Elemental Campaign World

[GreatLemur]

Not to sound stupid or anything, but what's #5?

 

[genshou]

Yeah, they're actually a very large part of why I dislike elemental systems. Why would I like something more if I've already seen it used a bunch of times by existing popular entertainment media?

You've a point there. But it still proves my point about the fact that there's still a large fan-base out there for settings revolving around the classic four elements.

The universe most certainly is governed by laws. But you generally won't find in it the sort of simplicity and symmetry presented in elemental systems. The idea of the world being composed of or governed by four clearly-defined and fundamentally-equal forces just doesn't ring true to me.[/QUOTE]
That's because you grew up in the real world–not to mention a world in which there are over a hundred naturally occurring elements. D&D has another set of four fundamentally-equal (but not so clearly-defined) forces in the form of alignments. If Good exists in the world and can even affect my spells (or be created physically if we're talking Elements of Magic), why not have four elements? Things can still be complex; I mean they'd have to be if the world follows the same basic non-magical laws as our world does.

 

[DamionW]

Captain Planet is way too homo-erotic to include in my campaign world. Yeah he's elemental, but no thanks.

 

[Spatzimaus]

But what do you make the combinations of the other elements become? I'm especially looking at Earth+Air, which is a combination that has always stumped me.

D&D already covered this with the paraelemental and quasielemental planes:
Paraelementals are what you get when you cross two elements: Smoke (A+F), Magma (F+E), Ooze (E+W), and Ice (W+A).
Quasielementals are the cross between elements and the Positive and Negative energy planes:
Lightning (A+P), Mineral (E+P), Radiance (F+P), Steam (W+P), Vacuum (A+N), Dust (E+N), Ash (F+N), and Salt (W+N).

Note that there aren't any planes for combining opposing elements. So no Fire+Water (which is what Steam should be), Earth+Air (which is what Dust should be), or Positive+Negative.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Why would I like something more if I've already seen it used a bunch of times by existing popular entertainment media?

Because thanks to all those people that have thought about and refined the system over the years, elemental systems tend to come across as more internally consistent and less haphazard than any others I've seen. As I said earlier, my biggest complaints with D&D's current system are that it structures a lot around the abstract "alignment" system, and then slaps on a bunch of spells that just sound neat. It's not well-structured, it's not internally consistent, and it just comes across as artificial. By "artificial", I mean that it leads to metagaming, where in-character decisions are made purely on the basis of the game mechanics. A low-level player knows that the first element he needs to protect himself from is fire, and then lightning, and then cold. Not because there's any conceptual reason for them to go in this order, but simply because the core rules list only a small number of spells, and that's the order they go in.

The way around this is to make a more free-form system, so that you can have the full variety of spells without prohibitively long lists.
For instance, IMC we changed metamagic to be more of an on-the-fly thing, and casters were slowly given a series of free metaforms. Among those were the Shaping metaforms, which change any spell into a different area of effect. So, you could turn a simple ray spell into a line, a ball, a burst, a cone, a series of smaller rays, etc. This meant that all we had to do was create one generic ray spell for each damage type, and let the players do the rest.
Then, we made most spells into "level X" spells. That is, if you memorize it in a level X slot, it has a certain amount of power. For instance, the cure wounds analogue might heal Xd8+level (max 5*X). Suddenly, with one "spell" you've replaced almost all of the healing spells in the PHB, and combined with the Shaping rules I mentioned, you're actually more flexible than before.

Now, I believe this sort of change is a major improvement to the system. But it really leaves you with two obvious options:
1> Restructure the system such that each "school" of magic has a similar number of these. For this, elementalism becomes the obvious choice, since each school would have a single damage type (and therefore a single core attack spell).
2> Go with something closer to the D&D Psionics rules: little or no elemental ability at all, and the few powers that do use it (the 3.5E Energy Bolt, Energy Ball, etc.) allow you to choose the element at the moment of casting, and so aren't fundamentally tied to the elements.

Both work well, IMO. But the middle-ground that D&D Wizards use just grates on me.

The idea of the world being composed of or governed by four clearly-defined and fundamentally-equal forces just doesn't ring true to me.

Electromagnetism. Gravity. Strong Nuclear. Weak Nuclear.
Our world IS governed by four clearly-defined forces. As for how equal they are? Each is most powerful in a different set of circumstances; no one of the four could be removed without the whole thing falling apart. Of course, they're all fundamentally linked (see also: Grand Unified Theory).

Of course, the four elements I prefer:
Duct Tape, to bind everything together.
WD-40, to allow movement.
Play-doh, to give it form, and
Caffeine, to give it purpose.

 

[DamionW]

D&D already covered this with the paraelemental and quasielemental planes:
Paraelementals are what you get when you cross two elements: Smoke (A+F), Magma (F+E), Ooze (E+W), and Ice (W+A).
Quasielementals are the cross between elements and the Positive and Negative energy planes:
Lightning (A+P), Mineral (E+P), Radiance (F+P), Steam (W+P), Vacuum (A+N), Dust (E+N), Ash (F+N), and Salt (W+N).

Note that there aren't any planes for combining opposing elements. So no Fire+Water (which is what Steam should be), Earth+Air (which is what Dust should be), or Positive+Negative.

I've just always had some problems with the RAW layout of elements. It's a good starting point, but it needs changes. Maybe a cross between it and EoM, or some such. Here's my nominations

6 Basic: Air, Fire, Earth, Water, Positive, Negative
4 Paraelements: A+W=Rain, W+E=Mud, E+F=Magma, F+A=Smoke
8 Quasielements: A+P=Lightning, A+N=Vacuum, W+P=Oil, W+N=Acid, E+P=Mineral/Metal, E+N=Salt, F+P=Radiance/Light, F+N=Ash
3 Diaelements: F+W=Steam, E+A=Dust, P+N=Time

The only one that really gives me pause is the water plus Positive, because steam makes sense, but It makes more sense to me as Fire and Water combined. I picked something, like oil because you're taking a liquid and infusing it with power, so that might be oil, but I could get something better I think. Just need to think of it. Maybe Fog or vapor, but then you get into the A+W range. Or else you could put Acid as A+P and ice as A+N. Just not sure. Everything else is less problematic as I see it by those descriptions.

Of course, the four elements I prefer:
Duct Tape, to bind everything together.
WD-40, to allow movement.
Play-doh, to give it form, and
Caffeine, to give it purpose.

Amen.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The only one that really gives me pause is the water plus Positive, because steam makes sense, but It makes more sense to me as Fire and Water combined. I picked something, like oil because you're taking a liquid and infusing it with power, so that might be oil, but I could get something better I think.

Well, IMC with Life/Death replacing Positive/Negative (no real change), we had a similar discussion. We don't do paraelemental planes or anything, but there are aspects of magic that try to mix adjacent elements. Note that we use basically a modern setting:

Fire+Death would be Radioactivity. Water+Death would be Acid. Air+Death would be Poison. Earth+Death would be Coal/Oil/gasoline.
(Several people argued F+D=Gasoline and E+D=Radioactivity, but we ended up going with this way.)

But really, we don't have a Plane of Acid or anything, because that'd just be silly; these mixes are purely for Alchemy, prestige classes, or certain spells. As it is, D&D seems to me to have written itself into a hole by adding all these quasi/para planes, plus the 17-18 aligned planes; with so many planes to travel to, smart players could ALWAYS find one specializing in whatever you want, and it's just too many things to keep track of. That's why we limited it to six basic planes in our world.

 

[genshou]

Of course, the four elements I prefer:
Duct Tape, to bind everything together.
WD-40, to allow movement.
Play-doh, to give it form, and
Caffeine, to give it purpose.

Very good! But replace caffeine with root beer, to give it life.

 

[jaker2003]

this might be off topic, but my homebrew is revolving around this . . .

Where do I find a template to turn an elemental into an outsider without giving up it's elemental traits or neutrality?

 

[Spatzimaus]

In the core D&D, elementals are already pseudo-outsiders, with almost all of the same basic rules. So what exactly do you want this template for, and how are you justifying giving bonuses for extraplanar origin to races that already HAVE bonuses for extraplanar origins? Especially if you don't want them becoming aligned...

The rules already allow you to put the Half-Celestial/etc. type templates onto an elemental. You can't put the Celestial template on them, so you could always take the Celestial/Fiendish/Axiomatic/Anarchic templates, and just replace the alignment-specific aspects with something else. Elementals are like Humans for alignment; not inherently neutral, just "usually neutral" and without a [Good] or [Evil] tag.