The problem is: there comes a point when "making things simple" backfires.
Maybe, but "making things simple" was literally 5e's market pitch and why it is what it is today.
Attempting to make creature/personal-scale combat rules apply to vehicular combat rules for the sake of "simplicity" is also why 5e's vehicular combat (Spelljammer included) is such a train-wreck.
I actually like the system the infernal war machines have in Descent into Avernus. They're compact and personal enough of vehicles that they can vaguely resemble creatures in combat, and the stations each person in the war machines occupies during combat is much easier to get a handle on. Ships are a different story, because they're massive and have many more moving parts.
The problem is: there comes a point when "making things simple" backfires.
Maybe, but "making things simple" was literally 5e's market pitch and why it is what it is today.
Attempting to make creature/personal-scale combat rules apply to vehicular combat rules for the sake of "simplicity" is also why 5e's vehicular combat (Spelljammer included) is such a train-wreck.
I actually like the system the infernal war machines have in Descent into Avernus. They're compact and personal enough of vehicles that they can vaguely resemble creatures in combat, and the stations each person in the war machines occupies during combat is much easier to get a handle on. Ships are a different story, because they're massive and have many more moving parts.
Yeah; the Avernus ones are "better" but not great. One of the main problems with treating vehicles (the larger the worste this problem gets) as "creatures" using 5E's default rules is that vehicles have inertia; which these movement rules utterly lack. It makes them behave incredibly strangely and counter-intuitively. Pair with that the "damage threshold" rules being in an entirely different location from the rest of the rules, but using the same terminology (Armour class, HP etc) and you have a recipe for confusion. It's the worst of both worlds: you have a system with no depth or complexity to it, that is also a massive pain to actually put together; all that work to figure it out gives little payoff as itw ere.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
This is true; another issue with the small ships that I pointed out earlier on is taht they are entirely too small for purpose. The Damselfly ship is the worst for this: since it apparently has NINE people living out of less than 3 squares on the deck plan. The mid-size and larger ships get better for this; but still odd; like the fact that the space galleon should probably have a much larger crew than it does. It almost feels like the people designing the stat blocks, the people doing teh deck plans, and the people coming up with lore A) didn't talk to one another and B) didn't bother to think about the reasonable needs of crewing/living on these things.
I mean, the damselfly ship is described as "swift but cramped," and it says that "The ship’s cargo hold can easily be turned into crew cabins." It sounds to me like they talked to one another, at least.
The problem is: there comes a point when "making things simple" backfires.
Maybe, but "making things simple" was literally 5e's market pitch and why it is what it is today.
Attempting to make creature/personal-scale combat rules apply to vehicular combat rules for the sake of "simplicity" is also why 5e's vehicular combat (Spelljammer included) is such a train-wreck.
I actually like the system the infernal war machines have in Descent into Avernus. They're compact and personal enough of vehicles that they can vaguely resemble creatures in combat, and the stations each person in the war machines occupies during combat is much easier to get a handle on. Ships are a different story, because they're massive and have many more moving parts.
Yeah; the Avernus ones are "better" but not great. One of the main problems with treating vehicles (the larger the worste this problem gets) as "creatures" using 5E's default rules is that vehicles have inertia; which these movement rules utterly lack. It makes them behave incredibly strangely and counter-intuitively. Pair with that the "damage threshold" rules being in an entirely different location from the rest of the rules, but using the same terminology (Armour class, HP etc) and you have a recipe for confusion. It's the worst of both worlds: you have a system with no depth or complexity to it, that is also a massive pain to actually put together; all that work to figure it out gives little payoff as itw ere.
I mean if we're talking about ship physics, the speeds these ships have on their "stat blocks" are pretty weird too. The book says that they can cruise across 100 million miles in 24 hours. In terms of speed per round, if my math isn't off, that's approximately 36.7 million feet per round.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
This is true; another issue with the small ships that I pointed out earlier on is taht they are entirely too small for purpose. The Damselfly ship is the worst for this: since it apparently has NINE people living out of less than 3 squares on the deck plan. The mid-size and larger ships get better for this; but still odd; like the fact that the space galleon should probably have a much larger crew than it does. It almost feels like the people designing the stat blocks, the people doing teh deck plans, and the people coming up with lore A) didn't talk to one another and B) didn't bother to think about the reasonable needs of crewing/living on these things.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
This is true; another issue with the small ships that I pointed out earlier on is taht they are entirely too small for purpose. The Damselfly ship is the worst for this: since it apparently has NINE people living out of less than 3 squares on the deck plan. The mid-size and larger ships get better for this; but still odd; like the fact that the space galleon should probably have a much larger crew than it does. It almost feels like the people designing the stat blocks, the people doing teh deck plans, and the people coming up with lore A) didn't talk to one another and B) didn't bother to think about the reasonable needs of crewing/living on these things.
I think the intent here is that it's assumed that the entire nine person crew won't be occupying the crew 'quarters' at the same time as they would be crewing the ship in shifts barring emergency situations that call for all hands on deck. Since we're given no details on the interior furnishings of the 5 foot x 15 foot room, I'd image that it's got two hammocks, one slung above the other, occupying each five foot square for a total of 6 sleep spots and some minimal storage facilities for personal effects along with them. Much like old sailing ships, these are not designed for the comfort of the crew but for efficiency of space and operation.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
This is true; another issue with the small ships that I pointed out earlier on is taht they are entirely too small for purpose. The Damselfly ship is the worst for this: since it apparently has NINE people living out of less than 3 squares on the deck plan. The mid-size and larger ships get better for this; but still odd; like the fact that the space galleon should probably have a much larger crew than it does. It almost feels like the people designing the stat blocks, the people doing teh deck plans, and the people coming up with lore A) didn't talk to one another and B) didn't bother to think about the reasonable needs of crewing/living on these things.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
This is true; another issue with the small ships that I pointed out earlier on is taht they are entirely too small for purpose. The Damselfly ship is the worst for this: since it apparently has NINE people living out of less than 3 squares on the deck plan. The mid-size and larger ships get better for this; but still odd; like the fact that the space galleon should probably have a much larger crew than it does. It almost feels like the people designing the stat blocks, the people doing teh deck plans, and the people coming up with lore A) didn't talk to one another and B) didn't bother to think about the reasonable needs of crewing/living on these things.
I think the intent here is that it's assumed that the entire nine person crew won't be occupying the crew 'quarters' at the same time as they would be crewing the ship in shifts barring emergency situations that call for all hands on deck. Since we're given no details on the interior furnishings of the 5 foot x 15 foot room, I'd image that it's got two hammocks, one slung above the other, occupying each five foot square for a total of 6 sleep spots and some minimal storage facilities for personal effects along with them. Much like old sailing ships, these are not designed for the comfort of the crew but for efficiency of space and operation.
Even so; nine people in that tiny space is cramepd by the standards of U-boats, much less something intended to have people live in it IN SPACE.
The irony of course, is that when they get into proximity to "an object" they go to regular speed which seems absurdly slow (40 feet on average).
The only possible thing I can think of from a physics standpoint as to why that is might be special relativity. The 36.7 million feet per round speed I mentioned is approx. 32 times the speed of light. The time dilation from a stationary observer would be absolutely insane.
In fact, given that the time dilation formula applied to faster than light travel starts getting into the complex plane of numbers, these speeds should really start involving time travel or shifting to another plane of existence or something funky like that.
The irony of course, is that when they get into proximity to "an object" they go to regular speed which seems absurdly slow (40 feet on average).
The only possible thing I can think of from a physics standpoint as to why that is might be special relativity. The 36.7 million feet per round speed I mentioned is approx. 32 times the speed of light. The time dilation from a stationary observer would be absolutely insane.
In fact, given that the time dilation formula applied to faster than light travel starts getting into the complex plane of numbers, these speeds should really start involving time travel or shifting to another plane of existence or something funky like that.
Gravity very clearly does not operate the same way in Spelljammer as it does in reality. Therefore, special and general relativity are unlikely to hold.
The irony of course, is that when they get into proximity to "an object" they go to regular speed which seems absurdly slow (40 feet on average).
The only possible thing I can think of from a physics standpoint as to why that is might be special relativity. The 36.7 million feet per round speed I mentioned is approx. 32 times the speed of light. The time dilation from a stationary observer would be absolutely insane.
In fact, given that the time dilation formula applied to faster than light travel starts getting into the complex plane of numbers, these speeds should really start involving time travel or shifting to another plane of existence or something funky like that.
Gravity very clearly does not operate the same way in Spelljammer as it does in reality. Therefore, special and general relativity are unlikely to hold.
My point ultimately is that you can't cleanly apply real-world physics to stuff in D&D, and vehicles are no exception.
Obviously if you're homebrewing the setting or running a campaign set on Earth and its cosmology (which canonically exists in the Forgotten Realms multiverse by the way), then you can set up the physics of the game universe in that way.
Up until now, 5e had been, IMHO; the most CONSISTENT edition. Nearly every book was a B- to B+, well worth the $50. We has the occasional A+ (Curse of Strahd) and C- (Sword Coast AG), and several too good to be true values (Lost Mine and Icespire starters).
Quite frankly, I feel like I got 6 races for my money. That's it. Boo's Menegerie was excellent. The adventure was goofy but nothing outstanding.
The Astral Adventurers Guide..... oh boy.
Races- good.
New Spells/Magic Items- meh, most of these exist solely to allow to continue adventuring in the environment.
The spell jamming "rules" and ships. - ad hoc, tacked on, and inconsistent with previous rules. Infernal war machine type rules so the ships actually feel USEFUL would have been great, even an over complicated system like Saltmarsh would have been ok.
No gazetteer of Realmspace or ANY space for that matter. You have non existent rules for non existent places to go.
annnnd once again wotc proves to be lazy and doesn't care about what it's player base wants & needs so glad I'm playing other rpgs now.
There is a reason 2 of the 3 5e campaigns I am currently running are based on 3rd party or Kickstarter campaign material. My players and I had been wanting to do spelljammer for a while and that was why I pre-ordered it while it was on a discount... won't make that mistake again... I'll stick to people I trust to make setting material... And I no longer trust WotC.
Only time will tell if they ever manage to earn backy trust....
Up until now, 5e had been, IMHO; the most CONSISTENT edition. Nearly every book was a B- to B+, well worth the $50. We has the occasional A+ (Curse of Strahd) and C- (Sword Coast AG), and several too good to be true values (Lost Mine and Icespire starters).
Quite frankly, I feel like I got 6 races for my money. That's it. Boo's Menegerie was excellent. The adventure was goofy but nothing outstanding.
The Astral Adventurers Guide..... oh boy.
Races- good.
New Spells/Magic Items- meh, most of these exist solely to allow to continue adventuring in the environment.
The spell jamming "rules" and ships. - ad hoc, tacked on, and inconsistent with previous rules. Infernal war machine type rules so the ships actually feel USEFUL would have been great, even an over complicated system like Saltmarsh would have been ok.
No gazetteer of Realmspace or ANY space for that matter. You have non existent rules for non existent places to go.
SCAG is great for what it is, an introductory guide to the forgotten realms and offered up a fair bit of class options at a fairly discounted price.
Is it as good as other later supplements? Not really, but it's a testament to it's quality that almost everything inside of it got pirated for future supplements and it was their first supplement.
And honestly, with everything that I know about both of them there If I had to choose between these two I'd still take SCAG over Spelljammer any day of the week; It doesn't have a module or a beastiary, but what it does have is enough information to inspire dozens, possibly hundreds of adventures due to a clear effort to create a setting as opposed to a half assed supplement that confuses the hell out of people with it's shoddy explanation of it's mechanics.
Like FFS, I still have no idea why they ditched the phlogistron.
Like FFS, I still have no idea why they ditched the phlogistron.
Maybe they thought the Astral Sea was simpler to wrap one's head around and incorporate as the void between the systems, since the Astral Plane was already established as a thing in 5e, and it would (at least in their mind) provide a more convenient way to tie factions in the Astral Plane like the githyanki to Material Plane space.
Also I imagine if this product wasn't rushed out the door, they might have actually provided a more concrete explanation for why the Astral Sea can be accessed from the Material Plane this way. If it was something like the Warp in Warhammer 40K, where ships entered it to cut down travel time significantly, I'd get it. Maybe they could have gone into the metaphysics involved, like the edges of the system don't actually exist; maybe the system is actually infinite in all directions, but the spelljammer helm has a special property that allows you to breach the veils of reality that lie out in the far corners of the system, which in turn allows you to enter the Astral Sea.
The spell dream of the blue veil also foreshadowed this, because it allows you to effectively dream your way to another world, which is not too dissimilar from astral projection.
And honestly, with everything that I know about both of them there If I had to choose between these two I'd still take SCAG over Spelljammer any day of the week; It doesn't have a module or a beastiary, but what it does have is enough information to inspire dozens, possibly hundreds of adventures due to a clear effort to create a setting as opposed to a half assed supplement that confuses the hell out of people with it's shoddy explanation of it's mechanics.
Like FFS, I still have no idea why they ditched the phlogistron.
Well I agree that Spelljammeras released is "half-assed" and they needed a lot more, to include space maps, and how to create your own spelljammeradventure material, and they should have done something with the ship battles, hells take the rules from BALDUR'S GATE: DESCENT INTO AVERNUSand repost them or something. Because what they gave was seriously lacking. And I would suggest for everyone to go to drive-in RPG and buy all the AD&Dspelljammerbooks to get the needed rules. Or use One of the many D20 Space setting games like TravellerD20. But we got what we got, if they had a rules supplement that gave these things as just tables and numbers that would fix 99% of what was wrong with Spelljammer.
As for Phlogiston honestly that was dumb, as a player who played Spelljammer in the 90s, I felt it was dumb, it was dumb then, and I am glad they removed it. What I'm not so happy they removed was the Crystal Spheres. Those had a purpose to contain settings and make it hard to intrude upon some settings. Also it was a way to limit some of the bigger bad guys in Spelljammer. Ironically in real physics we actually have something akin to them around our solar system The heliosphere. I always found the irony that the heliosphere basically is the real Chrystal Sphere. But deep space is just space, so the phlogiston wasn't needed, and OMG the insides of Crystal Spheres having impossibly huge (larger than solar system sized) demi-god like beings that walked around looking like constellations on the inside of the Crystal Sphere, and having planet sized braziers of fire as well. Glad those are gone.
Had to look them up: Constellate - Constellation Monsters. Yes back in the day star constellations were a type of monster.
Heres the thing: I'm not arguing the Phlogistron was great so much as I am that it was better then the astral sea since the latter runs up against very real issues regarding the nature of the cosmology since it would imply that the prime material plane is more like a fractured collection of demi-planes rather then a coherent universe, to say nothing of how the astral plane has it's own sets of rules and effects.
Really though and this is the main issue with Spelljammer: it is a completely pointless setting in 5e. Like, there is effectively nothing out in wildspace or the astral sea except for horrific monsters that want to kill you and/or steal your shit. If you feel the need to get to another planet then you are better off simply utilizing a portal or possibly plane hopping then you are ever going anywhere near a spelljammer. Which is frankly amazing from a narrative standpoint because spelljammer should be this fantastical, romantic adventure that blends elements of steampunk sci-fi with high seas adventures with players engaging in various feats of daring do!
There's not enough of anything in these books. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got them.
The major problem here is that I pretty much solely play homebrew, which lets be real here, is 90% of what D&D is about. Adventure modules are great, but what should be the focus is giving players and DMs tools to create with. I was expecting a slew of D100 tables, more subclasses, and way more spells. I'm going to end up having to use Critical Role's graviturgy as a stand in for any 'space magic' we missed out on.
Here's hoping we get another (cheap) supplement because quite frankly this was barebones at best and it's going to take me a lot more work than I hoped to turn this setting into a viable homebrew campaign. Or at least to make it a campaign that isn't just the same stuff as usual but 'in space'.
Hoping to see the community get some good D100 tables out in the near future and I also *really* would like to see someone make some dragonborn subraces for this book. We just got Fizban's, how hard could it have been to make just two more?
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I actually like the system the infernal war machines have in Descent into Avernus. They're compact and personal enough of vehicles that they can vaguely resemble creatures in combat, and the stations each person in the war machines occupies during combat is much easier to get a handle on. Ships are a different story, because they're massive and have many more moving parts.
Yeah; the Avernus ones are "better" but not great. One of the main problems with treating vehicles (the larger the worste this problem gets) as "creatures" using 5E's default rules is that vehicles have inertia; which these movement rules utterly lack. It makes them behave incredibly strangely and counter-intuitively. Pair with that the "damage threshold" rules being in an entirely different location from the rest of the rules, but using the same terminology (Armour class, HP etc) and you have a recipe for confusion. It's the worst of both worlds: you have a system with no depth or complexity to it, that is also a massive pain to actually put together; all that work to figure it out gives little payoff as itw ere.
The other issue with the spelljammers is that pretty much without exception big ship > small ship ssince larger vesssels will invariably have more weapon mounts and health then smaller ships... although if the players are trying to man and operate their own vessel then this is a moot point since a party of 4 can only operate a single ballista due to the weapon needing a 3 man crew and you needing a spelljamming pilot which makes combat on that scale a complete and utter chore.
This is true; another issue with the small ships that I pointed out earlier on is taht they are entirely too small for purpose. The Damselfly ship is the worst for this: since it apparently has NINE people living out of less than 3 squares on the deck plan. The mid-size and larger ships get better for this; but still odd; like the fact that the space galleon should probably have a much larger crew than it does. It almost feels like the people designing the stat blocks, the people doing teh deck plans, and the people coming up with lore A) didn't talk to one another and B) didn't bother to think about the reasonable needs of crewing/living on these things.
I mean, the damselfly ship is described as "swift but cramped," and it says that "The ship’s cargo hold can easily be turned into crew cabins." It sounds to me like they talked to one another, at least.
The galleon, though... Idk.
I mean if we're talking about ship physics, the speeds these ships have on their "stat blocks" are pretty weird too. The book says that they can cruise across 100 million miles in 24 hours. In terms of speed per round, if my math isn't off, that's approximately 36.7 million feet per round.
The irony of course, is that when they get into proximity to "an object" they go to regular speed which seems absurdly slow (40 feet on average).
I think the intent here is that it's assumed that the entire nine person crew won't be occupying the crew 'quarters' at the same time as they would be crewing the ship in shifts barring emergency situations that call for all hands on deck. Since we're given no details on the interior furnishings of the 5 foot x 15 foot room, I'd image that it's got two hammocks, one slung above the other, occupying each five foot square for a total of 6 sleep spots and some minimal storage facilities for personal effects along with them. Much like old sailing ships, these are not designed for the comfort of the crew but for efficiency of space and operation.
Even so; nine people in that tiny space is cramepd by the standards of U-boats, much less something intended to have people live in it IN SPACE.
The only possible thing I can think of from a physics standpoint as to why that is might be special relativity. The 36.7 million feet per round speed I mentioned is approx. 32 times the speed of light. The time dilation from a stationary observer would be absolutely insane.
In fact, given that the time dilation formula applied to faster than light travel starts getting into the complex plane of numbers, these speeds should really start involving time travel or shifting to another plane of existence or something funky like that.
Gravity very clearly does not operate the same way in Spelljammer as it does in reality. Therefore, special and general relativity are unlikely to hold.
My point ultimately is that you can't cleanly apply real-world physics to stuff in D&D, and vehicles are no exception.
Obviously if you're homebrewing the setting or running a campaign set on Earth and its cosmology (which canonically exists in the Forgotten Realms multiverse by the way), then you can set up the physics of the game universe in that way.
Up until now, 5e had been, IMHO; the most CONSISTENT edition. Nearly every book was a B- to B+, well worth the $50. We has the occasional A+ (Curse of Strahd) and C- (Sword Coast AG), and several too good to be true values (Lost Mine and Icespire starters).
Quite frankly, I feel like I got 6 races for my money. That's it. Boo's Menegerie was excellent. The adventure was goofy but nothing outstanding.
The Astral Adventurers Guide..... oh boy.
Races- good.
New Spells/Magic Items- meh, most of these exist solely to allow to continue adventuring in the environment.
The spell jamming "rules" and ships. - ad hoc, tacked on, and inconsistent with previous rules. Infernal war machine type rules so the ships actually feel USEFUL would have been great, even an over complicated system like Saltmarsh would have been ok.
No gazetteer of Realmspace or ANY space for that matter. You have non existent rules for non existent places to go.
annnnd once again wotc proves to be lazy and doesn't care about what it's player base wants & needs so glad I'm playing other rpgs now.
There is a reason 2 of the 3 5e campaigns I am currently running are based on 3rd party or Kickstarter campaign material. My players and I had been wanting to do spelljammer for a while and that was why I pre-ordered it while it was on a discount... won't make that mistake again... I'll stick to people I trust to make setting material... And I no longer trust WotC.
Only time will tell if they ever manage to earn backy trust....
SCAG is great for what it is, an introductory guide to the forgotten realms and offered up a fair bit of class options at a fairly discounted price.
Is it as good as other later supplements? Not really, but it's a testament to it's quality that almost everything inside of it got pirated for future supplements and it was their first supplement.
And honestly, with everything that I know about both of them there If I had to choose between these two I'd still take SCAG over Spelljammer any day of the week; It doesn't have a module or a beastiary, but what it does have is enough information to inspire dozens, possibly hundreds of adventures due to a clear effort to create a setting as opposed to a half assed supplement that confuses the hell out of people with it's shoddy explanation of it's mechanics.
Like FFS, I still have no idea why they ditched the phlogistron.
Maybe they thought the Astral Sea was simpler to wrap one's head around and incorporate as the void between the systems, since the Astral Plane was already established as a thing in 5e, and it would (at least in their mind) provide a more convenient way to tie factions in the Astral Plane like the githyanki to Material Plane space.
Also I imagine if this product wasn't rushed out the door, they might have actually provided a more concrete explanation for why the Astral Sea can be accessed from the Material Plane this way. If it was something like the Warp in Warhammer 40K, where ships entered it to cut down travel time significantly, I'd get it. Maybe they could have gone into the metaphysics involved, like the edges of the system don't actually exist; maybe the system is actually infinite in all directions, but the spelljammer helm has a special property that allows you to breach the veils of reality that lie out in the far corners of the system, which in turn allows you to enter the Astral Sea.
The spell dream of the blue veil also foreshadowed this, because it allows you to effectively dream your way to another world, which is not too dissimilar from astral projection.
Well I agree that Spelljammer as released is "half-assed" and they needed a lot more, to include space maps, and how to create your own spelljammer adventure material, and they should have done something with the ship battles, hells take the rules from BALDUR'S GATE: DESCENT INTO AVERNUS and repost them or something. Because what they gave was seriously lacking. And I would suggest for everyone to go to drive-in RPG and buy all the AD&D spelljammer books to get the needed rules. Or use One of the many D20 Space setting games like TravellerD20. But we got what we got, if they had a rules supplement that gave these things as just tables and numbers that would fix 99% of what was wrong with Spelljammer.
As for Phlogiston honestly that was dumb, as a player who played Spelljammer in the 90s, I felt it was dumb, it was dumb then, and I am glad they removed it. What I'm not so happy they removed was the Crystal Spheres. Those had a purpose to contain settings and make it hard to intrude upon some settings. Also it was a way to limit some of the bigger bad guys in Spelljammer. Ironically in real physics we actually have something akin to them around our solar system The heliosphere. I always found the irony that the heliosphere basically is the real Chrystal Sphere. But deep space is just space, so the phlogiston wasn't needed, and OMG the insides of Crystal Spheres having impossibly huge (larger than solar system sized) demi-god like beings that walked around looking like constellations on the inside of the Crystal Sphere, and having planet sized braziers of fire as well. Glad those are gone.
Had to look them up: Constellate - Constellation Monsters. Yes back in the day star constellations were a type of monster.
AJ did a video- https://youtu.be/ozhZpuy4my4
Heres the thing: I'm not arguing the Phlogistron was great so much as I am that it was better then the astral sea since the latter runs up against very real issues regarding the nature of the cosmology since it would imply that the prime material plane is more like a fractured collection of demi-planes rather then a coherent universe, to say nothing of how the astral plane has it's own sets of rules and effects.
Really though and this is the main issue with Spelljammer: it is a completely pointless setting in 5e. Like, there is effectively nothing out in wildspace or the astral sea except for horrific monsters that want to kill you and/or steal your shit. If you feel the need to get to another planet then you are better off simply utilizing a portal or possibly plane hopping then you are ever going anywhere near a spelljammer. Which is frankly amazing from a narrative standpoint because spelljammer should be this fantastical, romantic adventure that blends elements of steampunk sci-fi with high seas adventures with players engaging in various feats of daring do!
There's not enough of anything in these books. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got them.
The major problem here is that I pretty much solely play homebrew, which lets be real here, is 90% of what D&D is about. Adventure modules are great, but what should be the focus is giving players and DMs tools to create with. I was expecting a slew of D100 tables, more subclasses, and way more spells. I'm going to end up having to use Critical Role's graviturgy as a stand in for any 'space magic' we missed out on.
Here's hoping we get another (cheap) supplement because quite frankly this was barebones at best and it's going to take me a lot more work than I hoped to turn this setting into a viable homebrew campaign. Or at least to make it a campaign that isn't just the same stuff as usual but 'in space'.
Hoping to see the community get some good D100 tables out in the near future and I also *really* would like to see someone make some dragonborn subraces for this book. We just got Fizban's, how hard could it have been to make just two more?