D&D 5E Should 5e have a "default setting" and cosmology?

[Kynn]

I refluffed 4e Channel Divinity feats with a simple pen. I created Muir's Justice and Thyr's Justice for a Bard's Gate campaign (3PP Necromancer Games, from the 3.x era) by tweaking an existing ChanDiv power and changing the name. 30 seconds. You can go generic with Channel Divinity easily.

Biggest problem with Channel Divinity is that they didn't allow in the builder what they said in the books you should do. I.e., allow for painless refluffing. For example, if I had a campaign where I worshiped the God of Light and Stone, I should be able to take either "Moradin" feats or "Pelor" feats, and the rules said this should be cool.

The character builder didn't -- but that was a weakness of the character builder itself and not the rules. (Feats and powers shouldn't be strongly tied to certain gods by default, which is something they learned by the time Essentials rolled around.)

 

[catsclaw227]

Biggest problem with Channel Divinity is that they didn't allow in the builder what they said in the books you should do. I.e., allow for painless refluffing. For example, if I had a campaign where I worshiped the God of Light and Stone, I should be able to take either "Moradin" feats or "Pelor" feats, and the rules said this should be cool.

The character builder didn't -- but that was a weakness of the character builder itself and not the rules. (Feats and powers shouldn't be strongly tied to certain gods by default, which is something they learned by the time Essentials rolled around.)

This is a good point. I had to print the new feats and related powers and handed them to the players, but you are right. The CB should have allowed for this.

 

[billd91]

Correct. Because if you want to change the name of Ioun to Zubalier, you can. Still don't see how this is an issue at all.

It's just one additional hassle. Sooner or later, the hassles just end up being so much of a weight that you drop the system. Had they taken a step back and called "Armor of Bahamut" "Divine Armor" the extra step by a host of individual gaming groups (nobody knows how many or few) could have been saved. That's why I think domains are a much better design for moderate customization of gods and clerics than the channeling feats in 4e.

I don't have a problem with a default setting at all. What I have a problem with is how deeply embedded it is and how meaningful that is.

 

[Alzrius]

It may have originated back then, but it was never officially part of the Great Wheel. It was something usually regulated to the appendix.

This is a semantic distinction, and a debatable one at that. What specifically was necessary to be "officially" part of the Great Wheel in 2E? In 3E?

 

[IanB]

Correct. Because if you want to change the name of Ioun to Zubalier, you can. Still don't see how this is an issue at all.

For one thing you're still stuck looking at the wrong name if you use the Character Builder and you print your sheet out, and you actually have to pick Pelor or whoever as your god in the builder and look at that on there too.

And remember the channel divinity feats are only one example of this in practice.

 

[DEFCON 1]

WotC didn't force Bael Turath into any other settings. What exactly do you mean when you say they "recreated the Realms and Eberron to add a lot of this PoL history and background into those settings too"?

I probably overstated by saying a "lot". But there are some, mainly in regards to the cosmology. The PoL cosmology was adapted into both settings by relaligning and justifying certain placement of planes in ways that hadn't been there before. I can't speak as detailed on the Realms, but I do know that in Eberron, Thelanis and Dolurrh became much more prominent as planes once they were subsumed into being the Feywild and Shadowfell. They (along with all the other planes) all revolved around the prime plane originally... but then in 4E the planes got arbitrarily assigned to the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos in addition to still revolving around the prime. On top of that, the gnomes also became Fey creatures that arrived from Thelanis at some point in the past, rather than an original Eberron race like they used to be.

You're right that the actual prime plane history of the PoL did not carry over (Bael Turath etc.), but it was the cosmology that had its greatest influence on both settings.