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And do we really need both?

The Astral plane is an actual 'real place' so to speak. Its a real dimension, it has portals to it, the whole nine yards. The Dreamstream seems to be more of a 'embodied concept' You can't just 'rift into the dreamstream' it seems to more or less exist only as a concentual mass dream. If that makes sense. And yes they are both needed....if you want to use the dream parts. Not all games choose to have ANY of the dream parts, due to issues with tone/power/what ever.

I of course meant the Astral Plane, not Plan....

Metaphysics aside, one notable difference is that while the superior (in the flesh) means of accessing either can mean your death, of the lesser (your body stays behind) versions of accessing them, the astral still results in death (or so I'm led to believe, could be some exceptions, like the Conqueror's astral projection in Rifts Mercs) while the lesser dreamdancing power simply means you wake up when you die.

There's actually a neat trick where you can make astral deaths non-fatal. It's possible for dream-selves to enter the astral plane via a d-port, so if you lesser dreamdance and then port to astral, your dreamself could affect the astral world while still not resulting in your death if it's destroyed.

They are both incredibly different planes.

One could argue that the 3 layers of the plane are as different from one another as from the Dreamstream though. Time works very differently in all 4 places.