I think my core concern with this idea is that the d20 is already a very swingy die and priviliging the bigger diversion from the median makes the game even more unpredictible. If you're okay with that, then by all means give it a try.
A thought, instead of Spell Draining what about a spell corrupting effect. Like these creatures don't drain the magic but corrupt it and tie a random prepared spell to the Dark Weave, making its effects unpredictable and dangerous. Maybe your Burning Hands will work, or maybe the fire will...
Yeah I thought the pacing was weird even when I saw it in the theatres and liked it quite a bit. It's a flawed diamond to me, which is more than I can say for TROS... which basically doesn't exist in my headcanon.
I feel like you're stretching a bit here. Even the Full Casters (especially Sorcerers) got more powerful in 2024, if not as much of a boost as Monks and Fighters. It's not incorrect to say that the ceiling for single-class builds has also been raised, Paladin excluded.
And while yes, using the...
Yeah this definitely sounds like a rebooted version of Clusterspace with the background details moved into the mythic past (so long ago not even the gods remember). It never made sense to me that the civilizations of cluster space grew out of the remnants of what came before when it literally...
There was lots of buzz for Spelljammer when it first launched, actually. But it got mixed reviews and was quickly overshadowed by the controversies about lacking ship combat rules and of course the hadozee debacle... and then a few months later by the OGL debacle.
The setting could be great but...
I don't necessarily think making changes is a bad thing in and of itself. God knows there were some elements of 2E Spelljammer that haven't aged well. Or, hell, were godawful even for the time (Aperusa). But outside of Bral, the 5E Spelljammer material felt empty. It made space feel small.
It's not that the idea came from nowhere. I fully believe that WOTC had no plans for Dark Sun when that interview was given.
But now that the people who expressed the resistance to Dark Sun are no longer working on D&D and the recent UAs strongly suggest it's in the pipeline. There's good...