D&D 5E What do you want in a Dark Sun book (sans psionics)?

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, they can write out whatever classes/races they think don't fit ans just add the "if you really want to play one talk to your DM" bit. They did it for Ravnica, and I see no reason they shouldn't do the same for Dark Sun and a whole bunch of reasons they should. I think it's more important to get the feel right.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Should the spikewyrm to be a dragon with age categories or only a magical beast? I like the idea of spikewyrm as "the other dragon of tyr"? Maybe they were a product of the lifeshape technology and they altered themself to hide, erase their before subtype to survive the cleasing wars.

I don't mind the canon, if something I like I will add it to my game, for example the wardens as primal paladins with lifeshape tech instead the classic divine spells.

* WotC should talk with Warner for a remake of the "Pirate of the Dark Waters", as an indirect way to promote Dark Sun.

 

[Parmandur]

Ahh, that makes sense. Not sure I like the idea of no sorcerers, even with the sidebar. I mean, if you are the only sorcerer, shouldn’t your magic still defile unless you preserve? I’m fine with templar being the only warlock patron (or... Sorcerer King patron, I suppose) and preservation/defiling being the only arcane traditions, but I’d prefer sorcerers to get a similar setting-appropriate treatment rather than be written out.

Well, in violation of the OP, I'd say putting something like the UA Psionic Sorcerer, and saying that people don't have a problem with Psionics in the same way as Arcane magic, might work.

Ravnica and Theros have really opened up the possibilities of making Settings distinct by exclusion of assumed options as much as inclusion of new options.

 

[delericho]

Now what do you want to see?

Basically take the 4e books, replace the mechanics with 5e equivalents, and you're done.

(The only real issue with that is the Dark Sun needs a lot of custom monsters, which necessarily takes up a lot of space in a one-and-done book. And if psionics is also going to take up a lot of space, that doesn't leave much for everything else. Not sure how to resolve that.)

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Basically take the 4e books, replace the mechanics with 5e equivalents, and you're done.

(The only real issue with that is the Dark Sun needs a lot of custom monsters, which necessarily takes up a lot of space in a one-and-done book. And if psionics is also going to take up a lot of space, that doesn't leave much for everything else. Not sure how to resolve that.)

I don't want to push too many buttons, but I despise how 4E Dark Sun handled some races; making Goliath = Half-Giants and Dragonborn = Dray, plus the additions of Tieflings... it isn't something I'd like to return to.

 

[Parmandur]

Basically take the 4e books, replace the mechanics with 5e equivalents, and you're done.

(The only real issue with that is the Dark Sun needs a lot of custom monsters, which necessarily takes up a lot of space in a one-and-done book. And if psionics is also going to take up a lot of space, that doesn't leave much for everything else. Not sure how to resolve that.)

Eberron and Ravnica were 320 pages. 37 pages and 70 pages just for Monsters, I'm either case. Based on recent UA approaches, Psionics would not be that extensive in page count.

Leaves plenty of room to straight up reprint the 4E book, honestly.

 

[muppetmuppet]

someone made a pretty good homebrew 5e darksun on this site.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So aside from Psionics, which are a given, the major things you need to do Dark Sun justice are:

1) Willingness to change the rules and ban existing stuff from the setting by default (obviously in a later chapter say "It's your world, you can ignore this, but..."). No existing 5E setting has really done this.

2) Half-Giants, Muls, and Thri-Kreen that don't suck. If you have to do something weird to make Half-Giants and Thri-kreen not suck, like make them a 1-level racial class (hello 3E!), then do it. Better that than Half-Giants which are Goliaths (ugh, I love both races but no...), or Thri-Kreen who are unexciting.

3) Preserving and Defiling being an actual choice, with actual consequences, and Defiling being being the default. As you can't use a massive difference in XP gain to differentiate them, you need to make it a serious choice some other way. But it has to be a serious choice. A big problem here is that Wizard in 5E is already a powerful, well-balanced class (this was not true in 2E, in 2E you were desperate to gain levels and escape from being bad and easily killed), so if you just make Wizards Preservers by default like 2E, you give no real reason to be a Defiler. Yet Defilers should be more common. So they're going to need a MASSIVE bonus. Like outrageous and unbalanced, in order to equal the massive difference in XP gain from 2E.

4) As per 1, ban most/all existing races, and any inappropriate subclass, including ALL current Cleric subclasses. Add Athasian variant races and subclasses as needed. All the Cleric subclasses should be Athas-specific.

Ban a bunch of spells too, anything that's inappropriate.

5) Equipment & Survival rules, and make them brutal. Weapons should break! People should nearly die of thirst! Nobody should be casting Goodberry!

6) L3 start + generous chargen.

We like tradition with other settings, right? So why do we not like it with Dark Sun? We should start people at L3 and give them a more generous character generation method.

If 5E couldn't handle this, I'd say don't do it. But it totally can! It can handle it with grace! And by all means encourage the DM to use more Hard and Deadly-class encounters!

And it will help give Dark Sun it's unique feel. Especially as you take away with the other hand with equipment.

7) Give everyone 1 Psi feat (as per the current UA) of their choice. Be clear that this is a one-off and doesn't mean your campaign is using Feats generally.

 

[Parmandur]

Willingness to change the rules and ban existing stuff from the setting by default (obviously in a later chapter say "It's your world, you can ignore this, but..."). No existing 5E setting has really done this.

Good post overall, but this part is somewhat inaccurate: both the Ravnica and Theros books introduce big restrictions to character options.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Good post overall, but this part is somewhat inaccurate: both the Ravnica and Theros books introduce big restrictions to character options.

From Ravnica;

Races
The people of Ravnica include members of many different races. Aside from humans, elves, and a smattering of half-elves, the races from the Player's Handbook are unknown on Ravnica, unless they're visiting from other worlds.

Classes
Your character can have any class that appears in the Player's Handbook (or other sources, with your DM's permission). Certain classes and subclasses are especially appropriate for particular guilds. reflecting the traditions and training of those guilds. This section can help you choose a guild if you already know what class you want to play.

There are some restriction to the races here, but it's also purposefully worded so that anyone can use them if they want to anyway (which isn't exactly hard considering the whole concept of Planeswalkers). Doesn't seem to be any class restrictions.

No idea how Theros will frame this because it's not out yet, but it probably will be about the same.

The restrictions people are asking for Dark Sun do seem to be much more strict than in these cases. I don't actually know the right way to do this, as I think using space for "These spells are banned!" kind of silly, but I would enjoy a section explaining alternative rules for spells that create food/water/nourishment, and for how clerics/wizards work. A flat ban actually seems like an uninteresting way of circumventing this problem.