ATLASATRIUM'S PROFILE

I'm putting older games and stylistic game design choices on the backburner for this subject because of its widely accepted use there (and the reasons behind them).

author=Liberty
Um, what? Earth as an element makes complete sense. It's one of the major elements that makes up the planet, and you can deal damage with earthquakes, just as you can with bushfires, hurricanes and tsunamis. That makes a LOT of sense.

I didn't say that Earth as an element in and of itself didn't make sense, nor that you can't cause damage with Earth - I was specifically addressing how every property of an Earth based -offensive- spell points to it being an attack that deals physical damage, alternative properties like

author=Liberty
Fire is Attack. Earth is Defence. Water is Magic. Wind is Speed

being aside from the point that I was trying to make. People are free to use the elements (Earth or otherwise) however they please and still have it fit nicely in the context of the game, I'm only pointing out that from my perspective, I think that Earth-based damage is better translated as Physical damage because of the previous points I made in the topic (unless you'd like to explain the difference between throwing a rock at someone and hitting them over the head with a club). I'm not getting into the fine details of all the other elemental interactions because they already have definite/established -elemental- properties that Earth does not have when it comes down to -pure offense- essentially: Earth = Defense (Yes) - however, Earth =/= Physical (???).

author=Liberty
Oh, and earth is great against fires, btw, but water already has that covered

This is more of what I meant. This is an example of an aspect that I pretty much overlooked - you can't put a fire out by hitting it with a sword. As for the wood thing, that's actually pretty interesting, I didn't even know about that until now, nor that that wood was changed to earth in translations.

It's not so much about trying to be realistic per se - the other elements have their own properties and interactions that define them (Ice = Good vs Fire Enemies / Wind effective at disrupting and damaging flying enemies / Etc.) Whereas earth has no such properties. It's brute force through and through, much like physical damage.

I never understood the mechanic of earth spells dealing earth elemental damage in video games. Well, I mean, I understand the MECHANIC, but it never made SENSE. Why would earth have its own elemental damage? Why doesn't it just deal physical damage? You're literally smashing your enemies with rocks, I don't care if you levitated it with a magic spell. It's not like that would suddenly make your warriors useless because they tank and have physical skills that have more effects than simply outputting physical damage. And in cases of a party that happens to have only one or a few physical attack characters, it gives your mage options against enemies who are resistant to magic instead of making them useless for the fight (or at least more options than they had before if you bothered to give them buff/debuff spells)

Does the Earth Element have a place or is it just some nonsensical cog in elemental rock-paper-scissors that nobody wants to discuss or point out?