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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8841825" data-attributes="member: 6790260">In my defense, at least this time it is to share not-necessarily-widely-known info, and purely in a "this is awesome" sense? But yes, point (and joke) taken.I actually find the 4e Bane really interesting, which is an odd thing for me to say, because I don't generally find war gods interesting and Bane Classic is even less interesting. Bane in 4e is both very tactical and actually valued by the other gods, even those who are good, because he's extremely effective. Getting him on board during the Dawn War was a HUGE help to the deities, and the War of Winter (where Kord's mother, Khala, tried to take over the world by locking it in an eternal freezing night invoked with her consort Zehir) would have gone disastrously for the opposed deities if Bane had chosen to join Khala instead.Plus, as others have noted, "Bane" is not his true name. But it is a name he has accepted and even revelled in, and I think that's kind of cool too. Thst even gods can be given new names they like better than their "real" names.It is from there, yes, though some of the details/flourishes might have come from a Dragon article supplement. I'll have to check exactly where/what when I get to my computer.That's fair, though (and this is weird to say, given her overall more pragmatic bent) it is kind of pie-in-the-sky idealistic of her to prioritize fixing something that may not even be fixable instead of doing something practical now and then turning to solving the problem properly. "The perfect is the enemy of the good" is usually Erathis' watchword, which was beautifully (if tragically) exemplified when she tried to play both sides against the middle with Arkhosia and Bark Turath and ended up losing both.Stupid sexy Bane.Or should I say Bae-n?Cutting you off there for space. That's a lovely idea, one I might even steal at some point, but I don't really understand why it needs an infinite expanse of fiery nothing (even if that "fiery nothing" does in fact have liquid fire oceans and fire-sand beaches and literally breathable fire skies) in order to work. Indeed, this obsidian tower set with a ruby that can control fire whales sounds like it would be even better in something like 4e's Elemental Chaos. There, you have an overall absolute mess, but there ARE seas of fire and rivers of molten glass and planes of ice that stretch for leagues in every direction. There, the obsidian tower is not "okay well why isn't it just more fire," it's something built from the clash of fire and earth nodes, or a rocky promontory in an otherwise mostly fire-and-air region of the Elemental Chaos.Well...I personally think the Points of Light stuff specifically dodged that issue by speaking only in the broad strokes about anything that wasn't a Cool Place. That's part of why I like it so much. It offers "filler" background only as much as necessary to support the real meat, built on strong mythological bones.By volume, the Prime is incredibly boring, because the vast majority of it is empty space, empty air, or solid rock. We subconsciously ignore all of that because we know it's boring; our attention is focused only on those eggshell-thin layers of Actually Interesting Stuff.The problem with the planes, both elemental and alignment, is that their whole premise is to force us to pay attention to all those boring non-places. The Plane of Earth is literally an infinite extent of solid rock and soil. That's boring! By definition, nothing happens in 99.999...% (as a measure, since this is an infinite thing) of the Plane of Earth. Only the vanishing portion of it that is not solid rock, and is instead caves and bubbles and open space allows for anything interesting to happen. The Elemental Plane of Air is literally an infinite vastness of absolutely nothing but air, with floating islands and the like near its edges. That's better than Earth, since at least things fly and move around so you could do cool battles or something, but it is only by weakening the "this is PURE ELEMENT and NOTHING ELSE" pattern that you get anything interesting, but the fans of this place almost always demand that that be what it is.Again, the Elemental Chaos gets all the useful parts of the various Elemental Planes, while ditching the commitment to vast amounts of boring, untraversable (or at least not worth traversing) space. Sure, the Elemental Chaos is also infinite, but its infinitude is more useful due to stepping away from the rigidity of the "inner planes" cosmology.The outer planes....you basically have to really, REALLY love the alignment grid, because it reifies alignment hardcore and pushes it up from "a personality classification system of debatable usefulness" to "literally the core conceit of reality." For one setting, e.g. Planescape, that's a neat conceit, giving as you said a new edge to political intrigue and subversive efforts (whether evil or good--subverting a hell fortress is an interesting idea that I may also steal.) As a general thing that is part of a Great Wheel cosmology forced onto every setting and campaign? It's really frustrating.</blockquote>

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