I was wondering if you can plane shift to a plane you never visited since you seem to need to specify a destination?
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\$\begingroup\$ Related. Although for D&D 3.5, Pathfinder raises similar questions. Further, consider defining in the campaign's house rules the term destination, perhaps as in this answer. \$\endgroup\$ – Hey I Can Chan Apr 30 '15 at 12:58
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You don't need to visit a plane to go there.
The only thing that the description of plane shift says about where you arrive is:
you appear 5 to 500 miles (5d%) from your intended destination
Compare this with teleport, which says:
You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination.
Teleport also has a bunch of other information about targeting a location, which says (among other things) that you need to at least see a place to teleport there. Since some transport magic specifically says that you need to see a place to go there, it implies that spells that don't say you need to see a place to go there, don't have that requirement.
The fact that plane shift says that you arrive near your destination, you do need to have a destination. However, this can be defined any way that your DM considers precise enough to count as a 'location'. For example, you could say that you wanted to go to a particular githyanki outpost in the Astral Plane, or a particular efreet keep on the Plane of Fire that you've heard of. As long as you can name a place, you can plane shift there.
answered Apr 30 '15 at 2:33
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2\$\begingroup\$ Is it worth saying something about tuning forks here? (I upvoted, but the tuning fork is the main way DMs prevent players from plane shift-ing anywhere in the multiverse.) \$\endgroup\$ – Miniman Apr 30 '15 at 4:19
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3\$\begingroup\$ Is it? That's odd, I've never seen it ruled that way. The 'tuning fork' doesn't have a gold cost, and "Assume that focus components of negligible cost are in your spell component pouch." There is similar wording on the 3.5 SRD. I've never played in a game where the 'tuning fork' was a thing that mattered. \$\endgroup\$ – DuckTapeAl Apr 30 '15 at 4:49
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2\$\begingroup\$ Huh. It's not on the SRD, but the 3.5 PHB has: "Forked rods keyed to certain planes or dimensions may be difficult to come by, as decided by the GM." I think the primary purpose is to make sure that you can't get into Mordenkainen's personal demiplane and grab all his stuff. \$\endgroup\$ – Miniman Apr 30 '15 at 4:58
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\$\begingroup\$ Minor nitpicking perhaps, but don't you automatically visit a plane when you go there? Unless you meant "You don't have to have visited a plane before to go there"? \$\endgroup\$ – Theik Apr 30 '15 at 7:48
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\$\begingroup\$ @thedarkwanderer The spell plane shift in Pathfinder requires a forked rod as its focus, regardless of the spell's source. (Check the spell's Components entry.) \$\endgroup\$ – Hey I Can Chan Apr 30 '15 at 12:25
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As a component of the spell Plane Shift it is required that you have a forked metal rod attuned to the plane of travel.
As long as that requirement is met you can travel to any plane - whether or not you've visited it previously.
