Astral Spell

[Cheiromancer]

What a peculiar spell:

Astral Projection
Necromancy
Level: Clr 9, Sor/Wiz 9, Travel 9
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 30 minutes
Range: Touch
Targets: You plus one additional willing creature touched per two caster levels
Duration: See text
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
By freeing your spirit from your physical body, this spell allows you to project an astral body onto another plane altogether. You can bring the astral forms of other willing creatures with you, provided that these subjects are linked in a circle with you at the time of the casting. These fellow travelers are dependent upon you and must accompany you at all times. If something happens to you during the journey, your companions are stranded wherever you left them.

You project your astral self onto the Astral Plane, leaving your physical body behind on the Material Plane in a state of suspended animation. The spell projects an astral copy of you and all you wear or carry onto the Astral Plane. Since the Astral Plane touches upon other planes, you can travel astrally to any of these other planes as you will. 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.

While you are on the Astral Plane, your astral body is connected at all times to your physical body by a silvery cord. If the cord is broken, you are killed, astrally and physically. Luckily, very few things can destroy a silver cord. 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. Although astral projections are able to function on the Astral Plane, their actions affect only creatures existing on the Astral Plane; a physical body must be materialized on other planes.

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).

Material Component: A jacinth worth at least 1,000 gp, plus a silver bar worth 5 gp for each person to be affected.

The write-up seems to presume that the spell will be cast only on the Material Plane, and the astral travellers will only travel to other planes with it.

Is this a "hard" limitation, or does the write-up simply suffer from a lack of imagination? Is it true that astral spell can be cast only on the Material Plane? Can you materialize a body on the same plane your (original) body is located? Can your materialized astral body cast astral spell a second time? I can see this as a way of getting multiple copies of magical items; items whose charges can be expended without risking the original.

Something is be wrong here!

 

[AuraSeer]

IIRC, the Manual of the Planes indicates that astral spell can be cast on any plane that has access to the Astral. In the standard cosmology this is all of them. I don't think I'd allow it to work for someone already on the Astral, though.

If someone in a materialized body re-cast astral spell, I'd rule that he would not leave another body behind. You could only ever have one real body, plus an astral self or a materialized duplicate; additional castings wouldn't give you an army of yourself, or a box full of your own magic items.

 

[green slime]

The spell is unclear.

This is how I run it:

When you cast Astral Projection, you are projected into the astral plane, leaving your real body behind on the plane on which you cast the spell. This astral body can enter other planes, creating a new physical body in the process. But all this time, there is the silver (invisible) cord trailing behind.

So Jim the Mighty Mage of Munchkin casts astral projection while on the Elemental Plane of Fire. His body lies in animated suspension there. Once on the Astral Plane, he travels to the Abyss, creating a new physical body there. Casting this spell again has no effect: he is already astrally projected. In order to leave the Abyss, he seeks the same Portal to the Astral through which he arrived, or another.

Should he return to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and take the items from his inert body, the physical copies which his physical copy-body possesses disappears: They must be in the possession of his original body for the copies to be present. Which means that when this new body wearing the original items dies or moves on to the Astral Plane, the original items are left standing by the wayside, in the possession of neither the copy nor the original.

Which also means that characters should fear robbery as well as murderers, while astrally projected.

What I fail to understand is how the fellow travellers are stranded if the spellcaster dies. They should be just as capable of joining their own original body, or seeking a gate from the Astral as the spellcaster. Which they are IMC.

 

[Dakkareth]

I'd say, it simply means, they can't dismiss the spell themselves. They can of course dispel the spell and thus return to their bodies.