What planes have predictable time warping effects?

Question

In the 5e DMG travel to the Feywild is accompanied by a time warping effect, which is determined by rolling on a random table.

My wizard (semi-inspired by an ancient ball of fun from Critical Role) is looking at making a planar home for himself to take advantage of this kind of effect.

I haven't found anything in 5e, so suspect I will be looking for rules from earlier editions: what planes have stable (ie: not rolled on a random table) time warping effects?

Specifically I am looking for a plane on which I can spend a long time, then step back into the material plane where a shorter time will have passed, even more specifically I am looking for one without negative side effects! Yes this is a classic 'how can my wizard extend their life' question.

So far everything I have found either has a side effect, is randomly rolled, or is the far realm (according to the 3.5 manual of the planes, and even that isn't clear about no negative effects upon returning, but might have to do for my purposes).

Answer 1

We may not know of a time-warped plane in particular, but we know who probably knows...

I know of nothing like this in 5e, but since in your question you stated that you are open to "rules for earlier editions", you might want to consider that for 2nd Edition, in the Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix, there is a rare humanoid called the dimensional warper that appears to have the knowledge and ability you are looking for. These warpers are:

• from another plane
• they mainly observe (but avoid interacting with) creatures in our Material Plane, merely seeking to gather knowledge (sort of like Watchers in many scifi genres)
• they have mastered movement in time and space in ways that are beyond our ken.

What plane they come from is a mystery that is never answered in 2nd Edition sourcebooks.

It is implied, if not said explicitly, that these creatures can do what you are trying to do

It's not exactly spelled out what is going on with these creatures, but they travel unknown planes, and as their name suggests, can warp the dimenions of both space and time. For example, very notably, they do not caste Haste but rather can bring about the same effect thrice daily, though some other means. One plausible explanation of their "mystery" is that they either know of planes with different time-cadences, or they simply know how to warp time, period.

If you have the kind of DM who likes to revive older edition creatures in 5e, then meeting up with a dimensional warper (they are neutral alignment, so potentially approachable), could be one avenue to pursue. Might be dangerous!

Answer 2

The description for gith in the Monster Manual (page 159) says that you do not age while on the astral plane.

Since creatures that dwell on the Astral Plane don't age, the githyanki establish creches in remote areas of the Material Plane to raise their young.

Would that work?

Answer 3

Even in past editions, in the default cosmology, no, but.

In D&D 3e, there is an explicit statement that time flows the same on all planes save the Astral:

Time Along the Great Wheel

Within the D&D cosmology, time flows at a normal rate, and all planes have the normal time trait. Planes with the flowing time trait or the erratic time trait change the game too dramatically for most player’ tastes.

The only exception to this is the Astral Plane, which is a timeless plane for purposes of aging, hunger, thirst, and natural healing.^[1]

^{(Manual of the Planes pg. 10)}

The Great Wheel is the default cosmology of D&D, used (by name) in 2e and 3e, but 1e also used a similar (unnamed) cosmology, and 5e seems to as well though we don’t really have a plane-dedicated book. (D&D 4e did something... entirely different, that 5e has mostly ignored aside from the Feywild, and using some of the names of 4e planes as kind of “poetic” names for Great Wheel planes.)

And the preference for normal time seems to be consistent in each of those editions, too: I spoke with a Planescape expert about 2e planes, and none with other planar time traits came to mind for him, and 5e has specific statements about not messing with time, as quoted in other answers.

However, note the reference to “the normal time trait.” That’s because, despite the fact that it didn’t use them, this edition defined other potential time traits for planes, including flowing time,² defined as

On some planes, time can flow faster or slower. One may travel to another plane, spend a year there, then return to the Material Plane to find that only six seconds have elapsed. Everything on the plane returned to is only a few seconds older. But for that traveler and the items, spells, and effects working on him, that year away was entirely real.

Furthermore, despite the statement in Manual of the Planes, there are (or were) some exceptions that actually used flowing time.³

A slow-time demiplane was apparently possible

Planar Handbook (the Planescape book for the “v.3.5 revised edition” of D&D and a kind of sequel to Manual of the Planes) mentions the possibility of a “planar breach” from a “slow-time demiplane.” That suggests that, despite not appearing in any of the major planes of the Great Wheel, demiplanes (which are often created by spellcasters, usually for their own personal use) can be constructed with flowing time traits.

Eberron—originally, at least

Eberron—whose debut in the “v.3.5 revised edition” made no mention of the Great Wheel and no attempt to be compatible with it—had moons that were also planes, somehow, and they had planar traits including some different time traits:

• Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams: flowing time, ⅒×Material
• Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead: timeless
• Thelanis, the Faerie Court: flowing time, 7×Material
• Xoriat, the Realm of Madness: “distorted” time, 60×Material (no idea why this wasn’t just flowing)

However, Eberron: Rising from the Last War says that the moons are just moons, and not planes, and makes no mention of differing time scales. It is unclear if this means they no longer have them or not, nor is anything about this ret-con explained in any manner. There are a lot of very serious problems with this ret-con,⁴ even ignoring older edition material,⁵ so I view the whole matter with a lot of skepticism.

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1. _{The exceptionally-timeless nature of the Astral has more significant repercussions than mentioned here, by the way—for one thing, that fact is why teleportation works, because you travel some distance in the Astral and pop out somewhere else in the Material, and the transit time is 0 from the Material’s perspective because time doesn’t move in the Astral. This property is... insufficiently defined to bear very much scrutiny, however. Taken literally, you would think the Astral would be very crowded with every teleportation performed by every creature to ever exist.}

2. _{The other time traits are the aforementioned normal, timeless for the Astral, and erratic time, where the plane is inconsistently faster or slower.}

3. _{None seem to have used erratic time, and frankly I have no idea how you would run such a thing. I guess do something similar to what the Feywild does, but 3e didn’t provide a table as the 5e DMG does.}

4. _{The issues are not primarily to do with the moons themselves, and whether or not they are planes, but rather with the connection of Eberron to the Great Wheel/wider multiverse. A ton of the tension in Eberron stems from being stuck with their own cosmology, and not being able to interact with other planes. No one in Eberron even knows if gods exist at all, much less can confirm their beliefs per se; in the Great Wheel, it’s not terribly hard to go meet a god in person. Likewise, in Eberron, almost everyone is consigned to Dolurrh on death, to be recycled—this is a major impetus for faith in at least two major religions, the Silver Flame and the Blood of Vol. In the Great Wheel, (almost) everyone just goes to their own deity’s divine realm. Adding Eberron to the Great Wheel is not impossible, but there needs to be some kind of explanation why the other planes haven’t completely upended Khorvairan society, maybe something like the Gray of Athas. Eberron: Rising from the Last War did not provide one.}

5. _{Which itself is a mistake since 5e has one book about Eberron while 3.5e had over a dozen and that’s not counting adventures.}

Answer 4

There is no such plane in 5e, and if there were, it would be broken

Having a fixed differential ratio for how fast time flows between two planes is inherently exploitable. As evidenced by the question itself, which is all about exploiting such a thing.

With access to planar travel spells like plane shift, it would allow a high level caster and its party to nearly entirely ignore the flow of time in adventures, and in many adventures, having a "clock" is critical because the PCs resources are limited per day.

Imagine a plane where time reliably flows 24x slower than on the prime material. A caster could cast plane shift on the group, have the whole group rest up, regaining his own spell slots including plane shift, and shift back again, trading a short rest for a long rest. Maybe they do not end up exactly at the same spot, but if another caster in the group has teleport, that is easily fixed. If you have access to level 8 slots so you can plane shift to rest again, you would get long rest recovery many times per adventuring day, entirely breaking the system of resource depletion that is envisioned for the game.

The other direction is as problematic, obviating time costs. Imagine a plane where time flows 120x as fast as on the prime material. Need a clone? Go there, make your clone, ready on the same day when you return.

KRyan pointed out that there were such planes in earlier versions of D&D and they were indeed highly exploitable. It is of course hard to prove a negative, but I do not know of any such plane in any official publication in 5e. I think it is also reasonable to expect the games designers, which have been playing D&D for decades, are aware of the issues. It therefore would be unlikely that one could be introduced again in future, but of course not impossible.

Astral Plane

If your goal just is to not age, you can go to the Astral Plane. Time will pass normally, but not age you. DMG, p. 47

Creatures on the Astral Plane don't age or suffer from hunger or thirst.

However, hanging out on the Astral has other downsides, as discussed in this Q&A.