| Crimeo |
Asserting something over and over again isn't proof. Please provide some actual proof and not just assertions.
My proof is my diagram I drew that quite obviously met all of the spatial relationships mentioned in RAW for how the planes connect. A diagram which requires that the astral plane be N+1 dimensions spatially more than the inner ones.
That is an existence proof of a model that works. I'm not sure what other details you might possibly expect or require.
If you don't like that model, and you don't think it's necessary for astral to be N+1 dimensions, then provide your own existence proof of any other model that establishes this to be possible.
otherwise, all you're doing is saying "We should throw out Crimeo's model and then.... uh.... be left with nothing... and be unable to objectively rule on anything that happens in astral travel because we have no model"
Sounds great. Sounds waaaaay better and more official and RAW-compliant to just blindly wing everything with no rhyme or reason.
| Milo v3 |
Quote:Still, I don't think the astral plane is 6 dimensional. It's got length, width, depth, time (sorta), planeI'm not sure why you keep referring to "plane" as a dimension. The astral plane does not contain the other planes (only demiplanes). It is described as "between" them. It is just one thing by itself, that is touching/next to other ones. It is not an index or rolodex plane or whatever.
Well, to describe your location you would need to say something like:
+5 meters from centre of plane, +5 meters from centre of plane, +5 meters from centre of plane, +100 years from start of existence, material plane. So plane should be a dimension. Though, with layers existing it'd be something like: +5 meters from centre of plane, +5 meters from centre of plane, +5 meters from centre of plane, +100 years from start of existence, material plane, 0.| Celanian |
Quote:Asserting something over and over again isn't proof. Please provide some actual proof and not just assertions.My proof is my diagram I drew that quite obviously met all of the spatial relationships mentioned in RAW for how the planes connect. A diagram which requires that the astral plane be N+1 dimensions spatially more than the inner ones.
That is an existence proof of a model that works. I'm not sure what other details you might possibly expect or require.
If you don't like that model, and you don't think it's necessary for astral to be N+1 dimensions, then provide your own existence proof of any other model that establishes this to be possible.
otherwise, all you're doing is saying "We should throw out Crimeo's model and then.... uh.... be left with nothing... and be unable to objectively rule on anything that happens in astral travel because we have no model"
Sounds great. Sounds waaaaay better and more official and RAW-compliant to just blindly wing everything with no rhyme or reason.
I already gave a counter example. A vast contiguous Astral Plane where every point touches every point in any connecting plane.
| Crimeo |
Well, to describe your location you would need to say something like:
Ah, okay. So basically you are conceiving of all planes as existing in a line. The problem with that is that it makes it impossible for you to satisfy the requirement that the astral plane touches EVERY plane (and indeed every point in every plane).
-------Plane 1 <---spatial coord--->
-------Plane 2 ^
-------Plane 3 |"Plane coord"
-------Plane 4 v
Is your model, it seems (simplified down to line planes). But where does the astral plane go, then? There is no place you can insert it where it would touch all planes. The most it could touch is TWO planes in this model.
The only way I can see to solve it is to effective have more than one "plane coordinate" and then have an N+1 astral plane that spans both of them. Like if those are all strings touching, the astral plane becomes a sheet of paper lying on top of them all.
| Crimeo |
I already gave a counter example. A vast contiguous Astral Plane where every point touches every point in any connecting plane.
That is not a counterexample, because that sentence is completely consistent with my own model... so if you intended it to be somehow different than mine (thus countering it), you need to specify some more detail.
| Celanian |
Quote:I already gave a counter example. A vast contiguous Astral Plane where every point touches every point in any connecting plane.That is not a counterexample, because that sentence is completely consistent with my own model... so if you intended it to be somehow different than mine, you need to specify some more detail.
It is not consistent with yours. Your model is explicitly not contiguous and breaks the Astral into infinite 3D slices. Mine has 1 very large contiguous plane.
| Bob Bob Bob |
So spell sunder totally works on things that can't be dispelled.
If successful, the barbarian suppresses the effect for 1 round, or 2 rounds if she exceeded the CMD by 5 to 9. If she exceeds the CMD by 10 or more, the effect is dispelled.
These aren't a continuum. Any effect that is dispelled is also suppressed, it just usually doesn't matter because it's already dispelled.
As for the spell being suppressed:
As a standard action, you may eject a creature from your demiplane. The creature may resist with a Will saving throw. An ejected creature goes to the closest plane to your demiplane (usually the Astral Plane or the Ethereal Plane, but if you cast this spell on the Material Plane, the creature is sent to the Material Plane). When the spell ends, the plane dissolves, and all creatures in the plane are ejected in this manner with no saving throw. The plane cannot be dispelled, but a creature on the plane can destroy it by using limited wish, mage’s disjunction, miracle, or wish and making a successful dispel check.
Unless you think that suppressing means something else.
Also, again, you still haven't explained why the Astral is special. Coterminous with every plane means it touches them once, not it touches every single point on them. Why does the Astral require a higher dimension that the Abyss?
| Crimeo |
It is not consistent with yours. Your model is explicitly not contiguous and breaks the Astral into infinite 3D slices. Mine has 1 very large contiguous plane.
If that's your only disagreement, then we agree on the math part of it.
The movement restriction thing is not because of math. It's based on another part of RAW: specifically, the fact that barbarians are not allowed to swing their swords and kill shadow plane creatures.
If your hypothesis is that creatures can just move through that 4th dimension as easily as through the other three, then it would require that barbarians CAN swing their swords and hit stuff in the shadow plane, without any spells, any time they feel like it. Because that's literally the same dimension we are talking about as the one cutting across the astral plane.
Unless you think that suppressing means something else.
That quoted bit doesn't matter. Spells are not ended when they are suppressed. They are just temporarily suppressed, then they come back. Thus, they haven't ended.
For more details, look up the text of the spell "antimagic field"
| Milo v3 |
So basically you are conceiving of all planes as existing in a line. The problem with that is that it makes it impossible for you to satisfy the requirement that the astral plane touches EVERY plane (and indeed every point in every plane).
No a line. You could have each represented as a 3D object. With planes that are connected physically touch the adjacent planes object. Astral plane is easy modelled as a sphere that would contain all the other planes, but does not exist within those objects. Basically, the astral has cavities within which the otherplanes exist.
| Celanian |
If your hypothesis is that creatures can just move through that 4th dimension as easily as through the other three, then it would require that barbarians CAN swing their swords and hit stuff in the shadow plane, without any spells, any time they feel like it. Because that's literally the same dimension we are talking about as the one cutting across the astral plane.
What 4th dimension? A barbarian on the shadow plane can absolutely hit stuff on the shadow plane whenever they feel like it without spells. A barbarian on the material plane can absolutely hit stuff on the material plane whenever they feel like it without spells. A barbarian on the astral plane should absolutely be able to hit stuff on the astral plane whenever they feel like it without spells.
See the common thread?
| Crimeo |
Basically, the astral has cavities within which the otherplanes exist.
This does not work for 2 reasons:
1) There is a requirement that the material, ethereal, and shadow planes must touch at every point. which is impossible if they are just like wooden blocks butting up against one another. They truly need to exist along a 4th dimension to do this. Not just as adjjacent raisins in an astral plum pudding.
2) If the astral plane merely touched the edge of each plane, then you would have no access to it for teleport spells or such, if you were deep in the middle of one of those other planes. You'd have to travel billions of miles out to the edge first to get to it.
| Crimeo |
What 4th dimension?
The one along which the material, ethereal, and shadow planes must geometrically lie, in order for every point of M and S to be adjacent to every corresponding point in E.
You cannot swing your sword along THAT dimension. Only the other 3.
But THAT dimension is literally the same one as the 4th dimension of the astral.
So if you can't act across it in one situation, it doesn't make sense that you can act across it in the other.
See the common thread?
It is not a common thread. Your first two examples are 3D planes, your last one is 4D. You are comparing apples and oranges.
"Green apples are crunchy!"
"Red apples are crunchy!"
"Oranges are crunchy!"
"See the common thread?!"
(and yes they share a name, "plane". So do apples and oranges "fruit". Not all planes are the same.)
| Celanian |
Quote:What 4th dimension?The one along which the material, ethereal, and shadow planes must geometrically lie, in order for every point of M and S to be adjacent to every corresponding point in E.
You cannot swing your sword along THAT dimension. Only the other 3.
But THAT dimension is literally the same one as the 4th dimension of the astral.
So if you can't act across it in one situation, it doesn't make sense that you can act across it in the other.
You're not making sense.
Geometry doesn't apply since magic is in effect, so if you're drawing all your conclusions from geometry, then no wonder you're getting weird results not supported by RAW.
Let's stop wasting time. Please show me in RAW where the Astral Plane has a 4th spatial dimension or just admit that it's all a house rule on your part.
Please show me anywhere in RAW that a barbarian in the Astral Plane standing 5' away from a monster in the Astral Plane has to use spells to hit that monster. Not your made up stuff, but actual RAW.
| Milo v3 |
Quote:Basically, the astral has cavities within which the otherplanes exist.This does not work for 2 reasons:
1) There is a requirement that the material, ethereal, and shadow planes must touch at every point. which is impossible if they are just like wooden blocks butting up against one another. They truly need to exist along a 4th dimension to do this. Not just as adjjacent raisins in an astral plum pudding.
2) If the astral plane merely touched the edge of each plane, then you would have no access to it for teleport spells or such, if you were deep in the middle of one of those other planes. You'd have to travel billions of miles out to the edge first to get to it.
You don't need to travel from one point of the object to reach it's edge. The whole object is your dimension.
| Crimeo |
Geometry doesn't apply since magic is in effect
I can stand in the ethereal plane and look at material and shadow. I am not casting any spells when I do so, no active magic at all, magic has nothing to do with it. It's just the nature of the universe. This can only be possible if they are touching along a geometric 4th dimension at every point.
Let's stop wasting time. Please show me in RAW where the Astral Plane has a 4th spatial dimension or just admit that it's all a house rule on your part.
Sure, right after you show me where in RAW it says that you are allowed to use a power attack feat with a bardiche.
It doesn't say. It says "you can power attack with a weapon" and somewhere else it says "a bardiche is a weapon" and then you have to use LOGIC to deduce that therefore, necessarily, it is RAW-supported that you can power attack with a bardiche.
Power attacking with a bardiche is RAW. But it never just flat out says that. It's still not a "house rule"
Similarly, there are a series of half a dozen rules about how different planes connect. You then have to apply logic to establish an overall geometry that allows all those scattered rules to be true at once. The deductive result is a 4-dimensional astral plane being the only thing that makes sense. This is RAW-compliant, just like the result of combining the feat and weapon lists. And is no more of a "house rule" than that was. It is RAW.
If you cannot accept that RAW requires you to deductively pull together rules from different places, then I don't think pathfinder is the game for you. Since you need to do that like every 5 seconds of gameplay.
You don't need to travel from one point of the object to reach it's edge. The whole object is your dimension.
What?
| Celanian |
Quote:Geometry doesn't apply since magic is in effectI can stand in the ethereal plane and look at material and shadow. I am not casting any spells when I do so, no active magic at all, magic has nothing to do with it. It's just the nature of the universe. This can only be possible if they are touching along a geometric 4th dimension at every point.
Can a barb in the Ethereal swing a sword and hit a material target? If the answer is no, then magic absolutely has something to do with it.
Sure, right after you show me where in RAW it says that you are allowed to use a power attack feat with a bardiche.It doesn't say. It says "you can power attack with a weapon" and somewhere else it says "a bardiche is a weapon" and then you have to use LOGIC to deduce that therefore, necessarily, it is RAW-supported that you can power attack with a bardiche.
Power attacking with a bardiche is RAW. But it never just flat out says that. It's still not a "house rule"
As you said, bardiche is a weapon and power attack is a weapon. Thanks for saving me time in printing it out.
So now that the RAW has been shown for power attack, please show it for the 4th spatial dimension in the Astral.
Similarly, there are a series of half a dozen rules about how different planes connect. You then have to apply logic to establish an overall geometry that allows all those scattered rules to be true at once. The deductive result is a 4-dimensional astral plane being the only thing that makes sense. This is RAW-compliant, just like the result of combining the feat and weapon lists. And is no more of a "house rule" than that was. It is RAW.
Again, where in RAW is it stated that the Astral has a 4th spatial dimension? The astral could just as easily have 3 spatial dimensions and magic explains the linkages with the other connecting planes.
If you cannot accept that RAW requires you to deductively pull together rules from different places, then I don't think pathfinder is the game for you. Since you need to do that like every 5 seconds of gameplay.
If you call making stuff up "deductively pulling rules together", then I don't think Pathfinder is the game for you.
| Milo v3 |
Quote:You don't need to travel from one point of the object to reach it's edge. The whole object is your dimension.What?
You were saying that because the planar contact is at the edge, if someone was deep in the plane they would have to travel immense distances to reach the edge. But in my example, the object is the dimension, so you don't need to reach the edge, because your location on the plane is irrelevant.
| Crimeo |
Can a barb in the Ethereal swing a sword and hit a material target? If the answer is no, then magic absolutely has something to do with it.
No, because of this rules text:
Normally, creatures on the Ethereal Plane cannot attack creatures on the Material Plane, and vice versa.
Why you think that has something to do with magic, I don't know. It doesn't say anything about magic, and no spell is in effect.
So now that the RAW has been shown for power attack, please show it for the 4th spatial dimension in the Astral.
1) RAW: Ethereal is between material and shadow and all corresponding points touch.
2) RAW: Material, ethereal, and shadow planes are all at least 3 dimensional.3) Necessary from (1) and (2) and geometry: these 3 planes lie in a line along at least a 4th dimensional space.
4) RAW: All planar travel or teleportation goes through astral (and astral touches everything, also stated)
5) Necessary from (4): astral touches any spot you can cast plane shift from. Which includes every spot on the material, ethereal, and shadow planes.
6) Mathematical fact: there is no such thing as a point on a number line that touches THREE other points. (or a plane along a line such that it touches all points of three other planes. Or a cube along a line such that it touches all points of three other cubes)
7) Necessary from (3) and (6): There is no way to slot in another three dimensional plane into a position where all parts of it could possibly touch M,E, and S all at once.
8) Necessary from (5) and (7): The astral plane cannot be three dimensional.
Point (6) is no longer true, however, when adding another degree of freedom. So if we open up astral to 4th dimensional, everything works dandy.
You were saying that because the planar contact is at the edge, if someone was deep in the plane they would have to travel immense distances to reach the edge. But in my example, the object is the dimension, so you don't need to reach the edge, because your location on the plane is irrelevant.
That's just another way of saying there's a 4th spatial dimension. Spatial dimensions = ones you can travel along orthogonally to others and without waiting in time. Or more inclusively/precisely, ones that cause points to touch orthogonally to any others.
| Celanian |
Quote:Can a barb in the Ethereal swing a sword and hit a material target? If the answer is no, then magic absolutely has something to do with it.No, because of this rules text:
Quote:Normally, creatures on the Ethereal Plane cannot attack creatures on the Material Plane, and vice versa.Why you think that has something to do with magic, I don't know. It doesn't say anything about magic, and no spell is in effect.
Since you must use magic to attack from one plane to another, that means that magic is what's keeping the planes apart.
Quote:So now that the RAW has been shown for power attack, please show it for the 4th spatial dimension in the Astral.1) RAW: Ethereal is between material and shadow and all corresponding points touch.
2) RAW: Material, ethereal, and shadow planes are all at least 3 dimensional.
3) Necessary from (1) and (2) and geometry: these 3 planes lie in a line along at least a 4th dimensional space.
4) RAW: All planar travel or teleportation goes through astral (and astral touches everything, also stated)
5) Necessary from (4): astral touches any spot you can cast plane shift from. Which includes every spot on the material, ethereal, and shadow planes.
6) Mathematical fact: there is no such thing as a point on a number line that touches THREE other points.
7) Necessary from (3) and (6): There is no way to slot in another equally dimensional (three dimensional) plane into a position where all parts of it could possibly touch M,E, and S all at once.
8) Necessary from (5) and (7): The astral plane cannot be three dimensional..
1 and 2 I can accept.
3) Wrong. Magic can explain how all corresponding points touch.
4) Teleport effects yes. Planar travel no. As shown by the Etherealness or Ethereal Jaunt spells that take you directly to the Ethereal.
5) Yep, magically.
6) Magic.
7) Since the premises of 3, 5, and 6 are all wrong, then FALSE.
8) Yes it can. Since the premises of 5 and 7 are wrong, we can say MAGIC, not geometry, establishes all the linkages.
I'm still waiting for a RAW cite that says the Astral has a 4th spatial dimension.
| Crimeo |
3) Wrong. Magic can explain how all corresponding points touch.
This is a useless explanation though because it does not allow any objective rulings to be made. One, this violates the whole core point of the tippyverse project, so I don't even know why you're in this thread in the first place, if that's your attitude. And two, because if you should always restrict magic to ONLY the exact things it says involve magic, this simply happens:
"lulz it's all magic."
"Okay"
"Now, my barbarian spell sunders your demiplane"
"No he doesn't"
"Why not?"
"Magic."
So the barbarian thing still doesn't work, society is still stable. Easy peasy.
[/thread] also [/table of players putting up with me as a GM when I pull "lol because magic" on them]
Teleport effects yes. Planar travel no. As shown by the Etherealness or Ethereal Jaunt spells that take you directly to the Ethereal.
It doesn't matter either way, I only need there to be one example to serve in the proof, not every example. Teleport/plane shift alone is good enough.
Since you must use magic to attack from one plane to another, that means that magic is what's keeping the planes apart.
Since I must use muscles to get off the couch, muscles must be keeping me on the couch! Oh my god, there's some sort of muscly invisible man pinning me down! Call 9-1-1!
| Celanian |
Quote:3) Wrong. Magic can explain how all corresponding points touch.This is a useless explanation though because it does not allow any objective rulings to be made. One, this violates the whole core point of the tippyverse project, so I don't even know why you're in this thread in the first place, if that's your attitude. And two, because if you should always restrict magic to ONLY the exact things it says involve magic, this simply happens:
"lulz it's all magic."
"Okay"
"Now, my barbarian spell sunders your demiplane"
"No he doesn't"
"Why not?"
"Magic."So the barbarian thing still doesn't work, society is still stable. Easy peasy.
[/thread] also [/table of players putting up with me as a GM when I pull "lol because magic" on them]
I don't even know where to begin...
1) The ENTIRE Pathfinder universe can only be explained with magic.
2) The whole point of the Tippyverse is to explore magic running rampant. To complain about injecting more magic into this is absurd.
3) There's a HUGE difference between using magic to explain the underpinnings of the universe and just throwing "lol Magic" to enact GM fiat like you're doing.
4) Your players would complain if you explained that the Wizards can cast spells and commoners can't "lol because of magic"???????
5) Magic can fit RAW quite well without inventing absurdities like 4th spatial dimensions and infinite 3D slices.
Since I must use muscles to get off the couch, muscles must be keeping me on the couch! Oh my god, there's some sort of muscly invisible man pinning me down! Call 9-1-1!
Since it takes a spell or SLA or SU abilities to breach the planes, it's definitely magic. Please show me a non-magical way in game to breach the planes.
BTW, I'm still waiting for a RAW cite about a 4th spatial dimension in the Astral.
| Crimeo |
The whole point of the Tippyverse is to explore magic running rampant. To complain about injecting more magic into this is absurd.
The point is to explore exactly the extent of magic described being used logically and exploitatively. Injecting more unnecessarily is equally as much undermining the point of the thought experiment as removing a bunch of magic would be.
Furthermore, the point is to actually end up with a playable universe at the end. Injecting wildcard, unnecessary, outside-the-described rules magic is even worse for this goal, because it makes the game unplayable when anything can just pop off in some random direction because magic.
If you go read the original tippyverse thread, he was pretty clear on this same line of reasoning himself too. One of his primary starting rules was "The gods are silent" to avoid such rules-instability.
Anyway honestly, bottom line, no offense, but I don't care to convince any further than that.
Just please keep discussion to "What would the universe be like without invoking any unnecessary magic, but otherwise pushing abilities to any extreme?" if for no other reason than that is what I am interested in considering in this thread.
Since it takes a spell or SLA or SU abilities to breach the planes, it's definitely magic. Please show me a non-magical way in game to breach the planes.
I agree that there is no way to travel between planes other than magic. Concluding that magic therefore holds them apart is a logical fallacy, though.
It COULD, but it doesn't HAVE to. It might be impossible otherwise merel "because there's a physical barrier there as a part of nature." Just like you can't walk through a rock. Magic can help you move through a rock. But that obviously doesn't require that magic is responsible for rocks stopping people from walking through them.
And as per new rule invoked above in bold, whenever it's possible to not invoke new magic, please don't. Therefore, I am operating on the assumption that planar boundaries are a simple force of nature just like rocks. Magic can overcome this, but is not originally responsible for it.
| Crimeo |
Crimeo wrote:"What would the universe be like without invoking any unnecessary magic, but otherwise pushing abilities to any extreme?"The Tippyverse.
See page 1 of this thread?
Trade being unimportant, and thus Telecircles, and cities not being secure compared to demiplanes, and this leading to fairly small isolated communities rather than bustling megaopolises and all that.
| Celanian |
Furthermore, the point is to actually end up with a playable universe at the end. Injecting wildcard, unnecessary, outside-the-described rules magic is even worse for this goal, because it makes the game unplayable when anything can just pop off in some random direction because magic.
Then please take your own advice and don't inject 4th spatial dimensions and infinite Astral layers without a RAW cite.
If I did like you, I could explain why the Elemental Planes aren't gigantic black holes by making stuff up about extra mass being shunted off to further dimensions. Or I can just say MAGIC and move on.
| Mathius |
So um wow. That sure was something. Another possibility is that the astral plane is 4D like suggested and that everything goes there becomes 4d. Normal experience does not lead to good game that way so just assume that it 3d and go from there.
Wish can duplicate spells or move you anywhere. I thought the house rule was to remove the I wish I was a god type things. Did we houserule away wish travel?
One of the major issues with small hidden villages is that people are social and exploratory. Folks will want to me others.
| Crimeo |
Then please take your own advice and don't inject 4th spatial dimensions and infinite Astral layers without a RAW cite.
There has to be some solution. Not having any model is not an option, as it does not allow any rulings to be made.
So my options are to use the non-magical model, which requires a 4th dimension and allows objective rulings that players could logic their way through, predict, and rely on, thus allowing a playable game that fits RAW.
Or I can say "because magic" which technically is possible, but leaves my players with no idea how anything works and unable to predict anything making for a mostly UNplayable game. You can't just "move on" like you say, relevant rulings have to be made. Moving on cannot happen until they are.
The first one of those is thus better for this purpose.
Another possibility is that the astral plane is 4D like suggested and that everything goes there becomes 4d.
This is possible I guess, but since there aren't any relevant combat or movement rules for 4D gameplay, it would force me to come up with a huge number of other rules off the cuff, more than the other possibilities require me to make up, and thus is still not the best of the various equivalently RAW suggestions. *shrug*
Wish can duplicate spells or move you anywhere. I thought the house rule was to remove the I wish I was a god type things. Did we houserule away wish travel?
Wish can still duplicate spells, just not anything else. So you can travel with it, but not outside the parameters of teleport, plane shift, or whatever.
One of the major issues with small hidden villages is that people are social and exploratory. Folks will want to me others.
My conception was that you'd have nested layers of security. 500ish people is your actual HOME. Then maybe 10 of those communities meet every once in awhile, or may have immigrants moving around. But it would be a once or twice in a lifetime thing with a lot of security screening and stuff to move completely between. Then beyond that are larger demiplane meetings for larger political consortiums and such, and so on to larger and larger groups.
But each one can be locked off with something like a dead magic plane in between with a huge 5 foot thick adamantine door, so there's plenty of time to respond to any shenanigans by closing down the connection.
Also your home planes don't have to be literal village sized. They could be the size of half a CONTINENT if they've been aroud a very long time and your creative ancestors were all busy making cool stuff. Plenty to explore.
| Celanian |
So my options are to use the non-magical model, which requires a 4th dimension and allows objective rulings that players could logic their way through, predict, and rely on, thus allowing a playable game that fits RAW.Or I can say "because magic" which technically is possible, but leaves my players with no idea how anything works and unable to predict anything making for a mostly UNplayable game. You can't just "move on" like you say, relevant rulings have to be made. Moving on cannot happen until they are.
You can absolutely have a playable game with "because magic". "Because magic" explains why the multiverse is the way it is, not how the rules interact with player actions.
Treating the Astral as just another plane for purposes of movement is completely predictable and easier to resolve than grafting on a 4th spatial dimension that's sure to have WAY more GM adjudication anyway.
That means you can teleport on the Astral, fly on the Astral, see other Astral entities, hit another entity on the Astral with your big stick, and locate entities on the Astral unless RAW specifically contradicts those abilities. Easy to adjudicate and very predictable without having to make up house rules that are not supported by RAW. And much more intuitive for players since they already have all those abilities on the material for most of their adventuring lives.
If I move to the elemental plane of Earth, I don't have to assume higher level layers or dimensions where the mass is shunted off to. I say "because magic" and now I can craft actual adventures with actual rulings based on what's actually in RAW rather than making up rules about the hypothetical dimensional offshoots of the plane of Earth that are not mentioned anywhere in RAW.
| Crimeo |
Players only need to know like 3 rules relevant to gameplay in the 4-d version. For a particular campaign setting, these might be something like:
1) If you just plane shift to the astral without specifying a 4d coordinate, you end up in the slice that directly touches the plane you departed from. This is where almost all native and visiting life is.
2) If you do specify an exact coordinate, you will go to that slice instead.
3) When demiplanes are created, they show up in the slice closest to wherever the spell was cast that created them.
That's it. There's lots more to the world in terms of choices the NPCs have made with the above rules, and the societal structures that have risen as a consequence, blah blah. But those are the only relevant mechanical rules.
You can absolutely have a playable game with "because magic". "Because magic" explains why the multiverse is the way it is, not how the rules interact with player actions.
Oh so your arbitrary spree of unexplained magic just conveniently stopped at the doorway of gameplay. Sure, functional, I guess, but bad storytelling. A system that actually makes mathematical sense not only minimizes unsatisfying handwaving, but also doesn't have a weird discontinuous boundary where magic physics and math-defying powers stop and normal math and physics begin right where players get involved. And since they're both equally RAW compatible, I choose the more interesting and satisfying to me story.
| Celanian |
Players only need to know like 3 rules relevant to gameplay in the 4-d version. For a particular campaign setting, these might be something like:
1) If you just plane shift to the astral without specifying a 4d coordinate, you end up in the slice that directly touches the plane you departed from. This is where almost all native and visiting life is.
2) If you do specify an exact coordinate, you will go to that slice instead.
3) When demiplanes are created, they show up in the slice closest to wherever the spell was cast that created them.
That's it. There's lots more to the world in terms of choices the NPCs have made with the above rules, and the societal structures that have risen as a consequence, blah blah. But those are the only relevant mechanical rules.
Thanks for finally admitting that it's a house rule and you have to make up rules subsystems to make it work. It would've saved us a ton of time if you had just admitted you were houseruling things right from the start.
If you want to play a houserule to explain why every demiplane doesn't get nuked, that's fine. But stop trying to pass it off as RAW.
I personally think it's lazy storytelling. No villains would ever be caught since they can always establish their bases on some random slice of the Astral. There's no reason for the players to ever try to stop the villains since they can always just retreat. Liches would be invulnerable since they just pick some random 3D slice of the Astral Plane to hide their phylactery and nobody could every find and destroy it. Pretty soon, there would be nothing in the universe except for liches since there are tons of high level casters who can qualify and there would be no way of permanently getting rid of them.
Pharasma would have to be the stupidest deity around. Why so much effort to protect souls when she can just rout them to an encrypted layer of the Astral where the Astradaemons and other horrors can't get at them? There would literally be no point to these monsters.
Heck, if encrypted Astral slices were a thing, then there would be no need to cast a create demiplane to begin with since you can just use the entire encrypted slice as your home base anyway.
Bad storytelling and makes no sense in the context of the Pathfinder universe.
Oh so your arbitrary spree of unexplained magic just conveniently stopped at the doorway of gameplay. Sure, functional, I guess, but bad storytelling. A system that actually makes mathematical sense not only minimizes unsatisfying handwaving, but also doesn't have a weird discontinuous boundary where magic physics and math-defying powers stop and normal math and physics begin right where players get involved. And since they're both equally RAW compatible, I choose the more interesting and satisfying to me story.
It's Pathfinder's spree of unexplained magic. You LITERALLY can't explain their universe without magic. I don't know why you're willing to handwave the elemental planes with "because magic" but not the Astral unless you're just being ornery.
| Crimeo |
Thanks for finally admitting that it's a house rule
There are different tiers of rules:
1) Things written right in the book
2) Things necessarily implied by more than one thing written in the book, when taken together.
3) Things that the book forces you to need to make a ruling on, but without any guidance in the book about what that ruling should be.
4) Things that you unnecessarily decided to change or remove from the book for purely personal preference.
This is a #3 situation. I use "house rule" to refer to #4 only. You apparently use "house rule" to refer to at least #3 or #4. So no, I don't think it's a house rule, and you do. Okay and...? This is semantics and not an interesting point of discussion. Because a Tippyverse thought experiment cannot avoid #3s no matter what.
You LITERALLY can't explain their universe without magic.
I just did. The fact that you offered a second alternative that also works does not make the first one wrong. There can be more than one way to resolve #3 situations (as above) that are all equally consistent with RAW / do not violate any type #1 or type #2 rules.
you can just use the entire encrypted slice as your home base anyway.
If your base is in an astral slice, you are now susceptible to scrying and similar spells. once somebody scries you, they have now seen your location, so they can now teleport or plane shift or whatever directly to you due to sufficient familiarity. Mind blank, sure, but it's stupidly risky and much more prone to error.
The demiplane is necessary for security by the fact that since it's another plane, none of those methods of gaining familiarity with a location work through it. (Also it lets you control your gravity and time flow and instantly make castles and stuff)
Pharasma would have to be the stupidest deity around. Why so much effort to protect souls when she can just rout them to an encrypted layer of the Astral where the Astradaemons and other horrors can't get at them? There would literally be no point to these monsters.
Sure there's a point to astradaemons. Two things:
1) Remember how I said "when you don't use planar travel magic to specify a coordinate, you just by default start out in the default slice closest to your point of origin." Thus astradaemons could quite simply mainly hunt in this slice, since souls by default would begin there.
2) Even if a soul meanders off into some other slice on its way to Pharasma, an astradaemon can find it if if it is familiar with the soul for scrying and such (see issues of being able to find people this way above), thus viewing its location and then being able to travel there. I guess this depends if you consider a departed soul a "creature"/valid target for such things or not. It is a bit unclear, but presumably souls can be targeted by magic, or resurrection wouldn't work. So if a daemon has any way of secretly familiarizing with you, might be screwed. This could be a very real danger for adventurers in this world to ever leave their demiplanes, like the PCs do.
Liches would be invulnerable since they just pick some random 3D slice of the Astral Plane to hide their phylactery and nobody could every find and destroy it.
They can still be destroyed by Marut inevitables. Since there are no rules written about where a Marut begins its hunt, it is not any less consistent with RAW to say they begin on whatever plane/area is necessary vs. anywhere else. In this case, likely whatever area the phylactery is in. If you wish a storyline reason, Pharasma guides them. She cares about the enforcement of the rules of life and death. She doesn't care about you finding some people you don't like or whatever.
Once there, if it's a demiplane, they can dispel it and/or invite other reinforcements in since they can now make tuning forks to it. And if it's a slice of the astral, they have now seen it, so they can go back to it later at will and bring other creatures or resources as needed.
The inevitables and divines have little interest in using these means to help one side or another of some petty mortal squabble though. Only if you are affronting the fundamental laws of nature.
Zelekhuts would be the closest to caring, but if you never had rightful jurisdiction over me anyway, notsomuch.
OR alternatively if you take issue with all that, then nix the inevitables, and there are just millions of liches hiding in random holes in the universe. Okay, so what?
OR alternatively becoming a lich is just really Really REALLY difficult, and only 10 dudes have ever done it in all of history. It doesn't say in RAW the specifics of how it's done, so this is perfectly consistent.
OR alternatively Liches get bored eventually / finish whatever work they became liches to do, and tend to commit suicide.
| Bob Bob Bob |
"house rule": a rule that only applies among a certain group or in a certain place. If no rule exists than any rule that fills the gap is, by definition, a house rule, since it must be created. You can insist that it's the most logical result but that means you're arguing it's the best (or most common) houserule, not what the rules say. On your list 2, 3, and 4 are all houserules. Despite the fact that being dead should prevent all actions, the book doesn't actually say that. Rules to the contrary (no matter how common sense or obvious they are) are still house rules, since they aren't part of the actual ruleset from the rule book.
| Crimeo |
The fact that three of us now have three different definitions (Celanian already agreed with me earlier that type #2 is not a house rule, and you don't) only further reinforces that this is not a very productive or meaningful term.
Again, regardless of terminology, Type #3 rules are necessary for this project. So what does it matter? It doesn't.
| Bob Bob Bob |
No, they're not necessary. You need them for the project to work for you the way you want it to work. That's fine if that's what you want, but then you're definitely not following the Tippyverse model. You're just building your own world with your own houserules.
Also how did they have time to agree with your #2 when they haven't posted since you posted it?
| Crimeo |
Also how did they have time to agree with your #2 when they haven't posted since you posted it?
Celanian agreed earlier that being allowed to power attack with a bardiche was RAW, not a house rule. Which would be an example of a #2 rule.
No, they're not necessary. You need them for the project to work for you the way you want it to work.
It is not possible to rule on barbarian spell sunders of demiplanes without making explicit or implicit assumptions about astral geography that are not specified in the book. So if a player says he wants to do that, you must add a #3 rule to adjudicate it. You cannot choose to only go by what's in the books, the information needed just isn't there.
You may not even realize you're doing so, but either way you rule, you're implying things that logically commit you to one type of unwritten geography and rule out others, none of which are explicit in the books.
I am choosing WHICH of those added assumptions based on the result I want, yes, but I do not have a choice THAT there must be added assumptions.
| Bob Bob Bob |
Quote:Also how did they have time to agree with your #2 when they haven't posted since you posted it?Celanian agreed earlier that being allowed to power attack with a bardiche was RAW, not a house rule. Which would be an example of a #2 rule.
Implied: suggested but not directly expressed; implicit. Your example was not implied. It was explicit. They did not agree that it was an example of #2. They agreed that it was true. Unless you're using a logician's implied, in which case you're going to need to define a lot more. What's "necessary". What's "taken together". Etc.
Astral geography is defined.Quote:No, they're not necessary. You need them for the project to work for you the way you want it to work.It is not possible to rule on barbarian spell sunders of demiplanes without making explicit or implicit assumptions about astral geography that are not specified in the book. So if a player says he wants to do that, you must add a #3 rule to adjudicate it. You cannot choose to only go by what's in the books, the information needed just isn't there.
You may not even realize you're doing so, but either way you rule, you're implying things that logically commit you to one type of unwritten geography and rule out others, none of which are explicit in the books.
I am choosing WHICH of those added assumptions based on the result I want, yes, but I do not have a choice THAT there must be added assumptions.
Additionally, the idea of "slices" is already addressed.The Astral Plane is a great, endless expanse of clear silvery sky, both above and below. Occasional bits of solid matter can be found here, but most of the Astral Plane is an endless, open domain.
The Astral Plane is the great silvery sky that connects all planes to one another, the realm of pure thought and expanded consciousness. Occasional islands of solid matter float in astral space, but most of the plane is an enormous, seemingly eternal void of silver radiance.
Layered Planes
Infinities may be broken into smaller infinities, and planes into smaller, related planes. These layers are effectively separate planes of existence, and each layer can have its own features and qualities. Layers are connected to each other through a variety of planar gates, natural vortices, paths, and shifting borders.
Access to a layered plane from elsewhere usually happens on the first layer of the plane, which can be either the top or bottom layer, depending on the specific plane. Most fixed access points (such as portals and natural vortices) reach this layer, which makes it the gateway for other layers of the plane. The plane shift spell generally deposits the spellcaster on the first layer of the plane.
You know what word doesn't appear in the Astral Plane description? The Abyss is the only "layered" plane.
| Celanian |
There are different tiers of rules:1) Things written right in the book
2) Things necessarily implied by more than one thing written in the book, when taken together.
3) Things that the book forces you to need to make a ruling on, but without any guidance in the book about what that ruling should be.
4) Things that you unnecessarily decided to change or remove from the book for purely personal preference.This is a #3 situation. I use "house rule" to refer to #4 only. You apparently use "house rule" to refer to at least #3 or #4. So no, I don't think it's a house rule, and you do. Okay and...? This is semantics and not an interesting point of discussion. Because a Tippyverse thought experiment cannot avoid #3s no matter what.
The book doesn't force you to make a ruling on 4th spatial dimensions or encrypted layers. You're just making it up. As a house rule to get your universe to work, that's fine. Just don't claim RAW. BTW, 3 is definitely house rule territory.
Quote:You LITERALLY can't explain their universe without magic.I just did. The fact that you offered a second alternative that also works does not make the first one wrong. There can be more than one way to resolve #3 situations (as above) that are all equally consistent with RAW / do not violate any type #1 or type #2 rules.
Why aren't all the elemental planes just one or more gigantic black holes? That's what you would get if you had infinite or near infinite mass spread relatively uniformly over a gigantic volume. I'd like a non-magical explanation. What is a non-magical explanation of how the Gods and various monsters get their powers? What is a non-magical explanation for why the astral, ethereal, elemental, and outer planes exist in the first place?
If your base is in an astral slice, you are now susceptible to scrying and similar spells. once somebody scries you, they have now seen your location, so they can now teleport or plane shift or whatever directly to you due to sufficient familiarity. Mind blank, sure, but it's stupidly risky and much more prone to error.
The demiplane is necessary for security by the fact that since it's another plane, none of those methods of gaining familiarity with a location work through it. (Also it lets you control your gravity and time flow and instantly make castles and stuff)
According to you, find the path and similar divination spells won't work since even if you know where the encrypted layer is, there's a 1 over infinity chance of actually landing on it unless you know the encryption key. This was stated explicitly by you earlier in this thread. The demiplane is unnecessary since it could already be found with find the path. It's just that you were arguing in this very thread that no one can land on the exact slice it is located.
Sure there's a point to astradaemons. Two things:
1) Remember how I said "when you don't use planar travel magic to specify a coordinate, you just by default start out in the default slice closest to your point of origin." Thus astradaemons could quite simply mainly hunt in this slice, since souls by default would begin there.
2) Even if a soul meanders off into some other slice on its way to Pharasma, an astradaemon can find it if if it is familiar with the soul for scrying and such (see issues of being able to find people this way above), thus viewing its location and then being able to travel there. I guess this depends if you consider a departed soul a "creature"/valid target for such things or not. It is a bit unclear, but presumably souls can be targeted by magic, or resurrection wouldn't work. So if a daemon has any way of secretly familiarizing with you, might be screwed. This could be a very real danger for adventurers in this world to ever leave their demiplanes, like the PCs do
1) Pharasma can just rout the souls through an encrypted plane. She's a deity and arguably one of the most powerful ones.
2) Astradaemons have only locate creature as a way of finding the souls. That does not work across different planes or layers. Even if they find the soul, there's a 1 over infinity chance of landing in their slice according to you.
They can still be destroyed by Marut inevitables. Since there are no rules written about where a Marut begins its hunt, it is not any less consistent with RAW to say they begin on whatever plane/area is necessary vs. anywhere else. In this case, likely whatever area the phylactery is in. If you wish a storyline reason, Pharasma guides them. She cares about the enforcement of the rules of life and death. She doesn't care about you finding some people you don't like or whatever.
Once there, if it's a demiplane, they can dispel it and/or invite other reinforcements in since they can now make tuning forks to it. And if it's a slice of the astral, they have now seen it, so they can go back to it later at will and bring other creatures or resources as needed.
The inevitables and divines have little interest in using these means to help one side or another of some petty mortal squabble though. Only if you are affronting the fundamental laws of nature.
Zelekhuts would be the closest to caring, but if you never had rightful jurisdiction over me anyway, notsomuch.
OR alternatively if you take issue with all that, then nix the inevitables, and there are just millions of liches hiding in random holes in the universe. Okay, so what?
OR alternatively becoming a lich is just really Really REALLY difficult, and only 10 dudes have ever done it in all of history. It doesn't say in RAW the specifics of how it's done, so this is perfectly consistent.
OR alternatively Liches get bored eventually / finish whatever work they became liches to do, and tend to commit suicide.
More houserules needed because of the unintended consequence of your first house rule.
| Crimeo |
Why aren't all the elemental planes just one or more gigantic black holes? That's what you would get if you had infinite or near infinite mass spread relatively uniformly over a gigantic volume. I'd like a non-magical explanation.
So would I. If you have one, be sure to let me know. Note that my rule was "Do not invoke magic unless you have to." If astral geometry can be explained without magic, but elemental black holes can only be explained with magic, then okay, choose "without" and "with", respectively.
According to you, find the path and similar divination spells won't work since even if you know where the encrypted layer is, there's a 1 over infinity chance of actually landing on it unless you know the encryption key. This was stated explicitly by you earlier in this thread. The demiplane is unnecessary since it could already be found with find the path. It's just that you were arguing in this very thread that no one can land on the exact slice it is located.
Yes, Find the Path and similar spells, such as locate creature, that only give you a direction, don't work. Because those spells leave it UP TO YOU to walk there, which is fine in the material but you can't do it in this case due to your body being 3D. Or to figure out / guess / extrapolate the exact position to tell to a spell, and you can't do that precisely enough.
Other spells, like teleport, DON'T require you to figure it out yourself. As long as you've seen a place, even if you don't know its coordinates, it will take you there. So that works, because you don't need to specify anything, so precision doesn't stop you.
Critically, scry works in the same plane, but not across planes, though, so you can scry and hop to a person in a slice, potentially, but not to a person in a demiplane. Making a demiplane a better hiding place. Also, again, demiplanes let you build things instantly and change gravity the way you want, etc.
And you cannot scry on a demiplane, because scry only targets creatures. If, some other way, you've seen the demiplane, then okay. But I don't know how you would've done that.
The book doesn't force you to make a ruling on 4th spatial dimensions or encrypted layers.
First of all, I didn't say anything about "encrypted" layers ever, I don't know where you're getting that from. It's not any more "encrypted" than the exact distance of the can of coke on my desk is "encrypted" due to me not knowing it. It is simply "Not known exactly" that is all. There is no special code or secret brownie decoder ring.
Secondly, I do not claim that it forces me to specifically the 4D thing. I thought it did earlier, but you gave another possibility. It does force me to SOME rule not written, though, one of those two (or possibly others). Yours involves just as much fiat as mine, and so would any third way.
For example, you fiat-ed / "house ruled" that people get ejected from a demiplane when it is suppressed. The spell has not ended, so it does not say anywhere in the book this happens, nor logically require it. You made up a rule. One that might be consistent with RAW, but not required by it, in order to make your plan work, exactly like I'm doing. So what? That's the best we can do.
You know what word doesn't appear in the Astral Plane description? The Abyss is the only "layered" plane.
The description of what layered means for the Abyss is is as an ONION, An onion is an object with 3D layers. Nor does the Abyss have any other problematic connections or relationships listed that would preclude it from being simple and 3D. So that's an entirely different concept than what I'm talking about. These Abyss layers are demiplanes or whatever that are just nested in 3D only, unless, similar to astral, there are other rules that would require or imply otherwise.
Astral geography is defined.
Yes it is defined as 1) As a great silvery sky, blah blah 2) As a plane that connects in half a dozen very specific ways to other planes that can only make sense if we add either a bunch of unstated magical geometry-breaking assumptions to the system, or if we add an unstated 4th dimension to the system. It is the only plan that has said connections.
1) Pharasma can just rout the souls through an encrypted plane. She's a deity and arguably one of the most powerful ones.
Okay? Pharasma always could have just used her divine power to thwart astradaemons, in any setting or cosmology, as long as she's a god and they aren't. They're just a badly designed creature in that sense. Or maybe the four horsemen or whoever is in charge of them has established mutual boundaries with pharasma, that would make sense. But I don't know, ask Paizo, this problem was not created by anything I wrote.
Astradaemons have only locate creature as a way of finding the souls. That does not work across different planes or layers. Even if they find the soul, there's a 1 over infinity chance of landing in their slice according to you.
Actually, I thought that astradaemons had scry, it seems that they don't. You can use scry to get to people on slices (see above).
That's fine, though, whatever, they just hunt in the first slice. Makes perfect sense that they have "Deathwatch" in fact, because they would only have a short period of time to catch a soul in the default slice before pharasma picks it up from its meandering and whisks it off or whatever she does. So they need to be able to anticipate death, stalk you (in the material plane, since they do have plane shift), and as soon as you die, shift to astral default slice and gobble you in an instant.
This would also make Locate Creature useful--for locating a still-alive desired victim in the material (perhaps a rumor of somebody really sick) so as to stalk it and watch for the exact moment of death.
| Celanian |
You LITERALLY can't explain their universe without magic.
I just did. The fact that you offered a second alternative that also works does not make the first one wrong. There can be more than one way to resolve #3 situations (as above) that are all equally consistent with RAW / do not violate any type #1 or type #2 rules.
Quote:Why aren't all the elemental planes just one or more gigantic black holes? That's what you would get if you had infinite or near infinite mass spread relatively uniformly over a gigantic volume. I'd like a non-magical explanation.So would I. If you have one, be sure to let me know. Note that my rule was "Do not invoke magic unless you have to." If astral geometry can be explained without magic, but elemental black holes can only be explained with magic, then okay, choose "without" and "with", respectively.
Earlier I stated that the Pathfinder Universe literally can't be explained without magic and you said you "just did". Are you backtracking on that statement now?
Quote:According to you, find the path and similar divination spells won't work since even if you know where the encrypted layer is, there's a 1 over infinity chance of actually landing on it unless you know the encryption key. This was stated explicitly by you earlier in this thread. The demiplane is unnecessary since it could already be found with find the path. It's just that you were arguing in this very thread that no one can land on the exact slice it is located.Yes, Find the Path and similar spells, such as locate creature, that only give you a direction, don't work. Because those spells leave it UP TO YOU to walk there, which is fine in the material but you can't do it in this case due to your body being 3D. Or to figure out / guess / extrapolate the exact position to tell to a spell, and you can't do that precisely enough.
Other spells, like teleport, DON'T require you to figure it out yourself. As long as you've seen a place, even if you don't know its coordinates, it will take you there. So that works, because you don't need to specify anything, so precision doesn't stop you.
Critically, scry works in the same plane, but not across planes, though, so you can scry and hop to a person in a slice, potentially, but not to a person in a demiplane. Making a demiplane a better hiding place. Also, again, demiplanes let you build things instantly and change gravity the way you want, etc.
And you cannot scry on a demiplane, because scry only targets creatures....
The demiplane makes you WORSE off with your setup. It makes you vulnerable to Find the Path spells since it's a notable location. If you just took an encrypted slice, it wouldn't be notable since according to your house rule, there are infinite numbers of them and find the path wouldn't work. Just set up residence in a random encrypted slice and cast screen every day so you can't get scryed. Don't use more of the plane than can be covered by the screen spell.
Casting a demiplane is the dumbest thing you can do if you want to remain hidden.
First of all, I didn't say anything about "encrypted" layers ever, I don't know where you're getting that from. It's not any more "encrypted" than the exact distance of the can of coke on my desk is "encrypted" due to me not knowing it. It is simply "Not known exactly" that is all. There is no special code or secret brownie decoder ring.
According to your house rules, you need the EXACT INFINITE PRECISION coordinates to get to the slice. Even an AXIOMITE can't reach it. That's functually equivalent to unbreakable encryption. You need the decoder ring to find the slice with your houserules.
Okay? Pharasma always could have just used her divine power to thwart astradaemons, in any setting or cosmology, as long as she's a god and they aren't. They're just a badly designed creature in that sense. Or maybe the four horsemen or whoever is in charge of them has established mutual boundaries with pharasma, that would make sense. But I don't know, ask Paizo, this problem was not created by anything I wrote.
Pharasma is a deity but Golarion seems to have a divine compact where deities aren't allowed to directly attack lower level entities such as Astradaemons. Which is why routing them in an encrypted slice would make it so she wouldn't have to attack them directly. And if the Astradaemons can't find a soul, they aren't any sort of threat.
It's not a problem with the default pathfinder cosmology, just with your houserules.
I think it's the height of arrogance to claim that they are badly designed just because they cause problems with your house rules.
Actually, I thought that astradaemons had scry, it seems that they don't. You can use scry to get to people on slices (see above).
That's fine, though, whatever, they just hunt in the first slice. Makes perfect sense that they have "Deathwatch" in fact, because they would only have a short period of time to catch a soul in the default slice before pharasma picks it up from its meandering and whisks it off or whatever she does. So they need to be able to anticipate death, stalk you (in the material plane, since they do have plane shift), and as soon as you die, shift to astral default slice and gobble you in an instant.
This would also make Locate Creature useful--for locating a still-alive desired victim in the material (perhaps a rumor of somebody really sick) so as to stalk it and watch for the exact moment of death.
The Astradaemons don't have scry, so they don't know the exact location of where a dead soul appears. According to you, that would make the Astradaemons completely pointless.
The default cosmology doesn't have any such problems. The Astral plane is one gigantic plane so there's plenty of time for them to locate souls and hunt them down before they reach Pharasma.
Edit:
It just occurred to me that you cannot have a "default slice" that everyone gets shunted to if they don't specify exactly where they are going.
The whole point of your hypergeometry is that the astral is connected to all other planes but the other planes aren't necessarily connected to each other. If you pull a 4th spatial dimension as your rationale, then each plane's connection with the Astral would have its own "default slice". After all, if all planes could connect to the same "default slice", there would be no need for the 4th spatial dimension!
| Crimeo |
Obviously the ENTIRE pathfinder universe cannot be explained without SOME magic. You could have saved yourself a lot of effort if that's all you meant, because the mere existence of any one single spell in the game is sufficient to prove that. I thought you were saying I couldn't explain any of it.
I still already addressed your actual question. I will reiterate:
I don't know why you're willing to handwave the elemental planes with "because magic" but not the Astral unless you're just being ornery.
Because I hold non-magical explanations at a premium for story-telling, since they are actually, you know, explanations, not two word phrases. 2 explained things > 1 explained thing > 0 explained things. Simple as that. You show me elemental black holes, and you show me astral plane. So far, I can explain 1 out of 2! Great! Better than 0!
It makes you vulnerable to Find the Path spells since it's a notable location.
A demiplane is economically worth far less than a hunting lodge in Golarion, is more plentiful per capita than a hunting lodge in Golarion, can be made smaller than a hunting lodge in Golarion, and even if it were notable, wouldn't "vulnerable" to a spell that can't get you there anyway.
According to your house rules, you need the EXACT INFINITE PRECISION coordinates to get to the slice. Even an AXIOMITE can't reach it. That's functually equivalent to unbreakable encryption. You need the decoder ring to find the slice with your houserules.
"Functionally encrypted" =/= "encrypted". The term misleadingly implies there is some active algorithm or code, which implies intentional complexity or intelligent design that is not required in the explanation. I am just making clear that's not the case.
It's not a problem with the default pathfinder cosmology
Of course it is. Pharasma is an all powerful god. She can just instantly whisk every soul to the boneyard without it ever spending any time whatsoever in the astral at all, in any setting. 3D, 4D, who gives a s~@% if souls never spend any time there because she insta-teleports them?
Instead souls flow in some stupid river that makes no sense and get randomly gobbled up because (???) reasons / ...Pharasma is a jerk? Astradaemons are badly designed because they make no sense in anybody's rules.
The Astradaemons don't have scry, so they don't know the exact location of where a dead soul appears. According to you, that would make the Astradaemons completely pointless.
You're not even reading my quotes, I just explained them. They can know where the soul is by stalking a dying person (deathwatch, locate person) on the MATERIAL plane, and then shifting just as they die to intercept and gobble the soul in the default arrival slice, before pharasma guides them.
...That is of course, assuming Pharasma is for some reason a douchebag who doesn't intervene in time in any cosmology. If you don't like that explanation, then get rid of astradaemons instead under any rules.
| Crimeo |
To your edit:
each plane's connection with the Astral would have its own "default slice". After all, if all planes could connect to the same "default slice", there would be no need for the 4th spatial dimension!
Yes, each plane would have it's own default slice. There is nothing "special" about these slices except that they are merely the ones that are directly touching each plane and thus physically closest to any shifting critters. Actually up to 2 planes can share any one default slice.
But the important thing is that geometrically, not ALL of them can be the same one. If the astral were 3D (i.e. if it were "one slice"), it could touch two yes but **only** ever fully touch 2 others. But we know it touches more than that, so it has to break out of the mold along another dimension.
(There is actually one other possibility that is way more complicated involving a hypertorus-y thing that would potentially allow EVERY plane to touch EVERY plane, but this causes far more problems by calling into question a slew of other RAW implications / vaguely even violating them. For one it makes the astral totally redundant, since every other plane could serve the same job you don't need an intermediary plane at all if you are already touching every destination. It also invalidates there being any meaning to "inner" or "outer" planes or "between-ness". It probably violates the inner plane cosmology since shadow would HAVE to also be touching material. Etc.)
| Celanian |
Obviously the ENTIRE pathfinder universe cannot be explained without SOME magic. You could have saved yourself a lot of effort if that's all you meant, because the mere existence of any one single spell in the game is sufficient to prove that. I thought you were saying I couldn't explain any of it.
In your reply to me earlier in this thread, you explicitly stated that you just explained the Pathfinder Universe without magic. I posted the direct quotes.
I still already addressed your actual question. I will reiterate:
Quote:I don't know why you're willing to handwave the elemental planes with "because magic" but not the Astral unless you're just being ornery.Because I hold non-magical explanations at a premium for story-telling, since they are actually, you know, explanations, not two word phrases. 2 explained things > 1 explained thing > 0 explained things. Simple as that. You show me elemental black holes, and you show me astral plane. So far, I can explain 1 out of 2! Great! Better than 0!
You can just state that the Pathfinder Universe is just some deity's vast dream. That way you can explain ALL aspects of the universe except for the deity. Now you can explain ALL-1! Better than 1 out of ALL!
Quote:It makes you vulnerable to Find the Path spells since it's a notable location.A demiplane is economically worth far less than a hunting lodge in Golarion, is more plentiful per capita than a hunting lodge in Golarion, can be made smaller than a hunting lodge in Golarion, and even if it were notable, wouldn't "vulnerable" to a spell that can't get you there anyway.
Permanent 9th level spell effects are FAR more notable than random natural terrain. Knowing that the demiplane exists is half the battle. Now you can do things like Commune/Contact Other Plane/Legend Lore or have an optimized Bard/Wizard make a DC100+ Knowledge Planes roll to find it. If you didn't know about it to begin with, it's hard to ask/investigate it. The only thing a demiplane does is put a target on you.
Quote:According to your house rules, you need the EXACT INFINITE PRECISION coordinates to get to the slice. Even an AXIOMITE can't reach it. That's functually equivalent to unbreakable encryption. You need the decoder ring to find the slice with your houserules."Functionally encrypted" =/= "encrypted". The term misleadingly implies there is some active algorithm or code, which implies intentional complexity or intelligent design that is not required in the explanation. I am just making clear that's not the case.
Encryption is putting out a vast key or password, designed to be hard to duplicate that is needed to open/decode the file/message. The infinite precision coordinates that you need under your house rule qualifies. It doesn't matter if the key/password is generated with an algorithm or picked randomly or picked manually, it is still encryption.
Quote:It's not a problem with the default pathfinder cosmologyOf course it is. Pharasma is an all powerful god. She can just instantly whisk every soul to the boneyard without it ever spending any time whatsoever in the astral at all, in...
None of the gods are all powerful. She is one of the most powerful, but non omnipotent. I don't know where you're getting all powerful from.
You're not even reading my quotes, I just explained them. They can know where the soul is by stalking a dying person (deathwatch, locate person) on the MATERIAL plane, and then shifting just as they die to intercept and gobble the soul in the default arrival slice, before pharasma guides them....That is of course, assuming Pharasma is for some reason a douchebag who doesn't intervene in time in any cosmology. If you don't like that explanation, then get rid of astradaemons instead under any rules.
Since Astradaemons don't have invisibility, they would have to be completely visible on the material plane. There would have to be millions of Astradaemon sightings every day on Golarion. None of which is in Canon. Also, it is explicitly stated that these souls have defenders who protect against the Astradaemons and get into pitched battles with them on the Astral plane. These defenders would also have to be within 30' using deathwatch in full view of the Astradaemons and anyone else in that area and then plane shift at the same moment as the Astradaemons. And the defenders plus Astradaemons would have to agree to fight on the Astral instead of each side attacking on the material.
When certain assumptions lead to ludicrous results, perhaps the assumptions need to be rethought.
Yes, each plane would have it's own default slice. There is nothing "special" about these slices except that they are merely the ones that are directly touching each plane and thus physically closest to any shifting critters. Actually up to 2 planes can share any one default slice.
But the important thing is that geometrically, not ALL of them can be the same one. If the astral were 3D (i.e. if it were "one slice"), it could touch two yes but **only** ever fully touch 2 others. But we know it touches more than that, so it has to break out of the mold along another dimension.
If there are multiple "default slices", one per plane, it would sorta defeat your entire idea. Axis/Material/Maelstrom/Elemental/Abaddon/etc wouldn't interact with each other. You couldn't have 99% of all inhabitants in the same default slice.
Incidentally, you can only have 1 plane with the same slice. Take 2 parallel lines on a plane. They each occupy different spaces on the plane. The only way they can share the same space is if they are the same line.
LazarX
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What is a non-magical explanation of how the Gods and various monsters get their powers? What is a non-magical explanation for why the astral, ethereal, elemental, and outer planes exist in the first place?
There isn't any, there doesn't need to be any. I'm glad that you can show your physics knowledge but if you're looking for a scientific simulationist roleplaying game, you're barking up the wrong tree.
This is a game where the world can be a flat disk supported by 4 giant elephants, all riding the back of a colossal turtle. Any resemblance to physical real worlds is purely by coincidence or artistic choice, not by mandate.
| Bob Bob Bob |
To be fair, they're not the one forcing math or physics into it. Crimeo is trying to force "but there have to be higher dimensions you can't cross into/interact with in the Astral plane" to prevent Find the Path demiplane destroying, and using physics to "prove" it. The person you're quoting has said:Celanian wrote:What is a non-magical explanation of how the Gods and various monsters get their powers? What is a non-magical explanation for why the astral, ethereal, elemental, and outer planes exist in the first place?There isn't any, there doesn't need to be any. I'm glad that you can show your physics knowledge but if you're looking for a scientific simulationist roleplaying game, you're barking up the wrong tree.
This is a game where the world can be a flat disk supported by 4 giant elephants, all riding the back of a colossal turtle. Any resemblance to physical real worlds is purely by coincidence or artistic choice, not by mandate.
You can absolutely have a playable game with "because magic". "Because magic" explains why the multiverse is the way it is, not how the rules interact with player actions.
Treating the Astral as just another plane for purposes of movement is completely predictable and easier to resolve than grafting on a 4th spatial dimension that's sure to have WAY more GM adjudication anyway.
And that's because, after a lot of bored research, apparently you totally can hunt down notable enough demiplanes on the Astral plane with Find the Path.
| Crimeo |
You can just state that the Pathfinder Universe is just some deity's vast dream. That way you can explain ALL aspects of the universe except for the deity. Now you can explain ALL-1! Better than 1 out of ALL!
It doesn't matter if it's a dream. To play a game in a dream, we would still ideally want to have descriptions of as many ordered, consistent rules within that dream as possible for most consistent and strategic, etc. gameplay.
Encryption is putting out a vast key or password, designed to be...
Emphasis mine. There is no reason to have to commit to it being designed for this or any purpose, so I do not commit to that and it does not qualify. It is entirely possible that it is just a side effect of a plane that connects everything, later exploited by mortals for means it was not designed for.
None of the gods are all powerful. She is one of the most powerful, but non omnipotent. I don't know where you're getting all powerful from.
More powerful than astradaemons is all that matters. JJ has also recently said she is the most powerful deity, so whoever is in charge of the astradaemons is also less powerful than her.
When certain assumptions lead to ludicrous results, perhaps the assumptions need to be rethought.
If you prefer, the souls simply hang out on default astral slice in some cases for quite some time, before pharasma gets around to guiding/aiding them. Where the daemons can find them / defenders can find them. Or if you don't like souls "hanging around" then you should have the same problems with this in YOUR conception as well, so just edit out astradaemons for being poorly conceived in the first place. Either way.
If there are multiple "default slices", one per plane, it would sorta defeat your entire idea.
There's only one per plane. I said there could be up to two planes per default slice. Not 2 default slices per plane. The statement is not automatically reversible.
More than one touching slice per plane is possible but only with a 5th or higher dimensional astral plane geometrically, which we have no reason to invoke: it's not any less magical, and yet it's more complicated.
Take 2 parallel lines on a plane. They each occupy different spaces on the plane. The only way they can share the same space is if they are the same line.
No they can be on opposite sides of the plane from one another, thus both touching the same line. Though this would be weird, it is possible in the model. I would generally probably say it doesn't happen for simplicity in an actual campaign.
Planes simply touch, they never actually share the same space. The planes are all "sitting" directly "on top of" (or weirdly, below) the astral, not sharing its exact space. Thus there is room for 2 if astral is 4D (above and below) but no additional room to cram in any more.
This is a game where the world can be a flat disk supported by 4 giant elephants, all riding the back of a colossal turtle. Any resemblance to physical real worlds is purely by coincidence or artistic choice, not by mandate.
It is both at once. The rules mandate filling in the blanks that they left behind somehow. One then has different (artistic) choices for how to do this: you can say "just magic" and handwave, or you can describe a geometric/physical means if you can. I choose the latter because I think it makes for a better game setting, while being no less consistent with RAW than the magical handwaving choice is.
| Bob Bob Bob |
Planes simply touch, they never actually share the same space. The planes are all "sitting" directly "on top of" (or weirdly, below) the astral, not sharing its exact space. Thus there is room for 2 if astral is 4D (above and below) but no additional room to cram in any more.
If a link between two planes can be created at any point, the two planes are coexistent. These planes overlap each other completely. A coexistent plane can be reached from anywhere on the plane it overlaps. When moving on a coexistent plane, it is often possible to see into or interact with the plane with which it coexists.
So no, the Material, Ethereal, and Shadow planes (all coexistent with each other) share the same space.
| Crimeo |
"Overlap" does not mean "the same space" it means covering/touching/on top of, etc.
o·ver·lap
verb
verb: overlap; 3rd person present: overlaps; past tense: overlapped; past participle: overlapped; gerund or present participle: overlapping
ˌōvərˈlap/
1.
extend over so as to cover partially
For example, vertebrae in the spine overlap. Or the layers of an onion overlap, the petals of a flower overlap. Papers on a desk overlap. These things do not take up the same volume in space. When paizo writes "overlap completely" they mean as in "not partially, but entirely touching/covering one another" (see dictionary definition which only requires partial by default).
And then "coexist" is a technical Paizo term since they define it specifically in your quote as planes where "a link can be created at any point between the two."
My model meets both criteria: the astral plane indeed overlaps and Paizo-coexists with every other plane, and the S,M,and E planes also meet the requisite relationships.
| Bob Bob Bob |
"Overlap" does not mean "the same space" it means covering/touching/on top of, etc.
Quote:o·ver·lap
verb
verb: overlap; 3rd person present: overlaps; past tense: overlapped; past participle: overlapped; gerund or present participle: overlapping
ˌōvərˈlap/
1.
extend over so as to cover partially
For example, vertebrae in the spine overlap. Or the layers of an onion overlap, the petals of a flower overlap. Papers on a desk overlap. These things do not take up the same volume in space. When paizo writes "overlap completely" they mean as in "not partially, but entirely touching/covering one another" (see dictionary definition which only requires partial by default).
And then "coexist" is a technical Paizo term since they define it specifically in your quote as planes where "a link can be created at any point between the two."
My model meets both criteria: the astral plane indeed overlaps and Paizo-coexists with every other plane, and the S,M,and E planes also meet the requisite relationships.
Coexistent planes overlap each other completely. If A overlaps B and B overlaps A, the only possible solution is A is the same size as B. And in order for them to overlap each other I think you're forced into some kind of Klein Bottle situation since every point on the Material has to be covered (your definition) by a point on the Ethereal and Shadow and also itself cover a point on the Ethereal and Shadow. Please, do explain how this is actually covered by your model, because I'm not seeing it unless you give the Material plane the same dimensions as the Astral plane. Or they all occupy the same space, but you explicitly said they don't.
| Crimeo |
Yes exactly, M,E,S are the same size. When it says the planes overlap completely, it simply means that the ethereal is not bigger than the material, or vice versa, etc. There are no little bits "sticking out" from the lineup such that there wouldn't be any corresponding bits to travel to on the other plane(s).
I'm not seeing it unless you give the Material plane the same dimensions as the Astral plane.
Easy, the astral plane and material plane are not described as coexistent with one another, so they don't have to overlap completely or be the same size... only M,E,S planes are described with that language. And those ARE all the same size and perfectly lined up in my model, with the larger astral blanketing them all.