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.

 

[humble minion]

What does Dark Sun do in this situation? Nothing. Evil is more powerful but it doesn't bring with it a corruption or a price. Oh it ruins the environment? Environment is already irrevocably ruined, who cares if I damage it further? What is stopping me from from defiling? Morality? Dying with moral superiority is still death. People hating me? They will respect me when I can rip their souls out of their bodies. Why would I ever choose to preserve when there is no consequence for defiling?

I’d push back a little on this idea that defiling was written as consequences-free. The problem was that mechanically the consequences were that a significant chunk of land around you was sucked dry and the earth was basically salted, in a radius depending on the spell level, the fertility of the local land, etc, etc. But it didn’t directly hurt you and so it was up to the DM to enforce roleplaying consequences for that. Roleplaying penalties to balance mechanical advantages are always a questionable design strategy and outcomes vary widely from table to table.

If you’re a defiler, you can’t hide what you are unless you don’t spellcast. If you use magic, you leave a trail of obvious destruction behind. If you do this in a city, then the plants you destroy are the sorcerer-king’s property, the crops that feed his populace. Sorcerer-kings take destroying their city’s food source SERIOUSLY. Theres a reason uncontrolled defiling is illegal in the city states. If you’re in a small free village, then every time you defile you destroy the locals’ livelihood, and they’re probably living hand to mouth as it is. They’re going to do their best to murder you before you starve them. And yeah, if you’re powerful enough you probably have nothing to fear, but if you’re a low-level 2e wizard with d4 hit points and 1 spell (or even a low-level 2e Dark Sun wizard with 3d4 hit points) then an angry mob is a very real threat. And you have to sleep sometime. And every druid in the setting will do their best to kill you on sight. As will most of the preservers because killing you early is better than waiting til you’re too powerful. And many of the other defilers because vegetation is a limited resource and if you destroy it to fuel your power then they can’t destroy it to fuel theirs.

That’s what life is like as a defiler. You can’t hide what you are, and once what you are is recognised, every hand is against you. You can’t settle down because you slowly destroy any place or any community where you stay. You become a rootless nomad, a desolation plague on legs, hiding when you can and leaving no prisoners when you can’t, forever leaving a trail of ruin behind which serves as a trail that the people hunting you can follow. You eat the world in a desperate quest for enough power to protect yourself from the very enemies you’ve made by the mere process of amassing that power.

The downside to being a defiler was … having to be a defiler. But doing the maths for how much plant life you annihilated every time you cast a spell was a pain, and the responsibility for enforcing the in-world logical consequences for defiling fell to the individual DM with obviously variable results.

However - that was then, this is now. The defiling sorceror in the UA causes no damage to plants, and only has a negative effect on other individual creatures that they specifically choose to target. I mean, the 3rd level ability even has them expending their OWN hit dice to empower their spells, rather than sucking lifeforce from outside. There very much is no downside to being THIS kind of defiler. Hell, if this is how defiling works Athas would still be green, because defiling doesn’t damage plants any more. I know the 5e design philosophy is absolutely allergic to PC abilities having downsides, and very parsimonious about allowing magic to have lasting or permanent effects beyond the next long rest, but having Athas be a wasteland because of too much defiling, and then have defilers not be inherently destructive seems to miss the point by so far you might as well be in the elemental plane of perfect spheres. I’m still hoping there’s generic defiling rules that apply to arcane casters across the board and that this subclass specifically represents those defilers who’ve chosen to specialise in and explore the nuances and advanced techniques of defiling, but time will tell.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, this is what I posted upthread.

To be fair to @Charlaquin, I think she's imagining a baseline that is not set internally to the fiction and play of Dark Sun, but rather set relative to the default expectations of an experienced D&D player.

Yes, very much so. I suppose you could adjust the math in the Dark Sun monster manual to account for this generally lower caster power level (though personally I don’t think it would be necessary to), so long as players feel like preserving requires them to limit themselves vs how they’re used to casting, and defiling allows them to go beyond the limits they’re used to with casting.

So, for an example of what I’m thinking of, maybe a general rule that any time you cast a spell using a slot of the highest level you can cast, any plant life within a 120 foot radius noticeably wilts. Something purely cosmetic and relatively unobtrusive like that. And on the defilement side, maybe there’s a general rule that when you cast a spell with an effect that gets stronger when cast using a higher level slot, you can expend a Hit Point Die cast it as if you had used a slot one level higher than the slot you expended. Then have subclasses that expand on these general rules - a Defiler Wizard that can fuel this power with their enemies’ hit dice instead of their own; a Circle of Preservation Druid that gets a boost to spells when they have spell slots of a higher level than they used to cast them. Etc.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

If the new setting can do both, support the table that wants to play amoral characters who will do anything to survive and thrive AND the hopeful characters who want to change the world, then I would consider that a massive step forward for Wizards.

However I think we know that only one of those options will be supported in print.

Tyr exists for the later, everything else for the former, so it could be done without retconning the setting or undermining it's themes.

For me the real question is will it have a Shadowfell or a tattered Feywild like 4e version did. I have mixed feelings on that.

 

[Staffan]

Except that, as demonstrated by numerous posts in this thread, it clearly did. The Dark Sun mechanical baseline, i.e. the thing that worked like normal D&D magic, was preserving magic. Defiling magic has always provided some advantage, or at least a gamble for advantage, over baseline magic. And yet, decades later, people still remember it working in the opposite way, to the point of misremembering the actual mechanics. The narrative of defiling as the baseline and preservation as a weaker alternative has held sway. IOW, the allegory succeeded, and the message hit as intended. Why wouldn't it do so again?

I think the main reason people have vague memories of what the "default" was is that the books themselves were ambivalent.

From the OG Dark Sun rulebook class description:

Defilers are wizards who have decided to take a faster, darker approach to mastering the use of magical spells. In the give and take of spell casting, defilers are well versed in the taking, but give nothing in return. With every spell cast, a defiler leeches the life-energy out of the plants and soil around him, leaving a lifeless zone. Because of this, defilers can only have non-good alignments.

The preserver is a wizard of the old, established school of magic. In the give and take of spell casting, preservers have mastered the balance. A preserver's magical spells are cast in harmony with nature. When a preserver casts a spell, there is no damage to the nearby environment.

Note the reference to preserving as "old and established."

From the Wanderer's Guide in the general world overview:

The magic of wizards is different from that of the clerical orders. It converts the energy of life into magical power that the sorcerer shapes into spells. If this is done with respect for the life forces of the world and care is taken to balance the net loss of energy with the net gain of magic, there are no adverse effects. In most cases, wizards take great care to guard the vitality of the world when casting their spells and working their enchantments.
For others, however, the long-term drain on Athas' ecology is meaningless. They care little for the life force that is lost when they spin their webs of magic. The dark souls, called Defilers, drain the power for their spells from the world around them. Plants near them whither and once fertile soil turns to sterile ash under their macabre power. Most of Athas' sorcererkings are Defilers of the highest power.

Again, we have "In most cases, wizards take great care"

Later under Athasian Society:

Defilers learn to draw magic from the land, but not the art of replacing it. Because it is this latter aspect of magic that is most difficult to master, they learn spells and advance in their art far more quickly than their counterparts. Defilers are a blight upon our world. They are the fiends who have destroyed Athas, and the reason that most decent folk-especially farmers and herders-will take up arms to drive any wizard, Defiler or not, from their midst.
When the life energy of foliage is converted into magical spells, the soil in which the plants were growing becomes sterile. In most cases, it stays barren for decades. The spark of life can be returned to the ground through hard work and tender care, but few people can afford to take the time required to do so.
Preservers reinvigorate the soil after they drain it to power their spells. As Preservers learn their craft, they also learn to rekindle the spark of life. When they cast a spell, they replace what they have taken through a combination of natural and mystical processes (such as by working compost into the soil or by performing the Rite of Blood in the field they have drained). Preservers learn their spells and master their art more slowly than Defilers, for they must learn to give as well as take. Unfortunately, Preservers are scarce compared to Defilers, and it is a rare person who understands the difference between the two.

And here we have "Unfortunately, Preservers are scarce compared to Defilers."

I think the main way to reconcile these ideas is that while defiling is attractive to many people looking for a quick path to power, it is ultimately self-defeating. When you cast a defiling spell, you literally get a bullseye painted on you in the form of a circle of black and grey ash at your feet, and given how most people feel about wizard magic that's likely to have negative consequences. Preserving magic is more subtle, and you have secret networks of preservers (the Veiled Alliance and such) which make preserving a more surviving-oriented option despite the lower power.

 

[Scribe]

Tyr exists for the later, everything else for the former, so it could be done without retconning the setting or undermining it's themes.

For me the real question is will it have a Shadowfell or a tattered Feywild like 4e version did. I have mixed feelings on that.

Yeah its not 'if' it could be done. Wizards obviously could, most of us could. WILL they however, when pretty much since the first adventure was published you were expected to go down the path of good guy only.

As to the 4e changes, I dont know them, but most of the 4e changes didnt really work for me so I dont see why those would.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

A big flaw was the novels resolving a bunch of plot lines for the game, then the game getting updated to reflect them a few years in. Remember the Dragon? Well he’s dead now.

 

[Eubani]

Reboot time, Sorcerer Kings in charge and trying to become Dragons. Dragon at large and nobody knows what its goals are. Preservers have to hide in the shadows. The world is dying and life is cheap.

 

[humble minion]

A big flaw was the novels resolving a bunch of plot lines for the game, then the game getting updated to reflect them a few years in. Remember the Dragon? Well he’s dead now.

Oh god yes. The first couple of years of Dark Sun releases were like the absolute platonic ideal of How Not To Build A Gameline. You have the novels overturning and obsoleting the entire setting almost immediately after it came out, and adventure modules where the PCs get to meekly follow in the footsteps of the awesome novel NPCs and do the boring sidequests that they couldn't be bothered with.

I have no idea what they were thinking, and I continually dredge every word that Ben Riggs etc write about TSR-era D&D in the hope of getting some scraps of insight into the thought processes involved in the design decisions there, but no luck so far. My best guess is that the big novel metaplot was an attempt to repeat the lightning-in-a-bottle runaway popularity of the Dragonlance Chronicles, with the setting updated for a more 90s set of mores and concerns - less capital-G&E Good and Evil, more environmentalism, shades of grey, and polyamory. I mean, Tanis and co left THEIR campaign setting turned upside down after the novels were finished too, but people still loved them. I suspect that TSR were consciously aiming to make Sadira, Rikus etc just as iconic as Raistlin and the like had been in the previous decade. You even had - spoiler alert! - Agis getting betrayed and murdered by his long-time friend/ambiguous partner Tithian mid-series, in a near mirroring of the death of Sturm Brightblade.

Of course, the Dragonlance game modules at least let you PLAY as Tanis, Raistlin, Sturm etc and save the world personally, rather than following them around and cleaning out their chamberpots, so the parallel admittedly isn't perfect...

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Oh god yes. The first couple of years of Dark Sun releases were like the absolute platonic ideal of How Not To Build A Gameline. You have the novels overturning and obsoleting the entire setting almost immediately after it came out, and adventure modules where the PCs get to meekly follow in the footsteps of the awesome novel NPCs and do the boring sidequests that they couldn't be bothered with.

I have no idea what they were thinking, and I continually dredge every word that Ben Riggs etc write about TSR-era D&D in the hope of getting some scraps of insight into the thought processes involved in the design decisions there, but no luck so far. My best guess is that the big novel metaplot was an attempt to repeat the lightning-in-a-bottle runaway popularity of the Dragonlance Chronicles, with the setting updated for a more 90s set of mores and concerns - less capital-G&E Good and Evil, more environmentalism, shades of grey, and polyamory. I mean, Tanis and co left THEIR campaign setting turned upside down after the novels were finished too, but people still loved them. I suspect that WotC were consciously aiming to make Sadira, Rikus etc just as iconic as Raistlin and the like had been in the previous decade. You even had - spoiler alert! - Agis getting betrayed and murdered by his long-time friend/ambiguous partner Tithian mid-series, in a near mirroring of the death of Sturm Brightblade.

Of course, the Dragonlance game modules at least let you PLAY as Tanis, Raistlin, Sturm etc and save the world personally, rather than following them around and cleaning out their chamberpots, so the parallel admittedly isn't perfect...

I think that was TSR era, unless I mixed up my timeline for Dark Sun.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I think 4e did it pretty well in setting it after the death of the Sorcerer King of Tyr, but before anything else like the death of the Dragon.