Help with Astral Projection

[Professor Frankln Von Wolfstien]

Some of my Pcs want to use Astral projection. Here is my question. When you cast the spell you project to the Astral plane, then they want to reform on the prime material plane with there new physical body. after they do this is the astral cord still visible on the astral plane or is it just invisble on the prime???? Does this question make sense?????

[Carl Cramér]

If they used Astral projection on the prime, they cannot form a new body on the Prime; they will instead return to their original physical body.

The Astral Cord is visible as an extension to the astral body while in astral space. When you enter a plane to form a physical body, you no longer have an astral body, and thus no astral cord is visible.

At least this is how I understand things; it is pretty complex and subject to interpretation.

[Professor Frankln Von Wolfstien]

2nd question Can you use Astral projection on a plane other than the prime material say cast it in Sigil and reform a body on the prime .????

[James Jacobs]

Actually... there's nothing that says you can't return to the same plane from which you're projecting. In any event, if there were, it'd only be a matter of plane shifting to another plane and then astrally projecting to the Material Plane.

The spell's kind of worded poorly, alas... and it's not really a good spell for the game, I don't think (since it kind of takes the risk out of high-level play completely). But it's in the game so there ya go.

[Cintra Bristol]

I honestly don't know if I made this up out of whole cloth, or if I found some rules justification for it somewhere, but here's how I dealt with it:

When someone is Astral Projecting, they're linked by the astral cord even if they form a body somewhere. Off the Astral Plane, the astral cord is present but invisible. So if someone uses See Invisible or True Seeing, they'd see the silvery cord trailing from the person. The Astral Cord is also supposed to be extremely difficult, but NOT impossible, to sever, and I wasn't able to find any specific rules for this. So I decided that the astral cord was likely to survive any initial attack, but any sensible astral traveler would return to his body the moment someone starts targeting his Astral Cord.

If you want a rule mechanic for it, the most lenient rule might be that any attack which specifically targets the cord requires a saving throw which fails on a Natural 1 (a stricter rule would expand the range in which the person fails the save). Alternately, you could give the cord Hardness and Hit Points (but I wasn't able to find anything like this in an official source).

[infomatic]

That's not a bad house rule, though I haven't seen anything like that officially. Note that the cord is also incorporeal, so "any attack" won't work — it has to be with a magic weapon or some other effect that affects incorporeal creatures. (Kinda moot at the level this comes into play, of course).

On WotC's boards, chonjurer long ago assembled a list of "problematic spells" and this one was one of the worst offenders. Here's his suggestion:

chonjurer wrote:

Fix: When you project, any equipment that you have on you comes with you. If you end up on the same plane as your original body for some reason, the spell immediately ends and you return to your body with any equipment you have on you. If you die while projected your equipment falls to the ground where you died and you must retrieve it via some other means. I really can't believe that they left this one.

Or you could just kick Astral Projection into Epic — though with this adventure that'd still be a problem.

[Thoth-Amon the Mindflayerian]

Cintra Bristol wrote:

I honestly don't know if I made this up out of whole cloth, or if I found some rules justification for it somewhere, but here's how I dealt with it:

When someone is Astral Projecting, they're linked by the astral cord even if they form a body somewhere. Off the Astral Plane, the astral cord is present but invisible. So if someone uses See Invisible or True Seeing, they'd see the silvery cord trailing from the person. The Astral Cord is also supposed to be extremely difficult, but NOT impossible, to sever, and I wasn't able to find any specific rules for this. So I decided that the astral cord was likely to survive any initial attack, but any sensible astral traveler would return to his body the moment someone starts targeting his Astral Cord.

If you want a rule mechanic for it, the most lenient rule might be that any attack which specifically targets the cord requires a saving throw which fails on a Natural 1 (a stricter rule would expand the range in which the person fails the save). Alternately, you could give the cord Hardness and Hit Points (but I wasn't able to find anything like this in an official source).

We've followed the same houserule for years so i believe we must of read from the same source as you. We also houserule that you need a very specific magic blade to cut said cord, like a magic silver sword? used by the githyanki(sp?).

Thoths mind oozes genius

[Carl Cramér]

I once had an NPC necromancer goth girl who hid her body on a VERY secret extraplanar location, then used Astral Projection to create a new one on the Prime. This made her immortal, of sorts - which she used to commit suicide every now and then, mostly for shock value.

Nos, she wasn't evil, she just used a lot of evil spells.

And I concur that it takes some special effect made to target silver cords in order to harm them - such as a githyanki Silver Sword. Guess why they work so hard to keep them safe? After all, it is the only such power described anywhere in D&D canon as far as I know.