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Hey, I've decided to merge these two cosmologies together and was asking if anyone has tips on how to pull this off.

So far I've decided
-Yes the gods are real and known to exist, however it was long ago decided that gods cannot leave their respective domains or directly interfere with the concerns of mortals.
-Alignment is not too important, for example Onatar will except evil artificers as worshippers, provided they don't exhibit behavior that aligns better with another god.
-Only people without a patron deity end up in Dolurrh, everyone else end up in their deities' domain. Worshippers of the silver flame merge with the silver flame.

There are 4 subtypes of outsider
-Divine: Gods.
-Planetouched: Basically living things which have been mutated by planar energy. They do need to eat and sleep, they do age (but they usually have extremely long life spans) they can gain class levels and they do need to reproduce sexually. They do leave bodies when they die and can be raised or resurrected.
-Exemplars: They are made out of the material of their plane. They do not need to eat or sleep and they do not age. They normally cannot gain class levels or reproduce sexually. Their numbers are either static (when one dies another outsider of the same type appears, meaning they do not leave a body and absolutely cannot be raised or resurrected in any way) or dependent upon some other factor not in their direct control. Some of these (usually fiends) find ways to increase their power by having mortal cultists perform dread rituals and they might even create a phylactery to prevent themselves from being replaced.
-Petitioners: Like Exemplars in most ways, however they were once mortal. While they cannot be raised or resurrected, their mortal bodies can. Whenever a Petitioner dies there is a 50% chance they will loose all their memories, however even if a Petitioner does loose all their memories they regain all of them when they are raised or resurrected.

thanks.

edit: I'm thinking that I will combining Sigil With Maladomini.

Also the Dealkry in Khyber pretty much cover some of the layers of the abyss.
The Lord of Eyes: Beholders
The Lord of Stone: Medusas, basilisks, cockatrices, gorgons, gargoyles.
The Lord of spiders: ettercaps, driders, neogi, grey renders.
The Mighty Lord: Ogres, Trolls, Minotaurs.
The slime lord: oozes phasms fungi phantom fungus Otyugh

Count Geiger wrote:-Only people without a patron deity end up in Dolurrh, everyone else end up in their deities' domain.

What about death gods ('Where is your death god now?').

Count Geiger wrote:-Divine: Gods.

So what's the difference between Gods and Exemplars, Gods and Petitioners, or Gods and Panetouched?

Count Geiger wrote:-Exemplars: They are made out of the material of their plane. They do not need to eat or sleep and they do not age. They normally cannot gain class levels or reproduce sexually..

Since you're delving into matters of reproduction anyway, it seems like Exemplars could easily be responsible for the creation of Planetouched, as 'third wheels'. If your spouse gets 'possessed by a demon' or 'your union is blessed by an angel', the baby is quite likely to have wings.

Count Geiger wrote:-Petitioners: Like Exemplars in most ways, however they were once mortal. While they cannot be raised or resurrected, their mortal bodies can. Whenever a Petitioner dies there is a 50% chance they will loose all their memories, however even if a Petitioner does loose all their memories they regain all of them when they are raised or resurrected.

Where do those memories hang out in the mean time?

Count Geiger wrote:The slime lord: oozes phasms fungi phantom fungus Otyugh

It's name is "Juiblex"

Lamannia: Balinor, the devourer
Thelanis: Aureon, Olladra, Dol Dorn, The shadow.
Sigil: Kol Korran (The Market), Onatar (The industrial Quarter), The Furry (The entertainment district)
Kythri: The Traveler
Dolurrh: The Keeper
Shavarath: Dol Arrah
Daanvi: Arawai, Boldrei
Mabar: The Mockery

For humanoid plane touched I think I will just say they are a result of living under a manifest zone. I'm planning to make a type of planetouched for each manifest zone.

"So what's the difference between Gods and Exemplars, Gods and Petitioners, or Gods and Panetouched?"

A lesser god may come from any of those backgrounds.
Plus have all of these traits:
http://www.verkroost.com/dnd/divine.html

"Where do those memories hang out in the mean time?"

Yeah I'm not going to explain that, it's not like they explained how come Lawful Evil people don't come back with the intellect of a lemure.

Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to use the rules in Deities and Demigods. Seriously, just don't do that.

-Username17

Count Geiger wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Where do those memories hang out in the mean time?

Yeah I'm not going to explain that, it's not like they explained how come Lawful Evil people don't come back with the intellect of a lemure.

Bah, did none of you read the 2e planescape stuff? They hang out in the astral as memory cores. You can go and play soccer with them if you really want to, and speak with dead goes and talks to them instead of the petitioner themselves. Which only works if my memory isn't faulty and Eberron has an astral plane, but whatever.

See, shit like that is what I feel fairly confident I can just make up.

It would be cool if memories hung out in Dal Quor. You'd have a sort of Ka/Ba thing going on, where the 'soul power' went to the god and the personal identity floated around in dream. Of course, that would put 'necromancy' (speaking with the dead) squarely in the hands of 'dreamspeakers', while the animation of the dead would still be, well, necromancy.

I like the flavor of that, and it works out pretty well with D&D cosmology.

I think I'm getting rid or Irian, it is a farily useless plane with nothing of interest on it and it's where those retarded deathless draw their power. I've decided to place a very potent manifest zone with Thelanis over Aerenal, due to that plane's timeless quality and connection to the arcane it has made the Aerenal elves with long lifespans and potent mages.

Thelanis isn't timeless, is it? I thought that time just ran slower there.

The idea is sound, but since Thelanis really is the domain of the fey (and has practically nothing do do with elves), I think Dolurrh would make more sense.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Thelanis isn't timeless, is it? I thought that time just ran slower there.

If you spend time there and leave you age rapidly and become ravenously hungry except if you are a native. And so generational exposure to the plane would slow aging and metabolism.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:The idea is sound, but since Thelanis really is the domain of the fey (and has practically nothing do do with elves), I think Dolurrh would make more sense.

Really? Thelanis is home to the eladrin, basically super elves. I've always thought elves=Fey light what with their resistance to sleep and mind influencing effects, common Fey abilities.

While we are on this topic is there any decent source material for Fey you know of?

I'd also like to here you defend your Dolurrh idea.

Elves just flat out aren't fey. Eladrin (at least the 3e ones) are Good outsiders, not fey. Elves are very long-lived humans that meditate rather than sleeping.

Dolurrh is where the godless dead end up. Elves are ancestor worshipers, so be definition shouldn't have a god's domain to end up in. Their most revered ancestors are still shambling around on Eberron, so you might expect that they have some strong connection between the afterlife and the here and now which allows them to 'bleed over'. Either that out you could imagine a very strong barrier trapping elven souls on Eberron. In my suggested cosmology, you'd also have to deal with the memories in Dal Quor. This would probably tie into the fact that elves don't dream.

Is divine magic going to be granted merely on the basis of belief or as a divine gift? (ie. can you still worship your shoe and get spells as a cleric.)

Eladrin are basically super elves and they live on Thelanis.

And far as I'm concerned, Elves are fey. I mean, what, almost eternally lived nature-connected creatures with strong magical tendencies and decidedly chaotic demeanor? That's "fey" in a nutshell. The whole "ethereal beauty" and "enchanting presence"-parts pretty much underline that.

I'm changing areanel elves to be fey arcanists, they do worship their ancestors and that worship has transformed the diseased elves into eladrin.

Also I'm getting rid of Dolurrh, moving everything there to Mabar except for lemures which go to shavarath as devil cannon fodder.

I've decided to import heironeous, hextor and erythnul to be the leaders of each faction on shavarath.

"Is divine magic going to be granted merely on the basis of belief or as a divine gift? (ie. can you still worship your shoe and get spells as a cleric.)"

No you cannot worship a shoe, you must devote yourself to a god or an ideal.

The dealkry programed all thier creations to worship them and so most aberrations and creatures in droam are sort of reincarnated by being drawn back into the husk of infinite worlds.

Also can anyone provide me with a list of creatures that are the spawn of Khyber. I already know Rakshasa, hags and aboleth are, what else?

Edit: someone just pointed out to me that if I stay true to form I can't have any of the gods of commerce, artifice and passion in my Sigil because of the lady of pain, does anyone know how to resolve this?

Count Geiger wrote:Edit: someone just pointed out to me that if I stay true to form I can't have any of the gods of commerce, artifice and passion in my Sigil because of the lady of pain, does anyone know how to resolve this?

1) Don't use Planescape

2) The gods of commerce, artifice, and passion are all dead, slain by the Lady of Pain

3) The gods of commerce, artifice, and passion aren't in bloody Sigil

So what planes are you using? It sounds like no Dolurrh (subsumed in Mabar) or Irian (merged into Syriana and Thelanis?).

So you've got Astral (infinite unchanging silver skies), Daanvi (bullshit alignment plane), Dal Quor (Dream), Fernia (elemental fire), Kythri (bullshit alignment plane), Lamannia (animals, plants, lycanthropes, and natures spirits), Mabar ('negativity'; darkness and death), Risia (elemental cold), Shadow (like Mabar but less evil and always coterminous), Shavarath (Archeron; eternal struggle), Syriana (Heaven; elemental air), Thelanis (fey, [undead] elves), and Xoriat (the 'far realm').

There's still a good deal of overlap here, and some neat ones from Planescape have no equivalent. Pandemonium could be tied in with Khyber, I suppose.

The Eberron deities are the Becoming God (creation, constructs, warforged; being made in a secret bunker), the Lord of Blades (demigod of constructs, war, and warforged, lives in some mountain fortress in Afghanistan), the Dark Six (storms, rage, decay, deceit, hunger, darkness; Mabar?), Khyber (stuff you might expect from Xoriat; is Khyber), the Sovereign Host (they're the Greek gods), Lady Vol (Death stuff, unlives on Eberron), and the Silver Flame (Paladin, exists in Flamekeep, Eberron).

Are you going to use them, or are you going to use the full Planescape metapantheon?

---

So I thought about it a few seconds longer, and the periods in which certain locations are coterminous are rather dumb.
[*]Clearly Mabar should be coterminous every night and remote every day. If Irian exists it's coterminous during the day.
[*]Thelanis should be coterminous during the twilight hours.
[*]Risia is obviously coterminous during winter and remote during summer. Lammania, if it exists, should be coterminous during Summer and remote through winter.

On a similar note...
[*]Shadow has no place in Eberronesque cosmology. Thelanis should take over the illusion aspects and Mabar the darkness.
[*]The Astral plane doesn't fit either.

Count Geiger wrote:No you cannot worship a shoe, you must devote yourself to a god or an ideal.

Who is to say that shoes are not an ideal?

Quantumboost wrote:1) Don't use Planescape

I was considering looking into planescape a lot and then running a game there. What are the reasons to not use Planescape? Also, if you have an opinion, on Spelljammer, and if Spelljammer+Planescape could possibly be mixed into a sane whole.

Spelljammer by itself is completely insane.

People jerk off about the Lady of Pain a lot, but she's actually totally minor. If you bumped her off, the game world wouldn't change very much. She's just a goddess who doesn't have clerics but does have outsiders who attack clerics who use major spells in one frickin town. It's meaningless.

-Username17

More importantly, people always bitch about how she's a DM penis extension and her existence automatically turns the game into a railroad where you have no fucking control or anything. Sure, this can all be true, but show me a setting where such a thing doesn't exist.

I always liked the high level Planescape 3.5 game I was in, where basically it was "Fuck up any setting you don't like". Decanter of Water + evil sorcerer thing + Dark Sun world == HUGE SUCCESS.

Lokathor wrote:I was considering looking into planescape a lot and then running a game there. What are the reasons to not use Planescape? Also, if you have an opinion, on Spelljammer, and if Spelljammer+Planescape could possibly be mixed into a sane whole.

One of the major reasons not to use Planescape is if you're already devoted to specific cosmology things that are incompatible with Planescape, and don't want to put in the redesign effort to reconcile them. Eberron specifically uses a different cosmology than the one in the core books, which is why combining it mechanically with Planescape is anything other than a matter of saying "both are true".

For Spelljammer, Greyhawk, and most homebrew settings that either don't concern themselves with other places than the Prime or use "the default" for the rest of the planes, you can pretty much just say "oh, and all that Planescape stuff is out there too". Even if you personally aren't the DM.

If you were actually asking about merging the themes and stuff to make Space Pirate-Philosophers... I don't actually have advice about that. <_<

I played in a very brief 3.5 game that was supposidly planescape, but it was more like "you're assigned to go on fetch quests in all the campaign settings the GM liked as a kid". So we did a Darksun mission, then another one, and on the second one we realized we could hax the metal value conversion thing to pay them for things that they could produce at 10x the normal amount and then make boatloads of cash as soon as we went home to Sigil. So then we didn't get to go to Darksun again, and instead The Lady Of Pain literally sent us personally on a mission to Dragonlance to collect lots of "minor dragonlances" (which are a thing I guess?) so that she could equip her army for an invasion against some sort of dragon-controlled place.

So basically:
1) yes, the lady of pain is a DM wankfest whenever she's used, so she shouldn't ever be used. It's actually worse with her than with normal gods because she doesn't even have any goals that the PCs are supposed to be able to understand, so it's impossible for the players to be able to make any rational choice other than "yes I'll do exactly what you want". They can't make any argument about "Ah, wouldn't it be better if ____?" or anything like that.

2) I started DnD with ADnD 2e in either 1997 or 1998, the "Revised" edition, and my friend down the street had the Skills and Power book but we never really used it. I had fun with Rogues and Rangers and Druids and so forth, but I never played a high level thing and my DM never used a campaign setting, so I totally missed out on that super setting bloat. The friend with Skills and Power got the FR Boxed Set at one point. I like the cover (a dracolitch) but I never really payed attention to anything other than the Sword Coast (where Baulder's Gate was set, fun game). Now granted, my DM might have been running both settings horribly wrong, but Darksun seemed terribly unfun because everyone was overly xenophobic, and Dragonlance seemed entirely average except for the part where the DM couldn't shut up about "well, if you'd read the novels then you'd know...". Grognardia (a biased source, I know) talked a little about Dragonlance and didn't paint it in at all a good light. Spelljammer, from the very little I've read about it (both the actual book and secondhand info) doesn't sound at all like DnD, but it does sound totally awesome. Planescape doesn't actually seem much different from what's presented in the 3e Manual of the Planes.

3) Thinking about it now, I think that the biggest reason that I would want The Lady of Pain around and existing in the game as a player would be that it gives you a place that you can jump back to after you've pissed off a god and you need an escape. It's kinda like escaping from one Corp's territory into another in Shadowrun.

4) No, I didn't really know that Planescape had a theme to it, other than "The universe is full of stuff! Explore!". Which isn't quite the same as Spelljammer's "Outer Space is full of stuff! Explore!"

Lokathor wrote:yes, the lady of pain is a DM wankfest whenever she's used, so she shouldn't ever be used. It's actually worse with her than with normal gods because she doesn't even have any goals that the PCs are supposed to be able to understand, so it's impossible for the players to be able to make any rational choice other than "yes I'll do exactly what you want". They can't make any argument about "Ah, wouldn't it be better if ____?" or anything like that.

The LoP is a device in the setting to explain the relative peace of Sigil as opposed to the state of constant open war that's happening everywhere else in the Planes. Murders, yes. War, no. Her not having an agenda means you can do anything and she won't be there to cockslap you provided you don't destroy the city. It's only a city, and it's been there since forever and no one has destroyed it yet and in a world full of uberpowerful omnicidal maniacs that requires explanation.

And she doesn't give quests (that one printed module where she does is as retarded as Estes' Greyhawk or Knaak's WoW fuckery) because Planescape is very freeform, very anti-LotR. The multiverse is not in danger. Sigil is not in danger. The whole point of Planescape is that when someone says "Pretty pretty please there's a demon incursion on the 2.8th level of Elysium HALP", you're perfectly capable to say "Fuck you and your plane Thank you very much, but I'd rather go raid a githyanki fortress" and the world wouldn't end and the number of nice places to have adventures in wouldn't decrease.

Also: Planescape is the D&D universal massively multiplayer shared setting. Once you're playing D&D, there's no "outside Planescape". People don't have victory conditions (see the "beating the setting" thread) in shared settings and players seriously take offense at others destroying "their" gameworlds.

IWC had a poll on The Game and normally calm and friendly people went apeshit in the comment thread because they took offense at the idea they are playing without their consent.

Conquering Sigil would have been the ultimate Planescape (and, by extension, D&D) cockslap achievement. And the cosmic King of the Hill would have went contrary to the design goals which I presume were to make players see interesting places, kill interesting people and meditate on the nature of life, the multiverse and everything while at it.

Lokathor wrote:on the second one we realized we could hax the metal value conversion thing to pay them for things that they could produce at 10x the normal amount and then make boatloads of cash as soon as we went home to Sigil.

It's hard to travel to Dark Sun for this very reason: Athas is not supposed to be fixed via planar travel. No iron and especially no Decanters (although they could have just limited the amount of water it produces).

Lokathor wrote:a mission to Dragonlance to collect lots of "minor dragonlances" (which are a thing I guess?)

Footman's Dragonlance, yes. A standard-size dragonlance is mounted on a dragon (btw, I have no idea what to do once the corpse of an enemy great wyrm is impaled on it, 3000 ft. in the air).

Lokathor wrote:Darksun seemed terribly unfun because everyone was overly xenophobic

Darksun is no more racist than other D&D settings (which is to say: yes, it is racist). The good thing is that no one is kill on sight. Elf? Work the fields. Dwarf? Work the forge. Mul? Fight in the arena. Thri-kreen? Fight the mul. Half-giant? Splendid, you get to be my bodyguard. Escaped slave from another city? Like I care, GET TO WORK I SAID. Defiler? Moar encounters translate to moar XP; alternatively, serve the local king however it pleases him/her. Preserver? The Veiled Alliance luuuurves you.

Yeah I've just decided screw the eberronian pantheon lets just include all the gods from any setting. Lady of pain is still a godslaying but silent ruler of the plane of Sigil which is much larger and is a plane of constant construction filled with ruins upon ruins upon ruins.

Summer+Winter are caused by the position of risia and fernia
Day+night Mabar and Lamannia, as positve energy should be related to living things with mabar as it's opposition.

Also what I am essentially asking when I say I want to combine eberron with planescape is how do I fill a dungeon punk setting with pseudophilosophy?

Count Geiger wrote: Also what I am essentially asking when I say I want to combine eberron with planescape is how do I fill a dungeon punk setting with pseudophilosophy?

That's all? Sure, that's easy.

I'm going to level with you: every time someone starts to tell me how planes or moons or whatever the fuck work in Eberron, my eyes glaze over and I wake up naked in the forest with dried blood under my fingernails. Every time I try to read the Eberron cosmology, I lose time and end up with nothing but shreds of paper all around me.

The Eberron Cosmology is fucking pointless. The places in it don't mean anything. It's a bunch of crazy names that don't have any historical resonance. You might as well just put a bunch of spots on a map and press the random fantasy name generator for each one.

But taking weird pseudo philosophy and cramming it into Dungeonpunk is no problem at all. Do some half-assed look-up of Victorian Era Philosophy and assign the points of view arbitrarily to whatever fucking planes you happen to be working with. Then you announce that things working out in accordance with those philosophies ascendant is a needed component of portals to those worlds opening up. And that places in the other planes are actually locationally unstable and can drift from one plane to another by having people with different philosophies winning in them.

So you bust out your list of planes, and oh what the fuck my eyes!? OK, there are like 13 of those fucking moons, and I don't even fucking care. But you've got some actual Victorian philsophical systems, including Positivism, Utilitarianism, and Fabianism - and you make a kind of vaguely nice version of each and a kind of nasty version of each - you can villainous Positivism by emphasizing the Social Darwinsm crap and slap that idea on whatever the hell counts as Hell in that system.

-Username17