Combine approaches and extras to create different narrative justifications for powered and unpowered actions.
Because of the limitations of approaches this probably won't be really viable for a long-form campaign story lasting months-worth of sessions. Still, if you're going to be playing shorter games (a month per campaign, tops) this is an elegant option. If you want to use skills, read this anyway because I'm going to bring skills into it at the end.
I've experimented with this for a werewolf game, actually: by using approaches, your characters can have the same problem-solving attitudes regardless of their form: a Forceful cowboy turns into a Forceful werewolf, and a Clever schoolgirl becomes a Clever magical warrior. When they change form, the narrative shifts to give them justification for using their approaches in more magical and combat-oriented ways: a cowboy can't bite people but a werewolf can, and a schoolgirl can't create magical illusions but a magical warrior can.
(This doesn't work with skills because skills represent what-things-you-can-do-ness while approaches represent how-you-do-things-ness.)
You can represent this shift narrative by clever use of aspects and extras. Aspects should generally be phrased so they're relevant in both forms, which can be difficult but gets easier with practice. It's nigh impossible to give generic advice for specific aspect creation needs like this; the best I can say is that focusing on personality and relationships makes it easier to keep aspects relevant between forms.
Now, extras! There are many ways to craft extras around this. (Extras are for when you want to give effects that stunts can't handle, either because it's too many stunt's-worth of effects, or because a single effect is too complicated or powerful for a stunt to handle gracefully.)
Extra: Moon Infusion
Permission: An aspect indicating your magical nature.
Cost: At the start of each session I'm in, the GM's pool of NPC Fate points increases by 1 for each action I can use magically.
Benefit: Because I am secretly a champion of the Moon goddess, once per session I can reveal my warrior form. When I do, I gain the aspect Infused with the Light of the Moon (with one free invoke) for the rest of the scene.
This gives me magical context for using my actions (like flying, and shooting rays of cleansing light). When you take this extra, pick the actions (Overcome, Create Advantage, Attack, Defend) I can use magically.
I chose to make the extra's cost a "make the NPCs stronger" effect (increasing NPC Fate points) rather than a "make the PC weaker" effect (reducing PC Refresh) because, frankly, it's more interesting to face stronger opponents than to have your own power balanced out. In play it's effectively similar: the opposition scales according to the power the PCs bring to the scenario. The exact cost may need a little tweaking depending on your game. I've borrowed the basic concept from the atomic-robo RPG, which is a wealth of resources for this sort of thing.
Don't worry about including "running out of power" type mechanics in these extras: that's what consequences are for. Just as a gunfighter might take a mild consequence of All out of ammo, a magical girl might take Overcome by doubt or Cut off from my power.
But what about skills?
I started with approaches instead of skills because they're easier and more obvious to use with transformations.
On the face of things it's still pretty straightforward: Just as having a loaded gun lets you use the Shoot skill, having sparklemagic attacks lets you use it too. However, a schoolgirl probably doesn't have a lot of ranks in Shoot, so we need a new level of complexity in representing the transformation if your game uses skills instead of approaches.
Extra: Moon Infusion
Permission: An aspect indicating your magical nature.
Cost: At the start of each session I'm in, the GM's pool of NPC Fate points increases by 2.
Benefit: Because I am secretly a champion of the Moon goddess, once per session I can reveal my warrior form. When I do, I gain the aspect Infused with the Light of the Moon (with one free invoke) for the rest of the scene. This gives me magical context for using my actions (like flying, and shooting rays of cleansing light).
My abilities are different when I'm a warrior: when you first choose this extra, shuffle my skill ranks into a different configuration representing the talents of my magical form (the new configuration must still follow all the game's rules about skill ranks and caps). Whenever I reveal my warrior form, my skills change to their new configuration. They return to normal when I do.
Now we've got a girl whose abilities radically change but her aspects stay the same--so she's still the same person, but she has a different set of competencies when she's transformed.
In FR the dragons were created by the primordials. Does this mean many/most/all dragon gods are also primordials, as aspects/fragments of Io?
The Dragon Gods are presented as actual gods rather than primordials (DMG p. 10, PHB p. 296, & SCAG p. 113).
Can a primordial also be (or somehow become) a god?
I'm unaware of this occurring, but I wouldn't rule it out:
- Asgorath/Io is both, but (as creator of the universe) doesn't count.
- Tharizdun is close, but is not a Primordial.
- Kossuth is also close, but he's "not a true god but actually an
elemental primordial".
Do primordials need, desire or benefit from followers?
Not normally, but Kossuth is an example of a primordial that benefits from extensive worship.
Do surviving primordials have significant religions associated with them, either in Abeir or in Toril?
On Toril the five Elemental Lords have followings, while The Seven Lost Gods were once worshiped. I believe Abeir would have more significant Primodial worship, but that setting was never detailed.
Do primordials grant spells in the same way as gods?
Not normally, but again: Kossuth is an example of a primordial that both grants spells and has extensive followings.
Can they be warlock patrons?
I don't see anything preventing this. A few homebrewed examples of this can be found here and here.
Is there any obvious difference in the portfolios of primordials versus gods? I would have assumed that since they predate mortals they tend to represent more fundamental forces (like the elements) rather than human concepts like law, love, luck, agriculture.
That might be one way to view it, but 4e's creation myth (Worlds and Monsters p.56, cited below) has the Gods being created at the same time as the Primordials. Another way to view it might be that the Primordials are composed of elemental "physical-matter" while the Gods (and Astral Sea) are more composed of thought (mental-matter).
In short, what is the difference between a god and a primordial? Are they fundamentally the same (just different lineages) or are there fundamental differences?
They are consistently presented as having fundamental differences. From 4e's Worlds and Monsters (p.56): "The gods, beings of divine power, appeared in the Astral Sea, while in the Elemental Chaos arose the primordials, incarnations of tremendous elemental might"... "composed partially of creation-stuff".
I also found this fantastically detailed post on Candlekeep...
That still seems like as good a guide as any.
Best Answer
In later D&D editions, the term eldritch is associated with the warlock class, whose signature class feature is eldritch blast. The warlock was introduced in 3.5e’s Complete Arcane, and was a core class in both 4e and 5e. All three of these warlocks tended to revolve around the use of eldritch blast, and as a result, feats and items specifically tailored for this class often use the word eldritch, and such things that are more generally for all arcanists tend to avoid it.
The warlock class is an arcane class, so eldritch can be seen as a subset of arcane. However, warlocks generally gain their powers not through study (as with wizards) or ancestry (as with sorcerers), but through pacts with fey, fiendish, or alien creatures. This accounts for the connotations and associations you’re seeing around the eldritch term.
However, the term is also simply an English word, and it is sometimes used in situations divorced from the warlock class even after it was printed (and clearly, prior to Complete Arcane, any use of the term had nothing to do with the class that hadn’t been written yet). This is seen perhaps most notably (to modern D&D, anyway) in the eldritch knight class; that was originally printed as a prestige class in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for 3.5, before Complete Arcane was printed. At that point, it was just used as more-or-less a synonym for arcane. And even though both 4e and 5e already had warlocks with associations with the word eldritch, Wizards chose to keep the eldritch knight name for an arcane-casting fighter, using it as a knight paragon path in 4e and a fighter archetype in 5e. So the eldritch knight could be seen as a big exception to the idea of “eldritch” being associated with warlocks. There are others.
However, even when used simply as English words, the words have different connotations. Arcane means complex and/or secret, and anything secret can have sinister associations, but eldritch highlights them. Something arcane may merely be complex and difficult to understand (quantum mechanics is very arcane), but something eldritch more strongly hints at something sinister going on.
For reference, Google provides the following definitions: