D&D 5E (2024) For a setting that emphasizes the five power sources

[Yaarel]

MODAL THEMES OF POWER SOURCES

Psionic Themes			Arcane Themes			Primal Themes		Divine Themes
PSION	BARD	SORCERER	WARLOCK	WIZARD	ARTIFICER	RANGER	DRUID	CLERIC	PALADIN
SPACETIME	SPACETIME	SPACETIME	.	Spacetime	.	Spacetime	Spacetime	Spacetime	Spacetime
MIND	MIND	MIND	Mind	.	.	.	.	.	Mind
Fear	Fear	.	Fear	.	.	.	.	.	Fear
.	Illusion	Illusion	ILLUSION	ILLUSION	ILLUSION	Illusion	.	.	.
Ethereal	.	.	ETHEREAL	ETHEREAL	ETHEREAL	Ethereal	.	.	.
.	.	Fire	.	Fire	Fire	.	Fire	Fire	Fire
.	.	Elemental	.	Elemental	Elemental	ELEMENTAL	ELEMENTAL	Elemental	.
Fey	Fey	.	Fey	.	Fey	FEY	FEY	.	.
.	.	.	.	.	.	.	Shadow	Shadow	.
Healing	Healing	.	.	.	Healing	Healing	Healing	HEALING	HEALING
.	.	Astral	Astral	Astral	.	.	.	ASTRAL	ASTRAL

Looking at the themes -- the central narrative tropes of the official classes -- can identify the niches that still have thematic room for new class concepts.

It seems worthwhile to create a Necromancer class. Its six salient themes are: Spacetime, Fear, Illusion, Ethereal, Shadow, and Astral. It works out to be an Arcane class as it shares the Illusion-Ethereal thematic pair with the other arcane classes.

. Spacetime. The original meaning of necromancy, being seances to consult the dead of the collective grave of the underworld. But it extends to include the remote presence of haunted objects, places, and people, and even teleportation traveling immaterially at the speed of thought.

. Fear. The otherworldly spookiness and sometimes the echoing trauma of a death or an unfinished life, can frighten the living, and even induce subjective hallucinatory phantasms.

. Illusion. Ghosts sometimes manifest lifelike apparitions of themselves personally or of experiences they had during life.

. Ethereal. The soul comprises various levels, ranging from transcendent cosmic to the lifeforce of a particular body. The spirit of a soul is made out of ether. It is the soul of an artist or a mage relating to selfidentity, that can grow, evolve, and influence the world. It can be a telekinetic force. This spirit of a person can disembody and travel the Border Ethereal. It is an immaterial force. A strong mind can even manipulate matter and manifest poltergeist activity. Ghosts travel outofbody from their underworld location, being partial shadows of their former lives.

. Shadow. Of course, the Necromancer masters the magic of the underworld, death, and the necrosis of corpses.

. Astral. There is interest in the levels of the soul elsewhere, including the afterlives beyond the spacetime fabric and among the realm of ideals. However, the Necromancer lacks the Healing theme of resurrection and restoration. The lifeforce of necromancy is vampiric theft and its immortality is Undead.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

If one views an Artificer as sculpting inorganic matter into constructs, it could be argued that a Necromancer sculpts organic matter into constructs. (Animate Dead, Create Undead...)
-Elemental (body?) instead of Illusion?

There is some ambiguity between shadow/illusion vs. shadow/undead (& the dead) to be wary of.

Playing with the ancient Egyptian concept that everyone has five bodies (which I've interpereted as physical, magical, spiritual, reflection and shadow)...
A creature (intelligent or otherwise) that is missing one or more of its' bodies is exhibiting symptoms of undeath*.

So there is the contrast of a mundane shadow cast by light, a spirit of the dead (shades & the ancient Greek underworld), and the undead shadows of D&D...


*characters slain by a shadow (undead) and later raised from the dead, cast no shadow (mundane) until they...kill their own undead shadow.

 

[Yaarel]

When looking at the prevailing themes of each class, I am leaning toward Necromancer meriting its own separate base class.

The Cleric has necromancy especially turning Undead, but its Healing and Celestial Fire aspects feel incongruous and distract from the necromantic concept. Meanwhile the all-over-the-place-ness of the Wizard gets in the way, and prevents the class design space that is necessary to articulate the features for solid necromancy flavor. So, the Necromancer class steals all of the Wizard Necromancy flavor and traditions from earlier editions, leaving the Wizard none of it. The sculpting away of what the Wizard can do actually polishes what the Wizard class is making it more vividly flavorful with a tighter concept. Meanwhile it is fine if the Cleric continues its dabbling into necromancy.

If one views an Artificer as sculpting inorganic matter into constructs, it could be argued that a Necromancer sculpts organic matter into constructs. (Animate Dead, Create Undead...)
-Elemental (body?) instead of Illusion?

I view the Artificer (alchemy, elementalism, daoism) as too life oriented. Even when doing "alchemistry" the Artificer is adding the attention of ones own conscious soul as the "ethereal" "quintessential" ingredient to catalyze the formulas. Appropriately, the Alchemist involves Healing magic to keep a living body alive, even immortally.

There is some ambiguity between shadow/illusion vs. shadow/undead (& the dead) to be wary of.

4e merged the Illusion Shadow Plane and the Ethereal Plane into a remix forming Feywild and Shadowfell instead. Both Fey and Shadow strongly associate with Illusion magic. 5e 2014 kept Fey and Shadow but returned Ethereal. 5e 2024 made Feywild and Shadow strictly material, nonethereal. But the prevalence of Illusion magic seems to remain.

Since 2024, I view the Ethereal Plane as a bridge between the Material and the Feywild-or-Shadowfell. So depending on the "energy frequency" of the ether, one might be in the Border Ethereal of the positive Feywild, of the mixed Material Plane, or of the negative Shadowfell.

Thus the souls of Fey creatures can travel outofbody thru the Ethereal Plane, and likewise the souls of Shadow. The Shadow Ghosts are these disembodied minds that bring with them the Negative void that pervades the Shadowfell.

Illusion magic itself impresses a mental visualization into the physical but immaterial force of ether. The techniques can involve ones own personal soul (psionic, primal) or impersonal weave (arcane, divine). The four elements of matter are all made out of ether (like atoms are made out of forces). And the Astral thoughtstuff can emanate force. So ether and Illususion magic can happen effectively anywhere in the universe.

Playing with the ancient Egyptian concept that everyone has five bodies (which I've interpereted as physical, magical, spiritual, reflection and shadow)...
A creature (intelligent or otherwise) that is missing one or more of its' bodies is exhibiting symptoms of undeath*.

Huh. If these different parts of ones own soul arent in tune with each other, there is a sense of restlessness.

So there is the contrast of a mundane shadow cast by light, a spirit of the dead (shades & the ancient Greek underworld), and the undead shadows of D&D...

A view the Greek-Egyptian-etcetera underworld of the dead as literally underground in the sense of a collective grave, where the souls of the corpses can interact with each other in lifelike ways. Hence there is an upsidedown mirror image of the living world.

In many cultures (including Greek and Egyptian), the underworld includes both painful regions of punishment and pleasureful regions of reward. For D&D, these are the Shadowfell and Feywild respectively. Note, for these cultures, the Fey is conceptually underground, inside caves and mounds, or so on.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

Huh. If these different parts of ones own soul arent in tune with each other, there is a sense of restlessness.

Edited to not run afoul of Eric'c Grandma:

 

[Yaarel]

A vampire is a ghost whose mind is strong enough to psychokinetically self-animate ones own corpse. For the corpse to present a semblance of life, it must siphon lifeforce from actual living bodies. Most vampires have corpses that continue to resemble the moment of death, albeit sometimes an idealized version of it.


For a playable vampire concept:

Take levels and options in the suggested Necromancer base class, to represent the various tropes of the versions of vampires.



Vampirism is a curse, not a benefit. Drinking blood doesnt grant superpowers: it merely disguises the corpse.

A vampire must take the lifeforce from a living creature every night. If it fails to do so, its body starts to revert to a rotting or desiccated corpse.

Mechanically, the vampire must take lifeforce from a living creature during each night, by drinking its blood, or else cannot gain the benefits of a Long Rest. Additionally, at each sunrise (or comparable period of time), the hungering vampire suffers an additional level of Exhaustion, and is destroyed if reaching level 6. The vampire can transfer these levels of Exhaustion to a living creature by drinking its blood. If the donor of the lifeforce is dead, then the blood is ineffective, even if extracted while the donor was alive, and the vampire can sense if the blood remains living or not. The lifeforce donor can be away from its blood at any distance and in any plane. During the drink the donor must be either voluntary or Unconscious, and afterward while suffering Exhaustion is Charmed by and shares Telepathy with the vampire.

An already Exhausted donor that dies from reaching level 6 during a transfer from a vampire, reanimates at sunset as a new vampire with 1 level of Exhaustion and inability to Long-Rest, until drinking living blood.

For both the vampire and the donor the levels of Exhaustion cause the body to appear more and more corpselike.

During a Long Rest, the vampire is dead, but appears as if dying that night. Treat the vampire as Unconscious, except the ghost of the vampire is Aware of surroundings, and the corpse cannot reanimate until the completion of the Long Rest, typically at sunset.

 

[Yaarel]

A Norse setting translates oddly into 5e, relating obliquely to both Giant and Fey, Material and Ethereal.

On the one hand, "jǫtunn" often connotes "giant" because some are the larger presences of mountains, but really means any wild nature being of any size.

On the other hand, the term "troll" that is generally synonymous literally means "mage", enchanter. It appears to be a loan translation of English "fairie" that likewise literally means "magic", a creature of magic. While there is some semantic shift, the concept of troll generally derives from the beautiful "cliff giant" berg-risi that inhabits the appealing and animistically sacred aspects of mountains.

An other generally synonymous term is "huldufólk", the "hidden community", where this "unseenness" hulda refers to the presence of minds whose bodies are elsewhere -- or in this case whose mountains, lakes, etcetera are elsewhere but exerting mindful influence.

To represent all these Norse concepts in 5e 2024, everything is the natural features of the Material Plane: mountains, lakes, etcetera. Yet the magical presences and influences relate to the Border Ethereal that overlaps -- observes and influences -- the Material Planes.


All nature beings including Humans can learn the same kinds of magic. Some individuals have more talent, a more powerful visualization (ham-ramr) than others. It is often the case that a nonhuman nature "being" (vættr) is a mentor, who teaches a Human how to do magic, and often while the Human enters a magical trance to encounter the being outofbody. The forceful presences are all around but "unseen" from the perspective of the Material Plane. But enter the Ethereal Plane and one can see them everywhere. These ethereally "hidden" nature beings project out from their individual natural features, socializing with other natural features, and occasionally traveling great distances away remote from their Material locations.


The natural features are Elemental, such as a particular earthy mountain, or a specific watery waterfall. These kinds of animistic elementals are natives of the Material Plane. And each is a unique individual, an identifiable formation somewhere in nature. These features can project their influences, and the magically powerful sometimes even manifest as a humanlike apparition or an animallike apparition. Nature can use the same shamanic techniques to travel outofbody that Human shamanics and other mages can. They project into the Border Ethereal and populate it, while observing plainly the goings-on in the Material Plane. These magically talented nature beings (including some Humans) can roam ethereally while wielding magic.

A "giant" is the influential presence of an individual mountain. The mind of this mountain magically projects and can form a humanlike visualization within the Ethereal Plane. This humanlike ethereal form is sometimes as Huge as a mountain, but usually these mountanous inhabitants manifest forms of humanlike sizes. The ether is physical but immaterial like gravity. The ethereal forces are usually subtle and unnoticeable unless personally exerting magical strength. Any of these ethereal presences can manifest physically within the Material Plane if their magic is strong is enough.

The D&D Giant creature type can specifically mean an Elemental that is native to the Material Plane and projecting from the Material Plane into the overlapping Border Ethereal. These ethereal Giants can manifest from the Ethereal into the Material, seemingly outofnowhere as wondrous apparitions of nature that vanish again back into the ether.

In a Norse setting all Giants are mages, by definition, because they are manifesting by means of magic. Typically these Giants know other kinds of magic as well.

The nature beings that source from the elements of nature are often D&D Sorcerers. The beings are necessarily mages, which is how an apparently inert natural formation somewhere in nature is exerting personal presence and influence in the first place. This personal magic is Psionic, as the natural feature is a kind of person, a mindful soul. Humans can form personal relationships with environmental nature all around. And this magic of nature is innately Elemental, correlating the earthy, watery, stormy, and solar fiery aspects of D&D sorcery. Not all beings are the Sorcerer class, but it has affinity and often happens. Notably, these animistic Sorcerers are typically non-Human species. Occasionally, Humans also learn how to do this Elemental kind of magic.

I detail Feywild and Shadowfell for this setting in a future post.

Here emphasizes the centrality of Material Plane. Its physical features are a kind of persons. These Material natural "beings" (vættir) exhibit minds and exert personal magical influence via the Border Ethereal that overlaps the Material Plane. These forms within the ether can see matter plainly and if the magic is strong enough can interact physically with it. However the beings in the Ethereal Plane are "hidden" from persons in the Material plane. Unless, the Material person is also a mage with some form of "paranormal" vision (ófreski), such as Truesight. All animistic beings including Human and nonhuman can learn and wield the same kinds of magic.

 

[Yaarel]

In D&D 2024, each of the power sources correlates most strongly with two themes. Each of these thematic pairs correlates certain multiversal planes.

Primal: Elemental, Fey.
Feywild, [Shadowfell], Elemental Planes.

Divine: Healing, Astral.
Astral Plane, Celestial, Fiend, Aberration.

Arcane: Illusion, Ethereal.
Ethereal Plane.

Psionic: Spacetime, Mind.
Personal soul (entangling all multiverse)

Martial: Body, Toolset.
Personal body (building technologies).



Perhaps, the Primal power source especially involves the planar energies of Elemental, Fey, and Shadow, albeit in an animistic way involving the Material Plane. Some areas of the Material world are more rawly elemental, some are vibrant and full of lifeforms (Fey), and some are gloomy and unraveling (Shadow).

Divine magic obviously relates to the Astral Plane and its realms of concepts and symbols.

Arcane is force magic and objective constructs made out of force, involving the quintessential ether of the Ethereal Plane, especially as it entangles the Material Plane.

Possibly, Necromancy could be its own power source. If so, its thematic pair is Fear and Shadow, and its plane is Shadowfell. But I am comfortable with necromancy being the dark side of all the power sources: undead bodies, frightened minds, emptiness, deathliness, destructive patterns. In this sense, the Shadowfell is an aspect of the Material Plane, opposite the Feywild, and an aspect of an animistic afterlife -- whence relating to the Primal power source.

The Material Plane is the confluence of every multiversal plane -- an empty nothingness of space that these other planes can fill.

 

[NotAYakk]

I might be tempted to start with rubber meets road and work out how power sources interact after that. What do I want class X to feel like, regardless of its lore?

How do I want Warlocks to feel? That should tie to their power source.

And what are the Fey?

The Arcane/Divine/Primal/Psionic/Martial divide doesn't handle Fey and Shadow very well. In 4e, the Shadow power source was an extra hybrid one; what if the same is true of Fey? And we could even extend this. It also misses Elemental, which feels like it should be a thing?

I like doing combinatorics, especially with broken symmetry. Can we handle that via combinatorics? Split the "secondary" stuff off somehow? Fuel vs Method?

Like, maybe Fey/Shadow/Elemental are fuel?

...

Another thought is cosmology. In at least one game, they did some fun stuff with souls. Souls where something you could interact with, and they had basically magical energy in them. The various power sources could intertact with this soul-energy differently.

Psionic would harness, strengthen, consume and focus your own soul energy. How do we distinguish this from Martial? I guess the big difference is if you project your soul energy outside your body? Or maybe it is if you learn how to move your soul energy around. A Martial "simply" strengthens their soul-body connection to make themselves superhuman; a Psionic learns how to manipulate their own soul energy through direct practice focusing on it. Like, Psionic disciplines involve projecting your soul into the Ethereal, forming the will, then imposing it on reality; Martial techniques keep the soul and body moving as one.

Primal would interact with free spirits and make bargains with them. These spirits are everywhere. Sometimes they might require a bit of your soul, but often they just require tokens of respect and consideration in exchange for a favour. As your reputation grows as a wise guide of what needs to be done, it is more likely a spirit will help you at larger tasks "on credit".

Divine might use the soul energies of the dead believers/heavenly chorus? Or maybe divine beings have an insane amount of this energy, and you borrow some of it? The idea of using the heavenly chorus is neat; every believer adds to the sum total of what can be done. This separates the divine power source from the divinities themselves, which opens up the "replace a god" storyline if need be, and makes it so that gods can exist without worshippers; while the divine magic of followers of gods comes from other followers, the divine magic of a god is closer to Psionic (except on an insane scale).

That leads me to the idea of grand unification; at a high enough scale, all power sources are the same thing. Only at limited mortal scales do they differ.

Arcane... I sort of like the idea that Arcane interacts with a bunch of "magical macros" imposed upon reality. Like, in a past age, someone build a system for controlling soul energy and imprinted it on reality; Arcane is finding these commands and using them (possibly for different purposes than their original design). Hackers in a simulated reality who have worked out a limited number of console commands?

Both Shadow and Fey are attached to various kinds of tricksters and illusions. Instead of illusions being projections of light and noise, what if all illusions where phantasms? They are messages sent directly to your soul, not your eyes or ears.

Fey are known to steal names and the like (a kind of soul theft), while Shadow tears souls out of bodies. Maybe the body/soul dichotomy of Psionic can be here as well? The Shadow treats the body as a piece to cut off.

And what about things without Souls that are still Animate? ... How about 2 fundamental forces, not one? That could help: Anima and Soul.

Anima is attached to the Flesh, and distinguishes living matter from non-living matter. Soul is the stuff that survives death, and is rewoven back into a new life (usually).

A creature of Anima who "truly dies" cannot be resurrected; they are patterns of matter and flesh. They could be reconstructed, and if done perfectly it would even remember. But you could also duplicate their bodies and you'd have 2 of them.

Duplicating the body of a Soul doesn't give it a duplicate Soul.

You can animate objects without providing a soul. A Zombie would harness both the Anima and Soul of the dead, puppeting them. A Ghost is a Soul without flesh.

Then Martial is about strengthening the Anima, making the flesh superhuman.

Psionic is about strengthening your Soul, manipulating it to change reality.

Divine magic harnesses the Chorus of Souls of the faithful.

Primal magic still makes deals with nature spirits. Are nature spirits Anima or Soul? I think some are one, some are the other. Animals have a distributed Soul and individual Anima; so you can speak with Bear by talking to any Bear. Mortals are "strange" to Animals in that their species-soul is fragmented into individuals. A river spirit might be pure Anima, and be the river itself.

Arcane remains manipulating the magical craftwork of the Dawn age, imprinted upon reality. Much of it is destructive, as the Dawn war was destructive. The Gods rewrote reality to let them use reality itself as a weapon against the Primordials. Say the right thing, make the right gesture, and reality follows the script of the craftwork imposed on it. These tools are part of the very fabric of existence, and changing them would undermine its foundations. This makes Wizards into a kind of Archeologist, which feels great to me.

The Fey and Shadow deny the dichotomy of Anima and Soul in different ways. The Fey use Anima as Souls and Souls as Anima in their magics; thoughts that are flesh, flesh that is spirit, and play with both. The Shadow tear them apart; souls without bodies, bodies without souls. When a soul rides a body in the Shadow it does so like a jockey rides a horse, free to dismount, at most considering it a valued object, not part of the self.

Elemental is the parts of reality the Primordials built before the Gods got all uppity and created life and souls. In theory you could use such magic without Souls or Anima to ride it, but it would be corrosive to mortals and gods alike. So we get things like Elemental creatures, which are Anima controlling Elemental bodies.

Invoking Elemental effects via any power source is possible, because the Primordial magic and reality is the foundation of everything.

...

Radiant/Necrotic is Soul "+" and "-" energies
Force/Acid is Anima "+" and "-" energies
Fire+/Cold-/Lightning+/Thunder- are Elemental energies
Poison is ... not sure how it fits.