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Looks like Spelljammer and/or Planescape is back on the menu!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The Bard literally gets that, though: half-proficiency bonus for non-proficient rolls.

Well, Jack of All Trades doesn’t include saves, but even if it did, it’s better than +1 at level 11.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I'd agree with harder to enforce in terms of Spelljammer, but you just mark up the price to account for the Troll. And make sure that the Troll likes you enough.

I guess I don't see this as a big deal because generally IRL one of two things happened. The troll was a 90 lbs weakling who was bowled over and the company took the bridge. The Troll was a 800 lbs super troll who everyone played nice with and made very very wealthy. The Factions are clearly not weaklings, so people are playing nice with them, but that isn't much different than having to play nice with the Kingdom who controlled that section of the river, or the Port City that was the next safe harbor on the journey.

Ok, maybe I should just tack to a completely different reason for why some folks use Spelljammers instead of portals... permanent portals just aren't available to most people. Permanent teleportation circles are hard to maintain, and we've already established that permanent portals are less common. Even if factions control them on one end, who controls them on the Material Plane?

Like in the Forgotten Realms, I can't think of a single permanent portal named to Sigil. And if there is one, I doubt it has easy access for traders.

So all-in-all, your reasoning that portals are pretty easy to find and are reliable ways of travel, which I find no evidence for. I still think trade would happen, but it would happen between Sigil and its various places, not as a substitute as an intermediary location between two locations on the Material Plane.

Like, if we discovered a magical portal that connects Los Angeles and Singapore, is all shipping between both cities going to stop as everyone rearranges their shipping to instead be by moving goods through a magic door in someone's bookshop? No. Obviously not.

I don't even know why I have to explain the economical logical logistics of any of this really when we can just handwave why it doesn't make sense, portals and spaceships aren't real!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I don't care if they publish them in one book, but it does seem more likely that they will do a combined setting of Placescape and Spelljammer, maybe even adding Star Frontiers, instead of having two incredibly similar settings released as two different books.

But that isn't prefering one to be published and the other, not, it just seems like the most likely move.

Now that the Spelljammer UA is out, I'm extremely doubtful the two will be combined. Not a single Planescape race or reference there, and if they were doing both in the same book, they'd test all the races at once.

They're almost definitely going to separate the two now. Most of those races barely feature in Planescape material at all.

 

[Maxperson]

Great, so all the planes have portals going to them, and you agree with that. Moving on.

Not if you think that you're somehow refuting what I said. You didn't. A portal to the middle of the desert isn't going to take you to the moon or to another continent. Just having a few portals to an entire plane doesn't somehow make planar travel superior to flying.

Isn't the whole point of sigil that you can see Devils and Angels having tea at the local philosophy bar? How are we getting "hordes of demons and devils" threatening people in the streets of Sigil now? Since when was that a thing?

The odds of finding a portal directly to Sigil from the prime plane is somewhere between slim and none. The vast majority of travelers have to go to the outer planes and then find a portal to Sigil. The journey will easily take as long or longer than just flying in a ship.

I already countered your point too.

In your mind perhaps.

I've already explained this. You are wrong.

Nawp.

You know I've been talking about this from an economic standpoint, right? As in "why would people get on a ship and go through this dangerous area"

Not everyone is a trader trying to make money.

Sure, maybe you are the last of the generation arriving at a new setting, your people's entire history having been spent to arrive at this sphere... and in which case, you are never going to end up getting back on the ship and scooting off to explore the spelljamming space. You've set up a frontier story involving a new world. That doesn't fit as a campaign about space ships and exploring multiple worlds.

Your logic leaves a great deal to be desired. Once they get there they are going to have to explore and find trade, which most likely means Spelljamming.

 

[Maxperson]

IMO having a hard cap at 30 is really good exactly because high level characters can cooperate to make it “easy” to hit that. IMO the target numbers shouldn’t ever exceed what can be made totally doable by an epic character within their specialization with some help from their friends.

Yeah. I can see the benefits of that for sure. I was just pointing out that the game itself doesn't set that cap.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Now that the Spelljammer UA is out, I'm extremely doubtful the two will be combined. Not a single Planescape race or reference there, and if they were doing both in the same book, they'd test all the races at once.

They're almost definitely going to separate the two now. Most of those races barely feature in Planescape material at all.

It was my impression that when people talk about "Planejammer", they mainly mean combining the Astral Sea with the Phlogiston, not having Sigil/the Outlands be a part of Spelljamming or the Outer Planes being different "planets" that can be Spelljammed to. Not "merge Planescape and Spelljammer completely" and more "sail through the Astral Sea instead of the Phlogiston". I don't know exactly how 4e did it, but I know that "Sailing through the Astral Sea" is one of the main draws of the concept of "Planejammer", not playing a Bauriar or Rogue Modron, attacking the Lady of Pain from inside a Nautiloid ship, or anything like that.

And I do think that there is some merit to the suggestion of combining the Phlogiston and Astral Sea. If Crystal Spheres just float around in the Astral Plane instead of in the Phlogiston, does that really change the concept of Spelljammer that much? I know that I would like mining the petrified remains of Dead Gods to be a part of Spelljammer, because that's freaking cool, but isn't really possible in the 2e version of Spelljammer. Nautiloids versus Githyanki Raiding Ships would also be extremely cool to play out if Spelljammer and the Astral Plane were merged.

Feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong, though. I'm not the most familiar person with what people mean when asking for a "Planejammer" setting.

 

[Chaosmancer]

OK, I expect that both included in the broader cosmology of D&D, if that's what you mean. But they aren't similar, and don't cover the same ground, so I see no reasont hey would mix them. Each is sufficiently distinct to support a full product with close to zero overlap. No Planars in Spelljammer, after all.

See, this is leading me once again to be slightly confused. I've heard people say for years that they want Spelljammer so they can take characters from FR to Krynn or something similar. That was the purpose of Spelljammer, in the ways it was explained to me.

But it is also the purpose of Planescape, and I have often seen the two settings put at odds with each other, as in you either had a multiverse of the PLanescape model, or the Spelljammer Model. This thread it quite literally the first time I've heard it said that they don't cover the some conceptual space.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ok, maybe I should just tack to a completely different reason for why some folks use Spelljammers instead of portals... permanent portals just aren't available to most people. Permanent teleportation circles are hard to maintain, and we've already established that permanent portals are less common. Even if factions control them on one end, who controls them on the Material Plane?

I would assume the faction controls the other side. Portals are doors. It is very rare that you control access out of a doorway, but not into a doorway

Like in the Forgotten Realms, I can't think of a single permanent portal named to Sigil. And if there is one, I doubt it has easy access for traders.

So all-in-all, your reasoning that portals are pretty easy to find and are reliable ways of travel, which I find no evidence for. I still think trade would happen, but it would happen between Sigil and its various places, not as a substitute as an intermediary location between two locations on the Material Plane.

Permament, known portals would be easy to find in the same way that the Hershey Chocolate Factory is easy to find. People know where it is and can give you directions. I imagine Sigil would have a tourist pamphlet that includes a list of the best-known portals alongside things like the various headquarters for different organizations.

I also would note that Sigil has zero RAW materials. Everything has to be imported in, and then either maintained or replenished. So, trade between Sigil and a Prime would have to involve someone else providing the RAW materials to Sigil, then the item being made, then the shipment to the Prime. And I don't see a compelling reason why that less step is any different if the seller is not in Sigil itself.

Like, if we discovered a magical portal that connects Los Angeles and Singapore, is all shipping between both cities going to stop as everyone rearranges their shipping to instead be by moving goods through a magic door in someone's bookshop? No. Obviously not.

Um... yes? They absolutely would begin shifting everything they could to go through that portal. The land on either side would be taken over by the Governments, and it would alter the flow of goods immensely. Especially if the portal was big enough to drive a truck through.

It wouldn't be a screeching halt of the current system, but the literal BILLIONS it would save would alter the entire structure of shipping between America and China.

I don't even know why I have to explain the economical logical logistics of any of this really when we can just handwave why it doesn't make sense, portals and spaceships aren't real!

Sure, you can handwave it. I find that to be a poor method though. Much more robust to work it out.

Also, to be pendantic. Spaceships are totally real. Portals maybe not, but Spaceships, totally.

Now that the Spelljammer UA is out, I'm extremely doubtful the two will be combined. Not a single Planescape race or reference there, and if they were doing both in the same book, they'd test all the races at once.

They're almost definitely going to separate the two now. Most of those races barely feature in Planescape material at all.

I find myself a bit confused. Other than Modrons (we have them in the MM and the Autognome seems like it could be refitted), the Tieflings (have them), Genasi (have them) and Aasimar (have them) what Planescape races are you referring to? I'm not really familiar with any.

 

[Hatmatter]

See, this is leading me once again to be slightly confused. I've heard people say for years that they want Spelljammer so they can take characters from FR to Krynn or something similar. That was the purpose of Spelljammer, in the ways it was explained to me.

But it is also the purpose of Planescape, and I have often seen the two settings put at odds with each other, as in you either had a multiverse of the PLanescape model, or the Spelljammer Model. This thread it quite literally the first time I've heard it said that they don't cover the some conceptual space.

I understand now. You are working under a misconception. The purpose of Spelljammer is to have space adventures in D&D. I bought Spelljammer the day it came out. I read the old Spelljammer comic book (yes there was one), and I have DM-ed using it. It's a blast.

The person who explained Spelljammer to you took one of the secondary characteristics of Spelljammer and elevated it to "the purpose of Spelljammer." The purpose of Spelljammer is to have fun by having space adventures using D&D. That would be about it.

There was always the possibility to go from Oerth to Abeir-toril using magic or traveling through the planes well before Planescape was a glimmer in Zeb Cook's eye. I would also contest that the "purpose" of Planescape is to "take characters from FR to Krynn or something similar," as you suggest in your second paragraph. The purpose of Planescape is to have a D&D campaign setting focused on multi-planar travel and multi-planar philosophies and politics. The travel between different Material Plane worlds like Abeir-toril, Oerth, or Krynn is a consequence of that.

Concerning, "This thread it quite literally the first time I've heard it said that they don't cover the some conceptual space." Well, at the risk of shoulding all over you, perhaps you should try to look up the old Spelljammer & Planescape material? It's fun.

You have been responsible for a lot of conversations here and have put a lot of energy into making arguments and clarifications all stemming from an apparent misconception.

Once again, a character can travel from Krynn to Oerth with Spelljammer and also through multi-planar travel, but that is not the singular purpose for why Spelljammer or Planescape exist by any means. Gary Gygax in the Dungeon Master's Guide makes it clear that having characters visit different worlds can be a fun part of the game, to such an extent that he provides mechanics to convert D&D characters into Boot Hill characters, and that was 1979.

We were moving characters from world to world well before Planescape, well before Spelljammer, well before The Manual of the Planes.

 

[Parmandur]

See, this is leading me once again to be slightly confused. I've heard people say for years that they want Spelljammer so they can take characters from FR to Krynn or something similar. That was the purpose of Spelljammer, in the ways it was explained to me.

But it is also the purpose of Planescape, and I have often seen the two settings put at odds with each other, as in you either had a multiverse of the PLanescape model, or the Spelljammer Model. This thread it quite literally the first time I've heard it said that they don't cover the some conceptual space.

The 2E books are about Adventures....iiiiin...SPAAAAAACE!!"

The connections between Crystal Spheres are more of a plot hook to let a DM Shanghai players from a normal campaign, or use monsters and NPVs from anywhere. Spelljammer is not primarily a metasetting, but it's own thing.