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WarlockBeast
2008-06-01, 02:50 PM
I do not have the core books yet, and i am wondering on how much and how majorly the cosmology has changed. I have heard they have provided no encounters of Good aligned Dragons, Outsiders, and such in the MM. Please enlighten me.

JaxGaret
2008-06-01, 02:52 PM
Those two questions have little in common.

The cosmology has changed quite a bit, or really not all that much, depending on how you look at it.

The 4e MM probably has just about the same ratio of Evil to non-Evil monsters in it as the 3.5e MM.

WarlockBeast
2008-06-01, 02:55 PM
Ok thanks. And sorry the second question was supposed to be worded so they would sorta meld...:smallcool:

kamikasei
2008-06-01, 02:56 PM
They've scrapped the Great Wheel. We now have the Shadowfell, which is a sort of hybrid Plane of Shadow / Negative Energy Plane; the Feywild, which is Faerie and the Ethereal Plane; the Astral Sea, taking the place of the Astral Plane, within which the things that used to be on the Outer Planes exist as islands; and the Elemental Chaos, which is the Abyss plus the Inner Planes, either somewhere in the Astral Sea or off on its own.

The history of the multiverse has been rewritten to include a war between elemental Primordials who created the world in a state of chaos and the deities who defeated them and made it as it is today. Archons are super-elementals created as soldiers for the Primordials and now serve pretty much whoever. Angels are divine servants found in the employ of all the gods.

They appear to have left most good-aligned creatures either unstatted or only sketched out as they expect players to be good-aligned heroes fighting evil villains, and so good creatures aren't given combat stats.

Istari
2008-06-01, 03:09 PM
Thats stupid what if you want to have a good aligned creature fighting with the pcs.:smallmad:

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-01, 03:15 PM
Thats stupid what if you want to have a good aligned creature fighting with the pcs.:smallmad:

You wait 'till the next monster manual. :smallamused:

kamikasei
2008-06-01, 03:20 PM
Thats stupid what if you want to have a good aligned creature fighting with the pcs.:smallmad:

Well, you could stat up a class-templated humanoid creature, or take an evil creature and reflavour it as good (perhaps substituting one damage type for another), or use a neutral creature or one which comes in all alignments but which happens in this instance to be good or affiliated with good (e.g. an angel), or simply put something together yourself if it's important that the players fight many good enemies.

They seem to want to discourage evil parties, either so that they can sell the Big Book O' Evil as a splat in a few months, or to silence Angry Mothers With Acronyms. Having built the game around the idea of heroes fighting villains, they've spent most of their page real estate on villainous adversaries, which makes sense. They also claim it'll be easier to customize monsters and encounters in this edition, so it makes sense there too that the people who want to play unusual games (such as fighting good-aligned creatures) be the ones who have to make a little extra effort while those looking to play the game as envisaged by the designers have handy pre-made monsters ready for them.

Falrin
2008-06-01, 03:32 PM
Did you make this point when 3.5 came out? If not

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0194.html


Seems the idea has been around for a while. And with good reason.

Kurald Galain
2008-06-01, 04:19 PM
I do not have the core books yet, and i am wondering on how much and how majorly the cosmology has changed.
Kamikasei has already explained most of it, but I should add that the lineup of deities has changed quite a lot, and that the evil deities have been moved to the DMG (apparently PCs are not supposed to worship those).



I have heard they have provided no encounters of Good aligned Dragons, Outsiders, and such in the MM.
That is correct.

JaxGaret
2008-06-01, 04:29 PM
Well, you could stat up a class-templated humanoid creature, or take an evil creature and reflavour it as good (perhaps substituting one damage type for another), or use a neutral creature or one which comes in all alignments but which happens in this instance to be good or affiliated with good (e.g. an angel), or simply put something together yourself if it's important that the players fight many good enemies.

They seem to want to discourage evil parties, either so that they can sell the Big Book O' Evil as a splat in a few months, or to silence Angry Mothers With Acronyms. Having built the game around the idea of heroes fighting villains, they've spent most of their page real estate on villainous adversaries, which makes sense. They also claim it'll be easier to customize monsters and encounters in this edition, so it makes sense there too that the people who want to play unusual games (such as fighting good-aligned creatures) be the ones who have to make a little extra effort while those looking to play the game as envisaged by the designers have handy pre-made monsters ready for them.

QFT, all of it.

Also, Outsider as a type doesn't exist any more, so no, there are no Outsiders in the 4e MM. For instance, Angels have the "immortal humanoid (angel)" type.

There are plenty of monsters which either don't have a default alignment, or their default alignment is Unaligned; any of these will work perfectly fine as Good creatures.

Pronounceable
2008-06-01, 05:39 PM
If one can stop mourning the lost glory of the Great Wheel (which is impossible) and look at it in an unbiased view, the new cosmology is quite good.

Trimmed down and nonracialized gods, a less scientific and more fantastic feel, downplaying of alignment, canonical deitization of Asmodeus... I could go so far as to say the new cosmology is cool. But I won't, since I'm a PS fanboy.

As to types: things from above (angels, devils) are immortal, and things from below (archons, demons) are elemental. Things from the sides are fey or shadow. And other things from far, far away are aberrant.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-01, 05:40 PM
If one can stop mourning the lost glory of the Great Wheel (which is impossible) and look at it in an unbiased view, the new cosmology is quite good.

Trimmed down and nonracialized gods, a less scientific and more fantastic feel, downplaying of alignment, canonical deitization of Asmodeus... I could go so far as to say the new cosmology is cool. But I won't, since I'm a PS fanboy.

As to types: things from above (angels, devils) are immortal, and things from below (archons, demons) are elemental. Things from the sides are fey or shadow. And other things from far, far away are aberrant.

How many times must be said? Planescape is coming back. And it's going to rock the socks. And it's gonna be official.

Tough_Tonka
2008-06-01, 06:28 PM
Thats stupid what if you want to have a good aligned creature fighting with the pcs.:smallmad:

Well a lot of creatures are unaligned (not necessarily good or evil, just depends on who they serve), so while the heroes could be fighting archons and angels they could also be fighting besides them.

JaxGaret
2008-06-01, 07:54 PM
How many times must be said? Planescape is coming back. And it's going to rock the socks. And it's gonna be official.

That's just awesome.

Pronounceable
2008-06-01, 08:37 PM
How many times must be said? Planescape is coming back. And it's going to rock the socks. And it's gonna be official.

Eh? Wha? When, how?

LoopyZebra
2008-06-01, 08:41 PM
They plan to release a new campaign setting each year, instead of getting bogged down in producing a bunch of splatbooks for each campaign setting. Planescape, along with other classics, was mentioned as a possible setting to publish after Forgotten Realms (this year) and Eberron (next year).

Arbitrarity
2008-06-01, 08:50 PM
How many times must be said? Planescape is coming back. And it's going to rock the socks. And it's gonna be official.
That's just awesome.


This message was quoted for truth.

Sequinox
2008-06-01, 08:59 PM
Core cosmology? Who needs it? I already homebrewed my own (and my material plane had 7 layers, too... That one shocked my PCs when they learned) and I'll do it again. however, the whole thing about taking out evil characters is kinda disapointing... One of my players is gonna be mad... (Insane samurai)

Talya
2008-06-01, 09:13 PM
Those two questions have little in common.

The cosmology has changed quite a bit, or really not all that much, depending on how you look at it.

The 4e MM probably has just about the same ratio of Evil to non-Evil monsters in it as the 3.5e MM.

However, if you count monsters-who-can-be-things-other-than-good in 3.5, you get a significant number of them, even if the ratio is low. In 4e, the ratio of Good, to anything-other-than-good in the MM is about 0:Everything.


to silence Angry Mothers With Acronyms.

You made me laugh. Thank you.

sonofzeal
2008-06-01, 09:20 PM
Core cosmology? Who needs it? I already homebrewed my own (and my material plane had 7 layers, too... That one shocked my PCs when they learned)
Septera Core?

Xefas
2008-06-01, 09:50 PM
Do you even really need Good-aligned stuff to play an Evil game? I don't know about everyone else, but that was the conclusion that my group came to at the beginning of their first evil campaign.

"Right, we're evil, now! Lets go kill paladins and take their stuff."
"Why would we want a paladin's stuff?"
"Good point. Lets go find a devil cult, kill them, and take their stuff!"
"Alright!"

Does your blackguard want a Holy Greatsword or an Unholy Greatsword? And whose corpse is he more likely to loot each from?

The theory *does* break down on the cosmically evil scale without the Great Wheel, though. Used to be that demons and devils couldn't care less about butchering good aligned creatures and wished only for each other's destruction.

That said, the fluff for the Great Wheel, Blood War, etc are all still there. It didn't go away. Have an Evil-aligned Blood War game and you'll never need a single good creature at all.

Jayabalard
2008-06-01, 10:20 PM
canonical deitization of Asmodeus... Deification of a Judeo-Christian demon seems really likely to piss off AMWA

EvilElitest
2008-06-01, 10:33 PM
The cosmology has been simplified and i don't mean that in a good way. While the new stuff isn't actually bad in any way, and most (most) of it doesn't make me roll my eyes and cruse WotC appealing to the new generation, because at least from the preview books and the website, it is actually general niffty sort of way, but one that seems like one for a new published setting realized in a single book that nobody knows if it is going to take off, a niftty new look at monsters. HOwever it is small, perverts a lot of the creatures traditional uses, small, rather specific, small, simplified, small, puts entirely new spins on the people, monsters and creatures, small, limited as it seems champaign specific, small, follows a very central in storyline, small, supports a very specific idea of gaming, and did i mention it is extremly small.

So while it might suit as kinda of a niffty setting or cool idea, it is an awful way to handle a actually offical cosmology, considering how cool the great wheel was
from
EE

Sir_Elderberry
2008-06-01, 10:37 PM
Deification of a Judeo-Christian demon seems really likely to piss off AMWA

Really, if they're going to be angry about borrowing obscure names, they probably were already angry about, say, the existence of the "Blood Mage" paragon path, or any of a dozen other things.

Callos_DeTerran
2008-06-01, 10:38 PM
canonical deitization of Asmodeus...

My inner devil-worshiper just died happy. So very very happy.

EvilElitest
2008-06-01, 10:41 PM
why is the lord of hell a god now? It seems a little, unneeded
from
EE

Sir_Dr_D
2008-06-01, 11:02 PM
For those of you complaining about lack of support for evil characters, there is a very good reason for it. If in the players handbook WOTC publicly supported evil characters, it could cause public outcrys. So instead, in the players handbook they strongly encourage good aligned parties, while they secretly hand out splat books to provide rules for evil aligned parties. That will keep the angry mothers, the ignorant church groups, and the Hillary Clintons out of their hair.


For political reasons WOTC would have needed to do that.

Rutee
2008-06-01, 11:05 PM
You've never heard of a thing called the WoD, have you?

There are a lot of good reasons not to bother with Evil PCs in the core books (First and foremost being that you want your core books to see the most usage possible; Evil just doesn't get played, so give the barest minimum of support, promise a splatbook) , but public reception was not one of them.

Ozymandias
2008-06-01, 11:10 PM
You've never heard of a thing called the WoD, have you?

There are a lot of good reasons not to bother with Evil PCs in the core books (First and foremost being that you want your core books to see the most usage possible; Evil just doesn't get played, so give the barest minimum of support, promise a splatbook) , but public reception was not one of them.

I don't know. Dungeons and Dragons is about as close to mainstream as Tabletop RPGs are (probably) ever going to get, and are in general emblematic (deserved or not) of the medium as a whole. Plus, it's been targeted for fostering satansim in the past; we don't want another "Blackleaf did not find the poison trap and I declare her dead" on our hands. Look at Mass Effect and its "virtual orgasmic rape".

FlyMolo
2008-06-01, 11:11 PM
That's my main beef with 4e. Makes playing story campaigns with heroes easier and more exciting, but makes oddball or slightly aberrant campaigns an uphill slog in the rain. I like oddball, so that's no fun.

Rutee
2008-06-01, 11:14 PM
I don't know. Dungeons and Dragons is about as close to mainstream as Tabletop RPGs are (probably) ever going to get, and are in general emblematic (deserved or not) of the medium as a whole. Plus, it's been targeted for fostering satansim in the past; we don't want another "Blackleaf did not find the poison trap and I declare her dead" on our hands. Look at Mass Effect and its "virtual orgasmic rape".

Third edition has a (bare minimum) for support of Evil in the core books, and released the BoVD. I'm /pretty sure/ they weren't besieged with Chick-like Whackjobs again.

'course, I could be wrong. And to be fair, the SRD flat out refers to Evil as being for NPCs and Monsters, not players, so if a wh-

Ooo. Clever... I wonder how many Chick-likes actually read the PHB as opposed to the SRD...

Rockphed
2008-06-01, 11:27 PM
why is the lord of hell a god now? It seems a little, unneeded
from
EE

Why is he named "Asmodeus" instead of something a bit more original?

Little_Rudo
2008-06-02, 12:26 AM
I personally don't think there would be a big public outcry over anything published by D&D. From what I've seen, the "X is corrupting our children!" stories tend to change every few years. RPGs were awhile ago; since then, we've gone through movies, rap music, cartoons, and we're still working our way through video games. Blaming RPG's isn't "in" anymore; you'll undoubtedly get a few annoyed people, but for the most part, it's an under the radar thing most people don't care about anymore, when they realized nobody who didn't already have psychological problems was being affected by the games.

That said, I'm not too upset over the lack of support for evil parties. D&D is pretty much, by default, a game about generally good-inclined (or at least non-evil) people adventuring and becoming hugely powerful figures. You can certainly use the system for other sorts of games, such as a group of evil PC's, but the core rule books don't (and shouldn't, necessarily) cater to that niche.

ghost_warlock
2008-06-02, 01:52 AM
"Right, we're evil, now! Lets go kill paladins and take their stuff."
"Why would we want a paladin's stuff?"
"Good point. Lets go find a devil cult, kill them, and take their stuff!"
"Alright!"

This is beautiful. :smallbiggrin:


They've scrapped the Great Wheel. We now have the Shadowfell, which is a sort of hybrid Plane of Shadow / Negative Energy Plane; the Feywild, which is Faerie and the Ethereal Plane; the Astral Sea, taking the place of the Astral Plane, within which the things that used to be on the Outer Planes exist as islands; and the Elemental Chaos, which is the Abyss plus the Inner Planes, either somewhere in the Astral Sea or off on its own.

Well, even in 3.5 the Negative Energy Plane sort of bled into the Plane of Shadow in a few places so that's no big deal. As for the Astral Sea, if you look at the Great Wheel, 4e hasn't really changed much beyond shifting the various planes around rather than forcing them into a ring. As for the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos, these sound like good changes to me.

BTW what, specifically, happened with Limbo? Because the Elemental Chaos sounds a lot like what Limbo used to be.

Pronounceable
2008-06-02, 03:54 AM
Well, even in 3.5 the Negative Energy Plane sort of bled into the Plane of Shadow in a few places so that's no big deal. As for the Astral Sea, if you look at the Great Wheel, 4e hasn't really changed much beyond shifting the various planes around rather than forcing them into a ring. As for the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos, these sound like good changes to me.

BTW what, specifically, happened with Limbo? Because the Elemental Chaos sounds a lot like what Limbo used to be.

No, Great Wheel is all but gone. Almost all (admittedly less used) planes are cut, the entire premise of it, the alignment, is nonexistant (no, what remains of it doesn't count) and the Blood War hasn't started (cos demons and devils can't get out of their planes). The City of Doors still exist however. No matter how far fluff moves, the Lady and her domain will remain far too cool to cut.

Now that you mention it, yes Elemental Chaos is quite like Limbo.

bosssmiley
2008-06-02, 05:21 AM
How many times must be said? Planescape is coming back. And it's going to rock the socks. And it's gonna be official.

I like the new planar layout in many respects. Heck, I thought it was an elegant simplification of a pretty overwhelming cosmology when I saw the prototype back in 3rd Ed's "Manual of the Planes".

But without Athar at the Spire, crazy Slaad invoking the power of GIANT FROG, the howling barmies in Pandemonium, the Ocanthus bladewinds of Acheron, the Prison Plane of Carceri, the Blood War, the Great Modron March, twelvety types of stroppy Mephits, quasi-elemental planes of WTF?, and the Factions squabbling in Sigil it simply ain't "Planescape" to me. :smallfrown:

"Stupid Primes getting the Planes wrong again. bErk, bErk, bErk!"

Devils_Advocate
2008-06-02, 06:03 PM
My understanding is that back in 2E, the Inner Planes were basically continuous, so that you could travel from the Elemental Plane of Water to the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze to the Elemental Plane of Earth to the Paraelemental Plane of Magma to the Elemental Plane of Fire etc. without having to go through any transitive planes. There weren't really any clear boundaries between one plane and the next, so you could think of it all as being one great frelling big plane if you want, with each element having one huge region that it dominated. Limbo, on the other hand, is a churning mixture of relatively small chunks of the elements.

The new Elemental Chaos thingy sort of splits the difference with lots of big regions of each element, and then throws the Abyss in for good measure. (It is a place of primal chaos, so it fits in, and Slaadi were pretty close to demons anyway.)

The Shadowfell is similar to 3E's Plane of Shadow, Negative Energy plane, and Hades, and the Fugue Plane in the Forgotten Realms setting and Dolurrh in Eberron. Darkness, evil, death, undeath, negative energy, necromancy, etc. are all associated with each other in one way or another anyways... which explains why those planes were already rather similar to one another in 3E. (How many creepy, foreboding planes of darkness, death, evil, and ick do we need? I say "One", and 4E's designer's apparently agree with me on this.)

I think that a lot of the planar realms from the Great Wheel are being moved to the Astral Sea. It's not like just one infinite plane doesn't have enough room for them. Unless you want to make it really hard to move from one planar location to another (which, as I understand it, Planescape generally didn't), there's no real need to have them on a bunch of separate planes.

I had earlier assumed that 4E Planescape, when and if it comes out, will use the Great Wheel cosmology. But now it occurs to me that it might just use 4E's cosmology. I'm not sure how I feel about that possibility. The problem with retconning things is that it can invalidate earlier material. How many fans of 2E Planescape would look at any take on 4E's cosmology as being the same setting? The rather significant change to the afterlife may not actually much matter in practice (How often did PCs interact with petitioners, really? And death is primarily something to be avoided in any normal setting), but getting rid of of or even deemphasizing the Blood War is a huge change. Just because something doesn't often directly involve the PCs doesn't mean that it doesn't frequently effect them indirectly.

It's probably easiest to think of 4E's core setting as having its own timeline, distinct from if in some ways paralleling earlier editions. Like Ultimate D&D or something. Depending on how much they differ from their earlier counterparts, this may be the best approach to 4E's takes on some established settings as well.

EvilElitest
2008-06-02, 06:05 PM
For those of you complaining about lack of support for evil characters, there is a very good reason for it. If in the players handbook WOTC publicly supported evil characters, it could cause public outcrys. So instead, in the players handbook they strongly encourage good aligned parties, while they secretly hand out splat books to provide rules for evil aligned parties. That will keep the angry mothers, the ignorant church groups, and the Hillary Clintons out of their hair.


For political reasons WOTC would have needed to do that.

they could do it at the exact same level as 3E did then everybody is happy, or at least content


Why is he named "Asmodeus" instead of something a bit more original?
they wanted to use fantasy elements in their own way? But even in their own setting it seems weird

Also, 4E planescape set in 4E cosmology would actually be very planscape like. Nor would spelljammer

from
EE

Norsesmithy
2008-06-02, 09:31 PM
I think that 4e Planescape will probably still use the "Great Wheel" cosmology, but that it won't spill over into Core.

Why would it not? Eberon has its own cosmology, why shouldn't Planescape, too?

Just keep it from bleeding into the rest of the settings, please.

JaxGaret
2008-06-02, 09:36 PM
But without Athar at the Spire, crazy Slaad invoking the power of GIANT FROG, the howling barmies in Pandemonium, the Ocanthus bladewinds of Acheron, the Prison Plane of Carceri, the Blood War, the Great Modron March, twelvety types of stroppy Mephits, quasi-elemental planes of WTF?, and the Factions squabbling in Sigil it simply ain't "Planescape" to me. :smallfrown:

"Stupid Primes getting the Planes wrong again. bErk, bErk, bErk!"

You do know that Planescape is in line to be one of the 4e Campaign Settings, right?

Rutee
2008-06-02, 09:38 PM
Someone do me a favor;

Find for me the official statement from WotC's mouth that says Planescape and Spelljammer are in. Because quite frankly, I only recall second hand info from Necromancer Games folks, and this is being spread around as fact, so it must be from something more solid.

Grey Watcher
2008-06-02, 09:42 PM
...quasi-elemental planes of WTF?...

Now that's a quasi-elemental plane I can get into.

Yeah, overall, I liked the simpler cosmology of 4e.

Oh, and crazy Slaadi and their GIANT FROG approach to life are still there, they just hang around in the Elemental Chaos now, apparently.

JaxGaret
2008-06-02, 09:42 PM
Someone do me a favor;

Find for me the official statement from WotC's mouth that says Planescape and Spelljammer are in. Because quite frankly, I only recall second hand info from Necromancer Games folks, and this is being spread around as fact, so it must be from something more solid.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1022209

JaxGaret
2008-06-02, 09:44 PM
Oh, and crazy Slaadi and their GIANT FROG approach to life are still there, they just hang around in the Elemental Chaos now, apparently.

Which MAKES ****ING SENSE.

... which is why it actually doesn't make sense for the Slaadi to reside there.

Yeah, Slaadi are just awesome like that. Crazy frogs.

Rutee
2008-06-02, 09:44 PM
It appears that they're only probably coming, possibly by Third Parties. Sounds like what I remember.

JaxGaret
2008-06-02, 09:47 PM
It appears that they're only probably coming, possibly by Third Parties. Sounds like what I remember.

Yeah, you can read what you want into that. If you believe Tanus, then they are definitely going to be released.

And why not? There's already big flavor and fan interest built into them. I honestly wouldn't be surprised at all if the yearly 4e Campaign Settings are simply rehashed versions of previous settings until they run out of them.

Instead of writing all new material, you take existing material, change it a little, and sell it to the public.

Cha-ching.

Devils_Advocate
2008-06-03, 02:50 AM
A model Hollywood has certainly embraced.

Heck, a new edition of a game is itself a new spin on old material. Way easier then creating and successfully marketing something entirely new.

The rehashes don't even have to be all that good. The rabid fans of any given setting will buy the new version even if it sucks; they'll just whine and bitch endlessly about changes they don't like once they've got it. And they were going to do that no matter what you did with it anyway, so no loss there!