D&D 5E Wonder why there aren't any Elemental Domains (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)?

[Corinnguard]

Take the spells or the abilities from two domains. Interesting.

This would work if 5e was like 3e with regards to the number of Clerical domains each deity had access to.

3e Mielikki--Animal, Fey, Good, Plant, Travel
5e Mielikki- Nature.

 

[SkidAce]

This would work if 5e was like 3e with regards to the number of Clerical domains each deity had access to.

3e Mielikki--Animal, Fey, Good, Plant, Travel
5e Mielikki- Nature.

Yeah, I never mentioned that ALL my deities have at least two domains. Gives them the depth and concepts that people were talking about up thread.

Nature/Wilderness cleric versus Nature/Agriculture cleric mightn not see eye to eye.

 

[Corinnguard]

A cleric having access to 2 domains (out of the 5 that 3e had) at once allows for more customization within the faith.

 

[Mannahnin]

although there are probably too many spells already, i wish there was a proper full array of spells for each energy type, (and several non-energy type thematics, like plant spells and earth magic)

I would agree, and I have long been a proponent of damage spells coming with various rider effects. You have some of that with cantrips, of all things – perhaps because they are all "0-level" and thus need something else to differentiate between them. Like ray of frost slows targets down, shocking grasp negates reactions (which makes it great for getting out of melee), chill touch shuts down healing for a round, and so on.

The tricky bit for me for this stuff is that I don't love Clerics having a wide variety of offensive magic. I feel like this is somewhere 3.5 in particular went wrong, proliferating offensive Cleric spells in part due to box-checking to fill out domains, and was yet another thing that made for Superclerics in that edition.

 

[Mannahnin]

There are Five Elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, plus Ether. Ether is force. Where the Four relate to states of matter, namely solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. The plasma is mainly the heavenly fire of the sun, and aspects of lighting, so Fire includes Radiant and Lightning. The Ether relates the 'fundamental forces' that are immaterial but physical, including gravity. However, the Fire-Radiant-Lighting also covers any of the electromagnetic force. Ethereal force includes psionic telekinesis, whence flight and objects made out of force.

It often works out well, to treat Plant as a living Element. Plant is sometimes synonymous with Air, in the sense of Daoist expanding-encompassing motion, in the sense of Norse Yggdrasill heavens, and sometimes synonymous with Earth, in the sense of springing from the ground. Plant can also have watery and fiery (sunlight, burning) aspects. For D&D, it makes sense for Plant to be a Living Element composed of the other Four Elements and associating the Material Plane where the other Elements recombine.

The easiest way to handle the Elemental themes is to reorganize the entire spell list according to them. Then any class can be assigned an element, by treating it like a spell school or spell domain.

For utility, including to ensure there are decent spells for every slot level, an Elemental character concept should choose at least two from the Five Elements.

Even if we aren't going with the 4e cosmology, where the gods and elemental powers are explicitly at odds, I feel like the delineation still exists. Divine domains are conceptual and based around the lives of their worshipers, while the elements are more of an abstract building block..

Fire is not a concept. You might see fire used by a God of the Sun, or a Goddess of Home and Hearth, or a God of the Forge. But you don't get a God of Fire any more than you get a God of Roads. Roads fall under the God of Travel, which is a nicely broad concept, while roads are a specific thing.

Yes, and it's important to bear in mind that different cultures have different conceptions of what constitutes an "element" or "elemental force" as well.

The four elements of hermetic magic and classical Greek philosophy are the ones we're most familiar with from Greece's prominence in Western Civ, but they're not the only take on the elements.

Japanese philosophy, for example, referencing Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void.

Or Chinese/Daoist/Wuxing having wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

Or the pre-Christian Irish having three realms making up the world (Land, Sea, and Sky; fire is of the gods), and nine elements or Duile which make up the world and have correspondences in the human being- Earth (flesh), Stone (bones), Plants (hair), Wind (breath), Water (blood), Clouds (mind), Stars (senses), Sun (face and outward aspect), Moon (the soul).

You can see an interesting correspondence to the Irish elements in Norse myth, where Odin, Vili and Ve made Midgard (our world) from various parts of Ymir's body- Ymir's flesh for earth, bones for mountains, blood for rivers and seas, hair for trees and vegetation, brain for clouds, skull making the sky, etc.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I think, even with my closed list of 18 domain subclasses, I could probably extend the domains somewhat by just giving alternate spell lists. So I use Tempest for both a conceptually flavored Elemental Air and Destruction, and I could make a different domain spell list for Destruction.

I've been using Grave to lean into the afterlife and hence, the planes, but it might be worthwhile to give them an alternate spell list to better distinguish the life/death boundary and transition from the more general liminal and beyond ideas. Now that Im thinking in those terms, I'll back over the domains and see if I can cover more concepts with existing domains that way, and have less new ones to make.