So, a question occurred to me today as I was poking the survey--what do we expect the hybrid blasts would be, assuming they indeed come? I was trying to picture which combinations I thought would be most interesting and realized a lot of the combinations are either not obvious or not obviously different from another element.
One significant question is whether the combination is more... material or metaphorical I suppose. For example, if you combine Fire and Air in a material way, the most obvious combinations are either super-heated air or bellows-stoked flames depending on whether you add six of one or half dozen of the other. On the other hand, a valid metaphorical options for Air-Fire would be lightning, the big hot energy blast of the sky (To be clear, I want lightning to be a basic blast option, I'm not off that barrel yet, this is just an example), or possibly Smoke (incidentally, now that Wood is an element, Smoke 100% should be a Fire-Wood blast, not a Fire-Air blast.
It would be kind of weird imho to have some blasts be purely material (magma) and some be metaphorical (acid; fire + water?) or even more strained ("Life" from wood + water), but on the other hand I kind of accept that this is likely an inevitability given there is up to 21 unique combinations to be had. With that in mind, go at 'em.
One idea that may be worth exploring is having the three 'opposed' combinations produce a 'clash' element; a chaos, so to speak. On the other hand, Steam and Dust are perfectly viable concepts for Fire-Water and Air-Earth at least, though it is an open question what hybrid blasts will offer besides new ways to deal bludgeoning damage (or fire for the 5 fire-hybrid blasts).
Just to note, there's only two opposed pairs. Wood and Metal are part of a five-element cycle.
I am well familiar with the Wuxing. I think it would be a mistake to assume metal and wood only exist in the context of the Five Processes, and so I argue they are fully conceivably 'opposites' of a type. All the same, the reason why I put 'opposed' in air-quotes in the OP was to blur the notion that any two elements are necessarily opposed.
After all, if Metal and Wood cannot be opposed because they are a part of a cycle of 5, then neither can Fire or Water. I don't necessarily think any two elements should be described as 'inherently opposed', at least not if we are going with the assumption that there are multiple equally valid theories of the elements in the material realm, but the notion of opposed elements is strong around here (plus I was a touch inspired by a certain Elementalist skin from a certain MOBA)
Wood + earth could be coal. Just chunks of coal.
Go, petrified wood block!
Time to put my money where my mouth is and see if I can't think of something:
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AIR
+ Earth - Sand/Dust and wind erosion are pretty real concepts, so could do worse... sand blasting is no joke.
+ Fire - Superheated Air/Firebrands carried on the breeze
+ Metal - I wonder if there's something you couldn't pull out of Electricity/Metal...
+ Wood - I don't know how thematic it would actually be, but commanding a swarm of flower petals or dead leaves held aloft on a gust of wind sure is a heckin' cool look.
+ Water - Cloud/Mist doesn't feel like it packs much of a punch, but I guess Rain is in there too. Just as long as it's not Ice. I was not fond of editions of D&D putting the paraelemental plane of Ice as the junction between Air and Water. In my book, I like Air + Water to say something about Storms except that I also need lightning as a base power, not a hybrid blast.
EARTH
+ Fire - This one always seems obvious. In fact, it's probably the combination that usually inspires people to start filling out the Bingo card.
+ Metal - I guess raw, unprocessed Ores count.
+ Wood - Coal's not a bad idea actually. And other carbonic organisms which have been compressed into a stone state. Honestly now I really want a Bone element so I can make an Earth-Bone bender who launches fossils from their fists. On the other hand, given that Crystals 'grow' out of minerals...
+ Water - Mud, Sludge, Slurry, Ooze. Lots of vibes there, albeit not much going for it but more bludgeoning damage. Would be kind of disappointing if it had a move speed debuff as a rider, but it seems incredibly likely.
FIRE
+ Metal - Red-hot Pokers of Doom!
+ Wood - Ash/Smoke. Fire Flowers...
+ Water - Steam burns are nasty
METAL
+ Wood - Ironwood? I suppose metal crystals are also a thing...
+ Water - Rust? That might be unpleasant... Mercury, or "Quicksilver" as they call it in the lingo would be pretty cool albeit just a liquid metal that theoretically is present normally all over the Metal plane.
WOOD
+ Water - Hydrophytic Vegetation? Kelp blasts and sargassum away! Water lillies are cute. Gonna be real with you, some wood blasts give me a hard time because like, I'm not sure what species of plants we're meant to launch by default.
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I'll admit, I wasn't really straining my creativity with most of these. There's actually a lot of room for interesting possibilities when it comes to different and obscure elemental expressions in nature (for example, I didn't even find a place to put in Fulgurite and that stuff's the bomb! Like it would have to be Air+Earth but without a basic electric blasts...)
One issue that keeps distracting me is what we might be able to expect hybrid blasts to do. Unless they're a lot stronger than the basic element blasts by adding on special rider effects, most hybrid blasts seem like they'd end up being re-skinned bludgeoning applicators.
On the other hand, if they do have cool bonus effects or extra damage, how many times would the hypothetical dual-wielding kineticist actually be able to use them per fight? If using a hybrid blast causes Overflow, that's something they'd only be able to pull out for one attack before needing to refresh two gates to do it again. That could be worth it but this design avenue would also mean a dual-element character only really combines their elements for major attacks and otherwise treats them as separate. That's a fine option but it's not without it's cost.
... It's been a while since trying to logic out elemental interactions has gotten me this stirred up.
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If we're going to have hybrids, we want to pay attention to the hybrid outputs, as well as the hybrid inputs. There are peopel who want to play cod/acid/etc kineticists, and if we make hybrids and don't give them the thing they crave, we will be making them sad for no reason.
So... cold/ice, lava, acid, and lightning need to be there bare minimum. Poison and sonic should be there if we can fit it in. Given that start, let's try filling out the bingo card again.
Air:
- Earth - sand/dust works just fine here.
- Fire - lightning
- Wood - Poison
- Water - Ice. It needs to go somewhere, and it's the obvious place
- Metal - Sonic. There's nowhere else that really fits it better.
Earth:
- Fire - Lava. duh.
- Wood - Roots?
- Water - Mud? Acid could go here.
- Metal - Crystal?
Fire:
- Wood - Ash/Smoke?
- Water - Steam?
- Metal - Molten metal?
Wood:
- Water - Rot?
- Metal - ??? Craft, maybe?
- Water/Metal - Rust? Acid could go here as well.
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Some of these aren't great, but I think I've managed to get most of them to passable. I also note that there are 15 of the things, which is going to mean that trying to work out much of *anything* for every one of these is going to be more work (and pagecount) than it's really worth. Hybrid is a niche. My suspicion is that we're going to see cold, lightning, acid, probably lava, and maybe poison and/or sonic. If they take just those six, it's a cycle, with one per base element.
That doesn't work all that well either, though. I've tried, and it's hard to justify anything but poison out of that list as partaking of wood, while some of them (lave in particular) are obviously dual-element.
I don't really know how they're going to do it. I really hope they can, because I feel like a cryokineticist is near-mandatory, for all of the people who want to play Elsa, but I don't actually ahve any answers at the moment.
Huh. Thinking about what a cryokineticist would actually do... maybe it should be earth/water? Or maybe it's "element X, modified by Y". Like, I think you could manage a fairly solid rendition of the cryokineticist fantasy (or at least pretty close) with "you're an earth kineticist, but all of your damage is cold damage". It's not *quite* there, but it's surprisingly close.