Planar Travel

Planeshifting

As per the plane shift spell, an attuned focus is needed to deliberately travel to a given plane. Other hindrances may also foil a traveler, like divine veto, dimensional anchors, if the destination plane does not border the departure plane, or other reasons.

If an attempt at planar travel is to be attempted, it is recommended that the caster know what they are getting themselves into, and if the transit is possible from where they intend to cast their spell.

For transitions from one tangible plane to another the transit is often a portal, tunnel, or some other such traditional movement. For "travel" to the more metaphysical planes it may be more like waking from a dream, or indeed like falling asleep. In these cases the actual instance of arrival may be tangled in symbology seen through subjective interpretation.

Artificial Portals

For those who know where to find them, and knows how to power them, inter-planar portals are an option that bypass the use of personal magic. They are rare, and often do not hold up for long as the energies powering them are usually from an era long past.

Natural Thresholds

These are poorly understood and are unreliable in most cases. They can be actual portals, areas that coexist on two or more planes, or other less intuitive crossings.

Availability and Occurrence

For most ordinary mortals life is lived largely in ignorance of the existence of other planes, let alone their influence or an opportunity to travel to them.