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.

 

[EthanSental]

If someone is inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs or believe he/she can do better, a new book/setting/film/comic book with a new world and set of characters can be invented. No need to disrespect the original art.

Similarly, Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning created Dark Sun. That setting can be reprinted as is. No need to butcher or reinterpret.

What I don't understand is why the WotC posse is so deprived of artistic vision and creativity that they can't create their own setting that incorporates everything like about another setting and excludes everything they don't. They can make a post-apocalyptic wasteland setting without butchering or reinterpreting the world of Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning.

If the WotC posse can do better than Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning, I see let them try. Let them have at it. But I don't see why they need to lean on Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning's work as a crutch. Are they so artistically inferior that they cannot measure up? Perhaps--perhaps not.

I didn’t realize that the works of brown and Denning on DS were such high pedestal works of art that can’t be touched or built upon or changed, but I’m probably just overly reading into the post above since I don’t exactly agree with it.

I played DS once for like 3 sessions back in the 90s, nothing since but have recently bought the boxed set of eBay to read. Even then I haven’t really started to read it. I did enjoy the novels about DS back then and have them on audible now but I don’t think a new take on it is going to ruin the old. Heck even Andy warhol’s Mona lisa version is controversial to people but for varying and different artistic reasons but at the heart of most disagreements boils down to - it’s different and I just don’t like different or change….which falls into my post I mentioned above, I replied cause I didn’t “like the feel of the post above” so I need to look in the mirror a bit and not feel the need to reply because it didn’t like it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

No. Every piece of media does not have this issue, only those that get remade. Instead of remaking media, I'd like to see new media be made.

We have become a civilization of artistic pillagers and creative parasites. Shame on us.

This is as more an effect of copyright law and regulatory environment around large dominant corporations and the operating paradigm of those corporations than anything else.
If copyright was invested in humans and not semi-immortal corporation things would be different.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

We have always been a civilization of artistic pillages and creative parasites. The ancient Greek tragedies pillaged their mythic traditions mercilessly. They rewrote Homer, for goodness sake! And precisely one of Shakespeare's plays, The Tempest, is his own creation - the rest were all his takes on plays circulating around the London theater scene of the time. He gave King Lear a tragic ending - how his audience must have been shocked since it always had ended happily before in previous versions.

And these are some of the pillars of the Western literary tradition.

Fanfiction all the way down.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I just disagree that you cannot have sincerity in these types of settings, but I'm clearly biased towards 40K/30K and believe it could be one of the great IP's of multimedia.

You say "could be", I say "is". Seriously, it's basically just lacking TV and movies these days - which are the obvious parts of multimedia but not the only parts.

Books. Black Library is pretty huge as single IP publishing houses go. It's definitely a player alongside D&D novels, Star Wars novels, and other media tie ins. (Also when it comes to books the sheer diversity of the setting and the Chaos Gods to me gives it a huge advantage over most of the other big IPs)

Video Games. 40k is huge. There have been on average about 4 40k video games per year since 2014 plus a handful each of Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. We're not at Mario, Pokémon, or 90s LucasArts level yet - but Warhammer IP is possibly one of the strongest and most diverse going in video games in the modern era.

Toys and merch? Lol

40k is very much a multimedia IP franchise. It's just missing one obvious pillar.

 

[mamba]

What I don't understand is why the WotC posse is so deprived of artistic vision and creativity that they can't create their own setting that incorporates everything like about another setting and excludes everything they don't. They can make a post-apocalyptic wasteland setting without butchering or reinterpreting the world of Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning.

they can, but if they are going to create a setting with similar themes, they are going to use the familiar name, not a new one

If the WotC posse can do better than Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning, I see let them try. Let them have at it.

so, let them have a shot at a new DS setting for 5e then?

 

[Rob Fasa]

View attachment 415038

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.

New Apocalyptic Subclasses UA

Dark Sun seems like it’s coming next year.

Sign me up for this. I just hope it's not watered down.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh come on, for Hopepunk you have Radiant Citadel. Darksun is supposed to be Dystopian.

No.

Radiant Citadel isn't hopepunk. I put the definitions in earlier in this thread. People can call it that, but's not. It just vaguely utopian. It doesn't meet any definitions of hopepunk, which is essentially "dark or even grimdark fantasy where the good guys can win (often by working together)".

What it is close to is solarpunk, which is more focused on utopian community chill out stuff.

So just slapping words around like that is bloody silly. The vast majority of hopepunk is about deeply dystopian or even grimdark societies, and those being defeated.

And guess what? That's what Dark Sun is about. It's literally impossible to deny that, because it literally is what the first adventure in the first Dark Sun book is about. Your point is simply wrong and nothing else.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I will give it a chance is using 2014 doesn’t make it annoying.

I am not turning my nose up at all of 2024 D&D as a principle. Make something I like and can use with 2014 and I am open.

I am just confused at times. We hear over and over and over the old days are past, the preferences of the younger players are all that matters…

Then Greyhawk in DMG and now this. Interesting

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Does hopepunk contribute something different than being a memeified response to grimdark?

What on earth are you talking about?

You're "memeifying" hopepunk, it's not "memeified" itself. You can't accuse other people of doing what you're doing. Good lord. Also how can you complain about "memes" when you seem to singing the praises of grimdark, the most "memeified" genre in human history!

Joking aside, stories where the world is effed and bad people are in charge but our plucky protagonist can rise up and overcome them are as old as the tides, no?

Absolutely. But because there was a brief era of super-rape-obsessed grimdark being dominant in the early 2000s (long, long after Dark Sun, which is not grimdark, and only weird revisionists claim is). It's a bit weird that people are calling that structure hopepunk but they are because of the once-dominance of rubbish like Malazan.

Grimdark is a new(ish) type of story

No.

Absolutely not. Grimdark as a term is refers to Warhammer 40K's "In the grim darkness of the 41st century..." which is from the mid-1990s, and frankly, tonally, there have been stories like that for decades and decades, because 40K didn't invent the genre, it just named the trope.

What was "new-ish", and let's not prance around this, was being obsessed with rape (and also more general torture), primarily of women, particularly young women. That's what marked the big difference with early 2000s grimdark, which is the only thing I can imagine being called "new-ish". Steven Erikson, R. Scott Bakker, Mark Lawrence and so on were absolute rape-obsessives (Lawrence later recovered and became a bit more normal, the other two did not). Richard K. Morgan, who was slowly losing the plot, got in a bit later and wrote the same way (very distinct from his SF I note). I blame GRRM for starting this, but he was never as bad as these lot.

Luckily, Joe Abercrombie wasn't obsessed with this, was a better writer and storyteller than any of those freaks, and seems to have altered the course of modern darker fantasy fiction (grimdark or just dark) by being extremely successful and popular.

Horrified to hear anyone is still reading Prince of Nothing in 2025. It's stylish ultra-trash that has absolutely nothing to say despite massive, gigantic, crushing pretentiousness which could easily make people think it might. I sadly made it all the way to book 4 before I realized we were going to get nothing but more Tolkien pastiche, stolen-from-700 AD history stuff (rise of Islam, decline of Byzantium), cod-philosophy, admittedly cool wizard-fights, and sexual assaults of various kinds. That no-one shot Anasurimbor Kellhus with one of the man-portable laser cannons that the first book says exists fairly early on remains a great disappointment to me (apparently it doesn't happen in the other two books either).

 

[Randomthoughts]

Been running Dragonlance (before a a brief summer hiatus) but I have to say I’m excited to see Dark Sun on the horizon (fingers crossed).