D&D General Which "Elements" would you put in a Cosmology?

[Cadence]

I'm working on a cosmology structure for a D&D-esque game, and I'm picturing something akin to the elements playing a key roll.

• Instead of the Clerics & Paladin-esque classes channeling just Positive or Negative energy, they might "channel" the other "elements".
• There might be a Feywild/Shadow/Dream plane inhabited by various Djinn/Fey/Spirit/Shade like creatures influenced by those sources. This could affect character classes where spirits were part of their thing, and possibly some sorcerous backgrounds.
• They would show up in the type lines for the relevant spells and possibly have an effect for various types of spell casters.

So, the question is, what "elements" do you use? I'm currently leaning towards 12 and emphasizing that a given campaign might very well just have a subset of them.

1-2 Positive, Negative

3-6 Air, Earth, Fire, Water

7-8 Wood and Metal (for the Wu Xing, even though they're thought of differently).

9 Ice seems common in a lot of popular culture things that use elements, and was along with Fire in the Norse creation myth.

10 Lightning shows up in some popular culture things about elements, and is one of the energy types.

11-12 Acid (Corrosion) and Poison give the other two colored dragon heads and one of the two missing energies. It also means that acid doesn't need to be shoe-horned onto earth or water or wherever.

Edit: And if I have Acid and Poison, I periodically lean towards wanting Disease as 13. But then I think Acid, Poison, and Disease all are like sub-sections of Negative...

If we're doing energies, then Sonic? But that always feels more than just like three separate things to me concussion, shattering, and deafening so I'm almost fine just de-energizng that.

Does Aether/Void/Quintessence add anything?

 

[GSHamster]

I think that's a lot of elements. Elements (and archetypes in general) work best when they are over-broad. About 4 to 6 elements is probably best.

My favorite elemental setting is Sharon Shinn's Elemental Blessings series. Here's a post I wrote a long time ago about the central mechanic: Elemental Blessings Personality/Alignment System

 

[Cadence]

I think that's a lot of elements. Elements (and archetypes in general) work best when they are over-broad. About 4 to 6 elements is probably best.

In terms of story telling or a particular world I can see that. Maybe that's why most ones used historically or in fiction have a pretty small number?

If you go with a few, do they each need several flavors to capture the ideas people might want in their world building? So Water includes Ice, Earth includes Metal and Wood, Air includes Lightning, etc... But then does grouping them just mean some worlds will require just separating them out (so splitting Metal and Wood from Earth in a world that has those as three separate elements, or splitting Ice from Water in a world that has those separate? )

Anyway, I guess I was thinking along your route when I mentioned in the original post suggesting that each world might only have a subset of them.

My favorite elemental setting is Sharon Shinn's Elemental Blessings series. Here's a post I wrote a long time ago about the central mechanic: Elemental Blessings Personality/Alignment System

I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the link to the post and the author name!

 

[Marandahir]

I've been toying for several years now with 9 elements aligned with the Enneagram personality types, a nine-deity main pantheon, and groups of 3 (Solid/Liquid/Gas-Plasma elements).

Earth/Metal/Ice
Oil/Sand/Water
Fire/Lightning/Wind

I really want Wood in there too but not sure how I'd fit it in given that wood flows like a liquid but is solid, and not sure which group it would belong to, if any. I originally had it in the liquids in place of Sand, with Shadow also taking a spot there among the liquids too, but Oil was a cooler idea for Earth's liquid form (and gives birth to fire).

What do you think?

 

[Cadence]

I've been toying for several years now with 9 elements aligned with the Enneagram personality types, a nine-deity main pantheon, and groups of 3 (Solid/Liquid/Gas-Plasma elements).

Earth/Metal/Ice
Oil/Sand/Water
Fire/Lightning/Wind

I really want Wood in there too but not sure how I'd fit it in given that wood flows like a liquid but is solid, and not sure which group it would belong to, if any. I originally had it in the liquids in place of Sand, with Shadow also taking a spot there among the liquids too, but Oil was a cooler idea for Earth's liquid form (and gives birth to fire).

What do you think?

Thank you for giving me more to consider! I'll ponder that kind of layout and get back to you.

First thing that came to mind thinking of trios, is that Alchemy had Salt, Mercury, and Sulfur.

 

[Marandahir]

I might consider Earth/Water/Air to be "overelements" in which case I'd have to rearrange and move some other elements into the groupings. But it's a work in progress, too.

 

[SehanineMoonbow]

I might consider Earth/Water/Air to be "overelements" in which case I'd have to rearrange and move some other elements into the groupings. But it's a work in progress, too.

I would go for something like this, too. Have the "umbrella" elements (I would also include Spirit), and then have more "subelements" under them. If you're familiar with ALTA, think of Toph. She was an earth bender, but discovered she could metal bend, because metal was part of earth. So, earth would be the "main" element, and metal would be the "sub=-element".

 

[Marandahir]

I would go for something like this, too. Have the "umbrella" elements (I would also include Spirit), and then have more "subelements" under them. If you're familiar with ALTA, think of Toph. She was an earth bender, but discovered she could metal bend, because metal was part of earth. So, earth would be the "main" element, and metal would be the "sub=-element".

Right, that was my thought originally with Earth (Metal, Wood), Water (Ice, Shadow) Air (Fire, Lightning). But as I was thinking about Solid-Liquid-Gas, it didn't line up right, and some of the attempts to align it with Enneagram personality types weren't working out the way I wanted (Land/Sea/Sky made sense as 6/3/9 types, but then when looking at lightning, fire, and wind, wind was better suited toward type 1 rather than type 9 at the top, which was better with lightning as a blinding light). So I've been playing around with it, and I've gone back and forth a lot.

That take on it was

Type 8-9-1 (Body/Instinct Types) - Fire/Lightning/Wind
Type 2-3-4 (Heart/Emotion Types) - Wood/Water/Shadow
Type 5-6-7 (Mind/Thought Types) - Ice/Earth/Metal

It's just that then I'd draw natural connections between Fire and Earth, Lightning and Metal, and it didn't line up quite right in terms of how the Enneagram works vs how these elements work. So I'm still tinkering, and trying to figure out what I want out of the elemental system.

It's also my alternative ability score system, moving from 6 abilities to 9, which changes a lot of things in my setting in terms of how some classes and skills work.

 

[Cadence]

I would go for something like this, too. Have the "umbrella" elements (I would also include Spirit), and then have more "subelements" under them. If you're familiar with ALTA, think of Toph. She was an earth bender, but discovered she could metal bend, because metal was part of earth. So, earth would be the "main" element, and metal would be the "sub=-element".

I've never really followed Alta... so,

Air (?)
Earth (metal)
Fire (lightning)
Water (Blood)

and Spirit is over all of them?

 

[Charlaquin]

How about sulphur, salt, and mercury?