Am I the only one who does not like the Great Wheel?

[the Jester]

And there's no reason we can't take a step beyond that. What about simply receiving your power through Faith. Not faith in a specific god, but simply the inherent power of having Faith.

Actually, in 1e, clerics got 1st and 2nd level spells through the power of their faith alone.

 

[Henry]

Actually, in 1e, clerics got 1st and 2nd level spells through the power of their faith alone.

In my homebrew world, I still use that; there are tons of low-level "fringe" clerics worshipping gods of bottle-washing or dung beetles or philosophy who are still getting 1st-3rd level spells due to faith alone; clerics of demi-gods are getting up to 6th level spells; and clerics of true gods (lesser and greater) are getting full 9th level spells. In fact, convince enough people to take away worshippers, and these gods start actually manifesting.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Actually, in 1e, clerics got 1st and 2nd level spells through the power of their faith alone.

Really? That's kind of cool. Never played 1e, obviously. Never personally owned a book until 3e, actually.

 

[Nifft]

In fact, convince enough people to take away worshippers, and these gods start actually manifesting.

"Divine Blessing for here, or to go?"
"To go, please. And gimme extra ketchup!"

I think you meant something else, but I can't figure out what... gods come out to play if you ignore them too much?

-- N

 

[Orius]

I've always been fascinated by the concept of the planes ever since I saw a diagram of the Outer Planes in the back of what I think was the 1e DMG. I use the older version of the Wheel as a basis, that is, the Wheel with the paraelemental and quasielemental planes, and an Ethereal Planes with a Deep Ethereal which connects only the Material and Inner planes. On top of that, I add Planes from MotP which I find interesting, so there's also a Plane of Time, the Dreamscape, the Plane of Faerie, the Spirit World, and the Far Realm. Clunky? Yeah, but so what?

If i were to change anything, it would only be the configuration of the Outer Planes.

 

[diaglo]

Actually, in 1e, clerics got 1st and 2nd level spells through the power of their faith alone.

and they spoke to lesser beings for mid levels. not until they were higher level did they get their deity's ear so to speak.

there was a really good article in Dragon Magazine about converting the masses from around 1983 or 84...that had some cool ideas on running a more religious based campaign.

 

[ichabod]

I like planes, but I'm not into the Great Wheel either. I always wanted something more fluid. I use a variant of the Orrery cosmology from MotP. Each season has a different elemental plane ascendent, and different one descendent. As the elemental planes orbit the material plane, so do the nine aspect planes (for the alignments) orbit the elemental planes. Then there are outer planes that orbit the aspect planes. There are four transitive planes connecting all of this: astral, ethereal, dream, and shadow. All this orbiting affects planar travel. Say the Jungle of Delights is orbiting the Plane of Water. If it's summer, Water is descendent. If the jungle is also descendent, it is unreachable from the material plane. However, at certain times planes can become contiguous, which means you can travel to them without even using magic. It's dangerous to swim in the middle of the winter, because you might accidentally swim into the Plane of Water and not be able to find your way back. All of these orbits also affect magic, so that fire spells are more powerful in the summer.

Anyway, this was a bit too complicated to deal with while finishing up my masters at the same time, so it didn't come together in my current campaign. I'm working on simplifying the mechanics without removing the ideas for when I reboot after I move. But it's all world specific in that it works well with the backstory. I have an old GURPS world that I want to redo in D&D, and that would only have the ethereal and dream planes, which wouldn't be seperate planes so much as different perspectives on this one.

 

[Orius]

Re the Inner Planes - I preferred previous edition's more complex approach, with Elemental & Energy planes shading into each other, so you get the Plane of Dust, Plane of Minerals, Para-Elemental Plane of Ice, and such. To me, those are fun and inspiring.

What I don't like is the Great Wheel denoting say Asgard/Gladsheim as the CN(G) plane, or the Happy Hunting Grounds as the NG(C) plane, and so on. It may suit a Gygaxian need to jam everything into a single rigid alignment-based classification system, but it does a horrible job of evoking actual mythology or any sense of wonder.

While I don't dislike the standard Outer Planes, they are one of the few things I would change, since they're really the hardest part of the planes to shoehorn into a campaign. Since they really involve the campaign's cosmology, it often makes sense to retool them. I've been thinking about doing my own Outer Planes setup for my campaign, though when set up my campaign's cosmology to begin with, I took the standard Outer Planes into account.

Regardless of what I do, the Inner Planes, and I mean the Inner planes as they were meant to be, are still in.

 

[Emiricol]

Am I the only one who does not like the Great Wheel? It seems like almost everybody uses it, even in their hombrew worlds. While I do not like the idea of planes, besides the PMP at all. The planes just seem so dull, and political. I might have an alternate world in my homebrew world, but it is not a plane. So, who else does not like the planes?

I like it, but when we made The 13 Kingdoms setting, it was just clearly not appropriate for the cosmology. So we did a cosmology from scratch that fit our setting.

I wouldn't have any problems using the Wheel if it fit the setting.

 

[Ackem]

So there's no spell-casting clerics in your world, then?

Correct. No RaiseDead/Reincarnate nor any divide between Arcane/Divine magic.

Many of the higher-up casters in various Churches claim to recieve their power from the deity but that's just postering for the peasants. I find that Religion gets way more interesting when most of the Churches are scheming nest of intrigue, corruption, and every possible alignment. Which you can't have with existant Divine magic and interventionist gods.