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.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So instead of desert survival and slavery, we'll have beach parties and treasure hunts for magic ice cream fountains.

That's some wild use of hyperbole there!

 

[SkidAce]

I don't think any revisions will be as bad as some folks are dreading.

 

[Zaukrie]

1. I am surprised that WotC is doing Dark Sun.

2. I am happy that WotC is doing Dark Sun.

3. I am also a little sad, in a way, because that means that we are stuck with ... the stuff ... that they've pushed out as "psionics," but I'll get over it.

4. I'm curious to see what the final release looks like.

5. I hope that it is awesome! I just want it to be good- it doesn't matter to me if it's grimdark, or hopepunk, or gammaworld reimagined, or a meta-commentary on EDM. Just be good. Do you know why? Because the original Dark Sun stuff is still available. You can always use that lore if you prefer.

What a refreshing post in a thread filled with the same people rehashing the same stuff the post every thread. Thank you.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yup! S'why I mentioned her being a character.

But yeah. Ultimately, Dark Sun's not gonna be Dark Sun if they change too many of the identifying characteristics. Which is sad and frustrating 'cause you can be damned sure WotC's gonna take the path of least resistance and change a lot of those setting identity markers to be as Kitchen Sinky as they can.

I fully expect them to do just enough of that to make it enough of a valid argument that we can debate it for pages and pages here, but I also expect them to do what I would consider a perfectly adequate job of presenting the world so that I can play it just like I did in the 90's - by ignoring anything that they say that I don't like, like I do with all D&D books.

Heck, maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised by the tone of it - I'm pretty surprised by the UA, which isn't anywhere near as "watered down" as "everyone" keeps insisting that its going to be!

 

[Superchunk77]

I don't think any revisions will be as bad as some folks are dreading.

Well as history has demonstrated, be prepared to be proven wrong

 

[Necropolitan]

Something that just occurs to me - Paizo copped merry hell a couple of years ago over the Agents of Edgewatch AP. Having a campaign centred around 'good guy' law enforcement PCs was seen as distinctly smelly give the political events around BLM etc that were happening at the time. Paizo eventually had to put our a quasi-apology I think.

Now WotC is releasing a sorcerer-king pact warlock. An explicitly PC-focused mechanic (this is 5e, NPC bad guys have stat blocks, not subclasses) that entirely revolves around the idea of you playing the brutal oppressive enforcer for the capricious whims or draconian 'laws' of a undying genocidal and dictatorial tyrant. And we're 25 pages into the thread and while it's perfectly possible the subect has ben raised in a post I missed or skipped over, it certainly hasn't been a major theme of discussion.

Times change quickly it seems. And yeah, if they remove slavery from the setting in the final product the outraged cries of 'woke!' will no doubt shake the birds out of the skies. But this is looking quite the opposite to me right now. Playable templars explicitly themed around a 'you terrify, dominate, and control people on behalf of your evil master' theme is NOT what I had on my bingo card in 2025.

Good.

People should be capable of deciding something isn't for them and choosing not to play it instead of demanding that anything that offends them get removed regardless of if it's actually harmful.

Dark Sun is defined by being a dark setting. If people want a desert campaign that isn't dark they can either adapt what bits of Dark Sun they like, use the desert part of a different setting, or write their own.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Grimdark is not an entirely useless genre, but nihilism is entirely anathema to why I love, consume, and create fantasy media. Too many people and writers think grimdark means “no one can ever be happy, nothing matters, and any character that is momentarily happy or cares about anything meaningful needs to be abused by the plot until they get with the cool kids and become nihilistic naughty words like everyone else in the story.”

If Homelander gets away with everything in Season 5 of The Boys TV show, it will ruin the entire series for me. I don’t want to consume useless garbage where the moral is “everything is and always will be awful, so there’s no point in fighting for what’s right.”

I don’t want to consume books that read like novelized suicide notes. I don’t want to watch shows or movies that tell me humanity is a foolish endeavor and that we might as well give up in the fight for freedom, justice, and happiness. I would not want to run or play in a setting where there is no point. Where the group knows from the start that they have no hope of defeating the villains or improving the world and nothing of importance can be done.

Stories of hope are always important, especially now when the world is rapidly getting worse. And nihilism helps those that are actively ruining the world by telling you there’s no point in fighting back.

Dark Sun is and must be hopepunk. The heroes can overthrow the Sorcerer-Kings, slay the Dragon, and start to heal the world. If they cannot, there is no reason for the setting to exist. There is no use for a setting or story that tells you life is pointless and you were a sucker for caring.

http://www.stephenrdonaldson.com/EpicFantasy.pdf

I'm not sure I'd call that Hopepunk, but I'm not an expert in Hopepunk, but Tyr being a free city state has always been the main element of Hope for Darksun.

 

[Steampunkette]

I don't think any revisions will be as bad as some folks are dreading.

This is the entirety of how 4e handled Defiling and Preserving:

Everyone is a Preserver at all times unless you WANT extra power, and then you can Defile, instead.

Defiling, in 4e, was a straight up boost to your damage instead of a constant baseline of the game's expectations.

In 5e, it looks like it'll be a specific subclass of Sorcerers that Wizards and other arcane spellcasters won't interact with. They'll get bonuses from their subclass, like any character, with the ability to Defile for even more power.

And Preserving will just be another way to be a Druid with no cost to it, and instead it'll be the source of their subclass abilities compared to other druids.

There's literally no reason to believe they'll turn around and say "All -Wizards- and other Arcane Spellcasters Defile at all times with no power gain, but also you can choose to Preserve and it'll make your spells weaker." which is what the structure was in the original setting.

Which is, @FitzTheRuke, really watered down.

These core identifying pieces of Dark Sun are going to be used as general trappings for a couple of specific classes, and the setting will suffer for it. Like a Remake of an 80s movie where the plot is WILDLY DIFFERENT from the source material, the theme is hilariously off from the original intent, but the characters have the same name as the 80s material and the title is unchanged.

Like the 2014 Robocop remake which kept Alex Murphy, but ditched the whole personal question of his remaining humanity and memories in favor of having the cops make it a purely external question of imposed loss of humanity through programming. How the original's designs and over the top gore were meant to be an indictment of 1980s audiences desires for endless bloodbaths and gratuitous violence. Hell, Verhoeven had Murphy walk on Water and act as Christ-like as possible to highlight people's eagerness to pursue and absorb copaganda so long as the 'right' bad guys were being targeted. Instead Padilha tried to write a straight-faced film without satirical elements using the RoboCop character to oppose drones in warfare and policing and copaganda by having the Chief of Police working with the evil faceless megacorp. And where the original had the villain protected by a secret directive that was undermined by someone else saying "You're Fired" to remove his OmniCorp protections in RoboCop's programming, which reinforces the question of Murphy's humanity, in this one RoboCop just decides to override his programming through sheer personal will, proving that humanity is stronger than machine programming!

Is it a good movie? Gonna depend on your personal opinions and perspective. But to me? It's just not RoboCop. I had the same issues with RoboCop 2 and 3 which just bought into the core premise without any examination of the themes or identity of the original and just made movies which praise police and single quasi-divine figures of powerful personal nature.

Hell, RoboCop 2's plot centered on the fact that the only reason Murphy 'worked' rather than immediately committing suicide was his Catholic Upbringing, an invention of this movie to both fulfill Frank Miller's desire to continue to poke at his own religious trauma in his work and serve as a half-assed explanation of how and why they eventually use a death row inmate as the test subject for their new RoboCop design...

Anyway, yeah. I very much feel like they're gonna try to go with the least introspective version of Dark Sun they can. One which misses important themes and identifying characteristics while relying on the trappings to sell the fantasy.

Sorta like this image showing how much they tried to make Robert Burke look like Peter Weller:

The grime and detailing are gone. But the trappings are the same. And that'll be enough for some.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Sure. Oral traditions were necessary to pass on ideas from one generation to another. Inevitably, improvisation and mutations occurs. Thanks to the printing press, that is no longer necessary. I can read A Princess of Mars without the need for bards, orators, and rapsodes to butcher or reinterpret Edgar Rice Burroughs's original.

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.

And no, I do not care about corporatists arguments. Let's keep politics out of art/gaming/everything meaningful to the human condition.

I think its okay to add some new things that don't butcher as you said their work.

 

[Mistwell]

More I look at the Circle of Preservation Druid, it's overpowered. No concentration always-on temp hit points to your whole party every round is just Twilight Cleric's mistake. Always injuring emanation with no concentration is just a better spirit guardians. This is just too much, at low levels in particular. Reduce the temp hit points, or make it healing, and get rid of the damaging effect later, and the subclass is fine.