Planar adventuring has been a popular topic for Dungeons & Dragons adventures since even before the release of the Planescape setting. As magical and fantastical as the average D&D setting is, the other planes offer even more variety.

Whether it’s hunting a devil through the Nine Hells, playing politics in the Feywild and City of Brass, or desperately surviving the ever-shifting horrors of the Abyss, the possibilities for D&D 5e planar adventures are limitless. Or at least they should be.

This doesn’t often feel like the case. A lot of the planes in D&D 5e seem to go underused.

This could be for any number of reasons. Some are far more developed than others. The Shadowfell and the Nine Hells both have adventures set wholly or partially in them, for instance (Curse of Strahd is one of D&D 5e‘s best campaigns, and I am pleading the fifth about Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus).

Some of the D&D 5e planes have much less conflict, and conflict is what often drives adventures. It’s usually the Upper Planes hit with this problem. Arcadia and Elysium are both delightful to live in, what trouble is there? People enjoying themselves too much?

Being boring isn’t restricted to the Upper Planes in D&D 5e. Acheron, one of the Lower Planes, is, for my money, the dullest. It isn’t good for much except endless killing, which you can do much more excitingly on the Ysgard plane in D&D 5e.

And yet an adventure can be set on any D&D plane. A whole story arc can, I’d be willing to bet. My plan here isn’t to tell you what to play – although if anything on here miraculously gives you that bit of inspiration, go ahead – but to give you something to think about for your own planar adventures in D&D 5e.

Updated March 18th, 2024: I try not to update old articles too often, but some still get readers despite being very outdated in their writing and style. I’ve updated this article on D&D 5e’s best and most underrated planes to bring its quality more in-line with my more recent work.

Arcadia – The Spreading Rot

As far as the perfect, delightful, heavenly regions go, Arcadia is probably one of the best planes in D&D 5e for aesthetics alone.

It presents a more interesting form of perfect and heavenly than Bytopia’s Impressively Lawful Neutral Good, focusing more on the collective than the individual. It’s also more militarised than the heavenly Outer Planes, with cadres of Paladins who patrol to maintain order and see off threats. Plus, day changes to night instantly, that’s kinda cool.

But cadres of Paladins can’t overcome everything. Arcadia’s a big place with plenty of room for things to go wrong.

What if something dark, something evil, something corrupting, ended up there? This could be by accident or by design. An Unseelie Archfey, a fallen Angel, a powerful Demon would all be a nightmare for this D&D 5e plane. Something that could degrade the world around it by its very presence, and easily fight off any Paladin militia that attempted to destroy it.

Worse, this threat isn’t just corrupting the D&D plane of Arcadia around it, it’s growing stronger. As the world rots and decays, it gains power. Glistening blue lakes turn to green sludge, the corpses of fish and swimmers lining their surfaces. Fine forests and plains soften and rot into fetid swamps. Beautiful birds turn gaunt and lose colour, beginning to hunger for living and petitioner flesh.

You get the picture. Paradise has been cursed.

Your D&D 5e PCs – probably pretty powerful and high-level, if they’re getting this quest – are petitioned to slay the creature and end its corruption. First, they need to survive through the corroded and decomposed husk of a beautiful land it has created.

Acheron – A Needle in a Bladestack

Yep, we’re doing several D&D planes I explicitly called out as being boring. My criticism of Acheron was primarily limited to its first layer – although the same applies to its third, and its fourth is pretty much instant death.

Conveniently, this leaves the D&D 5e plane of Acheron with one layer that might actually work for planar adventures. The second layer of Acheron is a massive junkyard where all the lost weapons in the multiverse end up.

Let’s face it, “search for this lost weapon” is a fairly popular plot hook. Why not do it in the world’s biggest haystack made almost entirely of needles? It makes thematic sense, and a huge junkyard is a cool planar setting for a D&D 5e adventure.

This approach can add a bit more depth to a fairly simple plot arc. For instance, the PCs need to find a way to reach Acheron and then get back out. Furthermore, it can be a nice chance to splash a bit more magical loot for your D&D party, given every lost magical weapon ends up there eventually (although not too many – for every Vorpal Sword, there are approximately ten trillion regular swords lost).

The Acheron plane in D&D 5e can also include a wide variety of enemies. Rust Monsters, Fiends, other adventurers looking for other weapons (or even the same one). You could probably swing one of D&D‘s Celestials down there looking for loot and being highly untrusting of visitors.

If you want to include the other layers of Acheron in D&D 5e, there are ways. For instance, they might only be able to access the first layer, and need to find a way down. This could involve some negotiating with a side that controls access to it. Alternatively, there could be an entertaining ‘hold the line’ combat in D&D 5e as the party fight off the Plane’s denizens long enough to complete some travelling ritual.

Going further down this D&D 5e plane, wicked Wizards often make their lairs on the third layer, because it’s less populated. Maybe one of those has stolen the weapon, and the PCs only find out after fighting through the junkyard.

You could even expand this to include other D&D 5e planes. Magic items are usually immune to rust and the sort, but thousands of years in the multiverse’s junkyard might harm them.

Your D&D 5e party might need to take them to some of the best weaponsmiths in the multiverse to give them their shine back – which happen to be on Bytopia (another paradise Plane). Should you really want to go to Acheron instead of some of D&D 5e‘s best planes, there is plenty of meat there for adventures.

Carceri – There’s No Way Out of Here

Speaking of Lower Planes nobody ever wants to go to, Carceri is actually my single favourite plane in D&D 5e. I don’t know quite why I like Carceri quite so much, I just do. Many people consider it to be a knock-off Nine Hells (which, kind of valid), and argue that it’s very difficult to run anything short-term in there, due to its nature (again, definitely valid).

Something about D&D‘s Carcei being the perfect prison plane for some of the most contemptible people in the cosmos just appeals to me. And what details have been given about it (it seems to be one of those planes that’s more set-dressing than an actual location) are all cool.

For instance, Carceri contains a ship that provides one of the few refuges from the horrors of D&D‘s most unpleasant plane, and so is often packed with the wicked and the damned. But it also contains a hundred stone coffins with unknown contents. Anytime they’re opened, the ship’ is found deserted’s inhibants disappear in some unexplained, hideous way.

The D&D Carceri plane also has a sentient, hostile garden trying to spread to the entire plane. The Titans of Othrys offer shelter to people on their layer if they have something to bargain with, but enviously murder people with a chance of escape. In short, Carceri has some of the best stuff of any plane in D&D 5e.

This isn’t just a travel brochure for Carceri (that’d be one hell of a holiday), it’s reassuring you that you can totally play there. And you can. Now, I will admit, that unless you’re very high level, it probably won’t just be one adventure.

Carceri’s very nature as a D&D 5e plane is that there’s no escape. Conventional magic can get you in, but it can’t get you out (short of a Wish spell). This is a long-term commitment for any D&D 5e planar adventure.

Nonetheless, it could be one hell of a unique story arc, being trapped in D&D 5e‘s torment plane and seeking a way out. There are plenty of ways your D&D party could end up there. A mishap in the Astral Plane sending them through a portal to this hellscape. A hiccup with a plane-shifting artifact. Alternatively, the party could willingly enter D&D‘s Carceri plane searching for an artifact or person. It’s one hell of a risk, but so is any adventure.

Like Acheron, Carceri also has ways to link to other D&D planes. One of the precious few ways to escape is by accepting the offers of the Blood War recruiters who pass through.

If your D&D PCs take that offer, that’s a whole other story arc you’ve got there. Another way is to follow the River Styx, braving its dangers and going on a veritable tour of the Lower Planes.

There are plenty of ways a story can use Carceri in D&D 5e, and more to do than its relatively sparse lore would suggest. And I just love this D&D plane in general. More respect for Carceri, please.

The Water Plane – On Stranger Tides

The Elemental worlds get a bum rap among the Inner Planes. The Feywild and Shadowfell are two of D&D‘s best planes. The Astral Plane has Githyanki and Astral Dreadnoughts, two of the cooler extraplanar terrors. The Ethereal Plane is….ghosts or something. Conversely, the Elemental Planes have a bad reputation.

I think a lot of the dislike for these D&D planes comes from inconsistent depiction. Most significantly, it’s almost impossible to set a D&D adventure in a plane entirely made up of one element. If the Plane of Fire in D&D is made up entirely of fire, with a lava floor, flames coating every surface, and an atmosphere made of ash and gas, it wouldn’t make for good adventuring.

D&D 5e‘s Dungeon Master’s Guide spells out all the Elemental Planes as more inhabitable, especially the Plane of Water. It’s no longer an endless ocean with no surface or land. Instead, it’s an endless ocean that has a surface, a sky, and vanishingly rare lands (that get even more infrequent the further you go).

You need a ship for an adventure through the Plane of Water in D&D 5e. However, a ship opens up boundless possibilities.

The Plane of Water, in its current D&D 5e state, is a chance to live out your Pirates of the Caribbean fantasies while doubling down on the weirdness. We all have Pirates of the Caribbean franchises, don’t lie.

In the Plane of Water in D&D 5e, you can swashbuckle across islands inhabited by undead crews whose spirits cannot rest. You can sail full-speed ahead away from Krakens as your guns desperately fire to drive it off. You can dive to shipwrecks in a bottomless sea (pressure, thankfully, is not something D&D 5e pretends to simulate) to recover fabled artifacts. 

This does require a certain type of group and a certain type of DM. Nonetheless, but if you’re looking for a zany, fantastical, swashbuckling romp, the Plane of Water is one of the best planes in D&D for adventuring.

The Outlands – Red Dead Neutrality

Now, it might be technically cheating to include the Outlands in this list of D&D planes I have to defend.

By all reports, the Outlands make up one of the most reasonable planes in Planescape. They’re inhabited by literally all sorts of folks and wildlife, it’s made up of the same sort of combinations of everything as the Prime Material. Furthermore, lots of adventures are run here.

The reason I’ve included the Outlands on this list (aside from it originally being written before Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse) is because many planar adventures in D&D focus very much on one Outlands feature.

Sigil, the City of Doors, is the centre of the D&D Multiverse, a fascinating place, and the setting of beloved D&D video game Planescape: Torment. And while Sigil is truly a fantastic setting for even a whole campaign, the rest of the Outlands plane in D&D tends to get left by the wayside.

This is a shame because, by the lore given for them in D&D 5e, the Outlands are basically the American frontier in Planescape. They’re the ultimate kitchen sink (besides Sigil) because nearly anything can end up in the Outlands plane.

The main bastions of civilisation are the seventeen Portal towns, one for each of D&D‘s other Outer Planes. These each somewhat resemble their home Plane (so the Abyss one might not be too nice, for instance), but are inhabited by nearly anything.

The Abyss Portal Town could well be home to the souls of mortals who couldn’t reach their god’s plane, a retired Githyanki pirate captain on the run from the law who will regale you with a story for a shot of whiskey, a Devil Blood War captain who is all but begging for a fight with the local Demons, a grumpy Celestial there to hash out the details of an agreement with a Modron on ground they both hate equally, and pretty much any other Wild West trope you can think of, but with a Planescape bent.

Outside these Portal Towns, the Outlands plane in D&D likely includes other bits of civilisation, but weaker, smaller, and less able to defend themselves from local predations (which could be anything from bandits to manticores to Nothics, and far more besides).

So the further you go in D&D‘s Outlands, the more wild and unsafe the land gets. Another interesting feature is that, if you go inwards from the Portal Towns, closer to Sigil, your D&D magic starts to malfunction.

This gets more and more powerful the closer you get. This can add a fun (or horrifying) dynamic for your party’s spellcasters to deal with.

The sheer variety of things you could do in the D&D Outlands Plane is dizzying. Anything you could do in Planescape and anything else you could do in the Wild West, all for the taking.

Bodyguarding an Archfey as they drink in a town filled with their enemies? Check. Running mail between Portal Towns, ready to fight off the thieves or Modrons or Demons that want to steal it? Check. Hunting down a criminal gang containing members from six different planes who’ve been robbing across the multiverse? Check.

The sheer anything-ness of the Outlands plane in D&D, along with its frontier setting, its its biggest strength. I’m genuinely glad that Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse gives the plane its dues..

This has been a defense of five underrated planes in D&D 5e that I promise you can run adventures on. While the Nine Hells and the Feywild are cool, maybe give these ones a look-in when you’re planning your next planar adventure in D&D.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, please like it, comment below, and share it on social media. Thank you!

If you’re still struggling for inspiration with the entire D&D multiverse at your fingertips (we’ve all been there), check out ‘Five Ways to Make D&D 5e Quests When Low on Ideas‘.

To prepare yourself for D&D 5e‘s climactic plane-hopping adventure, instead consider reading ‘Five Things to (Possibly) Expect from the Vecna: Eve of Ruin D&D 5e Campaign‘.