D&D 5E How would you wish WOTC to do Dark Sun

[humble minion]

I'm actually a bit more tolerant than some about what post-2e material to allow into Dark Sun.

For me, it's about maintaining the spirit rather than the letter of the 2e lore (because remember, even the 2e lore was frequently confused, contradictory, and downright dumb in places, it shouldn't be treated as Holy Writ)

The fundamentals of the setting, as far as i see it:

• survival is hard, especially as a result of heat, lack of water, lack of metal. Slavery is common and life is cheap. No escape, no respite, no easy answers.
• magic or quasi-magic that is not druidic, elemental, psionic, or templar in origin is rare, hard to learn, and widely despised. And also - the power needs to come from somewhere, and it rarely comes without a price.
• many 'familiar' D&D creatures don't exist - orcs, celestials, vampires, minotaurs, standard-issue D&D dragons, goblins, sahuagin, etc etc.
• the majority of the setting's few cities are run by oppressive sorcerer-kings, and in general, it's a world in which kindness, mercy, and benevolence are in short supply

So I've got no problem with barbarians, for instance. The only objection seems to be game-mechanical. Treat non-metal weapons as default and metal weapons as quasi-magic items with special abilities, and the AC issue goes away. Some of the barbarian subclasses that give magical abilities will need to go though.

I see no reason monks shouldn't exist either. They aren't really in the DS lore up to now, but there's certainly no reason why they shouldn't be. There's certainly thematic room. Specialised gladiators. Thri-kreen who focus on using their natural weapons and instinct rather than equipment. Competitive or ritualistic unarmed combat styles in cultures like Draj or even Balic. Hell, several real-life martial arts started as methods of unarmed combat for oppressed classes that were banned from owning weapons, why shouldn't slaves (for instance) in Athas have something similar? Again, monk subclasses with flashy magical abilities would be no-nos, but i can certainly put monks in the setting without many problems.

I personally prefer templars as clerics (because cleric templars mean the sorcerer-kings have control over healing/curative etc magic which helps enforce their monopoly on power over their cities) rather than warlocks, but there's no reason a smart sorcerer-king shouldn't have both types. And i can even think of other possible warlock patrons. Someone mentioned psurlons above, that could certainly work. There's probably entities in the Black that would make a deal (Rajaat or his shadow giants, even). Powerful undead - kaisharga or Athasian wraiths - would be another option. Hell, in one of the Dark sun novels a main character gets a wraith anchored to him by a gem stuck in his chest and it uses its powers on his behalf so long as he does what it wants. (It's a pretty terrible book but it's canon!) Sounds like a warlock to me... Anyway, the sort of wild, non-Tolkienian sword-and-sorcery sort of stuff that DS is inspired by is full of people making dark deals with dread beings for power. It shouldn't be common or routine, but i have no problems with it being possible. What's more important than the existence of warlocks in DS is that warlocks fit into DS thematically. So, for example, if a village sees your PC casting Colour Spray, for instance, they're not going to spend too much time wondering if you're a defiler, preserver, warlock, or whatever before stoning you to death and burning your body afterwards. And the power to cast that Color Spray in the first place had to come from something, whether that's defiling, preserving, or (maybe) a bargain with some entity or other.

Sorcerers and spellcasting bards are the two base classes I have the most trouble with. If you held a gun to my head, then maybe sorcerers could represent people who made it to the Pristine Tower and were dramatically changed and given weird abilities as a result? But really, when magic comes too easy, it's not very Dark Sun to me.

As for races - I personally don't like tieflings in Dark Sun, because I've always preferred Athas to be an isolated setting with no escape or way out, so with little/no interaction with other planes, and because tieflings imply fiends and the whole point of Athas is that the worst bad guys in the setting are humans. And i think this was the original intention - but the Dark Sun book line is lousy with references to interplanar connections, everything from full-on githyanki invasions to sorcerer-kings who've wandered all over the entire Great Wheel (and for some reason actually came back home to miserable Athas afterwards rather than finding some nice quiet green Prime Material world and moving in permanently!) So while I don't think they're a great thematic fit, there's precedent. Bad precedent, but precedent! Or you could reskin them as mutants/Towerspawn and change their stat bonuses and innate spells around a bit to be more mutanty and psionic, respectively. Yuan-ti kinda fit thematically as monsters (psionic evil snake-people, hell yeah), but as PCs? Maybe not. Dragonborn you'd need to reskin as Dray and replace the breath weapon and elemental resistance, or else leave them out completely.

 

[Coroc]

Templars were priests not clerics. They didn't worship the SKs as gods at least most if them.

2E didn't require a deity for priests although some world's did.

Warlocks are arcanists, I suppose you could have a Darksun pact where they used the cleric spell list over warlock.

In 4E terms Clerics and Templars would be primal power source, cleric as leader templar probably more striker with side helping of leader.

Hell Templars could probably cast Druid spells as well.

Templar pact perhaps and each SK could have something like the guild pact options from Ravnica. Hell you could probably map 7 of the Ravnica guilds to the SKs.

Nibenay- Dimir
Hamanu-Boros or Azorious

Etc.

Problem with warlocks is thematic. They're arcanists who make pacts. On Athas pacts are clerical and arcane magic comes from plants.

I could maybe buy into warlocks on Darksun but not as Templars at least as written.

Same thing with Sorcerer. Inborn magic, Darksun you get inborn psionics, dragon Sorcerer doesn't really fit etc.

You could have DS specific archetypes you don't need a lot and they don't take up much page space.

Well you could redefine the source for Templar Warlock as "divine" or "sorcerer king", maybe their power comes from their medallions imbued by the SK.

The pact is simply an oath of allegiance to the SK in this case, or being selected by the SK.

If you argue their source be divine aka priestly, then look at how a human becomes a SK : He has to be a level 20 defiler / level 20 psionic as per 2e rules, so he has got no divine magic himself but is capable to grant it to the Templars?

 

[Zardnaar]

Well you could redefine the source for Templar Warlock as "divine" or "sorcerer king", maybe their power comes from their medallions imbued by the SK.

The pact is simply an oath of allegiance to the SK in this case, or being selected by the SK.

If you argue their source be divine aka priestly, then look at how a human becomes a SK : He has to be a level 20 defiler / level 20 psionic as per 2e rules, so he has got no divine magic himself but is capable to grant it to the Templars?

New ones can't grant spells, the ability is unique to the monarchs.

I suppose you could create a new SK. I did but left it unexplained how they got their power.

 

[Coroc]

...
So I've got no problem with barbarians, for instance. The only objection seems to be game-mechanical. Treat non-metal weapons as default and metal weapons as quasi-magic items with special abilities, and the AC issue goes away. Some of the barbarian subclasses that give magical abilities will need to go though.
...
I see no reason monks shouldn't exist either. They aren't really in the DS lore up to now, but there's certainly no reason why they shouldn't be. There's certainly thematic room. Specialised gladiators. Thri-kreen who focus on using their natural weapons and instinct rather than equipment. Competitive or ritualistic unarmed combat styles in cultures like Draj or even Balic. Hell, several real-life martial arts started as methods of unarmed combat for oppressed classes that were banned from owning weapons, why shouldn't slaves (for instance) in Athas have something similar? Again, monk subclasses with flashy magical abilities would be no-nos, but i can certainly put monks in the setting without many problems.
...

The problem with barbarians is they get DR also in addition to their unarmored defense. With monks the same, you do not need a monk class to be an unarmed fighter, the fighter class is sufficient.

With weapons the only reasonable approach is to make nonmetal weapons the standard and increase the die one size for metal weapons.
That way you prevent that a +1 bone weapon is much inferior to a non magic metal weapon of the same type.

E.g. your +1 obsidian dagger would be +1 to hit and 1d4+1 damage, your metal dagger would be +0 to hit but 1d6 damage.
That is easily doable, but imho several weapon,s which do not make sense to be crafted from inferior material should be obsolete anyway for darksun.

Example: You just cannot craft a reasonable Two handed sword neither from bone, nor from wood and not even from obsidian (In the latter it would look more like a Tulwar anyway if you tried), so just cut it of the list add interesting things like Trikal or Lotulis rather.

 

[Coroc]

New ones can't grant spells, the ability is unique to the monarchs.

I suppose you could create a new SK. I did but left it unexplained how they got their power.

I guess I would go with the Templar=warlock for my campaign, I would add some curative spells and redact the spell list so it mainly contains spells for crowd control troup buff debuff and utility to help you in administration. The explanation how the SK does it to give the Templars spells would be its mainly psionic. That would answer the question why the Templar does not defile everytime.

Maybe some of the high Templars would be defilers instead, but they would normally not show their powers openly, unless there be no disloyal witnesses afterwards

If I would dm DS I would not allow Templar a PC class anyway, so every explanation and detailing as a playable class would be rather scientific anyway.

 

[Zardnaar]

I guess I would go with the Templar=warlock for my campaign, I would add some curative spells and redact the spell list so it mainly contains spells for crowd control troup buff debuff and utility to help you in administration. The explanation how the SK does it to give the Templars spells would be its mainly psionic. That would answer the question why the Templar does not defile everytime.

Maybe some of the high Templars would be defilers instead, but they would normally not show their powers openly, unless there be no disloyal witnesses afterwards

If I would dm DS I would not allow Templar a PC class anyway, so every explanation and detailing as a playable class would be rather scientific anyway.

Knowledge of how Templars get spells isn't required.

But yeah warlocks as is are a poor fit. Templar domain probably best idea.

 

[Coroc]

Knowledge of how Templars get spells isn't required.

But yeah warlocks as is are a poor fit. Templar domain probably best idea.

Well technically it does not matter, you could do a monster writeup for Templars, and eventually this is the best way to go to make them effective mobs.
Simply give them some stats and some fighting abilities and add the spells you want them to have. Explain it is divine magic given to them by sorcerer king for their reverence, or pact magic with their medallion being either a holy symbol or a token for the pact.

 

[Delazar]

Regarding classes, I'm not sure if we need to decide "all templars are warlocks". In the end, only Player Characters have a class, all the rest of the world is a stats-block.

I DMed a DS campaign using 5e rules for 2 years, and sometimes my Templars used the "warlock of the fey" stats block, sometimes the "acolyte" stats-block, sometimes the "warpriest", other times the "cultist".

As a DM, you just need something that fits your concept, you don't have to assign them a "class".

For what concerns PCs, kind of the same. If a player wants to be a Templar, he could be a Warlock, a Cleric, even a Paladin. Heck, I guess he could be a Fighter if all he wants is to serve in the ranks of the Sorcerer-King as a general.

I did a lot of re-fluffing, and even those players that were DS veterans had no objections.

Fun fact: I had a new player that wanted to play a "psychic warrior". He had experience with 3.5, but not with 5e.
So I copy/pasted the full text of the Paladin in a Word doc, I renamed all his Class Features to something more "psionic", and changed all instances of the word "radiant" with "psychic". I changed a few choice words in his spells.
Then I handed him the document. He played that character for 6 months, never noticed it was a Paladin by any other name...

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I wonder about to publish an updated version of the 3.5 Sandstorm to be used not only for DS but a future Al-Quadim. Maybe also with some suggestions for DMs about how to "sacrifice" food and water for the PCs who don't them as the living constructs (warforged or shardminds).

* Do you remember the Hollow World from Mystara? and what if anybody in Athas had got the same idea about to create a demiplane to try to save the ecosystem was being destroyed for the cleasing wars?

* I don't take care about the canon. If I want I dare to add the occultist classes from Pathfinder in DS.

* What if the Gray isn't the true ultimate fate of the souls? Maybe the souls of the innocents, just people or with a enough "good karma" later becomes faes and go to the "land within the wind"/feywild, like the Heaven, with their own troubles between different generations, and souls with a "bad karma" become "shadow faes" in the black realm, and within this there are "shard domains", interconnected demiplaned created by pieces of the collective memory, the akasha. And this place is the battlefield because an alien race is using the "petitioners" as "soylent green" or fuel for their machines, (when these souls are "burnt" or "spent" they don't dissapear, only to "reincarnate" again, but weaker, and ready to be used again as "slaves").

 

[Haldrik]

As for the core rules, I feel the Xanathar sidebar should have been in the PHB and that's a missed opportunity, but nothing else needs fixing there.

I basically agree. The main need in the Players Handbook is a heads-up. WotC updates the core rules in the Players Handbook to give players an official welcome to use the Cleric class for various kinds of sacred traditions. Players just need to know they can use the Cleric in these ways. For details about a particular religion, only the specific setting can describe it. The Cleric class description does well to be brief and suggestive.

I reread the Xanathars sidebar. Its "cosmic force" covers many reallife nontheistic sacred traditions. For example, Daoism has the "forces" of Yang and Yin, that extend to the five elemental ways of moving: moving down like water, moving up like fire, moving outward and encompassing like air/tree, moving inward and concentrating like metal, and finally just being still like soil/space. The Hellenistic elemental states of matter are absolutely sacred concepts, that inform all being: earth/solid, water/liquid, air/gas, fire/plasma (including sun, stars, and lightning), and the fifth element being force (understood variously, such as gravity keeping planets in orbit or spirit being inherently conscious). These elemental motions or substances are sacred concepts that are cosmic and holy, and at the same time, devoid of theistic personfication.

Dark Sun is correct to ascribe the four elemental "forces" to the Cleric class as sacred.

I go further here. Make Dark Sun psionics the "fifth element", being simultaneously "force" and "consciousness". Ultimately, the four elements are each made out of "force", in a kind of grand-unification-theory, that informs the Dark Sun sacred teachings as a kind of monism. Psionic phenomena thus receives veneration as a comprehensive holistic reality. Meanwhile the four elements weave together matter as a detailed atomistic reality.



The "cosmic force" also includes abstract concepts, like the power of love. Compare certain traditions in Christianity and Sufi Islam, where "God is love", literally. In this sense, the monotheism is abstract, and beyond a finite personification. This nontheistic monotheism, sotospeak, is useful for D&D because "God" understood as a sacred abstract principle allows for a monotheism that, heh, doesnt require the DM to pretend to be an infinite omniscient Being. Within a 5e perspective, the souls in Shadowfell/Gray and elsewhere eventually disintegrate. It is unclear if or where these souls go. Possibly D&D monotheism preserves an optimistic hope that these souls transcend, reunifying with the "Infinite" beyond. Perhaps, some Dark Sun traditions can interpret psionics with special sacred significance in the sense of an expanding mind and force, that anticipates this future reunion with the infinite. Dark Sun is bleak and lifeless, and such optimistic sacred traditions should be rare for flavor reasons. But perhaps realistically, where the finite is cruel, perhaps there is solace in the hope that the infinite is compassionate. This hope motivates the sacred tradition to make this finite world more compassionate, more in unity with the infinite.



An other benefit of the Xanathars articulation of a "cosmic force" is it feels more realistic. D&D 3e expanded the Cleric by making "faith" the source of divine power, which ended up solipsistic and silly. A popular D&D comic, the Order of the Sticks, humorizes the absurdity well, by having its bard character gain levels in Cleric by having "faith" in his hand puppet, Banjo the Clown. By constrast in D&D 5e, a hand puppet is less likely to function meaningfully as a "cosmic force". For D&D 5e sacred traditions, there must be some kind of identifiable "force" thus feels more plausible. For example, the "power of love" in the sense of one individual seeking the wellbeing of an other individual, can be a plausible nontheistic "ethical philosophy" corresponding to the power of the Chaotic Good alignment.



Finally, with regard to sidebar. For the Players Handbook, the Cleric class does well to specifically mention "animism" as a sacred tradition. Earlier editions of D&D presented the "shaman" in ways that occasionally defame "uncivilized" ethnicities. It is helpful for the sidebar to mention animism in a positive light as a sacred tradition that "reveres" (not worships) nature and seeks healthy coexistence with nature, and relates with the (psionic) minds and personalities of natural features in a reciprocal neighborly way. For Dark Sun, the ethical philosophy of Preserving is a kind of sacred animism. Also specify "ancestor reverence", since so many reallife sacred traditions are expressions of love toward ancient family members. In Eberron, the elven sacred tradition involving positive-energy undead is an expression of "ancestor reverence". Basically, glance thru what Eberron and Dark Sun are doing, and be inclusive of the religious diversity within these official settings. These sacred themes are prominent tropes across all of the D&D stories anyway. This brief summary for the Cleric class allows plenty of room for a player to explore various character concepts for their Cleric character. They can find a concept that they love, or at least can figure out a concept that they can live with.