Settings based on the elements

[Lvl 2 Expert]

This discussion kind of got started here, but that wasn't really the place for it, and also it happened a month and a half ago. So I'm giving it it's own thread.

The elements, whether it's the classical Greek/Indian/Japanese four or five (earth, water, air, fire with sometimes an extra mystery ingredient), the Chinese Wu Xing set of "states of being" (earth, water, metal, wood, fire) or any ancient, modern or homebrew list like it (water, fire, grass, electric, normal, ghost, dark, fairy...), they do kind of have a pull. They form a nice structured basis for a slightly alien yet strangely familiar setting.

Which set of elements would you use for world building? How would you use them? What would magic (if it exists) be like? Are there beasts or races tied to the elements? (Vampires for air, werewolfs for earth, mermaids for water?) How do you explain the existence of say meat or electricity or life? Are the elements tied to ways of life, religion, mental attributes?

Personally I like the Chinese elements better than the Greek ones. The Greek elements may map to the four most common (on earth) phases of matter: solid, fluid, gas and plasma. But as we all know matter can transition between phases while still staying the same substance. Like how water vapor and ice are both still clearly water and can easily revert to being fluid water. The Chinese elements/states/phases/something map to types of atomic/molecular structures and with those to real world behavior of substances. Water is small molecular substances, metal is metal, earth is ceramics and diamond-like crystals (different substances, very similar behavior) and wood is polymers, substances like DNA, proteins and wood. If only they had left out that fire, so close but no cigar. To bring the two systems together you can shoehorn air in by creating a distinction between the normal small molecule group and elemental substances, noble gasses and single element molecules like oxygen and nitrogen, the biggest components of air.

I've also got kind of a big write-up of a thought experiment of my own to post, don't be discouraged if you have nothing to say about that particular idea, just throw anything elemental into the ring. As further encouragement, I'm going to spoiler it:

Spoiler: Yes, you want to click this. Give in to your curiosity, it's the way to the air side. or something...

Show

I have toyed with the idea of a setting (for a game or a story or a book or anything) where the elements are approached somewhat scientifically. There are 5 types of unsplittable (as far as we know) elemental particles: earth, water, air, metal and wood. These unsplittable elements build up into an atom/small molecule analog consisting of three particles each, either all three from the same element, or two from one element and one from another (particles with three different elements are exotic and unstable, maybe to the point of having some of the properties of "nuclear stuff"). This creates substances like watery metal (the face of a mirror), airy earth (glass) and woody water (alcohol? and earthy water is oil?) (yes, I’m looking for better words for these). These particles mostly behave like their biggest ingredient, but have some aspects of the smaller contributor.

One of the properties that gives elements their macro scale behavior is the number of connections the particles can make to other particles. This number is determined by the largest contributor, so for this purpose watery air behaves the same (well, the same enough) as pure air or metallic air. Speaking of air, air does not make any connections to other particles, so will always stay a gas like our noble gasses. Water particles bind to one other particle, forming larger particles than air, making the substances denser and at room temperature fluid. Metal (but I could switch this around with wood and turn some of the elementobabble upside down) makes two links, forming long polymer-like chains that give metals their strong but flexible behavior. Biologically it’s also used to form DNA-like chains, where the order of subtype particles (watery metal, woody metal) writes out the genetic code, and possibly I’ll let this function as proteins as well. Wood has three links, so it can form sheets like cell membranes. I’m thinking packed sheets give wood its grain, making it easier to split by going between the sheets or by splitting the sheets like tearing paper than by punching straight through them from the broad side. Earth finally has four connections on each side, like our carbon, which gives it crystal-like properties.

Fire finally is not an element. It is instead what happens when particles release a lot of energy. The mixed particles are higher in energy in this universe than the particles containing just one element, so fire reduces matter to its elemental state. If a forest burns down the floor is littered with wood, but it has lost all subtype particles and between losing those and the heat from the fire it lost all biological structure and activity as well. So it is just the substance wood, rather than parts of trees. And yes, the air can burn, or rather the subtype particles mixed into the pure air can. I’m thinking it’s not dense enough to allow this in practice or something, air only burns when there is denser material burning nearby, or when pressurized enough (a combustion engine on air, now that would be a neat trick). Naturally occurring water probably does not contain enough mixed particles to light up. Because water burning would be kind of weird. I’m thinking people breathe in this setting to take up air subtypes. They then swap the non-air parts out for air parts found in food and drink, producing pure elements and energy. This probably means a person can't just take 3 metallic air particles and turn them into a metal particle and two air particles. That way people could live of air alone. But it does open up the possibility of fish actually breathing water. (Although my previous fix to burning water might make it a little more difficult. At least it's much denser than air, so there are more particles passing through the lungs.)

Now electricity, there's a challenge, I've got no idea if that exists yet. It could be smaller particles that keep the sets of three together, or part of the forces that do so. Not much has been mapped out on that front yet, although I suppose there's at least an attractive force between all particles and a deterring force between unlike elements.

There are two big problems with this setting as far as I can see: 1 It’s way too complicated to get people to pick up on it quickly. The system could maybe be sort of intuitive to people with a certain amount of knowledge of molecules and materials, but probably not really to the rest of us. 2 The setting does not actually add a lot of fantastic stuff to the world. No psychokinetic powers over elements, no magic, no elemental beasts (on the other hand, those could probably be arranged if we're not too picky about how little of the other elements they can use). It might even block options. So it’s a lot of world building for not much effect, basically. For any kind of magic I’ll have to add in some extra complications like “our world functions on both our normal physical laws and another set. They often agree on what should happen, but not nearly always. When there is a difference in how things would go the observer can affect the processes taking place by choosing which laws they follow”. Like some sort of quantum magic, making glass burn because it can in this other set of rules. But it feels very much needlessly overcomplicated and it also sounds like it still doesn’t add a lot of cool options for weird things to happen.

Anyway, that's one specific setting idea to discuss. Thanks for reading.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

You know what, I'm just going to kick around another idea. How often does one get the chance to do that in ones own fresh and untouched private thread?

This idea is for a d&d (any edition, but mostly 3.x and 5) style class. And yes, if it ever gets concrete it will get its own thread in the normal homebrew setting. Let's call it the elementalist for now, assuming that's not already twenty different archetypes and wizard (or oracle, or...) prestige classes. (I think it's at least one official thing already. But hey...)

For the purpose of this idea, assume a merger of the Greek and Chinese elements for now: earth, water, wood, metal, air, fire. But adding extra elements like electricity/lightning is certainly on the table. Although granted, most D&D settings have the elements set pretty solidly as the Greek four, it may not be the best idea to try this in any of those systems.

The idea is this: A character has some sort of pool of mana points, which we'll just call mana points for now. There are different abilities tied to the elements that use these mana points (MP?). But there are two catches. One is that at least to start out you can only control one element, and you will have to use the version of an ability tied to that element. The other one is that those abilities have to be bought with upgrade points (UP?) received at level up. Let's say you get an upgrade point at every even level, plus one at first level because otherwise the class would be pretty lame at that point, that gives you eleven UP in total if you go up to level 20. Let's now say every ability has an upgrade track of 5 stages, where buying one stage gets you the weakest form of the ability, and buying five of them gives you the most powerful options. We'll also put a limit on when you can buy the higher stages. To buy a stage your level has to be four times the number of the stage. In other words: your first two points can only be spend on first stages, your second two points on first or second stages (which you can only purchase if you have an accompanying first stage) etc and from level 16 on you can buy whatever you like. Not all abilities need to have 5 stages perse, some of them could just be single stage dips, but it would be cool if there were a couple of big ones.

Now, what would those abilities be? Here's the list of what I came up with so far:

-Spellcasting. Spontaneous caster, gain two spell levels (including level zero) per stage. Spells known are all spells on a limited elemental list, maybe three spells per level per element, if I can find that many. Casting spells costs their spell level in mana points. So cantrips are free. Even very high level spells stay thematic. You might be able to cause a large earthquake, but no wish for you elementalist. And yes, the way the upgrade point work means a dedicated caster is ahead of the curve in spell levels, getting 4th level spells when others get 3rd level, 6th when others get 5th etc. A possible fix: You can buy a new stage at that point but the second spell level does not kick in for another two levels.
-Elemental shape. Either wildshape or some form of elemental body. Higher stages give stronger forms and a longest time in that shape. I'm thinking it costs 1 MP (or some multiple) to turn into the simplest shapes, twice that for stage 2 forms, three times for even larger forms etc. Initial duration is just a few rounds, a high level character can basically stay changed forever. I probably should add some mana cost for staying changed to not make it a complete freebee, work in progress, but I do not want to pay per round, the shape should be useable for other things than short fights).
-Elemental damage resistance. Works in both normal and elemental shape. Protects you against your own element(s).
-Elemental fighting styles. Martial arts based on the elements, adding elemental damage and unlocking special moves, which cost MP. I was thinking of adding a simple elemental blast upgrade track, but with spells already being a thing this is probably a better idea. Ideally this track should run for five stages and deliver on the power this promises.
-Extra elements. With this upgrade you unlock different varieties of all of your abilities unlocked so far, and all those you're still going to unlock. I'm not sure if this should be a single extra element per stage or rather just a total of 3 stages where stage one unlocks a single extra element, stage 2 and 3 each give access to two more (or more for stage 3 if more elements get added.) Passive ability in that it does not cost more MP to use different elements on a single day.
-Extra mana. Upgrade your MP. So more resources from which to conjure up spells, shapechanges and/or special moves available per day. Not sure of the number of stages. Five stages would allow people to go specialized and pretty much untiring, but maybe just one or two small extra steps would be more balanced.
-Travel style/speed. Gives extra mobility. Air elementalists gain a flight speed, earth gives a burrow speed, water a swim speed, wood removes the hindrances of rough terrain and maybe gives tree stride as a spell like ability (for some MP per use). I'm not sure about metal (possibly a form of wall pass or burrowing through metal, fire (teleportation in a puff of smoke?) and electricity or any other possible extra additions yet. Probably only a single stage, maybe two or three if it can be made awesome enough.
-Cast spells while in elemental shape. A single stage.
-Maybe an elemental companion.
-Maybe some sort of track that just slightly boosts the power of all your abilities? Is going to be a real balancing act, probably not such a good idea.
-Extra class skills (one or maybe two per element, maybe just a vague profession like skill that says you're good with [element]), possibly including some extra skill points or just getting them maxed out automatically? One stage probably.

Note: Not all elements have the luxury of having their own damage type. Here's how I would map them for those abilities that use it:
Earth -> bludgeoning damage
Water -> cold damage
Wood -> poison damage
Metal -> piercing damage
Air -> either sonic or electric damage, definitely sonic if electricity becomes an element (sonic energy is air pressure, as far as I care it does not have to be of an audible frequency)
Fire -> fire damage

Which if electricity joins leaves just cutting damage on the cutting room floor.

The big gimmick is that this class should allow for completely different but sort of balanced builds. One could go full caster plus maximum extra mana and one little extra and be a squishy and very specialized sorcerer with plenty of casting power but not much else, but you could also build a much more utility focused character or a sort of druid/wildshape ranger. Going by the unofficial tier list for d&d 3.5 the overall power level should come out around tier 3, similar to a bard or a weird druid who's decided not to use any spells and basically just eats everybody.

So, I just cast elemental wall, my element is text.

[Xuc Xac]

It always kind of bothers me when people try to combine the Classical Greek elements with the Wu Xing. They don't represent the same things. They just use the same symbols. The Greek elements are substances. The Wu Xing are processes. The Greek elements answer the question "What is the world made of?" The Wu Xing explain "How do natural cycles work?" In the Greek system, air is Air, regardless of what it's doing. In the Wu Xing, warm rising air is Wood; vigorously expanding or blowing air is Fire; air that is fresh but not too blustery is Earth; air that is cooling, falling, and contracting is Metal; and still, stale air is Water.

The Greek Elements describe what stuff is, but the Wu Xing describes what stuff does.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Thanks for that information. I never got that somehow. That must be a really annoying pet peeve to have, too many people getting it horribly wrong.

So those Chinese philosophers (not sure if that's the correct term, but in its meaning in a classical context it's probably close enough) made a much better model for what things are than those Greeks and it was pretty much an accident. Because water, earths, metal and polymer (which is something different from "tree" but can in any classical setting be substituted with "wood" pretty well) really do map onto behavior of substances as determined by their micro- and mesostructures pretty well. Much better than the system of four, which might still map onto "what it's doing" a bit, ironically, but not onto "what it is". So for having fun with the concept of elements I'm probably going to keep including metals and polymers.