D&D 5E (2014) 4E Cosmology

[DrJawaPhD]

Out of interest, I know some people have already mentioned it, but what cosmology (if any) are people using in their home games?

Great Wheel for me, it works great

 

[Mind of tempest]

Out of interest, I know some people have already mentioned it, but what cosmology (if any) are people using in their home games?

Mine is fairly simple and mirrors 4e in a lot of ways:

At the top is Godsheim, the home of the gods and the various celestials.
Below them is the material plane which sits above/within the elemental plane though both are separate from each other, you don't look up and see the elemental plane of fire, for instance.
The Shadowfel and Feywild sit next to the material plane, they aren't true echoes of the material plane but you can use them to bypass obstacles if there are handy connections between material plane and one of the others.
Below the elemental planes sits the lower planes, home of the fiends, all grouped together with warring fiendish kingdoms.

Various connections allow access to the different planes, I use a great river that flows between them that people can use to access the others if they know how.

none I do not dm too scatterbrained to get it to work and none who I have gotten to play with care about such things

 

[Aldarc]

I think the main thing is that many critics of the Great Wheel perceive it as full of useless symmetries that exist to give everything a direct opposite and every alignment plane an in-between step, even if that creates what is effectively dead space as far as 'is this usable for an adventure'. Now this sort of worldbuilding may be up some people's allies--after all there are plenty of places too hostile for people IRL--but in terms of a game space I can see why some DMs prefer the designers not to waste space in the text and diagrams explainign something they don't need.

As an aside... the World Axis is also symmetrical--the Material-Fey-Shadow symmetry as well as the Astral Sea/Elemental Chaos symmetry, but it was deliberately designed to that everything had potential conflicts and adventure hooks, even the Seven Heavens. So as I indicated earlier, to me the problem isn't symmetry but that quite a few of the outer planes aren't evocative enough that they need to exist as their own realm, at least in my opinion.

Yeah, this is where I tend to distinguish between functional symmetry and grid-filling symmetry. The Great Wheel always struck me as the latter. There were monsters that didn't exist until the creation of planes "required" them in order to fill the Great Wheel's grid, but a number of these planes are kind of just duds that exist for the sake of maintaining symmetry.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Am I just weird? I'm 57 in March and this summer will mark my 50th year in D&D. I've hated the Great Wheel ever since I can remember. The shift in Cosmology and the addition of the Feywild and Shadowfell in 4e I thought was brilliant. I was disappointed when 5e went back to the Great Wheel model. I've kept 4th edition Cosmology In all my stuff and refuse to let it go. A couple of my players say I'm being a "Boomer" about it

What are people's thoughts on the current Cosmology In 5e? Do you make use of it or ignore it? Do you run successful adventures in it? Inquiring minds want to know!

5e "practical cosmology" is 4e cosmology with a coat of Great Wheel paint and a different 2d projection of an at least 4d space (and no 2d projection of 4d measures up). The Feywild and Shadowfell are precisely where you would expect and are the important two. The Elemental Planes float within the Elemental Chaos, which is more accessible than the Astral Sea - and the Outer Planes are not limited to the sixteen.

About the only part of the 5e Great Wheel that's not an odd map projection of the 4e cosmology are the positive and negative energy planes no one ever went to because they'd just die. Maybe the Ethereal Plane which I treat as mostly a liminal state anyway.

 

[Starfox]

I like the 4E cosmology (despite not liking the rules). I like the Blood War being between the ethereal demons and astral devils. I call my own cosmology the Axis Mundi, which is basically a line (or tree if you like Yggdrasil) with one end in the deep Elemental Chaos and one in the lofty outer Astral Plane. Everything else is at some point between these extremes.

Anything that happens, does so as an interaction between ethereal matter and astral ideas. Matter without ideas is dead and can't act or react, ideas without matter have no way of interacting or competing to measure which ideas are good and which are bad.

The Prime is in the middle of the Axis Mundi, surrounded by the three planes of the Shell, the Shadowfell (bordering on the Astral), the Feywild (bordering on the ethereal), and the Netherworld (bordering on the Far Realm). Yes, there is a branch of the Axis mundi that reaches out to another cosmology, the Far Realm. This is not a part of the Axis Mundi, but has had fundamental effect on it, particularly on the Prime.

The entire Axis Mundi is a great apparatus for testing out ideas. Concepts and spirits percolate from the astral, gathering matter as they go, to ultimately become things like gods, humans, animals, plants, elementals, and ultimately demons. The farther you go towards the ethereal, the less spirit there is, and the more material power each spirit can grab and control. Demons have spirits that on the Prime would only make primitive animals, but in the Abyss can control vast physical power. Creatures from the ends of the Axis Mundi, like gods and demons, have a hard time functioning on the Prime, they are dependent on their native conditions for their powers. This is why they need to be summoned by a being from the Prime and still can only remain for a short time.

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah, this is where I tend to distinguish between functional symmetry and grid-filling symmetry. The Great Wheel always struck me as the latter. There were monsters that didn't exist until the creation of planes "required" them to the fill the Great Wheel's grid were first created, but a number of these planes are kind of just duds that exist for the sake of maintaining symmetry.

That's true, but it is only a flaw because they aren't activated well by the game IMO.

Ideally, each plane should have a number of unique challenges and story seeds that makes it fun to adventure there. The best way to do this is a Radiant Citadel-style anthrology, where the players have to go to different planes to do different things.

But I will say...most of them are completely redundant in terms of description. Everything from Arcadia to Arborea is literally the same idea with small differences like "Oh the Seven Heavens are seven mountains with a FOREST AND RIVER" or "Aborea is a giant forest with MOUNTAINS AND A RIVER" etc etc etc. It honestly feels like there is no difference at all in the Upper Planes. At least the Lower Planes have the Abyss, the Nine Hells, Gehenna...but then Hades is LITERALLY just Gehenna 2, and Archeon is just Gehenna with less evil.

So I think the issue is less symmetry, and more so the planes themselves are really mid.

 

[Aldarc]

That's true, but it is only a flaw because they aren't activated well by the game IMO.

Ideally, each plane should have a number of unique challenges and story seeds that makes it fun to adventure there. The best way to do this is a Radiant Citadel-style anthrology, where the players have to go to different planes to do different things.

But I will say...most of them are completely redundant in terms of description. Everything from Arcadia to Arborea is literally the same idea with small differences like "Oh the Seven Heavens are seven mountains with a FOREST AND RIVER" or "Aborea is a giant forest with MOUNTAINS AND A RIVER" etc etc etc. It honestly feels like there is no difference at all in the Upper Planes. At least the Lower Planes have the Abyss, the Nine Hells, Gehenna...but then Hades is LITERALLY just Gehenna 2, and Archeon is just Gehenna with less evil.

So I think the issue is less symmetry, and more so the planes themselves are really mid.

This is also one reason why I appreciated Eberron's cosmology and the World Axis cosmology. Planes were designed more in terms of their themes. So it was easier to group likes together or even have more interesting mashups. For example, you will find Fire Elementals, Fire Demons, and Fire Devils all on Eberron's plane of Fernia. This meant that there were generally less redundancies.

 

[NotAYakk]

In the setting I'm writing, I'm using basically a 4e basis for the cosmology.

We have the prime material with its echos Shadow and Fey (or is the Prime an echo?). The "near" Astral is called the "Ethereal"; the Astral Plane has at least 5 dimensions of space, and when you approach a plane you are in the Ethereal of that plane. The Fey and Shadow are also nearby the Prime plane in the Astral, so the Ethereal of the 3 overlap (imperfectly).

The elemental chaos is a place, because that is cool, and it lets me have hybrid elemental creatures. The abyss being an pit within the elemental chaos is very evocative, and I love the idea that a shard of pure evil generates the entire abyss.

My alignments are simplified:

Lawful is organization and abstraction over individual connections.
Chaos is individual connections over organization and abstractions.

The Law:Chaos axis is about how much abstract ideals vs personal connection impacts your values.

"I follow the crown, not the king" is a Lawful ethos, while "I follow the king, not the crown" is a Chaotic ethos.

Good is self sacrifice for the benefit of others.
Evil is harming others for your own benefit.

The Good:Evil axis is about how wide you create your in-group, and how much you value the out-group. If your in-group (thing whose benefit you value) is yourself only, that is more evil. If you extend it to your family, or your friends, or your clan, or your people, etc this moves you further towards Good, as does as your "discount factor" for benefit to others in your in-group compared to yourself shrinks.

From this, you can see how a given religion that is any of these alignments could be sensible, and not "I'm a deranged psychopath to believe in this".

...

The outer planes are indeed the places where the Celestials and Gods lived, but my cosmology is post-apocalyptic. The great war against the adversary was fought, and the Gods won a Pyrrhic victory. The adversary was contained, most of the Gods where slain, and the remainder have since died of their injuries. The outer planes are a complete mess; the angels have been slowly going insane for millenia. Asmodeus led refugee angels to the 9 Hells and forged them into Devils in an attempt to survive, preying on the faith of mortals.

The various churches on the prime material plane are fueled by divine relics - pieces of gods and celestials with divine energy in them. They commune (with increasing difficulty) with insane angels left in the outer planes, getting cryptic answers back on their Divinations, as the angels are unable to say "your god is dead". High level PC-type beings with planar travel are nearly non-existent, barring the a lich or similar.

They bless paladins using said relics (which imbues them with a spark of divine energy); the orders of paladins are very selective about who they give such blessings to, as you can't take the spark back short of killing the paladin. There are, naturally, other ways to become a paladin, as there are both lost relics and loose divine energy in the mortal plane that could imbue a person with becoming a paladin (or cleric).

Most divine magic is manipulating said divine relics, or using them to create blessings that ordaned members can then use later; think "can read a divine scroll" as a NPC-priest class ability, and sequestered NPC-monks that spend their days scribing such scrolls as an institution of organized churches. (The ink might be infused with the tears of an idol of their god); "divine magic-tek" becomes efficiently using the known relics power to produce magical effects.

Arcane magic isn't in a much better state. To produce effects like PC spells, NPC mages read scrolls; they have a chance for the scroll to not self-destruct, and it drains them (uses their spell slot) as well as risking the scroll. The scrolls are created by clerks using inks and materials that are magical in nature (harvesting from the world, instead of from divine relics) and each scroll is unique (as the clerk has to win a fight against reality in order to imbue the scroll with the spell).

Pact magic is the other form of magic - making a deal with a spirit or other being. Rangers, Druids and Warlocks all use pact magic. Here, the supernatural being is the one "actually" providing the power. For the Warlock, a shard of power is embedded in their soul; Eldrich Blast is focusing raw soul-energy leaking from the wound. For Rangers and Druids, spells are actually actions done by nature spirits.

Sorcerers are very rare. Bards who can do more than hedge magic (cantrips) are nearly unheard of.

My Artificers are Gadgeteers. All of their "instant" effects are rewritten to be stuff they build and prepare over short rests (even PCs). NPCs usually take even longer to build their gadgets. Making a gadget that a non-artificer can use is a very long process.

PCs are all prodigies; the rules work as written. A PC wizard is like an NPC mage who can actually hold a spell in their head, nearly unheard of, and cast it without a scroll. Similarly for clerics, able to do magic without using divine energy from a relic?

Back to the cosmology, this means that when the PCs get to the outer planes, I'll have to create a horror-show version of them. Insane angels, feral celestial creatures, etc. In theory the PCs can bring along divine energy and rebuild parts of them.

 

[dave2008]

Out of interest, I know some people have already mentioned it, but what cosmology (if any) are people using in their home games?

Mine is similar to 5e with some changes to the positive and negative (which I no longer remember because I don't use them), changes to how Athas and Eberron interact with the cosmos, and I incorporated the Far Realm and the MtG worlds.

However, it is all very behind the current. My players know next to nothing about the cosmology and don't really care or ask. It is just my pet project.

 

[Aldarc]

Out of interest, I know some people have already mentioned it, but what cosmology (if any) are people using in their home games?

If I were running D&D, then I am usually playing either the Nentir Vale or Eberron. So I usually just adopt their respective cosmologies. I don't really run D&D in other official settings or even homebrew settings.