Magic based on the four elements is fairly entrenched in D&D’s monster list and cosmology, in the form of elementals, genies, the planes of existence, and so on. I’ll be honest, though–I never thought it was actually that good a match for D&D.

Elemental magic is fairly shopworn at this point, having appeared everywhere from Avatar: The Last Airbender to Frozen to Pixar’s upcoming Elemental. But based on its age, D&D gets a pass on that. The real problem with D&D’s take on elemental magic is, unlike in shows like Avatar, there is a major coolness disparity between the four elements.

Fire gets an A. Fire elementals have a schtick: they do fire damage, and they set you on fire. The Plane of Fire is the most interesting one, with its ifrits sailing seas of lava and its iconic City of Brass. With swooping red dragons and fireballs, fire is the most photogenic and the most gameable of the elements, partly because fire has its own damage type.

Earth on the other hand… earth elementals are useful if you’re running a siege-based dnd campaign, but you’re not. In 5e their schtick is they do… bludgeoning damage. Dao are the most forgettable genies for me, and as described in official products the Plane of Earth is not thrilling. I’ve mostly seen it come up as a neverending source of gems, which is kind of a meta-use (and for extraplanar gem sources, give me faerie trees laden with gem fruit any day). Visiting the plane is unrewarding: you can’t really travel through a plane filled with dirt and stone. You can make it cool by riddling it with dungeons – in my campaign the Plane of Earth is the mythic underworld – but without the Plane of Earth I’d still have dungeons, so honestly it’s not that much of a value add. The element of earth gets a D.

Water: Water elementals are fairly underwhelming. Like earth elementals they deal bludgeoning damage. On the other hand, marids are among the most gameable of the genies. Their braggadocio is fun. If you play the plane of water like a vast ocean, teeming with marid pirate ships and kraken and so on, it can make for a fun nautical campaign; if on the other hand you make it into an underwater realm, you hit all the problems that make underwater adventures everyone’s second favorite adventure type (out of two): breathing and speaking shenanigans, hard-to-track 3D combat, an over-reliance on athletics checks for swimming, disadvantage on lots of attacks, and either mechanical or logical incompatibility with various cool spells. Underwater adventuring is a spice I find works best sparingly. Still, at least it’s an adventure environment unlike an infinite plane of rock. The element of water gets a B- if the characters can ride giant sea horses, C+ otherwise.

Let’s move on to air. Let’s check out what 5e air elementals do. it looks like they do … drum roll … bludgeoning damage, and sometimes a push. While djinn are the most familiar of the genies, with their three wishes, as 5e monsters they aren’t very memorable (though their whirlwind power is fun). And the plane of air must be the most arid and boring of the material planes. It’s “an open expanse with constant winds of varying strength.” Just lots of empty sky, and elemental birds flying around with not enough perches. Cloud kingdoms are cool, though, and raise the element as a whole from an F to a D.

And to be honest, the analysis above is generous because it doesn’t even touch on spells, where the same pattern appears. If you want to be a fire-based spellcaster, you’re going to have a good time, with lots of cool attack spells. An earthbender has various ways to hide things in dirt, a water elementalist can create and control water, and an aeromancer can use gusts of wind to blow people around. Of these, only fire magic is worth building a character around. I’d much rather play an Elsa-like cold mage or a Thor-like lightning cleric than any of those.

All this is not to say the D&D elemental creatures and planes are badly designed! The designers have done their best with the material, and a good DM can do even more, but the classical planes aren’t doing their share of the lifting.

The big sin of the classical elements is, apart from fire, they’re not easy to design monsters and spells for. And that is a big sin–without varied and fearsome monsters and magic, an element is nothing.

The funny thing, D&D already has traditional, highly photogenic elemental replacements waiting in the wings: the five draconic elements, fire, frost, lightning, poison, and acid. The dragons were designed with cool energy blasts in mind, so we’re starting with a leg up mechanics-wise.

Imagine if we replaced the four classical elemental planes with the five draconic elemental planes.

The realm of flame. Well honestly we can just use the ifrit, the seas of lava, and the City of Brass from the Plane of Fire.

The realm of frost. Now we’re talking! A forest of eternal winter, ruled by an extremely broody winter king or queen who wants to freeze the world; defeated heroes frozen into ice statues; a cosmic home for frost giants; let’s go!

The realm of storms. A storm-wracked sea. Refugees from the plane of water, like marids, can sail here, piloting their vessels between thunderbolts, living lives writ large on a sea that could snuff them out at any minute. A raging Thor-like being at the center of the storm.

The realm of blight. A post-apocalyptic desert that resembles a cross between Dark Sun and World War I trenches. In this wasteland, twisted yellow trees produce fetid blooms, and a miasma of spores chokes or transforms unwary travelers. Take a jaunt in the blight lands when you want to do some good old-fashioned resource management, since you can only eat or drink what you bring with you.

The realm of corrosion. Ok, this one is kind of a dud… acid is the dumbest damage type. My apologies to black dragons, which I otherwise like. A couple of possibilities: maybe taking a cue from black dragons, it’s a realm of night, where any light burns like acid? Maybe glass-hulled ships sail on an acid sea? Hopefully you can come up with some more inspiring ideas than I can. Eh, four out of five ain’t bad.

As an added bonus of switching to the draconic elements, magic itself becomes more “elemental”. Cryomancers draw power from the realm of frost, and storm clerics from the realm of lightning. Magic items like frost brand and the hammer of thunderbolts can be tied to the planes as well. If you’re so inclined, you can even expand out to the other energy types–the radiant lands are the new realms of the gods, the shadowfell is the necrotic plane, the psychic realm is our new plane of dream, and so on– though tbh I’m fine leaving the elemental planes at the five draconic planes for now.

What’s the cosmic explanation for the draconic planes anyway? Not sure if we need one, but a couple spring to mind. Perhaps each type of dragon emigrated to the material plane from their original inner plane homes. Or perhaps what we call the material plane is just the Venn diagram collision of all five planes and the world is ringed by lava, storms, glaciers, and so on. But my favorite idea is this: the inner planes are what dragons dream of during their long sleeps. While a dragon dreams, its elemental self soars through its home plane. The day the last red dragon dies, the plane of fire will be no more.

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