D&D 4E From the 4e MM preview: Astraljamming?!

[Silverblade The Ench]

Hairfoot,
there weren't no Squidships in the 15th century
the blend of the organic and weird, with the familair and *practical*, was good.

Spider Moon ships looked like unreal junk in comparison, just purely made up cartoons, alas

 

[Hairfoot]

Hairfoot,
there weren't no Squidships in the 15th century

Shame, that. But maybe the historical absence of mind flayers has been a plus for western civilisation.

Spider Moon ships looked like unreal junk in comparison, just purely made up cartoons, alas

Then we disagree. Plurality of opinion keeps the game varied and intersting.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Hairfoot,
hey, no fear from mind flayers on Earth! Poor sods would starve to death! Or get food poisoning if they touched down at the Houses of Parliament or US Senate, haha

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

We could also see creatures (mainly elementals) who hide amongst the churning mass of the Elemental Chaos who spring forth, up through the Elemental Chaos and through the starry sea of the Astral Sea to grasp hold of a Astral Vessel and tug it down into the Elemental Chaos.

If the Githyanki's dead god islands exist in the Astral Sea as well. We could see large and small carrion eaters swarming over them.

You have been sailing the Astral Sea for several days now, seeing in the distance the Dominions of forgotten gods and the powers-that-were. The endless Sea stretches off in all directions, with only minor eddies and small waves disturbing it's surface.

Until now.

Ahead of you, the Sea begins to churn, almost imperceptibly at first, almost as if something was moving just out of site below the surface. Suddenly the water streams away from a single point as a massive shape bursts from beneath the surface.

Eyes like cottage-sized diamonds stare coldly at you, the mouth gaping open in hunger revealing jagged teeth like decaying boulders, before another massive disturbance off to your left heralds the emergence of a hand big enough to rip your mast clean off your ship. It reaches for you.

What do you do?

Of course, I'd imagine this being an Epic level threat, so the PC's should see this a fun encounter, not the End of the Campaign.

 

[Big Mac]

With the Astral Plane renamed as the Astral Sea, and domains there described as "planets" (the Nine Hells are an example), this all adds up to a very "Spelljamming" side to the new implied setting.

It was already possible to combine Spelljamming and Planewalking in 2nd edition rules. I'd like to see WotC do something with this, but the two should remain separate. Planejamming ships should be much rarer than either spacefarers or planewalkers.

On top of that, I prefer the one material plane model of the universe that Spelljammer and Planewalker work with best.

I want to see normal races Spelljamming in crystal spheres and monsters like Pirates of Gyth, hopping out of the Astral Sea to sneak up on them.

I'm loving these pictures. Now, I realised why you have made a varied collection of these for each type of ship. I'm looking forward to seeing the full set.

Is the Astral Sea like a sea in the sense you sail on it in two dimensions?

I don't know, but the 3e DLCS gave us an Ethereal Sea that surrounded the Ethereal Plane and extends out forever. So it looks to me like this Astral Sea is a second-hand idea.

(The Ethereal Sea is connected to the inside of the DL cosmology by The River of Souls, which breaches The DL Outer Planes at a point called The Gate of Souls. So I've always looked at the 3eDL cosmology as a sort of 'ultrasonic' version of a crystal sphere.)

I would prefer to see an Astral Sea be something that was above and beyond space. I'd like to see it be something different to the Astral Plane, so that people couldn't sail directly to Waterdeep or Palanthas. One thing that SF stories do fairly well is come up with a reason why starships can't hop into hyperspace until they have taken off and gotten away from a planet. I'd like the Astral Sea to start out in wildspace. (I'd even be happy if it was an alternative to the Phologiston, that involved different risks to the explosive nature of the Flow.)

I could even buy a sea for every plane, with the sea being what exists away from planets on the material plane. If there was a Sea of Fire, then a fire elemental could swim up river from Waterdeep to the sea and then zip along to Oerth and drop in on the City of Greyhawk. A mechanic like this would give each elemental or outsider creature its own unique alternative to Spelljamming.

I was just thinking if it was like a sea, you could have the fun of sailing around the multiverse but without the complexities of the 3rd dimension, gravity issues, etc. present in Spelljammer.

Most SJ stuff treated the universe as if it was two dimensional. The crystal spheres bob up and down on a single plane (making the phlogiston similar to a sea). Most planetary systems are also on a single plane. In SJ it is possible to travel towards the zenith or the nadir of the multiverse, but I don't think most people want to leave the middle of the multiverse).

You could always have something like density layers, thus creating multiple two-dimensional sea surfaces (complete with islands, reefs, etc.) within a three-dimensional sea space.

Wow. I like this idea too. And it could just as easily work with 2nd edition Spelljammer rules. You could have infinate layers of crystal spheres, with PCs unaware that they flew below Eberronspace everytime they went from Krynnspace to Realmspace. A hard to find vertical phlogiston river would be a great way to explain the discovery of places where new campaign settings were located.

Or the astral sea could be a 2-dimensional sea. And planes float on the sea's surface, but cause the whole sea to sag down around them. As an astral ship approaches a plane, it gets pulled down by the current of the sagging astral sea into the spherical plane. Kind of like a 2-dimensional version of actual space.

This is rather like the real-life theories of time-space being bent by large masses. Here is a nice picture of a black hole:

From a D&D point of view, I'd say that was the Astral Sea passing over a gateway to Ravenloft!

You could actually make Astral Sea travel safe in between worlds, but have ships risk crashing when they approach large planets and planes.

Well, the gityhanki were in Spelljammer to "Pirates of Gith", they'd steal elven ships, because elven ships are organic, living things, they could plane shift them back and forth from Prime ot Astral plane, ambushing folk

I like the Pirates of Gith/Githyanki, but why do WotC have to make them dress like Jodi Marsh?:

She seems far more concerned about being kicked in the shins than stabbed in the chest!

 

[Big Mac]

Honestly, if they do incorperate elements of SJ and Planescape into the core concept, then there would be no need for the full on settings.

I think I'd still like to see a full on setting (or a pair of settings) of some sort, but putting this inot the core rules would also be good. If Spelljamming was available under the GSL, then any third party publisher who signed up, could make their own crystal sphere or their own planewalking connection to Sigil.

If 2010 gave us a Spelljammer Campaign Setting or Planewalker Campaign Setting that brought together every GSL campaign setting in existance I think it would be a really attractive way to take PCs from one campaign setting to another campaign setting. It would restore the transitive aspect of either of those settings, but raise it to the level of a core rules mechanic that pretty much forced fans of two campaign settings to go out and buy the new SJ/PS rulebook.

 

[Jon Wake]

Okay, "Powers-That-Were" is the coolest phrase I've heard on the board yet. Dead and dying gods of forgotten empires that huddle together in the Astral sea. Any captain foolish enough to approach are immediately set upon by the ancient defenders of old faiths, eager to convert or slay interlopers.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

*agrees with Big Mac!*

Yeha I'll need to do transparent pics for the Tradesman and Deathspider as well
Oh, I'm now working on the Smalljammer....*waggles eyebrows mischievously*

 

[TarionzCousin]

Reading the posts in this thread, it appears to me that everyone assumes Sigil will be connected to the Astral Sea somehow. Is there any evidence to support this? In 2E & 3E Sigil was only accessible via portals.

Sweet! A nautical discussion! I've got a bunch of fantasy ideas I've been kicking around for this, but first, a little discussion on the physics of sailing ships.

Nice information JohnSnow. Thanks!

 

[GeorgeFields]

If the Manual of the Planes would combine the Planescape and Spelljammer as we've been discussing here, I'd have to have one 4e book on my shelf to house rule into my games.

I, for one, have never really "liked" the big wheel, but I had always accepted it as canon. By the time I started making personal changes to my game, I was so used to it that I never considered changing it.

This new layout for the planes just rocks IMO.