D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

According to WotC's James Wyatt, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons introduces a new cosmology for dragon gods, where the same beings, including Fizban, echo across various D&D campaign settings with alternate versions of themselves (presumably like Paladine/Bahamut, or Takhisis/Tiamat). Also... the various version can merge into one single form.

Takhisis is the five-headed dragon god of evil from the Dragonlance setting. Paladine is the platinum dragon god of good (and also Fizban's alter-ego).

Additionally, the book will contain psychic gem dragons, with stats for all four age categories of the five varieties (traditionally there are Amethyst, Crystal, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz), plus Dragonborn characters based on metallic, chromatic, and gem dragons.

D&D 5E - Check out Fizban's Alternate Cover!

WotC's James Wyatt talked to Polygon about Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which also revealed the alternate cover, which you can only get from hobby stores. https://www.enworld.org/threads/fizbans-treasury-the-dragon-book-now-has-a-description-and-a-feat.681399/

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Fizban's Treasury: The Dragon Book Now Has A Description... And A Feat

Courtesy of Amazon, we now have a description for Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the October D&D hardcover. The book introduces gem dragons, dragon-themed player options, and plenty of draconic lore! This joins September's The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and November's Strixhaven: Curriculum of...

www.enworld.org

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I still don't get this "demoted" stuff. Eberron is still Eberron, in the same exact way. Other parts of D&D cosmology can only appear if the DM wishes them to. Nothing has changed in Eberron, it's just meta stuff.

In 3E and 4E Eberron was truly isolated. Other settings and their cosmologies existed, but they were somewhere else and weren't surrounding Eberron. Eberron and its planes didn't have to be protected from the rest of the multiverse, because other settings and their cosmologies were effectively distant galaxies.

In 5E, all settings (except perhaps the MtG ones, maybe they still get to be independent) have been absorbed into the rigidly-defined default 5E cosmology. They could have let Eberron stay it's own thing in it's own distant multiverse, but now the default 5E cosmology has reduced it to a Material Plane whose own cosmology is truly a number of demiplanes within that Material Plane.

This has implications beyond Eberron. For example, any possible setting WotC could make that is influenced by non-European cultures will either have to be designed to also fit with the default 5E multiverse or be segregated into bubbles like Eberron so that their own demiplanes aren't rendered invalid by the 5E multiverse.

The 3E Forgotten Realms approach was much less restrictive, by contrast. In that edition Toril was a hub for multiple Astral Planes with unique Outer Planes and pantheons. Depending on what gods they worshipped, a character could end up in one of three separate Astral Planes (or a Spirit World coterminous with the Material Plane for followers of the Kara-Tur pantheon).

 

[dave2008]

The many Forgotten Realms novels undermine that a bit by all taking place in the same world yet changing along with the shifting cosmology (which, among other things, means the fact that the primordials were established to exist as Dawn Titans in FR has ensured those creations of 4E persist into 5E, such as Maegara in Storm King's Thunder).

I just want to be clear that I am never talking about the D&D novels when I discuss anything about D&D. Novels are a different medium and do not impact the game at all IMO. So what goes on in a novel I will not consider as an argument for D&D lore.

 

[Bolares]

I wasn't saying you agreed or disagreed. You were saying you understood his point of view and I was hoping you'd be able to tell me in what way it actually does what he's worried about, because I can't see it.

Ah, ok. Well if you see the lore about the great wheel as absolutely true and binding, if you see Eberron as a small sphere protected from the true gods and planes I can see how it would seem like Eberron lore got downgraded and retconned.

 

[dave2008]

Yes and no. Some lore is definitive. King Azoun Obarskyr IV officially and definitively died during the Goblin Wars. That's official lore and canon. With setting cosmology lore that intentionally uses vague language, there is no official lore canon since the truth isn't definitively set down.

Yes and no. That happened a version of what ever setting that is from, but it didn't necessarily happen in all versions.

 

[Bolares]

They could have let Eberron stay it's own thing in it's own distant multiverse

This is exactly how I read Eberron’s current status quo. Part of, but untoucheable and independent. To me the changes just give a possibility of connection, not an official ranking of cosmologies

 

[Maxperson]

Yes and no. That happened a version of what ever setting that is from, but it didn't necessarily happen in all versions.

It did in the official lore canon. It didn't in my game, because I like him and so I changed the official lore.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, ok. Well if you see the lore about the great wheel as absolutely true and binding, if you see Eberron as a small sphere protected from the true gods and planes I can see how it would seem like Eberron lore got downgraded and retconned.

But if it's completely isolated(and it is) and the true gods can't get through it(and they can't), then what actually got downgraded and retconned?

 

[Nefermandias]

I just thought I would point out that the traditional many of "Multiverse" is not the same as the now commonly accepted definition of "Multiverse." I am sure you know this, but I thought it was an important distinction.

D&D Multiverse: multiple planes of existing. Each plane being different from the other (sometimes vastly so), but also connected.
Pulp Multiverse: alternate realities, separate from each, but typically all bearing some resemblance to our reality

Personally I prefer the D&D method to the pseudo-science pulp definition. But everyone is different!

It's the same as the Marvel's many universes, really. It's kinda easy to move from Earth to Earth in Marvel canon.

 

[Bolares]

But if it's completely isolated(and it is) and the true gods can't get through it(and they can't), then what actually got downgraded and retconned?

From what people are saying here, just being part of a bigger cosmology makes Eberron’s cosmology downgrade if I understand the argument correctly

 

[Hexmage-EN]

And if you care about the lore in the text as a discrete thing, that's fine. More power to you.

But apparently the rest of us see a different picture (not necessarily larger, just different.) I see the lore in any one book as something that used to be different in a different book at a different time... and will be different again once that book gets remade (for a new edition, a revamp or whatever.) So it is a waste of my time to get up in arms about the lore in this one book.

It was one thing in 3E and 4E, where all settings were distinct and claims about Tiamat or whoever explicitly did not apply beyond the setting in which the information was presented. In 4E Tiamat could dwell in the plane of Tytherion and war with Zehir for territory in the Points of Light/Nentir Vale/Dawn War/etc setting without that having any impact on the Tiamat of the Forgotten Realms setting.

In 5E, though, it's harder to ignore because all settings take place in the same cosmology and all iterations of Tiamat are one being who lives in Avernus.

Official lore has far more weight and potential to affect other settings under the 2E/5E model of a unified cosmology that all settings belong to than the 3E/4E take of multiple independent cosmologies.