Walking Dad
First Post
What is your stance on the 'Primal' power source? Or the 'elemental', which was used so far only in one dragon article?
Shadow as a "power source"?
- Thread starter Therise
- Start date
I'm no expert on 4E cosmology, but I think you're mistaken here. Shadowfell is where the dead go and where the god of the dead (Raven Queen) resides. How is that not the plane of the dead?
In the Forgotten Realms, the "Fugue" is the Realm of the dead - where souls go initially upon death, and are judged. Souls that are faithful to a particular deity are collected by agents of that deity and taken back to the individual planes of each god. Kelemvor is the current god of the dead in the setting, and his Realm definitely isn't in the Shadowfell (even in 4E).
Unless you personally decide to adapt the Raven Queen and pull her in, she doesn't exist in the Forgotten Realms. With Kelemvor, I don't really need a Raven Queen. Some have suggested making her into an Exarch servant of Kelemvor, but again she and this new "fused" plane are not really part of the cosmological theme that I want.
If you're solely referring to core cosmology in 4E, you'd be right though.
FR girl, actually.How exactly would it become Core feature of the Setting?
I really think you're thinking about this way too hard.Look at the power sources and classes:
(...snip...)
But there's a real easy solution for an FR guy like yourself: The Shadow Weave. Just say the Shadow power source comes out of the Shadow Weave.
I don't really intend on limiting any classes or abilities, though, I'm just wanting a rather different "fluff" for the cosmology I'm going with.The Shadow Weave isn't really to my tastes, either. I'm content with not having a Shadowfell, but staying with a (much) earlier version of the Plane of Shadow. Similarly, I won't have a Feywild as it exists in Core 4E; it's really become apparent to me how very, very dramatically they've had to change things in the Realms to be similar to or "match" Core. Beyond all the changes of the spellplague and adding in Abeir, which I also don't particularly like, the cosmological changes required for having the Shadowfell and the Feywild as currently defined aren't what I really want. I'm probably going to keep the world tree approach, or perhaps go back to a great wheel approach.
PS: I also see that my thread has been moved to "4E discussion" which I understand but had hoped to avoid. I meant to talk more about the general implications of shadow as a power source, and I think moving the thread here may give some people the impression I "really" wanted to talk about 4E core design, which isn't the case.
It probably got moved because "power source" is specifically a 4e thing. Talking about shadow as a power source doesn't make much sense in AD&D/3e, except maybe in the Ravenloft setting. The (demi-)plane of shadow is just a tool used by a handful of wizard spells.
DracoSuave
First Post
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
Okay, let's talk about what Shadow was in previous editions.
Shadow was not 'That thing that shows the absence of light caused by occlusion from an opaque substance.'
Shadow is not 'The darkness'.
Shadow is not 'The opposite of light and all it means.'
Shadow refered to a substance that illusions could create... not -quite- real, but real enough that it could cause actual harm. 'Quasireal' was the term for it. A Shadow Fireball, if not saved against, would do exactly the same thing a normal fireball would... it would set things on fire. If saved against, it would still do damage. Not as much as a fireball would, but it would do some.
Shadow was the inherent substance that lies and deception were weaved from, given physical form. Nethermancy is what 4e calls it, but originally, it was simply called 'Illusion/Phantasm'
Why were so few spells tied to it? Well, the ones that were had descriptions like:
'Copy the effect of any Conjuration spell of x level or lower'
Shadow was one of the first power sources the game had ever had. In 4th edition, they made the source of that quasireality into a physical plane, a large one, replacing the ethereal, and included in it necromantic energies.
How is that NOT a power source?
Then dont. There's precident of shadow magic in Forgotten Realms well before Shar did her thing. Again, Shadow magic isn't some new thing, it's been in the game since 1st edition. It's older than the realms themselves.
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Tony Vargas
Legend
'Shadow' carries a lot of mystique, though. Yes, it's just light being blocked by something. To the medieval mind, though, light is not just rays (or particles or waves or both) of impersonal energy. Light is the power of the sun, of fire giving by the gods, of they mysterious stars & moon. And darkness isn't just it's absence - darkness is also everything you fear might be in the darkness. Darkness could even be concieved of as a primal force or intangible matter, itself, only /driven away/ by the light, and /waiting in the shadows/. Shadows have also been seen as mystical manifestations of the person casting them. An evil creature might be able to inhabbit or steal your shadow, for instance, and the idea of something supernatural not casting a shadow is out there, too.
So, yes, shadow has mystical import in fantasy.
However, D&D has an even more pat answer for you: the Shadowfell. It's plane of endless dark, depressing, ooginess, kinda like a Goth club the size of a planet. It filled with shadowy undeady dark unwholesome power that can be tapped. Creatures native to it even have the 'shadow' origin. So, Shadow power source = tapped into the shadowfell.
Well, again, much of this depends on the cosmology I'll be using. As I mentioned, I won't be using either the Shadowfell or the Feywild as they have been developed for 4E. Just not to my tastes at all.
To me, each power source is based on a layer of D&D's reality.
The Martial power sources is the base layer. It draws from the basic laws of reality. Normal physics. Regular Chemistry and biology.
Arcane and Divine are the layers of the background. Arcane magic user tap into the laws of the world that most never see and cannot happen under normal laws. These are the supernatural laws. Academic arcanists (wizards) learn the rules behind nature while raw arcanists are attached directly to the rules
Divine magic is the other behind nature power source. Divine power users get their power from the current rulers of nature, deities. Their power comes from deities and follows the rules placed by them.
Primal power is much like a mixture of Martial, Arcane, and Divine power. The Primal power like Martial is nature but is the part of nature people normally can't control: storms, spirits, plants, etc. Like Arcane, Primal follows a hidden ruleset except it isn't hidden behind nature, it is nature. Linking oneself to this normally uncontrollable part of nature requires the being to be born attached to it (fey, elementals) or mentally aligning oneself to it (like a Divine character).
Shadow is the false layer. False life through undeath. False truth through lies, illusions, and deception. Shadow users draw from the absence of real nature and supernature. They pull from the energies between the layers. Everything an acanist casts a spell, a cleric receives energy from a deity, a druid moves a cloud; maybe a tiny percent of energy is lost in the process. Maybe a little bit of latent magic copies the controlled magic around it. All this dead power and copied power is the Shadow power "source".
The Martial power sources is the base layer. It draws from the basic laws of reality. Normal physics. Regular Chemistry and biology.
Arcane and Divine are the layers of the background. Arcane magic user tap into the laws of the world that most never see and cannot happen under normal laws. These are the supernatural laws. Academic arcanists (wizards) learn the rules behind nature while raw arcanists are attached directly to the rules
Divine magic is the other behind nature power source. Divine power users get their power from the current rulers of nature, deities. Their power comes from deities and follows the rules placed by them.
Primal power is much like a mixture of Martial, Arcane, and Divine power. The Primal power like Martial is nature but is the part of nature people normally can't control: storms, spirits, plants, etc. Like Arcane, Primal follows a hidden ruleset except it isn't hidden behind nature, it is nature. Linking oneself to this normally uncontrollable part of nature requires the being to be born attached to it (fey, elementals) or mentally aligning oneself to it (like a Divine character).
Shadow is the false layer. False life through undeath. False truth through lies, illusions, and deception. Shadow users draw from the absence of real nature and supernature. They pull from the energies between the layers. Everything an acanist casts a spell, a cleric receives energy from a deity, a druid moves a cloud; maybe a tiny percent of energy is lost in the process. Maybe a little bit of latent magic copies the controlled magic around it. All this dead power and copied power is the Shadow power "source".
Tony Vargas
Legend
Not a fan of the World of Darkness, then? (The Feywild and Shadowfell are /remarkably/ similar to the Umbra or 'Dreaming' and 'Shadowlands' of the old WoD.)
The vague excuse for the Illusionist's 'Shadow Walk' spell in 1e AD&D? The Plane of Shadow, 1e implication or 2e version, still gives you ample excuse for a Shadow power source - if you want to include the two 'Shadow' and few Shadow-keyword-using (sub)classes from Dragon and Heroes of Shadow. There's also 'Nethermancy' a mage school that's shadow-oriented, and has been added to in Heroes of the Feywild (which, I guess, not a big draw for you, either, though if you're using any sort of Other World, Faerie, or 'enchanted elfin woods' or whatnot, it could still be handy).
Anyway, you could also just demote 'Shadow' to a keyword, not use the original DDI-only Assassin, and give the vampire whatever source you feel works for Undead (it could even be Divine, undead knowledge does fall under Religion, and Vampires do, freakishly, use 'Holy Symbols' as implements).
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