No more Malcanthet?

[The Ubbergeek]

Note that many of such changes are also old.... Things made by DM since the start.

Not every classic settings used the Wheel, you know. A big one was Dark SUn.

 

[jdrakeh]

Sometimes, tradition IS a good thing.

Imagine how players of Original D&D felt when that whole "Great Wheel of the Planes" got added to the game in AD&D. Obviously, TSR had no respect for tradition, either

 

[Moon_Goddess]

I on the contrary really like the changes.
In 3E, every demon seems to have some kind devil equivalent and vice versa. The only difference between demons and devils seems to be that demons are labeled chaotic, and devils are labeled lawful. But what's the real difference between them? They are both after souls of mortals, and they hate each other. Their alignment difference don't seem to matter in the actual structure - their are Arch Fiends and Demon Princes ruling over the lesser devils/demons.

In 4E, the difference between Devils and Demos seems very obvious.
Devils tempt mortals to get their souls. They use trickery over brute force and manipulate other beings. Sounds like something a lawful evil creature should do, because it's about long-termin planning and fine-tuning your devil contracts so that they do what you want.
Demons want to destroy the world. No need for plans or structure, as long as you get to kill someone or destroy something. In fact, any kind of plan or structure revealed to a demon is a target.

Demons automatiaclly become mortal enemies of devils. Devils want souls, and a destroyed world doesn't give it to them. Devils devise complex plans to get their goal, but a Demon loves to wreck with these things.

These have always been my devils and my demons. I don't know maybe I was running them wrong all along, but That's the way I've always ran them.

 

[Lord Zack]

Wizards can make as many changes to the cosmology as they want, I'll ignore them. Unless of course there's a change I happen to like, which I haven't seen let. So in my 4e games Succubi and Erinyes will be different creatures and Malcanthet will be in the Abyss where she belongs.

 

[Shroomy]

Note that many of such changes are also old.... Things made by DM since the start.

Not every classic settings used the Wheel, you know. A big one was Dark SUn.

I thought DS did use the Great Wheel, but it was just cut off from the outer planes.

 

[Lord Zack]

In Planescape yes, but I believe the Dark Sun books had a different cosmology.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I didn't watch it much, but yes, it have another *and quite simpler) cosmology - elemental and anti-elemental planes, the Grey (deads's lands?) and the Black and White, I think.... Astral, Etheral, quite changed.

Something like that... anyone could correct me please?

 

[Xethreau]

All those plains were never really explained and shown simply in the DMG (worst diagram of the universe, ever?), so my group and I never really did any sort of planar travel, and could care less if Transitive Planes, the 'Twin Paradises of Bytopia' (or whatever), and the like were dead. On the other hand, I absolutely loved the fluff that devils had in 3e, and demons... were the embodiment of destruction, and were therefore awesome. On the whole, my group like about half of the Great Wheel cosmology, which really makes for a crappy wheel, doesn't it?

I for one am glad to see the universe makeover, and I am very happy to see a better distinction between devils and demons than "chaos verses law, can't you tell by looking at them?" Well, now we can, thank you.

However, as for the main point of this thread. I have never read anything about Mecanthet in any D&D book, and I was only first introduced to her in the Player's Handbook Public Service Announcements (check out youtube). I loved her character, and as such, would hate to lose that legacy in the D&D game.

 

[kennew142]

I'm happy to see the Great Wheel no longer as a default cosmology. If some folks still want the Great Wheel, they can still use it. The wheel can be seen as one outer domain floating in the astral sea. The difference is that the wheel is no longer written into the core rules. I've never used it (in 28 years), and I certainly won't miss it.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

Once 3e hit, every setting got its own cosmology and was no longer uncomfortably shoehorned into some giant, wierd metasetting that had no rhyme or reason whatsover other than a metagame vision of alignment taken from D&D's earliest days. Settings like Dragonlance and Dark Sun which were both intended to have completely seperate cosmologies....cosmologies connected to the settings and rooted in the assumptions of those settings were forced to be part of some giant cosmic hub system.

Oh yeah, then began the retroactive rationales.....

Even the greatest scholars of the their respective worlds didn't know the 'dark' of the planes and were nothing but bumpkins compared to the planar's worldly, cynical sophistication. So the wisest sages of Krynn didn't know that their Abyss was really just the planar domain of Takhisis and their Greater Goddess was merely Asmodeus' guard dog so to speak. They didn't know that their Paladine's Dome of Creation wasn't really a plane of reality all its own but merely his domain on another plane.

Athasians had no idea that they were just in some magically impenetreble crystal sphere that was bobbing like an apple amongst a bunch of others in a infinite fishbowl of flammable liquid all of them surrounded by a bunch of alignment based planes.

I might be griping about some, or even a lot of, 4e's mechanical changes, but if there is anything I am grateful for it is that 4e is casting off the shakles of the Great Wheel and letting it be what it always really was....Greyhawk's Cosmology. The Great Wheel IMO turned everything into a bland, homogenized gruel by attempting to be everything to every setting and ultmimately damaging the uniqueness of each setting arbitrarily crammed into it.



Wyrmshadows