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]

Use gnome, but your size is medium.

Gnomes aren't tough!

 

[Staffan]

Gnomes aren't tough!

Depends on how you cook'em.

 

[pemerton]

so if someone played one of the ‘exterminated’ races, how would they get their XP bonus for playing according to how they fit into the world?

The DM would make something up? I mean, you're talking about 2nd ed AD&D!

 

[Parmandur]

Unfortunately I agree.

Your reasoning is sound. "Monkey people" as a concept should have basically been this to WotC:

10 racism danger zone red flags out of 10

But... somehow they just went ahead and gave them a "slave race given intelligence by a slaver and then rescued by outside saviours" (NOTHING PROBLEMATIC THERE!) backstory AND bonus minstrel-reference art! (!!!!!!!!). Goddamn.

To be fair, that wasn't "WotC" in the abstract that did that, it was one actual guy who did all that...who is writing for Darrington Press now.

 

[Parmandur]

Whether there will be an adventure campaign as an example of Dark Sun done really well.

Dollars to donuts we see something similar to the upcoming Forgotten Realms offering: a detailed intro Adventure (as we saw in Rusing from the Last War, Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica, Van Richten's Guide, wtc) and a bunch of low prep Adventure outlines like the DMG. Maybe a lot of them, to explore the kind of dustinct stories and locales of the Tablelands

 

[GarrettKP]

Dollars to donuts we see something similar to the upcoming Forgotten Realms offering: a detailed intro Adventure (as we saw in Rusing from the Last War, Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica, Van Richten's Guide, wtc) and a bunch of low prep Adventure outlines like the DMG. Maybe a lot of them, to explore the kind of dustinct stories and locales of the Tablelands

I very much hope we get a two book combo for setting books going forward. The FR books look fantastic and I need the other settings to get the same treatment.

 

[Parmandur]

I very much hope we get a two book combo for setting books going forward. The FR books look fantastic and I need the other settings to get the same treatment.

Maybe, though Dark Sun is a far more...concise...Setting? The Tablelands are are about 100-120k square miles, so about the size of Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Italy, or Poland...like 5% of the square miles of the Sword Coast. I think you really could do Dark Sun justice in a single book format at 256-320 pages.

 

[kermit4karate]

This also seems weird to me. It's a game largely about killing things, but slavery is bad? It's like the US being obsessed with sex in movies, but ok with violence....

That's the thing about censoring ideas.... It's a slippery slope! The logic begins to break as soon as the why-this-not-that / whataboutism begins. For every person who can make a case to censor one thing, someone else will make a similar case for another. Eventually, the never-ending appeasement leads to books that read like they were written by very cautious, very boring 8-year-olds.

Note: Censorship is not inherently political, BTW. It can be, but it's also sociological and often has nothing to do with political factions or directives.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To be fair, that wasn't "WotC" in the abstract that did that, it was one actual guy who did all that...who is writing for Darrington Press now.

Sorry but that's not accurate.

It was WotC's D&D team at the time, some of whom are still there.

The minimum people involved are the person who wrote the race details, the person who approved them, the person who did the minstrel art pieces and the art director, as well as whoever did the layout. That's five people, absolute minimum. Having worked in corporate environments where products were created I would say at a dead minimum double that had eyes on that part of the product. Every one of them should have been "uh oh monkey people ". But apparently none of them were. Or if they were, didn't feel they could raise the issue, which is itself major problem and corporate culture one.

I presume the approver was Crawford or Perkins is what you're saying (I can't find the credits page right now)? And the buck definitely stops with whoever was in charge but it's not just on them unless the issue was raised and ignored, which I just do not buy, especially not re the art.

Re: Darrington thankfully I don't see the team they have making a similar mistake, the worst they've done was the pith helm deal AFAIK. But I would laugh of it did happen again thanks to one of Crawford and Perkins. I have previously pointed out Perkins "brought the racism back" with Stradh, after 4E got rid of it (kinda lol) by reverting to 2E lore and l there are other problematic WotC D&D books in that era (Volos particularly).

 

[GarrettKP]

Maybe, though Dark Sun is a far more...concise...Setting? The Tablelands are are about 100-120k square miles, so about the size of Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Italy, or Poland...like 5% of the square miles of the Sword Coast. I think you really could do Dark Sun justice in a single book format at 256-320 pages.

You could. But you’re dedicating a lot of space to the Psion, it’s 4+ subclasses, the other apocalyptic subclasses from UA, the new Wild Talent feats and backgrounds to go with them, plus other feats that aren’t origin, new spells, and possibly new equipment lists and species. I’d rather they take all of the that and a player facing gazetteer for a player book and give us more in depth DM content in a separate book, perhaps one with numerous one page adventures. It’s a lot of content.