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

[jade-mushroom.livejournal.com]

dont play D&D, but i think it might be harder to bend zombies, because first the blood is congealing and all the solid matter settling. Then as the body continues to rot, everything liquefies inside. i could see bloodbending bodies more than a week old turning into a bending of liquified mush... ew that's a nasty image

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Since bending is a spiritual thing in Avatar and not magic I suggest that all the people should be able to do it but some of the nun human races probably have a natural incline for one of the elements. For example you will find more earth benders than any other kind among the dwarfs, orcs with there temperament probably have more fire benders, etc. But that also depends upon how spiritual they are in your world, after all if your elves are egoistical atheists then there are probably no benders among them.

What kind of races did you plan to use and what kind of 'culture' do you plan to give them?

When it comes to monsters I suggest that you use evil spirits of different kind, since the A:tLA is an world of spirits. Animal possessing spirits that twist there hosts bodies into monstrous forms and drives them mad. Hate filled ghosts that possess corpses and create zombies, etc.
For inspiration I suggest the *Monster Books' to Werewolf: the Apocalypse; 'Kindred of the East', and chapters about spirits in the Exalted books. Also the comic book the Portent.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

A question - What technological level had you planed to give the people in this world?

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

A suggestion - you could use the Planetouched templates to represent human/spirit offspring

Also, do you know http://pachycrocuta.deviantart.com/gallery/ ? If not, cheek him out, he has a loot of good art and some that could be inspiring for your world.