Lightning?
edited 9th Jul '13 12:46:41 PM by m8e
I'm sorry, correcting it right now (you damn grammar nazi :P)
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.
Wood strikes me as overly narrow. Perhaps 'Nature' would be a wider field.
"Steel wins battles. Gold wins wars."
Nitrogen!
Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.
Dreams of Revenge
It's incorrect to state lightning/electricity is a sub-set of fire - Fire will not create a potential difference*, no matter how hot it gets. And electricity will conduct perfectly well no matter how hot or cold it is.
So I don't think you need to worry overly much about it being "too similar" to fire. 
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Technically wood covers even flesh, but you are right, nature seems a more fitting name
edited 9th Jul '13 1:42:49 PM by mbartelsm
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.
Forget about physics for a moment since I rewrote several physic laws to give the setting some "sauce" and unique feel. And now think about fire and lightning (not electricity), their visible manifestations are both in the form of plasma and both are hot enough to burn stuff. They are similar enough so that they can be grouped in the same category of "glowish hot stuff" once you take electricity off from the equation.
edited 9th Jul '13 1:48:24 PM by mbartelsm
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.
J.D.T.creates
Well i've been researching elements because I have an element based system myself and the question you have to ask yourself is how this: how wide or narrow are you planning on making each one. Are we looking at manipulating the exact element and nothing but(ex. fire control not lava or heat). Are we allowing things more wiggle room (lighting is electromagnetic energy so it involves light).
EDIT: Oh okay, you're talking about thematic/emotional associations with these elements. Well with that you can do a white mage/black mage divide between the two or a status buff/debuff difference.
All of space and time, everything that ever was and could have been... and there's still nothing on tv
Blood. The element for animal life.
Reality is for those who lack imagination.
Well what about Life and Magic? Life includes things like soil (earth, life), plants, animals, etc. as well as some magical constructs (Golems for example). Magic is a sort of catch-all case, it can be used to mean magic (spells and so-on), mind (intelligence), or oddness (gems are odd stones).
I got a setting where the elements are fire, earth, disease and rain. Rain/storms can probably be an in-between for water and air. I think the ancient Sumerians had fresh water and salt water as two separate elements.
Then there's aether. I don't really know what it is but it exists and is considered a classical element. Maybe you could have time? Or gravity?
That's all I got.
Lets see, I have the Void, Emptyness, Nothingness. The duality Light, Time, Order vs. Dark, Space, Chaos. I have the element of life, soul, spirit, aether or whatever you want to call it. and The seven elements already mentioned which have subcategories (such as wood and meat for, well, wood).
This has two purposes, for explaining and making a consistent world and for spell casting, that is why life, even if it wasn't used by the other element, would not fit in, how easy would it be to just squeeze the life out of someone? or that's why I can have both salt and fresh water, or water and rain, it would be redundant from the spellcasting point of view. Something similar happens with lightning and fire, they are both shiny, hot and are well conducted by metal, it becomes redundant if I take into consideration their practical uses, the only difference would be one has electricity, then it becomes even worse, why choose fire when you have the upgraded version: lightning.
I'm sorry if I am being too picky, but that's the reason I haven't come up with one myself.
Also, it can't be six elements since it's better if they don't have opposites (as in: water and fire cancel out), heck, not even light and shadow are treated as opposites, just complementary. Neither they can be too abstract, wind/air is as far as I can push it since this is for describing the physical world.
But if no one has anything I guess I will have to work with six elements.
edited 9th Jul '13 6:19:09 PM by mbartelsm
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.
@JD Tcreates: things have some room, but only within the physical realm, fire covers heat, and flames, it can also control the heat aspect of lava and molten metal, but not the material itself which would be controlled by earth and metal respectively. Wood or Nature as someone suggested, control organic matter such as wood, meat or even soil.
Now that I think about it, the heat aspect of fire is too abstract for an element, but at least it is integral enough that it has to be in somewhere, I can't just ignore it, and it doesn't fit within the other levels of elements.
edited 9th Jul '13 6:27:00 PM by mbartelsm
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.
Looking at these elements as physical things with a practical magic use, I don't think void/emptiness/nothingness/dark/space would count. Darkness isn't a thing, it's the lack of a thing (light) while void is the lack of matter. Everything's a dark void until you add to it. In a way, control over light would also be control over darkness and same goes for void and space and whatever. Do you get what I'm saying? This is kind of abstract.
If control over light is control over dark, you'd have light/dark, earth, fire, wind, water, metal and nature.
Magnetism, Gravity, Chaos, Death, Cosmic.
You kind of got it wrong, the void, light/dark and life are not part of the physical elements, I only listed them to clarify which thing were already in use
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.
The Dev Cat
space or time maybe? a little overpowering sure, but it'd defiantly be the hardest to learn.
I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?
Any possibility of using light as in the stuff that comes from lamps and makes lasers and stuff? If not, every other option I can think of will just fall under one of the other six. Which sorta makes since, as many of the classical elements groups have only 4-5 elements, so figuring out more that wouldn't fit under those and still be a physical part of the world (as opposed to something intangible or spiritual) is hard.
If you can't think of a seventh elements but you need an odd number of elements, how about you just combine Earth and metal. They're basically the same thing anyways. Even more so that ice and water are the same thing.
Salt and Blood do sound like viable elements. Ice is simply water. That is too obvious. Could sound be an element?
But I don't see what is wrong with lightning. Lightning has properties that are very much unlike fire. Lighting moves instantly through water, metal, and air, whereas water extinguishes fire, and metal contains it, except for it's heat. Fire moves slowly on its own, unless carried by wind (an explosion). Too much wind can extinguish fire, but does nothing to electricity. Fire+Earth=Lava, but electricity won't combine with earth at all.
you seem to be using the Wu Xing
element system plus windnote and lightningnote , why not remove both and solve your "even elements" problem at the same time? since the usual additions of yang and yin/void and matter can't be applied either way.
edited 26th Jul '13 4:55:32 AM by ShanghaiSlave
Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?
Wind(air), Fire, Earth, Water is part of the 'classic four' too.
Fire, Earth, Water, Wind(air) + Wood, Metal, Lightning
or
Fire, Earth, Water, Wood, Metal + Wind(air), Lightning
Lightning is the only one that not part of any of the two.
edited 26th Jul '13 5:20:04 AM by m8e
that's besides the point. my point was consistency (just simply wuxing, which already have consistent element relationships) and avoiding even numbered elements and "opposites cancel" system.
if that's meant for me at least...
edited 26th Jul '13 5:45:06 AM by ShanghaiSlave
Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?
Elvenking
Well, Chinese Mythology had 5. Earth, Fire, Water, Metal and Wood. Wood included wind so there was no Air element.
Japanese had 5. Earth, Air, Water, Fire and Spirit.
Tibet had 5 as well. Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Space.
Alchemy had 3, Mercury (stability/volatility), Sulphur (combustion) and Salt (solidity).
What's really useful is the seven chakras of Hinduism and Buddhism; (crown) Time/Space, (third eye) Light/Dark, (throat) Aether/Lightning/Life, (Heart) Air/Wind, (navel) Fire/Heat, (sacral) Water/Ice/Mist, and (root) Earth.
Hinduism's has 6 other elements, which are earth, air, fire, water and aether/void, and Buddhism's and Egypt's were the classic 4, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Some had the four plus 'quintessence', basically aether.
Babylon had 5; sea, earth, sky, fire and wind, which I reckon would be the easiest to add to. (sea, earth, sky, fire, wind, wood and metal? sea, earth, sky, fire, wind, aether and time? sea, earth, sky, fire, wind, space and sun/stars?)
The mythology section of the TV tropes page on Elemental Powers has a few interesting ones as well.
edited 27th Jul '13 6:16:58 AM by VincentQuill
'All shall love me and despar!'
So, my setting works with an elemental magic that has seven different elements: Wind, Fire, Metal, Earth, Wood, Water, Lightning
The problem I have is with the last one, lightning, it doesn't convinces me, mainly because the way I see it it is just a subset of fire, I thought Ice, but it is a subset of fire (heat) too. Any suggestions as to what element could replace it? even better it it somewhat fits between water and wind.
PS: Can't be light, shadow, void or similar ones as they are already used for something else, it has to be a "natural" element
edited 9th Jul '13 12:58:26 PM by mbartelsm
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab.