D&D 5E Darksun 3.0

neogod22 said:

Going off 2nd edition rules where races like Orcs didn't have spellcasters, and reading Rise And Fall Of a Dragon King and how they went about exterminating the races, yes Orcs would've gone down easily. Unlike normal defilers, the sorcerer kings are actually dragons, immune to normal weapons, and can use animal life to cast their spells. They are basically gods on that world, and with them leading armies exterminating tribes of orcs, you can see how they could fall quickly. The thing was though, each king was tasked with eliminating a single race at a time and did so at their own pace (some were lazier than others), they stopped when found out that they were doing this to create a halfling only world, not human. (ALL sorcerer kings were originally human since halfling couldn't learn magic). So the races that are still alive are the ones that they didn't get to yet, or didn't finish their genocide when they learned the truth about what they were doing.

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TheHobgoblin said:

Since I first saw Dark Sun, I always felt that it too easily dismissed some of the common "bad guy" humanoids existing in that world. Yeah, they tossed in background pieces about them being exterminated-- but are you really telling me it would be easier to exterminate Orcs than it is to exterminate Dwarfs or Elves? I feel like they felt compelled to keep the races in the PHB alive in the world despite if it made any sense.

Now that more development has been done on exactly what an Orc is and what its specialties are, I feel like Orcs would have had a much easier time adapting to the scant food and lack of water the world of Dark Sun presents. Its just now all that difficult for me to imagine these desert dwelling Orcs with sandy orange skin who might live primarily on the weeds, but are all too happy to bury themselves in the sand and ambush those who are unlucky enough to find themselves out traveling in the desert to kill and cannibalize them. And also to be prized as good, strong slaves that don't require much upkeep, but tend to be a bit lazy unless whipped into shape.

And you have this whole evil, brutal dictatorship as your core civilization where survival of the fittest reigns supreme and might makes right? It seems custom tailored to include the more modern concept of Hobgoblins as primary enforcers of this system whether or not they ever get accepted into any roles of meaningful power or influence.

But, at the time these concepts weren't particularly well developed and were different bags of hit points to pop in order to extract the XP and gold. So I guess they thought that having different "monsters" would make the setting unique... but still didn't have the guts to eject the elf, the halfling and the dwarf which all feel far more wildly out of place in the setting than Orcs or Hobgoblins would.

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Zardnaar said:

One of the Dwarven Kings almost killed The Dragon in single combat.

Darksun has a few artefact floating around, weapons similar to the Sword of Kas in terms of power. The Scorcher, Heartwood Spear and the Scourge of Rkard were statted out in 2E.

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neogod22 said:

The Sword of Rkard was the Dragon's sword, funny he was killed by his own weapon. All of those weapons you mentioned was created for sorcerer kings.

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Zardnaar said:

Some of the SKs were statted out in 2E. They are roughly as powerful as an archfiend, they are weaker than a few avatars of the god of Faerun for example.

In 5E terms The Dragon would be CR 30, while the rest would be CR 21-24 or so which is roughly on par with the archfiends. SOMe might be CR 25/26 depending if you like the 2E or 4E take on them.

The cleansing wars lasted 1500 years.

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cbwjm said:

I expect a battle between the Dragon and Dregoth (CR 29 if going off his 2e level, although perhaps boosted to CR 30 from his undead state) would have been an epic battle. From memory it took the combined might of the other sorcerer kings to kill Dregoth the first time.

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Zardnaar said:

Its a bit of a crap shoot Dregoth vs Dragon, 2 more SKs would tilt that assuming some of Dregoths servants aided him.

Some of the weakers SKs could be killed in a round or 2 if you got close enough to them. Abalach Re was one of the weaker ones (lvl 21) but that could be as low as CR 13 in 5E terms (a tougher archmage) although she would presumably have legendary actions etc to boost her up to lich levels or a bit tougher perhaps due to psionics as well.

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neogod22 said:

The problem with 5e is you can't treat them like PCs as far as levels go since a lvl 21 dragon is equal to a lvl 20 wizard, + lvl 20 mystic (psionics) + a ton of bonuses for getting to lvl 21. They should be equal to at least a CR17 creature when you adjust the HP they should gain in 5th. In 5th edition getting to a sorcerer king's level is impossible with the current leveling rules. But in the fight with Dregoth, they would be smart enough not to engage him in melee.

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neogod22 said:

Going off 2nd edition rules where races like Orcs didn't have spellcasters, and reading Rise And Fall Of a Dragon King and how they went about exterminating the races, yes Orcs would've gone down easily. Unlike normal defilers, the sorcerer kings are actually dragons, immune to normal weapons, and can use animal life to cast their spells. They are basically gods on that world, and with them leading armies exterminating tribes of orcs, you can see how they could fall quickly. The thing was though, each king was tasked with eliminating a single race at a time and did so at their own pace (some were lazier than others), they stopped when found out that they were doing this to create a halfling only world, not human. (ALL sorcerer kings were originally human since halfling couldn't learn magic). So the races that are still alive are the ones that they didn't get to yet, or didn't finish their genocide when they learned the truth about what they were doing.

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