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Aquillion
2008-07-22, 12:40 PM
By freeing your spirit from your physical body, this spell allows you to project an astral body onto another plane altogether.Ok, so you seperate your body from your astral self and can project it onto other planes (away from the astral plane, ultimately) That part works fine.


You project your astral self onto the Astral Plane, leaving your physical body behind on the Material Plane in a state of suspended animation.

Uh. So if you cast Astral Projection while physically on the Astral Plane, your physical body is popped onto the Material Plane? For that matter, what happens if you cast it on another non-Material plane?


When a second body is formed on a different plane, the incorporeal silvery cord remains invisibly attached to the new body. If the second body or the astral form is slain, the cord simply returns to your body where it rests on the Material Plane, thereby reviving it from its state of suspended animation.No it doesn't, if your body isn't on the material plane.


You and your companions may travel through the Astral Plane indefinitely. Your bodies simply wait behind in a state of suspended animation until you choose to return your spirits to them. The spell lasts until you desire to end it, or until it is terminated by some outside means, such as dispel magic cast upon either the physical body or the astral form, the breaking of the silver cord, or the destruction of your body back on the Material Plane (which kills you).So what happens if your body is not on the Material plane when it gets destroyed?



EDIT: Also, a mostly unrelated question, but I didn't want to create two threads on Astral Projection...


To enter one, you leave the Astral Plane, forming a new physical body (and equipment) on the plane of existence you have chosen to enter. You're not getting a 'reflection' of your equipment -- you're, uh, duplicating every piece of equipment you own. Which seems abusable, to put it mildly.

There's no description of whether or not that duplicate equipment is lost when your Astral Projection is killed/terminated, but let's assume it is. Even then... so I buy a Ring of Three Wishes. Then I cast Astral Projection. My projection has a Ring of Three Wishes. This is not the original ring -- this is a completely new ring. I use it up. The ring back on my physical body is unaffected. I end the projection, then cast the spell again, creating a new, fully-charged copy of that original ring...

erikun
2008-07-22, 04:06 PM
I'm going to assume this was a responce to another thread, as it doesn't make much sense by itself. I'm not going to bother with whatever RAW should be, and just state how I would judge such a case as a DM.

First, when you cast Astral Projection, you leave your body behind and project onto the Astral Plane. The term "leaving your physical body behind on the Material Plane" seems to imply that you are on the material plane to begin with - if you were elsewhere, it doesn't make much sense for your body to suddenly teleport back to the Prime Material Plane. (Which is really RAI, but *shrug*)

Second, if you really want to cast Astral Projection while on the Astral Plane, I see no reason why not. However, you don't get to choose where you project, so you probably won't end up next to your unconcious body. :smallwink: Also, while you can find a portal to a specific plane in X hours, that's just finding A portal, not one specific portal. Don't expect to find your body easily.

Third, if you really wanted to go there with the Ring of 2 Wishes: any wishes cast from the projected ring end when the Astral Projection ends. Or, if you really insist on pushing it, I'm sure there is an "Astral Filcher" who would happily relieve you of that ring if you let your guard down. Don't be trying to munchkin me; it doesn't end well. :smalltongue:

nargbop
2008-07-22, 04:27 PM
:smallcool: Wonderful story possibilities here... You appear to mortal men, bound with a silver cord back to a floating POINT. Children laugh and tug on it... :smallcool:

This is a situation for... DM INTERPRETATION! Adjust the magic's stated rules to the unanticipated situation.

RTGoodman
2008-07-22, 06:22 PM
You're not getting a 'reflection' of your equipment -- you're, uh, duplicating every piece of equipment you own. Which seems abusable, to put it mildly.

There's no description of whether or not that duplicate equipment is lost when your Astral Projection is killed/terminated, but let's assume it is. Even then... so I buy a Ring of Three Wishes. Then I cast Astral Projection. My projection has a Ring of Three Wishes. This is not the original ring -- this is a completely new ring. I use it up. The ring back on my physical body is unaffected. I end the projection, then cast the spell again, creating a new, fully-charged copy of that original ring...

You could do that, but that's not the only way to abuse it, especially if you're high enough level to have a ring of three wishes. If you're duplicating EVERYTHING, then you should make sure you've got all sorts of high-level expensive equipment on you when you cast astral projection. Then just have your friendly neighborhood high-level Cleric make a gate (the astral travel version, which costs NO XP) beside you, walk through, and get the copies of your equipment from your astral body. (I don't know anything about the Planes, though, so would they need any special equipment to grab anything on the Astral Plane and/or bring it back?)

Then they just pop back to real world and the two of you split the profit of your doubled goods. If you can get a lot of coins instead of magic items, that makes it even better since you don't have to worry about finding someone to sell high-level items to.

Anyone see any RAW problems with that?

The_Snark
2008-07-22, 06:31 PM
You could do that, but that's not the only way to abuse it, especially if you're high enough level to have a ring of three wishes. If you're duplicating EVERYTHING, then you should make sure you've got all sorts of high-level expensive equipment on you when you cast astral projection. Then just have your friendly neighborhood high-level Cleric make a gate (the astral travel version, which costs NO XP) beside you, walk through, and get the copies of your equipment from your astral body. (I don't know anything about the Planes, though, so would they need any special equipment to grab anything on the Astral Plane and/or bring it back?)

Then they just pop back to real world and the two of you split the profit of your doubled goods. If you can get a lot of coins instead of magic items, that makes it even better since you don't have to worry about finding someone to sell high-level items to.

Anyone see any RAW problems with that?

Well, not RAW exactly... but I'm sure there's a type of inevitable strictly dedicated to keeping the fantasy economy relatively stable, or else it would have imploded by now.

Frosty
2008-07-22, 06:35 PM
Fun things about DnD economy - excerpt from the Economicon. Read the complete thing here: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547

The Economicon: Making Sense of the Gold Standard:

"100 pounds of gold for a house? How does anyone make rent without a wheelbarrow?"

Since time immemorial, D&D has used the "gold piece" as its primary currency. It is apparently a chunk of reasonably pure gold of vaguely standardized weight that people use fairly interchangeably in different cities populated by different species. In the bad old days, each gold coin was a tenth of a pound, which was hilarious and inane. In the current edition, each gold piece is a fiftieth of a pound. That's 3.43 gp to the Troy Ounce, which means that in the modern economy, each gp is about $171 worth of gold. Obviously, gold is significantly more common in D&D than it is on Earth, gold is also undervalued because its status as a currency standard drives it out of industrial uses and causes inflation. Further, populations in D&D are orders of magnitude smaller than they are in the real world, so the gold per person is higher even with the same amount of gold. So the gold piece is massively less valuable in D&D economies than it would be in Earth's economies.

Nonetheless, things are really expensive in D&D, and the high price in gold means that there's a distinct limitation of how much wealth can be transported by any means available. The economies of currency transaction are actually so unfavorable that currency as we understand the term does not exist. Things don't have prices or costs – all transactions are conducted in barter and a common medium of exchange is heavy lumps of precious metal.

Wish and the Economy

An Efreet can provide a wish for any magical item of 15,000 gp or less. A Balor can greater teleport at will, but can only carry 30 pounds of currency while doing so. Even in platinum pieces, that's 15,000 gp worth of metal. The long and the short of it is – at the upper end of the economy currency has no particular purchasing power and magic items of 15,000 gp value or less are viewed as wooden nickels at best. You can spend 15,000 gp and get magic items, but people in the know won't sell you a magic item worth 15,001 gp for money. That kind of item can only be bought for love. Or human souls. Or some other planar currency that is not replicable by chain binding a room full of Efreet to make in bulk.

Powerful characters actually can have bat caves that have sword racks literally covered in 15,000 gp magic items. It's not even a deal because they could just go home and slap some Efreet around and get some more. But even a single major magic item – that's heavy stuff that such characters will notice. Those things don't come free with hope alone, and every archmage knows that.

Wartime Economies Make for Shortages:

Many people wonder why a masterwork dagger goes for more than its weight in gold. That's a pretty valid question to ask; certainly I'm not going to attempt to justify the 600 gp price tag on a masterwork walking stick – that's just an example of simplistic game mechanics run amok. But to an extent the crazy prices can be justified by the fact that every settlement in every D&D world is on a war footing all the time. The idea that Peace is somehow a natural state is a fairly recent one, and based on the frequency of wars all over the world – it's obviously just wishful thinking anyway. War is the default position of every major economy in the world, and that means that weapons have an immediate, and desperate, clientele. Iron is still relatively cheap, because you can't kill people with it right now, but actual weapons and armor are crazy expensive.

That doesn't explain the fact that the PHB charges you over a quarter Oz. of gold just to get a backpack, and it doesn't explain the fact that the markup on masterworking a buckler is the same as the markup on masterworking a breastplate – that's just a game simplification that makes no real-world sense. But it's a start.

Coins are Big and Heavy
"How many boards could the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?"

From the standpoint of the adventurer, the primary difficulty of the D&D currency system is that the lack of a coherent banking and paper currency system means that there are profound limits to what you could possibly purchase even with platinum. But the currency system hurts on the other end as well. Untrained labor gets a silverpiece a week. That's 500 copper coins a year, which means that no matter how cheap things are they can only make one purchase a day most of the time. That's pretty stifling to the economy, in that however much gets produced, noone can buy it. Demand, from the economics standpoint, is strangled to the point where large production outputs don't even matter (remember that in economics Demand doesn't mean "what people want", it means "what people are willing and able to pay for", so if the average person only has 500 discreet pieces of currency per year, that puts an absolute cap on economic demand, even though the people are of course both needy and greedy enough to want anything you happen to produce).

What's worse, those coins are heavy. For our next demonstration, reach into your change drawer and fish out nine pennies. That's a decent lump in your pocket, neh? That's about one copper piece. Gold pieces are smaller (less than half the size, actually), but weigh the same. D&D currency, therefore, is more like a Monopoly playing piece than it is like a modern or ancient coin. There's no reason to even believe these things are round, people are seriously marching around gold hats and silver dogs as the basic medium of exchange.

Now, you may ask yourself why these coins are so titanic compared to real coins. The answer is because having piles of coins is awesome. Dragons are supposed to sleep on that stuff, and that requires big piles of coins. Consider my own mattress, which is a "twin-size" (pretty reasonable for a single medium-size creature) and nearly .2 cubic meters. If it was made out of gold, it would be about 3.9 tonnes. That's about eighty-six hundred pounds, and even with the ginormous coins in D&D, that's four hundred and thirty thousand gold pieces. In previous editions, that sort of thing was simply accepted and very powerful dragons really did have the millions of gold pieces – which was actually fine. Since third edition, they've been trying to make gold actually equal character power, and the result has been that dragon hoards are… really small. None of this "We need to get a wagon team to haul it all away", no. In 3rd edition, hoard sizes have become manageable, even ridiculously tiny. When a 6th level party defeats a powerful and wealthy monster, they can expect to find… nearly a liter of gold. That is, the treasure "hoard" of that evil dragon you defeated will actually fit into an Evian bottle.

There are two ways to handle this:
Live with the fact that treasures are small and unexciting in modern D&D.

Live with the fact that characters who grab a realistic dragon's hoard become filthy stinking rich and this fundamentally changes the way they interact with society.


But once you accept that the realities of the wish based economy, you actually don't have to live with characters unbalancing the game once they find a real mattress filled with gold. That's not even a problem once characters are no longer excited by a +2 Enhancement bonus to a stat or a +3 enhancement bonus to Armor. Which means somewhere between 9th and 13th level it's perfectly fine for players to find actual money without unbalancing the game. Really, you can stop worrying about it.

Oslecamo
2008-07-22, 07:42 PM
Fake things about DnD economy

Fixed it for you.

Noowww, where should I start?

Ah, yes, the real world. Always a good starting point. A dollar will buy you a drink. A billion dollars will buy you a company or some high tech military vehicles and weapons. It doesn't matter that it's the same currency, you can buy both normal and uber awesome stuff with it. It's the whole idea behind money. It can be traded for any kind of product or service.

Now I highly doubt that the people actually carry around a billion dollars on their suitcases. No, they use other methods of transport, such letters of credit, reinforced cars, servants and stuff.

But of course, the authors of Ecomicon assume that when you go buy something you have to personally carry all the money. It's not like there aren't people willing to work for money. Money only good to fill bed matresses after all.

Not to mention that basing your assumptions in the earnings of untrained labor is a complete joke. Even a commoner has skill points, and he's gonna use them in some skill that can earn him money or die starving.


On the wish economy:

It doesn't work. Try it and:

A-You find there aren't enough efreetis on existence to answer all the casters trying to summon them, giving you an 0.0001% chance of ever seeing one.
B-The efreeti wishes you to become his slave, and another fool joins his army.
C-Wishes just have an awfull tendency of backfiring no matter how well you word them.
D-The plane of Mechanus is watching you. The only thing Inevitables do is seek and punish anyone who tries to mess up with the order of the universe (aka what they say is right). So if a someone actually manages to make some efreeti chain working, he can be guaranteed to be facing mighty arcane terminators in no time. If there is no Inevitables, then there aren't efreetis, or any kind of outsiders for you to abuse and everything is fine anyway.

So, for ecomicon to make any sense, you have to ignore 99% of the rest of D&D, the real world, economy rules and pretty much everything else.

Specially because if you have an infinite supply of 15000 GP items, you don't need anything else. That Balor will hoard up on scrolls of time stop untill it can auto win any battle. Every city will be ready to gate solars at any sense of danger. The party will be slaughtered in their first ecounter because that kobold army was fully equiped with +2 swords, +3 armors and candles of invocation.

It's pure fantasy, and could make for an interesting White Wolf game, but it isn't D&D anymore.

Frost
2008-07-22, 07:55 PM
1) Yes Astral Projection Clones all your equipment. Yes this means that expended use items become super sweet. Yes you can abuse it horrendously with scrolls or Rings of Wishes or whatever.

2) Yes Astral Projection has many lines which serve only to prove the point that the WotC authors didn't even realize that Planeshift exists. You can either rule that casting the spell on any plane other then the Material is impossible or you can accept that all the "Material Planes" can just be removed from the text.

3) Something everyone should know about Astral Projection: Nightmares can cast it at will at CL 20 without using components as a suprenatural (IE non-dispellable) ability. This can be ruled as the ability to cast is (Su) and the spell is still a spell and dispellable, but still.

So what you do is:

Step -1: Have a level 9 Wizard in your party
Step 0: Be inside your super fortress
Step 1: Buff up the Wizard's Cha checks with items and spells
Step 2: Make a Magic Circle, Cast Dimensional Anchor in it, then Planar Bind a Nightmare.
Step 3: Have it's task be to cast and maintain AP on the party until the spell ends naturally (IE not him dismissing it).
Step 4: Project or Planeshift (level 9 Cleric needed) to wherever you want to adventure.
Step 5: Rest to regain spells.
Step 6: Enjoy you CL days of adventuring while immortal at level 9.

Frost
2008-07-22, 08:04 PM
Fixed it for you.

Noowww, where should I start?

Ah, yes, the real world. Always a good starting point. A dollar will buy you a drink. A billion dollars will buy you a company or some high tech military vehicles and weapons. It doesn't matter that it's the same currency, you can buy both normal and uber awesome stuff with it. It's the whole idea behind money. It can be traded for any kind of product or service.

Now I highly doubt that the people actually carry around a billion dollars on their suitcases. No, they use other methods of transport, such letters of credit, reinforced cars, servants and stuff.

But of course, the authors of Ecomicon assume that when you go buy something you have to personally carry all the money. It's not like there aren't people willing to work for money. Money only good to fill bed matresses after all.

Not to mention that basing your assumptions in the earnings of untrained labor is a complete joke. Even a commoner has skill points, and he's gonna use them in some skill that can earn him money or die starving.


On the wish economy:

It doesn't work. Try it and:

A-You find there aren't enough efreetis on existence to answer all the casters trying to summon them, giving you an 0.0001% chance of ever seeing one.
B-The efreeti wishes you to become his slave, and another fool joins his army.
C-Wishes just have an awfull tendency of backfiring no matter how well you word them.
D-The plane of Mechanus is watching you. The only thing Inevitables do is seek and punish anyone who tries to mess up with the order of the universe (aka what they say is right). So if a someone actually manages to make some efreeti chain working, he can be guaranteed to be facing mighty arcane terminators in no time. If there is no Inevitables, then there aren't efreetis, or any kind of outsiders for you to abuse and everything is fine anyway.

So, for ecomicon to make any sense, you have to ignore 99% of the rest of D&D, the real world, economy rules and pretty much everything else.

Specially because if you have an infinite supply of 15000 GP items, you don't need anything else. That Balor will hoard up on scrolls of time stop untill it can auto win any battle. Every city will be ready to gate solars at any sense of danger. The party will be slaughtered in their first ecounter because that kobold army was fully equiped with +2 swords, +3 armors and candles of invocation.

It's pure fantasy, and could make for an interesting White Wolf game, but it isn't D&D anymore.

Where to start:

1) They are talking about the ridiculous weight of money, yes you can carry tonnes around, yes it is still ridiculous.

2) If 1/4th the people in the world could instantly create an infinite amount of dollars at will, or a drink, but no one could instantly create a company, then those 1/4th would own all the companies, and would be unwilling to trade any of those companies for any amount of money, since they can create that at will. They would only trade a company for something else that has value to them, which must be something that they cannot create.

3) Effertis are infinite in supply, because they live all over the infinite plane of fire.

4) Effertis can only grant wishes to mortals, not to themselves.

5) Wishing for someone to be someone else's slave is a DM fiat Wish. Yes someone could wish for only him to ever be able to Wish again, but we ignore the part that says "anything is possible" and we focus on only the things that Wish can very specifically do every single time without fail. Which is create any magic item in the game, or 25,000gp worth of non magic items.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-22, 08:40 PM
Segfault.

The spell doesn't function if you're not on a plane adjacent to the Astral Plane.

Frost
2008-07-22, 08:51 PM
Segfault.

The spell doesn't function if you're not on a plane adjacent to the Astral Plane.

Segfault, all planes are adjacent to the astral, and you are making that up because it is reflected nowhere in the rules.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-22, 09:01 PM
Segfault, all planes are adjacent to the astral, and you are making that up because it is reflected nowhere in the rules.

The astral is not adjacent to the astral.

And, according to D&D's usual cosmology, neither are the elemental planes.

shadow_archmagi
2008-07-22, 09:23 PM
Campaign concept: Maintaining the Balance.

Everyone in the party plays a Warforged. You hunt down mechanics abusers; everything from bucket-head peasants to bag-o-rats fighters and astral cloning wizards.

If the party screws up, giant green tentacle monsters start to break through the newly formed cracks in reality. If they continue to do poorly, even worse things appear.

turkishproverb
2008-07-22, 09:28 PM
The astral is not adjacent to the astral.

And, according to D&D's usual cosmology, neither are the elemental planes.

where is that "adjacent" thing backed up by the rules?

LibraryOgre
2008-07-22, 10:22 PM
where is that "adjacent" thing backed up by the rules?

Page 60 of the Manual of the Planes. "The Astral Plane cannot be reached from any of the inner planes. It can be reached from the Ethereal plane only through ether cyclones, which create temporary ruptures between the Astral and Ethereal."

Frost
2008-07-23, 03:27 AM
Page 60 of the Manual of the Planes. "The Astral Plane cannot be reached from any of the inner planes. It can be reached from the Ethereal plane only through ether cyclones, which create temporary ruptures between the Astral and Ethereal."

Which has absolutely nothing to do with casting a spell that projects you to the Astral.

Would you say that Plane Shifting to the Astral is impossible as well?

Paragon Badger
2008-07-23, 03:51 AM
The spell fizzles.

There, problem solved.

Aquillion
2008-07-23, 03:56 AM
Page 60 of the Manual of the Planes. "The Astral Plane cannot be reached from any of the inner planes. It can be reached from the Ethereal plane only through ether cyclones, which create temporary ruptures between the Astral and Ethereal."
The Astral Plane is neither an inner plane nor the Ethereal plane, though. It's a Transitive plane, and not covered by any of the exclusion clauses you listed, so it can be reached from itself.

Eldan
2008-07-23, 04:16 AM
I can only quote how it was done in Planescape, and that was AD&D and not technically legal anymore. Still, it explicitely said that you couldn't cast astral projection on the Astral, only on the Material plane. (I'm pretty sure you couldn't even do it on the outer).

loopy
2008-07-23, 07:37 AM
You get an astral hula hoop, hilarity ensues.

Waspinator
2008-07-23, 08:46 AM
If I was DMing, I'd probably have lightning strike right next to the Wizard and leave behind a note that says "Next time it will be falling rocks. Love, the Gods."

Aquillion
2008-07-23, 08:57 AM
If I was DMing, I'd probably have lightning strike right next to the Wizard and leave behind a note that says "Next time it will be falling rocks. Love, the Gods."Astral lightning? Astral rocks? :smalltongue:

Waspinator
2008-07-23, 02:30 PM
They're called "asteroids". :D

arguskos
2008-07-23, 02:54 PM
If I were dming, I'd let it fly, but, your bodies go comatose right there... on the Astral... with all sorts of baddies just LOOKING for a free meal. Astral Dreadnought anyone?

Also, to the debate about where the Astral is coterminous to, the DMG in the planes section mentions that the Astral Plane touches EVERYWHERE. If it didn't, you couldn't plane shift certain places (ie. if it didn't touch the Inner Planes, you couldn't plane shift there, since all teleportation spells use the Astral as a conduit or catalyst for the spell to function. If the Astral doesn't go to the destination, neither do you).

-argus

Ascension
2008-07-23, 03:09 PM
I might have Astral Projection be a two-way door... if you're on the Material when you cast it, you go to the Astral. If you're on the Astral when you cast it...

Welcome to the Material Plane in your Astral bodies! Oh, you want your physical bodies? They're still on the Astral Plane!

Frost
2008-07-23, 03:40 PM
Welcome to the Material Plane in your Astral bodies! Oh, you want your physical bodies? They're still on the Astral Plane!

That's pretty much what everyone wants anyway, since Astral bodies are just like other bodies, only it doesn't matter if you die.

Ascension
2008-07-23, 03:43 PM
That's pretty much what everyone wants anyway, since Astral bodies are just like other bodies, only it doesn't matter if you die.

Oh? Have they given any thought to what the various beasties on the Astral will do to their uninhabited forms? It'd be a race against time to get back to the Astral Plane before their physical bodies are destroyed.

Aquillion
2008-07-23, 07:16 PM
Oh? Have they given any thought to what the various beasties on the Astral will do to their uninhabited forms? It'd be a race against time to get back to the Astral Plane before their physical bodies are destroyed.What beasties? The Astral Plane is pretty empty. The most common beasties there are Gith, and they can kill you anyway, whether your body is actually there or not.

Frost
2008-07-23, 08:14 PM
Oh? Have they given any thought to what the various beasties on the Astral will do to their uninhabited forms? It'd be a race against time to get back to the Astral Plane before their physical bodies are destroyed.

Have you never made or found an Astral Fortress? We totally build our own Super Astral Fortresses.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-23, 09:52 PM
Which has absolutely nothing to do with casting a spell that projects you to the Astral.

Would you say that Plane Shifting to the Astral is impossible as well?

That does have to do with casting a spell that projects the caster into the astral, because you can only go into the astral from someplace adjacent to the astral. The Ethereal and inner planes are not adjacent. The Astral is not adjacent.

Frost
2008-07-23, 10:14 PM
That does have to do with casting a spell that projects the caster into the astral, because you can only go into the astral from someplace adjacent to the astral. The Ethereal and inner planes are not adjacent. The Astral is not adjacent.

So you think some obscure statement about the only ways to travel to the Astral Plane supersede a spell that explicitly states that it projects you on the Astral Plane no matter where you are?

{scrubbed}

LibraryOgre
2008-07-23, 11:29 PM
You seem to be misunderstanding which part of your argument I am addressing. You stated that all planes are adjacent to the astral. I was pointing out that not all planes are adjacent to the astral; the Elemental and Ethereal planes specifically are not; the elemental planes have no contact, and the Ethereal planes have only sporadic, point-to-point contact through the ether cyclones.

I was wrong about astrally projecting while physically present on the astral; page 70 of the Manual of the Planes specifically notes this as a possibility. However, the note that it cannot be reached from the inner or ethereal plane still applies; in all editions, specific trumps general.

olentu
2008-07-23, 11:43 PM
This disagreement between the books probably falls under the primary source rule.

nagora
2008-07-24, 05:20 AM
What happens if you cast Astral Projection while physically on the Astral plane?

Nothing except you just wasted a spell/power/item use.

Aquillion
2008-07-24, 08:16 AM
Nothing except you just wasted a spell/power/item use.

I was wrong about astrally projecting while physically present on the astral; page 70 of the Manual of the Planes specifically notes this as a possibility.So per RAW, something certainly happens.

...does it give any more detail, though? If they say it's allowed, seems pretty obvious to me what the RAI was (your astral projection copy steps out of your real body, which is left behind on the astral plane while you can form a new body in other planes as usual for Astral Projection), but I'm just curious if they realized they'd made those assumptions about the Material Plane back in the original Astral Projection text.

nagora
2008-07-24, 09:18 AM
So per RAW, something certainly happens.
Sure, but overruling that simplifies things a lot and I'd be happy if my DM did so, having said that:


your astral projection copy steps out of your real body, which is left behind on the astral plane while you can form a new body in other planes as usual for Astral Projection
Is fine too, although I'd not be happy leaving my body lying about on the Astral Plane for protracted periods.

EndgamerAzari
2008-07-24, 09:44 AM
I think I'd rule it's the physical (astral?) equivalent of dividing by zero.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-24, 10:07 AM
So per RAW, something certainly happens.

...does it give any more detail, though? If they say it's allowed, seems pretty obvious to me what the RAI was (your astral projection copy steps out of your real body, which is left behind on the astral plane while you can form a new body in other planes as usual for Astral Projection), but I'm just curious if they realized they'd made those assumptions about the Material Plane back in the original Astral Projection text.

The full text from page 70 of the MotP:
* The astral spell obviously cannot be cast by an individual who is already astrally projecting, but it can be cast by a traveler who is physically in the plane. Unless a safe haven is found for the physical body, both astral and physical forms are subject to encounters, attacks, and the effects of the psychic wind while on the Astral plane.

EDIT: Oh, and the planar relations map on page 7 is very clear that there are no standard or special ways of getting to the astral to the inner planes; only ether cyclones between the ethereal and the astral.

Frost
2008-07-24, 11:55 AM
However, the note that it cannot be reached from the inner or ethereal plane still applies; in all editions, specific trumps general.

{Scrubbed}

1) I am standing on the ground Surrounded by walls. I cannot go to someplace outside those walls.

I cast Teleport a spell which says, "You go to place X."

I am no in Place X even though I could not mundanely travel to that place.

2) I am on a Plane that is not adjacent to the Astral. I then cast a spell, either Plane Shift or Astral Projection that says, "You go directly to the Astral Plane, do not pass go, do not collect $200."

I am now on the Astral Plane.

How is: You may not reach the Astral Plane from Plane X, more specific then You go to Plane X no matter what.

Or even better the line in the DMG that says: "The Astral Plane touches all Planes."

Eighth_Seraph
2008-07-24, 01:30 PM
Relax, Frost. There are no flame-wars on GitP, and Mark Hall already gave the official answer to the OP's question. Nobody's trying to antagonize you.

Chronos
2008-07-24, 08:28 PM
That does have to do with casting a spell that projects the caster into the astral, because you can only go into the astral from someplace adjacent to the astral. The Ethereal and inner planes are not adjacent. The Astral is not adjacent.According to the DMG, the Astral Plane is adjacent to everything. I can see making an exception for something weird like the Far Realm, or wherever it is that vestiges are, since those are explicitly outside of the "normal" cosmology. But you'd think that if the Astral weren't adjacent to important planes like the Ethereal or elemental planes, that the DMG would have mentioned that very important exception, instead of just saying that it's adjacent to everything.

Again, if the DMG says one thing, and the Manual of the Planes says another, it's the DMG that takes precedence. This is especially true when the DMG in question is 3.5 edition, and the Manual of the Planes is 3.0.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-24, 09:37 PM
When did I say I was looking at the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes?

Did y'all even check my references? It's not like I've made my edition preferences secret, after all.

Frost
2008-07-24, 09:47 PM
When did I say I was looking at the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes?

Did y'all even check my references? It's not like I've made my edition preferences secret, after all.

No need to. There was no 3.5 Manual of the Planes ever published.

The only 3.5 Planar book even close is the Planar Handbook. So yeah, your 3.0 supplement is not going to sway me about planar relations when it specifically contradicts the 3.5 DMG.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-24, 09:57 PM
No need to. There was no 3.5 Manual of the Planes ever published.

The only 3.5 Planar book even close is the Planar Handbook. So yeah, your 3.0 supplement is not going to sway me about planar relations when it specifically contradicts the 3.5 DMG.

Once again... when did I say I was talking about the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes? And where did the OP say he was talking about 3.x?

Siosilvar
2008-07-24, 10:05 PM
Mark, I believe that 1st/2nd edition is an outdated source when discussing 3rd edition rules.


Going off-topic, I would really like to play 1st edition.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-24, 10:55 PM
Mark, I believe that 1st/2nd edition is an outdated source when discussing 3rd edition rules.


Going off-topic, I would really like to play 1st edition.

Where did he say he was talking about 3.x?

Iudex Fatarum
2008-07-25, 12:38 AM
I'm quite confused now. I just was checking the Manual of the Planes. About the astral plane it says "It is the space between everything." (p. 47) and "The Astral Plane is omnipresent and can potentially have links to every other plane in your cosmology... but in general the Astral Plane connects everywhere." (p. 48) and also just to put another quote to it "All planes, including the Plane of Shadow and the Ethereal Plane, are coexistent with the Astral Plane, which envelops the whole cosmology like a cloud." (p. 16)

Someone mentioned that Manual of the Planes is 3rd ed. so I checked it is indeed 3.0. The closest book I could find in 3.5 is Planar handbook. It says this about the Astral Plane, "The Astral Plane is a conduit to all other planes" (p. 136)

So I am very confused. I couldn't find even the word astral on page 70 of MotP, would you mind letting me know the edition you are using?

hamishspence
2008-07-25, 04:10 AM
MotP was updated by Wotc to 3.5 online. So info from it is not automatically invalidated unless there is a direct contraction, and contractions in one place do not invaldiate the whole book.

hamishspence
2008-07-25, 04:17 AM
In any case, claiming the line "your physical body is left behind on the material plane" in PHB automatically invalidates attempts to cast the spell on the astral plane ignores the fast that the Astral Projection spell can be cast anywhere. What if you cast it on an outer plane? You body is left behind on the plane you cast it from, not automatically the Material plane.

So, if through some mishap or otherwise, you are physically on the astral plane, and the spell can be cast anywhere, logically your physical body sits right where it is and you project an astral form from it.

LibraryOgre
2008-07-25, 08:29 PM
So I am very confused. I couldn't find even the word astral on page 70 of MotP, would you mind letting me know the edition you are using?

1st edition. Publication date of 1987.

hamishspence
2008-07-27, 07:29 AM
2nd ed rules state explicitly you could not astral project a body back to the material plane, but this is not mentioned in 3rd ed on 3.5 (prescence of pools to material plane suggests you can project to material plane.)

As for projecting from places other that the material plane. MoTP 3rd ed states clearly that if you project on Shadow, body is left behind on Shadow, and if you project from Ethereal, body is left behind, on Ethereal. So, its not that big a leap to say: If you project, anywhere, physical body is left in the location you project from, wherever it is, including the Astral.

(note 3rd ed and 3.5 alow you to project to the inner planes, as well as the Outer, or transitive, or even, to astral project to get to a demiplane.)