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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5049502" data-attributes="member: 58197">I've always thought the Far Realm's sole purpose in 4E is to give aberrations a place to be from, which is a pretty poor justification for adding an entire plane to the cosmology - especially one that steps all over the toes of the Abyss and its demented, be-tentacled denizens. My world doesn't have a Far Realm; aberrations are the native races of the Underdark (waging a constant struggle with interlopers from the surface such as drow and duergar).To me, the Far Realm has a distinct science fiction vibe, so if I were going to use it, I'd tweak the rest of the cosmology to match. Emphasize the "pure mind" aspect of the Astral Sea over the "home of the gods" aspect. Get rid of the Elemental Chaos and the Abyss, and set the Far Realm on the other side of the Astral Sea.Then play up what remains of Vancian casting and encourage psionic and martial classes, while discouraging or even eliminating primal and divine. Flavor arcane classes as alchemist/scientist types (which might mean getting rid of the sorceror). Maybe throw in some bits of advanced technology, Blackmoor-style.In this cosmology, alien entities from the Far Realm seek to cross the Astral Sea and colonize, conquer, or otherwise exploit our reality. The really powerful ones plan on changing it to match their own eldritch universe. The PCs must track them down and stop their incursions.(And I agree with Rechan that "unfathomable motivations" is usually a lot of bunk. Most of the time, when a creature is described as having unfathomable motivations, the motivation is quite straightforward once you get past the Lovecraftian fluff; self-defense, reproduction, or control of scarce resources. If you want a creature whose motivations are truly unfathomable, its goals need to be totally bizarre and random, like killing all blond-haired people who were born in the three days following a solar eclipse... just because. But I suspect most players would find that hard to accept.)</blockquote>

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