Elemental Planes Killed

[Gundark]

*checks watch*

Yep the "WotC is ruining D&D with 4e" thread is right on time

 

[Celebrim]

It doesn't have to be searing heat with eyeballs frying and skin boiling and lungs desicating into dust. That just isn't fun to me.

Traditionally, outer planar adventures are seen as a way to physically isolate extremely powerful BBEG's whose presence in the midst of armies of 1st level warriors, and countrysides abounding with 1st level commoners would be problimatic. That way, something powerful enough to challenge a part of 18th level adventurers can exist, without having to explain why it hasn't decimated and/or devoured the entire countryside. It is I think an implicit assumption of the rules that outerplanar adventures don't generally occur until reasonably high level play (in current terms, level 11+) because it is only at high levels that the tools for accessing the other planes become readily available.

So the assumption is that if you enter any of the other planes that you have some supernatural capacity to adapt to their environment. This should certainly be true adventurers that are of high enough level to get there on thier own power.

Interestingly, the Elemental Plane of Air and the Elemental Plane of Water are two of the most accessible and survivable planes for low level adventurers. The first is theoretically survivable by anyone, though in practice you need to fly to actually get anywhere. However, flight is available as a third level spell, and flying mounts are conceivably available at reasonably low levels (purchase of hippogriffs or spider eaters or whatever). The second requires only that you have means to breathe water. Both planes contain inhabitants that are reasonable challenges for low level adventurers, so if you are happy providing low level adventurers with a gate, then you can easily have a door that opens onto an infinite bottomless expanse of air and associated nearby encounter areas.

As for the plane of fire, its alot more hostile (but not in my opinion as hostile as the plane of earth), but if you want it accessible, its theoretically accessible at 1st level if you have an inhabitant of that plane befriend the characters and grant them items that allow adaptation to the place. Fairy stories tend to have friendly fire gnomes who have been saved from freezing by the thoughtful edition of coal to the fire by some kind hearted child, and as a reward are allowed to visit the plane of fire using some magical vestment of some sort and the fire native as the guide. Typically, adventure ensues with the child doing some favor for the fire people that is impossible for them to do themselves (visit someplace cold, underwater, etc.).

 

[FadedC]

I actually find it kind of ironic that some people have used the deep ocean as an example of why not every place should be an adventure location. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I've lost track of how many underwater adventures I have seen. It seems like every campaign usually has exactly one somewhere, and I think I've seen somewhere around a half dozen of them in Living Greyhawk.

I have not however ever seen an adventure in the elemental plane of water. It seems kind of ironic to me that an entire new elemental plane would be a less exciting place to adventure in then simply going under the water of your home plane.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the issue might be about the frequency of such habitable anomalies in an elemental plane. I've only got hazy recollections of the 1e Manual of the Planes to go by, here, but weren't they incredibly rare and isolated? And, for that matter, not granted all that much detail?

I'm reminded of a discussion of the population of the universe in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The narrator notes that the universe is infinite, but has no inhabitants. It arrives at this logic by noting that the average population density of an infinite space is zero, and so it stands to reason that you'd never actually encounter any inhabitants. Obviously, this is a joke, and there is something wrong with the math and the reasoning. However, while it illustrates the conceptual problems of the assumption of infinite space, its also very germane to your point. It doesn't matter how unusual and isolated the pockets, antechambers, gate towns, and border regions are admidst the infinite space. If those are the only regions you visit, then effectively they are common and numerous. Maybe there are infinite voids of fire in out in 'Adventures Don't Normally Happen Here' and 'Middle of Nowhere', but if you spend all your time in the City of Brass then so what?

From a story telling perspective this is similar to the way planets are typically treated in science fiction. Maybe there are vast ergs of sand on Tatooine, but if your characters spend 99% of thier time near a space port, effectively the majority of the (used) planet's surface is the inside of a cantina.

I expect the only real change for the Elemental Planes in 4e will be that the pockets and border regions will play a bigger role.

Which will be no actual change at all, simply sticking a 'New and Improved' sticker on the product while 'fixing' problems that I don't actually have. Of course, part of thier fix will be effectively saying, "Since we discovered that 99% of all adventurers on Tattooine occur in the Mos Eisley cantina, we've decided to make Tattooine the cantina planet and do away with all those useless wastes where no one actually goes. While we are on the subject, we've done away with deep space too. I mean, it's empty, what's the point?"

 

[Stormtalon]

Then you can have the Paraelemental Plane of Top Quarks.

Try visualizing that, mister big DM hotshot man!

Oh crap. Free-association does me in again....

You've now just put the image of Richard Benjamin as a Dom in my head.

*twitch*

(cue a horde of "huh??" responses, as it's REALLY obscure....)

 

[catsclaw227]

Interestingly, the Elemental Plane of Air and the Elemental Plane of Water are two of the most accessible and survivable planes for low level adventurers. The first is theoretically survivable by anyone, though in practice you need to fly to actually get anywhere. However, flight is available as a third level spell, and flying mounts are conceivably available at reasonably low levels (purchase of hippogriffs or spider eaters or whatever).

Though this assumes that the Elemental Plane of Air is filled with Oxygen. Otherwise, we couldn't breathe.

EDIT: And depending upon the temperature, it could be more like the atmosphere of Jupiter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Composition

 

[Aloïsius]

No more elemental planes. Great ! I never knew what to do with them, and did not use them in my cosmology. Elements should be in all the planes anyway.

 

[Celebrim]

Though this assumes that the Elemental Plane of Air is filled with Oxygen. Otherwise, we couldn't breathe.

That assumes that there is such a thing as Oxygen, and the answer to that is rather up in the air when you've only got four elements. Don't assume that you know how things breathe when they come from a universe with only four elements.

EDIT: And depending upon the temperature, it could be more like the atmosphere of Jupiter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Composition

It certainly could be extremely hot. It could also be near absolute zero. But both of those would be 'border regions' near to one elemental plane or the other. Even though the border regions are infinite, they can be considered infinitely smaller than the planes themselves, so the odds of arriving in one by accident are effectively zero. That however is somewhat beside the point. Since the DM is almost always determining the point of arrival, its very easy to assume that the prevailing local conditions at the point of arrival are whatever the DM wants within the broad framework of possibilities allowed by each of the planes. So, for example, the PC's could arrive near a cluster of floating islands of rock connected by a network of tropical vines, even though floating islands of rock are supposed to be extremely rare and the encounter location is effectively unique.

 

[catsclaw227]

That assumes that there is such a thing as Oxygen, and the answer to that is rather up in the air when you've only got four elements. Don't assume that you know how things breathe when they come from a universe with only four elements.

That's a good point. It's important to remember that at some point along the trail we shouldn't mix our fantasy with real-world physics, because that way lies insanity.

 

[Grog]

That is pretty much exactly my point. You can divide DMs into two groups: those that don't set adventures on the elemental plane of fire, and those that do.

This is incorrect. You can actually divide DMs into three groups: Those who don't set adventures on the elemental plane of fire, those who do, and those who would set adventures on the elemental plane of fire if only it were a more interesting place to set adventures (and if only it were a place where most PCs could survive for more than a couple of minutes). For this third group, the way the elemental planes currently are most certainly is a problem, and it's one they avoid by simply ignoring their existence the vast majority of the time.

When I hear them say, "The elemental planes aren't conducive to adventures", what I hear them to mean is, "The elemental planes aren't conducive to adventures in the familiar pattern."

Well, your own inference is just that - your own inference. The fact of the matter is that as things stand now, under the core rules, two of the elemental planes - fire and earth - are not conducive to adventuring in any pattern. On the plane of fire, the party will be taking massive fire damage every single round, and even if they have some way to deal with that, they also can't breathe and will suffocate in a couple of minutes. On the plane of earth,
the party starts out embedded in solid rock, can't move, and can't breathe.

Now, of course DMs could choose to have the PCs appear in more hospitable locations on these planes - but that's just admitting that these planes are useless as adventure locations without DMs making changes to them. Why not make them more open for adventuring from the beginning?

At best, we are going to get new elemental planes that are effectively the same as the old planes but with a 'New and Improved' sticker stamped on them. At worst, we are going to get every plane of existance looks basically like Earth with a slightly different color pallette.

I rather think that there's room for a happy medium between those two extremes.