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

 

[Alzrius]

Sure. "The divine beings of the multiverse are often categorized according to their cosmic power. Some gods are worshiped on multiple worlds and have a different rank on each world, depending on their influence there."

This is consistent with past editions. A god could be a demigod on one prime plane and a greater god on another.

Quick sidebar: where is that quote from?

 

[dave2008]

I've never liked that, since these gods generally don't live on the Material Plane, they live out on the Outer Planes somewhere.

I don't like it because it ties the gods power to their worshipers and I prefer my gods to be independently powerful. They may get some boost from worship, but the existing before they had worshipers and they don't need it, IMO.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Quick sidebar: where is that quote from?

Dungeon Master's Guide, Chapter 1, Gods of Your World (using the DNDBeyond version, so no page number, sorry)

DIVINE RANK
The divine beings of the multiverse are often categorized according to their cosmic power. Some gods are worshiped on multiple worlds and have a different rank on each world, depending on their influence there.
Greater deities are beyond mortal understanding. They can’t be summoned, and they are almost always removed from direct involvement in mortal affairs. On very rare occasions they manifest avatars similar to lesser deities, but slaying a greater god’s avatar has no effect on the god itself.
Lesser deities are embodied somewhere in the planes. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, as does the unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms and the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss. Such deities can be encountered by mortals.
Quasi-deities have a divine origin, but they don’t hear or answer prayers, grant spells to clerics, or control aspects of mortal life. They are still immensely powerful beings, and in theory they could ascend to godhood if they amassed enough worshipers. Quasi-deities fall into three subcategories: demigods, titans, and vestiges.
Demigods are born from the union of a deity and a mortal being. They have some divine attributes, but their mortal parentage makes them the weakest quasi-deities.
Titans are the divine creations of deities. They might be birthed from the union of two deities, manufactured on a divine forge, born from the blood spilled by a god, or otherwise brought about through divine will or substance.
Vestiges are deities who have lost nearly all their worshipers and are considered dead, from a mortal perspective. Esoteric rituals can sometimes contact these beings and draw on their latent power.

 

[Maxperson]

Dungeon Master's Guide, Chapter 1, Gods of Your World (using the DNDBeyond version, so no page number, sorry)

Page 11

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The Outer and Inner Planes are infinite. Let's say your world has as its Outer Planes "The Bastion" a lawful good place of order and angels, the "Peaceful Realms" a good plane less concerned with order and more with individuals finding their best afterlife, "The Pit", an infinitely descending spiral of devils, and "The Inferno" a primordial chaotic realm of demons. The Bastion would either be a region of the plane that the classic settings know as Mount Celestia (or Arcadia, whichever fits the theme best) that is an indefinitely large "distance" away from the parts that look like Mount Celestia.

This is exactly what I can't stand about the current model. In my homebrew worlds, i just flat out reject all of this stuff and do what I want, but if I'm playing in Eberron I'm playing in Eberron, not in a homebrew world loosely based on Eberron. I'm only able to change so much without it killing the enthusiasm of the campaign for me, because at that point I'd have more fun using Eberron and Jim Butcher's Cinder Spires and the vague aesthetic of certain Miyazaki movies to make a crystal punk world where airships and other flying machines are emerging technology sat alongside a very magical nature inspired by the idea that Tolkien described when saying that fairies are supernatural in that they are the most natural.

But I enjoy Eberron, so I also play and run games there.

And I don't run, and rarely play in, games where the cosmology doesn't matter. I don't even run games where it takes until high level for the cosmology to matter. I have a character who is level 10 and is finding out that the planet Eberron really is the primordial dragon Eberron, and that she still has a sort of concious Will, and is calling people to her service for the first time in eons because of the terrible wound upon her body and soul that is the Mourning. Meanwhile, one of her companions is searching for a lost land that ties into the Age of Demons and the return of the Mark of Death, and ties into the nature of fiends in Eberron, and that of dragons, which in turn ties into the Kobold Wizard's destiny and the nature of his people. Explaining exactly how and why would take more time than I'm willing to spend, but I really do need Eberron to exist entirely on it's own for my current campaign to work. I need Eberron's lore to remain as it has been, and I have to ignore parts of 5e's lore to do that. It has an actual direct impact on my campaign.

Or take the world of the High Rollers actual play game. It couldn't ever get the Exandria treatment, because it features a unified multiverse under the banner of a massive Empire that is unltimately trying to stop Hadar from consuming all reality, and the gods are absent, not just from the primary world of the campaign, but from the multiverse. Where they do still exist is in other multiverses, parallel to the one threatened by Hadar. The team wasn't super high level when they went into Astral Space, either.

Idk how else to explain it. It matters.

 

[Bolares]

I don't know if I've been reading Eberron Rising frim the Last War wrong all this time, but the way I interpreted it, Eberron, and it's own cosmology are by default not affected by the rest of the multiverse.... unless you want it to be

 

[Bolares]

And I don't see how the changes in the rest of the multiverse affect Eberron... All those changes were made before Rising came out. And in it the cosmology of Eberron remained unaffected. And even if it was affected, we have Kanon to hold on to. Exploring Eberron is the biggest dive in to Eberron's cosmology ever, and it happened after all this changes...

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I don't know if I've been reading Eberron Rising frim the Last War wrong all this time, but the way I interpreted it, Eberron, and it's own cosmology are by default not affected by the rest of the multiverse.... unless you want it to be

Vi and the Cyre 1313 disagree.

 

[Bolares]

Vi and the Cyre 1313 disagree.

Depends on how you look at it... both those were made in non eberron products (I know Vi's art is on Rising). So I'd say eberron is affecting other worlds, but until now I don't see Eberron being affected by other worlds

 

[dave2008]

It came up when talking about teleport, and teleportation circle. I think this was just after Eberron came out, but I'm not certain. It might have reference in a sage advice answer, as well, but no promises.

No worries, I just noticed in another post the Eberron is in its own Prime in 5e, so it seems like the idea of multiple primes still exist.

I never said you were. In fact, no one has tried to say that I'm wrong about what matters to me, that would be extremely strange. What others have flatly stated, and your posts come across strongly as implying, is that my perspective that it is a thing worth discussing and that my position that it's less good for the game than the other options I've posited, is not a valid perspective.

I can see how my attitude could give that impression. Sorry about that, it is not my intent. I will have to think about how to discuss the topic and provide an alternate perspective without being dismissive. I will note that you also treading close to that line as you continue to grapple with the viewpoint that a combined cosmology of some type could be less restrictive.

What I don't understand is how anyone can fail to see how it is more restrictive to have a single cosmology that all dnd worlds exist within, than to allow for dnd settings to exist wholly in their own cosmology, with no ties to the Great Wheel other than some rare places where a traveler can get to any universe like Sigil.

First, I don't see how such a set up is functionally different from what we have now. That is basically what I work with. In my D&D cosmology some worlds are in the same Prime, some are in different Primes. Some of the different Primes are functionally close and others are extremely remote. The only thing that connects all of this together, the various Primes and cosmologies, is the Far Realm / Blind Eternities. The Far Realm is extremely difficult to travel through, even for deities. Therefore, those Primes that are functionally far away (like Eberron, DL, and (even more so) the MtG worlds) are almost completely cut off and their own separate realities. I know this is not the official stance, but I really haven't see anything yet that contradicts this viewpoint (not that I would care I'm using it regardless).

Like....the new lore coming out, combined with the existing lore of 5e, puts everything that exists in dnd except for the MtG settings, inside the Great Wheel. That is less open than the 4e model where the Great Wheel was just how things are in Greyhawk or in homebrew campaigns that choose to use it, and FR, Nerath, Eberron, Athas, etc, all have their own cosmology.

I'm not so sure it does. Now it could be the case that I see what I want to see and don't what doesn't work for me, but I have not see anything in a book that suggest this is 100% true. This could be exacerbated by my tendency to assume lore in books is just one possible version/story and not the definitive truth.