[RPG] Can creatures from the Material Plane survive being sucked into the Astral Plane

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I was looking through this article, reading about a portable hole + bag of holding combination as a projectile weapon and I was thinking about the end effect.

Placing a bag of holding inside an extradimensional space […] instantly destroys both items and opens a gate to the Astral Plane. The gate originates where the one item was placed inside the other. Any creature within 10 feet of the gate is sucked through it to a random location on the Astral Plane. The gate then closes. The gate is one-way only and can't be reopened.

Things and creatures are obviously sucked into the Astral Plane, but are they necessarily killed or destroyed? If this was used as a weapon to throw a human sized enemy into the Astral plane would they survive?

Normal spells can safely send people and things to the Astral Plane but what if they're forcibly sent there by a bag of holding + portable hole combination? The Gith can survive there so I assume it is at least somewhat hospitable to humanoid life.

Best Answer

Though the PC's in the situation described won’t die straight away, the astral plane is a very dangerous place. I would refer to the DMG on pg: 47

A character who travels bodily to the Astral Plane (by means of the plane shift spell or one of the rare portals that leads directly there) has no silver cord.

and when using astral projection

Only the severing of a character’s silver cord while on the Astral Plane (or the death of his or her helpless physical body on the Material Plane) can result in the character’s true death. Thus, high-level characters sometimes travel to the Outer Planes by way of astral projection rather than eek out a portal or use a more direct spell.

Basically this means that they will be transported “bodily” and therefore are at the mercy of everything the astral plane can throw at them such as psychic wind and githyanki.

So though they don't die en route, they will likely die there unless they find a colour pool for the prime material plane

(spoiler alert)

The colour for the prime material plane is silver as stated on pg 47 of the DMG.

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