Nentir Vale Coming to Dungeons and Dragons

[dave2008]

- Right, sorry, that's what I meant, the Dawn War pantheon. The FR and Eberron pantheons are in the PHB.

I know (or at least I suspected), I was just being a bit cheeky!

 

[KahlessNestor]

I thought he was a proponent of the primal spirit power source. I recall he talked at one point about making a 4e warden-like subclass for the barbarian (in fact, this is one of the things I am hoping for out of this homebrew). Of course, support for the power source doesn't necessarily mean support for "primal spirits are keeping gods, primordial, and demon lords out of the surface of the world."

If it was me, I would keep that, but suggest the primal spirits needed followers to complete some kind of difficult ritual to keep the Powers out, and suggest that the ritual didn't work so well last time so the followers might need to hire adventures to get some magguffins that would let them do some kind of super-ritual to repair the damage.

There could be some interesting politics that come out of that. Some gods (and some devils) might find the current situation acceptable, since it creates a (largely) protected "garden of souls" for them to harvest without having to invest any resources to defend, so their followers would support the adventurers. Other gods (and demon lords and primordial), on the other hand, want a new playground to play in.....

I don't know what he's planning on doing with the Primal Spirits. But that was a part of the cosmology, that the gods couldn't just run around willy-nilly (like his Kord example) because the Spirits had locked them out so the world couldn't be a god-primordial battlefield again and ruin it.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Well, both Melora and Kord are considered Primal Spirits by the Primal Spirits (according to the Primal Power sourcebook). But, I don't think Mearls has taken that into account.

Ah, I hadn't realized that. It's been a while since I read anything 4E, and didn't play much with the Primal paths when I was playing (more a Divine Power guy). Melora makes sense, and maybe Kord does (he was storms, right?, but also strength and power? Like a Thor/El type character?) But still, the idea of Kord running around like that is quite a cosmology change as well.

 

[KahlessNestor]

I hope not. You certainly can have the Primal Spirits without them keeping the gods out of the world, though, so Im not too worried about it.

Yes, you can, but it's quite another big change to the Nentir Vale cosmology.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Yes, you can, but it's quite another big change to the Nentir Vale cosmology.

However, it is completely in cannon that a powerful enough priest can summon an aspect of a god. So maybe you can't wrestle Kord, in his entirety, but you can wrestle a piece of Kord anywhere in the Vale that has a priest with enough juice. I don't recall if they stat'd out the aspect of Kord, but I remember they did for Bane (in fact, two different aspects) and Moradin.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

, but I remember they did for Bane (in fact, two different aspects) and Moradin.

They did? I'm quite sure they didn't.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

They did? I'm quite sure they didn't.

If I still had a subscription to the compendium, I would give you the actual references, but Bane had a warlord one (The Conqueror) and a melee fighter one, (I think it might have been the Legionnaire). They popped up in the Dragon (I think or might be Dungeon) article on lore about Bane.

Moradin's aspect was actually one of the more interesting 4e monsters, as it came with a bunch of high-level dwarf-shaped golem minions that it could replace when the PC's broke them. I am not sure where it came from, but I saw both the aspect and the minions on the compendium, so it must have been official.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I remember the Bane article. It was great! Don't remember the aspects, though I'm sure you're right

Also sure ZeromaruX will be here in a short while to tell us the details

 

[cbwjm]

I recall the aspects of bane. I don't recall seeing the aspect of moradin but it sounds pretty cool.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I remember the Bane article. It was great! Don't remember the aspects, though I'm sure you're right

Also sure ZeromaruX will be here in a short while to tell us the details

I wouldn't have remembered Bane, but there were a couple of people trying to reverse engineer stat blocks for the gods based on the aspects on one of the more interesting WotC forum threads; they were a bit confounded by the two aspects having different roles. Given that there were goblins, orcs, etc. with different roles, it shouldn't have been such a big deal, but god stat blocks were so rare that any blip was a big one....

Edit: I also want to agree that that Bane article was really good. For an edition that didn't "officially" have LN (admittedly with evil tendencies), he really came across as an excellent example of that. After reading the article, I adjusted how I ran the setting so that merchants and farmers were actually happier in hobgoblin-controlled areas then in most human-controlled areas. Although the hobbies were cruel when you violated the law, they didn't tolerate violations of discipline among themselves, so a hobgoblin wouldn't randomly appropriate your stuff, and if he did and you reported it (which you could actually do without fear of reprisal as long as the hobgoblin was judged guilty), the hobgoblin could be imprisoned or tortured.