I’m in a weird spot with this in that I’m cautiously optimistic from a big picture point of view while disliking a large amount of what is presented.
Druid subclass is mechanically interesting but thematically misses the point completely. What’s the point of ‘preserving’ a temporarily verdant few square feet of land that’ll then revert to desert 1 minute later? I get that the idea is to name check the old ‘guarded lands’ concept while not anchoring a druid pc to a particular location in a way that hampers adventuring, but this sort of sugar hit ecology is exactly what dark Sun Druids should NOT be like.
Gladiator is useless to me and my 2014 table.
Sorcerer is … conditionally good? I like what they’ve done, but I’m wary that this might be the only mechanical nod to defiling. The defiling choice needs to be a decision and temptation that every caster faces with every spell they cast, not something reserved for one eeeEEeevil subclass. If there are separate defiling rules that apply to everyone and this class represents a sorcerer who consciously focuses on defiling, then it’s good. If this is the only defiling mechanic in the book, then it’s projectile vomiting time, and sadly I strongly suspect this is how it will be.
The warlock I like. I personally prefer templars as clerics rather than warlocks, but I think it’s an interesting and well themed class.
The lack of clerics are an interesting omission, we’ll have to wait and see there. Not sure we have all the elemental domain bases covered at this point (earth being the obvious), but we know how much WotC haaaates to take options off the table so I expect they’ll try and (somehow) rationalise support for every subclass in the setting, goodness knows how.
But I’m very very excited to see new DS stuff in any form from WotC to be honest, especially if it means the setting opens up on dmsguild. And there’ll inevitably be SOME cool stuff i can mine.
Having said that, I find it somewhat ironic in that how all the loud angst about WotC converting DS was that they’d (ahem) ‘wokeify’ it in the process of bowdlerising the setting to conform to modern standards. From this very limited slice of content, it seems like the adaptation is going entirely the other way. The importance of sustained and long-lasting effort on a local level to protect and preserve one’s local environment, in the knowledge that you’re giving effort without thanks and will unlikely see the fruit of your labor’s in the long run? Nope, gone, now your magic forest follows you around because you’re just a nifty person. The defiling choice and the implication that restraint and preservation are a choice that everyone has to make, continually and over and over again with no reward? Nope, no more line between good and evil running down the centre of the human heart, now we can be confident that defiling is the fault of Those Guys Over There With The Evil Subclass.
I don’t think that was the intention (I think the plan was ‘make it playable and stick to the ‘pc abilities don’t have downsides ever’ philosophy, but the irony is very stark indeed.
