Elemental Chaos

How is the Feywild actually like the Positive Energy Plane? I'll admit I don't know a lot about the latter, but I got the impression it's an all-encompassing overwhelming energy field kind of place, sort of like the Elemental Plane of Fire, while the Feywild is full of fairies and magical reflections of the material plane and odd arcane stuff and so on with no particular life energy theme.

I've always loved the Primordials for how good they did the Titan aesthetic.

There's nothing more titanic then a living sea of acid or a massive dog made of thunder. It was the perfect foil for the gods.

The Feywild is the archetypical "bright and vibrant world full of teeming life," and the Shadowfell is the archetypical "dark and gloomy world full of creeping death."

5e made the majority of the Elemental Planes adventureable-by-default by making the Plane of Fire a desert near the Material Plane, the Plane of Water an ocean, the Plane of Earth a mountain range, and the Plane of Air an archipelago of floating islands.

For the Positive and Negative Planes, they can either be:
A. Made adventureable-by-default... but there would be very little to distinguish them from the Feywild and the Shadowfell other than the Positive's soul fonts.
B. Made nothing more than roiling masses of life-imbuing radiance (plus soul fonts) and/or entropic necrotic power, in which case, why do they exist at all from a meta perspective except as conversation pieces?

>you will never play a campaign where you and the rest of the party play as Primordials and turn the tide of the Dawn War
hold me, lads

Are there any rpg settings that where the war of creation / end of day war is the focus of the setting and not some bit of background lore?

Seeing as I'm stealing/adapting a lot of 4e's lore for my world (I'm actually taking it a step farther, down from 5? "planes" to one, but sprinkling in some important details like the Elemental Chaos, Io, expanding Giants' elemental origins to most humanoid races) I should fucking say so.

The Feywild is a weird one for me, because the fey can be considered like beings from another dimension, to something elemental or tied to nature, or to spirits of the dead.

It's closely tied to nature, magic, and life, seemingly the echo of the positive energy plane, but does that leave room for the wicked? Where do fey as spirits of the dead fit in?

Hey look, it's Bahumet's Birthday!

Shit, I really fucked up Bahamut, sort of like that primordial is about to fuck up his dad.

The Feywild is not nearly as simple as the PEP. Firstly, it's more arcane than divine. Secondly, it's closer to the Prime in terms of society/geography, since it's a "mirror". Thirdly, it's connected to the subconscious of mortals somewhat like the Plane of Dreams, in that it's the plane of stories.

I think the Feywild and Shadowfell work well enough - if anything, the Shadowfell could easily replace the Plane of Shadow while the NEP continued to run its course. The PEP and the NEP should really just be made into sources of power instead of actual places. Then you could have the Shadowfell as a plane where the NEP creatures dwell and the NEP itself is affecting everything in varying degrees.

D&D seldom uses fey as spirits of the dead; even banshees are simply undead, not fey.

>Firstly, it's more arcane than divine.
Perhaps in 4e, but in 5e, the Feywild has no special link to the arcane or the divine, and neither does the Positive Energy Plane.

>Secondly, it's closer to the Prime in terms of society/geography, since it's a "mirror".
Correct.

>Thirdly, it's connected to the subconscious of mortals
I have never seen any canonical piece of lore to suggest this in 4e or 5e.

>somewhat like the Plane of Dreams
This is not a plane. This is a complicated issue, as I go into here: archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/50939985/#50941783

>the Shadowfell could easily replace the Plane of Shadow
This is already the case in 5e.

>The PEP and the NEP should really just be made into sources of power
If they are going to be nothing more than featureless blobs of radiant or necrotic energy, then why even give them dedicated planes? There are no dedicated planes for other fundamental forces like fate, space, time, or gravity, so why do positive and negative energy need dedicated planes?

5e's cosmology has some jarring redundancies in its layout which are quite obviously in the name of "trying to please everyone" and "design by committee."

>5e's cosmology has some jarring redundancies in its layout which are quite obviously in the name of "trying to please everyone" and "design by committee."

True, for instance. Why have both the Feywild and Arborea?

As a guy with a lot of experience adapting and playing around with the Great Wheel in 5e, I personally say that the Great Wheel is great for running distinct extraplanar experiences. The sheer abstract nature of planes with terrains and cultures strictly formed by ideals and concepts often makes for rather interesting adventures. Being very descriptive of the strange form of the lands as well as adding in mechanical difficulties (such as the 45 degree slopes in Gehenna or the floating cubes of Archeron) gives my players a unique adventure they frequently recount.

It is true that many of the outer planes are notoriously empty of creatures or points of interest (especially a bunch of the upper planes), though some researching into 2e bestiaries and interpretive embellishing (that is, designing new content in the spirit of old content) can fix both of those problems. For instance, when I had to quickly think of a useful creature to come from Arborea, I quickly googled and found a Lillend, formulating stats for it and adapting its culture to be a bit more comprehensive so that the players would find it interesting.

Of course, this works out well for me because I ignore most canon gods completely, which may not work out for everyone else. I also found a way to mix primordials (which I like a lot) into the game using the inner planes as their homeplanes, though I am certain that too would cause problems for some people. Like many people in this thread mention, the Elemental Chaos is much easier to just pick up and go with, which is easier on DMs who would rather focus on more "material" aspects of the game.

>D&D seldom uses fey as spirits of the dead; even banshees are simply undead, not fey.

Could they then show up in the Feywild or at fey crossings?

This boils down the difference between 4E and 3.5

4E tried to be a game, and everything that was not necessary in the game was thrown out. 3.5 tried to be world.

This is another good example. Page 60 of the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide also happened to copy and paste AD&D 2e Planes of Chaos's opening description of Arborea:

>Larger than life, Arborea is a place of violent moods and deep affections, of whim backed by steel, and of passions that blaze brightly until they burn out. Its good-natured inhabitants are dedicated to fighting evil, but their reckless emotions sometimes break free with devastating consequences. Rage is as common and as honored as joy in Arborea.

We are to understand that Arborea is the cosmic essence of Chaotic Good, which means that a truly exemplary Chaotic Good character should be a manic-depressive psychopath of "violent moods" and "whim backed by steel," who literally kills people in fits of passion.

This is actually more capricious and whimsical than the Feywild's fey ever more.

Reading through the AD&D 2e "Planes of Law," "Planes of Conflict," and "Planes of Chaos" boxed sets can give you many great ideas and inspiration on how to run the Outer Planes.

Of course, even with those books, you will still find that the writers were too bored to write anything interesting about certain planes (e.g. Arcadia, Bytopia). This is a problem even within the context of AD&D 2e Planescape alone, and there is no easy way around it other than manually writing some new lore yourself.

Another huge, *huge* problem with the Outer Planes, in 5e, is that the system is currently missing statistics for the "main three" celestial races: the archons of Mount Celestia, the guardinals of Elysium, and the eladrin of Arborea.

The 5e Dungeon Master's Guide does not even mention archons and guardinals, and simply declares that Arborea is populated by elves who are celestial rather than humanoid. This makes for some disgustingly boring Upper Planes, at least without bringing in DM's Guild homebrew for the missing celestial races.

I've personally been thinking of making the comparatively orderly Inner Planes the work of a group of "perverse and traitorous" Primordials that decided they'd like a little less chaos in their existence.

You should consider adapting the lore of the Wind Dukes of Aaqa (more properly known as the vaati) from 2e and 3.X planar lore.

Ironically, in 2e and 3.X, it was a host of elementals and their predominantly elemental allies (with some lawful outsiders mixed in) who had established order in the multiverse.

I'll look into that, thanks.

At least in the 5e DMG it lays out what planes you actually need and what examples there are of those. It's still not very streamlined but it's good at making GMs not just take include every plane in their setting at least.

The 3.0 Manual of the Planes did the exact same thing. 5e's Dungeon Master's Guide is not much different from that book in terms of presenting alternate cosmologies.

It does not make 5e's default, out-of-the-box cosmology any better, or any less filled with redundancies.

>And if the Positive and Negative were never meant to be adventured in, then why do positive/radiant and negative/necrotic energy even need their own dedicated planes from a meta perspective?

I always figured it as a minor setting detail - "these places exist because they're a logical extension of the rules we've put in place, this is what happens when you go there, but why would you, because nothing ever happens there".

In that respect, the positive and negative planes are a lot like the sun; it's a thing that exists, they serve a purpose in-universe, but if your campaign takes your PCs there you're not playing the usual game of D&D.

>"these places exist because they're a logical extension of the rules we've put in place

Except that they are not necessarily a logical extension. D&D 4e had radiant and necrotic energy without need for dedicated planes for those two.

It is rather pointless to have the only interesting feature of the Positive Energy Plane be soul fonts, and the same goes for the Negative Energy Plane.

>the sun

The 2e Spelljammer books tried to make most crystal spheres' suns viable places for adventure. Did you know that according to the Greyspace book, the sun of Oerth has cool lakes and water elementals upon its surface? The Practical Planetology book also contained many an interesting sun to adventure upon.

In a fantastical multiverse full of surreal and blatantly supernatural environments, I fail to see the impetus to designate some areas as, "Nope, nothing interesting here."

I will stand by the belief that the World Axis has the Great Wheel beat in absolutely everything that matters when it comes to actually being both a playable multiverse and an interesting cosmology, and only sheer Planescape grognardia* and "muh 9-grid alignment!" sacred cowisms forced us to lose it.

*which is extra annoying, because all the damn interesting places and creatures in Planescape can still fit into the World Axis - Mechanus and Limbo in the Astral Sea, Arborea/Arcadia/Ysgard in the Feywild, etc.

I will repeat my stance from :

>Out-of-the-box, as-written, yes, 4e's cosmology is much better for actual adventuring (especially with all of the lore concentrated in the Plane Above and Plane Below books).

>2e Planescape and 3.X's Great Wheel, by comparison, have many planes that suffer from lazy writing (e.g. Bytopia, Arcadia, Limbo) and/or a whole lot of emptiness (e.g. the Positive Energy Plane).

>I do think that 2e Planescape/the 3.X Great Wheel is the better setting for expanding and interconnecting the lore on your own (you can even use the vaati-obyrith war as a stand-in for the Dawn War), but that is plenty of work, and I can understand if many people would prefer the more adventure-friendly-by-default 4e World Axis.

Yes, you can reintroduce many of the old 2e Planescape elements into the World Axis. That is exactly what Dragon Magazine #421 did with the full-fledged Blood War, the yugoloths, the baernaloths, the Heart of Darkness, Maeldur et Kavurik, Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word. However, it does not *quite* fit even when they dedicated half a Dragon issue to it, like a square peg in a round hole.

Yes, you could just place all of the old Outer Planes into the Astral Sea, but the Great Wheel already has those Outer Planes by default and much room in the Astral Plane for many a dominion and demiplane. 4e spelljammers and astral ships are interesting, but the 3.5 Planar Handbook already had very similar vehicles. The Feywild and the Shadowfell are very interesting, but the 2e Guide to the Ethereal Plane lays out many possibilities for Border Ethereal anomalies that fulfill the same niche.

I suppose what I am trying to say is, if you want to put only a "decent/solid" amount of work into a campaign, yes, the World Axis is better, no contest. If you want to go the extra step and devote a grueling amount of work into setting-revamping, I think that using the Great Wheel as a base will net you more interesting results.

So... let me get this straight.

The cosmology where you need to burn the whole thing to the ground and start over with just the bare bones (Great Wheel)... is better than the cosmology you can run perfectly well as-is because it will assimilate any homebrewed planar content without so much as hiccuping (World Axis)?

Generally they're undead elves of some sort, and elves are fey. So you could run them as just being fey ghosts?

It might sound strange, but yes.

Dragon Magazine #421 did an absolutely applaudable effort at reintroducing the full-fledged Blood War, the yugoloths, the baernaloths, the Heart of Darkness, Maeldur et Kavurik, Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word. Despite this sterling translation, it still was not quite natural, and felt rather shoehorned and without a place in the actual history of the Dawn War and the present.

Here's the thing, though... who says we need the Blood War? I, for one, hated it! I despised it! Worst bit of overhyped, tryhard, edgelord crap to come out of Planescape, and that's saying something!

Honestly, I thought the World Axis was to be commended for not only making the Blood War into something other than the biggest plane-shaking whatever, but for actually shearing it of all those alignment based trappings it depended on in 2e.

The Blood War of the World Axis is a deep, personal enmity between demons and devils over mutually hostile world-views (demons want to destroy everything, devils want to conquer everything). To this end, they will do everything that seems plausible in giving them an edge up in the competition. Entire new races have been brought into being as a potential weapon, which sometimes backfired - hence the daemons, who were a diabolic spawned race that defected to become fiendish mercenaries.

It's a natural outcome of the creation of the Abyss and Asmodeus' own backstory, and it fits neatly into the tapestry of the Dawn War's legacy without overshadowing the whole thing.

Also, I think you have your Dragon Magazine reference wrong, because #421 covers Mephits, Cryonax, Krynnish magical items, Draconians, alternative multiclassing rules, and demonic trade-goods.

Do we have more images of the primordials?
I must have missed the book on them but I can never find photos

I do seem to be referring to the wrong Dragon Magazine; #417 is what you should be looking at.

>The Blood War of the World Axis is a deep, personal enmity between demons and devils over mutually hostile world-views (demons want to destroy everything, devils want to conquer everything). To this end, they will do everything that seems plausible in giving them an edge up in the competition. Entire new races have been brought into being as a potential weapon, which sometimes backfired
This is hardly that different from the regular, 2e/3.X-era Blood War, so I am not sure what you are getting at here.

>hence the daemons, who were a diabolic spawned race that defected to become fiendish mercenaries.
As far as I am aware, there is no such thing as a "daemon" in D&D 4e's cosmology. Mezzodemons, nycademons, ultrodemons, and yagnodemons are simply demons; they do not comprise their own subrace. They are by no means "a diabolic spawned race that defected to become fiendish mercenaries."

Supposedly, according to pages 5 to 7 of Dragon Magazine #417, yugoloths have existed as their own race separate from the birth of both demons and devils.

Hmm, what if it literally is the sun?
Combine the positive plane with the plane of radiance, and Dark Sun's elemental plane of sun. Make it similar to the Underdark, as in it exists in the Shadowfell, the Prime Material, and the Feywild at the same time.

Make it the home of beings like Phoenixes, Ki'rin, Shedu, and Couatls.

You could have it be the home of "wild" angels. Like, ones that aren't bound to serve a god.

And possibly who aren't good at all. The Dazzles from Al-Quadim could also work.

Angelic-like beings, whose true form is composed of white motes and radiate heat. Just they feed on negative emotions.

I thought the Feywild (and Feydark while I'm at it because Underdark twists are something I'm particularly partial to) was.

Each plane having its own Underdark equivalent was pretty cool at first.

Then I found out the Shadowdark was what it was called in the Shadowfell. I mean, come on, guys. Shadowdark? As in dark dark? Why not Underfell?

Might as well get this out the way.

>Were the Primordials and the Elemental Chaos the best things to come out of 4E in terms of new lore?

No, the best thing was the Feywilde

The Primordials were pretty damn good though.

Really the cosmology as a whole wasn't bad.

this. 4e's planar setting was elegant and still added plenty of wiggle room, since the elemental chaos is functionally infinite and you could plunk down as many godly realms as you wanted in the astral sea.

>New lore
See heres the problem I have with that:
The elemental Chaos is just a reorganization of things. Nothing new came from it, even the Abyss at the center of the Chaos (Which has now been reverted in the new edition) wasn't a new concept for the time.
Tharizdun picking up swaths of the Elemental Planes and creating the abyss was in 2e D&D (Remeber the Temple of Elemental Evil and all that?) Not sure if it's even older because 2e was when I started playing.
Heck even being a churning mass of elements isn't exactly new, almost every planar book that describe the elemental planes makes mention that as some point near the dawn of time that, that's exactly what they were

Speaking of Tharizdun, Primordials are also nothing new. In 4e we rebranded many Old-god and elder evil style creatures as Primordials, but D&D already had a billion and fifty creatures filling the Primordial Job Description, just none of them had the Title. I forget were obyriths rebranded Primordials? They already share much of the job description. There were certainly some newer beings they added that I liked (I fucking LOVE Balcoth for instance, been trying to wriggle him in my current on going game). But really the Primordials were Hardly an innovative idea.

>Baaaah! You most hate all these ideas if you are downplaying them so much!
Well no. Although the Primordials and the Elemental Chaos barely register as new ideas in the D&D cosmos but that does not make them bad. I really enjoy the new spin and style that 4e took with them and still use elements of it in my 5e games.

>and only sheer Planescape grognardia* and "muh 9-grid alignment!" sacred cowisms forced us to lose it.

Actually kind of reverse of that. Older editions and Forgotten realms (Ed Greenwood) created the 9 alignment worlds to start with along with the elemental planes and astral and all that. Then Zeb Cook came by and said "If you guys aren't going to do anything with this shit I WILL!" thus planescape.
Granted he could only fill out so much there were just too many damn planes. But the cosmology is not planescapes fault, planescape was merely the ones trying to put it to use.

Greenwood would later just drop all the planes because great wheel was too confining, you know he needed to create even MORE sub worlds for his numerous gods.

Nah, Obyriths were different. Tanar'ri princes were tainted Primordials.

Obyriths were beings from a previous universe, who created the shard that Tharizdun used to make the Aybss, allowing them to escape.

>9 alignment worlds
Nine? I mean 17. And ed still needed more.

I will say that Bwimb is a dumb fucking name for basically anything

>only sheer Planescape grognardia* and "muh 9-grid alignment!" sacred cowisms
>I will stand by the belief that the World Axis has the Great Wheel beat

Well funny thing, guess who is the grognard now?

>Noun
>grognard (plural grognards)
> - An old soldier.
> - (games, slang) Someone who enjoys playing older war-games or roleplaying games, or older versions of such games, when newer ones are available.

>older version ..., when newer ones are available.
>I will stand by the belief of the World Axis

Keep standing, old man.

So who was the best primordial?

Frankly, the second-person viewpoint articles were shit. One article mentions a "drow goddess" and an even more nonsensical "illitihid god", as though either of those make sense within the World Axis.

They are being told from the perspective of a present-day person in the Points of Light cosmology, and such people will more often than not think of Corellon as "an elven god" and of Lolth as "a drow goddess," even if that is not strictly accurate.

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos makes it clear that there are many worlds in the "natural world," from the world of the Nentir Vale, to Abeir-Toril, to Athas, to Eberron. There are thus many more gods than those in the default 4e pantheon, and it is hardly unthinkable that one of them would be an "illithid god."

Bwimb was based

>D&D 4e had radiant and necrotic energy without need for dedicated planes for those two.
That hardly shows that it's not a logical extension.

Erm, what DOES make it a logical extension?

I'm not the other user but a source for energy types.
You certainly don't HAVE to have that any more than you need an elemental plane of fire or shadow plane or infernal plane but given such a structure of planes they are logical extensions of the system.

>elemental plane of acid
>elemental plane of thunder
>elemental plane of force
Yeah, no.