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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glak" data-source="post: 4241748" data-attributes="member: 21495">lots of good ideas.  The books are coming soon enough so I'll hold off on the mechanics.  Right now the focus should be on goals and design philosophy.The Dark Sun fluff is incredible.  That is why we all want to do a conversion in the first place.  Thus making 4e fluff fit a Dark Sun world should be out of the question.  Having dragonborn running around in Tyr is a horrible, horrible idea.  You know what is cool about dragons in Dark Sun?  That there is only one known dragon and a small group of secret dragons, and that these dragons are all humans worshipped as gods.  A race of dragons just ruins this.  Yes I know about the dray.  The dray would be the focus of a campaign and so are kind of an exception.  So what does this mean?  It means that we need to implement the Dark Sun fluff and disregard 4e fluff completely.The 2e Dark Sun mechanics were just that: mechanics.  They existed for two reasons:  the primary reason is to implement the Dark Sun fluff, and the secondary reason was to fix problems with the 2e rules.  Our 4e mechanics should do the same thing.  However since the 4e rules are new there are no known problems (there are problems with the 4e rules; we just don't know them yet).  So rather than clinging to 2e rules (starting at 3rd level for example) we need to approach this from a 4e perspective.So what are some of the results?  Well the original boxed set had the following races:Humans, Elves, Half Elves, Dwarves, Mul, Halflings, Half-Giants, Thri-kreen.  I can see dropping Half-Giants and Thri-kreen down to NPC/monster status, especially Thri-kreen.  Eladrin, Dragonborn, and Tieflings have no place in the DS fluff.  Dragonborn might be usable as Dray, which means that the PCs will never see them.  Tieflings could be used as mutants and would be considered entirely Human.Classes are partially a mechanical invention, and partially fluff.  Let's break it down by power source:MARTIAL4e: fighter, rogue, ranger, warlordDS: fighter, rogue, gladiator, bardok for the most part this is easy.  The gladiator can be covered by the 4e martial classes just fine.  The warlord will also be fine in DS.  The bard is a little tricky.  It might be best implemented as a paragon path for rogues.  Rangers cause a little problem as they fall under the Elemental powersource in DSARCANE4e: wizard, warlockDS: defiler, preserverI think that it is pretty clear that the defiler and preserver should come from the wizard class and that the warlock should go.  We should be able to change the warlock's power source to elemental without problemsDIVINE/ELEMENTAL4e: cleric, paladin, (warlock)DS: cleric, templar, druid, rangerUsing the cleric as the cleric is pretty obvious.  Using the warlock for the druid and/or templar is also a pretty good move.   Perhaps turning the paladin into an elemental warrior (with no devotion to goodness) would make some sense and allow for the DS ranger role to be filled, perhaps it wouldn't.PSIONIC4e:DS: psionicist, wild talentsWell we have a serious problem here.  Psionics are extremely important to the DS setting.  Wild talents would be easy enough to handle by giving everyone either an encounter, daily, or even at will power from a short list.  However there would also need to be a class for Psionicists.  This one is tricky and would probably require a lot of design and development work.  If a full class is made then wild talents are easy, give everyone the multiclass feat.  Maybe Psionics are important enough that they should steal the wizard class mechanics.Ok now on to some ideas.  In keeping with 4e philosopy non-metal weapons would be the default; metal weapons would give a bonus.  Likewise preservers would be the default PC arcanist.  However from a setting point of view defiling would be more common, though still extremely rare.  Preservers would suffer temptation to become defilers.  Preservers could be just like normal wizards (the 2e approach) or they could have some minor benefits and penalties.  In 2e they had a skill called Somatic Concealment which was basically slight-of-hand, and they had to be able to blend in.  Maybe some free rogue skills at the expense of having to use healing surges to do some magic might work.As for setting, of course it would have to be before the Prism Pentad.  All of the background information from the books is good stuff, but it really doesn't work as a setting for the players if the Sorceror Kings start dying and democracy comes to Tyr.</blockquote>

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