Chain Binding Nightmare

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Oct 21, 2012 2:02 am

Just for reference, here's what I'm looking at:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/astralProjection.htm wrote:Astral Projection
Necromancy
Level: Clr 9, Sor/Wiz 9, Travel 9
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 30 minutes
Range: Touch
Targets: You plus one additional willing creature touched per two caster levels
Duration: See text
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
By freeing your spirit from your physical body, this spell allows you to project an astral body onto another plane altogether.

You can bring the astral forms of other willing creatures with you, provided that these subjects are linked in a circle with you at the time of the casting. These fellow travelers are dependent upon you and must accompany you at all times. If something happens to you during the journey, your companions are stranded wherever you left them.

You project your astral self onto the Astral Plane, leaving your physical body behind on the Material Plane in a state of suspended animation. The spell projects an astral copy of you and all you wear or carry onto the Astral Plane. Since the Astral Plane touches upon other planes, you can travel astrally to any of these other planes as you will. To enter one, you leave the Astral Plane, forming a new physical body (and equipment) on the plane of existence you have chosen to enter.

While you are on the Astral Plane, your astral body is connected at all times to your physical body by a silvery cord. If the cord is broken, you are killed, astrally and physically. Luckily, very few things can destroy a silver cord. When a second body is formed on a different plane, the incorporeal silvery cord remains invisibly attached to the new body. If the second body or the astral form is slain, the cord simply returns to your body where it rests on the Material Plane, thereby reviving it from its state of suspended animation. Although astral projections are able to function on the Astral Plane, their actions affect only creatures existing on the Astral Plane; a physical body must be materialized on other planes.

You and your companions may travel through the Astral Plane indefinitely. Your bodies simply wait behind in a state of suspended animation until you choose to return your spirits to them. The spell lasts until you desire to end it, or until it is terminated by some outside means, such as dispel magic cast upon either the physical body or the astral form, the breaking of the silver cord, or the destruction of your body back on the Material Plane (which kills you).

Material Component
A jacinth worth at least 1,000 gp, plus a silver bar worth 5 gp for each person to be affected.

This is from 3.5e, rather than the 3e Manual of the Planes, and should be fully usable without reference to that non-Core book.

The salient points seem to be that you create an 'astral body' (whatever that means), and then create a new physical body (along with new equipment) when you leave the astral plane.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sun Oct 21, 2012 2:07 am

So that can get you ONE copy of your equipment if you Astral Project, go back to the Material Plane, walk to your comatose body, and grab the equipment on your original body to go with the equipment on your new body.

What next?

If you cast Astral Projection again, the first copies of your equipment would presumably disappear, leaving you with still exactly two sets of your equipment.

I also wonder if taking the equipment away from your original body would make the astral copies of it disappear, in the sense that when you remove an object from the vicinity of a mirror its reflection disappears too. So even if you hike back to your original body on the material plane and grab the equipment on it, you'll only have the original equipment because the astral copy disappears.

Certainly an interesting effect, but it doesn't seem susceptible to any infinite loops. Or even any finite loop for n > 2.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Oct 21, 2012 2:32 am

The point is that absent the MoP language, you can buy a single scroll of Gate, Astral Project, and then use the scroll of Gate, and the one attached to your original will still be there when you come back, to cast Astral Projection and use the copied scroll of Gate again.

I mean, I guess you could, during the duration of the spell, arguably have two +6 Int items... but since they don't stack, that seems pretty useless, generally, since you carry around all your loot, and then when someone casts dispel magic, all your cool loot falls at it's feat and you wake up naked.

K · Post by K » Sun Oct 21, 2012 2:52 am

John Magnum wrote:
I also wonder if taking the equipment away from your original body would make the astral copies of it disappear, in the sense that when you remove an object from the vicinity of a mirror its reflection disappears too

According to Manual of the Planes, this is exactly what happens.