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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6758752" data-attributes="member: 6777454">If you are going to go 5 elements, you kind of have to go with the traditional set up. Anything else is going to feel arbitrary and not remotely balanced. If you randomly said "Our elements are lightning, ice, lava, fog and dark", its just not going to feel right.Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Wood - those are recognized cross-culturally as a traditional 5 element set up. It is arguably no less arbitrary, but because people are familiar with it, it feels less so.The first issue you have is that they are too nebulous for the D&D Cleric system. You are going to want to nail down generally what general aspect each one is. Perhaps Water is the "Tempest" Domain, Fire is the "War" domain, Wood is the "Nature" domain, Earth is the "Life" domain and Air is the "Knowledge" domain with Light and Trickery being left out. But that is perfectly arbitrary and you could probably scramble them if you wanted.The next thing you need to consider is the fact that you are putting together a deity system where, on its face, it is clear that none of them can exist without the others. Even if you have priests devoted singularly to one or another, do most people really wholly dedicate themselves to a single deity or is this a system where which one you are going to pay tribute to entirely depends on what is going on in your life? When there are storms or a lack of rain, you pray to the Water one, when you are going to go to war or enter a sports math you pray to the Fire one, when people are injured or sick you pray to the Earth one, when you are going to be tested or need guidance or want your fortune told you pray to the Air one, when you take from the wild or get lost in the woods or want a good harvest you pray to the Wood one.... The way D&D handles deities, the idea that people would be more or less equally respectful and devoted to each one is something quite different from the expectation-- but in a system like this it seems like the inevitable conclusion.Also, you might want to consider if your deities have natural alignments. It would be weird to declare the Fire deity "Chaotic Evil" and the Wood deity "Lawful Good" since fire is something that the peoples of the world would be highly reliant on regardless of their society's alignment. It might be best for them all to be "Neutral" and for all 5 to have both good and evil aspects with their wicked priests and devotees (again, presuming anyone is wholly devoted to any one of them) displaying their more evil aspects and their good ones displaying more of their good aspects.The next thing to consider is where the peoples and monsters of the world come from. With this set up it is easy to see where the elementals come from (and treants and such would likely be considered elementals now under this system), but what about things like Owl Bears, Displacer Beasts, Rust Monsters, Zombies, Oozes, etc. I suppose the different colored Dragons could be representative of each of the 5 Gods (Red is fire, blue is water, green is wood, black is earth and white is air) so they could be said to be divided by devotion to a singular deity and Giants could be said to be the same way.Some things could be the result of demonic corruption-- perhaps undead fall under that category.But then you have your peoples of the world. Aarakcocra, Bullywugs, Cyclops, Centaurs, Dopplegangers, Dragonborn, Dwarfs, Elfs, Ettin, Fomorians, Gith, Grell, Gnolls, Gnomes, Goliaths, Grimlock, Halflings, Hags, Harpy, Humans, Githyanki, Goblinoids, Kenku, Kobolds, Kuo-toa, Lamia, Lizardfolk, Medusa, Merfolk, Merrow, Mindflayers, Minotaurs, Myconids, Ogres, Orcs, Pixies, Rakshasa, Sahuagin, Satyrs, Sprite, Thri-kreen, Troglodytes, Trolls, Yuan-tiI list them all out to get across that there are a crazy ton of intelligent creature species to have to sort out. Even after you decide which ones are even going to exist in your world, you kind of need to know generally where they come from and how they relate to one another. If you randomly just say "The Earth Deity created the Dwarfs", it won't quite feel right because even if the Dwarfs seem more tilted towards Earth and Fire than the others, they absolutely have all 5 aspects in them. In fact, all of them are going to embody the spirit of all 5 elements regardless, they might just be closer to some than others. Some of them you could explain as the result of demon meddling, but the world would probably be more interesting if most of the bad guys are worshipping the same gods as the good guys but just have different ideas on how to express their devotion.</blockquote>

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