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.

 

[Alzrius]

Ben Riggs has posted numbers somewhere for the initial sales.

Just a helpful note that there's a master list of all of Riggs' sales graphs over here:

D&D General Thread 'Master List of Benn Riggs' D&D Charts and Graphs'

Oct 12, 2023

So back when Ben Riggs was promoting his new book, Slaying the Dragon, he posted a lot of charts and graphs about the data he gathered in the course of his research. Unfortunately, most of that data was posted on his Twitter (now X) feed (and, I think, his Facebook page) rather than in the book itself. Fortunately, a lot of those charts were posted here (courtesy @darjr), but they're scattered around various threads, which can make them rather hard to find for aficionados who want to look for them again.

As such, I'm starting this thread as a repository for all of Riggs'...

• Alzrius
• Replies: 43
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 
• 

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

OK, let's remember this has got two parts, the crunch (the playerss options) and the fluff (lore/background). WotC wants to focus into the first and avoid the second.

I imagine the Athasian celestial plane like the secret good ending of a videogame, and the "infernal Athas" like the "bad ending of the videogame". The keepers or defenders of the Athasian Heaven wouldn't be the classical angels but the time-dragons and guilds of chronomancers working like timecop/Time-Variant-Authority (Loki, Disney show). Maybe between both planes there is something like a "purgatory plane", working like a battlefield among different time-traveler factions.

We will see changes in the DS 5e, like it happened in Dragonlance or Ravenloft. My doubts are about a retcon to add the "psionic" PC species like dromites, xephs, elans or maenads. The dromites could arrive from the kreen empire, or at least this was the version told by them.

The city-states are relatively "small" for players who wanted campaigns more focused into urban areas or palace-intrigues.

* We should recover the "stalking horror" or moonbeast. It has got its Lovecraftian touch, hasn't it?

The ruvoka (Dark Sun Monster Compedium II: Terrors of Tyr) should be the faction used to explain the reason because civilitations from the elemental planes don't visit Athas, because the ruvokas built realms or empires around the elemental planar gates. I suspect the ruvoka are linked to the genies.

the pakubrazi should return because they are right for games focused into investigate "who commited the murder".

* We shouldn't forget the art by Tom Baxat.

 

[Zardnaar]

OK, let's remember this has got two parts, the crunch (the playerss options) and the fluff (lore/background). WotC wants to focus into the first and avoid the second.

I imagine the Athasian celestial plane like the secret good ending of a videogame, and the "infernal Athas" like the "bad ending of the videogame". The keepers or defenders of the Athasian Heaven wouldn't be the classical angels but the time-dragons and guilds of chronomancers working like timecop/Time-Variant-Authority (Loki, Disney show). Maybe between both planes there is something like a "purgatory plane", working like a battlefield among different time-traveler factions.

We will see changes in the DS 5e, like it happened in Dragonlance or Ravenloft. My doubts are about a retcon to add the "psionic" PC species like dromites, xephs, elans or maenads. The dromites could arrive from the kreen empire, or at least this was the version told by them.

The city-states are relatively "small" for players who wanted campaigns more focused into urban areas or palace-intrigues.

* We should recover the "stalking horror" or moonbeast. It has got its Lovecraftian touch, hasn't it?

The ruvoka (Dark Sun Monster Compedium II: Terrors of Tyr) should be the faction used to explain the reason because civilitations from the elemental planes don't visit Athas, because the ruvokas built realms or empires around the elemental planar gates. I suspect the ruvoka are linked to the genies.

the pakubrazi should return because they are right for games focused into investigate "who commited the murder".

* We shouldn't forget the art by Tom Baxat.

What Athasian celestial plane.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

That is the fun part, it is not confirmed, but the SK Tectuktitlay tells there is a "paradise" for the souls who worship him and this is a half-truth. Really there is a "demiplane" created by Tectuktitlay and this is the destination of the sentient beings sacrificied in Draj. In their new existence they are more elementals than true celestial. Most of souls are air elementals. To be a water elemental is a great honor but there is a great work to purify water. Earth elementals have to work but the worst part is the fire elemental who suffer their eternal burning and they are used like "locomotive boiler", an energy battery for "celestial machines".

There is a dark domain what is an ironic infernal punishment for defilers. These are reincarnated into a variant of hammadriads, more "wood-elementals" than true fey. They only need sun and some floor with water but eating preys is more pleasant. Their torment is they suffer pain if the flora around their zone is hurt, and there are "settlers" who need to cut trees to obtain wood, and these are damned souls suffering their own punishment in the afterlife.

* Other idea is to add the "mirage plane", a variant of the mirror plane. Really lots of "exotic" monsters that appear in the region of Tyr are from here but they crossed some planar gate accidentally. It is a weird place to be visited, more surrealist than really Lovecraftian. It is if some deity created an astral domain using "pieces" from the plane of the mirror and the dreamlands, and after her departure this plane remains like "planar ruins". I warn this place may have got its "planar okupas", for example nathri (Spelljammer) camps. Let's say it is like Conan the barbarian meeting new-weird-fiction.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My concern is that WotC will spoil the setting for a new generation of players. They can’t take away the old books and lore, but they can poison the well. Release such a lackluster or mediocre product that current 5E players just ignore it. But, as long as Dark Sun is opened to the DM’s Guild, I’ll be happy.

Yeah that's my concern too.

It's hardly life and death but Dark Sun is a setting that, in theory, is incredibly relevant to our day and age, never more so, and if WotC puts out some half-hearted version (which I hope won't be the case) that people ignore it, and that players who heard about the "legendary" Dark Sun go "Oh, is that it? Huh..." then that's not great.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My theory is the metaplot of DS will be rebooted when they had got enough experience adapting IPs to cinematographic productions, and here DS teleserie will be released after some titles about Dragonlance and Ravenloft.

Maybe we will see a book for players' option but more about generic post-apocalitic than DS. Other book will be about PC species, monters and a chapter about the region of Tyr and its city-states. If there is an adventure I would suggest something about the faction from the "city of spires" (Black Spine module). It will be unlocked in DMGuild and maybe we see some merchandising products.

Other option could be a Netflix show where characters from the 90s play their homemade version of DS, working like a reboot of the setting, or maybe in the 3.5 age to can add the psionic PC species.

Or the deities to punish Athas could cause some cosmic event like the Sundering and then the Athaspace would be altered by the arrival of new celestial bodies. And we add time-travelers's conflicts causing something like a multiversal war and the creation of alternate timelines, even with a different list of sorcerer-kings and city-states. Why? Because the Athaspace is too perfect to hide things like cursed artifacts. Then if you create alternate timelines then you can hide better those powerful artifacts.

I could understand Athasian population could be relatively maltheist (beliefs the gods are cruel) but the most would need hope in a future better in the afterlife. Even the sorcerer-kings would promote the belief of an infernal plane where the criminals would be punished. And even the slavery shouldn't be too hard because the slaves could suffer "banzo" (depression by slaves in Brasil) becoming inoperative, or even dead.

In the next years no metaplot will be touched but Forgotten Realms.

Maybe the right writters are hired and we have got new DS novels but these wouldn't be happen in the region of Tyr. It is a new world with "biopunk" tech, then the defilers from Athas arrive and here the ecological apocalypse begins. And then the characters discover the costelations in the night different because now they are in the Athaspace.

* You are talking about what you wouldn't like I don't see suggestions about what changes should be allowed or avoided.

 

[JLowder]

Just a helpful note that there's a master list of all of Riggs' sales graphs over here:

D&D General Thread 'Master List of Benn Riggs' D&D Charts and Graphs'

Oct 12, 2023

So back when Ben Riggs was promoting his new book, Slaying the Dragon, he posted a lot of charts and graphs about the data he gathered in the course of his research. Unfortunately, most of that data was posted on his Twitter (now X) feed (and, I think, his Facebook page) rather than in the book itself. Fortunately, a lot of those charts were posted here (courtesy @darjr), but they're scattered around various threads, which can make them rather hard to find for aficionados who want to look for them again.

As such, I'm starting this thread as a repository for all of Riggs'...

• Alzrius
• Replies: 43
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 
• 

Thank you!

The charts are great and Ben did terrific work putting them together, but often they are better understood with more context. The returns for the Dark Sun novels, for example, were triggered by TSR ending their distribution deal with Random House and then WotC declaring the books out of print in the late 90s as they started shrinking the number of game worlds they were supporting. Sales likely would have continued at some positive level had those decisions not been made. TSR also stopped reprinting some of the books in the run-up to their near bankruptcy--they simply could not afford to pay the printer or build more printer debt--which strongly impacted sales, as well. The "long tail" on sales for fiction is much, much longer than the "tail" for RPG products since the novels are, to much of their audience, independent of game system or edition.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Here we have a clear example of dillema with the metaplots. We have to choose between coherence with the metaplot or creative freedom to follow a different timeline. Somebody could want to use the DS style but with a homemade setting using the geography and factions from other franchise. Some DMs may have to choose to ban or allow players options from other sourcebooks.

Other idea is the Athaspace is a demiplane suffering a timeloop. Some SKs remember or dreamed the past and possible future loops. But here the surprise is in the current loop several new sentient species, as if some external power tested some weird experiment. Or even it is more serious because a group of new celestial bodies are added to the Athaspace.

Should the 5e version to reintroduce the cerulean wizard whose power-source is the Tyr-storms? Maybe there is a secondary effect of her magic, the accidental summoning of elementals like a backslash effect. And the shadowcasters? Or "no-evil" necromancers whose role is wellcome in the Athasian society like spokepersons of the ancestor souls. Let's a necromancer who could craft biopunk tech thanks a mystic pact with the spirit of an ancient ruthili.

Other idea is "new" city-states in "mirage" demiplanes. How could survive the cleasing wars? here a new agent intervenes, the fraals, who agreed a deal with the champions of Rajaat. The fraals were allowed with complete freedom to "make disappear" the no-human towns. The champions of Rajaats were happy because they saved a lot of effort but really those cities weren't destroyed really but "abucted", like the supervillain Brainiac from Superman comics "collecting" cities. Why would fraals save those populations? They were a faction interested into psionic powers and the ascesion into divinity. Thanks their actions the fraals could become quasi-deities. Their intentions aren't pure but they try to avoid innecessary suffring against sentient beings.

The rest of pantheons from other wildspaces wouldn't be very happy with these fraals but they found an option to punish them. Their astral domains would work like "firewalls" against intruders of other universes, for example the Far Realm. Several merchants know secret paths toward these populations but they believe they are crossing a planar-gate toward the "land-within-the-wind".

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I imagine a lot of mulzhennedar are sterile but thanks special mutation someones can breed. Some females mulzhennedar show "parthenogenesis", this means they can be mothers without a male but the children are like clones of the mother.

The "hellbred" from 3.5 Codex Infernalis II could be included in DS. Maybe they found some planar gate from a lower plane toward Athas and this was used to escape. Even the infernal lords could sell these as slaves to mortals because they aren't so useful in their domains, and the hellbreds would rather to live as slaves because the lower planes are worse.

Other idea is a "mausoleum plane". a demiplane working like a cementery for the souls of legendary heroes or quasi-deities. This place could be the source of magic power, but may those souls don't want you can do it without their previous permission. Or their souls are "tainted" because in the face they faced some cosmic power like Therazdum, the elder elemental eye.

Maybe there is reincarnations in the Athaspace but the reincarnated people may suffer some social stigma, or they would rather to hide it. For example they could remember some secret languange and that would be forbidden, or they could keep their hate against their enemy faction.

Other plane would be like a parody of the blue age. Everywhere is ocean, but the life on the surface is a hell becaouse there are storms almost always. There aren't lands but the zaratans (huge tutles) and islands with too much volcanic activity. Usually there are "floating forests" like an evolution of the gulfweed, but they are zones with lots of predators. The safest places to build a civilitation are within certain floating islands but without a powerful army to defend somebody else will want to conquer it. They are aquatic sentient beings like tritons and sirens who can build undersea civilitations but they also face the menace of "biopunk mutant" acuatic monsters with weird cybernetic prosthesis. It would be like mixing Kevin Cosner's "Waterworld", Junji Ito's "Gyo" and 1983 animated film"Fire and Ice".

 

[Phantom_Miria]

Yeah that's my concern too.

It's hardly life and death but Dark Sun is a setting that, in theory, is incredibly relevant to our day and age, never more so, and if WotC puts out some half-hearted version (which I hope won't be the case) that people ignore it, and that players who heard about the "legendary" Dark Sun go "Oh, is that it? Huh..." then that's not great.

I think that's pretty unlikely. It's more likely in my opinion that a half-arsed Dark Sun book will just result in players laying the blame on, well, a lame modern adaptation being lame, and figuring out that the "legendary" Dark Sun stuff is just all in the older editions. Worst case scenario is a renewed interest in older material basically, rather than people thinking the whole setting was always lame because the latest product is lame.