Mapping elements to combat effects

[Badwe]

I am working on a campaign, and my long term goal is for the players to visit the elemental chaos. In the elemental chaos, I intend for their to be an elaborate temple/fortress/dungeon for every element. Not just classical/captain planet elements like fire/water/earth/wind, but also acid, ice, poison, thunder, lightning or more abstract "elements" like necrotic, psychic, or even metals or stone.

To this end, I will likely be creating many monsters as well as many new attacks. I started to think about what it really means to be fire vs. ice or poison or thunder. It can't merely change by damage type and be done. So I began to wonder what mechanical aspects would certain elements tend towards. Here are some ideas I've conjured so far, curious if anyone has any good ideas. Ordered by likely importance.

++Fire++
-ongoing damage, more than most
-melted armor -> penalties to AC
-attacks reflex/AC more than fort or will
-smoke causes blindness/obscures squares.

++Ice++
-slow or immobolized
-increased vulnerability to future cold attacks
-attacks fort or ref more than AC, least of all will.
-icy squares are difficult terrain, or sliding rules

++Thunder++
-pushing/sliding or knocking prone
-dazed or stunned, from loud attacks
-burst or blast attacks resulting from regular attacks
-strong winds cause penalties to ranged attacks
-attacks AC/fort more than ref or will

++Necrotic++
-ongoing damage, more than most
-power draining: weakened, stunned, penalties to AC or hit
-attacks will and fort, maybe AC, likely not ref
-darkness squares ala shadar-kai
-focus on lurkers and skirmishers



I have more but I don't want to taint what others might add with my own ideas. Also if you don't agree with what I've concluded please say so! the important thing for me is a blend of thematics/mechanics, the players must FEEL like they're in an ice temple or a shadow temple.

Also, any suggestions for races/creatures to use would be good. Fire has plenty of candidates but for temples like Ice or Earth I find myself having to cut a wider swath. For example, the Earth temple will have pyramid moments with mummies, scarabs/bugs, etc.

1st Edit: Thanks Walter, I like your suggestions and had similar ideas for acid. One of the hurdles in my personal brainstorming was differentiating magma-style fire from acid. I think your gaseous idea is a step in the right direction.

 

[WalterKovacs]

++Acid++

Ongoing damage
Attacks against reflex and fort
Corrosive -> Weakens armor and weapons [penalty to armor, penalty to attacks, weakened state, perhaps tied to the ongoing damage]
Changing terrain [areas may have disolving floors]
Gaseous attacks [auras, bursts, blasts, maybe a swarm based acid monster].
Perhaps aquatic areas with acidic zones?

 

[chronoplasm]

If you want to get really chaotic you could try pairing elements up together.
For example, I'm working on a dungeon where the west wing is on fire and the east wing is frozen.

You could try...

Water+Cold
Fire+Lightning
Air+Thunder
Earth+Acid

 

[Badwe]

I do plan on having "sub elements" in order to prevent the players from stacking resistance TOO heavily in an attempt to trivialize the encounters. For example fire will have some earth moments, obvious pairings like acid+poison or thunder+lightning will intermix among each other's dungeon. necrotic will have a fair deal of psychic damage as well.

although the meat of these dungeons will be around the mid paragon to early epic levels, if my players like it I may make the temples descend forever, with each "floor" increasing the encounter difficulty by 1 level. Not an entire 8-10 encounters to allow the PCs to level, of course, but just progressively more difficult floors to see how much of a risk they felt they could take.

 

[chronoplasm]

Ah.

Well, for monsters you could simply take elemental monsters, like the fire bats, and simply swap the element.
You could also take enemies like spiders, and simply add elemental keywords to their attacks.

For the earth dungeon, I'd suggest a combination of primal beasts things contrasted against high-tech constructs.
Spiders, snakes, gorgons, wolves, etc. turned into earth elementals
vs.
Golems, Homunculi, Gargoyles, etc.
The dungeon could be an overgrown elemental city made of massive stones and rusting machinery covered in plants.
Perhaps there could be a tomb underneath for all kinds of undead enemies. Perhaps the bodies of whoever lived in this city?

 

[Badwe]

I like your thematic ideas for the earth temple, and encourage anyone else who has ideas for scenery/themes for elements to post as well.

I hadn't thought about including iron/overgrown into the earth temple since I was so focused on it as sort of a primal, pure area. The main variation I had concocted was equating earth -> sand and going on a faux Egyptian tangent (mummies, scarabs, traps, etc.). That would be just one theme though, as it got deeper I could imagine it being a spiral tower descending into the earth, with the final floor holding the sleeping tarrasque.

The fire temple would naturally have to be a volcano. I almost imagine the fire temple as a place of fire business, with Azers, salamanders, Efreets, and red dragons all sitting around a slate table, counting coins and discussing trades they've made with the material plane in order to bring fire and heat into it.

The water temple naturally lends itself to a beaver damn scenario, where one must dive underwater to enter it, but pockets of air fill it. One challenge I foresee with water is that I'd like to have an almost sewer or water pipe system so that water will sometimes fill a room or force your passage to the next zone to be a swim. The goal is that the threat of drowning be neither permanently present nor completely negligible.

I am having trouble imagining an interesting setting for an ice temple besides just a temple made of ice. Worse still, a giant igloo would neglect some of the interesting settings of a cold area like ice floes, snowy tundras, or barren stretches of land blasted by howling cold wind.

 

[WalterKovacs]

One idea would be the areas of intermingling.

For example, the ice area could be after the water one. Upon surfacing at the "end" of the water area, you begin with the ice flows, and work towards the more solidly frozen area until it's almost a crystaline area ... and that could lead to the radiant area perhaps.

If the area is divided up into a map, there could be features that are related.

For example, between the water and fire areas is the area of thunder and lightning.

Between water and earth are swamps and marshes that, over time, dry up into desert wastelands, which can lead down into underground cities of stone, etc.

Between the earth and fire dungeons are the underground smeltworks creating mechanic creatures ... perhaps this area is actualy under the lightning/thunder area above, combining lighting with earth/fire to create some robotic types.

Acid and cold/ice can be tied to the water areas. Closer to the earth area, the cold could be more cold desert [desert at night]. Towards the fire area, the acid may be more gaseous and poisonous, while the cold/fire meeting spot may be another thunder area, perhaps dealing with tornados and the like ... this would probably be close to the water/fire border that would be lightning.

So it could be a sort of slopping area ... maybe there are two mountains on either side [a frosted cap moutain and a volcano]. In between are various terrains [desert, swamps, plains, water ways]. The weather is in part determined by the element involved. In each case, going below the ground leads to more stuff involving the element, or in some cases, going into the mountain. Earth, fire, water involving going into the ground, while cold may involve scaling the ice mountain and finding "the light" and radiant area. The necrotic, on the other hand, would be below ground as a counter point of the light.

So:

above ground would be cold, lightning, thunder, radiant
below ground would be fire, acid, water, earth, necrotic

There would be the "cold mountain", with the radiant temple of ice at the top, in the valley is tornado alley where storms brew and below mad scientists create unnatural things. There are areas of marshland that become deeper and deeper, and it is said there are underground waterways which lead to underwater palaces. Below the sandy dunes and dust storms around the great pyramids lies hidden caves and cities as well. All these underground networks allegedly created from the lava flow of the volcano. The volcano is dormant, for the moment, but there is much activity within. And together, in the lowest reaches of the underground caverns lay catacombs and the resting places of many long thought to be dead, although they seem to rise throughout the areas, even reaching the surface world.

Any other elements I'm missing? Some below ground stuff would seep out above, but it would make for an interesting "everywhere in one place" island of monsters. The mountain range may itself be something keeping the players in [for example the "island" is floating in the elemental chaos and the only way out is either through a temple into the astral sea [the radiant area] or through a gate to the shadowfell/abyss [the necrotic area below]. Or some similar area.

An interesting twist ... considering how star pact warlocks use radiant damage ... it could be a twist that the "gods" worshiped in the temple a top the mountain of ice are in fact creatures from the Far Realms and not the Astral Sea, and thus all sorts of abbertions can pop up and you can go all Elder Gods/Cthulhu on them [could also be a good way to make the mountain top a "turn around and go the other way" scenario].

It can also be that, perhaps the top area is natural, while below ground it is revealed to be a bit less than natural primal, with civilizations working towards some ends. For example the whole irrigation system for the underwater area, perhaps some mining operation under the earth area, harnessing of electricity in the lightning area, smelting in the fire area ... it could all be pieces of something working together. Similarly, the necrotic and radiant could even be working together or againt each other, even if they are both evil. Influence from the Far Realms, the Abyss, the Shadowfell and the Astral Sea may all by reshaping this area of the Elemental Chaos into something slighly less chaotic.

 

[chronoplasm]

If you've ever played Banjo Tooie for the Nintendo 64, that might give you some ideas for ways to make the dungeons very intermingled to the point that they all might connect to form a sort of super-dungeon.

In Banjo-Tooie, each areas had something that could only be opened or accessed from another area.
Examples:
The factory area was connected to the snow area by a pipeline.
The lake in cloud-cuckoo-land (a flying island) could be drained by pulling a plug, thus causing water to fall down into dinosaur-land.


Some ideas for you:

The fire dungeon can be used to melt ice in the cold dungeon.
The cold dungeon can be used to make an ice bridge in the water dungeon.
The water dungeon can be used to put out flames in the fire dungeon.

Barrels of battery acid from the lightning dungeon can melt certain rocks in the earth dungeon.
A rock slide tumbling down from the earth dungeon can create climbable mounds in the air dungeon.
The air dungeon can turn wind-mills to power up the lightning dungeon.

 

[Badwe]

I plan to have the temples very far apart from each other at least some of the time, flung to the far reaches of the elemental chaos and spoken of only in whispered tales. I honestly haven't even come up with a good justification for why the players would want to delve into these other than "here be great treasure".

However, I really like these suggestions for clashings of elements as ideas for describing the rest of the elemental chaos. They seem very inline with what has been already elaborated in the PHB and DMG. I was definitely hoping to work some far realm stuff into the psychic dungeon.

In general, my vision of the elemental chaos is somewhat like the Dreamcast videogame Skies of Arcadia. Massive globs of elemental chaos floating amid a wild and windy expanse of sky, seemingly held aloft by nothing at all. By extension I see the elemental chaos as a great place to hit the fantasy trope of airships as a means of conveyance.

 

[chronoplasm]

Treasure, eh?

Heres an idea, because I like exploration and interconnectivity:

Lets say you have... 8 dungeons. Each of those dungeons has seven magical items in it, each of those items corresponding to one of the other seven dungeons. These items can be used to open something up or defeat an enemy in its corresponding dungeon.
Furthermore, each dungeon has seven things in it, whether a door, a puzzle, or an enemy, that requires a corresponding item from another dungeon to beat.
...Not strict requirements mind you... think of Mega Man. You don't need the boss enemy's weakness to defeat the boss, but it's a lot easier that it you do.

Players will be forced to backtrack a lot and revisit dungeons, but since this is the elemental chaos the dungeons can be in a constant state of change so that things are different everytime the players revisit a the area.