Element Ideas

[reanjr]

I need some ideas on Elements

I am revising the D&D Elemental system to include the opposing elements of Metal and Wood. I have come up with many of the relationships between the six elements but am stuck on two of them.

If you treat the Elements as a circle, Wood would come between Air and Water, while Metal comes between Fire and Earth.

Opposing relationships
Fire - Water: Destructive opposites
Earth - Air: Exclusive opposites (they do not mix, but neither do they destroy one another)
Wood - Metal: Ideological opposites (nature and industry)

Consumption relationships
Fire feeds Metal (the fire is consumed and makes the metal red and hot)
Water feeds Wood
Fire consumes Wood
Water consumes Metal (rust; I know it's not quite correct, but it sounds good)

Unnamed relationships
Metal comes from the Earth
Wood comes from the Earth (in that it grows from it)
Metal ___ Air
Wood ___ Air

As you can see, I need an analagous relationship of Metal to Air and Wood to Air. Any ideas? (feel free to change the Metal-Earth and Wood-Earth relationships to fit)

Or if you think Wood and Metal should go elsewhere or you can come up with entirely new relationships I haven't thought of.

 

[Terwox]

Well, you can use the fact that plants breath CO2 in there somewhere. Air feeds wood, in that view. Or wood feeds air -- trees give off oxygen from breathing, etc. They feed each other? Dunno.
Metal and air is stumping me, though.

 

[Nifft]

Take a peek at my cosmography. It's got more elements than yours, but also incorporates those two (... if you conflate "ash" and "metal").

http://fishnet.cx/~josh/DnD/DHE/planes.shtml

The relation is:

Water -> Wood -> Fire -> Ash (metal) -> Ooze -> Water

In this cosmography, Metal is the child of Fire, which somewhat emulates how it is forged.

-- N

 

[RangerWickett]

In the Elements of Magic spell system, there are 22 elements, arranged something like a globe.

You have the six cardinal elements.

• North Pole - Life
• South - Death
• Equator - Air, Fire, Earth, Water

Air opposes Earth, Fire opposes Water, Life opposes Death.

Then you can combine any two non-opposed cardinal elements to create a new element.

The 'positive' elements (equator plus Life) are:

• Air - Sound
• Fire - Light
• Earth - Crystal
• Water - Ice

The 'negative' elements (equator plus Death) are:

• Air - Void
• Fire - Shadow
• Earth - Metal
• Water - Acid

The para-elements (combining two equator elements) are:

• Air and Fire - Lightning
• Fire and Earth - Lava
• Earth and Water - Ooze
• Water and Air - Mist

Then there are the Unifying Elements, those that exist as a part of everything, underlying existence.

• Force (pure energy)
• Nature (solid matter)
• Space
• Time

I also briefly considered adding Alcohol as a combination of fire and water, but I scrapped that.

 

[Arkhandus]

The standard D&D cosmology has the planes of Positive Energy and Negative Energy as Inner Planes alongside the elemental planes. So make PE one of the elements of your system, between earth and water (the life-bringing aspects of them), related to wood and air somehow in that 'unnamed relationship', while putting NE between fire and air (the more destructive aspects of them), related to metal and air somehow in that 'unnamed relationship'.