Elemental Antithesis Planes


Homebrew and House Rules

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8

Hey folks,

Interesting thought experiment I am playing around with.

I'm thinking of a cosmology with the regular elemental planes but I also want to have what I would call 'Antithesis'* Planes. Here is what I mean:

Fire and Water are opposites but Fire and Ice are Antithesis. So an Elemental Plane of Cold would be Fire's Antithesis.

Water's Antithesis would be.. well dryness.. or dessication.. represented by a Plane of Dust?

What comes to mind to you for Air and Earth?

*I am aware that 'antithesis' and 'opposite' are primarily the same thing. I picked the word to denote difference between the usual Fire/Water or Air/Earth oppositions.

Dark Archive

Air's would be Void/Nothingness
Earth's would be Life, (what do you do with someone who is dead, you bury them in the earth)


Well the ancient greeks did this:

Fire = Hot Dry
Earth = Cold Dry
Air = Hot Wet
Water = Cold Wet

So maybe that helps.

You could have the elemental planes have those qualities so that they all oppose each other plane in a way

Earth opposes fire by being cold, water by being dry, and air by being earth.

You could use it as a justification for the energy associations as well. Fire is Fire. Hotness combined with wetness creates lightning, like in a storm... or somthing. Water get's coldness. The only one that doesn't make sense is earth with acid but that never made sense to me anyways and I don't use it in my games. Okay maybe the energy associations aren't any better defined than before.


Earth's opposite could be Void . . . Solid, densely packed stuff versus Nothingness.

As for Air, everything I think of in opposition to it is connected with Earth, stable vs ever-moving, enclosed vs open, etc.


I tend to use Earth, Air, and Water. I then have para-elementals of Cloud (Water + Air), Dust (Air + Earth), and Mud (Earth + Water). I think it makes things work pretty well:

Earth - Cloud
Dust - Water [on the Greek system, this would be Dry - Wet]
Air - Mud

When I think of the other areas, I usually see Fire as a para-elemental of Heat and Light. This allows an antithesis of Cold and Darkness (though I've yet to figure out a good para-elemental that combines Cold and Darkness the way Fire combines Heat and Light - I want to call it 'Void' but I don't think that works).

I sometimes break things down further, particularly:

Heat + Earth = Lava

Heat + Water = Steam

Heat + Air = Lightning

Cold + Earth = Metal [or Mineral] (the basic premise being a more 'ordered' version of common dirt). Technically obsidian or other solidified forms of Lava would work best.

Cold + Water = Ice

Cold + Air = Frost (for lack of a better term - the 'Frost' is more akin to dry ice and similarly solidified forms of air - though it's not mutually exclusive from the normal application of frost or of simply very cold air)

I would then go on to argue that Heat + Cold = Sound, though I could see the argument for switching Sound and Lightning.

I tend not to deal with Acid much as the most obvious antithesis would be Base, and I'm really not sure where to put them.

Earth is the most tricky of them because there are different ways it can be referred to:

Soft Earth: Basically your average soil that you can dig into and plant stuff in.

Hard Earth: Rocks of all sorts, which are a mixture of minerals but in a harder form than soil.

Crystalline Earth: Minerals of all sorts that aren't actual metals (diamonds, rubies, etc).

Metallic Earth: Metals of all sorts (gold,iron, etc).

Whether or not all of these apply to the Plane of Earth would probably depend on your setting preferences, particularly if you're running something based on oriental elements where Earth and Metal are considered separate.


Chemically speaking strong acids and song bases have similar corrosive effects so acid should be it's own oppiset.

Alternatively by the common Arrhenius definition acids and bases are both aqueous compound so acid should be associated with water. But I majored in chemistry and can't expect my fantasy world to obey a stuff consistent set of rules like the two world.

I like Indagare's set of elements very through.


Bardarok wrote:

Chemically speaking strong acids and song bases have similar corrosive effects so acid should be it's own oppiset.

Alternatively by the common Arrhenius definition acids and bases are both aqueous compound so acid should be associated with water. But I majored in chemistry and can't expect my fantasy world to obey a stuff consistent set of rules like the two world.

I like Indagare's set of elements very through.

Thanks! I've thought about this for a while. I like to include real world physics where possible. For instance, the ionized form of gasses is plasma, so I like placing Lightning as the result of Heat and Air because it's also a plasma.

I know that technically the corrosive effects of acids and bases are similar, so it probably could be its own opposite or antithesis if there were some way of reversing the 'charge' of it (since Acid is treated as an energy rather than as a compound).

An alternative is to consider the fact that acids can come from solids, liquids, and gasses. It could be possible that Acid (as an energy) could be opposed to Base (as an energy) if they had two different sources. Then again, if Acid has a strong liquid association (Water) then a good opposite could be Lightning (give how easily Water conducts electricity). If we maintain the Acid - Earth connection, the opposite of Lightning - Air may work even better (since Earth tends not to be an ideal conductor of electricity).

I do agree that associating Acid with Earth doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given that not all acids are solids and fantasy Acid (as you mentioned) tends to be shown as a liquid that 'melts' things. If anything Sound would be a better association with Earth since sound waves tend to travel better through denser materials (Air, for all we may associate it with hearing, is a really poor conductor of sound waves).


Bardarok wrote:

Chemically speaking strong acids and song bases have similar corrosive effects so acid should be it's own oppiset.

Alternatively by the common Arrhenius definition acids and bases are both aqueous compound so acid should be associated with water. But I majored in chemistry and can't expect my fantasy world to obey a stuff consistent set of rules like the two world.

I like Indagare's set of elements very through.

I posted this from my new phone last night and it appears I am not very good at typing with that device.

More modern definitions of acid don't define acid as an aqueous solution though most chemical reactions happen better in solutions. So acid's don't necessarily have to have a water connection more so than air, fire, or, earth. Perhaps earth + water could be minerals which dissociate in an acidic manner in water.

Which would give us an association of elemental planes and paraelemental (energy)planes

Earth+Water=Acid opposed by Fire+Air=Lightning
Earth+Fire=Sonic opposed by Water+Air=Cold

Kind of works.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think void would be a good antithesis of earth. As for air, I would agree with something similar to mud, some kind of goo substance.

This reminded me of the para-elemental planes from Planescape:

planescape planes:
Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Positive, Negative were the bases. Then you got the composite paraelemental planes, such as:

Earth + Fire = Magma
Earth + Water = Ooze
Air + Fire = Smoke
Air + Water = Ice
Air + Positive = Lightning
Air + Negative = Vacuum
Earth + Positive = Mineral
Earth + Negative = Dust
Fire + Positive = Radiance
Fire + Negative = Ash
Water + Positive = Steam
Water + Negative = Salt

Earth/Void, Air/Mud, Water/Dust, Fire/Ice aren't bad pairings.

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