How over done is elemental aspects?

[MysticMonkey]

Personally I feel like it is to be honest but what I am wondering is if there is a way to salvage a bit of the concept?

I am thinking broader than just the four traditional elements. I am trying to create a world with fractured magic and am looking at all types of magic to kind of break it down into parts. . . For lack of a better word.

I have thought of schools, alteration, necromancy, etc. But I want a physical manifestation of the elements to be present in the world, for the purposes of gates or portals that lets the magical energy into the world. Closer to the gates, stronger the physical presence is.

This is a fledgling thought, i am just wondering how turned off people are by elemental concepts?

[the_david]

You could use leylines, but I think you want something more specific. Like a physical representation of a school of magic. Have you considered making them persons instead of uhm, giant magical antennas?
That might be a bit too Runelordy though.
I can also see a bunch of dungeons based on the 8 schools. (Are we counting universal? It's not much of a school, is it?)

Do the giant magical antennas send out the magic, or do they gather it instead? Because I could a dungeon build to absorb the ambient magical energy.

Okay, those were just some wacky ideas. Tell me what you think.

Edit: Oh right, you wanted to know if it was a turn off. It's just a plot ticket campaign right? Find the 8 artifacts of magic and/or stop the villain from using/destroying them. It's not very original, but since there are no original stories anymore that's kinda okay.

[MysticMonkey]

Edit: Oh right, you wanted to know if it was a turn off. It's just a plot ticket campaign right? Find the 8 artifacts of magic and/or stop the villain from using/destroying them. It's not very original, but since there are no original stories anymore that's kinda okay.

Hmm, I wasn't thinking it would be a collect these objects and fix things, but that would be funny if a group of pcs thought that was what they should do and it didn't work.

I was thinking a little more along the lines of each gate/portal would be a way for magical energy to enter the world but it was a way to also get into the elemental plane. There could even be more than one but i don't want the world rife with them. So as you approach the gate of fire for example, you would have more likelyhood of encountering creatures from that plane, more pools of lava, things like that.

But i also want to include things like shadow, death, life/nature, etc.

Magic comes into the world in heavy concentration and eventually all weaves together to create "normal" magic.

[Everyl]

Elemental aspecting is heavily done, but it's always possible to do something new and/or interesting with any old trope. The idea that particular "flavors" of magic get more or less powerful depending on geographic proximity to specific features is interesting, and I think there's a lot of potential there. In particular, it seems worth considering that the high-magic regions near the "gates" or "portals" or whatever they wind up being would give a major home-field advantage to people who specialized in the same kind of magic.

Some brainstorming:

The Free City of Pyropolis is built at the closest point to a Elemental Fire Portal that remains habitable to humans year-round. The fire mages there use the tremendous amounts of basically-free energy available to run an industrial powerhouse, operating forges, basic steam turbines (that they lack the technical know-how to make work at greater distances from the Portal), and other manufacturing facilities on a scale unseen elsewhere in the settled world. Between the inhospitable conditions around the city and the heavily-armed standing army, Pyropolis has maintained its independence for centuries as empires have risen and fallen in the region. Indeed, the city has grown rich supplying weapons and armor to various sides in those conflicts.

Those who live in high-Death-magic regions understand one thing all too well: only in death can anything become eternal. The growing aura of death magic suppresses all life, starting with the smallest, making microbes unable to thrive or even survive. Thus, when there's too much ambient Death magic, not only is the soil largely infertile, but milk won't curdle, wine won't ferment, and corpses won't decompose. This can actually be exploited as a way to preserve things - dead people naturally mummify, books won't mold or rot, and many foods won't spoil. It's all a matter of having a way to get close enough to take advantage of the preservative effects without going so close as to threaten one's own life, or to make food production/acquisition impractical.

...

And so on. From a worldbuilding perspective, I think there's definitely still new and interesting material to explore with "elemental" aspecting.

[Xuc Xac]

Elemental aspects have been done very many times, but almost always in the same way.

How often have you seen a fire mage that didn't just light everything on fire like a pyromaniac?

Why don't we ever see a fire healer cauterizing wounds? Or a Pyropsychiatrist who burns away the darkness of depression and suicidal tendencies from your mind and kindles a new passion for life?

The elements are supposed to be symbols and not just purely physical things. It's even worse with the Chinese 5 element system. Many games just treat them like the 4 Greek elements with Wood and Metal split off from Earth and Air being eliminated. But in the 5 element system, the elements are processes and not substances (they just use the substances for names). I'd really like to see the elements used less literally.

[MysticMonkey]

Why don't we ever see a fire healer cauterizing wounds? Or a Pyropsychiatrist who burns away the darkness of depression and suicidal tendencies from your mind and kindles a new passion for life?

This kinda makes me think of Jordan's magic used by the Aei Sedai. I agree with what you are saying something beyond the physical would make the elemental aspect easier to take.
I was trying to think of what the components of magic could be and the elements are what first popped into my head. Followed by gods/demons. The first being a little easier to work with, I went with that, still trying to make it unique (ish) as the breaking if magic is what formed my current world situation.

[Corneel]

The four classical elements are just one way to look at things.

To start with the Chinese already have different elements, which don't exactly overlap:
Fire - Earth - Metal - Water - Wood (wherein Fire gives Earth (ashes), Earth gives Metal, Metal gives Water (?), Water grows Wood, Wood gives Fire; but also Fire melts Metal, Metal cuts Wood, Wood (roots) breaks up Earth, Earth dams Water, Water douses Fire)

DSA has six elements, Fire, Water, Air, Rock, Earth/Humus (and life & wood), Ice (& cold & death)

And lightning can also serve as an element.

Or you could go by the basic abilities: strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom & charisma and see them as basic elements. The physical elements could even be a manifestation of these (e.g. Earth = constitution or Water = dexterity, etc. )

[Mith]

A neat way to work with the various concepts would be to have that every element of magic can accomplish most of the same things, just with a different technique with varying degrees of difficulty. So a fire mage can invoke passion, but they can also calm emotions, although that would be more difficult for them. A water mage would have the opposite problem. This would continue for all the elements.

As for portals, I would suggest that you pick geographical formations/terrains/biomes that seem symbolic of the element, and then see if you can draw up transition zones for lesser elements between them. For example, Fire becomes a hot desert, Death a tundra, Water a swampy island, Air on the Plains (open space, lots of wind) Shadow in caves, Earth in Canyon, Life a rain forest, etc. Have the various territories mix for interesting results at times.

[falsedot]

Personally I am a bit bored with paper rock scissor elements; but you can change that! In my game I have a paperA paperB rock setup; the balance is that rock (light) can also heal

[Cespenar]

Many ways to do this.

-You could generalize a bit: Matter, Energy, Life, Space, Time

-Or you could go with dualities: Heat (both fire and cold), Light (and dark), Life (and death), etc.

-You could go with concepts that still could be physically observed: Creation, Preservation, Change, Destruction.

-You could go with scientific types of energy, maybe edited/combined vigorously and given new names for giggles: Fire (thermal, include light or not to your own desire), Lightning (electric, include magnetic as well, maybe), Movement (combining kinetic, potential, mechanical, etc.), Life or Nature (chemical), Aether (gravitational), Raw/Hidden/Divine/Chaotic Energy (nuclear), etc.