D&D 5E How would you wish WOTC to do Dark Sun

[Danzauker]

I think it all comes down what people are looking for when it comes to Dark Sun. What is the core element that needs preserving (no pun intended)? Right now, Dark Sun seems to be several things people want:

• Post-apocalyptic meets pulp dying world where hope and resources are in short supply. Vance meets Howard by way of Burroughs.
• A D&D hardmode where PCs might be super-munckiny (24 strengths! Free Wild talents!) but still die quickly from dehydration, inferior weapons and armor, and monsters that make the Tomb of Horrors look like a Disney dark ride. Bring extra character sheets.
• An "anti-D&D" s setting where everything is flipped on its head. Cannibal halflings! Bards that poison you rather than spell cast! Psionics instead of magic! No orcs, no goblins, and dragons are psionic-magical God-Kings! There is not one word of lore in D&D that is true about Dark Sun, no assumption can be made, and nothing, and I mean nothing, is like it is described in the PHB.
• Fidelity to the original vision of the setting, without additions or subtractions, with or without the metaplot advancements. Nothing that wasn't in the original setting back in the 90's.
• A collection of new options (Races, subclasses, psionics) and rules (advanced survival, defiling) that can be ported to other games or used in homebrews.

Whichever you think is most important colors the rest of your choices on what to adapt. For example, the first point is the most important than the Barbarian class is a natural fit; tough armorless primal warriors seem a shoo-in for the setting. Yet If the second is the most important, barbarians are a no-go because they allow PCs to have excellent ACs easily, and having a good AC is a privilege for those cunning enough to survive low levels with bone armor and stone weapons. Similarly, if fidelity is most important, there is no way you can possibly accept sorcerers, warlocks, tieflings, or any other element that came post 2e as part of the setting since it ruins the very notion of DS's relation to magic and the planes, but if you want more options, then you want warlocks to get new Pact options, not banned altogether!

WotC will have to decide IF they are doing this, which parts are the most important and in what measure. If they want the setting beats and options but don't care about it being hard or keeping true to the setting, you get a 4e-ish style book that is mostly refluff, reflavor, and some new options to go with it. If they want to satisfy the original purist who want Dark Sun to be D&D are its most brutal and strange, they are either going to have to create a book that doesn't use 50% or more of the current options in the core, let alone doesn't generate leads to supplemental books OR they are going to have to re-write the game to accommodate all the changes. You MIGHT be able to get away with "paladins are unknown, check with your DM" but there is no way you are pulling off "In Dark Sun, you cannot be a barbarian, bard, monk, sorcerer, paladin, or warlock. Additionally, you cannot be an eldritch knight, arcane trickster, beastmaster, have any cleric domain but life, light, and nature, or specialize in any school of wizard magic except preserver or defiler."

So again, what is the most important parts you want to emphasize? What trade-offs are you willing to make?

I agree. Everybody has a personal and skewed view of what Dark Sun is (well, like any other matter) and that's what drives his opinion.

That's why no setting update to new rules will ever satisfy everybody.

Me, personally, I'd like to stick more to the feeling than the rule (of course based on my feeling.

I'm not against incorporating things that were invented after the first publishing, if they fit well with the basic idea of the setting.

For example, like many others I concur that mechanically and temathically speaking Warlock pact magic fits better with what a Templar is in the lore. And I would accept the inclusion of a reptile PC race like dragonborns or lizardfolk, if correctly implemented. Even tiefling, as a stretch, could be refluffed as "mutants" of some sort, without any demonic/diabolic association (the lore itself states that mutations are relatively common among humans).

What I didn't like was the tendency of shoehorning everything from the core books into the setting that was done in the 3e and 4e conversions. Dark sun is not Eberron or the Forgotten Realms, where "there's a place for everything". Quite the opposite. It was intended to be wildy different from the expected "regularQ game right from the start.

 

[Haldrik]

Thinking more about the flavor of Preserving versus Defiling.



Arcane Magic

Back in D&D 2e there was only one main arcane class, the Wizard (Magic-User). But by the time of 3e, 4e, and now 5e, the Sorcerer and the Warlock are additional main arcane classes.

Hypothetically, a 5e Dark Sun could ban the Wizard class, and use the Sorcerer class to represent the "Sorcerer-Kings". Meanwhile, a Divine Soul Sorcerer could be the Templar with healing powers, if healing is perceived to be an important Dark Sun flavor. Moreover, the affinity of the Sorcerer spell list with elemental spells makes sense in Dark Sun elementalism.

So, 5e Dark Sun actually needs to have a good reason to keep the Wizard class. Otherwise ban it



In my eyes, the best reason for Dark Sun to use the Wizard class is because this magic is "scholarly". By extension, wizardry remembers by means of the scholarly ways of libraries and record keeping, the magical technologies that existed historically before the post-apocalypse. Likewise, Dark Sun wizardry can be flavorfully urban, "civilized", and elitist. Wizardry couldnt care less about the wilderness of plants and nature, beyond the city. Whence the apocalyptic disaster. Meanwhile, the weird magic of the Templars flavors as the result of magical experiments.

So the Wizard class is appropriate for Dark Sun, where the technological "points of light" are ethically blots of darkness.

"Defiling" is the traditional approach of Wizardry. Exploit the environment. Use up its resources.



Thus "Preserving" plant life is a new and recent paradigm shift within the wizardly culture. The self-restraint is uncomfortable. The motivation comes from a new awareness of the fragility of the planetary ecosystem. Moreover, Preserving is an inherently nonurban outlook. It prioritizes the wellbeing of the wilderness first, and only secondly the city. In other words, Preserving applies the sacred wilderness magic of animism to the urban context of Wizard magic. There is an alliance between the animists of the wilderness and the Preserver Wizards who originated from the cities. Now most of the Preservers have fled away from the cities, to escape the Templars of the Sorcerer-Kings who hunt them down. But these refugee Wizards remember the urban ways of life and try to preserve them in modest ways.

Most importantly, Preserving life is a sacred tradition. This sacred tradition is animistic. Despite being arcane Wizards, the Preservers are holy vocations, and participate in a wider shared sacred culture. Thus there is a kind of sacred alliance among the animists:

• the Clerics of the fundamental elements
• the Druids of each holy landscape feature
• the Psions of the pervasive conscious force
• the Perservers of the sustainable use of wizardry

This collective animism deserves development within 5e Dark Sun. What sacred worldview do all of these four magical institutions share in common? What are the relationships between these four institutions? What does each magical institution contribute to the wider animistic community?

 

[Danzauker]

Elderly wizard. "Why don't you learn magic like your family has been doing for decades instead of wasting your time with mind tricks?"
Young psionicist: "OK, boomer".

 

[Remathilis]

What I didn't like was the tendency of shoehorning everything from the core books into the setting that was done in the 3e and 4e conversions. Dark sun is not Eberron or the Forgotten Realms, where "there's a place for everything". Quite the opposite. It was intended to be wildy different from the expected "regularQ game right from the start.

I think you can do that without jettisoning many/most/all? classes though. In fact, WotC tipped its hand on how to do it: psionic subclasses. You can remove the EK and AT if the psychic warrior and soul knife are there to take their place. Monks can easily be preflavored as some psionic meditative. Barbarians are a natural fit, and you can do bards, sorcerers and wizards if all arcane magic has defiling options. (The bard can reflect a more psionic/mind-manipulative version as well). We've discussed warlocks as templars, but GOO ones feel mighty psionic to me as well. Assuming we keep clerics as elementalists, the only class in question is paladin, and I think the Oath of Heroism in Theros leaves some room for a "psionic hero" class. (It's a tough row to hoe, but if you are up to it...) I mean @Delazar did just that above.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Regarding classes, I'm not sure if we need to decide "all templars are warlocks". In the end, only Player Characters have a class, all the rest of the world is a stats-block.

I DMed a DS campaign using 5e rules for 2 years, and sometimes my Templars used the "warlock of the fey" stats block, sometimes the "acolyte" stats-block, sometimes the "warpriest", other times the "cultist".

As a DM, you just need something that fits your concept, you don't have to assign them a "class".

For what concerns PCs, kind of the same. If a player wants to be a Templar, he could be a Warlock, a Cleric, even a Paladin. Heck, I guess he could be a Fighter if all he wants is to serve in the ranks of the Sorcerer-King as a general.

I did a lot of re-fluffing, and even those players that were DS veterans had no objections.

Fun fact: I had a new player that wanted to play a "psychic warrior". He had experience with 3.5, but not with 5e.
So I copy/pasted the full text of the Paladin in a Word doc, I renamed all his Class Features to something more "psionic", and changed all instances of the word "radiant" with "psychic". I changed a few choice words in his spells.
Then I handed him the document. He played that character for 6 months, never noticed it was a Paladin by any other name...

See, I wouldn't be able to reskin something like that and not tell the player. Not a bad idea, but it would bug me that I was essentially deceiving the person.

 

[Micah Sweet]

An other benefit of the Xanathars articulation of a "cosmic force" is it feels more realistic. D&D 3e expanded the Cleric by making "faith" the source of divine power, which ended up solipsistic and silly. A popular D&D comic, the Order of the Sticks, humorizes the absurdity well, by having its bard character gain levels in Cleric by having "faith" in his hand puppet, Banjo the Clown. By constrast in D&D 5e, a hand puppet is less likely to function meaningfully as a "cosmic force". For D&D 5e sacred traditions, there must be some kind of identifiable "force" thus feels more plausible.
[/QUOTE]
I hope you're not blaspheming against Banjo, God of Puppets (and his brother the God of Slapstick).

 

[Danzauker]

I think you can do that without jettisoning many/most/all? classes though. In fact, WotC tipped its hand on how to do it: psionic subclasses. You can remove the EK and AT if the psychic warrior and soul knife are there to take their place. Monks can easily be preflavored as some psionic meditative. Barbarians are a natural fit, and you can do bards, sorcerers and wizards if all arcane magic has defiling options. (The bard can reflect a more psionic/mind-manipulative version as well). We've discussed warlocks as templars, but GOO ones feel mighty psionic to me as well. Assuming we keep clerics as elementalists, the only class in question is paladin, and I think the Oath of Heroism in Theros leaves some room for a "psionic hero" class. (It's a tough row to hoe, but if you are up to it...) I mean @Delazar did just that above.

Good ideas. The game grew so much since 2E that there are many mode different classes and subclasses that can be used to customize the game. I guess it's obvious that no setting or game is expected to have exactly all the options presented in core + every expansion.

Like someone already noted, after all in 2e times we only had onefull arcane caster, which was Wizard whith its specializations. Now we been having Sorcerers and Warlocks for nearly 20 years in the game and I find natural that had DS been done today they would have been included in the game in some way. You jist have to be cautious in adapting them in a way that is as compatible with the canon as possible.

The lore of DS seems to state that magic is difficult to learn and practice and must be studied with far more dedication than in other settings, particularly if you want to be a Preserver, because it's scarce and it's pratictioners tend to be secretive.

This seems to bar "natural spellcasters" like the Sorcerers we are used to, but this could be circumvented by having them very vey rare and far between. An individual born with some natural talent to magic, without control or mastery, would probably be treated as a mutant in the X-Men comics and killed at the first manisfestation.

The Sorcerer PC could be the only living Sorcerer in the whole city if not in the whole tablelands. Heck, I'm thinking of running a DS campaign based on a gladiator school secretly run by Sorcerers that search and save others of their kind...

 

[Remathilis]

Good ideas. The game grew so much since 2E that there are many mode different classes and subclasses that can be used to customize the game. I guess it's obvious that no setting or game is expected to have exactly all the options presented in core + every expansion.

Like someone already noted, after all in 2e times we only had onefull arcane caster, which was Wizard whith its specializations. Now we been having Sorcerers and Warlocks for nearly 20 years in the game and I find natural that had DS been done today they would have been included in the game in some way. You jist have to be cautious in adapting them in a way that is as compatible with the canon as possible.

The lore of DS seems to state that magic is difficult to learn and practice and must be studied with far more dedication than in other settings, particularly if you want to be a Preserver, because it's scarce and it's pratictioners tend to be secretive.

This seems to bar "natural spellcasters" like the Sorcerers we are used to, but this could be circumvented by having them very vey rare and far between. An individual born with some natural talent to magic, without control or mastery, would probably be treated as a mutant in the X-Men comics and killed at the first manisfestation.

The Sorcerer PC could be the only living Sorcerer in the whole city if not in the whole tablelands. Heck, I'm thinking of running a DS campaign based on a gladiator school secretly run by Sorcerers that search and save others of their kind...

Well, we have a psychic sorcerer in playtests already, and you could say draconic sorcerers might be the last of an ancient bloodline from a sorcerer king and that wild magic is literally attempts to hack defiling to the extreme.

 

[Danzauker]

Well, we have a psychic sorcerer in playtests already, and you could say draconic sorcerers might be the last of an ancient bloodline from a sorcerer king and that wild magic is literally attempts to hack defiling to the extreme.

Draconic sorcerers hunted by templars sent by sorcerer-kings to be dissected to extract the secret of advancing as a dragon...

 

[humble minion]

Good ideas. The game grew so much since 2E that there are many mode different classes and subclasses that can be used to customize the game. I guess it's obvious that no setting or game is expected to have exactly all the options presented in core + every expansion.

Like someone already noted, after all in 2e times we only had onefull arcane caster, which was Wizard whith its specializations. Now we been having Sorcerers and Warlocks for nearly 20 years in the game and I find natural that had DS been done today they would have been included in the game in some way. You jist have to be cautious in adapting them in a way that is as compatible with the canon as possible.

The lore of DS seems to state that magic is difficult to learn and practice and must be studied with far more dedication than in other settings, particularly if you want to be a Preserver, because it's scarce and it's pratictioners tend to be secretive.

This seems to bar "natural spellcasters" like the Sorcerers we are used to, but this could be circumvented by having them very vey rare and far between. An individual born with some natural talent to magic, without control or mastery, would probably be treated as a mutant in the X-Men comics and killed at the first manisfestation.

The Sorcerer PC could be the only living Sorcerer in the whole city if not in the whole tablelands. Heck, I'm thinking of running a DS campaign based on a gladiator school secretly run by Sorcerers that search and save others of their kind...

Magic etc in DS has always had an element of heavy-handed political/societal analogy to it (DS was always the message-iest of TSR settings,and i love it so...).

Psionics is the power you find in yourself from self-discipline and determination. Not inherently destructive, but of course depends on the user.

Templar magic is the power you can borrow through adherence to a corrupt system. Bad Cop magic, if you like,

Defiling magic is power obtained through study of difficult, obscure and incomprehensive-to-most complexities, formulae, and equations, which gives results unachievable by any other means but which is used without thought of consequences. Basically, defiling is the dark side of technology.

Preserving magic tries to moderate the consequences of the above. The responsible, sustainable use of technology, but which is harder and slower because it requires extra effort to alleviate side-effects and not go over the top.

Druidic magic is the power you get from protecting and integrating yourself into your local area/neighbourhood/environment. 'Grass roots' power, to pun unforgiveably.

Elemental magic is protest power. You choose one issue that consumes you and turn your fanaticism and drive and motivation into power, but power that's pretty specialised. Again, depends on the user, but DS generally portrays it as beneficial to the world as a while, which is Athas-as-enormous-unsubtle-social-justice-allegory on show once again.

Given all this, where does the 'natural spellcaster' fit in? I suppose it could represent unearned, inherited power that comes as an accident of birth, which is basically sorcerers in a nutshell i guess. Several sorcerer-kings canonically have children (even though at least one is a giant mutant centipede thingy), so maybe it could work. But the other Athasian theme is that power always has a price. Whether it's service, or sucking energy out of the earth, or whatever, the price is always there. How you fit sorcerers (or even harder, bards) into that paradigm has always been more difficult for me to work out. The concept of inborn natural magic just flies in the face of everything having a price.