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

 

[Chaosmancer]

What's with you and constantly trying to have me say the complete opposite of what I said?

YOU WILL TAKE IT TO OTHER SETTTINGS AND OTEN ARRIVE WHERE PLANAR PORTALS ARE NOT PRESENT.

Which of the major settings or planes of existence doesn't have a portal, but is easily reachable via a Spelljammer?

Or the 99.99% of the various universes where no portal from Sigil exists. Sigil is finite in size. It does not have infinite portals to all places in all settings. It doesn't even have portals to more than a very small percentage of places.

That is quite literally the opposite of how Sigil is described.

In the 5e DMG: "Called the City of Doors, this bustling planar metropolis holds countless portals to other planes and worlds."

From the Wiki, referencing the 3rd edition manual of planes and the 2nd edition Guide to Sigil: "A major hub for interplanar travel, the city contained multiple portals to every single plane, as well as to numerous locations in the Prime Material Plane.[4][2]" and "Thus, the city touched all planes at once, yet ultimately belonged to none."

Further more, since you could not enter or exit it except from a portal, and could not observe it via any magic, and there is no reason therefore to consider that it could not be infinite in size, or infinitely layered.

First, it's only you, not we. Second, I said planar travel is far more dangerous, so again you're attributing to me the literal opposite of what I said in the post you quoted. Stop it.

How is walking through a portal more dangerous than sailing through explosive gas full or monsters and pirates for months at a time?

It's not like there's an Office of Portal use that shows everyone a convenient portal to wherever they want to go. You have to get lucky to find a portal to exactly where you want to go. Or hell, even a portal anywhere. That portal to Krynn you want? Well it's on the 17th level of Undermountain and you have to have a severed green dragon head to trigger it.

And once you find a permanent portal? You can always go back to it, it is permanent. A severed green dragon head? Okay, hard to initially get, I will give you that. It isn't like Sigil is a trading hub of the entire multiverse where you can buy anything and everything given enough time and money. Or that something like, ritually casting Gentle Repose every couple of days will keep a single severed head from decomposing allowing you easy access to the portal for... forever.

And again, how dangerous is spelljamming again? With how many groups of slavers and pirates who are waiting to kill people, or monsters, or the various other things that you might find. I mean, aren't their reality storms and the like which can time displace you and make your journey take 100 years?

Yes, it is hard to initially set up a portal, but once it is set up? Walk through and arrive. Far simpler, far easier, far safer.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Actually, no, the original design intent was to imitate He-Man and Buck Rodgers Adventurea. The cross-Setting stuff sort of came in after.

OKay, that's fair.

And I think the He-Man and Buck Rodgers stuff can still work, but by making Spelljamming more like expeditions to mine asteroids, and less to travel from plane to plane.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I mean, the simplest answer is probably trade. Like, it'd be fairly expensive to constantly be using spell slots to transfer large amounts of goods through teleporting them. So it may be more economical to transport large amounts of goods via Spelljamming.

So as an individual, teleporting should always make more sense. But transporting large amounts of goods, or invasion armies, or mobile laboratories... feel like Spelljamming is a better fit.

Here is the rub though, Sigils portals don't cost spell slots. They are permanent gates. That is what takes away the advantage of Spelljamming for getting from plane A to plane B.

 

[Parmandur]

OKay, that's fair.

And I think the He-Man and Buck Rodgers stuff can still work, but by making Spelljamming more like expeditions to mine asteroids, and less to travel from plane to plane.

Oh, for sure.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Hmmm.... maybe you'd even need a gate while sailing the astral sea to actually travel between realities, as opposed to just interesting locations in the local planar group?

That way Spelljammer would be for fantastical flying pirates while Planescape would be the world-hopper, and you'd be able to literally do both if you wanted to, but as distinct things.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hmmm.... maybe you'd even need a gate while sailing the astral sea to actually travel between realities, as opposed to just interesting locations in the local planar group?

That way Spelljammer would be for fantastical flying pirates while Planescape would be the world-hopper, and you'd be able to literally do both if you wanted to, but as distinct things.

That's kind of the direction I've been thinking in.

 

[Maxperson]

Which of the major settings or planes of existence doesn't have a portal, but is easily reachable via a Spelljammer?

Which sentence of mine ever claimed a plane doesn't have A portal?

That is quite literally the opposite of how Sigil is described.

No it isn't. It has a lot of portals. Maybe even thousands. There are infinite numbers of prime planes and the outer planes are infinite in size.

In the 5e DMG: "Called the City of Doors, this bustling planar metropolis holds countless portals to other planes and worlds."

Nowhere remotely close to infinite. And I have the 2e Planescape books. Nobody has a good count(countless!), but it's only in the thousands. many of which people don't know about or how to activate.

From the Wiki, referencing the 3rd edition manual of planes and the 2nd edition Guide to Sigil: "A major hub for interplanar travel, the city contained multiple portals to every single plane, as well as to numerous locations in the Prime Material Plane.[4][2]" and "Thus, the city touched all planes at once, yet ultimately belonged to none."

My gosh! Multiple portals to an infinite plane. That will be sure to get me exactly where I want to go! Except the odds are good that even if I can find the correct portal, and few know where they all go, I won't be able to use it. Simply saying that they exist isn't the same as people knowing about them and/or how to activate them.

How is walking through a portal more dangerous than sailing through explosive gas full or monsters and pirates for months at a time?

How is a portal to the sun more dangerous than flying to a planet?

And once you find a permanent portal? You can always go back to it, it is permanent. A severed green dragon head? Okay, hard to initially get, I will give you that. It isn't like Sigil is a trading hub of the entire multiverse where you can buy anything and everything given enough time and money. Or that something like, ritually casting Gentle Repose every couple of days will keep a single severed head from decomposing allowing you easy access to the portal for... forever.

:sigh: What makes you think these portals are permanent? Many, if not most of sigils portals are temporary, showing up god knows where(people) generally don't, and with triggers that people have no idea about. People often go missing because they accidentally trigger a portal that no one knew about and then goes away.

 

[Maxperson]

Here is the rub though, Sigils portals don't cost spell slots. They are permanent gates. That is what takes away the advantage of Spelljamming for getting from plane A to plane B.

A few are permanent gates and those are spelled out in the 2e Sigil supplement.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd rather have navigation not take spell slots at all. I'd make it a skill and divorce it from any need for class X at all.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'd rather have navigation not take spell slots at all. I'd make it a skill and divorce it from any need for class X at all.

For the Spelljamming Helm in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, it doesn't require you to expend spell slots to use it, but it does require that you have at least one unexpended spell slot in order to pilot it, and you can still cast spells while attuned to it. I think this works way better than the original version in 2e.