Gate Warden 5e
You spent a significant amount of time somewhere influenced by intense planar forces or a portal to another plane of existence, such as one of the gate-towns in the Outlands. You're accustomed to experiences that would leave others reeling in terror or enraptured by otherworldly beauty, and you're as comfortable dealing with Celestials and Fiends as you are with vendors in town (who might be one and the same).
Source: Planescape - Adventures in the Multiverse
Prerequisite: Planescape Campaign
Skill Proficiencies: Persuasion, Survival
Languages: Two of your choice (Abyssal, Celestial, or Infernal recommended)
Equipment: A ring of keys to unknown locks, a blank book, an ink pen or quill, a bottle of black ink, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a pouch containing 10 gp.
Feature: Planar Infusion
Living in a gate-town or similar location steeped you in planar energy. You gain the Scion of the Outer Planes feat. In Addition, you know where to find free, modest lodging and food in the community you grew up in.
Building a Gate Warden Character
Those who dwell for an extended time near a permanent portal to another plane absorb the essence radiating from the realm beyond. Those influenced by the same plane share similarities in behavior and even physical appearance.
Suggested Characteristics. The influence of an Outer Plane shapes your perspective. The Gate Warden Personality Traits table suggests traits you might adopt for your character.
Gate Warden Personality Traits
| d6 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | Strange events and otherworldly creatures don’t faze me. |
| 2 | I think in terms of exchange; something for something, nothing for nothing. |
| 3 | I speak with an unusual cadence. |
| 4 | I pepper my speech with borrowed words or curses from planar languages. |
| 5 | I’ve seen enough to know that you can’t take anyone at face value, so I scrutinize everyone. |
| 6 | I have a superstitious habit I picked up, such as touching iron when I’m nervous or arranging objects in a specific order. |
Gate Warden Trinkets. When you make your character, you may roll once on the Gate Warden Trinkets table, instead of on the Trinkets table in the Player's Handbook, for your starting trinket.
Gate Warden Trinkets
| d6 | Trinket |
|---|---|
| 1 | A tiny vial pendant, filled with a drip of honey that glows faintly |
| 2 | A small lead ingot with a strange thumbprint pressed into it that whispers when held tightly |
| 3 | Two lodestone spheres that chime when they attract each other |
| 4 | A smoldering pebble of coal that, while always hot, doesn’t burn skin, fur, scales, or clothing |
| 5 | A feather that sheds dim light in a 5-foot radius. |
| 6 | A ring made from a chain link that, once donned, won’t come off without pulling painfully hard. |
Creating Gate Warden Characters
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Gate Wardens are so close to Planar Philosophers I wonder why both needed to get printed. Mechanically, this reads as a worse version of that background, but with a slightly different style. Instead of caring about the city of Sigil, you care about the outlands and their gate towns; how this mechanically translates, to put simply, is it doesn’t. You will look and play basically identically.
Skills
Persuasion and survival are both reasonable skills that will serve best on a character whose identity is to be the navigator. Rangers, barbarians, and rogues tend to fit this archetype best. Persuasion is a fun twist, though, as the “wilderness explorer” usually doesn’t overlap with people pleasers. I could see warlocks using these two perfectly together; sorcerers and paladins also can make great use out of these skills when paired with their typical class fantasies.
Other Proficiencies
You get two languages of your choice with some flavorful recommendations… but that’s it. Not tools, no vehicles, just some bonus languages, which isn’t great. Most games aren’t going to care all that much about what languages the player characters speak unless the DM prefaces the game with “These languages will be important- somebody should know them!”
Equipment
I think the ink/quill and book are underrated, handy little items. Having on hand tools to jot down information quickly is useful for aiding in remembering things, plus they can be torn out and left places. This does improve your language utility a bit, as if you share an uncommon language with the party, you can leave messages only a few people may be able to read. The ring of keys is a great trinket with plenty of mystery your DM can opt into, too, making this batch of equipment reasonable to me!
Feature
Scion of the Outer Planes and some help finding lodging doesn’t line up well against other recent backgrounds. I’d take Squire of Solomnia or Strike of the Giants through their respective backgrounds over this every day of the week, and I don’t rate those super highly. A cantrip and resistance is just not as impactful as a lot of other options.
There aren’t great ways to build out of this either, as only really the expanded Lawful and Chaotic feats offer any text I’m interested in, and both are fairly narrow.
It does help that the skill selection overlaps with the two classes I’d consider those on (paladins and melee warlocks). Its still not necessarily something you’ll want to do, but it is an extra option if you want this for story reasons.
Bonus Tables
These background tables do at least tell a bit of a story about your character’s history- you’re basically coming from a wild, diverse world of high-magic, and have adapted as such. The trinkets can pair with the personality traits to tell stories. You may be unfazed by otherworldly creatures because that smoldering pebble you have came from a giant coal elemental who watched rip through a gate town street. That event in your life was tame, and gives a lot of room to expand your background from there.
The trinkets also can make for easy DM tools to introduce NPCs your character could know, which is a major asset to their world building and helps give you automatic buy-in to future events.
All Together
Gate Warden is something you don’t take for its mechanical benefits, but something you take because you love the thematics and personality traits it offers. The skills are fine, but the feature is definitely going to be worse than a lot of the recent competition presented. If you do find yourself wanting to get to Cohort of Chaos or the other Scion prerequisite feats, I think picking a skill of your choice paired with and artisan’s tool proficiency from Planar Philosopher is going to be preferable to what else is offered here.
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