What They Don't Tell You About The Astral Plane - D&D

the multiverse is the stage it's where things happen it's what folks are supposed to see the astral is in the background it's not something anyone was ever supposed to see no one was ever supposed to go there it isn't a there at all no space no time nothing the astral plane isn't part of the multiverse it's the place you go to when you're not anywhere it's the place in between in between what in between everything we're going to go deep into the strangest place ever conceived but first we do have a word from our sponsor this video is brought to you by grimm hollow the player's guide a supplement for your 5th edition adventures that adds 24 new subclasses new backgrounds new spells magic items and even new systems for you to enjoy in your dungeons and dragons games in this book you will find probably my favorite new system from any second party designer for 5th edition and that's the transformation system basically they have a robust wave in grim hollow for your characters to transform into monstrous creatures in this book specifically they have added transformations into fae elementals and spectres these transformations come with different stages where you start with only a few mild changes to your body and then as the changes grow deeper they are reflected in new abilities stat changes and even flavorful flaws if any of my players ever find themselves in a situation where they are turning into a monster whether by choice or not this is always my go-to system for such an event grim hollow the player's guide will be available on september 21st so feel free to check out the grim holo store using the link below and see it for yourself but now on to the video i don't do this very often but i'm going to give you an official description of the astral plane coming from 2nd edition a magnificent way of seeing what this place is and how it is represented within dungeons and dragons it is going to be a relatively long quote but i promise that you will enjoy it quote terms and concepts like space distance time movement body and even plane itself are relative to the strange mental realm they exist only as perceptions not as reality want to truly know the astral plane take two thin sticks and spread them about a foot apart then bring them within 6 inches of each other about half the distance they previously were apart after that move them to half the distance again 3 inches apart and then again and again until they almost touch then imagine half the space that separates the sticks and then half of that and again and again until the distance is virtually infinitesimally small the sticks will never actually touch because as they move together they must first cross half the distance and then half the remaining space and then half that and so on into infinity see between everything there is a space in some cases a space so small that it can only be imagined and never seen the astral plane is somewhere within that space how can that be how can anything let alone a whole infinite plane fit into literally no space simple the astral is not a place it has nothing to do with space at all it is a realm of the mind that's why even though there is no distance to measure or space to occupy it appears that there is it's all a matter of perspective or rather perception the mind sees distance feels space around it and perceives what it thinks is a plane this is because no matter where a body goes he is on a plane right wrong a person can leave the planes when he is not on a plane he's on the astral the astral is not like the beastlands or the plane of ooze it's certainly not like the prime material in fact it's not really a plane at all it is not a plane it has no space it is the absence of space the absence of a plane it is the void between all true space many think of the astral as a means to get from one plane to another and they're not far off or at least originally they weren't if a body supposes for a moment that an intelligent force created the multiverse then it's safe to say that the force never actually intended for anyone to ever go to the astral the conduits are there for a purpose and beyond them there is nothing to see then somberk flubbed a plane shift or some such and wound up physically traveling to the astral plane despite the fact that it had no dimensions of space no true width height or depth the berk perceived there to be such and saw things within the silver void this describes what happened when the first basher whoever he was physically entered the astral plane physically well that's what it's called what really happened was that his body was translated into the astral equivalent as all matter is translated when it physically enters the plane something physical cannot truly exist where no space exists at least not as most people look at existing instead it becomes a kind of mental energy that exhibits the same source of properties that normal matter does on a real plane at this point however a body should remember that until someone stumbled onto it no one lived on the astral the astral was just what the rest of the multiverse was built upon the scaffolding of the universe a body might say another might call it the mental realm of conscious foundation that forms and supports the underpinnings of concepts like space and even time it is the backstage area that no one was ever meant to see and quote you know what happens when you cast true sight on the astral it shows you the ultimate infinity of the plane it is such an unbelievable thing to witness that the canon said that it literally stuns you and leaves you immobilized for the whole duration of the spell there is nothing in the astral plane rather there was never meant to be anything it is said that the single only natural existence of this plane are the conduits connections between the prime and the outer plane whenever there exists a permanent link between your world and the realm of the gods this is what we call a conduit constructed and long-lasting connections these are naturally formed to allow the two existences to be together this is important because this is actually how gods send spells to clerics and druids in the prime world if the prime reality and the heavens were not connected they wouldn't be able to do this this is also how you go to heaven when you die your spirit finds one of these conduits and then embarks on a journey into the heavenly afterlife this conduits are invisible in the prime world and you typically require high-level magic or power to be able to sense them but if you were to be able to sense them then you could use them to travel to whatever place in the outer plane it would connect to the tricky thing though is that because they are natural they do have something of a lifespan when a conduit is born it aggressively attaches to the prime sometimes absorbing things around and then spewing them out into the astral and that's actually why rarely you can find floating pieces of rock material on the astral these are pieces that were grabbed on by a conduit and then spilled out here now these new conduits move around a lot so even if you as an adventurer in the prime managed to find one of these sure enough it won't be there the next day typically these countries are also one way you can either go into the other planes through it or they can go to you it takes about 200 to 300 years for a conduit to mature at which point it stays in place and then becomes a two-way street once it reaches this point it'll take about 600 years for it to become old but then during this time you might find a lot of clerics and churches form around the conduit if they know that it exists since it provides a link to the realms of the gods provided that it actually goes to the realm that you side with because again it is possible that the conduit would lead into the abyss or some other dangerous place which would not be good but after the conduit becomes very old it'll start to move erratically and basically eventually die off and disappear now these conduits are again the only natural thing that spawns on the astral when you go to the asteroid you can see them like funnels that stretch throughout the plane connecting the prime with the outer planes you can get inside from the astral into any of these topicants but it is typically very dangerous like attempting to enter a tornado you can get successfully sucked in or you could be battered off and maybe even die and you also have no idea where they go by the way so they can either spit you out into the prime or somewhere in the outer planes without a way for you to know it's also important to mention that these conduits can indeed drop you in any layer within the plane they lead to so if you define that a particular conduit is destined to take you into the abyss be careful because it might actually drop you a couple hundred layers down without a way for you to go back now of course nowadays there is more that layers here than just conduits as time has passed people monsters and legendary locations have formed here but how does it feel to even be here in the first place let's actually go now deeper into the astral itself so the astral plane has no gravity in its most traditional sense you basically just float as if you were in space and again just like in space if you wanted to physically move you would have to basically push yourself off of something in order to get momentum or someone would have to push you and give you momentum everything is weightless here but you still retain your mass which means if you wanted to jump off of something that something would have to have larger mass than you for you to gain momentum off of it otherwise you would push that something away instead of you moving if that makes any sense the things that you throw in the astral basically never lose their momentum either because there is no drag there is no air there is no gravity and there is no atmosphere so an arrow that you throw would literally fly on forever until it hits something perhaps maybe even a thousand years later the funny thing too though is that just the art of throwing something typically also enacts a small amount of inertia for you which would then cause you to move backwards around 10 feet it can be funny to see an archer throwing their arrows and then getting pushed back for every arrow that they shoot now this is all as far as physical movement is concerned but this is of course not a physical place this is a mental place a place where the mind has true and ultimate power in the asteroid you can move with the mind and it is in fact the way that everyone uses to move even a barbarian would gain much more movement by using its mind than by using its brawn the actual amount of movement that you get has varied tremendously throughout the editions for example in first and second edition you can actually move 30 feet for every single point of intelligence that you had so an average person with 10 intelligence could move 300 feet around in third edition they lowered it to 10 feet for every point of intelligence so then an average person again could move a hundred feet per round and then in fifth edition they lowered it even further by making it three feet for every point of intelligence so then an average person in this case would move 30 feet around which kind of makes a little bit more sense they seem to have been nerfing it more and more as the additions have progressed so you can take what you will from that now the important thing to know though is that once again mind over matter takes on a whole new meaning here in the astral that is because strength and dexterity are literally useless the physical raw power of your muscles hold no sway in the realm of thought and movement is not defined by how precise you have trained your hands to be but by how calculated you have trained your mind in essence every single advantage your strength gives you is now taken over by intelligence for example how easy it is to hit with your maze or how much damage you deal with it how hard you can push something and how much you can carry all of this is now defined by how smart you are so that's a big change at the same time dexterity is now completely replaced by wisdom how quick and agile you are how deft you are with your hands and how good you are at pinpointing targets from a distance with your arrows all of this is now defined by wisdom it used to get so bad that in second edition when they used to do a lot more class restrictions for activities they actually even specified that barbarians would just straight up refused to go into the astral unless they were level 6 or higher in any case very similar to the ethereal in this way because this is a place of thought to get anywhere all you have to do is basically just think about going there if you're looking for a specific location thinking about going there will basically pitch you on the right direction if you have been there before the time that it would take to get you there would become shorter and if you have never been there before then of course the time would get longer typically we're talking about 20 hours traveling to get to a place that you've been before versus 80 hours to a place that has been described to you and then 250 hours to get to a location for the first time that has not been described to you now time itself is a funny thing because time actually does not pass here really what i mean by that is that you will not grow old if you stay for a thousand years in the astral which is a huge benefit a time however still passes like normal on the outside so you're not actually time traveling or slowing down real time or anything like that it's really just that the effects of time are not quite felt here now this guys is where the real interesting part of the astral opens up see the fifth edition dungeon master's guide tells you that quote creatures on the astral plane don't age or suffer from hunger or thirst end quote though i should say it is a bit more complicated than that what the dmg doesn't tell you is that time is is actually passing it's just so infinitely slow to the point where it is impossible to perceive the math actually checks out at around a thousand years on the astral equaling one single day in the real world quote the effects of the passage of time on the astral are slowed by a factor of 365 000 to 1 end quote this basically translates to 170 days in the astral being one real round in true time now the astral plane behaving this way has a lot of ramifications that you might not even think about ramifications that are not even fully talked outside of first and second edition where they went really deep with these concepts for one natural healing is completely useless your body doesn't actually close its wounds by just resting there is actually no form of natural healing in here whatsoever if you were to be caught by a blade your wound would never close and you would simply have some of your blood usher out every once in a while this effect doesn't make you bleed out to death but it is also extremely uncomfortable and painful the only way to heal on this plane is through magical healing however it is important to note that short and long rest also don't do anything as in you do not recover spells by taking any kind of rest in here so your body basically gets to experience the positive sides of never aging but then also some of the negatives the things that rely on time are generally out of whack and spell recuperation would count on that the one caveat is that if you're a cleric or druid of a god that lives in the astral then you of course would function as normal for the sake of getting spells back but of course that is extraordinarily rare spells that have a time duration would work as intended but potions that have a time duration get this would last forever remember 170 days would have to pass in true time to amount to a single round in the astral so if a potion is normally meant to last for one minute then in here it will last for i don't know hundreds of years though i i do need to point this out too because i know that people's minds are just gonna go crazy about potion combining and such it is very important for you to understand that generally you're not meant to combine potions in the world of those and dragons mechanically speaking you can do whatever you want of course but in the actual world these characters exist in mixing potions is a very dangerous proposition mixing a potion of climbing within a potion of fly can have very creepy weird consequences that you might have not anticipated i should also point out that because of the lack of gravity liquids like potions actually get viscous they basically look and function like ketchup to the point where they even get stuck to the sides of the glass vials and can be very cumbersome to get out of the vials that's why experienced travelers bring wine skins instead and more soft containers that you can squeeze it is also worth noting that because of the lack of gravity and functions of liquids that require me to be much more intelligent for me to be able to explain when you touch a liquid in the astral liquids tend to want to cover the surface area of that which they touch so if i were to for example throw water at you instead of it simply just wetting your shirt and skin on the impact zone it will attempt instead to make a layer around you basically govern your entire body if there is enough water like a thin water layer this is very dangerous because it'll cover your nose and mouth and prevent you from breathing if you were to then breathe the water would get into your lungs and basically drown you now this does have the very fortunate effect of making things like applying oils very very easily typically applying an oil onto your body is a long and annoying process but in the astral all you have to do is basically just touch the oil with your finger and then the oil will naturally start covering your entire body because i guess that's how liquids work when there is no gravity it is also worth noting that if a liquid is meant to do damage like acid or holy water to an undead it'll generally do twice as much damage here because it will of course purposefully cover the entire outer layer of the body naturally i should also mention that heat and eyes also work interestingly in here because the astral plane doesn't really conduct heat or colten as well at all if there was a massive ball of fire floating in the asteroid you would have to actually be touching it in order to feel its heat simply being very close would actually feel like nothing another interesting thing about the effects of time being slowed down in such a way is that a poisons are very much useless in here they of course rely on time passing and them taking over and damaging the insides of your body but because time doesn't flow like normal poison and presumably disease as well doesn't really affect you unless you were to leave of course if you think that you're severely poisoned then you're way better off cleaning that up before you make your departure from the astral or it'll catch up to you real quick speaking of time catching up to you that actually does happen and many an adventurer has been wrecked by this in the past thinking that they could simply live on forever in the astral and never age remember this you may not age in the astral but time is still passing and as soon as you leave it every single day you spent there will be very quickly given back to you and you will age every single day in the span of a few minutes i know people will ask about this so i do want to clarify as well did yankee actually have a spell that prevents time from catching up with them we're not talking about them on this video but i figured that you guys would actually be curious about that in any case hunger does catch up with you as well but nobody has actually ever died for being too hungry in this way though the ravenous hunger people feel as soon as they leave the astral is very well known actually very well known to the point where planet travelers even set up food shops like food trucks close to well-known portals and make killer profits out of it oh and before i forget even though most other functions are eliminated in the astral you still need to sleep since it is a function of the mind it is one of the few things that remain the same in this place another thing that you're not told about this place in fifth edition is the fact that interdimensional spaces do not exist on the astral this is something that we have already mentioned before in our previous videos so we don't have to go really too deep into it but basically the astral is not a location per se but instead the lack of a location as we previously talked about because of that you cannot form planes or extra dimensions within here it is believed that the amount of power needed to create a plane or something akin to that in the astral is so monumental that maybe only a greater deity could do it but of course no greater deity has there too because historically the astral plane is meant to be a no man's land many deities actually believe that a god trying to mark their place in the asheville would inevitably create a major deific war so they of course stay far away from that in any case magic items like bags of holding either simply do not work or sometimes they instead open up into the real sizes that they are supposed to represent for example and this is really funny the back of all them would literally just look like a bag the size of a room and maybe like a big parachute of sorts spells that deal with the ethereal realm or with the inner planes also do not work in here so you cannot summon any elementals or become ethereal yourself this also applies to shadow magic if you don't know what shadow magic is it's basically illusory spells that have tangible effects that you can touch those spells do not work in here either a magic in general actually has a lot of interesting effects in here because the entire realm is basically magical effectively every single spell that you cast is quickened which means you can cast full-blown spells as a bonus action in here all the time and spells that typically require 10 minutes to cast for example will be casted in half the time magic tends to be very easy to cast in here but also and this is very crucial guys it's very dangerous though probably not for the reason that you're thinking quote a danger exists to spell casters who spend a great deal of time using magic in the silver void the plane's magical and mental nature makes spell casting very easy even pleasurable this can result in a literal addiction to spell casting no matter what plane the victim travels to those afflicted by this addiction simply hunger for the feeling of their magic coursing through them often wasting their spells frivolously and always casting their full allotment of prepared enchantments each day there's a good chance that at first the caster's companions and even the caster herself will not notice the addiction soon or certainly after she leaves the astral the caster and those around her will notice that she becomes consumed by using magic and is only happy when casting spells and also yearns to return to the astral where magic is pure and undiluted all other activities fall to the wayside in threatening situations she will use her spells immediately even when they are not completely necessary in fact even during calm times if she exhausts all of her prepared magic she will become despondent until she can replenish them spell addiction can be cured only by a restoration spell or a similar insanity curing enchantment magical psychosis poses an even greater danger to spell users on the astral plane the combination of magic and strong mental energies sometimes becomes just too much for a wizard or priest there is a low chance per visit to the astral plane that a wizard will be adversely affected by the conditions there and will be driving him barmy the afflicted sod is allowed a saving throw vs spells to shake off the effects if the character fails the saving throw he becomes homicidal paranoid and schizophrenic like spell addiction magical psychosis must be cured through magical means and quote there's actually a lot more for us to talk about so i'll be making an entire set of videos just for the astral since not many people tend to go into the ethereal or the inner planes i didn't really necessarily bother covering it to this degree but many of you have shown great interest in the astral especially with the sudden interest in githyanki so i have decided to go big on this plane on our next videos we're going to talk about astral projection we're going to talk about dead gods because as you might or might not know when a god dies their corpse falls into the astral so that's a really cool thing and we are hopefully also even going to cover the yankees so please stay tuned i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters barry maskant 5v magic shop morgan johnson rusty rain duck feeder walker motley the great godini terry culp xeron king omega scales ozol alex cookson benjamin bosters faulky 951 or doric sabine kurshab solarensis thomas haunt bushido burrito nathan mccomb soulless writer werewolves games lost crusader mr salty stalia brian kemp chad aiga stephen jd green oh left clap treb909 tony rc famine 52 george fotland sovereign mind trevor hess drag lugia 5 the living guild pack michael walker streeblo d scribe herbert johnson the wizard's vault dragon 19 guy 97 james the perverted shoddycast kiram at questing under their influence podcast horror bound jeffrey a alexander and jesse feliziano for supporting me on patreon at the 25 level if you guys would like to support me as well then please please head on over to patreon.comrex to support alright guys stay tuned for again part two of what didn't tell you about the astral plane uh then we're gonna do astral projection and uh and we're also gonna talk about some dead gods so stay tuned it's gonna be a blast see you all next time

Channel: MrRhexx

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Id: gyGrsv9uOA0

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021