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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 2588252" data-attributes="member: 3051">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.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.</blockquote>

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