D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

According to WotC's James Wyatt, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons introduces a new cosmology for dragon gods, where the same beings, including Fizban, echo across various D&D campaign settings with alternate versions of themselves (presumably like Paladine/Bahamut, or Takhisis/Tiamat). Also... the various version can merge into one single form.

Takhisis is the five-headed dragon god of evil from the Dragonlance setting. Paladine is the platinum dragon god of good (and also Fizban's alter-ego).

Additionally, the book will contain psychic gem dragons, with stats for all four age categories of the five varieties (traditionally there are Amethyst, Crystal, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz), plus Dragonborn characters based on metallic, chromatic, and gem dragons.

D&D 5E - Check out Fizban's Alternate Cover!

WotC's James Wyatt talked to Polygon about Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which also revealed the alternate cover, which you can only get from hobby stores. https://www.enworld.org/threads/fizbans-treasury-the-dragon-book-now-has-a-description-and-a-feat.681399/

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Fizban's Treasury: The Dragon Book Now Has A Description... And A Feat

Courtesy of Amazon, we now have a description for Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the October D&D hardcover. The book introduces gem dragons, dragon-themed player options, and plenty of draconic lore! This joins September's The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and November's Strixhaven: Curriculum of...

www.enworld.org

 

[JEB]

But that was a retcon itself, especially for the Forgotten Realms which was using the Great Wheel about as long as Greyhawk.

Correct, that was a retcon for the Forgotten Realms. (Not so sure about 1E or 2E Dragonlance; not my area of expertise.) Still, the different settings definitely (and intentionally) did not have a unified cosmology in the 3E era.

 

[Parmandur]

Correct, that was a retcon for the Forgotten Realms. (Not so sure about 1E or 2E Dragonlance; not my area of expertise.) Still, the different settings definitely (and intentionally) did not have a unified cosmology in the 3E era.

Sure, but they did previously and WotC changed that when they felt there was a need to do so, first in 4E then again in 5E.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Page 153 of the 3.5 PHB explicitly says that it's the Great Wheel. Don't know about 4e.

Except it doesn’t. It says that the default setting’s cosmology is the great wheel. Other settings exist outside The Great Wheel.

 

[Azzy]

In 1e, there wasn't so much as a default setting as there were default assumption—much of which came from Gary, Rob, and Jim's campaigns (with holdovers from Dave's Blackmoor campaign). Hence the named spells, magic items, artifact lore, and such (with occasion direct mention of Gary's Greyhawk campaign—not the published version, that came later). Another of these default assumptions was a barely sketched cosmology in the back of the 1e PHB. This cosmoloy, the Great Wheel, evolved over the course of 1e—from the PHB to to various modules to D&DG to various articles from Dragon magazine to MotP.

It was assumed (I guess) that players and DMs would use this cosmology in their own campaigns (before 1980, Gary and Co. assumed that people would create their own settings). Of course, not everybody did. Then, (a version of) Greyhawk was published and it assumed the Great Wheel cosmology. Ed Greenwood, writing in Dragon magazine, assumed the GW for his setting (you know the one). Around '85, Dragonlance happened. DL inferred its own cosmology (but never really detailed it). Meanwhile, the only the other published setting, the Known World (later Mystara) developed its own cosmology distinct from the GW. Then the Forgotten Realms were published in '87. So, two of the four settings used the GW and the other two had their own thing going.

At some point during 2e, it was mandated that all settings (in the AD&D line) would use the GW. Some of DMs still ignored it, though, for their homebrewed settings. Then 3e came and gave everyone their own cosmology like some Oprah giveaway (seriously, the 3e Manual of the Planes was a great book). 4e created a new cosmology. And now we've arrived in 5e, which, like 2e, wants to assimilate all the settings under into the GW like some cosmology Borg.

Needless to say, I prefer having each setting having its own cosmology that make sense to it. Sure, have the GW be the "default assumption" like it was foe 1e, and let Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms keep it as their cosmology because that's what the started with. Let other published settings have their own cosmologies (with, like Eberron, a caveat that allows for making the setting part of the GW). And give us a mechanical toolkit, like 3e's MotP, for DMs to create their own cosmolgies for their homebrewed settings.

/rant

 

[Urriak Uruk]

In 1e, there wasn't so much as a default setting as there were default assumption—much of which came from Gary, Rob, and Jim's campaigns (with holdovers from Dave's Blackmoor campaign). Hence the named spells, magic items, artifact lore, and such (with occasion direct mention of Gary's Greyhawk campaign—not the published version, that came later). Another of these default assumptions was a barely sketched cosmology in the back of the 1e PHB. This cosmoloy, the Great Wheel, evolved over the course of 1e—from the PHB to to various modules to D&DG to various articles from Dragon magazine to MotP.

It was assumed (I guess) that players and DMs would use this cosmology in their own campaigns (before 1980, Gary and Co. assumed that people would create their own settings). Of course, not everybody did. Then, (a version of) Greyhawk was published and it assumed the Great Wheel cosmology. Ed Greenwood, writing in Dragon magazine, assumed the GW for his setting (you know the one). Around '85, Dragonlance happened. DL inferred its own cosmology (but never really detailed it). Meanwhile, the only the other published setting, the Known World (later Mystara) developed its own cosmology distinct from the GW. Then the Forgotten Realms were published in '87. So, two of the four settings used the GW and the other two had their own thing going.

At some point during 2e, it was mandated that all settings (in the AD&D line) would use the GW. Some of DMs still ignored it, though, for their homebrewed settings. Then 3e came and gave everyone their own cosmology like some Oprah giveaway (seriously, the 3e Manual of the Planes was a great book). 4e created a new cosmology. And now we've arrived in 5e, which, like 2e, wants to assimilate all the settings under into the GW like some cosmology Borg.

Needless to say, I prefer having each setting having its own cosmology that make sense to it. Sure, have the GW be the "default assumption" like it was foe 1e, and let Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms keep it as their cosmology because that's what the started with. Let other published settings have their own cosmologies (with, like Eberron, a caveat that allows for making the setting part of the GW). And give us a mechanical toolkit, like 3e's MotP, for DMs to create their own cosmolgies for their homebrewed settings.

/rant

Good summary here.

I'm happy with the Great Wheel being the default, and also the "Meta-Cosmology," so that worlds with unique ones like Eberron can hold their cosmology under a smaller umbrella within the Great Wheel (as the Eberron book explains). However, I also like how the DMG does sort-of state that the Great Wheel is really just a theoretical framing of how the cosmology works, and no one truly understands its true workings. I think that allows a back-door option for any DM to re-interpret the cosmology however they like. "The experts are wrong, the cosmology actually works like this!"

 

[Parmandur]

Good summary here.

I'm happy with the Great Wheel being the default, and also the "Meta-Cosmology," so that worlds with unique ones like Eberron can hold their cosmology under a smaller umbrella within the Great Wheel (as the Eberron book explains). However, I also like how the DMG does sort-of state that the Great Wheel is really just a theoretical framing of how the cosmology works, and no one truly understands its true workings. I think that allows a back-door option for any DM to re-interpret the cosmology however they like. "The experts are wrong, the cosmology actually works like this!"

DM's world, DM's rules.

 

[Demetrios1453]

That only applied to the default D&D setting in 3.5 (which was Greyhawk). The Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Eberron all had different planar structures from the Great Wheel in 3.5, as described in their respective campaign setting books. (Worth noting, though, that of the three, only Eberron had a cosmology that was radically different from the Great Wheel; the other two aren't hard to reconcile.)

The FR 3.5 cosmology was pretty easy to reconcile. Several of the planes had the same name and function as the GW versions (Nine Hells, Abyss, Arvandor), some were very similar with just some light changes (the House of the Triad was just Mt Celestia with minor changes - heck it even had a mountain called Celestia in it!), and others were equivalent to parts of planes in the GW (Demonweb Pits, Golden Hills, etc.). Others were a bit more mixed, but some (usually the ones with unified pantheons that are otherwise scattered in the GW, like Heliopolis and Dwarfhome) could be explained away with portals and other planar connections which were specifically stated to exist for these pantheons in the GW system anyway. There are some planes, however, like the Barrens of Doom and Despair, which are a bit harder to work with though; you have to lean in a bit hard with the "planar connections between various planes" theory to deal with those. But, for the most part, it wasn't hard to reconcile the two systems...

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

OK, I directly quoted you, so what did I miss?

Drbadwolf was talking about Eberron not being part of the same cosmology. You quoted this and then talked about Eberron being part of the same multiverse.
You may not have seen the distinction, but these are two different things. - They were using cosmology to mean the planar structure, as opposed to the multiverse.

5e canon is that Eberron exists in the same multiverse as Planescape at least: The gnome Vi is mentioned in both Eberron and non-Eberron sources as living in Sigil, but having come from Eberron originally.
However Eberron does not have the Great Wheel: Eberron's cosmology is very different.

 

[Mirtek]

Currently the gods of Eberron are very much a matter of faith: There has never been any proof of their existence like the FR gods for example.

Well, even that is arguable, as the Rajahs are merely "gods by any other name" and they do objectively exist. So while there is argument around some of Eberron's deities, there's a whole host of them that objetively exist

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Well, even that is arguable, as the Rajahs are merely "gods by any other name" and they do objectively exist. So while there is argument around some of Eberron's deities, there's a whole host of them that objetively exist

Good point. Capital G Gods then.