Darksun Teasers

[Alphastream]

Hey, glad someone else does their research.

Also: keep an eye on my Twitter feed on Sundays.

Nah, just post your address and I'll drive up...

Yeah, keep the posts coming, but it is time you guys spill the beans on something. With no new classes, does every race/class get a conversion kit? What is a Templar? A class feature? A conversion of a class? What is an Athasian Dwarf, as compared to a PH Dwarf? We want answers!

 

[Alphastream]

What do I have to say to all of you? That you made it. I want to give 4E another try. I do want to try DS for the first time in my life.

Gracias, Felipe!

Trying stuff you hate can be surprisingly good. I hated the description of DS in the store when it first came out. It sounded munchkin. Then my players bought the set and gifted it to me. "Run this," they ordered. I became a huge fan.

The same is true of a lot of things, where players showed me the way.

Similarly, you will find my name in the PH, but at the end of that first preview at D&DXP, I was hating a lot about 4E (despite being tired of 3.5 and open to a new edition). A few months later, I was a convert. It isn't perfect, but I can't think of it as anything but the finest edition of D&D yet.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

ooh, WOTC demon, er, designer involved, now...mmmmm *evil cheesy grin*

Well, the Dragon was mentioned in original boxed set as killing with the defiling effect of it's magic, not just the spells themselves, as first note of defiling causing damage.
Though I always saw the Dragon's defiling like a massive AOE death spell, making every living thing crumble as their "life juices" were sucked out, muhaha!
Like, oh when Sauron gets killed at the start of the first LOTR film. That degree of bad-ass is what the Dragon should do when it defiles!

If Defiling causes damage, will effects like War Wizard have usual effects of sparing/allieviating allies the damage the caster's arcane spells do? Hey...

One of the Dark Sun uber-fans posted his very cool homebrew rules here on EnWorld with defiling being powers that replace normal utility powers, which seemed actually a good way to do it and I liked the effects, but...then the defiler would lose out on utility powers? Hm, but it would be a good way to do it, so you'd use say a utility power to renew encounter or daily powers, but at cost of defiling "close burst" of increasing area and damage?

 

[Wik]

Movies like Mad Max, The Day After and Blade Runner all showed various levels of ecological destruction. Blade Runner is less a blasted wilderness than Mad Max is, but most people do what they can to minimize the effects of the acid rain and wear masks to keep the poor air out of their bodies. The Day After is, of course, nuclear devastation, and Dark Sun was certainly something we could imagine as a future earth post-nuke.

Ha. People that know me learn pretty quickly that they should avoid mentioning Bladerunner around me, or I'll talk their ear off. I have a pretty strong guess that I'm one of the bigger uber-fans on this site (or most non-BR sites).

I imagine that's probably one of the reasons I like Dark Sun.

For the record, I have all of those movies. And I could add a bunch more to the list - Post-apocalyptic fiction is a huge interest of mine.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Wik,
still wish they had filmed the Moon sequence with Batty
but NOTHING has touched the Blade RUnner intro for truly beautiful imagery!!

 

[Wik]

Wik,
still wish they had filmed the Moon sequence with Batty
but NOTHING has touched the Blade RUnner intro for truly beautiful imagery!!

I wish they had filmed the original opening, with the cabin and Deckard killing a replicant and pulling out the guy's jaw and finding a serial number on the back.

My favourite scene in any movie, ever, is the "tears in the rain" scene. Especially because it was pretty much ad-libbed.

But I digress.

 

[Dausuul]

I wonder if this means that it was the defiling that pushed into bloodied, or the effect of the spell that did it. I'm not sure how I like PC's defiling affecting non-plant life. Feels like a mood changer. Good or bad? Not sure yet.

I like it. A lot. It's a perfect answer to the problem of keeping the game balanced while making defilers more powerful than preservers. Sure, you're more powerful, your spells are more effective for your level... but you fry your allies every time you cast! It's got a nice soupcon of evil recklessness to it, it's simple and easy to understand, and it fits the defiling concept like a glove.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Wik
yeah, sigh that's what I want a D&D movie to be like, not like...that screwed up heresy we got!

Visuals like Blade Runner, Dune, LOTR, and novel covers of old etc help shape my games (note my art, too hehe.)
There was an outstanding piece of scifi art for a novel, around early 70s, for John Carter of Mars book?? with alien insect with big round disc feet...damn, that was fantastic and very Athasian!!!

Back on topic!
Dausuul
That's true. For NPC defilers "balance" doesn't matter, but for PC ones it does....nd one of the warlock's pwoeras already can hurt allies, for extra damage, iirc?

 

[Mistwell]

I hope WotC will remember that this is important for the Dark Sund feel.

I just recently finished the original boxed set. Dungeons are frequently mentioned. Ancient civilizations that lie in ruin, buried beneath the sands.

 

[SSquirrel]

Ha. People that know me learn pretty quickly that they should avoid mentioning Bladerunner around me, or I'll talk their ear off. I have a pretty strong guess that I'm one of the bigger uber-fans on this site (or most non-BR sites).

Yeah when they released The Final Cut version I bought the 5 blu ray suitcase edition heh. One of the best things is that all of that was done before computer graphics for special effects in movies. Philip K Dick watched some scenes from Blade Runner before they had it done and apparently asked Ridley how they stole the images from inside his mind

Movies like this, comics like Dark Knight and Watchmen, the end of the cold war after years of threat of nuclear war....it was all sort of a perfect storm of influences to spawn Dark Sun maybe. Then you throw Brom's amazing art into the mix, I really hope they are able to get Brom involved in the new edition. Whether they get to re-use some of the old art or get him to do some new. I don't mind either way, but I would love to see his take on some of the new stuff.