D&D 5E Dark Sun 5E conversion - draft

[toucanbuzz]

I got excited when the UA psion project came out that we might be getting a Dark Sun reboot. Alas, I've gotten Ravnica, ships, and some Waterdeep stuff, which has generated about .05% interest with my players. So, like others, I've taken on the task of doing it myself. It's been daunting. I found easily several dozen campaign conversions, some mechanically pretty good and others pretty bad, and I took what I perceived as the best pieces of each one and worked them into my own.

Anyhoo, attached is a Dark Sun Campaign Guide draft project using GM Binder (I'm no expert in coding but fairly user friendly): races section complete. I'll be working on classes next, then equipment. I'm shameless in borrowing material I like, so I don't lay any original claim to much except in my goal to keep the original 2E feel as much as possible (e.g. half-elves originally got an animal companion and half-giants had double hit points every level, which didn't translate well).

Since it's only a draft, not putting in downloads, but wanted to share for anyone to add, subtract, criticize, borrow, and so on.

 

[epithet]

After only a brief look at your draft guide, I like what I'm seeing so far. I'm looking forward to seeing your 5e rules for defiling or preserving.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Defiling will be a task, to keep it simple yet meaningful. After all, there's a reason the sorcerer kings and so many others went to the "dark side" rather than preserving magic. As a background:

2nd Edition: defilers went up in levels quicker than preservers. Doesn't convert to later editions, and didn't explain what happened if a preserver, like Sadira in the books, defiled once because it was life or death.

3rd Edition: Dragon Magazine proposed "defiler points" for metamagic effects. It basically makes defiling an addicting drug, and long-term defilers junkies going through withdrawal. You can purge your withdrawal symptoms, which get worse the more you defile, by increasing your permanent defiler score, but once that hits a certain level, you become evil and an NPC lich junkie. It doesn't take long, either.

3.5 Conversion, Athas.org, major collaborative effort: Defile to take a full round to cast and boost caster level by 1, weaken creatures in the radius, then "metamagic" feats to improve defiling. All casters got a boost or penalty depending on the terrain. Not bad, but absent metamagic feats, hard to translate this. Idea remains that we keep the wizard as is and add a perk for defiling to explain why a lot of wizards give in.

4th Edition: Defiling lets you reroll an attack or damage roll (taking 2nd roll) at cost of minor damage to allies (why allies and not enemies, their excuse was things you have an "emotional connection" with), no sense but the reroll idea was pretty simple. Then add defiler-specific class stuff you could take to make this better. Not bad, but the damage ally stuff is silly.

5th Ideas: The conversions I saw (4 types) all had a basic defile anytime to get a minor bump in spell effectiveness (extra damage, DC, duration). All went with making wizards into a two Path class of defiler and preserver. The paths remove the 8 schools of magic, which sucks, and the preserver is pretty much gets healer, defensive stuff. Kinda sucks. I can't be an evoker? My benefits are stacked around protecting and healing?

I'm leaning towards the mechanic of the 3rd edition points if, and only if, we don't use a sorcerer class as I don't want to tread on their special territory. I like the idea of the addiction. The part that doesn't work too well is that it doesn't take long to become the undead lich thing (41 1st level spell castings, in theory, could do it...but I suppose that's why the populace takes special care to kill wizards on sight).

I'm leaning against the idea of two Paths. It seems like the 2nd edition issue of two classes and doesn't make sense that you'd always get protective healing stuff simply because you go Preserver.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is really cool! Some of the specific mechanical details of some of your races are not the way I would handle them, but it passes the most important test with flying colors: reading it makes me want to play Dark Sun ASAP.

A few mechanical details I really like:
- giving elves the Tabaxi sprint ability
- giving Halflings Savage Attacks and Fury of the Small
- giving Mul Relentless Endurance

I would straight-up use these as Athasian subraces for their respective races in a heartbeat. The Darksun-specific races feel a bit busy and overworked to me, except Mul, which are perfect.

RE: Defiling, I do like the idea of Metamagic points. I think that’s a nice, clean way to handle it if you don’t include Sorcerers. Another option, if you do include Sorcerers, might be to make Defiler a class. Characters who want to defile can multiclass into it. You could even make Defiler levels give you a bit more than standard class levels, to capture that 2e feel of “leveling up faster”.

 

[Delazar78]

here is how I handle Defiling in my campaign:

Defiling. When an Arcane caster (*) casts a spell using a spell slot, he
can choose to defile the land. All vegetation within 5ft times the
level of the spell slot used withers and dies. This area is halved
(round up) if the defiler is in an area with abundant vegetation (a
garden, a forest, a grassy plain).

When a spellcaster defiles the land, roll a d10. If the number
rolled is HIGHER than the expended spell slot, they immediately
regain a spell slot of the same level.

If the number rolled is a 1, the Defiler’s curse begins to take hold
of you. People start to recognize you as a defiler, with all the
related consequences (most probably burning at the stake)

Roll a d10
1. Gray skin
2. White hair
3. Yellow eyes
4. Long nails
5. Rotten teeth
6. Smell of decay
7. Limp
8. Cackling laughter
9. Random acts of cruelty
10. Ashen footprints

You cannot defile a patch of land that is already defiled.

(*) Arcane Casters = Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

 

[vecna00]

Not bad! Your line of thinking matches my own on some things and I definitely want to see where how this turns out.

 

[toucanbuzz]

here is how I handle Defiling in my campaign:...When a spellcaster defiles the land, roll a d10. If the number
rolled is HIGHER than the expended spell slot, they immediatelyregain a spell slot of the same level....

I like this line of thinking. It's like the 3rd edition "defiler points" crack. One option is to recover an expended spell slot. They put a cap on all the wonderful things you can do by your level. A first level wizard could never quicken, extend duration, or enhance spell damage, but they could make a spell silent or still (no somatic).

Defiling probably should depend on the terrain, and that would require a table. But I suppose that's what DM Screens are for.

 

[toucanbuzz]

...The Darksun-specific races feel a bit busy and overworked to me, except Mul, which are perfect...

Always looking for improvement. Goal #1, get players excited about the new take on races. Traditional races can get to be old news, flat and generic if you play enough games.

But I don't have any framework or playtest to see how these work. When you say busy and overworked, let me know what you're seeing. I'm guessing there's too many traits going on. My goal #2 was to stay as true to the AD&D version as possible within reason (no half-giants, you don't get double hit points every level) and avoid things that don't fit (why would an Athasian halfling be "lucky"?)

 

[Azzy]

Defiling will be a task, to keep it simple yet meaningful. After all, there's a reason the sorcerer kings and so many others went to the "dark side" rather than preserving magic.

I see the common solution is to give defilers a bonus of sorts. If you want to encourage defiling versus preserving, that's one route. However, you could go about this in the opposite manner: defiling does provide any inherent bonus (it's standard spellcasting). Preserving, otoh, comes with penalties—say it takes longer to cast spells, or spells are treated as cast a level lower or whatever.

 

[Charlaquin]

Always looking for improvement. Goal #1, get players excited about the new take on races. Traditional races can get to be old news, flat and generic if you play enough games.

But I don't have any framework or playtest to see how these work. When you say busy and overworked, let me know what you're seeing. I'm guessing there's too many traits going on. My goal #2 was to stay as true to the AD&D version as possible within reason (no half-giants, you don't get double hit points every level) and avoid things that don't fit (why would an Athasian halfling be "lucky"?)

Too many abilities, yeah, and some of the abilities feel clunky to me. Dasl, for example, feels really weird as a racial ability. I’d probably leave it out entirely and include in the equipment section that chatkcha and gythka are made from crystallized Thri-Kreen venom, and can’t be crafted without it. . Thri-Kreen physiology and weapon training feel distinctly un-5e like in presentation with those bullet points, though what they do seems fine given your design goals. Missile deflection feels really extra on top of all the abilities Thri-Kreen get. Also, why are they Large? They’re Medium in the monster manual.

For half-giants, saying they occupy a 10-by-10 space and have double carrying capacity is redundant with saying that they’re Large. Large limbs seems strange to me as 10-foot reach is not typically a feature of Large creatures and it seems REALLY overpowered, especially with half-giants being able to wield oversized weapons. Also, oversized weapons don’t have an increased die size, they have double damage dice. Which would also be crazy op. I would recommend removing that from Giant Heritage, move the ability to use versatile weapons’ normal damage die when wielding them one-handed there from long limbs, and add the ability to wield two-handed weapons in one hand, decreasing their damage due by one step if they do. Either that, or get rid of the versatile weapons in one hand thing, and allow them to wield oversized weapons, but only simple ones.