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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mephista" data-source="post: 6474301" data-attributes="member: 6786252">Umm... the boarder planes and 'echoes' aren't really innovations, are they?   I mean, I seem to recall everything in the DMG about the elemental planes being in previous editions.   The para-elemental planes are now the borders between the major elements.   The elemental chaos came from 4e, but the 5e incarnation is pretty negligible, for reasons dictated below.The inner elemental planes always sounded cool when written down on paper, but they suffered from a single issue that I'm still questioning - why would anyone go here?     You seemed pretty pumped about it.   So, can I ask you what kind of campaigns would you send adventurers on here?    What would you do with the elemental planes in story?   4e merged the elemental planes into the singular elemental chaos in order to make it more accessible to play campaigns in.   They kept the whole 'more like the material world' in large parts, so that's good for playing in - the pre-4e versions were just horrible to run in.   And, truthfully, the new "like material plane" completely and utterly removes the whole point of having an Elemental Chaos.   Probably why it is all but a footnote now. With all due respect, the "traditional" elemental planes were pretty much unplayable, and rarely used.    They were just difficult to play in, and now, with how things work with being more mixed in key areas, its even far more unlikely that anyone will venture into these "pure elemental expression" areas.   There are major cities in each plane where you can meet up with any Elemental Prince - why the cities?  Because near the cities is where most battles between elements are happening, and more likely to have conflict (a major drive of D&D games).    I really feel like the "pure expression" areas were included just because they existed before, and the whole "inclusion" thing meant that they, along with the Elemental Chaos region, were put in for the simple sake of nostalgia. Never seen before 4e.   Like I said before, the Elemental Chaos was the first attempt at creating a more player friendly elemental planes.    For 5e, they took all the playable parts of the Chaos, and moved it into the four elemental planes of the Great Wheel.   I'm not starting an edition war here, but credit should be given where due.   The current model is better than the previous ones, though, taking the best of all of them and merging them together.In a lot of ways, the heavily playable parts of the elemental planes resemble the elemental chaos - we have earth elementals in the Plane of Air, fighting!   The whole elemental conflict is a go in the elemental planes, which is a good thing.    However, because of it?     I really suspect that the previous incarnations of chaos and pure expressions are going to become defunct, very quickly.   All the good stuff, the City of Brass, the Furnaces, the jewels, all of that is near the material plane, and not further out.    The last of the Sundering series, the Elminster one, seems to push the Great Wheel as the dominant theory in the stories.   Seemed to be almost a snub of the nose to the Great Tree and World Axis models, more than anything, but there you go.   The creator of the Forgotten Realms is using the Great Wheel as the default in his books.</blockquote>

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