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.

 

[Chaltab]

if you have the option to ‘save’ the world at the cost of a few thousand lives a year or certain destruction, I’d say you kinda have to go with option 1.

Could the SK be nicer, sure, but ultimately they are saving the world from something worse

But that doesn't make them the good guys. Stalin helped out with Hitler but that doesn't mean he wasn't also a monster.

 

[Chaltab]

Yeah, it makes entire in-world sense, and i like the extra wrinkle of Borys's paranoia having him keep up the pretence all that time.

Would it work as a scenario in game though? It's a bit 'little man behind the curtain'. It might be a letdown to the players if you've hyped up Rajaat all campaign only to make it a complete anticlimax when they finally meet him.

And what happens if the PCs see Rajaat's pathetic frail form and decide 'hey, Borys was a tyrant who lied about everything, this is just a harmless old guy, we'll take him home and give him a pizza and help nurse him back to health'?

Presumably the logical in-world answer is 'Hamanu or Andropinis or someone realises what these idiots are doing, teleports in and kills Rajaat as thoroughly as possible while he's weak, and then leaves'. But would that - or requiring the PCs to stick a sword in a basically helpless prisoner - be a satifying end to a campaign? I'm honestly not sure, it'd depend on the group and the buildup. But that would be my primary worry about this resolution.

That's fair. My hope is that the fight with Borys would be so taxing the party was on their last legs and finding that Rajaat had withered is a welcome anti-climax. They've done the hard part, finishing off the monster that began the cleansing wars is the victory lap. But it's definitely something you'd have to thread the needle with.

 

[mamba]

But that doesn't make them the good guys. Stalin helped out with Hitler but that doesn't mean he wasn't also a monster.

it makes them the better option, as I said initially, it undermines the message

 

[EzekielRaiden]

it makes them the better option, as I said initially, it undermines the message

Exactly. It's a choice between "the worst, most genocidal dictators in human history collectively" or "Aliens will literally exterminate all life on the Earth, yes, even deep-ocean life."

When people like Stalin are the better option, when pragmatism says "well, we can let the genocide slide this time", it weakens the message that these people are absolute monsters.

 

[Zardnaar]

Exactly. It's a choice between "the worst, most genocidal dictators in human history collectively" or "Aliens will literally exterminate all life on the Earth, yes, even deep-ocean life."

When people like Stalin are the better option, when pragmatism says "well, we can let the genocide slide this time", it weakens the message that these people are absolute monsters.

Genocide was mentioned on the original DS.

That came later in the cycle. Im big on using the original timeliness. Kalaks not dead.

His death set the stage for on Athas ancient past. I'm not opposed to Kalak dying but it should be up to the DMs imho if and how that takes place.

You don't need to include it to upset people who don't like it and it wasn't in the original release.

Original adventures were mostly terrible. There's a reason not much in terms of adventures from 1986-94 is regarded as good. Its peak castle Greyhawk, Deagonlance, Darksun etc metaplot heavy, railroaded crap adventures.

 

[Staffan]

Indeed. Freedom is essentially "go on minor side quests to aid the rebellion while the novel heroes do all the hard work (like fighting the sorcerer-king) and get all the glory." IIRC the adventure even includes a bit where the PCs get to watch the novel heroes do their thing in the arena, but they don't get to help because that's not what happened in the novel.

I'm probably in a minority among DS fans in that I don't mind Freedom very much. There's a large part of it that's about building connections to various factions which would be useful for the DM making future adventures, and I think the finale should be seen more like a disaster movie. There's Heavy Stuff going on, no-one knows quite what but it's definitely dangerous, and you need to get out and hopefully bring people along. Rikus et al killing Kalak is comparable to a skyscraper being on fire – it's a thing you can't do anything about, you just have to survive it.

Now, if you want to talk horribad Dark Sun adventures, Black Waters is right there.

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.

I think that while the path to get there, by just randomly killing a bunch of Sorcerer-Monarchs in a novel series, was pretty bad the actual result was good. OG Dark Sun presented seven city-states that were very similar to one another. They had a veneer of different ancient cultures over them, but they were all "sorcerer-monarch dictator ruling with an iron hand through their templars, with nobles controlling the food supply and making heavy use of enslaved labor". Revised Dark Sun still has that in three cities (the three most distinct ones), but you also has Tyr the democratic experiment, Raam descending into anarchy, Draj where they're trying to prop up the former sorcerer-king's son as the new king but without the muscle, and Balic under a triumvirate of trading houses. That's a lot more variety and opens up more possibilities.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Genocide was mentioned on the original DS.

That came later in the cycle. Im big on using the original timeliness. Kalaks not dead.

His death set the stage for on Athas ancient past. I'm not opposed to Kalak dying but it should be up to the DMs imho if and how that takes place.

You don't need to include it to upset people who don't like it and it wasn't in the original release.

Original adventures were mostly terrible. There's a reason not much in terms of adventures from 1986-94 is regarded as good. Its peak castle Greyhawk, Deagonlance, Darksun etc metaplot heavy, railroaded crap adventures.

I'm not saying they didn't call out the genocides. I'm saying that when your choice is "several outrightly genocidal warlord tyrants who have zero compunctions about slaughtering thousands of innocents on the regular" or "outright extermination of essentially all life", the former becomes the morally superior option.

We should not intentionally construct fantastical narratives where "outrightly genocidal warlord tyrant who has zero compunctions about slaughtering thousands of innocents on the regular" is the morally superior option.

 

[Chaltab]

When people like Stalin are the better option, when pragmatism says "well, we can let the genocide slide this time", it weakens the message that these people are absolute monsters.

That's the exact opposite of the point I was making. I was literally saying you shouldn't let the lesser evil slide!

it makes them the better option, as I said initially, it undermines the message

A better option? I wasn't arguing that leaving them alive should be an option. Ideally you'd have most or all of the SKs dead before Borys and Rajaat were even a factor.

 

[Weiley31]

Maybe we can make Dark Sun an allegory for crypto coins? Okay. Your idea is better.

I can't believe the Sorcerer-Kings were all Crypto Coin Bros all this time!!!

Talk about levels of Scooby Doo monster unmasking moments!!!

 

[overgeeked]

To be fair, in The Verdant Passage novel, which I’m fairly sure was the second ever Dark Sun product after the original box (correct me if I’m wrong), Sadira is written as nominally a preserver, but one who lapses into defiling at times of stress, desperation etc.

Even TSR, that early in the game line, couldn’t agree on what defiling and preserving meant. It’s not real surprising there’s different views and recollections among the players 30 years later!

Yep. It’s all over the place. The novels disagree with the OG box. The novels are where the idea of preserving taking longer comes from. If I had to pick a source to follow it would be the novels more than any of the game products.