Quote:
Originally Posted by Festin
Making elemental royalty non-unique may be good for overall balance, but it is horribly unthematic.
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That depends on what you think the theme is.
The platonic element conception (ie, that originally used by D+D in 1st and 2nd edition, originated with Plato) envisions the elements in reality being produced by or tied to elemental planes that are infinite in extent and purely composed of that element. An infinite plane would have infinitely many royals on it if it had any royals, so... where's the problem?
Since the term 'elemental' is tied up with the platonic concept of element anyway, the fact that the game uses elementals suggests its implicitly accepting the platonic concept, and thus the elemental royalty being unique is actually unthematic.
I'm not saying making them non-unique is necessarily the way to go, I'm just saying there aren't really major thematic problems with doing so.