For months before the release of Starfinder 2e I been thinking on how to do some Treasure Planet-esque adventures within the Lost Omen setting. For this reason I been reading on some Spelljammer lore to get inspiration and, while doing this, I noticed something I thought its interesting; How does the Astral Plane work on Pathfinder? For reference, navigation in the Astral Plane in D&D / Spelljammer works by concentrating your thoughts on a location to plot a course. I didn't remember such feature existing in Pathfinder's version of the Astral Plane so I dusted off some old books and went to the wiki to read a bit more and...I didn't found such a thing existing here (though knowing me I probably missed something that was on plain sight).
The only similar thing I found is that souls seem to innately know how to enter and traverse the River of Souls to reach Pharasma's Boneyard, though this could also be perfectly explained by saying the soul is immediately transported to the River of Souls upon death and that the properties of the River of Souls itself leads souls to the Boneyard (its a river after all, so a metaphysical current that leads souls isn't that farfetched). I don't know if this is a case of old PF not wanting to retread upon D&D lore because back then the assumption mostly was that "if it has the same name as a D&D thing then it works pretty much the same" or that when PF grew into its own beast it was kinda left to the side because the chance to go a bit more in-depth about the Astral Plane hasn't appeared yet (a thematic book, AP, or similars).
Mind navigation (for lack of a better term) just isn't a thing in Pathfinder? It seems the answer is "no" because there isn't a single mention of that in either PF and SF edition it seems, but at the same time the Astral Plane feels a bit underexplored in the Paizoverse so the answer could potentially be "yes" too.
I know I'm probably the only one thinking about this, but would you go for a "yes" or "no" in regards to this topic?
Personally I'm more of an Ethereal Plane fan, but I'm always interested in transitive planes.
It seems the Ethereal Plane has a similar thing going on too (at least in D&D). Does this mean it could be something innate of the transitive planes? Both the Astral and Ethereal planes share the Subjective Gravity trait so I guess some of that concept exists in Pathfinder too.
I would generally avoid an "it exists in D&D so it's probably in Pathfinder" mindset.
That said, if you want to add something to your own game then that's your business.
That's not what I'm saying.
I said that in the context that it probably used to be the case in early Pathfinder when D&D still was the core for both the setting and the rules. Here I'm asking for a canonical or semi-canonical answer to know if some aspects from the Astral (and Ethereal) plane that weren't contradicted in PF but weren't mentioned to exist in this version of those realms can be assumed to exist in PF or not. As I said in the earlier comment, the Subjective Gravity trait can be used as proof to show they could.
I'm not entirely certain what your question is however?
Are you saying, movement in the astral plane should occur and be driven by different game mechanics than in the Known Universe?
Like are you saying Astral travel distances shouldn't be your walk speed but instead your (INT mod + 5) x 5' instead? If movement is by mind, then what happens to a mindless arrow, does it not fly from the bow to the target because it doesn't have a will?
I would suppose that you could invent a new 'trait' which could be shared by Planes and it could modify certain rules elements, such as movement speeds, and you could choose to apply it to Astral or Ethereal planes if you wanted to. However I don't think by default they have actually implied that the universes are different like that.
Granted, the Astral Projection ritual talks about if the primary caster leaves the others behind they don't have the ability to 'navigate' in the astral plane. But it also makes it clear that the travelers aren't entirely in the plane, but only partially there, and they can't use it to travel to other attached planes. So the limitations of the primary caster being the means they can 'navigate' isn't an aspect of the Plane, but instead an aspect of the ritual/mode of travel they are using.
I think for example the subjective Gravity trait is there to make these alternate planes seem Alien and different. Having other rulesets to change a variety of other things might certainly strengthen that flavor, but I don't know it is expected. However if it is in line with what your players want, I would say go for it.
Just try to keep in mind you don't want anything that will allow the players to just steamroll encounters if you allow it, allow a character's concept to become untenable in the environment unless the player in question is on board for the challenge being presented to them.
I would suppose that you could invent a new 'trait' which could be shared by Planes and it could modify certain rules elements, such as movement speeds, and you could choose to apply it to Astral or Ethereal planes if you wanted to. However I don't think by default they have actually implied that the universes are different like that.
That trait exists already. Its the Subjective Gravity trait.
However, I'm not asking for mechanics here. I'm asking if, lore-wise, someone on the transitive planes can think "I want to go to the nearest location" (like the House of the Itinerant Soul in the Ethereal Plane. I also assume there must be locations somewhere in the Astral Plane as well) and their bodies would move automatically there by virtue of them thinking hard enough. Even though there's no mention of such a thing being possible within either Pathfinder or Starfinder (AFAIK), the fact that the Subjective Gravity trait exists implies that mental movement is a thing in these planes within the setting too, hence why I would want to know if theoretically this could allow someone to plot a course over longer distances within these planes (mostly to circumvent the use of tech or the Drift since this is meant for Pathfinder).