D&D: Salvaging 4e & PF Lore

Why put shit on your chocolate icecream?

Expanding on my opening post.,..

I use the World Axis instead of the Great Wheel - I find the latter is too focused on filling a grid and being there to support the bloated mess that is 9-grid alignment.

4e angels, devils and demons beat out their i5e versions, though succubi are still an "independent" fiendish faction.

Oni and Kami are from the Feywild.

Divs are genies who tried to manipulate either the Abyss or the Shadowfell and found it backfired, corrupting them into monsters no longer accepted by their kin.

Nentir Vale is the "default world" and not Faerun.

Dawn War was the first and biggest conflict in the multiverse. As in 4e, the Blood War still exists, but goes through eons-long hot & cold cycles and is currently rebuilding from the last "hot" cycle, which destroyed a galaxy's worth of shit.

The Devildrake War that destroyed Arkhosia and Bael Turath is a thing.

Iron & Adamantine Dragons replace Bronze & Brass as the "core five" of Metallic Dragons.

>>53672317
I'm going to bump real quick to avoid this thread dying and bring up this: OP, have you read 'Worlds and Monsters', a book WOTC released which explained their worldbuilding for 4E?

>>53673082
Kami would probably work as a particular type of primal spirit.

Demodands never got added to 4e, but I can see them as some kind of demonic shadowfell race.

Asuras would work great in a 4e-based system as a sort of epic level anti-Deva foe, with the ability to reincarnate themselves and others.

Btw I'm serious: initially I hated the way 4e ditched so much of the cosmology D&D had built over the years for a rebooted setting but after reading Worlds and Monsters I gained a new appreciation for what they were trying to do. Namely, build a high fantasy setting framework which made internal sense and was not beholden to random bits of lore from various settings which had accumulated and glued themselves to D&D for no other reason than it was there because it was there.

>>53672317
Nentir Vale is alright, I guess, for when you need a blank slate "setting" with minimal complications. I put scare quotes around the word setting because NV is so tiny it wouldn't qualify as a small country region, let alone a campaign world.

I really appreciated the lore of 4e. It focused a lot more on actually interesting places you could go and adventure, instead of pointless pattern completion.

>>53676699
Symmetry in a cosmology is not pointless. Just ask the wheel of dharma.

>>53676699
Why are you bothered with things being just there? Why must every single place be an adventure locale for your murderhobos to wreck up?

>>53676798

Because it's wasted page space. If it's a setting that exists for fantasy adventuring, why waste my time with things entirely irrelevant to the scope of the game?

>>53676763

If they don't contribute anything that I can actually use in a game, then they are pointless.

>>53676823
>If they don't contribute anything that I can actually use in a game
If you can't think of ways for, say, "infinite fire" to contribute to a game, then maybe the problem isn't in pattern completion.

>>53676885

Except they included that in the world axis, only they also made it good for adventuring. Funny how that works.

>>53673816
I bought Races & Classes and Worlds & Monsters as my very first 4e purchases, because they were released before even the HB and I desperately wanted the sneak peek of what was going to be in the PHB.

I absolutely love both of them. I still flip through them (and all my other 4e books) from time to time, simply because 4e did so many things RIGHT in terms of fluff and setting design.

So yeah, why do you ask?

>>53676823
Very good point. Which is honestly more interesting?

The Elemental Chaos, where you can see things like the Riverweb or Gloamnull?

Or the Elemental Plane of Ooze, where, even if you do have "Water Breathing" to avoid drowning, there's literally nothing to see but slime, mucus, bile, tar and chemical muck as far as the eye can see?

>>53676911
>Or the Elemental Plane of Ooze, where, even if you do have "Water Breathing" to avoid drowning, there's literally nothing to see but slime, mucus, bile, tar and chemical muck as far as the eye can see?
Elemental plane of ooze is literally infinite. You could put a whole bunch of ooze wizards and otyughs and weird shit in there. You could center an entire campaign to the place if you had a pinch of imagination.

>>53676969

But the system does absolutely nothing to support you doing that. The setting does nothing to support you doing that.

What you're calling 'a pinch of imagination' is literally just 'writing your own campaign setting which is technically part of an official one'.

>>53677015
>But the system does absolutely nothing to support you doing that. The setting does nothing to support you doing that.
Yes, it does. There are several rulebooks telling you what each elemental plane does have. Just the elemental plane of ooze alone has more perfectly described things than the Riverweb and Gloamnull you just mentioned.

>What you're calling 'a pinch of imagination' is literally just 'writing your own campaign setting which is technically part of an official one'.
But that's the entirety of 4e's "lore" right there. They just wrote a bunch of weak, shallow, nonsensical bullshit about elemental chaos with weird shit in there, that only doesn't manage to collapse on itself because lol chaos, then told you to go in there and do adventures.

The old setting already has that. It's called Limbo. Then it adds a whole bunch of other different and distinct adventure locales on top of that. It's objectively superior.

>>53677113

The old setting was a few detailed, interesting locations and then a fuckton of pointless, empty space that only existed to satisfy the designers pattern completion fetish.

The world axis can easily contain absolutely everything of value that existed in Planescape, without anywhere near as much bullshit to slog through to get to the good stuff.

Infinite is not really a selling point.

Literally every single dumb plane and demiplane also exists in the 4e World Axis. The only difference is how you get there and where, cosmologically, it is situated. These debates are retarded.

>>53677162
>The old setting was a few detailed, interesting locations and then a fuckton of pointless, empty space that only existed to satisfy the designers pattern completion fetish.
Well if you don't think every single elemental plane isn't interesting entirely on their own merit, without even having to add some adventuring locales to them as well - which the books still do, then I guess I have nothing to tell you and we just have to agree to disagree.

>The world axis can easily contain absolutely everything of value that existed in Planescape, without anywhere near as much bullshit to slog through to get to the good stuff.
Sure, by making it a chaotic playground that exists purely for the whim of the player characters and makes little internal sense. It might be all you want, but it's not all I want.

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>>53676969
Maybe you could... Why the fuck would you want to? In what possible universe is the existence of an endless expanse of different kinds of slime and muck - the VERY description of Ooze from 2e's "The Inner Planes" - more inspiring than the Riverweb?

>>53677162
>>53677217
Exactly! Most of the Great Wheel was boring empty space with a handful of locations thrown out, all of which can be easily moved into the far more explorable and enjoyable World Axis.

Speaking of which... anons, I'm having a devil of a time tracking down the images from the Elemental Chaos splatbooks; can anyone help me out?

>>53677225

The Positive or Negative energy planes? Places you literally can't go without extreme prep work, and where there's fucking nothing to find anyway? Basically the only thing I've ever heard them used for is nonsensical abuse of the metaphysics.

>>53677295
They both have people living in them anyway. And those people might have quests.

>>53677343

A small number of them, existing amidst an infinite expanse of blinding white light. Why fucking bother?

>>53677283
>Why the fuck would you want to?
Maybe I want to try something different today? Maybe I have this idea of a wizard wanting to drown the world in mud that the party should oppose? Maybe I just think Riverweb is a bunch of bullshit?

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean everyone does. Don't impose your ideas and thoughts to the rest of us.

>>53677225
What the world axis really does is make all those places connected, so you can have an adventure in the Astral Sea or the Chaos like you would an adventure in the material plane. That's it.

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So, who here was a fan of the Astral Sea and the Dominions? I thought it was a huge step up from the old Astral Plane whilst still keeping the more interesting parts of it, like floating corpses of dead divinities.

The Dominions were pretty cool, too. I mean, isn't there something symbolic about how entering Hell literally requires you to plunge burning and (potentially) screaming out of the sky to crash upon a barren wasteland of ashen d eserts and broken rock?

>>53677383
Hey, if you don't think that's some cool shit then, again, I have nothing to tell you.

>>53677444

All the cool bits are more accessible and work better included as a bit of the world axis.

>>53672317
Points of Light was a decent setting (to the extent that it was ever actually written,) but it's comically unsuited to the game it was made for. The Nentir Vale is a place where civilization has failed and humanity is doomed, not because of any one calamity, but because of a million systemic forces and a score of powerful competitors for the same ecological niche. It had some of the ancient Norse attitude toward heroic failure. It was nicknamed Points of Light both by the fans and by its own designers to represent how little is left for the PCs to try to protect. It's a dramatic idea, but it was never realized because it needed a game system built for brutal survival, desperate temporary victories staving off inevitable doom. What it got was a game system about high-powered superheroes whose wealth and comfort were assumed to such an extent that they needed a robust magic item economy to function as intended. The Nentir Vale shouldn't even have reliable sources of grain and salt, much less residuum and astral diamonds.

>>53677416
>>53677460
They also make no fucking sense. They're all scattered about for absolutely no reason. There's no order or structure there at all. Sigil isn't even in the middle of everything, it's just sort of awkwardly wedged to the side!

>>53677463

...No? I feel like you're completely missing the point of it.

The points of light were the bits of civilisation that survived, and the setting is fundamentally hopeful- No matter what happens, heroes keep rising to try again. However many times the world falls, people will raise it up once more.

It made perfect sense for 4e.

>>53677492

They make perfect sense. That they don't adhere to the old logic doesn't mean there's no logic to it at all.

>>53677492
They're all situated within the same realm so that you can travel from one to another without the need for planeshifting. Again, this is so that if you wanted to make a campaign about traversing the realms of the gods or whatever, you can just do it. Nothing else needed.

>>53677509
Then explain the sense to me. All I see, all I've ever seen in that, is a big mess, like someone taking all your shit from your room and throwing them all over the floor and being like "There! Now you can find your stuff easily without having to reach the top shelves!"

>>53677547
You could already travel the planes without planeshifting. You had the World Tree, Mount Olympus, River Styx sometimes, elemental vortices, and Sigil doors, just to name a few things. You never needed anything more to traverse to the realm of gods to begin with.

>>53677463
>residuum and astral diamonds.
This was one of the most retarded parts of 4e, and that's saying a lot.

>>53676911
You can have discrete, named locations in the standard Elemental Planes, so I call false dichotomy.

>>53677584
Rephrase: You could explore without needing to go to landmarks which are essentially permanent portals. You can go directly from the City of Brass to the Abyss on foot.

>>53677620
Yeah, but you also have infinite fire with nothing in there! Why would anyone ever go there?

>>53677623
>You can go directly from the City of Brass to the Abyss on foot.
So you can go from anywhere to anywhere - that's your thing?

What if I told you that in my Forgotten Realms homebrew, you can step outside the gates of Waterdeep and immediately arrive to Calimport? Wouldn't that be just awesome?

>>53677495
No, it makes no sense, first because the state of the world doesn't match the rules (regarding the economy especially,) and because if humanoids were that powerful, even a tiny fraction of them, they wouldn't constantly need saving.

>>53677646
Well that's your homebrew and I wouldn't care.

>>53677463
Do you really think Fallcrest is trading in the kind of currencies gods keep in their vaults?

>>53677686
Yeah, but that's your entire argument right there. Calimport and Waterdeep have so much awesome shit in them, so wouldn't it make the game so much better if you could just step from one to the other without having to slog through all the boring shit in between?

you know what you really need to do to fix the problems with both the World Axis and Great Wheel?

remove the material plane completely.

>>53677727
Comparing the distance between two places in the material plane to actually being in a different reality is false equivalency.

Even in the world axis, places can be far apart, but the difference is that they are places you can go directly to.

>>53672317
I always use the world axis in my own games as I really don't like the Great Wheel idea. I tend to run my own worlds, but they are always somewhere in the axis.
The Elemental Chaos is by far the best part of that. I can't stand the eternally dull elemental planes, so the roiling madness of the Elemental Chaos provides a much richer array of ideas for me to work with.

>>53677405
So, in other words, you're a fucking idiot who never even bothered looking at the World Axis lore?

Seriously, the Elemental Chaos is explicitly an infinite plane where all elemental matter originates. That means, much as there are continent sized swamps in the Feywild, there are world-swallowing oceans of muck, magma, mud, tar, amber, salt, liquid ice or whatever you need in the Elemental Chaos.

Plus, the one constant law of the Chaos is Mind Over Matter. You can change the chaos-stuff into whatever you want by having a strong enough will.

So, plans that relied on the "infinite expanse of X" aspect of the Elemental Planes? They still work just the same. Drowning the world in mud is no harder in the World Axis than it is in the Great Wheel.

>>53677584
There was this map of the World Axis in the 3e DMG as an orrery - bowl-shapes above and below as the Astral Sea and Elemental Chaos, World, Feywild and Shadowfell rotating below. Can some anon find it and post it? My google-fu is weak and my connection has literally just dipped to the point I can't post images anymore.

>>53677620
Yeah, you could, but the rest of the plane was homogenous and lethal to the point it may as well not exist, because there was no fucking point in visiting except under very, very specific reasons.

Do remember that Planescape itself assumed most of the action would happen in the Outer Planes and Sigil, admitting that the rest of the multiverse thought of the Elemental Planes as just boring backwaters.

>>53672317
Points of Light was pretty much the only thing I liked about 4E, it's a real shame wizards threw it all in the trash just to pander to FR fanboys. If anything I think it would have suited 5E better than 4.

>>53677776
>Even in the world axis, places can be far apart, but the difference is that they are places you can go directly to.
Define "directly".

Because by those means, you could already hike from the City of Brass to the Abyss all on your own. The difference was that you knew what was in the way and could plan accordingly, come up with different paths you could take and choose from. With the World Axis, however, the only one that knows what you'll face is the GM - there will be no planning, unless he has for some reason prepared different routes for you. You're completely at his mercy. You know nothing.

Pardon me if I'll still go with the Great Wheel.

>>53677818
>That means, much as there are continent sized swamps in the Feywild, there are world-swallowing oceans of muck, magma, mud, tar, amber, salt, liquid ice or whatever you need in the Elemental Chaos.
And the GM can come up with a whole bunch of kewl adventures where the party goes from a land of ice to a land of fire without anything in between, then to a land of mud and a land of salt, then to a bossfight, like this was fucking Super Mario Brothers.

>So, plans that relied on the "infinite expanse of X" aspect of the Elemental Planes? They still work just the same. Drowning the world in mud is no harder in the World Axis than it is in the Great Wheel.
It doesn't. There's no consistency to it whatsoever. You don't even know what's out there unless the GM graciously lets you prepare. It's just shit at the GM's whim.

>>53677492
>Sigil isn't even in the middle of everything, it's just sort of awkwardly wedged to the side!

In the World Axis, it's the Mortal World that is at the center of the universe. That's why all the gods, demons, and stranger shit actually give a fuck about it and bother with world domination plots.

>>53677781
In my own games, I run the World Axis like this: "The World" is the Prime Material Plane under a different name.

That means it takes the shape of a universe of stars and planets, if not under the same rules as in our own reality.

Spelljammers, then, exist to facilitate travel between worlds in the Materium. Many are also upgraded with plane-shifting abilities, because you can also use the Feywild and Shadowfell as linkways between different worlds too - it's just not very easy.

Sigil is the metaphorical heart of the multiverse; every plane and every world can be reached from Sigil, if you know how. It's possible to just ride a plane-shifting vessel from plane to plane, but Sigil is THE name in speedy portal travel.

Like, if Planejamming is taking a cruise ship from North America to Australia, then Sigil is like taking a flight from New York to Sydney.

>>53677964
>In the World Axis, it's the Mortal World that is at the center of the universe.
It's the center of the universe in the Great Wheel as well, though. Sigil's just in the middle of the outer planes there.

>>53677941
>Define "directly".
Defined as not having to head to Sigil or some other place with portals or planeshifting services.

>You're completely at his mercy. You know nothing.
You know what your knowledge checks would tell you about plotting that route. You do not, however, flip open a sourcebook to check. That's gay.

>>53677692
Yes, because it's written that way. Even more common goods are absurdly abundant everywhere. A town completely cut off from the infrastructure it once had, with no reliable roads to anywhere else and monster-infested wilderness on all sides, should not be the sort of place where you can reliably buy weapons and armor. If it survives at all, it shoukd only offer the meager produce of those farmers close enough to get there without being eaten by ogres or something. More than that, it shouldn't be as cheery as Fallcrest is always portrayed. If four superheroes showed up and saved them from the current biggest threat to them, of course they'd all throw themselves at their feet in gratitude. But as soon as those superheroes try to move on to the next town, the mood should darken in an instant. The next time something happens, they're on their own, and their one-time saviors were just vagrants after all, providers of false hope followed by crushing disappointment more bitter than if they had never come at all.

>>53678019

It's a heroic fantasy setting. It isn't adhering to your expectations because it never intended to.

>>53678014
>Defined as not having to head to Sigil or some other place with portals or planeshifting services.
Again, was never needed.

Grab the closest elemental vortex from the plane of fire to the material plane. Then find the nearest path to Mount Olympus or Yggdrasil to arrive to the Grey Waste. Cross over Carceri. Bam, you're in the Abyss.

>>53678001
More explicitly, it basically took Sigil's place in regards to what were the outer planes.

>>53678045
So, you're finding places with portals, which is exactly what I fucking said.

>>53677969
Heh, I run things much the same, though with fewer Spelljammers due to fuckery up near the Topaz Gate's ruins fucking up the planar tides.

Actually, on that note, I don't see nearly enough appreciation for Shardminds and the Topaz Gate around here.

>>53678089
And why's that so terrible? In both cases you have to do a bit of a hike: all that's different is the flavor, and of course the fact that there's some manner of consistency and structure to the Great Wheel version.

>>53678045
>walk across three worlds
>Bam!
This is exactly the thing that the World Axis was made to get rid of.

>>53678105
Oh, and Psionics as reality's immune system against the shit flowing in from where the attempts to barricade up the hole where the Gate was failing.

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>>53676911
>I bought Races & Classes and Worlds & Monsters as my very first 4e purchases,
Where to download them?
>4e did so many things RIGHT in terms of fluff and setting design.
So true. Points of light and stuff.

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>>53677818
This image?

One of the best things about the world axis is the way it simply makes the planes "above" and "below", like a classical Heaven-Earth-Hell trinity. It also distinguishes the central cosmological conflict as that of Law and Chaos.

>>53678108
It's terrible because you probably had to use shit like that to get there anyway, which means pointless backtracking. If your DM is gracious, he'll cover the trip in one sentence and move on. If he's not, well, prepare for your campaign to take another six months.

Or! Or, you could just go where you want to go.

>>53678113
>This is exactly the thing that the World Axis was made to get rid of.
Any good DM would make you walk through about three different adventure locales on your way from the City of Brass to the Abyss, so again, in the practical sense, what's the difference?

>>53678163

Idiot proofing

>>53678113
Didn't stop those dwarves making a ship and SAILING STRAIGHT INTO THE ABYSS just to see how deep it went and if the Shard of Evil was still down there.
Best part is, they are still going strong.

>>53678163
You aren't in charge of what a good DM is or isn't. The only actual point I see you making is that the Great Wheel looks neat and orderly.

>>53678160
Or maybe you could just not cheapen the entire concept of primal elemental planes and the lands of the dead by making it so disgustingly easy to skip through them, like you were in a prancing candyland?

Like, what the hell? Where's the fantasy and wonder to that? Where's the sense of adventure and danger? All removed for the sake of ease and convenience.

You're not supposed to "just backtrack" from basically Hell to another Hell.

>>53678196

Because it's combined with making everywhere you go through interesting locations to adventure in, as opposed to dull monotonous bullshit which does nothing to assist the GM making the journey interesting.

I thin we can at least all agree that the Primordials did nothing wrong.

>>53678183
>Great Wheel looks neat and orderly
And, by contrast, that the World Axis looks like a fucking vomited chaotic mess.

If the two are otherwise identical, why would you not go with the Great Wheel? Are you so offended by the fact that there's a plane of ooze somewhere, and that the book has a page or two dedicated to describing it that you could just skip anyway?

>>53678225

Because a setting for a game should focus on things that are actually interesting and useful. The World Axis did this better than the Great Wheel.

>>53678140
That's exactly it! Thanks so much for finding it.

>>53678133
Well, I bought my copies in print when they came out, so I'm not too sure. 4e PDFs were never hugely popular because of all the backlash from angry grognards.

You can find them legally on DriveThruRPG. But... finding them free? Not sure; maybe one of the PDF archives here on /tg/ has them...

>>53678196
I don't see any part of walking through the Elemental Chaos as being a candyland. It is certainly less predictable than going through one of the known portals to other realms.

>>53678225
The World Axis looking like "vomited mess" is an opinion I disagree with. I think it makes a lot more sense at first glance than the Great Wheel does.

>>53678213
Well, once again - if you think crashing through a fire storm into the world, then taking a trip across a gigantic world tree into the grey underworld full of wailing spirits, trekking the poisonous land into a realm of prisons, before finally arriving to the realm of chaos full of demons, is "dull monotonous bullshit", then I have very little to tell you.

>>53678242
A game setting should focus on things that are interesting and useful, yes, but not to the point where its integrity completely collapses into itself. There has to be some internal consistency, and the World Axis does not have it.

>>53678269
Was it not you that said this? >>53678160

"Just going where you want to go" sounds like a candyland skip to me.

>>53678298

>Well, once again - if you think crashing through a fire storm into the world, then taking a trip across a gigantic world tree into the grey underworld full of wailing spirits, trekking the poisonous land into a realm of prisons, before finally arriving to the realm of chaos full of demons, is "dull monotonous bullshit", then I have very little to tell you.

Cherrypicking the few interesting places doesn't really support your point, especially when they're all still options.

>>53678321
>Cherrypicking the few interesting places doesn't really support your point
The initial argument was a trip from the City of Brass to the Abyss. That is the route according to the Great Wheel.

Besides, I still think they're all interesting. Even the ooze land.

>>53678298
>"Just going where you want to go" sounds like a candyland skip to me.
It's not. The elemental chaos is extremely dangerous. You, however, don't have to travel through several different worlds to get to the one you want to go to. Surprise, it's all one world. You may still pass through places like that, but you do not have to plan a circuitous route in order to get to the place you want to go. At least not anymore than you would on the prime material.

>>53678372
Well, what if I want to plan the route? What if I prefer knowing what's up ahead over just a bunch of unpredictable chaos-stuff?

There's actually zero difference between the world axis and the great wheel. You imbeciles.

>>53678393
Just make your knowledge check, man. Hell, the whole party can work on it and you'll know roughly what to expect on your journey. It won't be something you, the player, open a book to find out ahead of time.

>>53678393

Then you make a roll and your GM tells you. Rather than metagaming by opening a book.

Here's what I'm getting from Great Wheel Fag: Straightup autist.

>Prefers predictable patterns.
>The shape of the Great Wheel is very important.
>Is a fag who would probably read the GM portion of a module.

>>53678409

Well, there are structural and metaphysical/thematic differences. The two could honestly be seen as the same universe, one where Order has the advantage in the cosmic battle, the other where Chaos does.

>>53678434
>>53678448
But that's how it always worked. Just because you can just pop open a book doesn't mean your character can. It's just that the GM has something to work with and doesn't need to make it all up on his own - and some GMs can handle it way worse than others.

>>53678453
Ad hominem.

>>53678479
>Ad hominem.
But true

Going away from the cosmological details for a moment, what about monster lore? I know most of it showed up in Dungeon, Dragon and the Wizards Presents books, but still, are there 4e-related bits of monster fluff you like to salvage?

For me, personally, priority #1 is to kick whoever wrote the 5e gnoll fluff in the nuts and use 4e's Playing Gnolls fluff.

Priority #2 is to change Formorians and Cyclopses back to "mad, deformed, evil giants who war against the archfey on equal terms" and "disciplined, organized, loyal giant-kin who have sworn their allegiance to the Formorians for reasons unknown".

...Which I suppose kind of means I need to bring in Torog, doesn't it...

>>53678479
I don't see anything in what you've said that has anything to do with the superiority of the Great Wheel. It's just laid out more because that's what it's supposed to be. By contrast, the World Axis was made to relax the constraints on the planes. They're both doing what they're supposed to.

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>>53678465
>>53678544
I think you could boil the whole debate down to this - Law versus Chaos.

Great Wheel is a nice orderly realm where everything's in their place, even if some of those places might be argued to be fucking boring and maybe you'd rather skip over a bunch of them on your way from one place to another. The World Axis is a land of chaos where nothing is the same from one day to another, where you can encounter all manner of strange and probably quite exciting adventures, but where it all also just sort of floats around without any manner of order or consistency.

I think we've all made our picks on which one we believe, and can't ever be shaken off from what we've chosen. It's all just flavor. There's really no point in arguing.

>>53678453
My autism is a superpower that allows me to pour incredible amounts of focus into my game and bring forth detailed campaigns and adventures for my players to enjoy, where everything is fully thought out and nothing is out of place.

I think anyone that's trying to turn it into an insult over the internet is just jealous.

>>53678716

The greatest asset a game setting can give a GM is ambiguity and grey areas.

The sweet spot is having enough detail and interesting locations to strongly define the tone of the setting and give you ideas, while also leaving plenty of things undefined so you have the freedom to fill in the gaps.

>>53678791
To put it in a way relevant to the discussion, the Great Wheel does this by giving you just short of forty different-kind of themed lands - many more than that if you count each planar layer as a different place - all of them quite literally infinite and full of places for you to stick your own things into, so long as you remain within the thematic framework. The World Axis, meanwhile, just gives you a great big playground to just build whatever the hell you want in it with no framework to start up on, but also absolutely no limitations.

Depending on what you're going for, either one can work just fine.

The only effective difference between the World Axis and Great Wheel, besides the difference in volume of published material, is the number of connections on the planar flow chart. World Axis is completely finite and allocated in the same three-dimensional space, and none of it is even that big, so you could in theory travel from anywhere to anywhere else just by walking/sailing. Great Wheel has a lot of infinite and otherwise unwalkable distances that function as invisible walls. This does restrict the players in where they can go, making them dependent on knowing the locatioms and keys to gates to and from Sigil, but that can be useful for the DM to give a little structure to the campaign.

>>53678501
Fomorians (one R) are the misshapen giants. Formians are the ant people. You.seem to have mashed the two together in your head.

>>53678501
Actually... anons? I could honestly use a hand in figuring out how to assimilate various celestials & fiends from Pathfinder into the World Axis. So far, this is all I've got:

* Agathions: Plunk 'em in the Feywild and call them fae. Done. Agathions are non-licensed Eladrin, which pre-World Axis were just seelie fae as angels.

* Guardinals: ...No clue.

* Kami: A "liminal" spirit; technically Primal Spirits, but they originate from areas where the Feywild and the World overlap, so they're as much faerie as they are spirit.

* Oni: Malicious fae spirits, perhaps connected by ancestry or experimentation to the formorians?

* Demodands: Unless my memory failed me, in the Great Wheel, these were native to Carceri? So, in the World Axis, these are the descendants of angels assigned to guard Carceri and the monsters within... and actually not all that evil: they're not *nice*, but they fill a vital role, and this gives them some respect. Imagine going to Arvandor and seeing demodands welcomed onto the Wild Hunt.

* Rakshasa: Devas who became so obsessed with earthly pleasures that it corrupted them, turning them into hedonistic monsters. Rather than a caste system, the different kinds of rakshasa represent different "dark pleasures".

* Kyton: Fiends native to the Shadowfell. Maybe somehow tied to Shadar-Kai who took the "stimulation or death!" philosophy down some very twisted avenues?

>>53678218
Yes, they dindu nuffin
They waz kangz!

>>53678218
>I thin we can at least all agree that the Primordials did nothing wrong.
Yeah sure, about as much as the OTHER bunch of cosmic titans known as Primordials from another RPG.

>>53677295
>>53677343
>>53677383
This is why I love PFs version of the Positive energy plane, it's the birthplace of souls and suns, and as such it has a native race called the jyoti, who guard and tend the weird crystalline tree structures that birth new souls like so many orchards that are scattered across the plane. Among them are the manasaputras, who are mortals who have attained enlightenment and help guard and shepherd the new souls being created.

Its no longer a featureless white plane of empty pure life energy, but the bustling place of creation and life.

As to the thread, the Elemental Chaos is very nice. Ki as a form of psionics makes so much sense, so much so that in certain regions of my world, Psions are called ki masters. Incidentally, forms of this show up in PFs occult classes like the kineticist and psychic.

>>53678032
Clearly you have some kind of narrow private definition of heroic fantasy. It could just as easily have been a heroic fantasy with a comfortable status quo of material abundance and magic items everywhere, the kind implied by the 4e rules, frequently threatened by various scary monsters but quickly beaten back each time by the glorious heroes. Kind of like the fantasy equivalent of a superhero comic. That's what 4e needed, but instead they wasted a perfectly good bleak setting on a game that didn't fit it.

>>53679735

The bleak setting only exists in your head. You're pining for something that never existed.

>>53679768
It's a bunch of tiny cities and walled towns as the few sparks of civilization amidst a darkness filled with monsters and cultists - the very definition of "Points of Light" it created.

It's pretty bleak.

>>53679153
Kytons are devils. Always have been. Baator is still a thing in World Axis, so just put them there.

>>53679796

But, as you've just described in detail, it isn't. It could be a basis for a bleak setting, sure, but that's not how they used it.

>>53679811
Pathfinder's Kytons are not the same thing as D&D's traditional Kytons, though. They're basically expies of the Cenobites from Hellraiser, and live in PF's version of the Plane of Shadow, seeking to abduct and physically/spiritually/mentally mutilate other mortals to remake them as new Kytons.

>>53679768
In my head and in the core tenets of the setting described in the DMG and in designer commentary on the Wizards site.

>>53679153
Demodands/Gehreleth could be the former angels of Torog, send into broken slavery with him in the formless depths of the Underdark.

There they have adopted terrible and monstrous forms, having to torment their former god, for crimes none of them can remember.


Guardinals are a cross between primal spirits and celestials. They're what beasts know are waiting for them in their eternal reward.

>>53679900
That's close to what fiends do in general. Fuck it, just make them devils.

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>>53679153
Agathions: are literally D&D guardinals renamed. They go in the outer realm of Arvandor with eladrins and other such fey, animal, or wild celestial creatures. Sit the azatas there too.
Kami: are quite literally Primal spirits made "flesh". Just use them that way.
Oni: These are harder. Id say make them a different version of evil Devas. They could be evil cursed devas who seek out new forms, as their curse prevents them from reincarnating without a nearby corpse. This keeps them close to their PF lore, while still fitting them in with 4e lore.
Demodands: Stickem in the Abyss as shock troops for demonlords. Were crafted by ancient death titans, so they work perfectly fine with 4e lore.
Rakshasa: Just mix them with the Rakshasa found in 4e as you did.
Kyton: Devils who escaped to the Shadowfell. Stick with the Hellraiser aesthetic. Shadar-kai are either free living people within their great metropolises, or slaves to the chain devils.

So, query; am I the only one who thought Eladrin as the primary "humanoid" (for a flexible definition of the term that accepts "incredible natural power levels") of the Feywild made more sense than just being "Angels who just so happen to look like elves"?

>>53681420
No. I liked it too.

>>53681420
It really worked well.

Should have gone further and moved Arvandor to the Feywild, and made the Seldarine into Archfey.

>>53676823
This whole concept is completely foreign to me, and I don't begin to understand it.

It's like asking why we need so many elements on the periodic table.

>>53682260

Given that D&D works on the four elements, you don't in the context of the setting.

>>53682321
That's... not the point, anon.

I didn't spend much time looking at the 4e World Axis stuff because it didn't seem to have much in the way of charm or character relative to the Great Wheel/Planescape stuff. It came across as dull, adding little or nothing to the standard high fantasy setting.

What are the good points? Does the World Axis have neat unique attributes? Things that function as icons, the ways the Modrons or the Lady of Pain did for Planescape?

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>>53672317
Yeah I just straight up USE both sets of lore in my planescape games.

2e Planescape taught us that if your are using a campaign world and if doesn't match how the Great Laid things out. It's because it's form the point of view of a Prime-worlder (Nentir Valer or Golarionian) who doesn't quite have to whole story.

They even had the example of Faerun which in it's own cosmology believes Clangor is it's only world and plane and nothing else. Planescape says it's just the roobs on Toril that don`t realize there is MORE. (Kinda like new yorkers). All of 4e was merely written from some well meaning, but less informed Vale-Sage. Pretty much all of 4e slots nicely in the Great wheel without a hitch... except that Elemental Chaos... Then 5e happened and now I don`t have to bother explaining it anymore. Now it all just fits nicely.

Golarion`s outspheres are MUCH easier to explain, because ever so slightly Mr. James Jacob has already told us that Golarion is just another prime in the D&D verse. Some slight hiccups here and there, but much of the outspheres lore is heavily lifted from Planescape`s old setups.(Daemon`s huge backstory with the ex-general, and tower of wasting? Anyone?)

>>53683050
...You know, that arrogant "we know best!" attitude was always one of the reasons why, despite loving the idea of a plane-traveling epic fantasy campaign, I couldn't STAND Planescape.

>>53682801
First things to immediately spring to mind are the Primordials - who come in far more variety and flavor than the Archomentals of old, the Primal Spirits, the Living Gate and the Starspawn.

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>>53679153
>* Demodands: Unless my memory failed me, in the Great Wheel, these were native to Carceri?...

>Planescape:
Demodands or gehreleth were created by the mad/exiled baernaloth Apomps. A baernaloth who tends to use his god like powers to created newer better gehreleths and mad experiments. Often uses other creature bodies to transmute into new 'leths. Lives and trapped on Carceri?

>4e:
I can't find my planar books so excuse if this next part is a little muddled with personal lore.
I believe in 4e Carceri is still a semi prison plane, and it has a planar connection to either the NG plane or the CG plane. Weird monsters and mutations constantly pour through, but some elves on the other side congregated together to form the "Wild Hunt" and slain these monster when they can.

>Back to Planescape: "The hunt"
Between Elysium, The Beastlands, and Arborea. Each have their share of "Monsters - spilling - through - from - somewhere else"
The beastlands much like 4e does have their wyldhunter for dealing with this. Arborea/Olympus also has part of the Wyldhunt, but also Olympic heros which slain monster almost as a rite of passage, and Bast's Dreamhunters trying to keep the universe from falling apart.
Elysium's bottom layer is like a swampy planar prison? Little is explained but terrible monsters are being kept there form destroying everything else.

>Tying it together.
Apomps who does have his personal army of gehreleth. Is still going on as a mad experimenter. Trying to out do the creation of Tanar'ri or Yoguloths or both. Constantly sending his on creations to wreak havoc on Carceri's planar opposites like a child trying to prove he is the best. Sadly due to being a creature as old as the planes themselves he can easily rip open planar gate to Elysium/Beastlands/Arborea whenever he pleases. The forces of good each deal with the problems in their own way.

>>53683198
>"we know best!" attitude
How do I say this...
I very much understand that point of view, and most of the PS books are written as such. But I think it was ment to be a kinda double entendre (non-sexual), where while all the people of sigil and such are telling you "It's the best!" what they are showing is how shitting sigil is, and how fucked up the planes are.
The over the top in-character writing obscures this I find.

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>Archons
Hey I was thinking of this the other day and it fits nicely in this thread. Archons in 4e are metal forges suits of armor that are infused with elemental energies and brought to life.

In older editions or 5e Archons are reincarnated beings or petitioners on Mt. Celestia attempting to achieve oneness or enlightenment or whatever. They are often depicted as Animal People or lofty humans, Hounds, Ursine, Throne, Etc. Except wait.

A small snippet of lore that is present in all Mt. Celestia versions is that all archons are actually tied closely to the armor they wear. Bracers, breatplate, collars, etc. Even if an Archon is slain on it's home plane so long as it's armor pieces remain intact it will eventually come back to life.

So bother Archons are armor infused beings? Interesting I thought.

>>53683398
In the World Axis cosmology, Carceri was created as a prison to hold the Abominations - uber-monstrosities that the gods and primordials created to kill each other off during the Dawn War, and which were too strong/numerous to be exterminated after the war ended.

However, some of the gods - namely Corellon, Sehahine, Melora and Avandra - objected to the Carceri Plan, feeling it was unlikely to succeed and might have serious effects on the Astral Sea.

So, one-way portals from Carceri to Arvandor's wild regions were established, and the tradition of the Glorious Hunt, where the Exalted (Petitioners, more or less) of Arvandor go out to fight and kill the Abominations that do find their way out of Carceri, was established.

>>53672317
I use the Empyreal Lords from Pathfinder, mostly because the Celestial equivalents of Demon Lords and Infernal Dukes are heavily underdeveloped compared to their evil counterparts and in Pathfinder most are largely the same.

>>53678140
>One of the best things about the world axis is the way it simply makes the planes "above" and "below", like a classical Heaven-Earth-Hell trinity
That sounds like terrible dumbing down of the whole thing and abandoning complexity and nuance for childish simplicity.

>>53685419
You sound like the child here.

>>53678453
>all the people disagreeing with me are one person and they're wrong because they're an autist
wew kid, you're saying a lot more about yourself with this post

desu if anything I recognise more of the "it's totally the same thing but also a zillion% better without all the stuff I personally find boring" arguments from similar previous threads
it even starts with the same bs "I totally agree they did a lot wrong but why don't we talk about the few things of value that can be salvaged which is all of it because it's all superior in every way", basically that pic of the hipster sjw in a mask that /pol/ loves to post

>>53685611
no, u
:^)

>>53685636
Please don't phonepost and mind the wordfilters.

>>53685718
I'm not on a phone and I'm aware of the filters desu

Anons? If you had to redesign the Dawn War Pantheon, how would you do it? Would you bring in any deities from Pathfinder?

Personally, I find Nusemnee, Goddess of Redemption, a really interesting concept, so I like to bring her back to life.

Lamashtu also has an interesting "hook" that I think could actually work really well with the history of the Dawn War.

In fact... maybe there's an interesting idea worth pursuing in that Demon Princehood isn't a one-way corruptive path; maybe, Demon Princes who can ascend to divine power level actually, in some fundamental way, *stop* being Demon Princes, which means they're no longer slaves to the Abyss' call to consume everything?

4e, sadly, didn't devote a lot of attention to brand new faces with articles like Demonomicon, Codex of Betrayal, Court of Stars and Lords of Chaos, but the few new faces, I always thought, tended to stand out.

Like Cordicuhn, the Blood Storm, from Dungeon #172. A gargantuan demon prince compelled to physically climb from the Abyss and lay waste to all that is not a part of it, so enormous and terrible that even other demon princes fear him and have sought over the centuries to stop, or at least slow, his inexorable ascent.

The description is just full of awesome flavor. Pity I can't post the whole thing here in one post.

I'll have you all know that I'm stealing various bits of everything mentioned in this thread and I don't even care where it's from.

>>53683605
5e has them as the Elemental Myrmidons, in Princes of the Apocalypse.

>>53688181
Even if they did, I figure they'd just be primordials.