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).

Takhisis.jpg


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.


 
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So, as far as I can tell, the only time an official D&D adventure ever actually had the possibility of Tiamat being for real killed was in 4E's Last Breath of the Dragon Queen, where the party kills her in her home plane (though in 4E this was Tytherion rather than Avernus). The ending of the adventure features Bahamut himself showing the party visions of how killing Tiamat has destroyed greed and envy and increased the desire to be charitable of all mortals in the multiverse.

Bahamut regards you kindly with his platinum eyes. “When you killed Tiamat, you didn’t just defeat a god. You defeated the very wellspring of greed and envy. No one wants gold coins or other riches for their own sake. That’s why Magister Tulm gives away his extra wealth: He can no longer fathom a reason to keep it. It’s not strictly out of the goodness of his heart, but because he no longer has the concept of greed. There’s still evil in the world, of course. The tree of evil has multiple roots . . . not just greed. But you’ve fundamentally changed the world forever, heroes."
 
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dave2008

Legend
So, as far as I can tell, the only time an official D&D adventure ever actually had the possibility of Tiamat being for real killed was in 4E's Last Breath of the Dragon Queen, where the party kills her in her home plane (though in 4E this was Tytherion rather than Avernus). The ending of the adventure features Bahamut himself showing the party visions of how killing Tiamat has destroyed greed and envy and increased the desire to be charitable of all mortals in the multiverse.
That adventure also gives the option that she wasn't really killed completely. Just like Bahamut, she has a divine spark hidden and she can resurrect just like Bahamut does in the adventure.
 

dave2008

Legend
However, apparently Hickman and Weis themselves have been on record saying that they oppose the idea of Tiamat being Takhisis or the world of Krynn existing in the same multiverse as other D&D settings.
I've heard that as well. One reason I am glad it is WotC IP and not theirs! It was never their world like they seem to think. It has always been a huge collaboration with the Art being as influential as the novels I think. Not to mention there were many other authors.
 



However, apparently Hickman and Weis themselves have been on record saying that they oppose the idea of Tiamat being Takhisis or the world of Krynn existing in the same multiverse as other D&D settings. WotC at least has been consistent in 5E that every setting is in the same multiverse, going back to the 2E conception (whereas 3E and 4E had different settings in their own multiverses whose planes could differ from those of other multiverses).
They apparently really, really wanted Dragonlance to be a separate IP unconnected to DnD
 











doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I didn’t mean anything quite as extreme as that. But folks do seem unhappy.

I think people should be allowed to be upset over things. I just don’t get it in this case.
I mean, I just don't see why "upset" needs to come into it. Not every negative opinion is an indicator of upset. I don't like songs that are basically half a verse and 5 repetitions of the chorus, but I'm not upset when they come on the radio.
I kind of do that in my games already. At least in the "some people believe the Host are ancient dragons" camp.
I like the ancient dragons thing, mostly because i don't necessarily think that truly ancient wyrms are actually totally distinct from gods, but also partly because I think the Host are amalgamations of the stories told about archetypal figures, and even if there is some kernal of a true deific entity at their core, their nature and what they mean to the world is about those archetypes and stories.
Did they?
Yep. It's just inside a bigger and harder to penetrate crystal sphere. Basically, all of Eberron are just "berks". Honestly, it's lucky for me and my group that Eberron has always been heavily pushed as a setting that you make your own, where canon doesn't matter, because I despise Planescape's takeover of all of DnD, and this might have killed my interest in Eberron if I felt inclined to take it seriously.
They are both 5-headed evil dragon goddesses with a white, black, green, blue, and red heads that relate yo cold, acid, poison, lightning, and fire respectively. Other than some ornamentation, they are exactly the same.

Gods are not from worlds, they are from their divine realms. The influence a world (or worlds) through their divine aspects or avatars. Seems pretty (super)natural to me.
Ugh. World, cosmology, setting, whatever.
Not even close. It is more like saying a great horned owl and great grey owl are both owls. Yes, there are slight differences, but they are both owls.

IDK, I mean Tak has gotten a lot more one v one time in novels than Tiamat I think, so it is really kinda hard to say IMO

My goodness - just do a search for Tiamat on Deviant Art and you will see a lot of people see Tiamat that way. And I believe that she is described that way in the 4e Draconomicon.
So, fanart and a description in an edition that came how long after the (bad) decision was made to make them the same? Okay?
Tyranny of Dragons came out just as I was wrapping up a years-long campaign arc coming to an almost identical climax. I'm not sure who Wolfgang Baur had spying on my table, but I did not appreciate it!
Man...yeah. It's rough.
/cough cough

And neither are those over 58. ;)
Fair enough! :D
I just thought I would point out that the traditional many of "Multiverse" is not the same as the now commonly accepted definition of "Multiverse." I am sure you know this, but I thought it was an important distinction.

D&D Multiverse: multiple planes of existing. Each plane being different from the other (sometimes vastly so), but also connected.
Pulp Multiverse: alternate realities, separate from each, but typically all bearing some resemblance to our reality

Personally I prefer the D&D method to the pseudo-science pulp definition. But everyone is different!
Yeah IMO the planescape version of multiverse is...boring, except as entirely it's own thing with no connection to, say, Eberron or Krynn or Toril.
[Here Be Spoilers for War of Souls]

As the War of Souls and Weis’s Mina trilogy further depicted things, I’ve gotten the sense that Dragonlance gods are (as always shown) a bit weird in their divinity. There’s always the notion of High God and his “calling from beyond” of beings to grant divine power to, then their divine children (all of course a bit of Jeff Grubb’s old Neoplatonist “original Toril” campaign document given a bit of a Mormon metaphysical spin by Tracy Hickman. Moreso than even with other gods in D&D, where the being and the power can be separated, it feels more like hypostases.

Paladine is and is not Bahamut is as much as the being who is now Valthonis is complete and the echoing divinity Bahamut is complete. The incorporated Draco Paladin is both. Similarly, the being that was Takhisis and the continuing echoing divinity Tiamat incorporated into something combined but unique in Draco Cerebrint. (We all know that somehow Astinius is Gilean, but Astinius as he likely exists until the end of Krynn and the Book as Highgod creates it at the beginning of Krynn from a different eternal perspective are hypostases) Even the fact that Takhisis can “steal the world” from Krynnspace to ‘Dragonspace’ likely involves the strings of that echo shared between her and Universal Tiamat, like a user following a network along to a different terminal.
I mean I love that stuff, but IMO making all of DnD a setting, rather than truly a collection of separate settings, makes each "setting" less than it would be otherwise, especially when the gods are really just all the same gods. Paladine leaving the world or giving up his divinity for the sake of balance means nothing when he is just one of potentially infinite aspects of the cosmic male half of Io.
 


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