monodrones (the lowest rank of modrons) are breatharians:

web.archive.org/web/20160325095439/http://lomion.de/cmm/modron.php
>It is fortunate that [monodrones] feed on the very substance of air around them; otherwise, it would be necessary to order them to eat every day.

From a 2e perspective:
1. It is clear that monodrones need air to survive in the long term.
2. It is clear that monodrones need not eat.
3. It is unclear if monodrones need to actually breathe, drink, or sleep.
4. It is unclear if other modrons need air to survive in the long term, or if they need to breathe, drink, eat, or sleep.

Page 76 of the 2e Planewalker's Handbook is silent on the biological needs of rogue modrons.

In D&D 3.0's Manual of the Planes web enhancement, modrons are outsiders. They need not drink, eat, or sleep. They do need to breathe.

According to page 43 of D&D 3.5's Dragon Magazine #354, rogue modrons are living constructs. Pages 44-46 of that same issue, as well as page 85 of Dungeon Magazine #144, establish all non-rogue modrons to be non-living constructs. Therefore, all modrons, rogue or otherwise, need not breathe, drink, eat, or sleep at all.

In pages 224 to 226 of D&D 5e's Monster Manual, modrons are constructs. The construct type does not confer any special benefits if the creature does not also have the "constructed nature" special ability that animated objects, golems, and helmed horrors all have. Therefore, 5e's modrons must breathe, drink, eat, and sleep, just like 5e's demons and devils.

The biological needs of modronkind are dependent on the edition you use, and if you are not using a D&D system, which edition's lore takes precedence for you.

Bump?

Does anything weird happen to outsiders - exemplars in particular - if they're a different alignment from the alignment of their home plane? Is it even possible?

Fall From Grace was a lawful neutral succubuss. The only effect it seemed to have on her was the intense strain & stress of going against her nature.

Oh, Ok

I ask because, in a campaign I was part of that was based on modified planescape, exemplars who become other alignments metamorphosed into exemplars of that alignment.

Sigil can be found atop the infinitely tall spire in the center of the Outlands, as just about every book that mentions the Outlands can tell you, from the 2e Planewalker's Handbook to the 3.0 Manual of the Planes to the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide.

These two pages should list every single canonical planetouched race that has ever appeared in a D&D product:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetouched

brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=6992.0

I would like to point out one planetouched race that both of these pages miss, however: the wildren from pages 16-18 of the 3.5 Planar Handbook.

>Prominent among these are the wildren, beings descended from the union of partially transformed dwarf petitioners and celestial badgers.
Yes, these actually exist. Do not ask why partially transformed dwarven petitioners would wish to mate with celestial badgers.

There is very little that is written on what precisely happens to an outsider if it falls outside of their home plane's alignment.

1. Modrons become rogue modrons, as per page 14 of Planes of Law: Mechanus, pages 76-78 of the 2e Planewalker's Handbook, and pages 37-38 and 42-44 of Dragon Magazine #354.

2. According to pages 57-58 of Dragon Magazine #306, there are, in fact, lawful neutral slaadi who have the (lawful) subtype in that edition.
>A fluke breed of slaadi born from the spawning stone, the gormeel are mutants that slipped between the notice of Ssendam and Ygorl, the slaad lords of Limbo. Naturally lawful, they take particular pleasure in battling their slaadi cousins, reveling in the destruction of these chaotic natives of Limbo. For their part, other slaadi are equally fond of destroying any gormeel that they can find. Gormeel exemplify one of the strangest aspects of true chaos: In a completely random environment, even lawful behavior is a possibility.

From the above, we can tell that modrons who go rogue are immediately identifiable and must abscond from Mechanus. Gormeels, likewise, are readily identifiable, although they seem content to live in Limbo and be bullied by regular slaadi.

3. Pages 33, 48, and 72 of Faces of Evil: The Fiends claim that there are various rare instances of baatezu, tanar'ri, and yugoloths going rogue. They might retain their alignments yet go rogue anyway, they might shift on the law-chaos axis (yugoloths are against turning lawful or chaotic due to their history with the Heart of Darkness as page 10 of Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War tells us), or they might even rise to goodness. The most famous redeemed baatezu happens to be a hamatula. These traitors are reviled and hunted down, but the tanar'ri care about their rogues less since the tanar'ri already have to deal with more betrayal than any other fiends.

4. Pages 8-9 of Warriors of Heaven tell us that celestials in general have a formalized process for exactly what happens to a fallen celestial. They have an assembly called the "Celestial Tribunal" that determines whether or not a celestial has fallen and what the punishment must be. A few particularly remorseless fallen celestials are even cast into the Lower Planes to become petitioners there, and then fiends!

5. Pages 51-52 of Warriors of Heaven explain archons to be particularly strict towards falling, more so than other celestials, befitting their lawful nature. Falling towards chaos or evil is enough to warrant punishment, and the precise sentence depends on the archon's new alignment.

Celestials, on the other hand, do not seem to have any visible changes to their appearances when they fall or shimmy around the law-chaos axis. Otherwise, there would be no need for them to stand trial before the Celestial Tribunal to determine whether or not they actually went rogue.

It is unclear whether or not a rogue or risen fiend has a different appearance.

This is actually the case in D&D 5e, according to page 122 of the Player's Handbook:
>Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn’t tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.

It does not apply in other editions, although pages 8-9 of 2e Warriors of Heaven suggest that fallen celestials are sometimes cast down to the Lower Planes to become petitioners and fiends. How this benefits the Upper Planes, I would not know, but surely there is some heavenly logic to it.

Interesting that the PHB says that; it seems to conflict with other published 5e material. The 5e Monster Manual says fallen angels are banished yet are still celestials.

The 5e adventure Curse of Strahd has a fallen deva disguised as an abbot and it lists his monster type as celestial and alignment as Lawful Evil.

maybe they meant it metaphorically?

like, "can a devil that doesn't fight for the cause of lawful evil trully be considered a devil" kind of thing.

I cannot explain that, then.

Personally, I think that off-alignment outsiders should look exactly similar to regular outsiders. There is so much more plot potential, intrigue, espionage, trust issues, and uncertainty when one cannot be entirely sure if the fiend in front of oneself is redeemed or not... and when a legitimately redeemed fiend has no easy method of showing their golden heart to a group of wary celestials.

Off-alignment outsiders would be in high demand all over the Outer Planes as undercover agents and spies, and of course, their cover identity would naturally tempt them back into their old ways. Such agents and spies would walk the razor's edge of alignment.

How would an off-alignment outsider convince a prospective spymaster that they are what they say they are?

What if they're actually an infiltrator from the other side?

Oh man, now I really want to play a planar spy campaign.

There would be few reliable methods of discerning such. The closest one could get is playing under 3.X logic and testing for conflicts between true alignment and alignment subtypes using Anarchic, Axiomatic, Holy, and Unholy arrows and bolts, but even then, there would be many ways of duping such tests (e.g. Use Magic Device).

A major danger of being a planar spy is that undertaking actions to uphold a cover identity will slowly slide one towards a potentially undesirable alignment.

You'd probably really like Demon: the Descent.