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Dark Sun... any good?
- Thread starter wlmartin
- Start date
Zaran
Adventurer
The single adventure that they put out for Darksun has hardly anything to do with the world. The poster map included with it had things like horses on it. It was obvious that it was not made for Athas but shoehorned in because they needed a Darksun based Adventure to put with the setting.
The Darksun tiles have water on them. Pretend they are silt!
The Creature Catalog is good.
The Sourcebook is ur... Not Bad... My main issue is that it's only the one book. In 2e, Dark Sun had lots of adventures and sourcebooks that gave the GM so much info to work with . There was no way they could put all that into a single sourcebook. And this is not just a Darksun issue so I will give the Sourcebook a good grade.
I wish I had all my old Darksun material. If I did I'd probably be running a Darksun campaign.
The Darksun tiles have water on them. Pretend they are silt!
The Creature Catalog is good.
The Sourcebook is ur... Not Bad... My main issue is that it's only the one book. In 2e, Dark Sun had lots of adventures and sourcebooks that gave the GM so much info to work with . There was no way they could put all that into a single sourcebook. And this is not just a Darksun issue so I will give the Sourcebook a good grade.
I wish I had all my old Darksun material. If I did I'd probably be running a Darksun campaign.
Of all of the 4e published campaigns, DS is my favorite. I will echo what Zaran said and say that I was a little disappointed they didn't split the campaign book up, because there is SO much material they could add. However, with the Campaign book and the Creature Catalog and some of the Dungeon and Dragon magazine content, it is still well fleshed out and fun to run. I still have all of my 2e material, and I've been using that to run my 4e campaign, converting material as needed. If you're interested, here's the thread where I describe my experiences.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/302516-my-dark-sun-d-d-4th-edition-game-experience.html
Someone was also really nice and made a blog about 4e DS, and the potential to convert the 2e content. That site is here:
Big Ball of No Fun
You'll have to go back to last year to see the articles on Dark Sun, but he does a good job of evaluating whether or not the material is easy to convert.
For some reason, I wasn't a huge fan of 2e Dark Sun. Maybe it's just that I'm older now and my tastes have changed, but I personally love the 4e version. Maybe it is because they reset the timeline to just after Kalak's death, so you don't have to worry about trying to run the campaign around established canon.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/302516-my-dark-sun-d-d-4th-edition-game-experience.html
Someone was also really nice and made a blog about 4e DS, and the potential to convert the 2e content. That site is here:
Big Ball of No Fun
You'll have to go back to last year to see the articles on Dark Sun, but he does a good job of evaluating whether or not the material is easy to convert.
For some reason, I wasn't a huge fan of 2e Dark Sun. Maybe it's just that I'm older now and my tastes have changed, but I personally love the 4e version. Maybe it is because they reset the timeline to just after Kalak's death, so you don't have to worry about trying to run the campaign around established canon.
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They did a great job with DS in 4e, IMO. The campaign book and the creature book are both top-notch. I don't know about the published adventure, as I didn't pick it up due to the bad reviews.
As far as support goes, there have been a lot of great DS articles in Dragon/Dungeon, and a couple of adventures too, I think.
As far as support goes, there have been a lot of great DS articles in Dragon/Dungeon, and a couple of adventures too, I think.
Locutus Zero
First Post
Have there been ANY paragon or epic DS adventures published anywhere?
Not that I've seen.
Peraion Graufalke
First Post
My 2 cents:
Good
Good
- Reset of the timeline back to the original Dark Sun box (so you're free to ignore what
ruined the settinghappened in the Prism Pentad novels) - 4e's newcomer races fit pretty well into the setting, especially the dragonborn (dray)
- Balanced races and psionic wild talents
- The Primal power source is a great addition to Dark Sun, as are Themes for characters
- Very scary monsters with great artwork
- No unified art style
- Some of the interior artwork in the Campaign Setting seems out of place in Dark Sun
- No separate Player's Guide
- No short stories (these really helped to get a feel for the setting in the original box)
- The adventure Marauders of the Dune Sea is terrible
- The gouge is too good
the Jester
Legend
Dark Sun is awesome.
The Good
-Captures the setting adequately, lots and lots of little places and adventure hooks are mapped out throughout the campaign book.
-City-states are particularly well-detailed, and you get a pretty good sense of the culture of each one.
-Combat is deadly, deadly, deadly. Dark Sun monsters are downright beastly, some of them. If harsh and gritty deadliness is something you consider a prerequesite to Dark Sun, then rest assured they pretty much nailed this.
-Themes are awesome and fun. So good they just had to add them to core D&D, in fact.
-Weapon breakage rules come in two flavors; one is really rough and gives you a desperate scrabbling-for-survival feel, the other is optional and gives you another option in combat, giving the game yet more strategic depth.
-Tight restrictions on which classes and races are allowed (no divine classes!) makes sure that the Dark Sun campaign feels very authentic and true-to-its-roots.
The Questionable
-Arcane Defiling doesn't really cut it for me, personally. You cause half a healing surge of damage to your allies in order to reroll a daily attack roll or damage roll. Defiling otherwise has no effect on the game. This sucks, because what is supposed to be a huge element of the setting (it's the reason the whole dang world is a desert) has become a minor mechanical footnote. A lot of arcane daily powers are either a) big area of effects, in which case rerolling only a single die isn't going to make much of an impact or b) stuff like Flaming Sphere or Wall of Fire, where there simply isn't much reason to do it.
Plus, with DS monsters dishing out higher-than-average damage, and with divine classes (the best healers) disallowed, knocking off a bunch of HPs from your teammates is a pretty good way to start the TPK chain-reaction. Simply put, I have never once used Arcane Defiling in a DS game, or seen it used, because it's very rarely a good tactical choice. So I play a defiler... that never defiles. It kind of stinks.
-YMMV on how the 'new' core races fit into the campaign setting. Personally, I think Eladrin are awesome and fit in beautifully, but Dragonborn (Dray) and Tieflings are just kind of there, busy being Dragonborn and Tieflings. Once again, YMMV.
-Cities feel too cosmopolitan. Some of the city-states have mention of significant minorities of halflings and thri-kreen in them. Personally, I have no idea why the sorcerer-kings would allow races that routinely KILL AND EAT other humanoids into their cities. I personally would've kept halflings and thri-kreen to their respective societies, and let adventuring PCs deal with all the fun culture shock and complications.
-Overall, the campaign book doesn't do a very good job reflecting what I consider to be the tone of Dark Sun; Dark Sun 'adventures' should be more about finding food and water to the survive the next day, and less about plundering ancient ruins for goodies. The sections that detail the setting, outside of the city-states themselves, quickly become list after list of "adventure sites." "This ancient ruins has some giants guarding glowing treasure! This hidden valley is home to a powerful druid! Here there be drakes!" It's great that they're giving us adventure ideas, but I think Dark Sun requires a shift in what you consider an adventure, and this doesn't always come through.
-The 'harsh and gritty' might slant toward too harsh and gritty. I've been playing in a Dark Sun game for 5 levels now. I've gone through 5 characters. To be fair, I was 'doubling up' on characters, playing two at a time to make up for a lack of players. And this is obviously going to change somewhat depending on your DM, but the fact remains... I've seen two TPKs in Dark Sun, and numerous close calls.
There's also an adventure module out there that's rather notorious for being brutal. I don't know what it's called (might ask the DM tomorrow and report back later), but it's absurdly brutal. It's intended for levels 6-9, or something like that, but the first fight is against two bloodied solos. The second fight was against some insubstantial and phasing foes (always annoying). The third was a forgettable cakewalk (for my party, at least), but the fourth was against some reskinned stirge swarms (an overpowered, level 10 creature) and resulted in a TPK.
When you're level 9, and you hear your DM say, "Okay, you're now taking ongoing 40" then you know you're really, really boned.
There was apparently a fifth encounter, which I never got to see, but our DM assured us it was a doozy.
-This is a minor gripe, but I think banning divine classess, while an awesome way to keep things retro, had some unintended consequences. There are only 8 leader classes (9, if you count the Warpriest separately). Eliminating the Divine classes, you're down to 6 choices, and you also lose out on the Paladin, a fairly solid substitute-leader.
It gets worse; the Sentinel has a built-in ressurection mechanic, which many DMs interested in running a harsh-and-gritty permadeath DS game will not like. There's also an issue with the Artifcer: some of their class features key off of magic items, and since Dark Sun is intended to be fairly scarce on the magic items, this is a sub-optimal choice at best. This leaves you with only 4 viable options for your team leader. And if you think Bards are silly, or don't like the power point structure for Ardents... then, well, hope you like playing Warlords and Shaman, buddy.
The Good
-Captures the setting adequately, lots and lots of little places and adventure hooks are mapped out throughout the campaign book.
-City-states are particularly well-detailed, and you get a pretty good sense of the culture of each one.
-Combat is deadly, deadly, deadly. Dark Sun monsters are downright beastly, some of them. If harsh and gritty deadliness is something you consider a prerequesite to Dark Sun, then rest assured they pretty much nailed this.
-Themes are awesome and fun. So good they just had to add them to core D&D, in fact.
-Weapon breakage rules come in two flavors; one is really rough and gives you a desperate scrabbling-for-survival feel, the other is optional and gives you another option in combat, giving the game yet more strategic depth.
-Tight restrictions on which classes and races are allowed (no divine classes!) makes sure that the Dark Sun campaign feels very authentic and true-to-its-roots.
The Questionable
-Arcane Defiling doesn't really cut it for me, personally. You cause half a healing surge of damage to your allies in order to reroll a daily attack roll or damage roll. Defiling otherwise has no effect on the game. This sucks, because what is supposed to be a huge element of the setting (it's the reason the whole dang world is a desert) has become a minor mechanical footnote. A lot of arcane daily powers are either a) big area of effects, in which case rerolling only a single die isn't going to make much of an impact or b) stuff like Flaming Sphere or Wall of Fire, where there simply isn't much reason to do it.
Plus, with DS monsters dishing out higher-than-average damage, and with divine classes (the best healers) disallowed, knocking off a bunch of HPs from your teammates is a pretty good way to start the TPK chain-reaction. Simply put, I have never once used Arcane Defiling in a DS game, or seen it used, because it's very rarely a good tactical choice. So I play a defiler... that never defiles. It kind of stinks.
-YMMV on how the 'new' core races fit into the campaign setting. Personally, I think Eladrin are awesome and fit in beautifully, but Dragonborn (Dray) and Tieflings are just kind of there, busy being Dragonborn and Tieflings. Once again, YMMV.
-Cities feel too cosmopolitan. Some of the city-states have mention of significant minorities of halflings and thri-kreen in them. Personally, I have no idea why the sorcerer-kings would allow races that routinely KILL AND EAT other humanoids into their cities. I personally would've kept halflings and thri-kreen to their respective societies, and let adventuring PCs deal with all the fun culture shock and complications.
-Overall, the campaign book doesn't do a very good job reflecting what I consider to be the tone of Dark Sun; Dark Sun 'adventures' should be more about finding food and water to the survive the next day, and less about plundering ancient ruins for goodies. The sections that detail the setting, outside of the city-states themselves, quickly become list after list of "adventure sites." "This ancient ruins has some giants guarding glowing treasure! This hidden valley is home to a powerful druid! Here there be drakes!" It's great that they're giving us adventure ideas, but I think Dark Sun requires a shift in what you consider an adventure, and this doesn't always come through.
-The 'harsh and gritty' might slant toward too harsh and gritty. I've been playing in a Dark Sun game for 5 levels now. I've gone through 5 characters. To be fair, I was 'doubling up' on characters, playing two at a time to make up for a lack of players. And this is obviously going to change somewhat depending on your DM, but the fact remains... I've seen two TPKs in Dark Sun, and numerous close calls.
There's also an adventure module out there that's rather notorious for being brutal. I don't know what it's called (might ask the DM tomorrow and report back later), but it's absurdly brutal. It's intended for levels 6-9, or something like that, but the first fight is against two bloodied solos. The second fight was against some insubstantial and phasing foes (always annoying). The third was a forgettable cakewalk (for my party, at least), but the fourth was against some reskinned stirge swarms (an overpowered, level 10 creature) and resulted in a TPK.
When you're level 9, and you hear your DM say, "Okay, you're now taking ongoing 40" then you know you're really, really boned.
There was apparently a fifth encounter, which I never got to see, but our DM assured us it was a doozy.
-This is a minor gripe, but I think banning divine classess, while an awesome way to keep things retro, had some unintended consequences. There are only 8 leader classes (9, if you count the Warpriest separately). Eliminating the Divine classes, you're down to 6 choices, and you also lose out on the Paladin, a fairly solid substitute-leader.
It gets worse; the Sentinel has a built-in ressurection mechanic, which many DMs interested in running a harsh-and-gritty permadeath DS game will not like. There's also an issue with the Artifcer: some of their class features key off of magic items, and since Dark Sun is intended to be fairly scarce on the magic items, this is a sub-optimal choice at best. This leaves you with only 4 viable options for your team leader. And if you think Bards are silly, or don't like the power point structure for Ardents... then, well, hope you like playing Warlords and Shaman, buddy.
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Kinneus, I disagree about the defiling somewhat. The key here is that it's the TEMPTATION. And, while defiling may be unrealistic and counterproductive for wizards (who have AoE attacks galore), that doesn't mean it isn't a viable option for other arcane spellcasters like the Sorcerer and Warlock. For example, you are fighting the BBEG, most of you are down to your last surges, and you want to make sure that this guy takes as much damage as possible as quickly as possible so that as many of your group survives as possible (happens in DS more than you'd think). You cast Dazzling Ray (single target spell with massive damage)....and you MISS. You'd better BELIEVE that it's tempting to defile and take that reroll. A few HP to your companions versus a TPK? Yeah...I know what I would be doing.
I definitely agree with you about the Tieflings. It does, indeed, feel like they were just thrown in there for little reason. At least with the Dray, you get a sense of their culture, but with Tieflings, you don't get anything.
I think the adventure you're talking about is Beneath the Dust, where you fight two bloodied Tembos in the first encounter. This is a brutal adventure, and I loved every minute of it.
I definitely agree with you about the Tieflings. It does, indeed, feel like they were just thrown in there for little reason. At least with the Dray, you get a sense of their culture, but with Tieflings, you don't get anything.
I think the adventure you're talking about is Beneath the Dust, where you fight two bloodied Tembos in the first encounter. This is a brutal adventure, and I loved every minute of it.
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