Contact Other Plane: Help Me, Dungeon Master!
Spell Level: 5
School: Divination
Casting Time: 1 minute (ritual)
Range: Self
Duration: 1 minute
Components: V
You mentally contact a demigod, the spirit of a long-dead sage, or some other mysterious entity from another plane. Contacting this extraplanar intelligence can strain or even break your mind. When you cast this spell, make a DC 15 Intelligence saving throw. On a failure, you take 6d6 psychic damage and are insane until you finish a long rest. While insane, you can’t take actions, can’t understand what other creatures say, can’t read, and speak only in gibberish. A Greater Restoration spell cast on you ends this effect.
On a successful save, you can ask the entity up to five questions. You must ask your questions before the spell ends. The GM answers each question with one word, such as “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “never,” “irrelevant,” or “unclear” (if the entity doesn’t know the answer to the question). If a one-word answer would be misleading, the GM might instead offer a short phrase as an answer.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @KoboldCrier
Do you know what sucks? Casting a spell that sometimes makes you go insane and take 6d6 psychic damage! Why would you do that? What could be worth forcing yourself to make an Intelligence saving throw with a DC of 15 or face get mentally blasted?
Contact Other Plane baffles me. It’s the warlock and wizard version of Commune and Commune with Nature. All three of these spells have the basic use of being a tool to fill players in on information they may have missed or otherwise need to acquire. Each has a specific region it gives information about, and each has a specific time it’ll be at its best, but for some reason this spell can radically maim you. Sure, you’re probably just going to cast this before a long rest, but why risk it? Long rests are time for preparation, strategic planning, and needed respite from a harsh life of adventure. Potential insanity in exchange for an opportunity to ask questions is a horrendous deal.
Even in the case that you succeed, you aren’t guaranteed anything. Like Commune, “uncertain” is going to be a common answer to your questions. Comparatively it does allow for other one word answers, which can include names, but ultimately that will only be beneficial in hyper niche extra planar affairs. In your day to day mid-tier adventure, what is this spell actually going to tell you? If you’re contacting the nine hells about some devils that are running amok, there’s a reasonable chance the entity you’re contacting has no idea who or what summoned them over to your neck of the planarverse. These are powerful extraplanar creatures with specific knowledge over a niche area, not omniscient deities connected to every element and creature from their plane.
Warlocks really get shafted here; you can use one of your pact magic slots to potentially do nothing. They aren’t innately ritual casters, so unless you’re spending invocations for it, you can’t cast this as a ritual. Talk about feels bad moments.
Like Plane Shift and Astral Projection I just don’t see how this can fit at most tables. If you’re plane hopping around and playing in a grand multiverse this works great (minus the horrendous save to “limit” its uses). It can be a neat roleplay tool for warlocks who want to literally chat with their patron. In all other cases, unless you’re plane hopping and need intel on some critical locations housing some ancient demigods, don’t bother with this trash.
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