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]

If your first argument was that it removed the Maedar, I'd have given that to you. But it sure as heck didn't remove "female" as a part of Medusae!

The male medusas are, in the 5E 2024 paradigm, held to be just as much a medusa as their female counterparts. Hence, the inherent understanding that a medusa is a female creature is no longer inherent.

 

[Remathilis]

Honestly, Fallout Athas sounds kinda awesome.

 

[Sacrosanct]

You realize some of the best art is also made not by the original artist, but by those who came later and reinterpreted it? What would the X-Men look like if only Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were allowed to write them? No Clairemont to introduce Wolverine, Storm, Kitty Pride, Nightcrawler, etc? No Phoenix Saga, no Inferno, no Days of Futures Past? What does the modern comic book industry look like without Frank Miller taking the goofy blue-amd-gray bat hero with the gadgets and boy sidekick and reinterpret him as The Dark Knight Returns? His goofy circus-themed bank robber nemesis redefined by Alan Moore's The Killing Joke? You'd still have Superdickery level stories without that ability to modify and adapt.

Do you like Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower or should that song only be performed by Bob Dylan? Ike and Tina's Proud Mary or only CCRs original? What about James Bond movies not based on Ian Fleming (or even those that were, go read the original Casino Royale and tell me Bond is a hero)? Spinoff media like the Thrawn Trilogy? Hell, should Star Trek Deep Space Nine ever been made since Roddenberry wasn't involved with it?

Art is made to be remixed and remade. Purity is only a concern for chemistry. Great art stands on the shoulders of giants and failures alike. Originality is always appreciated, but humans also crave the familiar. Old friends in New clothes. If you don't like it, don't read it.

I agree with this, and if I may, I want to expand on an analogy not just directed at you, but several posts I've seen re: "remakes ruin it for me." or "remakes take my nostalgia from me."

Let's look at John Carpenter's The Thing (1981). It's one of the best horror movies ever made. I have a ton of nostalgia about that movie. Whenever people talk about a potential remake, it's usually met with derision about how they can't do better and would just ruin it. But that wasn't the original movie. The original was from 1951. Did John Carpenter ruin that IP? Not by any objective measure. Maybe some older fans of the original might not have liked it, but it brought in a whole new generation of fans, like me.

It's the same here with D&D, and the same with just about everything. A company doing a remake of an existing thing isn't new, it can create something iconic and well-loved, it doesn't ruin the IP just by doing it. It can be good, or it can flop. And I'd bet people would be surprised to realize just how much of what they love wasn't an original creation, but an adaptation of something earlier. It's like all those people saying Terry Brooks ripped off Tolkien when there are more similarities between Tolkien and his source material but no one ever says how Tolkien ripped off the Volsunga Saga or Wagner.

So yeah, future adaptations can make something better. And for each new generation, it's a fresh exposure for them, which help bring in more fans. I'm all for that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

On a related note, I've heard a couple times about remaking Peter Jackson's LOTR movies, and the overwhelming response is "No way! It's way too soon! They couldn't do it better!"

Then I realize that Hollywood does remakes every 20 years or so all the time, and guess how old the LOTR movies are...then I realize how old I am...

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The male medusas are, in the 5E 2024 paradigm, held to be just as much a medusa as their female counterparts. Hence, the inherent understanding that a medusa is a female creature is no longer inherent.

Your reasoning is absolutely bizarre to me. The medusa is still a female creature. Just because it is also a male creature doesn't change that! It might not exclusively be a female, but it still can be. Your description: Snakehair, Stoney-eyes, female STILL EXISTS AS A THING. It has not been taken away, like you're trying to pretend.

BTW, My previous "yet again" was not in reference to specifically YOU, but to this entire line of argument (the larger one that has little to do with medusae, that you brought up with your attempt to use the medusa as an example.)

 

[Remathilis]

On a related note, I've heard a couple times about remaking Peter Jackson's LOTR movies, and the overwhelming response is "No way! It's way too soon! They couldn't do it better!"

Then I realize that Hollywood does remakes every 20 years or so all the time, and guess how old the LOTR movies are...then I realize how old I am...

I'm more disappointed in the remake of Harry Potter, considering that there isn't enough time between the movies and the series to do anything more than rehash the same plot but with more filler.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I get that you don't and that's okay, but the line between that kind of humourless, ill-tempered ultra-grimdark (the Prince of Nothing kind) and what people are calling "hopepunk" (i.e. Mad Max: Fury Road) is a pretty slim one to try and balance on! I think, if I understand correctly, you're okay with the good guys winning, but only if it's futile/minor in the larger picture or temporary? But because of the nature of fiction, whether it's an RPG campaign or a movie or whatever, it's very difficult to say if any victory short of total victory (and even that sometimes, c.f. defeating the Nazis in WW2 and er... world events) is actually not futile/temporary.

I'm beginning to think it's almost like these genre descriptors are causing more problems than they solve lol!


I thought they gave up on that first structure?

That's not how the 2024 Forgotten Realms campaign setting books are structured. The second structure you describe is just a cynical way of describing a normal D&D setting book from any edition lol.

I would gladly compare 5E Dragonlance to any older editions givings.

 

[Alzrius]

Your reasoning is absolutely bizarre to me. The medusa is still a female creature. Just because it is also a male creature doesn't change that! It might not exclusively be a female, but it still can be. Your description: Snakehair, Stoney-eyes, female STILL EXISTS AS A THING. It has not been taken away, like you're trying to pretend.

BTW, My previous "yet again" was not in reference to specifically YOU, but to this entire line of argument (the larger one that has little to do with medusae, that you brought up with your attempt to use the medusa as an example.)

There's absolutely no logic to what you're proposing. You keep falsely saying that just because male medusa are also a thing, a "medusa" is still understood to be female, even though that's not going to be the case 50% of the time (assuming that there's a 1:1 ratio of male and female medusa as per Fisher's principle). Male medusa mean that "female" is no longer inherently understood to be part of what makes a medusa what it is, regardless of your wrongfully insisting otherwise.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

The discussion about changes to Dark Sun (and D&D settings in general) makes me glad that the media franchises I liked most as a 90's kid (Godzilla and Mega Man) very often came out with alternate takes. The Godzilla movie franchise alone has like 11 separate continuities, and the Mega Man franchise ended up with seven sub-series split between two continuties, so I generally like seeing reimaginings of a media property versus a continuation.

 

[Kurotowa]

Let's look at John Carpenter's The Thing (1981). It's one of the best horror movies ever made. I have a ton of nostalgia about that movie. Whenever people talk about a potential remake, it's usually met with derision about how they can't do better and would just ruin it. But that wasn't the original movie. The original was from 1951. Did John Carpenter ruin that IP? Not by any objective measure. Maybe some older fans of the original might not have liked it, but it brought in a whole new generation of fans, like me.

For that matter, how do you draw a line between remake and adaptation? Both of those movies are based on the 1938 short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. Works get adapted between prose and film and video games all the time now. Would that also be non-kosher? Also how would you differentiate between "We remade this adaptation" and "We made a new adaptation of the original work, unrelated from that previous one".