Darksun: Athas.org or Dragon

[BrooklynKnight]

Which rendition of 3e/3.5 defilers and casters do you prefer?

The one from the latest dragon that uses Defiling points and a defiling score, where defiling is a choice not a condition?

Or the one on www.athas.org that requires you to take a feat for the ability to cast spells without defiling and defiling is something that hinders you.

 

[Erratic K]

Neither...

it isn't that I dislike them. They both have their merits. But to better fit my game:

I houseruled up my own.

I also did a racial levels conversion of the Athas races. My players don't like anything with ECL. I hope the soon to be released rules by Dave Noonan do the use racial levels and don't use the defiler as in Dragon. He is supposed to be doing Dark Sun in Dungeon/Dragon magazines according to the recent issue.

The Athas.org version has two major drawbacks for me:
1) I think is not enough like the base classes in 3E in terms of core mechanics. Players have to learn a bunch to get going.
2) it isn't power compatible (it is strictly better than other classes the Bard on Athas has a problem like that too).
But both of those play to it's strength- which is it more faithfully reproduces the feel of the 2E class.

The Dragon Magazine class has two major drawbacks:
1) It departs too far from the feel of the old 2E class (defiling optional? What?)
2) Even though it is 3E mostly, I hate busy work for little return and tracking defiler points is fiddly and has little return for me as a GM. It is something I'd have to enforce on my players (and it has negative impact on the players). I'd never track it for NPC's- it is just extra work.


-E

 

[Staffan]

Neither one in my case too. I use my own (or would use if I was running a Dark Sun campaign). Basically, it's a wizard that gets a bonus caster level at level 2, 9 and 16, and that gets an accellerated spell progression (increase spells/day by 1 for the levels where a regular wizard can cast them, and add access to high-level spells one level earlier - so a 4th level defiler has 5/4/3/1 spells/day and a 5th level defiler has 5/4/3/2).

I think my defiler is truer to the way it worked in 2nd ed, in that it's a class of its own.

 

[Cbas10]

As soon as I saw the article, I had a few ideas of using defilers as strange sorcerer variants. I found that the meditation times to get rid of Defiler points to be too short and too easy to get around, but that is easy to fix. As to how powerful they can be (the use of Defiler Points is VERY powerful), there are a few balances: a simple spell can detect the presence of them, they are easy to track down (I'd say areas affected by defiler magic are quite identifiable by rangers and druids), and they tend to be more oblivious and poorer leaders than regular wizards (when tainted, that is).

Then again, I could see Defiler magic being present only in some sort of strange Lich version of a druid or something. Hmmm....the ideas are rolling for my game now....

I've never had the opportunity to play in a Dark Sun game, so all of my opinions on this class are for use in my Greyhawk game.

Edit: oops...by the way, I loved the Dragon Magazine version

 

[ciaran00]

Both conversions fail to represent what was there. Mechanically imposed game balance is the problem, most probably. I house rule my own. The Dragon version seemed like it was just regurgitated out. About as fan-tastic as the Sha'ir.

ciaran

 

[Bendris Noulg]

My own: Spellcasting normally causes fatigue and you take a Feat in order to defile instead.

 

[megamania]

Each have their merit and in the end (after doing some playtesting) I suspect I will use a merged version. Concentration checks when gathering energy to get the feel of possible failure at any time and then the benefits for doing it as seen in the Dragon magazine.

I liked the artical. It showed new ways of thinking about it though he may have missed the fact that darksun magic is uncontrolled. "Any" mage can draw energy but only select few that train carefully can draw power as a preserver.

I hope it is looked at for this spring. I know I'll reread it to be sure I read it correctly and didn't miss anything.


Happy days happy days