D&D 5E 5e has everything it needs for Dark Sun

[Laurefindel]

One of the greatest obstacles I see with 5e Dark Sun (which, I believe, is why we haven't seen a DS setting so far) isn't so much about what's missing; it's about all the stuff that doesn't fit-in. Dark Sun, more than any other D&D setting ever published, is defined by what it isn't just as much as what it is.

In every setting and adventure released so far, you can make a character out of the PHB - any character - and there's a place for it somewhere in the world/setting/adventure. Maybe you can't make an Eberron-specific character fit in all D&D settings, but any "vanilla" character can fit in Eberron in one way or another. It's actually one of the setting's call card; "if it exist in D&D, there is a place for it in Eberron".

Not so much in Dark Sun

I never paid attention to 4e Dark Sun, but I wonder what they did with gnome characters. I'm sure they weren't your typical PHB tinker gnome, if they existed at all. But that's what's so attractive and simultaneously off-putting about Dark Sun, nothing is your typical PHB _____. It would almost require a rewrite of the Part I of the PHB, keeping the crunch and replacing all the fluff with Dark Sun goodness.

 

[SkidAce]

The elemental clerics would need new domains.

I've been waiting for actual Air, Earth, Fire, Water, domains.

Although there are some decent 3rd party ones out there. World of Farland may have some too.

 

[Maxperson]

Too late, people are really stuck on them being crappier sparkly wizards who never went to school.

All they really need is spell points and alt casting stats.

They need more than that. They also need to completely lose V, S, M for their powers, and they would need the psionic disciplines, which are different from the schools. So you'd need at a minimum, 6 new subclasses(Kineticist, Nomad, etc.) and enough powers in each discipline to cover 20 levels.

In short, you need a Psion.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, I still disagree.

Psionics existed, sure, but all real power was in the hands of the sorcerer-kings and their minions, and the psionic powers of the former were largely offstage in any event. Heck, the setting later wound up with that all-controlling Order added specifically to make sure there weren't any powerful pure-psionicists running around being influential. Psionics as experienced outside the hands of a psionicist-class PC (which plenty of us never played) was either monster powers or wild talents.

The Sorcerer-Kings were all 20th level psions and 20th level sorcerers, plus dragon. And plenty of us did play psionicists in 2e Darksun.

 

[Rikka66]

One of the greatest obstacles I see with 5e Dark Sun (which, I believe, is why we haven't seen a DS setting so far) isn't so much about what's missing; it's about all the stuff that doesn't fit-in. Dark Sun, more than any other D&D setting ever published, is defined by what it isn't just as much as what it is.

In every setting and adventure released so far, you can make a character out of the PHB - any character - and there's a place for it somewhere in the world/setting/adventure. Maybe you can't make an Eberron-specific character fit in all D&D settings, but any "vanilla" character can fit in Eberron in one way or another. It's actually one of the setting's call card; "if it exist in D&D, there is a place for it in Eberron".

Not so much in Dark Sun

I never paid attention to 4e Dark Sun, but I wonder what they did with gnome characters. I'm sure they weren't your typical PHB tinker gnome, if they existed at all. But that's what's so attractive and simultaneously off-putting about Dark Sun, nothing is your typical PHB _____. It would almost require a rewrite of the Part I of the PHB, keeping the crunch and replacing all the fluff with Dark Sun goodness.

4e banned gnomes, half-orcs, and every divine class (cleric, paladin, invoker, avenger). It did try to carve out space for a bunch of new races (eladrin, tieflings, genasi, ECT) so your mileage may vary overall.

 

[Remathilis]

The elemental clerics would need new domains.

They could make a generic "Elemental" domain that has some variance for air/earth/fire/water akin the Genie Pact.

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah, I still disagree.

Psionics existed, sure, but all real power was in the hands of the sorcerer-kings and their minions, and the psionic powers of the former were largely offstage in any event. Heck, the setting later wound up with that all-controlling Order added specifically to make sure there weren't any powerful pure-psionicists running around being influential. Psionics as experienced outside the hands of a psionicist-class PC (which plenty of us never played) was either monster powers or wild talents.

We already have assassins in 5e, and instead of calling them bards to fit into long-dead TSR Code of Conduct rules, they're just called assassins. 5e Bards don't need to be reworked to fit into Dark Sun, they can just be marked "not available in this setting".

No, it didn't.

And it took defilers exactly as long. Don't believe me? Let me quote the Dark Sun Campaign Setting boxed set's Rules Book, p.59, emphasis added:

The only initiative effect of defiling was the pain penalty inflicted on other characters in the defiling radius (and oh, man, would it be insane to try to adopt that directly into 5e initiative rules), there was no rule making defiling casting faster than preserving casting.

"Faster" in my post was "Not longer". With the implication that Preservers took longer. Though that may just be my household misremembering how Preserving works. But we do recall preserving increasing the initiative count time before a spell goes off. Having not played Dark Sun 2e since... oh... 1997ish, I acknowledge my memory is probably at fault, here. Or it may have just been a house rule at the tables we were at.

And yeah. Lots of players never played the Psionicist class. Doesn't change that it was a big part of what set the setting apart from other settings. The Will and the Way and Dark Sun itself were released the -same- year in order to make sure psionics were a part of the setting.

"Well I didn't play with it, and neither did a nebulous anecdotal number of other players!" doesn't really mean anything about whether or not Psionics, including the psionicist class from the PHBR5, were a major part of Dark Sun.

 

[Remathilis]

They're not going to do that for Dark Sun, though. Why? 'Cause there's no need to heighten the "Nightmare Logic" aspect of the setting in order to make it more oriented toward Action-Horror. But as I've noted in a different thread... they might make it more "Mad Max: Fury Road" than "Conan the Barbarian Enters the Thunderdome". More Action-Survival than previous editions. Maybe they'll focus on threats to survival beyond combat like they did describing each type of Horror and assign different survival threats to regions?

You didn't read 4e Dark Sun, did you?

Dark Sun in 2e was D&D that felt like a teenager embarrassed to be D&D. So, it tried hard to rewrite AD&D 2e to fit its "not D&D" aesthetic. It wasn't just removing a few races or such, it was a total rewrite of every class, race, and PC option. Even ability scores were differently done. So, Dark Sun might have used spell slots and Thac0, but it was largely incompletable with other AD&D supplements.

4e took a different tack. They didn't include some races and divine classes, but the vast majority of 4e's PH options were allowed mostly unchanged and fitted into the setting. Things like tieflings, warlocks, spellcasting bards, monks, and other options were canonized into the setting, and some 4e Dark Sun options (Drey, Half-giants) became reskins of existing races (dragonborn, goliath). It was a major break from the 2e version of the setting (and in the process also reset the timeline back to the original era) and it got a lot of praise and hatred for it. (sounds familiar...)

The core of the setting still existed: psionics, defiling, survival and brutal landscapes are all there. But it isn't going to be the 2e Box Set redone like how VGR isn't the 2e Box set redone.

 

[Mecheon]

some 4e Dark Sun options (Drey, Half-giants) became reskins of existing races (dragonborn, goliath)

Mind, Goliaths being reskinned into Half Giants has been going on for a fair while. Ol' 3E was the first to start it, as Half Giants in 3E are basically just "Goliaths but with psionics"

 

[Maxperson]

You didn't read 4e Dark Sun, did you?

Dark Sun in 2e was D&D that felt like a teenager embarrassed to be D&D. So, it tried hard to rewrite AD&D 2e to fit its "not D&D" aesthetic. It wasn't just removing a few races or such, it was a total rewrite of every class, race, and PC option. Even ability scores were differently done. So, Dark Sun might have used spell slots and Thac0, but it was largely incompletable with other AD&D supplements.

Except it was compatible. Stats rolled differently are still stats that still interact with the core system in the same way. So what if it was 5d4 instead of 3d6-L. That 16 Con gave you the same +2 hit points with the same system shock and survival rates. Same with the races and classes. They were just different classes and races, but the rules for them still interacted with the 2e core system just fine.

4e took a different tack. They didn't include some races and divine classes, but the vast majority of 4e's PH options were allowed mostly unchanged and fitted into the setting. Things like tieflings, warlocks, spellcasting bards, monks, and other options were canonized into the setting, and some 4e Dark Sun options (Drey, Half-giants) became reskins of existing races (dragonborn, goliath). It was a major break from the 2e version of the setting (and in the process also reset the timeline back to the original era) and it got a lot of praise and hatred for it. (sounds familiar...)

I'm glad I never had the opportunity to play and be disappointed by it.