Why can’t the physical elements have mental and spiritual counterparts?

The title of this post comes from "Limyaael's Rant #323: Elemental Magic". This is a very good question to ask. All too often elemental magic systems feel the need to introduce a fifth element for "spirit" or something along those lines. A number of writers for tabletop games have wondered this question and provided their own answers to it.

The Nephilim roleplaying game published by Chaosium, as well as the derivative sourcebook Enlightened Magic, posits a system of several elements including air, earth, fire, moon, sun, and water. These are explained as possessing both physical and spiritual aspects within both the environment and living things, to the degree that each directly corresponds to a gaming attribute: air to intelligence, earth to constitution, fire to strength, moon to charisma, sun to wisdom, and water to dexterity. Elemental magic uses any element to create effects on the environment and living things; the alchemy rules from the latter book specifically divide into three circles of physical, mental and spiritual effects that rely on any of the elements.

S. John Ross wrote "Elemental Magic for GURPS" which posited five elements of earth, water, air, fire and aether, each of which were divided into living and non-living aspects. As in the historical theory of the four humors, this system posits that living things are composed of a mixture of all the elements. Each of the elements manifests differently in living things: earth as flesh, water as soul, air as intellect, and fire as passion. Aether corresponds to the space and time in which living things exist, making it simultaneously physical and non-physical. This is both clever and simple, so I am surprised "space-time" is not used as an element by more writers.

The "Five Cities World" by Garblag Games uses an... interesting elemental magic system. I cannot make heads or tails of it.

Monsters as manifestations of the elemental fields

One of my inspirations for reinventing elementals was the ancient roleplaying game Nephilim. Originally published in France from the early 90s for three editions before the publisher went under, it was briefly translated and adapted by Chaosium in the mid 90s. Nephilim operated on the conceit that the world was the result of the interactions of six elemental "aethyrs" generated by the sun, planets and moon. The sun released rays that reflected off the moon and the planets of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Thus produced the elements of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Moon and Sun.

Aligned weapons

In the 3.x era, aligned weaponry raised some logical questions since it meant that when angels and demons fought their damage reduction did not work against each other, yet when demons and devils fought their damage reduction did work against each other.

5e has dropped 3.x's convoluted damage reduction mechanic in favor of a unified mechanic for damage vulnerability, resistance and immunity. Aligned damage no longer exists, although some effects deal damage to particular types: an arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage to dragons and otherwise harmless holy water inflicts radiant damage to fiends and undead.

I feel that removing the concept of aligned damage was unnecessary if alignment's place in the rules has essentially been replaced by types, and some monsters like vampires and werewolves still resist non-silvered weapons. Furthermore, the mechanic of extra damage makes it easy to derive different degrees of harm to provide more granularity and avoid logic gaps.

For example: fiends might be resistant or immune to damage from mortal weapons but not fiendish weapons, whereas celestial weapons not only ignore their resistance or immunity but deal extra radiant damage. In practice, this means that a fight between demons and devils would deal damage normally to both, but a fight between angels and demons would result in even greater damage to both.

So you can both use your xibalban blade to cut an otherwise invulnerable demon as well as splash it with holy water or brush it with a blessed dagger to cause burns.

Autochthones and Gegenoi

In Greek myth, the giants and other races were spawned by Gaia. There are even a few different names for this: autochthones, gegenees, spartoi. 13th Age borrows this same concept to explain where its depiction of orcs come from: they spring fully-formed and holding weapons from gashes in the earth, then go forth to destroy civilization as Gaia demands. This concept is really useful because it sidesteps having to worry about things like orc non-combatants and so forth. So I would like to apply that concept to most monsters, at least the humanoids, beastmen and so forth that parties are typically expected to slaughter as a matter of course.

Antimagic in a setting made of magic

My campaign setting and associated cosmology, which I have not yet given a name to, operates on the conceit that magic and nature are one and the same. More specifically, nature is a subset of magic as I outlined in a previous post on the "winds of magic." This means that antimagic effects and spells like detect magic cannot work the same way, since there are no magical effects separate from non-magical effects.

Colours of Magic for 5e

It recently came to my attention that the Colours of Magic series that I use to inform my world building was revised for 5e. The colors underwent a number of changes, in some cases being completely redefined. Details below the break.

Terminology: spontaneous generation

Spontaneous generation is an obsolete scientific theory dating back thousands of years. Ancient peoples believed that animals arose spontaneously from inanimate substances. For example: fleas from dust, maggots from raw meat, mice from grain, etc.

In my fantasy physics, this is true. Animals, fantastical animals, monsters and even people spontaneous generate all the time. They either find their niche or die off. (This also makes it easy to adjudicate dungeons without worrying whether they have a sensible ecology.) There is also lots of other ideas beyond that, so check out the links below the break!

Magic and technology, or why I dislike Starfinder

Starfinder is a spin-off of Pathfinder which takes place in outer space. As with typical modernist fantasy, like its predecessor Dragonstar, it treats magic and technology as separate. In Starfinder specially, the use of magic is on the decline as its role is being taken over by the convenience of technology.

I consider this convention, in a word, stupid.

Some physical contradictions of typical fantasy settings

I mentioned before that most fantasy campaign settings operate on the conceit that magic and nature are two different things. The fantasy world operates according to modern science while magic is haphazardly tacked on to explain any divergences. This leads to numerous bizarre contradictions which many gamers are painfully oblivious to.

The Winds of Magic

As modern humans we take it for granted that the fantasy world operates according to real world physics with magic added to let us cheat. Unifying magic and nature requires detailed explanations about how physics in the fantasy world is fundamentally different from our own reality.

Magic versus mundane: why the distinction?

A while ago I read an essay titled "Breaking out of Scientific Magic Systems" which discussed, among other things, the tendency for tabletop role playing games to segregate magic from mundane physics and offered alternatives to doing so.

Monster ecology needn't be constrained by reality

Many bestiaries devote word count to describing the place of fantastical creatures within the ecology of the fantasy world they live in. Commonly, they are described in ways analogous to the animals of our own reality. They eat and procreate in the fashion of real animals, sometimes with a fantastical twist. All to often, however, these monsters feel less like monsters and more like cryptids or speculative alien biology projects.