D&D 5E Astral Sea and Wildspace in the 5e Cosmology

[Urriak Uruk]

I'll add, I feel very vindicated. I guessed like two years ago that if Spelljammer came, the Phlogiston would be ditched in favor of the Astral, and it's fun to be right about something so inconsequential.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

That 2e model suggests wildspace is a radius around one sun or at most a galaxy. The 5e description seems to imply many or all of the stars in the sky.

I don't think we have gotten enough description yet to make a call on that.

 

[Yaarel]

I'll add, I feel very vindicated. I guessed like two years ago that if Spelljammer came, the Phlogiston would be ditched in favor of the Astral, and it's fun to be right about something so inconsequential.

Me too.

Admittedly, the terms "crystal sphere" and "phlogiston" might still exist in 5e, but in ways that make sense in the 5e cosmology.

 

[Yaarel]

I don't think we have gotten enough description yet to make a call on that.

I read this sentence,

"Home of the stars and gateway to the heavens, the Astral Plane teems with excitement and possibility,"

to mean:

The 5e astral plane is itself the home of all of the stars in the universe of the material plane.

This is why it is called the "astral" plane.

Even so, the actual stars are in the aspect of the astral plane, called "wildspace". It is a way to handwaive the reallife distances between stars.

Meanwhile, the astral sea the astral plane proper, the one that the Players Handbook describes. But this astral sea is a realm of though and dream and lacks spacial distances.

Thus:
• "home of the stars" describes the wildspace.
• "gateway to the heavens" describes the astral sea bordering the celestial planes.

 

[Parmandur]

I'll add, I feel very vindicated. I guessed like two years ago that if Spelljammer came, the Phlogiston would be ditched in favor of the Astral, and it's fun to be right about something so inconsequential.

The stakes are small, but the dopamine is realm

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I read this sentence,

"Home of the stars and gateway to the heavens, the Astral Plane teems with excitement and possibility,"

to mean:

The 5e astral plane is itself the home of all of the stars in the universe of the material plane.

This is why it is called the "astral" plane.

Even so, the actual stars are in the aspect of the astral plane, called "wildspace". It is a way to handwaive the reallife distances between stars.

Meanwhile, the astral sea the astral plane proper, the one that the Players Handbook describes. But this astral sea is a realm of though and dream and lacks spacial distances.

Thus:
• "home of the stars" describes the wildspace.
• "gateway to the heavens" describes the astral sea bordering the celestial planes.

Misunderstood I guess.

 

[Jer]

Wildspace never tended to have stars in it. They were just glints in the Phlogiston. Which is the same for the Astral probably.

Stars in Spelljammer were usually attached to the Crystal Sphere in some way. In some of the settings they were portals to the Plane of Radiance that would fry you if you tried to pass through them. I think in Greyspace they were massive gems embedded in the Crystal Sphere. You couldn't generally see the phlogiston through the crystal sphere in most systems - IIRC they were opaque.

 

[Storyteller Hero]

Depending on how they present the fine details in the 5e Spelljammer guide, it might be possible to have both traveling into the Astral Sea from wildspace and the prior editions' lore about crystal spheres + phlogiston at the same time. I'm planning to try and bridge the gap for my Realmspace project on DMsGuild. I'm hoping that they don't blatantly say that there are no crystal spheres in the actual text, and don't say that there is nothing but Astral Sea beyond wildspace for specific settings.

 

[Charlaquin]

Does it bother anyone else that wildspace is an ocean you sail on and the astralsea is a formless void?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Does it bother anyone else that wildspace is an ocean you sail on and the astralsea is a formless void?

The Astral Sea has stuff. It's a Silvery Sea filled with things like rocks, portals and the corpses of dead gods.