The question is: Is D&D Clerics worshipping gods or does D&D care if Clerics getting their powers from the elements and being narratively very rare?This is the fork in the road. Either Dark Sun learns to play nicely with the PHB OR it becomes some D&D adjacent game on its own with it's own collection of core rulebooks.
We've seen WotC has no interest in settings that are widely divergent from the core assumptions, and the latest Ravenloft blog reinforces the idea ("D&D is D&D, and we shouldn’t try to make it a game it isn’t."). 4e Dark Sun took this tack and I imagine 5e will go further. There is a zero percent chance you won't see all classes and many (but not necessarily all) races find a home in 5e DS.
You have the right of it, here, for sure!It's really just as simple as WotC saying in a sidebar "These classes traditionally do not feature in Dark Sun. If you want a classical feeling to the setting, do not use X, Y, and Z. However, if you wish to give your players more options, you can certainly use said classes by treating their fluff like so..." and then they describe what a DS cleric or DS paladin or whatever might look like.
Traditionalist DS players won't want to use certain classes. New DS players might not care. There's no reason the book has to go all-in on one side or the other. Make a point to describe both options and let individual DMs choose how they want to run their game.
The only risk they have if they go the "here's both ways you can go" route... is dealing with the complaints from traditionalists who will whine that because WotC did not outright ban certain classes altogether, they now are "forced" to let their players play these things because heaven forbid they ever tell their players 'No'.
There's also the third path: Keep stuff from core D&D with narrative adaptation. Oh, you wanna play a Cleric? Well there are no gods, no temples, and you're going to be hunted for your heretical beliefs in offering worship to rocks and fire rather than the Sorcerer-Kings. What domains? Uh. Whichever one you want? The domain isn't important, it's the fact that you're getting your power from elements that is.
Dragonborn as Dray, various elf-subraces as Desert-Elf-Mutants, Gnomes as incredibly short humans...
Though honestly after Theros I think they'll just say "No gnomes in this setting unless your DM really wants that headache".
Probably not "Points of Light" since they got out of that specific "We have to adapt every campaign setting to this incredibly specific premise!" angle.We know 2010 WotC thought it was important to have psionics released for Dark Sun. We don't know if 2021 WotC feels the same way.
I honestly have no idea what direction WotC will take Dark Sun if/when they release it, which is kind of refreshing.
With how they've handled Ravenloft, I think they're going to try and do what the Marvel Movies have: Give each setting a core structure that evokes a specific genre-feel. Like how Captain America was a WW2 Propaganda Period Piece and Winter Soldier was a Political Action Thriller. And then Ant-Man was a full on Heist flick.
They're all Indisputably "Marvel Superhero Movies" but with their own trappings to create a different genre appeal layered on top of the selling formula.
Last edited: