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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[Dausuul]

Something that just occurred to me about half-giants: We've been trying to think how to balance them against standard 5E PCs.

But that isn't necessary. Half-giants don't need to be balanced against a regular 5E PC; they only need to be balanced against other Dark Sun PCs. One of the design points of the original Dark Sun was that Dark Sun PCs were superior to PCs from other worlds. They were forged in the wasteland, where only the strongest survive.

5E could simply revive that idea. Of course, 2E's implementation was all over the place, but the 5E version could take a more measured approach. If half-giants get (effectively) +1 to hit and +2-3 damage from their superior Strength and larger weapons... okay, that's their "Dark Sun bonus." As long as each other Dark Sun race gets something comparable, everything's fine.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

From what I remember of 2e, being large didn't increase the damage of ones weapons, instead it meant that weapons like 2-handed swords did 3d6 damage to you.

 

[Dausuul]

From what I remember of 2e, being large didn't increase the damage of ones weapons, instead it meant that weapons like 2-handed swords did 3d6 damage to you.

Yes. In 5E, however, the opposite is true: Being large means your weapons do more damage, but other weapons' damage to you is unchanged.

 

[iserith]

I'm fine with goliaths being stand-ins for half-giants. I don't think we lose anything by not having Large-sized half-giants.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Something that just occurred to me about half-giants: We've been trying to think how to balance them against standard 5E PCs.

But that isn't necessary. Half-giants don't need to be balanced against a regular 5E PC; they only need to be balanced against other Dark Sun PCs. One of the design points of the original Dark Sun was that Dark Sun PCs were superior to PCs from other worlds. They were forged in the wasteland, where only the strongest survive.

5E could simply revive that idea. Of course, 2E's implementation was all over the place, but the 5E version could take a more measured approach. If half-giants get (effectively) +1 to hit and +2-3 damage from their superior Strength and larger weapons... okay, that's their "Dark Sun bonus." As long as each other Dark Sun race gets something comparable, everything's fine.

That's why I think (and I'll probably be banned from the forum for those heretic thoughts) that Darksun (and really, any wildly exotic settin) needs his own PHB. Mul shoudnt not be a sub-race of of PHB dwarves, Athas Halfling should be more than a PHB halfling subrace, Dms should not have to deal with a player who wants to play a tiefling cleric because its in the PHB. Even Athasian humans should have a different feel in Darksun (I can see City-Dwellers, Free-man and Wildling as subraces).

Like you say, if we try to balance races to make sense in Darksun with the race in the PHB, we'll end up with a watered down version of the setting; a kitchen-sink, FR-like setting with 50% more desert!

 

[Dausuul]

That's why I think (and I'll probably be banned from the forum for those heretic thoughts) that Darksun (and really, any wildly exotic settin) needs his own PHB. Mul shoudnt not be a sub-race of of PHB dwarves, Athas Halfling should be more than a PHB halfling subrace, Dms should not have to deal with a player who wants to play a tiefling cleric because its in the PHB. Even Athasian humans should have a different feel in Darksun (I can see City-Dwellers, Free-man and Wildling as subraces).

I wouldn't go so far as to give Athas its own PHB. It'd be straightforward enough to hand out "Dark Sun bonuses" to the PC races that appear in Athas (elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings, humans), and then add race writeups for the Dark Sun-specific races (thri-kreen, half-giants, muls).

As for players wanting to play a tiefling because it's in the PHB: I mostly regard this as the DM's problem, not the designers'. If you don't want tieflings in your Dark Sun game, and one of your players is dead set on playing a tiefling, you're gonna have to work that out between you. That said, the setting wouldn't supply a "Dark Sun bonus" for tieflings, so at least it would push the player to come talk to you before the game started, rather than just showing up to the first session with a tiefling PC.

 

[delericho]

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] #64

Were they were large as Monsters in bothe the Standard 2nd ed MM and the darksun MM, and wasn't there a Differentiation in Thri kreen and Thor kreen? I am pretty sure Thri kreen PCs in 2nd ed were medium. Otherwise they would have gotten some compensation mechanic like the halfgiants double hitpoints.

Good question - I had to check that one!

Thri-kreen are Large in the Monstrous Manual. They don't seem to appear in either the first or second MC appendices, nor are they in the first Dark Sun boxed set or the first Dark Sun MC appendix. They do appear in the second Dark Sun appendix, where they are large.

The Tohr-kreen appear in the first DS appendix (Large), with several further variants appearing in the second (a mix of Medium and Large). I don't have the revised DS box.

However...

after some further searching, I've found the original entry for them in 2nd Ed - they're in the first Forgotten Realms appendix. And they are, indeed, Medium-size there.

 

[Remathilis]

C'Mon WotC, you have Oerth, Eberron, Athas, and Krynn waiting patiently for just some love. Shemeska's Guide to the Multiverse seems like such a no-brainer: Chapter 1 is devoted to some basic info (themes, maps, unique elements) of each setting, chapter 2 is all the races (kender, warforged, mul, etc) and classes (artificer, mystic) you need to run the setting, and chapter 3 is the monsters (quori, draconians, etc) important to the setting that aren't in the MM. Then, open them up to the DMsGuild for expansion. WotC has said before that the Sword Coast Adv Guide was a poor seller and turned them off to "campaign settings", so this would be a great way to get some official support for those settings without having 4-5 setting books that may/may not sell. People will buy it for just one setting, to plane hop from setting to setting, or to harvest ideas and crunch from it.

 

[Yaarel]

The main problem with Large size is optimization that exploits reach.

Yet this seems something that is easy to balance around.

 

[AriochQ]

I think you are all ignoring the real problem with large sized PC's...grappling. The grappling rules are already quasi-broken (I say quasi because I have yet to meet a set of grappling rules that work well). 5e allows you to grapple a creature one size larger. Large PC's could basically grapple most everything. The vast majority of monsters are huge or smaller.