Dark Sun 4e: Can it work?

[Mephistopheles]

I'm confident it could be done. The real question, for me, is if WotC would do it in a manner that attempted to preserve the setting or if they'd go at it with the hammer and tongs like they did with FR; whether they approach it as adapting 4E for Dark Sun or adapting Dark Sun for 4E.

... how can you take seriously the minutiae of the Genuvian Behemoth (a giant sand fauna that I just made up) when the halfling can shove it around with a dagger?

I had issues like this with 4E at first but I think it's in how you tell it. It's not hard to think of it as the halfling rogue lunging or flurrying and the Behemoth stepping back to avoid the full impact of it. If on the Behemoth's turn it has an attack that pushes the halfling back then you can go either way and say the halfling is trying to avoid some of it or say the halfling is knocked for a six by it (I would, of course, go with the latter as it's what halflings deserve). I understand some don't like having to take that approach and that's fair enough, but for me this kind of filling in the blanks has always been a part of this type of gaming.

 

[MoonRock]

Hold on Guys.....just b4 i get my teeth into this i would like to point out that i have no Play experiance of Dark sun but i would love to run ad or Play it in 4E.

now ive got a feeling that if previous edditions of DS had no clerics or Paladin then they Proberbly wont get mentioned in the Players Guide after all isnt it up to GM to decide what PC & NPC races get to appear in a Setting? arnt WOTC are just giving us the tools to work with? i have no problem telling my players that there not playing X class/Race because of story telling issues.

just my slanted POV.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

brehobit,
well put, I agree!
Folk are scared stiff of halg-giants...half-giants are scared stiff of pionicists and templars...everyone's afraid of but also hates defilers...

Athasian bards could be re-worked rogues, with lots of poison powers?

Dark Sun is not "Nice and balanced" it's rough brutal and everyone does tend to have their "bailiwick". Which is cool.



Ishmayl,
warforged PCs? absolutely not acceptable in a default Athasian campaign! Totally unreasonable for several points:

1) Unless they were not metallic at all, everyone and their mother would instantly gank a warforged character as they'd be worth millions (in our equivalent).
A couple of hundred pounds of iron and wood? Are you kidding? Lol, they wouldn't get down a single street before becoming scrap
Only a very protected servant of a sorceror king could have sufficent protection.

Athas is very metal poor. bringing that much metal in is unbalancing to the setting's millieu.

2) So-uts (AKA, rampagers), they go berserk for and destroy metal on sight.

3) if they don't suffer heat exhaustion, or need water, that breaks another part of the millieu
"Oh my character's not scared of the desert! he doens't don't need water and can't get heat exhaustion!"
Meh...that torpedoes part of Athas's charm right off.

 

[Klaus]

Picture a warforged made of chitin plates, jagged obsidian and bones. Quite creepy!

 

[Mark Hope]

Picture a warforged made of chitin plates, jagged obsidian and bones. Quite creepy!

Awesome image! Having a little trouble visualising it though. Oh, if only there were some artists in the area who might help out...

 

[Obryn]

Picture a warforged made of chitin plates, jagged obsidian and bones. Quite creepy!

And also completely awesome!

-O

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

It is a nice idea, but...again, it would break a rule of Athasian game play:
the environment is not frightening to a construct character, ergo, that player would have a gross advantage and no fear of heastroke/thirst etc :/

Unless that was balanced? Dehydration of their wooden/rope/chiten parts??
Maybe that could be their advantage, weather conditions have only half the effect, or large bonus ot Endurance skill?

As an NPC though...yeah, great!

 

[Klaus]

It is a nice idea, but...again, it would break a rule of Athasian game play:
the environment is not frightening to a construct character, ergo, that player would have a gross advantage and no fear of heastroke/thirst etc :/

Unless that was balanced? Dehydration of their wooden/rope/chiten parts??
Maybe that could be their advantage, weather conditions have only half the effect, or large bonus ot Endurance skill?

As an NPC though...yeah, great!

While warforged don't need to eat/sleep/drink, they aren't immune to any effect, so they still have to make Endurance checks for Athas' stifling heat or lose healing surges. Plus, they're made of chitin, bones and obsidian. They would be prime targets for humanoid tribes willing to take them apart to make armor, weapons and tools.

But yeah, I thought of them mainly as NPCs/gimmicks (a sorcerer-king with a tireless army!), with *maybe* a one-of-a-kind PC (a tribe of one, mayhaps?).

Mark Hope: I see what you did there! Zing!

 

[The Little Raven]

What I mean is, 4E seems designed to take your focus off the world (which is only a backdrop) and place it on the battle mat.

4e is designed to focus on the battle mat when you are in a fight.

 

[Knightfall]

Picture a warforged made of chitin plates, jagged obsidian and bones. Quite creepy!

Coolio.

It is a nice idea, but...again, it would break a rule of Athasian game play:
the environment is not frightening to a construct character, ergo, that player would have a gross advantage and no fear of heastroke/thirst etc :/

Unless that was balanced? Dehydration of their wooden/rope/chiten parts??
Maybe that could be their advantage, weather conditions have only half the effect, or large bonus ot Endurance skill?

As an NPC though...yeah, great!

Think chitin rot.

Plus, can warforged heal like a regular character or do they have to be "fixed" like a construct? Tht would be a huge limitation, especially if they have to hunt down living creatures with chitin in order to be whole again. Or have to mine obsidian. In Dark Sun, both of those tasks are not easy.

Also, druids would be a warforged's worst enemy. Thri-kreen would hunt them as trophies because warforged hunt them for their chitin. They would be one of the most unnatural creatures on the planet and they would be feared for their alien nature on a harsh, dry world.

On Dark Sun, who would help such a creature? The Sorcerer Kings and templars would use them but not respect them. And if they learned how to create more, then they would simply discard those that fail them or, worse, harvest failures to make newer, stronger warforged slaves.

Imagine a "shop of horrors" where warforged are taken apart alive screaming for mercy in some deep, dark dungeon under a Sorcerer King's palace. (Remember that scene in Aliens: Ressurection with the "failed" Ripleys.)

Where would a warforged hide? They stand out. Such a character would either spend its life on the run or trying to blend in. They would hide from the templars in fear. Or they would become adventurers in order to stay alive. Learn the power of defiling magic to stay one step ahead of the templars the want to use them and the druids that want to destroy them.

Who would be their friends? Elves might bond with them over a shared hatred of kreen while dwarves would value their strength. Half-elves and muls could bond with a warforged based on them being outcasts in harsh world. Yet, when push comes to shove and the templars are clsoing in who could a warforged PC really trust.

There are ways to make such a character work, IMO. You'd try one character only to see how it goes and if it is too unbalancing then perhaps you scale back the races strengths and give it more weaknesses. Still, not everyone's game is the same, so what might work for my campaign might not work for yours.

Regardless, WotC's design philosophy is that if something is core then it has to have a place in any campaign they design for 4e. Therefore, warforged would have a place and so would gnomes and orcs, even though that bugs me. They will put paladins in and clerics too, but hopefully they will modify the races and classes to "FIT" Dark Sun instead of the other way around.

Anything is possible.