Is Dark Sun Coming To D&D?

WotC staff are dropping cryptic hints about campaign settings again! A couple of week ago it was Spelljammer; this time, it's Dark Sun. At Gary Con this year, during a D&D panel, WotC's Mike Mearls said of the psionic Mystic class -- "we don't need that class until we do Dark Sun."

He followed it up with with the usual note that he can't make product announcements and that all settings were part of the multiverse. You can hear the seminar on the Plot Points podcast. "Ben recorded a seminar wherein six game designers who worked on Dungeons and Dragons (Skip Williams, Jon Pickens, Zeb Cook, Ed Stark, Steve Winter, and Mike Mearls) talk about game design. During the talk, current lead designer Mike Mearls may very well have let slip what the next classic D&D game world he will be reviving next!"

Dark Sun was a campaign setting released back in the 1990s, and was a post-apocalyptic desert world called Athas, with psionics in abundance and dark survivalist themes. It made a reappearance in 2010 for D&D 4E.

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[Yaarel]

Is Dark Sun coming to 5e?

No, not anytime soon.

There will be no Dark Sun, until the Psion Mystic class is ready. And that isnt anytime soon.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I think Sorcerer is a better choice for making into a psionicist. In fact, I did just that a while back on these boards...

Meanwhile, I like the Mystic conceptually, for the most part. I think it has a few kinks that need to be worked out.

And I'd be TOTALLY behind a new Dark Sun! LOVED that campaign setting! But this time, Wizards, please -- LARGE half-giants, not this "powerful build" crap. And ditch the antlike medium sized "thri-kreen" with their little butt-pods -- back to the LARGE mantis-folk we remember and love -- REAL mantis folk with REAL mantis abdomens! There's a Sir Mix-a-Lot joke in there somewhere...

OMG, a million times YES. If you aren't 10+ feet tall, you aren't a half giant.

+4 STR, +4 CON, -2 CHA, -2 INT. Large size, disadvantage on saves vs Charm. Higher racial cap on Str.

5E doesnt have, nor require, perfect balance. Aarakocra can FLY from level 1. I think we can finally get a large race that's actually LARGE.

I also think we need a psionic base class, and a subclass for fighters and rogues analog to arcane trickster/eldritch knight. If they just refluff spells they may as well not bother, because magic acting different than psionics is a core of the setting.

 

[Dausuul]

There will be no Dark Sun, until the Psion Mystic class is ready. And that isnt anytime soon.

Source for that statement?

They've already put the mystic through a round of public playtesting, and that suggests they're pretty far along. Of course, it's possible that feedback from the playtest sent them back to the drawing board, but I didn't get any sense that there were unfixable problems with the mystic.

 

[Pauper]

How long have they been hinting at new 5E material for a Campaign setting other than Forgotten Realms? Give us something already!

I get that the cryptic hints are somewhat 'newsworthy' as speculation on potential future products, but it's rapidly getting to the point where I'm starting to expect the D&D equivalent of "Half-Life 3 confirmed!" memes any day now.

--
Pauper

 

[Superchunk77]

You are correct, at least in my case. The templar concept fits warlock like a glove. Just introduce a "Sorcerer-King" patron, and you're good to go.

IMO the elemental clerics are a better fit as warlocks. Elemental clerics were limited to their elemental sphere for spells, with minor access to the Cosmos sphere (where most of the regular cleric spells were). Warlocks have a relatively limited list of spells too, with specific spells granted based on their patron. Elemental clerics in Dark Sun made pacts (see the Earth, Air, Fire, Water book) with elemental patrons which again, meshes with the warlock pact. The only thing elemental clerics really had in common with the cleric class was the ability to turn undead, which could easily be granted via a warlock pact or invocation. Elemental clerics got a lot of special elemental abilities. Again, something warlock invocations could easily handle.

The druid class would work fine for druids in Dark Sun. You'd probably want some new circles of the land for Athasian terrain types, and some new beats for them to shape change into though.

I always thought templars would be better suited to the cleric and paladin classes. The sorcerer-kings were the closest thing to gods in Dark Sun. Templars were very different depending on which sorcerer-king they served. The ones in Gulg for example were more focused on plants and nature, easily done with the Nature divine domain or the Oath of the Ancients paladin. Hammanu's templars were very martial, they'd take War domain for sure. The cleric spell list in 5e is very similar to the sphere of the cosmos from Dark Sun, which is something that was always associated with Templars (and druids) but not with elemental clerics.

 

[machineelf]

Don't tease me.

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

Dark Sun would be an instant purchase for me. I would prefer it to Spelljammer, Planescape and Eberron. Actually, I would rather visit the dentist than have Eberron.

Dark Sun would certainly be the logical place to add psionics.

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[Alzrius]

As much as I loved Dark Sun back in AD&D 2E, I honestly can't get excited about this for 5E.

Why? Because quite honestly, we're never going to receive anything like the old Dark Sun Campaign Setting of yore. I don't just mean because boxed sets have gone the way of the dodo, either. Rather, the 5E model is to put out a hardcover adventure for a setting, and if it does well simply release more hardcover adventures, slipping new crunch in the appendices. Maybe there'll be a combination monster book/sourcebook or two, but those are comparatively unlikely. So we'll get a hardcover adventure titled "Day of the Defiler" or something similar, and that will likely be it, just like we did for Ravenloft. (And we won't see the Dark Sun logo either; 5E is far too tightly focused on "Dungeons & Dragons" as its own brand to do that.)

 

[iserith]

Why? Because quite honestly, we're never going to receive anything like the old Dark Sun Campaign Setting of yore.

Personally, I don't need any of that. Just the bits that are missing from the core D&D 5e rules that are unique to Dark Sun and I'm good to go. There is plenty of stuff on the internet for lore (and I don't mean pirating PDFs of the boxed sets).

 

[TwoSix]

You are correct, at least in my case. The templar concept fits warlock like a glove. Just introduce a "Sorcerer-King" patron, and you're good to go.

Worked great in 4e, should work just fine in 5e.