Astral plane- loophole for item creation?

[rand()]

I'm running a Dnd campaign and my players are planeshifting to the Astral Plane occassionaly, in order to create magic items and epic spells, eliminating the factor of time. For example , during our last game , they have created 4 epic spells in 2-rounds of material-plane-time, instead of 64 days :smallannoyed:. Is there any rule against it?

There wasn t any relevant entry, in dm's guide and in the manual of the planes, so any tip would be helpfull. (i know that as a dm:smallcool: i could just forbid them to do it but i d prefer a written rule)

[Wings of Peace]

I'm running a Dnd campaign and my players are planeshifting to the Astral Plane occassionaly, in order to create magic items and epic spells, eliminating the factor of time. For example , during our last game , they have created 4 epic spells in 2-rounds of material-plane-time, instead of 64 days :smallannoyed:. Is there any rule against it?

There wasn t any relevant entry, in dm's guide and in the manual of the planes, so any tip would be helpfull. (i know that as a dm:smallcool: i could just forbid them to do it but i d prefer a written rule)

This is one of the more well known tricks for doing time consuming tasks efficiently. While I don't know if that's the proper speed time flows at on the astral plane I can tell you that they're not alone on the astral plane either.

[GoatBoy]

You could change it so that "time" is effectively a resource that goes into magic item creation, like gp and XP, and since there's no time on the astral plane ("timeless"), items can't be created there.

If they don't buy that explanation, then just say that it doesn't work anymore. Rules or not, it's YOUR game.

[Acanous]

if all they're doing is creating things in the astral plane and not duplicating artifacts, count yourself lucky.

Seriously though, you say they've created two Epic Spells. PCs of epic level have a great many ways to break time and space. Saying they can't craft on the astral plane will just begin an arms race that culminates with your PCs going back in time and creating items before the campaign started.

I suggest instead Improved Sunder, Etherial Filchers, and Disjunction to deal with the surplus of items, and while they DID learn those epic spells quickly, they are limited to one epic spell per 20 ranks of relevant skill. You've got 20 levels to learn how to deal with the epic spells they have before that's a problem again.

[Eldan]

I wouldn't think that is possible. The Astral Plane does not have accelerated time. It has no time at all, time doesn't pass there.

However, for most things, this has, really, pretty much no effect. The only common change is that things do not age, and non-sentient things that move do not stop moving unless stopped. Also, no one becomes hungry or needs to breathe.

In fact, time even catches up to you when you leave: if you spent 40 days on the astral and never ate, enjoy starving to death in seconds.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure time still passes in the rest of the multiverse.

[Zaranthan]

I wouldn't think that is possible. The Astral Plane does not have accelerated time. It has no time at all, time doesn't pass there.

However, for most things, this has, really, pretty much no effect. The only common change is that things do not age, and non-sentient things that move do not stop moving unless stopped. Also, no one becomes hungry or needs to breathe.

In fact, time even catches up to you when you leave: if you spent 40 days on the astral and never ate, enjoy starving to death in seconds.

This. "Timeless" does not mean "Time Stop." Things don't break down or wear away on the Astral, but time still PASSES. It just doesn't do anything time normally does until you leave (at which point it all happens retroactively). If they spent 64 days in the Astral Plane, 64 days have gone by for everyone else in the multiverse as well.

[FearlessGnome]

While on the Astral Plane, you do not age and you do not have to eat. When you leave, all that time catches up to you. 64 days on the Astral plane? Fortitude saves for 64 consecutive days of starvation. And time still passes outside. It may have been inadvertently, but the players broke the rules in a way that greatly benefited them and that would kill them dead if hostile NPCs did the same thing. Retcon.

[Ellrin]

non-sentient things that move do not stop moving unless stopped.

Okay, I'm not actually sure about RAW, but I'd assume that's how things are at least supposed to work on the material plane, too.

EDIT:
Fixed!

[Zaranthan]

Okay, I'm not actually sure about RAW, but I'd assume that's how things are at least supposed to work on the material plane, too.

I didn't say that, Eldan did, but I think he was referring to the "No Gravity" trait of the Astral, where a fired arrow will continue flying in a straight line until it hits something, rather than falling to the ground and being stopped by friction.

[Eldan]

It's not only that, actually. I don't remember the actual mechanics in detail, but sentient things move differently from non-sentient ones. It's a bit weird.

But then, the astral plane really is one of the go-to planes for weirdness.

[Chronos]

It's also at least nine dimensional, though I'm not sure any of the sourcebooks go into detail on that.

One of these days I really need to write up some good homebrew planar rules.

[Ellrin]

I didn't say that, Eldan did, but I think he was referring to the "No Gravity" trait of the Astral, where a fired arrow will continue flying in a straight line until it hits something, rather than falling to the ground and being stopped by friction.

So he did. Sorry, I've been operating on a massive sleep-debt lately, and it was really late where I am when I posted that.