Dungeons & Dragons Releases New Unearthed Arcana Subclasses, Strongly Hinting at Dark Sun

Wizards of the Coast has released four new D&D subclasses for playtesting, all of which have heavy thematic ties to the post-apocalyptic Dark Sun setting. The four subclasses, released as "Apocalyptic Subclasses," include the Circle of Preservation Druid, the Gladiator Fighter, the Defiled Sorcerer, and the Sorcerer-King Patron Warlock. Although not stated outright, the Gladiator and Sorcerer-King Patron are explicit nods to the Dark Sun setting, set in a ruined world ruled by Sorcerer-Kings where gladiatorial fights were common.

The Circle of Preservation Druid creates areas of preserved land that grants buffs to those who stand upon it. The Gladiator adds secondary Weapon Mastery properties to their attacks, with bonus abilities. Notably, the Gladiator uses Charisma as its secondary stat. The Defiled Sorcerer can expend its hit dice to amp up damage to its attacks and can also steal the life of its targets to deal additional damage. The Sorcerer-King Patron gains a number of abilities tying into tyranny and oppression, with the ability to cast Command as a Bonus Action without expending a spell slot, causing targets to gain the Frightened Condition, and forcing those who attack them to re-roll successful attacks.

The survey for the subclasses goes live on August 28th.

 

[Michael Blackett]

My take..

Having only known AD&D 2e version of the product, having some concerns in how "if" there is going to be a 2024e iteration how will they approach some of the core themes from 2e > 4e >2024e.

Slavery being a hot topic which back in 2e if using the packed adventure module clipboard the PCs automatically are slaves of Tyr and fight for their freedom. No doubt given 2024e stance this will be a Taboo subject, next to the ravages of defiler magic on the environment.

Saying that, what I would like to see is possibly the rapid changes that occurred in the O.G. 2e edition handled in a sensible fashion so newcomers don't feel as though they are getting whiplash in reading and digesting.

I felt the short stories within the adventures went long way to maintain the flavour, which should be retained. Particularly in a world such as Athas where a lot has been lost due to the actions of a powerful few.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Works for me. The sorcerer-king patron warlock sounds fun.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The metaplot should be a source of inspiration for new stories but there is a risk iconic characters to become the stars and the rest of heroic groups to fall into the oblivion. Today with internet you don't need to spend money to know the metaplot. And this becomes obsolete if there is a new edition and the franchise is rebooted.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Talking to my wife today she had the same reaction I do to the idea of Sorcer-King Patron being an inherently “your character is evil” subclass.

It’s a dark subclass, absolutely. You are a Herald of an evil power. You’re kinda fantasy Judge Dredd.

But the whole point of such a character for many people is to play the person who was coerced into service, or who was groomed from childhood for service, or offered power and stability and a sense of purpose in a time of utmost despair, or the like, and who has turned or is starting to turn against the power structure they are the iron fist of (Equilibrium), or who has seen the Truth and found it unacceptable (Spawn), etc.

It is, even more than any other Warlock subclass, a subclass that exists in a state of invitation to play a character using their patron’s power against them.

It makes me wish 5e had more specific patrons, or just skipped the patron as the subclass and somehow made it into a less assumed part of the class from the start. The place where warlocks exist is so caught between “magical hacker who has gained power through taboo means” and “herald of a dark power”, and it makes me wish it was two classes.

 

[Michael Blackett]

That is quintessentially what a Templar is, a n enforcer of his/her patron, a sorcerer/dragon king.

Funny you should mention Judge Dredd, @doctorbadwolf, yet that is my approach to the Templar - an enforcer of their patrons law. At first not sure why WoTC went with Warlock, yet that fits better than cleric.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That is quintessentially what a Templar is, a n enforcer of his/her patron, a sorcerer/dragon king.

Funny you should mention Judge Dredd, @doctorbadwolf, yet that is my approach to the Templar - an enforcer of their patrons law. At first not sure why WoTC went with Warlock, yet that fits better than cleric.

I would have gone with paladin. But I guess you can use Oath of the Crown out of the box.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

100% and its generally to the detriment of the original setting.

Yeah, generally when you design a setting you tee up dominos to fall in whatever direction the players decide to push them.

Metaplot puts the setting on rails and stops the players achieving anything at all.

 

[rabindranath72]

That is quintessentially what a Templar is, a n enforcer of his/her patron, a sorcerer/dragon king.

Funny you should mention Judge Dredd, @doctorbadwolf, yet that is my approach to the Templar - an enforcer of their patrons law. At first not sure why WoTC went with Warlock, yet that fits better than cleric.

When I ran Dark Sun in D&D 3.0, I made Templars into Sorcerers, using the variant rule in the 3.0 DMG that required Sorcerers to have patrons to get spells (in hindsight, a proto-warlock.) Thematically it worked very well, and I can see it work with the Warlock in 5e (as it did in 4e.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It’s a dark subclass, absolutely. You are a Herald of an evil power. You’re kinda fantasy Judge Dredd.

Small e or big E evil though?

Judge Dredd is absolutely small-e evil in most presentations of him, but he's usually contrasted against even worse people, people who range from the merely very dangerously stupid or greedy to extreme big-E evil, like Judge Death ("All crime isss committed by the living" is pretty much as far Lawful Evil as you can get lol). The primary concern of Judges is enforcing the law. The law in Mega-City One isn't fair, isn't just, isn't democratic, isn't really honest, and is probably small-e evil in most senses, but it's the law, and most Judges aren't out there looking to do harm (especially not Dredd in most presentations of him), they just want to enforce it.

Templars though are serving extreme big-E evil. That's the problem. You're like Judge Dredd if he worked not for the Judge System/Mega-City One, but specifically for say, Sauron or Thulsa Doom or similar. They're not just enforcing unfair or undemocratic laws, they're doing the tasks and jobs of a truly evil overlord. They're more akin to the Gestapo or Brown Shirts. They don't have to necessarily follow or enforce the law, they just have to do what their boss tells them to. Which is often going to be, I would suggest, a lot more "evil-oriented" than "law-oriented". At the lowest levels probably most Templars would be following rules and guidelines and laws, but their boss can override that at any time in a way that might have Judge Dredd kicking down doors in the Judge's building to try and arrest his boss.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be playable or w/e, but that's a very big difference between being Nazgul Jr. and Judge Dredd I'd suggest, and most Templars are closer to the former imo. Nazgul Jr. might still rebel or realize his boss sucks, of course.

It makes me wish 5e had more specific patrons, or just skipped the patron as the subclass and somehow made it into a less assumed part of the class from the start. The place where warlocks exist is so caught between “magical hacker who has gained power through taboo means” and “herald of a dark power”, and it makes me wish it was two classes.

The sad thing is Warlocks could really easily have been given a "no Patron" magic-hacker option (it is indeed kind of hinted at in the text), which maybe had less raw power than the Patrons, but a bit more flexibility, but both 2014 and 2024 missed that opportunity.

 

[SableWyvern]

Templars though are serving extreme big-E evil. That's the problem. You're like Judge Dredd if he worked not for the Judge System/Mega-City One, but specifically for say, Sauron or Thulsa Doom or similar. They're not just enforcing unfair or undemocratic laws, they're doing the tasks and jobs of a truly evil overlord. They're more akin to the Gestapo or Brown Shirts. They don't have to necessarily follow or enforce the law, they just have to do what their boss tells them to. Which is often going to be, I would suggest, a lot more "evil-oriented" than "law-oriented". At the lowest levels probably most Templars would be following rules and guidelines and laws, but their boss can override that at any time in a way that might have Judge Dredd kicking down doors in the Judge's building to try and arrest his boss.

I don't think this necessarily needs to be the case.

You can certainly view a templar of Nibenay as an eager, fully invested fanatic in service to a cruel and bloodthirsty sorcerer conduction horrible experiments at one extreme. At the other, however, it's just as valid to have a Nibenese templar who is a young priestess, raised and indoctrinated in Nibenay's cult since childhood, who's come to realise the depravity and evil of the god-king she serves. The latter person is for more complex and deserves a lot more empathy than a junior nazgul.

In my personal version of Nibenay, the templars were pretty fair and decent a lot of the time. Nibenay just wanted the people sedate and passive, and treating them relatively fairly was a method that usually worked. The evils going on were the things under the surface, that no one was stupid enough to ask too many questions about. It would certainly be possible for a templar under such a regime to avoid committing too many overt acts of overt harm or cruelty; it's the acts of omission and simply doing nothing as others commit evil that would be much harder (and more dangerous) to try and avoid.

The reason I'm so enamoured of just the OBS + Ivory Triangle as my canon is it provides you with a rough framework but then leaves open a multitude of possibilities. The early material is asking you to go out and make of it what you will.