D&D 4E Dark Sun Conversion to 4E

[breschau]

It's an ice devil (gelugon), and they've pretty much always looked like that.

Holy crap! Thri-kreen are Ice Devils! Now that's a scoop.

<wander's off and buries head>

I totally don't remember those. I'm getting old.

 

[med stud]

med Stud,
I agree, I HATE the novels and 2nd boxed set etc.
Totally trashed a superb setting.
It's like in a couple of years, half the major NPcs of the Realms get permanently ganked, gah.

Refuse tO have anything to do with that, or the stupid "Official" history...blue age, halfling spaceships...oh nuts!

I juSt say it was due to the mind flayers, who wanted to put out the Sun, and thus spread psionics, so they could harvest psi power from ignorant noob races (like humans ). Psionics lead to the development of defiling, which triggered massive wars as the defilers wiped out the "good guys" as they are more powerful...but they destoryed the land....and then, the mind flayers tried to put the Sun out.

They screwed up, Sun went Nova, and the gods barely managed to stop it, catastrophy destroyed the "athasian Astral Plane" and the gods, thus messing up planar connections etc etc. World got wrecked too, massive earthquakes destoryed much of the Underdark (and the mind flayers got ganked by that and feedback...though, who knows...they may have survived)

So-Uts are left over bio-weapons from the wars, designed as scorched earth wepaons, destorying metal and buildings.
Sorceror Kings are surviving defiler tyrants, who've literally become demi-god like beings and are *way* beyond the power of any PC to kill.

Surviving creatures are grealty more dangerous, due to Darwinian evolution gone mad, aided by radiation (both solar and literal, some very dirty nukes were left off, by foolish psion/defilers, as they had learned of many obscure sciences due to their enhanced brains and planar learning, great fun having characters find a glass-covered crater, muhaha!), the very nature of reality being twisted by excess powers, and the mad experimentations of war mad wizards etc...


Works for me!

Nice backstory!

Personally, I prefer to keep the mystery even to myself . Athas is messed up. It's mostly due to defiling, but the sun is also on the Fritz. As is the isolation of Athas. All in all, Athas is an old world, and she is dying.

There might be clues of an older age if/when PCs come upon old ruins. Pictures of oasises as large as the Silt Sea, more metal on a single warrior than possesed by a squad of templars. The PCs start their career in a desperate fight for survival, looking out on a bleak, dying world. They gain a foothold somewhere. Part by part, they wrest a territory from sorcerer kings to themselves. They have to play the political game carefully or become the target of an attack. This is the heroic tier.

When they have their own land, they lock horns with more powerful entities of the desert. Great monsters, undead rising and portals to the Elemental Chaos opens. An army of a sorcerer king approaches. These are the paragon tier elements.

At the Epic level, the barriers of Athas are breaking. The reason why Athas have no contact with the Astral domains is that she has plunged into the Elemental Chaos and now the denizens of the Abyss have gained her scent. The sorcerer kings are too old and set in their ways to recognize the threat; they turn against the PCs while Athas is on the verge of total annihalation. The PCs have to seek out powerful allies in the Order and the Dragon, trying to get them to keep the sorcerer kings busy while the PCs try to stop the invasion. If they succeed, Athas is saved from the Abyss but the battles against the sorcerer kings have damaged her even more than she already was. Now players in the same league as the sorcerer kings and the Order, the PCs look out on a bleak world, dying under the dark sun... But this time knowing that she can't be saved.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

med Stud,
aye, mystery is VITAL to a campaign, lack of that killed the Realms, for me :/
Love the setting but...everything's detailed...no mystery, sigh.
So if I play the Realms again I'd stick to the very first boxed set, and that's IT

No mystery = no uncertainty, no (less) fear.

New planar ideas would work nice, as you suggest, Athas caught between elemental chaos and the Abyss, mmm

 

[Zaruthustran]

What's all this about mindflayers and halfling spaceships? The frustrating Athas timelines I've been able to find via Google are pretty much vague copy-paste jobs of each other.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

The OFFICIAL distant history of Athas is roughly about how halflings got uber powerful psions (demigod like_, and made other races (who didn't exist until then) and some halflings decided to wipe all the other races out seeing them as mistakes...and, oh just, ugh

 

[Khaalis]

That info is a bit out of date. WotC_Miko mentioned a few weeks ago that Golden Wyvern was nowhere in the PHB and a Feat that called Burning Blizzard (which modifies Acid and Ice spells) showed up implying that Emerald Frost tradition had been tossed as well. So based on those two pieces of evidence it sounds like they dropped Traditions.

To be honest, I think this was because they took our feedback and decided to keep the PHB a bit more "generic". I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that some form of Tradition / Order mechanic shows up in the Arcane Power Source companion book.

 

[Elphilm]

I too like the idea of defiling as a natural "implement". If a wizard wishes to preserve, she will need a suitable object to help with her spellcasting, and perhaps only materials that are both scarce and expensive are powerful enough to serve as implements. If, for example, preservers need implements made from some kind of metal, not only does it keep their numbers extremely low, but it also makes preserves very appealing targets to those who would like to acquire a piece of metal for themselves. It puts a curious twist on things: anyone who knows enough about preservers to understand that they are less of a threat to the world than defilers must also know about the preservers' need for implements, and thus may still want a preserver dead in order to secure himself a small amount of metal.

Of course, none of the above agrees with the original setting flavor, but it sounds cool gnarly enough to me.

 

[Danzauker]

I could not understand this at first. I finally got the boxed set some time after it had officially died. I hunted for modules that did not destroy the setting in the boxed set, I could not understand that the first module printed started to unravel the setting.

Amen.

Personally, I have nothing against the ancient history of the setting as is, complete with Blue Age, Green Age, Rajaat and everything.

What I really hated that the setting as presented in the original boxed set was completely destroyed without having the possibility of exploiting it fully.

Overthrowing a sorcerer-king or killing the Dragon should be the ultimate epic deed of PCs, not the stuff of the very first novel published!!

I couldnt find that in the original, here is what I have from the original:

I stand corrected. I am browsing through all my DS material currently and I'm making some mistakes about what was stated in the original box and what was changed in later supplements.

Could be that the restriction was lifted in the revised setting or in Veiled Alliance, or in Preservers and Defilers. I'll check.

 

[vagabundo]

Amen.

Personally, I have nothing against the ancient history of the setting as is, complete with Blue Age, Green Age, Rajaat and everything.

What I really hated that the setting as presented in the original boxed set was completely destroyed without having the possibility of exploiting it fully.

Overthrowing a sorcerer-king or killing the Dragon should be the ultimate epic deed of PCs, not the stuff of the very first novel published!!




I stand corrected. I am browsing through all my DS material currently and I'm making some mistakes about what was stated in the original box and what was changed in later supplements.

Could be that the restriction was lifted in the revised setting or in Veiled Alliance, or in Preservers and Defilers. I'll check.

If WOTC does a reboot, this should be an adventure path where you get to exploit as much of the original boxed set as possible before overthrowing one of the dragon kings.

Adventure Paths sell, WOTC.

Oh and I'd prefer if most Veiled Alliances did not work with defilers, gives PCs a reason not to Defile.

 

[breschau]

If WOTC does a reboot, this should be an adventure path where you get to exploit as much of the original boxed set as possible before overthrowing one of the dragon kings.

Adventure Paths sell, WOTC.

Oh and I'd prefer if most Veiled Alliances did not work with defilers, gives PCs a reason not to Defile.

The only way to make Dark Sun is to have the defilers hunted by the preservers. That's exactly what is described in the novels and original box. Sadira defiled once in front of her preserver buddies and they attacked her. Defiling bad.

Preservers defilers.