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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5744786" data-attributes="member: 177">There are a bazillion justifications for this particular myth.  That running water is holy stems from Christian belief, as various saints were baptized in running water.  However, vampire myths, and the idea that supernatural evils (the folklore is not limited to vampires) cannot cross running water, predate Christianity.  And, your D&D world probably didn't have Christian saints baptized in its waters, so if we are thinking about justification, we have to look a bit deeper.In a more basic form, running water is (usually) more drinkable, and thus more pure, in general. It is cleansing, and in various belief systems tends to ground or wash away magical energies or impurities.  And the traditional connection to the grave makes a vampire a creature connected to a particular place, and in general rivers and streams have always been seen as natural boundaries of locations.To me, all of this says that it the issue of water is strongly tied to contrasts - water runs through and off an area, a contrast to the static land.  I would normally say those conditions don't exist on the elemental plane - there is no earth to be in contrast to.  And the purity argument an washing away of  magical energies do not seem to hold well for the plane - there are evils aplenty in those bottomless deeps, and the whole bloody place is magical in the human sense of the word.</blockquote>