Page 113 of Between the Shadows is much clearer for Dreamdance: Superior, you reappear at the physical location you originally left. Astral Transference doesn't mention anything like this though.
If you are coexisting with the material world, I figure you just revert back to physical form. Sucks to be you if your Mach 1 flight left you thousands of feet in the air, underwater, in a volcano, in a wall, etc. and you probably die.
But what happens if you went to the Astral Plane?
This is a dilemma not faced by the Astral Lord / Astral Mage on 50/52 because they don't pay ISP to exist on the plane, they only pay ISP for coexisting on the material plane.
It mentions "all the abilities and benefits of the astral projection power apply to this form as well, except there is no silver cord involved.
Page 70 of Nightbane mentions that if the astral body gets lost or captured, the body will waste away and die, but does that apply if your astral body AND physical body get lost/captured together? There is a "Location of the Physical Body" table, but I don't know if this is in any way applicable to Astral Transference since there is no body left behind to travel back to, no cord to follow...
Without a cord to follow, I would think it would be even more likely to get lost, unless maybe you had someone else's cord to follow. I figure a similar difficulty would be faced for normal Astral Projection if a cord was destroyed.
This situation is mentioned on page 44 of Between the Shadows. It mentions that the silver cord (if any) is severed, and that you are at -10 to the rolls on Nightbane page 70.
Normally you reroll for a 1-76 (this is split into 3 text explanations but they don't seem to have any functional difference) so I think that means you now reroll for a 1-86, giving you just a 14% chance of finding your body every 5 seconds.
This problem was fixed in BTS39 (just noticed!) so I think it would go:
- 1-50 = reroll at -5
51-70 = reroll unmodified
71-90 = reroll at +10
91-00 = victory
These modifiers would be a lot more interesting if they were cumulative, though wording-wise it probably only applies to the next roll.
The chance of victory was narrowed, as previously it was 77-00 success, this was reduced to 81-00 succeess.
This seems pretty decent since Transference lasts 60min/level compared to AP's 5min/level.
I'm wondering if it should be even harder than this though, because even with a severed cord, standard astral projection still has a "body" it might possibly sense and hone in on. There's nothing to pinpoint when you've Astrally Transferred!
Another issue is page 44 is talking about when you are astrally projecting into someone's dream pool by first establishing a link with telepathy, which would mean you would need to get within 60 feet of someone in the real world to use it, and finding your way back to your body in the real world is supposed to be easier than doing it in the astral plane. NB70 implies it is basically automatic (you just return to where you left it) and that even if it was moved/hidden you can sense it at 60% rolled every melee.
I have to assume this is talking about cordless situations because you couldn't really hide a body still connected by a cord, since you could just follow the cord, right?
A 40% chance of failure per melee vs a (you must meet the 86% chance of failure all 3 times, 0.86 cubed is 0.636056) 63.6% chance of failure shows how without the cord, you can relocate your body's location better IRL than from the plane. The extra 2 rolls / round don't make up for the dismally low %.
But how would Astral Transference fare when there's no body to sense? Can you even sense the real world?
Astral Navigation on page 116 mentions "can return to his body (or to the physical world if traveling through astral transferene) which is certainly one way to do it. Although getting one roll per hour makes it seem kinda dangerous.
But how would you do it without this power? Or could you even still return to the physical world if the power ran out?
I got wondering, if the duration expired without having returned, could psychics possibly become like the Millek (page 65) who are then natives there, and can only send projections to Earth without the ability to materialize there anymore?
Even if not, this begs the opposite question: what happens to a Millek who uses Astral Transference to visit Earth as a ghost and his power expires? He cannot materialize, but the power doesn't mention anything about popping back like Dreamdance Superior... so what happens?
It feels like situations like this ought to be dangerous.... like maybe once duration runs out, you should start taking damage and eventually die? Seems like there should be a negative consequence that creates incentive to get back home in time. I dunno. Maybe as a house rule, if your Projection/Transference duration expires in an alien plane (astral for most, physical for Milleks) they should get shunted into the Void?
Page 39 of Between the Shadows mentions it is much harder to go from Earth>Nightlands via Outer Layer but I can't seem to find that reflected statistically. It says to use the table either to reach a destination or return to point of departure.
