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

[Umbran]

Personally, I'd prefer to keep the Astral plane strictly as a way to travel between planes (9 hells, 7 heavens, etc.) rather than mixing it with outer space and traveling between planets

Meanwhile, I am unlikely to ever use the Outer Planes in any significant way, so the Astral doesn't have a lot of purpose for me, except for Spelljamming.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Personally, I'd prefer to keep the Astral plane strictly as a way to travel between planes (9 hells, 7 heavens, etc.) rather than mixing it with outer space and traveling between planets

Astral color pools always had the capability of linking with the Material Plane, so it was always possible to use them as a means of travelling from planet to planet.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I don't think those terms map to actual description, but are rather marketing buzz-phrases. We don't have enough information to tell anything more detailed than Wildspace around the systems, followed by a vague silvery mist tradition to the Astral Sea. How that works exactly or even if it works the same for every bubble of Wildspace is unknown.

While I prefer crystal spheres and Phlogiston, it sounds like there's going to be a lot of stuff here that can be easily used in a game following the old paradigm, so I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I'm hoping for an old school sidebar suggesting the original system as an alternative.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The material plane has planets, stars, and outer space.

Thus the feywild and shadowfell echoes, likewise, have the fey and shadow aspects of outer space.

Because the wildspace is an astral phenomenon, there can be such thing as feyspace, shadowspace, and etherspace, since these places can exist as concepts within the astral plane.

Stands to reason. Since the mirror planes didn't exist in 2e, this would be a literal new space to explore.

 

[beancounter]

Meanwhile, I am unlikely to ever use the Outer Planes in any significant way, so the Astral doesn't have a lot of purpose for me, except for Spelljamming.

You haven't lived until you've fought Asmodeus on the 9th plane of Hell and died trying.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Additionally, isn't Plane Shift limited to 8 people? That's not a lot of cargo. Could be a work around if you start using bags of holding and the like, I suppose, but, it also might just be one of those things we're not supposed to question as it's a lot more fun if we have honking big flying ships.

See, I will always prefer explanations in universe over straight Rule of Cool. Avoiding a need for high level casters does that for me though.

 

[beancounter]

WoTC should make other spells like dream of the blue vail, but for lower level casters.

 

[Maxperson]

You haven't lived until you've fought Asmodeus on the 9th plane of Hell and died trying.

And then because he's a god, lived again and died horribly and in thousands of different ways.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

So do you think the inhabitants of the Rock of Bral will be in the astral and subject to the no aging thing?

No, it's in Wildspace which is Material Plane region that is off world.