Spelljamming Feyspace - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Spelljamming Feyspace

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
Negflar2099
Jan 18, 2008 12:44:38 The problem I see with converting spelljammer to 4E is what to do with the feywild and the shadowfell. With the feywild and the shadowfell you essentially get three worlds for the price of one. Three nearly identical worlds, just seen through a lens darkly (or a lens fairy in the case of the feywild). :D

That's great in a traditional D&D campaign but in spelljammer it would either mean that only one world would be duplicated in those planes or every world have to be created three times. Not to mention that you would have to have three open "spaces" truespace, feyspace and shadowspace. You could pick a middle ground where some worlds have a feywild (or shadowfell) representation but others don't. That doesn't really solve the problem though. Either way if not every world casts a shadow in those planes then you have to answer why some worlds do when others don't.

I thought about making feyspace equal to the pholistigon (essentially a rainbow colored sea that takes you to another star) but that just solves the space problem and not the world problem,if you know what I mean. Plus it leaves the problem of what to do with shadowspace.

You could drop these two planes but 4E is going to have a lot of spells and powers, not to mention class abilities, that depend on them. You could ignore the problem but I'm sure at some point a player will bring it up.

This problem is not really unique to spelljammer either. In the Worlds and Monsters book it describes a rumor that the Mind Flayers came from another world around a distant star, and the Warlock can call upon star powers. Some sort of space travel is at least hinted at in these descriptions. Plus there's other campaign settings that make use of space travel such as Dragonstar.

My question is if you're going to be the GM how do you plan on solving these problems?
#2
jaid
Jan 18, 2008 19:25:46 this is not a problem. those are other planes. just like how the ethereal goes (almost*) everywhere there is a prime material plane in core, and same thing with the astral.

why should we expect to run into huge problems just because the planes have changed a little bit to include a couple of new planes that are close to the prime material?

(* with the exception of a few campaign settings, such as iirc birthright and dark sun)
#3
valeren
May 07, 2008 6:21:06 my take here would be something out of a previous spelljamming adventure we had. what happened was that we allowed the ship's artificer to bring the whole ship into the other plane. sort of like making the whole ship be enclosed in some sort of field that shifts it into another plane(dimension).
#4
underdark_tourist
May 07, 2008 8:45:04 I was considering the idea of "Feyspace" the other day and began to drum up questions similar to the OP. Personally, I think that the "Fey" and "Shadow" worlds would only touch upon astral bodies and not contain a "space" of their own. This would lead to the assumption that those in the fey and shadow realms would have to come into the material world to actually travel through the stars. Just a thought. I haven't really sat down and fleshed it all out yet.
#5
katahn
May 07, 2008 9:37:06 It depends on what constitutes the "prime material plane" really. If the prime material is just the particular planet then the feywild and shadowfell don't need to extend to cover all of wildspace. However if the prime material is defined as "everything inside a crystal shell" then yeah, the shadowfell and feywild would likewise be there. Another argument for the feywild being present in wildspace is to not deprive eladrin characters of one of their race abilities while adventuring.

I can think of one potential problem though. Undead are powered by their connection to the shadowfell, so if there is anywhere they cannot connect to the shadowfell then they would cease to be anything other than really dead. Would this eliminate the possibility of undead in the phlogiston or in wildspace if the shadowfell doesn't reach there?

If nothing else the interactions of the new cosmology to anything resembling the original core spelljammer is going to be odd. Magic is different now, that mucks with helms, and that's just the beginning. To be honest, I'm looking to reimagine spelljammer by moving it from "fantasy space" to "sailing the astral seas" and make it its own epic-level setting.
#6
draerden
May 07, 2008 10:47:43 I agree. I much like the idea of the astral sea. Floating along through a limitless expanse of sky surrounded entirely by auroras and floating chunks broken off from the elemental chaos.

While traveling you can encounter so much more then simply other spelljammers and asteroids. You can have storms in Astral Space, dangerous vicious storms that set one off course, or take you to entirely new worlds. There could be lost and wandering elementals and spirits, gods and their retinues moving from place to place, massive dragons so large they can no longer travel to the prime plane, coming across souls headed for the Shadowfell and the demons stalking them and then there's the societies that could develop in such a place! Could you imagine magma men living on small clods of earth orbiting a giant floating ball of flame guarding an ancient god-killing sword until the return of their master?

For me, all this provides a little more substance then the old crystal sphere and phlogiston concept while maintaining as much or as little of the old as desired.

My only crutch is... what's a good way to get into the Astral Sea from th prime plane? One could created a portal in front of the ship and slide on in but that's horribly overdone. It's also horribly flashy and doesn't preserve the original setting of any world that is visited. My current concept is that the Spelljammers summon a cloudbank and sail directly into it until nothing of their world can be seen and when you emerge from the cloudbank one is in the Astral.
#7
katahn
May 07, 2008 11:37:15 Assuming there's a need for ships to readily move into or out of the material plane I'd probably do it with a combination of mapped "transition points" and a relatively minor magic item (or ritual) that allows a ship to essentially "slide through the cracks" to arrive on one side or the other. This preserves the idea of there being certain places that are "port towns" and why "Astraljammers" are modelled after ships (assuming weak points are all on the ocean).

But I'd like to ask the question "is it necessary for there to be such a thing?" I'm not sure there is. Characters at an epic-level (needed to be mucking about on the astral) presumably already have a means to travel from material to astral, I don't see it as a huge stretch that those means could include something like a small ship. Maybe for traders there'd be a need, but whatever they're hauling would have to be something that the natives of any given plane couldn't just get more cheaply from "domestic" sources.
#8
draerden
May 07, 2008 13:24:37 I could imagine a number of reasons for such Astral Jamming. For one, there could be civilizations within the astral sea same as anywhere else. There could be esoteric materials that exist nowhere else, like the stone needed to creating floating citadels, fire tears, and who knows what else. Could you imagine how valuable liquid chaos must be worth or what it might be capable of?

I figure, given that ordinary mortals possess more hit points, that an entire crew should be able to take on more significant challenges while those heroes and paragons aboard can handle what the crew cannot. Thirty crew members in 4th seems much more intimidating then they did in previous editions.
#9
thegreaterbad
May 07, 2008 13:49:06 The Astral Sea seems like a place that Epic characters go. Heroic, or even Paragon Tier characters will probably get their faces smashed there. Where as spelljamming can be done by lower level characters. Here's how envision doing Spelljammer in 4e, in regard to the plans.

The Shadowfell and Feywild exist and they effect spelljaming in different ways. The Shadowfell's differences in magical energy (being innately more magical than realspace) prevents Spelljaming ships from breaking the atmosphere, as though the magic pulls holds it down. If a mage is powerful enough to pull a ship into Shadowspace, they will find it a place devoid of stars. Navigation is all but impossible. However, while in Shadowspace, one does not age and time seems to stand still.

The chaotic energies of the Feywild have a bizzare effect on Spelljaming helms. While the Shadowfell seems to oppress, the Feywild's energies overcharge the helm, causing various anomalies, ranging from unpredictable speeds to physical changes to crewmen, and rare occasion, the helm and ship gaining sentience. Those brave or foolish enough to traverse its insanity will move quickly between worlds.
#10
darktouch
Apr 07, 2009 10:08:10 If I'm understanding the question correctly, it looks like 'Space' is being suggested as an appropriate parallel for 'Dark'. So the World has the UnderDark and WildSpace, so the FeyWild should have the FeyDark and FeySpace while the ShadowFell has the ShadowDark and ShadowSpace.

By 4th edition standards, a Spelljammer is the easiest method for getting around in the various planes in that there is some protection from being on a ship as well as the fact that it flies. I question whether any of these planes actually require a 'space' section. I just get the feeling that it works better if you don't think about it too much. Fly up up up and eventually you'll be in the sky/Astral sea. I think legitamately if you walk far enough you end up eat of the sun and west of the moon and be in the astral sea as well. Could depend on your world of course.
#11
colman
Apr 17, 2009 9:23:12 Here is what I'm doing. Basically, the Phlogiston is no fun in the Shadowfell or the Feywild, and their wildspaces are more difficult to survive as well.

Crossing via the usual method at special Fey crossroad type things.

It's FR centered but not inconsistent with 4e canon.

I hate the idea of the Astral Sea replacing wildspace.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Negflar2099 Jan 18, 2008 12:44:38	The problem I see with converting spelljammer to 4E is what to do with the feywild and the shadowfell. With the feywild and the shadowfell you essentially get three worlds for the price of one. Three nearly identical worlds, just seen through a lens darkly (or a lens fairy in the case of the feywild). :D That's great in a traditional D&D campaign but in spelljammer it would either mean that only one world would be duplicated in those planes or every world have to be created three times. Not to mention that you would have to have three open "spaces" truespace, feyspace and shadowspace. You could pick a middle ground where some worlds have a feywild (or shadowfell) representation but others don't. That doesn't really solve the problem though. Either way if not every world casts a shadow in those planes then you have to answer why some worlds do when others don't. I thought about making feyspace equal to the pholistigon (essentially a rainbow colored sea that takes you to another star) but that just solves the space problem and not the world problem,if you know what I mean. Plus it leaves the problem of what to do with shadowspace. You could drop these two planes but 4E is going to have a lot of spells and powers, not to mention class abilities, that depend on them. You could ignore the problem but I'm sure at some point a player will bring it up. This problem is not really unique to spelljammer either. In the Worlds and Monsters book it describes a rumor that the Mind Flayers came from another world around a distant star, and the Warlock can call upon star powers. Some sort of space travel is at least hinted at in these descriptions. Plus there's other campaign settings that make use of space travel such as Dragonstar. My question is if you're going to be the GM how do you plan on solving these problems?
#2 jaid Jan 18, 2008 19:25:46	this is not a problem. those are other planes. just like how the ethereal goes (almost) everywhere there is a prime material plane in core, and same thing with the astral. why should we expect to run into huge problems just because the planes have changed a little bit to include a couple of new planes that are close to the prime material? ( with the exception of a few campaign settings, such as iirc birthright and dark sun)
#3 valeren May 07, 2008 6:21:06	my take here would be something out of a previous spelljamming adventure we had. what happened was that we allowed the ship's artificer to bring the whole ship into the other plane. sort of like making the whole ship be enclosed in some sort of field that shifts it into another plane(dimension).
#4 underdark_tourist May 07, 2008 8:45:04	I was considering the idea of "Feyspace" the other day and began to drum up questions similar to the OP. Personally, I think that the "Fey" and "Shadow" worlds would only touch upon astral bodies and not contain a "space" of their own. This would lead to the assumption that those in the fey and shadow realms would have to come into the material world to actually travel through the stars. Just a thought. I haven't really sat down and fleshed it all out yet.
#5 katahn May 07, 2008 9:37:06	It depends on what constitutes the "prime material plane" really. If the prime material is just the particular planet then the feywild and shadowfell don't need to extend to cover all of wildspace. However if the prime material is defined as "everything inside a crystal shell" then yeah, the shadowfell and feywild would likewise be there. Another argument for the feywild being present in wildspace is to not deprive eladrin characters of one of their race abilities while adventuring. I can think of one potential problem though. Undead are powered by their connection to the shadowfell, so if there is anywhere they cannot connect to the shadowfell then they would cease to be anything other than really dead. Would this eliminate the possibility of undead in the phlogiston or in wildspace if the shadowfell doesn't reach there? If nothing else the interactions of the new cosmology to anything resembling the original core spelljammer is going to be odd. Magic is different now, that mucks with helms, and that's just the beginning. To be honest, I'm looking to reimagine spelljammer by moving it from "fantasy space" to "sailing the astral seas" and make it its own epic-level setting.
#6 draerden May 07, 2008 10:47:43	I agree. I much like the idea of the astral sea. Floating along through a limitless expanse of sky surrounded entirely by auroras and floating chunks broken off from the elemental chaos. While traveling you can encounter so much more then simply other spelljammers and asteroids. You can have storms in Astral Space, dangerous vicious storms that set one off course, or take you to entirely new worlds. There could be lost and wandering elementals and spirits, gods and their retinues moving from place to place, massive dragons so large they can no longer travel to the prime plane, coming across souls headed for the Shadowfell and the demons stalking them and then there's the societies that could develop in such a place! Could you imagine magma men living on small clods of earth orbiting a giant floating ball of flame guarding an ancient god-killing sword until the return of their master? For me, all this provides a little more substance then the old crystal sphere and phlogiston concept while maintaining as much or as little of the old as desired. My only crutch is... what's a good way to get into the Astral Sea from th prime plane? One could created a portal in front of the ship and slide on in but that's horribly overdone. It's also horribly flashy and doesn't preserve the original setting of any world that is visited. My current concept is that the Spelljammers summon a cloudbank and sail directly into it until nothing of their world can be seen and when you emerge from the cloudbank one is in the Astral.
#7 katahn May 07, 2008 11:37:15	Assuming there's a need for ships to readily move into or out of the material plane I'd probably do it with a combination of mapped "transition points" and a relatively minor magic item (or ritual) that allows a ship to essentially "slide through the cracks" to arrive on one side or the other. This preserves the idea of there being certain places that are "port towns" and why "Astraljammers" are modelled after ships (assuming weak points are all on the ocean). But I'd like to ask the question "is it necessary for there to be such a thing?" I'm not sure there is. Characters at an epic-level (needed to be mucking about on the astral) presumably already have a means to travel from material to astral, I don't see it as a huge stretch that those means could include something like a small ship. Maybe for traders there'd be a need, but whatever they're hauling would have to be something that the natives of any given plane couldn't just get more cheaply from "domestic" sources.
#8 draerden May 07, 2008 13:24:37	I could imagine a number of reasons for such Astral Jamming. For one, there could be civilizations within the astral sea same as anywhere else. There could be esoteric materials that exist nowhere else, like the stone needed to creating floating citadels, fire tears, and who knows what else. Could you imagine how valuable liquid chaos must be worth or what it might be capable of? I figure, given that ordinary mortals possess more hit points, that an entire crew should be able to take on more significant challenges while those heroes and paragons aboard can handle what the crew cannot. Thirty crew members in 4th seems much more intimidating then they did in previous editions.
#9 thegreaterbad May 07, 2008 13:49:06	The Astral Sea seems like a place that Epic characters go. Heroic, or even Paragon Tier characters will probably get their faces smashed there. Where as spelljamming can be done by lower level characters. Here's how envision doing Spelljammer in 4e, in regard to the plans. The Shadowfell and Feywild exist and they effect spelljaming in different ways. The Shadowfell's differences in magical energy (being innately more magical than realspace) prevents Spelljaming ships from breaking the atmosphere, as though the magic pulls holds it down. If a mage is powerful enough to pull a ship into Shadowspace, they will find it a place devoid of stars. Navigation is all but impossible. However, while in Shadowspace, one does not age and time seems to stand still. The chaotic energies of the Feywild have a bizzare effect on Spelljaming helms. While the Shadowfell seems to oppress, the Feywild's energies overcharge the helm, causing various anomalies, ranging from unpredictable speeds to physical changes to crewmen, and rare occasion, the helm and ship gaining sentience. Those brave or foolish enough to traverse its insanity will move quickly between worlds.
#10 darktouch Apr 07, 2009 10:08:10	If I'm understanding the question correctly, it looks like 'Space' is being suggested as an appropriate parallel for 'Dark'. So the World has the UnderDark and WildSpace, so the FeyWild should have the FeyDark and FeySpace while the ShadowFell has the ShadowDark and ShadowSpace. By 4th edition standards, a Spelljammer is the easiest method for getting around in the various planes in that there is some protection from being on a ship as well as the fact that it flies. I question whether any of these planes actually require a 'space' section. I just get the feeling that it works better if you don't think about it too much. Fly up up up and eventually you'll be in the sky/Astral sea. I think legitamately if you walk far enough you end up eat of the sun and west of the moon and be in the astral sea as well. Could depend on your world of course.
#11 colman Apr 17, 2009 9:23:12	Here is what I'm doing. Basically, the Phlogiston is no fun in the Shadowfell or the Feywild, and their wildspaces are more difficult to survive as well. Crossing via the usual method at special Fey crossroad type things. It's FR centered but not inconsistent with 4e canon. I hate the idea of the Astral Sea replacing wildspace.