The alignment wheel, but with elements?

[Zhentarim]

I had an idea for a mechanical feature where instead of using moral/ethical alignments, the axises would be water vs fire and earth vs air, with "extreme" alignments being "mix" elements like mud, ice, smoke, and magma. I'm not sure how to build a game around it, but I feel like the pieces for a good game are there and I just need to figure it out. Does that mechanic give you any ideas?

[An Enemy Spy]

Don't see how elements fit into alignment. Are fire and water people unable to get along? If I steal from you, was that an Air thing of me to do? Is helping people in need an Earth action?

[Zhentarim]

Don't see how elements fit into alignment. Are fire and water people unable to get along? If I steal from you, was that an Air thing of me to do? Is helping people in need an Earth action?

I was thinking of it in terms of allying with elemental lords...like I said, the pieces are there, but I'm missing something to tie it together.

[Psyren]

Don't see how elements fit into alignment. Are fire and water people unable to get along? If I steal from you, was that an Air thing of me to do? Is helping people in need an Earth action?

I'd consider taking a page from the Lords of Magic playbook, and leaving Chaos/Order in there alongside the other elements.

[An Enemy Spy]

A good nonstandard alignment system is Magic the Gathering's color pie. It has less to do with good and evil and more to do with differing philosophies. White's all about serving the collective good and sacrificing your needs for others. Blue's all about expanding your knowledge and trying to progress toward perfection. Black's all about serving your own needs. Red's all about pursuing your passion and being unfettered. Green's all about filling the role nature gave you and preserving things instead of trying to change them.

Each color has two enemy colors and two ally colors. White and Black are Morality vs Amorality, White and Red are Order vs Chaos, Blue and Red are Logic vs Emotion, Blue and Green are Technology vs Nature, Black and Green are Death vs Life.

[the_david]

Don't see how elements fit into alignment. Are fire and water people unable to get along? If I steal from you, was that an Air thing of me to do? Is helping people in need an Earth action?

While the alignments and the outer planes form the moral building blocks of the universe, the elements and the inner planes form the physical building blocks as everything is made up out of some combination of earth (solids), water. (liquids), air (gases) and fire (energy). Some editions add the positive and negative energy planes to the inner planes though, but feel free to use whichever version makes the most sense to you.

Just a quick suggestion, instead of using the regular races you can come up with a number of races based on the elements. Humans would take a neutral position, then you could add Gnomes, Salamanders, Sylphs and Undines. (Or whatever you want for your setting.) I suppose you could also add para/quasi elementals. For example, Dwarves could have a connection with both earth and fire.
Pathfinder has elemental schools for wizards.

As for adventures, fire tends to destroy things so it would be a standard choice as the villain. Earth is rigid, while air and water are more about freedom? It's hard not to fit the elements into archetypical characters.

Hrmmm, okay then:
The Salamander god of fire and destruction was imprisoned in an icy comet ages ago.
His kobold minions (Believing they are his descendants.) try to free him from his cold prison and a group of adventures takes notice as the kobolds start to kidnap and sacrifice villagers.
They later have to travel to the comet that is also a dungeon (How convenient.) to defeat the Salamander god of fire and destruction.
In Pathfinder this would be a Salamander with 12 hitdice, an appropiate size increase and mythic ranks. I'd add a lot of Fire Wysps (10?) to buff and keep the Salamander god alive. (CR11) Somewhere along the line a Large Fire Elemental with the Cleric template from monster codex would come along with his 8 Burning Skeletons (CR8), probably having escaped from the comet.

Have fun!

[grarrrg]

I'd consider taking a page from the Lords of Magic playbook, and leaving Chaos/Order in there alongside the other elements.

I'm against adding Order/Chaos as-is. The four classic elements are tangible, whereas Order/Chaos aren't.Refluffing them might work though.

First thought is Light/Dark, which while not really physical, are at least more solid then Order/Chaos (and personally, I'd make Dark = Order, but that's a different problem).

Second thought is maybe going a little eastern and adding Wood/Metal to the four. Chaos can become 'nature', and Order becomes 'metal'. Order in the way humans 'make' Order, like "dug chunks of stuff out of nature, picked out the good pieces, melted them down and forged structure and shape".

[Crake]

I use something like this in my homebrew campaign setting, though instead of a wheel, it's a sphere, with positive and negative at the top and bottom respectively, along with para elemental planes (two neightbouring elements combined), quasi elemental planes (elemental and positive/negative energy) and para-quasi elemental planes (two neighbouring elements and positive/negative energy). It leads to a total of 26 elemental/energy planes.

I still kept the alignment planes, but I limited them to heaven/hell, and harmonia/discordia (order/chaos), so it's something of a flip from the great wheel, where there were a tonne of outer planes, and just a handful of inner planes.

In my setting, the chaotic and fluctuating interactions of the inner planes is like an engine that fuels arcane magic to the world, and is actually designed by the gods to replicate the souls of dragons, who are the only beings to have innate arcane magic.