The Gaming Den

This is really more of a thought exercise and inspirational thing than anything concrete right now, but: What are example opposing forces / elemental systems from RPGs, myth, your creation, video games, and so on? To give some examples.

Fire/Water/Earth/Wind, sometimes with Light/Dark and Void
They very typical, classical fantasy elements

Wood/Fire/Earth/Metal/Water
The Chinese elements

Order and Chaos
Sometimes hang around opposing each other, but often mean Good and Evil.

Red/Black/Blue/Green/White
The Magic: The Gathering elements. These are also tied to land-types and emotions, which is interesting.

Body/Spirit/Mind
Used in a couple of sources, as well.[/u]

Earth/Air/Water/Fire/Heart
The Captain Planet Elements.

Water/Fire/Wood
The Battlebeasts Elements.

Black-Green, Blue-Red, Gray
The Etherlords color cross.

Is that kind of what you're looking for? I mean, Heroes of Might and Magic IV has the M:tG color wheel plus "might" while HoMM III uses a 9 point system.

-Username17

Fire/Lightning/Ice/Poison(/Damage/Magic(/Holy))

Also,

Sword/Lance/Axe

and

Light/Dark/Anima

and

Fire/Thunder/Wind

all from various Fire Emblem games.

O/A/B/AB (+ and -)

Rock / Paper / Scissors

Nerd / Jock / Prep / Emo

Conservative / Social Liberal Fiscal Conservative / Social Conservative Fiscal Liberal / Liberal (occasionally with "moderate", "neocon", or "longshot" added)

All of these are great answers, and exactly what I'm looking for. I should have clarified, I'm not looking for just elemental forces type things, for example...

O/A/B/AB (+ and -)

Was the most inspiring of the bunch.

Black-Green, Blue-Red, Gray
The Etherlords color cross.

What do the colors represent in this case? Death/Life, Water/Fire, Void? Or is this just basically the MtG wheel with White turned to Gray?

Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Void is the Japanese progression, with later elements being viewed as higher orders (closer to Heaven). Void itself also means Heaven, in a sense, and you sometimes see the domain of thunder and lightning here.

Earth, Fire, Water, Air is Greek.

Many later traditions (alchemical, etc) added the concept of Spirit as an element, but Akasha, or the Quintessence, had been around for a long time already, it was only some time later that it became common.

Also, as long as we're on the subject...

The four humours are Melancholer, Choler, Sanguine, Phlegm.

The two flows of qi through the five elements are Yin and Yang.

Ooh, I forgot the new testament symbolism


Man / Lion / Ox (or Calf) / Eagle (representing Matthew / Mark / Luke / John)

Relevant Artwork

Reference page

Edit: Fixed.

Frank wrote:Earth/Air/Water/Fire/Heart

Change Heart to "Spirit" and you have the Wheel of Time elements.

DragonChild wrote:

O/A/B/AB (+ and -)

Was the most inspiring of the bunch.

That's why I get payed the big bucks. In fact did you know that I freelanced for Augmentation and Street Magic in SR4.



Oh wait. I'm a lazy hack who has never been payed a cent for game design work. I was having that really awesome dream again.

Josh_Kablack wrote:Ooh, I forgot the new testament symbolism


Man / Lion / Ox /Calf (representing Matthew / Mark / Luke / John)

Relevant Artwork

So which one is the bird?

DC wrote:What do the colors represent in this case? Death/Life, Water/Fire, Void? Or is this just basically the MtG wheel with White turned to Gray?

In Etherlords it's literally a color cross. Green and Red are kind of like M:tG Green and Red. Trees, Orcs, both of them have a bunch of methods for pumping up ether channels. Black and Blue are... different. Black is represented mostly by a bunch of cybernetic worms. They are called the Synthet and they are a fast attack position of extremely expendable and offensively effective cyborgs. Blue stuff is extremely expensive for what it does but what it does tends to be awesome. So it's big into Nagas and Dragons and global enchantments that fuck over everything on some sort of individual basis (having to pay 1 Ether for each attacker is a lot less of a big deal if your only attacker is a Naga Warrior rather than a squad of magic bees like Green).

And the Gray faction is... unrelated to M:tG White. They are extradimensional horrors that sap color and reality out of the world. Their stuff is brutally powerful and can't normally die and it doesn't actually cost very much. But it also comes into play not existing, and they all have weird restrictions on when and how they can phase in and start fucking with you. Often these involve small permanent costs, so while "killing" a Pale Creature doesn't get rid of the creature in any permanent fashion, bringing it back will do permanent damage to the other player in a different way.

It really is set up as a cross, where the forces of Life face down the Synthet forces and the forces of Chaos face off against the forces of Tranquility. And they both do so over a central faction that undoes reality.

-Username17

So Gray is more like Artifact in M:tg

-Crissa

I'm going by the Ragnarok Online damage system here:

Element
Neutral (PCs are this)
Water
Earth
Fire
Wind
Poison
Holy
Dark
Sense (aka, Ghost element)
Undead (Undead is both a Race, and an Element in this system)

The way that it works is that most elements can hurt each other; but some have bonuses against others; and reduced damage from others.

Fire < Water < Wind (Lighting) < Earth < Fire

So, Fire is damaged more by earth, while at the same time Fire resists Earth (somewhat) and Fire (a lot, or completely).

The same applies to the other 3; Earth can't really be hurt by Earth, or is immune, and Wind attack barely scratch Earth targets.

Likewise, all of the Prime 4 elements are somewhat weak to Poison (25% more damage); with Earth being weak to Poison (+50% damage).

The other elements

Holy
-resists Fire/Earth/Wind/Water, Poison and Ghost
-weak against Dark, Undeath

Dark
-Resists Poison, Dark, Ghost and Undeath
-Full damage (or 3/4 damage) from the Prime 4;
-Full damage from neutral
-Weak vs Holy attacks

Poison > Earth, Water

Poison attacks (the thief base class, and assassin, rogue and alchemist advanced classes use poison to some degree; Assassins use a lot of poison based attacks)

Only Holy has bonuses vs. Poison; even then it's not a lot, and not often.
The other prime 4 elements deal full damage; Undeath, Ghost, Shadow and Poison deal less damage.

[Yes, poison is something that a monster can be, nothing really hurts them]

Neutral =/= Sense/Ghost

Neutral and Ghost cannot hurt each other.

So, if you send ghost-bolts at an Neutral element target, you will deal less than full damage. Likewise, Neutral attacks will not harm Ghost targets as much.

Eventually Neutral and Ghost attacks will not hit opposing targets.

However, Ghost is the only element that will harm Ghost for bonus damage, so Ghost attacks > Ghost targets.

Neutral takes 100% damage from everything, but reduced damage (then later no damage) from Ghost attacks.

Undeath

Bonus damage from Fire/Holy. Somewhat increased damage from Ghost attacks; Slightly Increased damage from Water/Ice attacks.

Earth, Poison, Shadow and Undeath attacks are weak vs Undead element targets.

Also, Undead targets cannot be frozen*, also undead element Players cannot be healed.

*: One of the best CC effects in the game is based on freezing target(s); either via a single target spell, or an AoE (called Storm Gust) that can be spammed.

This works against monsters or players in PvP or Guild vs Guild castle-fighting. So some Players want to be "undead" in order to walk through AoE affected areas. Players also use this property against undead monsters, since Storm Gust will deal continuous damage while not freezing undead targets.

I'm also playing RO on a private server.