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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think they're about as (un)popular as Wildren that were also in 4e.

How many people actually bought 4e Dark Sun though? If not many people own the book not many people can play the species. The only valid comparison is with other species that only appeared in that book.

Then you have to consider the mechanics and the lore. The appearance isn’t the only reason people choose a species.

 

[Chaltab]

How many people actually bought 4e Dark Sun though? If not many people own the book not many people can play the species. The only valid comparison is with other species that only appeared in that book.

Then you have to consider the mechanics and the lore. The appearance isn’t the only reason people choose a species.

Shardminds weren't from 4E Dark Sun, they were from Players Handbook 3.

They came up here because I mentioned adding them as a faction in my 5e Dark Sun game.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

How many people actually bought 4e Dark Sun though?

IME, it was a lot of people. Not compared to what 5e numbers are likely to look like, of course, but for 4e it was a solid seller (which is better than people like to imagine).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Shardminds weren't from 4E Dark Sun, they were from Players Handbook 3.

They came up here because I mentioned adding them as a faction in my 5e Dark Sun game.

Don’t matter which book they were in, it’s only comparable to species that were unique to the same book.

PHB3 came out in 2010, during the height of Pathfinder popularity and less than 2 years before D&D Next. I doubt it sold well.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I had never known they were unpopular, TBH. They were at least popular enough to get multiple 5E homebrew conversions.

I always thought they looked neat and I think the AI one there looks pretty generic by comparison.

I admit, I had something much cooler in my head when I started that post, but I couldn't get the AI to cooperate and wound up with something terrible. I should have given up on the post, but I got stubborn and posted it anyhow. I stand by the basic thrust of the post, but I admit my point is killed by my pitiful example.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Right and the most common reason to play that character IME is as someone who doesn’t want to be that (anymore, or never did) dn is trying to use their power/training/tools against the power structure they once upheld.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

The Judges are Evil. Period. “Cops but 1000x worse” is unambiguously evil. Dredd is a character who would have been a good man in a different environment, and is a great inspiration for characters that want to turn against evil power structures and wrestle with the fact that their power comes from that which they seek to destroy.

“Nazgûl Jr” is a distinction of intensity, at most, but mostly one of genre.

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.

Why less power? The Warlock isn’t a powerful class anyway.

I’d rather have two classes, and fold the patron warlock and Cleric together into a class called Herald that serves a greater power while the Warlock is the taboo/transgressive rituals to gain forbidden magic class, more like the 3.5 or WoW warlock.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The Warlock isn’t a powerful class anyway.

It isn't?

Huh. I guess a lot of people on the internet have been lying lol.

The Judges are Evil. Period. “Cops but 1000x worse” is unambiguously evil. Dredd is a character who would have been a good man in a different environment, and is a great inspiration for characters that want to turn against evil power structures and wrestle with the fact that their power comes from that which they seek to destroy.

Yeah that's a good way to put it, I see where you're coming from.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Shardminds are psionic living constructs. I am afraid they weren't wellcome for lots of players for DS because if they don't need food and water to survive then this could break the power balance. My suggestion is to add some handicap. Free sentient constructs aren't allowed in the urban areas, only those who are controlled by the sorcerer-kings. To hide the Athasian living constructs wear something like a living simbiont skin to seem "organic humanoids". This exoskin needs water and food to keep alive. Other living constructs don't need to hide, but they need water and special oils because they suffer something like the "disquiet" from "Prometheus: the Created".

* I am thinking about we could add the dragons from Spelljammer to Athas. The key is they couldn't or they shouldn't cast arcane magic and they had to learn to use primal magic instead. The stellar dragons only would want information, and Athas is full of secrets. They could be detected by Borys in the past, but before he could arrive to face them these had escaped toward other plane. Moon dragons would be willing to eat fiends but they would rather to pretend to be infernal lords. The Athasian sun dragons are different because their lairs are underground biomas with flora and fauna from the surface. If they are enoughly powerful they create the biomas in demiplanes where can't be menaced by SKs or defilers. Some theories or rumors tell the Athasian sun dragons were ordinary humanoids who learnt to become sun dragons.

The vishaps from al-Qadim could appear in Athas but they wouldn't be true dragon in their origins but failed experiments about how to become a dragon. They are hunted to use their body parts to craft magic items and like this.

The sand dragons (3.5 Sandstorm) could be hidden in underground lairs and exiting toward the surface to hunt fiends. Borys could detect their existence but he didn't mind because he thought they were like the elemental drakes. Somebody hunted some sand dragon for biopunk reverse engineering, and now we have got "artificial" sand dragons working for some secret cult or like this.

Maybe these intruder dragons could appear after the death of Borys

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yes and no. Dark Sun was a very 90's thing. Lots of pointing out social ills, but with a nihilistic despair that the corrupt system is too entrenched to fix anything.

I don't get this, particularly from reading the novels. In the first book alone they kill a sorcerer king and free the slaves in one of the city states.