D&D 5E (2014) How would you wish WOTC to do Dark Sun

[Crimson Longinus]

Also I'm very confused why the past couple of pages have devolved into some debate about religion...

I participated in it and I'm still just as confused as you are...

 

[Remathilis]

I largely disagree with this. IMO, all you really need to do to run DS as it is in 2E is to have the new DS-specific character options, and a blurb saying "These are the character options from the PHB or XGtE that are also good without alteration for DS."

In addition, there should be a revamping of the magic system to explain the costs of using preserver/defiling magic, the psionics spells, and a list of DS-approved spells (and new ones that are DS specific).

This doesn't feel like it requires an entirely new book to do, and feels fairly consistent with the content of the recent Eberron book, which is quite large. I especially loathe the idea that DS requires some "parallel rules" in order to function properly.

IMO, there shouldn't be a "proper way" in how to play DS. Yes there should be rules, and boxes, explaing how a DM can run it much like 2E was, but there shouldn't be some entirely new PHB just to lock other players out of porting their wizards into DS. If they want to do that fine, that's not "bad wrong fun."

I think it all comes down what people are looking for when it comes to Dark Sun. What is the core element that needs preserving (no pun intended)? Right now, Dark Sun seems to be several things people want:

• Post-apocalyptic meets pulp dying world where hope and resources are in short supply. Vance meets Howard by way of Burroughs.
• A D&D hardmode where PCs might be super-munckiny (24 strengths! Free Wild talents!) but still die quickly from dehydration, inferior weapons and armor, and monsters that make the Tomb of Horrors look like a Disney dark ride. Bring extra character sheets.
• An "anti-D&D" s setting where everything is flipped on its head. Cannibal halflings! Bards that poison you rather than spell cast! Psionics instead of magic! No orcs, no goblins, and dragons are psionic-magical God-Kings! There is not one word of lore in D&D that is true about Dark Sun, no assumption can be made, and nothing, and I mean nothing, is like it is described in the PHB.
• Fidelity to the original vision of the setting, without additions or subtractions, with or without the metaplot advancements. Nothing that wasn't in the original setting back in the 90's.
• A collection of new options (Races, subclasses, psionics) and rules (advanced survival, defiling) that can be ported to other games or used in homebrews.

Whichever you think is most important colors the rest of your choices on what to adapt. For example, the first point is the most important than the Barbarian class is a natural fit; tough armorless primal warriors seem a shoo-in for the setting. Yet If the second is the most important, barbarians are a no-go because they allow PCs to have excellent ACs easily, and having a good AC is a privilege for those cunning enough to survive low levels with bone armor and stone weapons. Similarly, if fidelity is most important, there is no way you can possibly accept sorcerers, warlocks, tieflings, or any other element that came post 2e as part of the setting since it ruins the very notion of DS's relation to magic and the planes, but if you want more options, then you want warlocks to get new Pact options, not banned altogether!

WotC will have to decide IF they are doing this, which parts are the most important and in what measure. If they want the setting beats and options but don't care about it being hard or keeping true to the setting, you get a 4e-ish style book that is mostly refluff, reflavor, and some new options to go with it. If they want to satisfy the original purist who want Dark Sun to be D&D are its most brutal and strange, they are either going to have to create a book that doesn't use 50% or more of the current options in the core, let alone doesn't generate leads to supplemental books OR they are going to have to re-write the game to accommodate all the changes. You MIGHT be able to get away with "paladins are unknown, check with your DM" but there is no way you are pulling off "In Dark Sun, you cannot be a barbarian, bard, monk, sorcerer, paladin, or warlock. Additionally, you cannot be an eldritch knight, arcane trickster, beastmaster, have any cleric domain but life, light, and nature, or specialize in any school of wizard magic except preserver or defiler."

So again, what is the most important parts you want to emphasize? What trade-offs are you willing to make?

 

[Haldrik]

As you said, there are three types of religions, and coincidentally there are three classes that get power from supernatural outside forces to represent them: cleric, druid, warlock. Seems doable under the 5e PHB with a few subclasses added for flavor. Unless you are a die-hard who feels clerics and warlocks shouldn't exist or need to be totally rewritten so as not to break the established cannon.

For "typical" cultures, the following arrangement for the three religions can work.

• Elementalism ≈ Cleric
• Animism ≈ Druid
• Divine-king worship ≈ Warlock

There can still be exceptions. Individual Clerics could be any of these three religions. By canon, elementalists or divine-king worshiper. So any of the three seems fine as a possibility.

Warlock can work well with sorcerer-king as the Patron. In this case, the Warlock is an arcane mage, so would be a defiler, which makes sense flavorwise.

Meanwhile, certain features of the Warlock can be explained as the result of earlier magical experiments by the sorcerer-kings, akin to magic item creation. When it comes to the spell slots, however, it makes more sense to me, if the sorcerer-kings know the spells that the Warlock gets from them.

A convenience of the sorcerer-king employing the Warlock class is, it is a popular class, and this flavor can fit seemlessly within the Dark Sun setting.

Then you need a new DS PHB.

DS requires a rigorous rewrite of the PH flavor for the Warlock. If a sorcerer-king as a Patron feature comes with mechanical variants that differ from fey fiend, or goo, then it might as well be a full rewrite of the Warlock class as it pertains to Dark Sun.

It occurs to me, the Athas Elf is unlike the other 5e elves. For example, it seems to me, it associates more strongly with Constitution and Dexterity, and perhaps Strength, as a tireless athletic runner who survives extreme environments. (Compare how the Sea Elf associates Dexterity and Constitution.) The Athas Elf might include psionic features.

In any case, most of the rewrite is to get the Dark Sun flavors right. By the time a writeup mentions mechanical variants, one might as well rewrite the entire Players Handbook entry.

Which is why I go back to a and b options.

Consider the essential 2e Dark Sun getting a full-on rewrite of the Players Handbook.

Full writeups for the essential races/species:
Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Half-Dwarf, Halfling, Half-Giant, and Thri-Kreen.

Full writeups for the essential archetypes:
Champion (Fighter), Battlemaster (Gladiator), Thief, Assassin (Bard)
Cleric, Druid, Warlock (Templar)
Wizard (Preserver, Defiler)
Whatever the Psionic options will be



Finally, there can be a separate section with advice for how to introduce other Player Handbook options, like Paladin, Sorcerer, etcetera, if players and DM want to go this route. But full writeups seem unnecessary for this extra stuff. One concern is to heighten the preserve/defile flavor. So would an arcane Sorcerer also need to choose between preserve and defile? Would a Bard have to choose? Is it better to give the Dark Sun Sorcerer and Bard a psionic tag? And so on, to think carefully about the implications if other 5e options are to be introduced into this setting.

 

[Remathilis]

DS requires a rigorous rewrite of the PH flavor for the Warlock. If a sorcerer-king as a Patron feature comes with mechanical variants that differ from fey fiend, or goo, then it might as well be a full rewrite of the Warlock class as it pertains to Dark Sun.

It occurs to me, the Athas Elf is unlike the other 5e elves. For example, it seems to me, it associates more strongly with Constitution and Dexterity, and perhaps Strength, as a tireless athletic runner who survives extreme environments. (Compare how the Sea Elf associates Dexterity and Constitution.) The Athas Elf might include psionic features.

In any case, most of the rewrite is to get the Dark Sun flavors right. By the time a writeup mentions mechanical variants, one might as well rewrite the entire Players Handbook entry.

This gets back to the heart of my original post: If (for example) the mechanics of a warlock or elf or whatever is different and the lore is completely different, why reference back to the PHB? I mean, you are already going to have to re-write most-if-not all the races, remove many class/subclass options, redo backgrounds, completely re-write the equipment section (as well as the staring equipment for those classes and backgrounds), revise the exploration rules to be more brutal, and add rules for psionics and heavily edit the spell section, you might as well just toss in the ability score and combat chapters and reprint the selection of spells that are staying and be done with it. It's a one-stop shop; no cross-referencing ban-lists, no mixing classic and DS lore, everything allowed in DS is in one book.

 

[Mecheon]

DS requires a rigorous rewrite of the PH flavor for the Warlock. If a sorcerer-king as a Patron feature comes with mechanical variants that differ from fey fiend, or goo, then it might as well be a full rewrite of the Warlock class as it pertains to Dark Sun.

Honestly I don't even think you need to go that far for warlocks. Just remove the divine and infernal options, the rest are fine enough

You can simply go "As a warlock you've made a pact with something. It might be with the Sorcerer Kings themselves. As an Old Ones warlock, you may have dealt with the Psurlons". Blappo

 

[Haldrik]

Honestly I don't even think you need to go that far for warlocks. Just remove the divine and infernal options, the rest are fine enough

You can simply go "As a warlock you've made a pact with something. It might be with the Sorcerer Kings themselves. As an Old Ones warlock, you may have dealt with the Psurlons". Blappo

The class description for the Templar Warlock can also include the history, where the Templars came from, how they get their magic, the relationship between the sorcerer-king and the Templars, the kinds of missions they get to "enforce" for the sorcerer-king, the status of the Templars within the city hierarchy, the priestly function of the Templars to organize the worship of the sorcerer-kings. Probably there can be backgrounds that flesh out certain aspects. There can be quite a bit of relevant setting information with how the Templar relates to it.

 

[Coroc]

....
For example, the first point is the most important than the Barbarian class is a natural fit; tough armorless primal warriors seem a shoo-in for the setting. Yet If the second is the most important, barbarians are a no-go because they allow PCs to have excellent ACs easily, and having a good AC is a privilege for those cunning enough to survive low levels with bone armor and stone weapons. Similarly, if fidelity is most important, there is no way you can possibly accept sorcerers, warlocks, tieflings, or any other element that came post 2e as part of the setting since it ruins the very notion of DS's relation to magic and the planes, but if you want more options, then you want warlocks to get new Pact options, not banned altogether!
....

All of this (No barbarians or monks because of the AC (and DR!) gimmicks , and of course no arcane casters except of wizards), and the only warlock pact that makes sense in 5e Darksun is a pact of the medallion with the according sorcerer king/queen as a patron for Templars. In fact that is even better than the original 2e solution presenting them as clerics.

 

[Zardnaar]

Warlocks make some amount if sense in the setting- as NPCs.

I don't like the idea of them replacing the Templars but the Sorcerer Kings had pet defilers, some of which could be warlocks.

The city states couldn't support large amounts of warlocks as Templars. The reason they use Templars over defilers us fairly obvious.

Sorcerer's could fit but would probably need an Athasian subclass. Wild maybe, Dragon no.

I would use the original boxed set. New stuff is fine but it has to make sense for the setting.

This means no to done PHB races or if they are a yes they're mutants.

New races that make sense for the setting are fine.

Genasi and Yuan Ti come to mind. I would add those two and 1-2 more.

Some spells on Athas shouldn't work or be nerfed a'la spells that create metal, food and water.

Races. As 2E plus ones that make sense. No to everything else. Sidebar in your games you can add whatever but they're mist likely mutants. Don't mention the pristine tower.

Classes. The following are suitable for a Darksun game. List then and explain how they relate to setting. Sidebar anything off this list ask DM. Include suggestions on them eg Warlocks could police the Templars, Dragon Sorcerer's people think they're mutants.

Monsters. The following are suitable for Darksun. List MM VgtR and Mordenkainen. This is what 2E did.

 

[Coroc]

Warlocks make some amount if sense in the setting- as NPCs.

...

The city states couldn't support large amounts of warlocks as Templars. The reason they use Templars over defilers us fairly obvious.

....

Why? I mean, i'm on your boat with Templars being NPCs unless you play an all evil campaign, but what is the problem to make them warlocks, give them some cleric spells for their list so they can cast healing also if you want that? Is it somehow canon that they have control over undead like clerics, well there are spells for that also. Of course their powers as per PHB have to be thoroughly sorted out, to make everything fit, but as they are mainly NPCs this should not be to difficult.

See, the problem I always had with Templars being clerics, is that cleric implies a faith. That they have to be faithful to their SK is clear, but most faiths imply a god, and SKs are only godlike, at best demigods. The warlocks otoh do it for the power, and that's what I think of DS Templars, power hungry bureaucrats.

 

[Zardnaar]

Why? I mean, i'm on your boat with Templars being NPCs unless you play an all evil campaign, but what is the problem to make them warlocks, give them some cleric spells for their list so they can cast healing also if you want that? Is it somehow canon that they have control over undead like clerics, well there are spells for that also. Of course their powers as per PHB have to be thoroughly sorted out, to make everything fit, but as they are mainly NPCs this should not be to difficult.

See, the problem I always had with Templars being clerics, is that cleric implies a faith. That they have to be faithful to their SK is clear, but most faiths imply a god, and SKs are only godlike, at best demigods. The warlocks otoh do it for the power, and that's what I think of DS Templars, power hungry bureaucrats.

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.