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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nivenus" data-source="post: 6382813" data-attributes="member: 71756">I think we may be getting unnecessarily sidetracked.As others have said, Planescape and the Great Wheel do not necessarily promote a moral equivalence between good and evil. It's one thing to say that cosmic good and cosmic evil are equal in power - that's more or less indicated by their equal standing in the Great Wheel. It's another thing to say that every good action results in an evil reaction (or vice versa). The former is (essentially) true in Planescape; the fiends and celestials of the multiverse exist in a stalemate (as do the devils and demons for that matter). The latter, however, is not.There is nothing in anything I've read which suggests that trying to enact good is a pointless exercise in the multiverse. There's nothing which says the death of a demon lord necessarily requires the death of a powerful celestial. There's nothing which says that good and evil are necessarily in balance at all times, forever, in perpetuum. Indeed, as others have pointed out, the very nature of Planescape's multiverse (which is shaped by belief) means that such things can (and probably will, given enough time) shift.What's more, I don't really see how the World Axis of 4e is any different. The gods have defeated, destroyed, or imprisoned most of the primordials but a great number of them still exist or on the verge of escaping. The demons of the Abyss aren't really any weaker than the angels of the Astral Sea. And what's more, the gods themselves are divided into good, evil, lawful good, and chaotic evil camps, so there's not exactly a united front against elemental evil in that world. Not to mention the increased relevance of the Far Realm, which is full of horrors that make demons and devils look positively friendly.Personally, I'm inclined to think mortals' understanding of the planes in any edition of D&D is probably a bit simplistic and flawed. I can see people in a setting viewing both the World Axis and the Great Wheel as valid interpretations, regardless of which is "core" (indeed, the 4e Manual of Planes allows for this possibility by explaining how to use the content of the book for the Great Wheel).</blockquote>

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