D&D 4E Dark Sun Conversion to 4E

[vagabundo]

Defiling is not the Force. It's engineering.

The Force has a light side and a dark side. You can live by the light side of the force, and it grants certain powers and abilites. Or you can embrace the dark side, losing some advantages of the light, but gaining others. It's a duality--Jedi and Sith are two sides of the same coin, equal and opposite.

Engineering isn't like that. Physics is physics--there's only one way of doing things right. And a good responsible engineer will design and build a bridge that will hold tremendous weight, survive earthquakes and floods, and last for generations. But a corrupt engineer will save time and money, break the rules of engineering, and build a half-assed bridge. When there's an earthquake, or when too many trucks drive over it at once, or when a few years have gone by, it will collapse. But the corrupt engineer doesn't care, because he embezzled the remaining money and now lives comfortably on a remote tropical island.

In short, defiling is selfish and lazy--It's fundamentally reckless.

Now go read Races and Classes. Specifically, the description of the sorcerer. Barely trained in magic? Lights nearby people on fire when he tries to cast a fire spell? Sounds pretty reckless to me. Using an entirely seperate base class for defilers will help them stay different from preservers, not just in character building or backstory, but in play.

And hey, It fits right in with "Sorcerer Kings".

The downside is that you'll have to wait for the PHB2 to come out before you can play. But given that it also has the druid, the psionicist, and quite possibly the bard, that seems like a good idea anyways.

Hmm I like it, but we would have to wait a year for the WOTC sorcerer. I suppose we have to wait for the PHBII anyway for psionics.

 

[Elphilm]

I don't know, I like the idea that defiling is a) tempting, and b) something that all arcane magic users have to deal with in some way.

 

[Danzauker]

I always liked Dark Sun and I'm quite happy of all this talk about the setting.

I' m planning to start my first campaign in 4e on Athas, and I'm quite glad of all these good ideas about the same points I'm trying to fix in order to be playable.

My take is:

1) Pre Prism Pentad setting ONLY!!! Actually I'm thinking of setting the timeline far in the past of Athas, so that Yaramuke and Kalid Ma are still living cities, so that I have some mileage for new ideas that don't fit the original box, but that's another matter.

2) Do not try to shoehorn things from the PHB that don't fit the setting. So if I decide not to put dragonborn or tieflings, they will just not be available. After all, all my players will be new to 4e, so they will not feel the loss.

3) Try to change as little as possible, concentrating on fluff more than crunch, in order to get what I want. I'll be as new to the new ruleset as everybody else, so I think the best way to "convert" the setting is taking what is already similar to what I am envisioning than redoing everything from scratch.

So this is more or less what I decided to do.

- Fighter, rogue, warlord, cleric, ranger, all in as they are with minor fluff modification. Gladiator I'm quite sure can be modelled by power and feat choice.

- Wizard will default to preserver for PCs. Like many said, the ruleset is balanced this way. I just have not enough experience with 4e to do otherwise (heck, I haven't seen the rulebooks yet!).

That said, defiling MUST be appealing. I was thinkink of making defiling just a choice for casters. With pros and cons.

For example, "defiling" could give the caster one or more of the following benefits: make a standard action to cast a minor action, or make a wizard able to use an encounter power without expending it, or give the caster another action (just like an AP) only for using a spell. I still haven't decided the detail. I'll wait for the actual rules to decide.

This will be countered by the destroying of vegetation, the overt revealing that there's magic at work and maye some sort of "taint" mechanic, I'll probably steal from Star Wars Saga or Unearthed Arcana.

After all, even in Dark Sun Revised there was a similar mechanic for defilers.

- Paladins will probly be Templars. Since paladins are not only champions of good, now, I think they will work well. Plus, all the "mark" type powers fill well the role ("By the power of the King Of All, stop and face the wrath of this servant of Hamanu, greatest King of Urik"!!).

Also, in fluff I always envisioned templars to have a more martial bend than clerics. Urik templars and Nibenay templasrs expecially were always described as excellent fighters.

- Warlock as a, almost temporary, substitute to druid. Great idea. I think I'll try it (I was tempted to make druid a NPC class only; after all, who wants to play a character that can not leave his pond to adventure?). I also admit that the idea that someone had of using it as a templar replacement is quite good. Maybe in some city-states templar could be paladins, in other warlocks...

- Psionics will be a problem. Honestly, I am seriously considering it to be availabel just for NPCs for the moment. This will give me some time to run my first campaign until the official rules are published (and some ideas I can use in the campaign, read below...). Psionicists will only be bad guys, so I can use exception base design to mimick them without worrying too much.

- Human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, halfling will be, fluff aside, be as they are in the PHB. I hope I can make do with some changes by giving them specific bonus feats (Run to elves, and so on).

- Dragonborn could be the basic crunch for mul. Of course all fire breathing tricks will go away and I'll try to find something to substitute them. I'll have to wait for the Monster Manual, though, in order to see if there's some other playable race that could fit better, maybe hobgoblin or ogre, who knows.

- Same for half-giants and thri-kreen: I'll look into the Monster Manual. If I can't find a suitable model, I'll just ditch it as not playable for the time being, at least until someone more skilled than me makes up a good playable conversion. They could be good opponents, though, if I can find something similar in the Monster Manual.

The campaign:

As I said, I will probably make psionicists NPCs only. This will make the PC preservers true exceptionals beings, like I think they should be.

Honestly, I always thought defilers were all too common in published material. In published adventures, almost every raider camp or slave tribe had a defiler. In a setting where magic is rightfully accused of the ruin of the world, and where everybody and his cat has a psionic talent, I'd expect wizards to be quite rare and psionicists much more prevalent. The few defilers the players will encounter will all be memorable opponents and pivotal characters, usually under the services of a sorcerer-king. All other "casters" in the campaign will be psionicists.

Plus, it will give me a lot of opportunities for hooks for adventure and contacts and supporting characters through the affiliation of the PCs to the Veiled Alliance, which will be smaller and even more secretive than in canon material.

Basically, I was thinking of having the campaign evolve more or less in what's published in Dragon Crown at paragon levels. This fits quite well with the premises I put. Being the PCs wizards they do not suffer from the psionic interference field, which makes them, ironically, "the right guys for the job".

So the chapters from Dragon Crown, will be diluted over levels 11-20, with some side trek, maybe. The Order will be the big bad guys.

Over the hero tier I will run other published adventures, with some hints of events to come in order to keep the campaign feeling, such as brushes with the Order, finding a Psionatrix shard that springs investigation, maybe some "psionic interference tests" due to experimentations of the Order members, mixed with the canonical ruin explorations, defiler chasing, templar hiding and raider fighting that make Dark Sun so special.

For the time I'm ready for epic playing, I'm sure that some of the skilled fans that are out there, maybe the guys of Athas.org, will have produced some excellent material, way better than the one I could write.

Who knows, maybe my players will be the ones to destroy Kalid Ma, or maybe... they will take the roles of Rikus, Sadira and Neeva in my version of the Prism Pentad (nobody in my group has read the novels, so I have lots of latitude)...

 

[Danzauker]

Defiling is not the Force. It's engineering.

The Force has a light side and a dark side. You can live by the light side of the force, and it grants certain powers and abilites. Or you can embrace the dark side, losing some advantages of the light, but gaining others. It's a duality--Jedi and Sith are two sides of the same coin, equal and opposite.

Engineering isn't like that. Physics is physics--there's only one way of doing things right. And a good responsible engineer will design and build a bridge that will hold tremendous weight, survive earthquakes and floods, and last for generations. But a corrupt engineer will save time and money, break the rules of engineering, and build a half-assed bridge. When there's an earthquake, or when too many trucks drive over it at once, or when a few years have gone by, it will collapse. But the corrupt engineer doesn't care, because he embezzled the remaining money and now lives comfortably on a remote tropical island.

In short, defiling is selfish and lazy--It's fundamentally reckless.

Now go read Races and Classes. Specifically, the description of the sorcerer. Barely trained in magic? Lights nearby people on fire when he tries to cast a fire spell? Sounds pretty reckless to me. Using an entirely seperate base class for defilers will help them stay different from preservers, not just in character building or backstory, but in play.

And hey, It fits right in with "Sorcerer Kings".

The downside is that you'll have to wait for the PHB2 to come out before you can play. But given that it also has the druid, the psionicist, and quite possibly the bard, that seems like a good idea anyways.

This does not fit well with the setting fluff.

Defiling, in Dark Sun novels and supplements WAS tempting.

And even skilled preservers, like Sadira, had to revert to defiling when they really needed it. She was even hunted by her master that tried to kill her before she became a defiler.

Maybe the force is not the best analogy, but the temptation of the One Ring surely does. The more you defile, the more you are drawn to it.

Original material even gave rules for atonement for defiling, and even gave the example of one sorcerer-king that could revert his tranformation from dragon to avangion.

So, I think defilers and preservers are better modeled with just one class (well, more if you want to add arcane caster variants like necromancers or sorcerers) which has the ability of preserve and defile. It's up to you then to make defiling more appealing through actual game mechanics (and eventually, how to balance the increased power it gives with negative mechanics) or leave the destruction it leaves in its wake just to fluff.

 

[vagabundo]

This does not fit well with the setting fluff.

Defiling, in Dark Sun novels and supplements WAS tempting.

And even skilled preservers, like Sadira, had to revert to defiling when they really needed it. She was even hunted by her master that tried to kill her before she became a defiler.

Maybe the force is not the best analogy, but the temptation of the One Ring surely does. The more you defile, the more you are drawn to it.

Original material even gave rules for atonement for defiling, and even gave the example of one sorcerer-king that could revert his tranformation from dragon to avangion.

So, I think defilers and preservers are better modeled with just one class (well, more if you want to add arcane caster variants like necromancers or sorcerers) which has the ability of preserve and defile. It's up to you then to make defiling more appealing through actual game mechanics (and eventually, how to balance the increased power it gives with negative mechanics) or leave the destruction it leaves in its wake just to fluff.

In that case, I think, it should be mechanically part of the Arcane power source: a way of quickening/empowering your magic. It needs to have a minor mechanical effect on the PC/NPC (like a taint) and the obvious physical effects (damage to wildlife).

 

[D.Shaffer]

Add my vote to the 'Preservers as standard' tally. By mechanics, it's balanced so the 'Preserver' is the base. By Flavor, Defiling was something ALL wizards could do, they just choose not to.

To me, Defiling as an At Will boost with some sort of penalty would be the best option, although I'm not sure what a proper balance would be. I think it's clear from the various Prerelease books that balancing via RP penalties and 'Sucking more then others at certain times' is out, so you need to build around that. AKA, it needs to have botha mechanical benefit as well as a mechanical drawback that effects combat.

 

[Lacyon]

Perhaps rather than quickening or empowering spells or abilities, defiling could be an option for recharging daily or encounter powers?

 

[Danzauker]

Of course I still have to see the rules, but after reading in the new previews that APs can be used in various ways as you advance, I'm becoming more convinced that the easiest way to implement defiling is to have defiling give you an Action Point to be immediately used to get an extra action to cast a spell or use an arcane power, or whatever else you can do at higher levels that's tied to arcane powers.

 

[Dausuul]

Another idea to chew on: By all accounts, ritual magic will not have much direct impact on game balance. What if defilers got a big cost break on ritual spells? Maybe even a bonus to their effective level for rituals?

 

[Danzauker]

Another idea to chew on: By all accounts, ritual magic will not have much direct impact on game balance. What if defilers got a big cost break on ritual spells? Maybe even a bonus to their effective level for rituals?

Could be, but I would not "transfer" all the mechanics of defiling on rituals.

One of the biggest mistakes in the revision of DS was putting the mechanics of defiling at memorization time (they must have realized that because they got back offering that option with Preservers and Defilers).

Let's admit it, the concept of drawing your energy from the plants in the midst of casting is much cooler more interesting.

Plus, I don't see where the temptation is in defiling at memorization time (or in ritual making) where you can just move in another place in order to get more energy.

It's quite more tricky having to decide whether to defile or not when you are in dire straits.