D&D 4E 4e Dark Sun

[Mort_Q]

I just noticed that the next campaign setting to be rebooted in 4e is Dark Sun.

I've never played in the setting, but I'm intrigued by what little I've read.

Any initial thoughts or concerns? Any links to 2e (iirc) stuff that I can read?

 

[Storminator]

There's already a couple threads in General.

PS

 

[Mort_Q]

Thanks.

 

[abyssaldeath]

The cover art definitely screems 2e Darksun. Which is good. I just hope they don't bring back the food and water mechanics. That was very annoying.

 

[Turtlejay]

I never played Dark Sun, so forgive me if this sounds ignorant, but why do you need special rules for food and drink? Ask the PC's if they have food and water. Remind them to tick of a day's worth on their character sheet. If they do not have any, they can't benefit from extended rests. No surge recovery. No daily power recovery. No action point reset. That should work, eh?

Jay

 

[Nymrohd]

Because part of the premise of Dark Sun is the extreme environment. Food and water can be very hard to come by. Personally I'd expect a few enviromental skill challenges to solve the rules issue here.

 

[Dr_Sage]

Its just a matter of taste, but I was not fond of the Darksun original world.

Too "powerplayish", too "allmighty muscled", where everyone was on steroids.

Personal taste of course.

Lets see if they keep that way.

 

[Crothian]

Since we are in the rules forum might as well discuss the possible rules of the setting.

In 2e Dark Sun had characters start at third level to give them a better chance to survive. I think in 4e with the bonus hit points, healing surges, and more difficult dying mechanci that it covers this change nicely.

Dark Sun uses psionics heavily. We know that the PHB3 will introduce psionic classes and that comes out a few months ahead of Dark Sun 4e so we should be good there. It reamins to be seen if there is a way for all character to have minor psionic powers like in Dark Sun and if those abilities could be made random. I highly doubt we would see the random part, but a feat to allow someone minor psionic power does not seem out of line.

I'll be interested to see if they actually have the weapons and armor be inferior to the metal ones in the base game. I hope they just don't keept he same stats for everything and just call it something different. I'd also like to see the weapon breakage rules. But that seems like a long shot.

Defilers and peservers I think gets a little more dicey. Defilers defiantly had an advantage in power. That was dealt with in 3e in the Dragon article I think so that might be a good place to look on how 4e might try to handle in.

While the setting has no goods it does have sorcerer kings and a strong elemental basis. I think that can easily be worked into the existing devine classes.

Attributes were higher but I don't see that as needed anymore.

It will matter on the ways the design team tackles these problems. Some of them they could just not put in this version of the game and others have multiple ways to be handled. I'm sure whatever they do it will greatly bother some people and others will love!

 

[kerbarian]

I highly doubt we would see the random part, but a feat to allow someone minor psionic power does not seem out of line.

It's been forever since I played Dark Sun, but didn't every non-psionic character get a free psionic power? They could easily handle that by giving everyone the (presumed) PHB3 feat for a minor psionic power.

That would make Dark Sun characters unbalanced with those from other settings, which would be a significant change for 4e (or even 3e). They might try to balance it with other aspects of the setting, though. Or they could just try to encourage players to take the feat somehow.

I'll be interested to see if they actually have the weapons and armor be inferior to the metal ones in the base game. I hope they just don't keept he same stats for everything and just call it something different. I'd also like to see the weapon breakage rules. But that seems like a long shot.

If they bring back inferior bone weapons, etc., it would weaken characters with weapon-based powers. They could apply comparable preserver limitations to all arcane implement-based powers (unless you take defiler feats?). I'm sure they could come up with something else for divine and primal implement powers, but it seems like it would get tricky to balance if they went down that path.

I wouldn't be surprised if they keep the same stats but say something like: nonmagical weapons are wood/obsidian, +1 weapons are bone, and +2 or higher weapons are metal. I hope they come up with something more interesting, though.

 

[Mort_Q]

Defiling is supposed to be easy, and Preserving hard. Making someone take feats to be a defiler is backwards.