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Waters Above: Astral Adventuring (5e)

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Sail the Psychic Tides of the Astral Sea

This 246-page text provides all the rules and lore necessary to convert the astral plane of any given setting into a fully-fledged psychic ocean alive with adventure, with its own locales, creatures, factions, weather, and geography. With this text, you can move your campaigns into the astral plane with confidence that you’ll have plenty of novel and exciting content to explore with your players.

Included in Waters Above are:

  • The rules and lore of the Astral Sea’s quasi-aquatic environments and origins
  • Environmental hazards unique to the Astral Plane
  • Descriptions of the plane’s layers; the Supernal Above, the Pelagic Zone, and the Stellar Abyss
  • Rules for designing, customizing, and sailing an astral vessel
  • 12 ready-to-use astral ships
  • 12 astral monsters
  • 13 new factions exclusive to the Astral Plane
  • The Githyanki and Githzerai as factions rooted in this interpretation of the Astral Plane
  • 60 new non-player characters
  • 60 corresponding black and white character portraits
  • The Sigil-Stained character option

These materials provide guidelines and principles by which you can develop the Astral Plane of your campaign setting into a rich seascape for your players to explore. Waters Above does not provide discrete locations or setting-specific information, outside of a few illustrative examples from the Forgotten Realms, but rather presents patterns and ideas to guide you in creating your own. Adjust the details of your campaign’s Astral Sea in accordance with your setting’s unique lore, deities, and history.

The pdf is bookmarked, and includes links in the table of contents.

The illustrations can also be downloaded separately here.

Update Log:

8/26/17: Added omitted page (p. 111 in new file)

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Reviews (0)
Discussions (2)
Customer avatar
Andy E March 12, 2022 11:19 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I have to commend the author for the sheer volume of content here, there is a lot of it, some of it quite interesting, and there's many crunchy tables and interesting options for building and customizing Astral vessels.

However prospective buyers should be aware of two main issues. One, the organization and layout of the book makes it difficult to parse and navigate. There are no bookmarks in the PDF to aid in navigation and the topic organization doesn't feel coherent to make finding what you need intuitive, and many headings are simpley bolded or italicized words on flat white backgrounds, making it sometimes unclear what's a new topic and what is a subtopic.

Second, the lore is confusing or idiosyncratic. Perhaps most strangely, Elminster appears in the book as having been dead for centuries when, in the current Forgotten Realms lore, he is very much alive. While there is much of use here, the lore presented feels disconnected from a more 'canon' D&D campaign, creating new names...See more
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Customer avatar
Vesper B March 13, 2022 12:39 am UTC
CREATOR
Thank you for this fair and helpful review! Particularly with regard to the organization and layout; I appreciate the feedback. I was more familiar with 4e than 5e when I wrote this (a bit bonkers to do such a large project as my first, I know), so that's why the lore is nonstandard. The book is really an ode to 4e's Secrets of the Astral Sea.

If you are interested in a product that comes from a stronger 5e background (and with a couple years of design experience behind it), you could check out Ingeborg's Guide to Hugging Illithids (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/349472/Ingeborgs-Guide-to-Hugging-Illithids), which is something of a companion to Waters Above.

Thanks again for taking the time to leave a review!
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Customer avatar
Andy E March 13, 2022 7:46 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Actually, something more akin to Secrets of the Astral Sea is what I was expecting, particularly with 5E updates of creatures like Astral Giants and Quom and locations like Kalanduren and Shom. Though new content is also appreciated.
Customer avatar
austin W June 19, 2021 2:47 am UTC
I've been reading and enjoying this book(The other Dm in my Group actually bought it)
you can definitely tell the dedication to detail and Marine Biology degree that went into writing it.
the setting has a few nihilistic elements that I will be changing out for my campaign (pardon me for believing in caring and just gods)
I wonder if the author has done any errata or updates to the ship construction / combat rules.
Although complete, I feel like a supplement book or further play tested rules updates/variant rules would be helpful
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246
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File Last Updated:
August 26, 2017
This title was added to our catalog on August 22, 2017.