Dungeons & Dragons lore!

A thing I wrote up:

Edited by God_of_Awesome on Mar 13th 2021 at 6:31:48 AM

I feel the need to point out that that video's description of the Plane of Fire is not, in fact, accurate to (current) lore. I'm not sure what they're using as a source, but it's not Official Material for 5e.

Because the terrain the video describes is actually that of Great Conflagration,(aka the Plane of Ash) the demi-plane that's the border between the Plane of Fire and the Plane of Air, with the City of Brass and some elements of the Fountains of Creation (the part of the Plane of Fire that borders the Plane of Magma) thrown in for some reason. It's not a description of the actual Plane of Fire.

Most of the visitable Plane of Fire is a wasteland of ash and embers known as the Cinder Wastes, where the heat is intense but survivable with decent (non-magical) protection and access to water (which the Cinder Wastes are not actually devoid of, particularly on the edge closest to the Prime Material).

The visitable parts of each of the Elemental Planes are the places closest to the Prime Material, because those are the places where, through the Prime, even the complete opposite element leaks in. And those places are all habitable (if perhaps with some hardship) to beings from the Prime.

Far away from the influence of the Prime, the Elemental Plane of Fire is, you know, just nothing but fire, but you can't adventure there, you can't even go there... Natives of the Elemental Plane of Fire (outside Elementals, of course) can't even go there, because nothing can exist there except fire. The same is true for the other Elemental Planes with their respective elements.

Iirc, they used a model similar to Exalted's Creation. As you get close to the Pole Of Fire, it's a harsh but survivable desert, and then it starts to get dotted with volcanos, next is a wall of volcanos and finally the Pole Of Fire turns the southern edge of Creation into a wall of fire that marks the border between Creation and Chaos.

In 5e, the Elemental Plane functions as one plane with each cardinal direction keying in on one element. As you enter from the Material, which essentially functions as Exalted's Pole Of Earth, you're not close to the "Pole", the border between the Elemental Planes and Elemental Chaos, and font of pure elemental energy. You're close to the Material and everything's chill.

> I feel the need to point out that that video's description of the Plane of Fire is not, in fact, accurate to (current) lore. I'm not sure what they're using as a source, but it's not Official Material for 5e.

Its from previous editions,still interesting though

It’s going to be a long time until I’m experienced enough to do any D Ming, but I have been thinking up a campaign for if it ever happens, and I want to ask if a part of it is a good idea. One part would be where the hypothetical players find out that a lot of the problems are caused by the king making deals with dark entities to save his kingdom from a plague destroying it. Then I looked at the phrase “dark entities” and thought, ‘’those’’ [[Tabletop Game/Ravenloft Dark Powers]]. If I go with this idea, would the player characters be completely screwed, realistically speaking? Is there any story of the Dark Powers being stopped in the process of claiming a new Darklord and territory for the Mists?

Edited by Novis on Mar 31st 2021 at 6:52:20 AM

I have little experience with Ravenloft, so this advice is purely from a storytelling perspective.

As I understand from reading comments of the setting, no, the Dark Powers can't be killed by the players in the module as written. That doesn't mean you can't use them, or adapt them to meet your campaign's needs. Instead of being as canon, maybe they're powerful but "locked away" behind a dimensional prison, and most of their interaction with the Prime Material plane (or whatever cosmology you go for) is through mortal intermediaries a la Lovecraft. If the players can silence their prophets, kill their cultists, and destroy or seal their dread artifacts they might be able to at least functionally contain their influence.

As I understand it, the Darklords typically all commit horrible crimes, and it sounds like this king is on the way to doing that via deals with the devil. Maybe the players can stop the evil tide and the encroachment of the mist by either A) stopping the king from committing a horrible crime that is part of the deal to save his kingdom (redemption, or plain killing him before he has the chance) or B) helping them repent and atone.

Alternately, if you want them to be able to fight and kill "The Dark Powers", it could instead be a demon with powers of disease that is not so much "curing" the plague in the kingdom as choosing not to infect people in exchange for XYZ favor from the king. Probably while secretly plotting to betray via Read the Fine Print.

Edited by Earnest on Apr 3rd 2021 at 1:19:37 PM

Realistically, if the game gets to high levels and you can find a homebrew Dark Powers statblock, you could just have your players kill them. If it has hp, players will find a way to bring that hp to zero if given the opportunity.

It's why there's, near as I can tell, no official statblock for them. Because the writers want them to be faceless, invincible, and unbeatable. But you need not let that stand in the way of any power fantasy your players may have. Slay gods, save the world, loot the universe.

I'm... Worried about the implications of the question asked 'Can the Dark Powers be stopped?' being answered with 'No, they can't be killed.'

Yes, the Dark Powers can be stopped. The way the Mists gains new Domains is by a ruler drawing, intentionally or unintentionally, the attention of the Dark Powers through their potential for corruption and then having the Dark Powers corrupt them in a way that seeps into and corrupts the land they rule, until that corruption is so endemic to the land that it simply... Slips out of its native world as if it had never been there in the first place and into the Mists.

Ways to keep the Dark Powers from claiming a new Domain for the Mists can include, but are not limited to:

• Getting the ruler to better their life and turn away from their corruption.
• Severing the connection between the ruler and the land so that their corruption stops affecting it.
• Killing the ruler (Although this carries a risk. If the corruption has seeped into the land too much, then outright murdering its corrupted ruler can be the final act that seals its fate and then the Dark Powers simply resurrect the ruler, usually as some type of Undead, to be its Darklord and, because the Dark Powers are assholes, they'll resurrect the Darklord's murderer too after the Darklord inevitably kills them and then have the two of them make each other miserable for all eternity).
• Finding some magical way to cleanse the ruler or the land of their taint of corruption. Often a holy relic or other object of divine significance.
• Deposing the ruler.
• Solving whatever situation is corrupting the ruler, if (as is the case in your hypothetical) the ruler is one of those well-intentioned types who's succumbing to the corruption out of desperation.

I had an elder evil eat one of dark powers <_<

I'm personally torn about what to think of the Dark Powers, but generally I feel that they suck out some of the fun from the basic premise of putting classic Gothic horror into D&D. I like the idea of the original Ravenloft module, because it doesn't really have to be more complex than fighting a Dracula stand-in, or Frankenstein and Mr Hyde, as in the sequels. Classic horror can be horrific and macabre, but ultimately fun in its spookiness, while the Dark Powers cause for me at least a heavy dose of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. That's why I'd completely ignore the Dark powers and make Barovia a part of another setting, like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk or Eberron, except that Strahd's evil has made it isolated and partially merged with the Shadowfell.

Yeah problem I also have with dark powers is that they are boring and feel like "plot armor". Like they are mysterious force that exists to say "this is why you can never defeat the horror truly" <_< But they don't actually "do" anything in the story besides keep up status quo

To me the Dark Powers are a bit like Midi-chlorians, in that they feel like an unnecessary detail used to explain something that doesn't really need any explanation. I find it appropriate that Strahd is The Chew Toy and a Cosmic Plaything for being foiled each time he tries to reach his goal, but I don't need it to be intentionally done by a meta-commentary on the creators of the game. It's enough for me that it is mainly because of Strahd's own personality-flaws, plus that his evil naturally brings forth intrepid adventurers out to wreck his unlife. As for why he keeps returning, it's not really necessary for Eldritch Abominations to be behind that. Taking cues from Universal and Hammer, it can be because Strahd simply has multiple contingency-plans with evil minions and actual cults at the standby to resurrect him, or just that something carelessly bleeds on his ashes.

Thanks for the advice. I’m definitely not planning on the players fighting the Dark Powers directly, at most they’d give some boons to the king if it comes down to a fight between him and the party. It’s still outside the Mists, so what they can do is limited.

I’ll keep Ronrecht’s list in mind.

Currently Salamanders and Frost Salamanders are unrelated elemental beings of vastly different appearance, but in the older PC-games they were both portrayed as physically identical creatures similar to the Yuan-ti in form. Is this something that the game programmers did just to save space with a Palette Swap, or were the two species related in earlier editions of D&D proper?

I can't speak about first edition ad&d, but Planescape was very clear that they weren't related, so it would have to have been so pretty far back.

Edited by bobbitwormhobbitwyrm on Apr 17th 2021 at 6:31:27 AM

I just checked that the Frost Salamanders as seen in Black Isle's games were invented by the developers as an icy equivalent to regular Salamanders, with no basis on the creatures in regular D&D. They did occasionally refer to them as "Ice Salamanders", but quite inconsistently and that led to my confusion. Honestly, these Ice Salamanders make more sense to me, being relatives and rivals of the creatures from the Elemental Plane of Fire, because it seems unnecessarily confusing to have another species with a similar name but no true connection.

"With all the different beastfolk running around D&D, why isn't there a dogfolk in canon that I know of?" There is such a race. They're called Lupins, from Mystara. They were generically "doggy" in BECMI, which is where they were introduced as a playable race, had both a very super-specifically doggy PC writeup for AD&D 2e in Dragon, had a somewhat more "wolf-dog" visual motif in Red Steel for AD&D 2e, then became wolf-people when they were updated in Dragon for 3e.

If you don't have to worry about NSFW language, you might want to check out their 1d4chan article.

1d4chan is down

...It's been back up for over a week now? Unless you mean the .NET version, which, yes, was seemingly taken offline once the .ORG version was restored.

Also, referring back to the discussion on dragons crossbreeding around page 3, the idea "it can happen, but it's really rare" goes all the way back to Council Of Wyrms for AD&D 2nd edition at the very least, and it may have been discussed earlier in the original Draconomicon for the Forgotten Realms in AD&D 1e. Mind you, in Council of Wyrms, it's stated that crossbreed dragons largely take after one parent or the other, and visually hybridized hatchlings are killed by disgusted pureblood adults... I'd need to pull my copy of the Revised Campaign Setting book out to do a direct quote of what it says.

I am unsurprised there is one for 2e, between it and 3e, D&D was gonzo back in the day.

Edit: Looking back at the Beast-Folk I made, I used "Lupin" as a subrace and I'm pretty sure I took it from the Mystara race. I also used Sirius from the big 3.5 homebrew compendium of beast-folk.

Edited by God_of_Awesome on May 4th 2021 at 8:11:40 AM

What would be, you think, the sociological and psychological impact on elves and those around elves if they had, instead, the following lifespan:

- Begin life aging normally as humans do.
- Between the age of 15 and 30, aging randomly halts
- Elves know, by instinct, when that happens and know, by precedent, that they now have precisely 100 years, to the second, of unaging life before they keel over dead

Edited by God_of_Awesome on May 8th 2021 at 12:49:46 PM

A period of unbridled hedonism until they get bored with that, followed by different desperate attempts to find any real meaning in life?

So, like humans then?

That would kinda remove the whole trope of elves having long multiple human generation lasting lives yeah basically making them like "humans, but youthful and live bit longer"

Kinda hard to think of other effects besides lacking concept of "elderly" but still having concept of someone being "old".

(note: pathfinder elves also does the "they age about normally until 20s when they stop aging and stay that way for hundreds of years thing, I think that is pretty common way to deal with it because a species staying child for 100 years sounds really silly in many ways)

One of the big characterizations with Elves/Eldar in Warhammer Fantasy and (especially) 40K, is that they are less flexible and nuanced than humans and tend to go to extremes with their philosophies and lifestyles. That way you can get extreme hedonists and extreme aschetics, with virtually no middle ground, as well as entire populations where everybody is expected to conform to that settlement's chosen culture. This probably has a lot to do with elves typically being a Dying Race, if not a contributing factor to why they are in such a pickle. I would incorporate a very similar unflexible mindset to elves in D&D as well.

As for aging, I think it would be more appropriate if they were considered adults at 100 for cultural reasons, because for a species that can live up to 700 years that would seem like an easy designated age for adulthood to begin. With the physical aging, I think it's okay if elves mature at least a bit slower than humans. Maybe with a similar time period spent as infants, after which each childhood developmental period gets slowed down a bit, until they reach puberty at, say, fifty? Fifty years of being a teenager seems to me a bit better than 100 years of childhood, especially if it is partly justified by cultural norms.