You’ve probably seen the "Great Wheel" diagram in the back of the Player’s Handbook. It looks like a neat, organized clock made of gods and nightmares. But honestly, trying to treat the list of all dnd planes like a simple geography map is the quickest way to give your Dungeon Master a migraine.
D&D cosmology isn't just a collection of locations. It’s a hierarchy of concepts. You aren't just traveling to "the fire place" or "the heaven place." You are moving through layers of reality where belief literally shapes the ground under your boots. If enough people on the Material Plane start believing that a specific mountain is a gateway to hell, the multiverse might just make it true.
The Core: Material Plane and Its Echoes
Everything starts at the center. The Material Plane is basically "Earth-plus." It’s where your campaign usually happens—places like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Greyhawk. It’s the baseline. But it’s not alone in its own space.
Think of the Echo Planes as the Material Plane’s weird siblings. They occupy the same physical "space" but on a different frequency.
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- The Feywild: Imagine the Material Plane but with the saturation turned up to 200%. It’s a realm of "Too Much." The colors are too bright, the emotions are too intense, and the flowers might try to eat you if you don't say please. Time is a suggestion here. You might spend a day in the Feywild and return to find a century has passed back home. Or you might return before you even left. Kinda messy.
- The Shadowfell: This is the opposite. It’s the "Not Enough" plane. Colors are muted, joy feels like a distant memory, and the air itself feels heavy with apathy. It’s not just "the goth plane." It’s a place where the memory of things goes to rot.
The Transitive Planes: The Multiverse’s Highways
How do you actually get anywhere? You don't just walk to the Nine Hells. You need a bridge.
The Ethereal Plane is like a ghostly fog that overlaps the Material and the Inner Planes. If you’ve ever used Misty Step or gone "incorporeal," you’ve dipped your toes here. It has two parts: the Border Ethereal (where you can see the "real" world like a grey smudge) and the Deep Ethereal (a swirling nebula of proto-matter used for long-distance travel).
Then there’s the Astral Plane. This is the big one. It’s the space between the Outer Planes. It’s not a physical place; it’s a realm of thought. You don't "walk" in the Astral Sea—you think yourself forward. Your intelligence score literally determines how fast you move. It’s also where the "bodies" of dead gods float like massive, stony islands. Githyanki love it there. Everyone else finds it slightly terrifying.
The Inner Planes: Raw Elemental Power
The Inner Planes are the building blocks. If you want to see where the universe’s matter comes from, look here.
- The Plane of Air: Endless sky. Floating islands. No ground.
- The Plane of Earth: A solid block of stone and jewels. You don't "visit" here unless you’re okay with being crushed or you've got a really good drill.
- The Plane of Fire: It’s not just hot; the air itself is a liquid flame. Cities here are made of brass because everything else melts.
- The Plane of Water: An infinite ocean with no surface. Hope you brought a snorkel.
Where these planes touch, they create "Para-elemental" zones. The 2024 updates and older lore call these out as places like the Frostfell (Air meets Water) or the Swamp of Oblivion (Water meets Earth). It’s basically where the elements get messy.
The Outer Planes: Where Belief Becomes Reality
This is the "Great Wheel" everyone talks about. There are 16 major Outer Planes, plus the Outlands in the middle. They are organized by alignment.
The Upper Planes (The Good Ones)
These are realms of light, mercy, and generally nice vibes. But "Good" doesn't always mean "Safe."
- Mount Celestia: The Lawful Good heaven. It’s a seven-layered mountain. You have to earn your way up. It’s very strict about the rules.
- Elysium: The Neutral Good paradise. It’s so peaceful that visitors sometimes lose the will to leave and just... fade away into contentment.
- Arborea: The Chaotic Good wildland. Huge forests, massive parties, and gods who punch things they don't like.
The Lower Planes (The Bad Ones)
This is where the monsters live.
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- The Nine Hells (Baator): Pure Lawful Evil. It’s a bureaucracy of pain. Everything is a contract. If you go here, read the fine print.
- The Abyss: Pure Chaotic Evil. Infinite layers of madness. It’s a cancer on the multiverse that wants to swallow everything.
- Hades (The Gray Waste): Neutral Evil. It’s worse than the Hells or the Abyss in some ways because it’s just... nothing. Pure despair. It drains the color from your soul.
The Neutral Planes (The Weird Ones)
- Mechanus: The Plane of Law. Imagine a universe made of interlocking gears. Every gear turn is timed. If you're a second late to a meeting here, the Modrons might have an existential crisis.
- Limbo: The Plane of Chaos. It’s a soup of elements. If you stop concentrating, the "ground" you’re standing on might turn into soup or gravity might decide to go sideways.
- The Outlands: The hub. At the center is a needle-thin mountain with the city of Sigil floating on top. Sigil is the "City of Doors," and it’s basically the neutral ground for the entire multiverse.
The Positive and Negative Planes
Wait, there's more. Most people forget the Positive Energy Plane and the Negative Energy Plane. They aren't "places" in the way the others are. They are more like batteries. The Positive Plane is pure life—it’s so bright and full of energy that it will actually make you explode from "too much life." The Negative Plane is the source of entropy and undeath. It’s a vacuum that sucks the existence out of you.
Why the List of All DnD Planes Matters for Your Game
You don't need to memorize all 16 Outer Planes to run a good game. Honestly, most players will never see more than three. But understanding the structure helps you answer the "why" of your world.
If you’re planning a high-level campaign, don't just treat these as levels in a video game. Use the list of all dnd planes to challenge your players' philosophy. Make them choose between the rigid, perfect order of Mechanus and the dangerous, vibrant freedom of Arborea.
Next Steps for Your Campaign:
Check your players' alignments and pick one "Mirror" plane and one "Outer" plane that matches their current trajectory. If they’ve been acting like agents of chaos, maybe a "wrong turn" into Limbo or the Abyss is exactly the wake-up call the party needs. Use the Border Ethereal for a low-level "ghost hunt" to get them used to the idea that reality has layers.