Bending Elements In D&D

[weirdlet]

I am having that strange and terrible urge to GM again. One of my major campaigns is coming to an end, and in the interim there's probably going to be a bunch of things my crew will be trying. I might put in a bid to try running something for them, IF I can come up with enough for folks to actually play with without tearing my hair out.

I really, really want to do a game with the Avatar D20 supplement the good folks of the GitP boards came up with- I don't necessarily want to run an Avatar: the Last Airbender game.  So my thoughts are running around the question of what do folks think that a setting with the A:tLA system of 'magic', rather than the classic wizards, druids and clerics, would be like.

My initial thought is that the various types of 'bending are mostly human's magic, but with a couple of other species getting in on the action either as having mimicked it, or having originated it.  Possibly non-human types like elves have their own magics, but I'll have to figure out what specific systems I want to include, so that things don't get too wildly out of whack (although high-level anything in a d20 system is going to be screwy any way you look at it).  I like the idea of combat being more about the different moves you can do, physically or elementally, rather than straight-up fire and forget arcana.

As for the setting itself- I'm thinking that this might be taking place in a small sea, in a place where there are a lot of large islands kind of near to each other, so that boat travel is frequent but you can also fetch up on a shore where you could go for a few days without seeing water on the other side, and possibly find the edges of some larger continents where civilization's grown up.  I'm seeing the elves as fairly reclusive on their particular islands, but the lower classes among them are known to show up outside their shores, fishing and trading.

Another big thing to think about- what are the problems that the adventurers are going to encounter?  Things like dragons and zombies are very very classic D&D, but they aren't going to fit without some serious adjustment- like if zombies are just corpses being blood-bent by a master witch.  You know, that could be an interesting thing, because as is, blood-bending is basically epic tier- it would be much easier to puppeteer a dead thing by its liquids than a live one.

Comments

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Are you planning to give the Elves some kind of magic to "compensate" there lack of bending ability or are they just surviving on their long life that’s gives them the ability to go high level and stay there?

Humm, the later is actually a good idea, the elves could be like Piandao, Mai and Ty Lee so skilled that they don’t need bending to be a high level threat.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

That's something of what I was thinking- I was considering giving them a few little tricks for flavor, light, maybe a few talk-with-animals or spirits tricks. I'm still looking to get a hold of Skull & Bones to see if I can work in the shamanic stuff rather than full-on arcana.

Hm. Bards. Their abilities are spell-like- I'm not sure they'd fit in. Better for rogues to take up the role of flim-flammery when needed.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

You could have it so that elves begin on a higher level, to represent that they have spent at least 50 years or more training, and that gives them an edge against benders

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

P.S. http://genzoman.deviantart.com/art/Blood-elf-in-L5R-81891978?q=boost%3Apopular%20legend%20of%20five%20rings&qo=12