It's Dark Sun

[Fallen Seraph]

Alrighty my own speculation:

Races:

• Thri-Keen
• Muls
• I think we could see perhaps a variety of Feats, or switch-out templates for other races.

Classes:
I could see lots of Feats, new Powers, etc. to make classes feel more appropriate for Dark Sun. Primal getting stuff dealing with sand, Arcane the Defiler stuff and so forth. I really don't know what class they will bring in.

Other Stuff:
Just like FR had Spell-Plague and Eberron Dragonmarks. Dark Sun will have some manner of Psionic Wild Talent.

As Dark Sun is shaping in my head right now. It is going to be a setting with lots of the crunch for PCs focused on feel, and while allowing lots of things from core showing how it would be done in Dark Sun. Such as Defilers, or Elementals and Divine Classes.

 

[MrMyth]

My first response to the news was to feel truly sorry for fans of Dark Sun. But if they honestly try to avoid the 4e FR treatment and cram default 4e into a setting as unique as Dark Sun, maybe, just maybe they'll have learned from their mistakes up to this point. One can only hope.

Worry does seem natural, but this seems to pretty much ignore the existence of 4E Eberron, which keeps the setting entirely intact while incorporating 4E elements without any difficulties at all.

Now, I think doing so with Dark Sun will be more difficult, but they seem aware of this, obviously willing to keep elements intact (gods are absent or dead), and thus far, I'm very excited about where this will go.

The only setting that might have gotten more interest from more would have been Planescape - but given how incredible a job they've done incorporating the elements of that into the default setting itself, I'm fine letting it remain at that.

 

[Obryn]

You are basically talking about me. If this setting ends up as good as I hope it does, next August I'll be marching out of my FLGS with an armload of 4e books...this coming from a guy who has never played or expressed an interest to play 4e.

One more note, this is a really BIG deal to me. So big in fact that it actually made me decide to stop lurking, register, and post.

Awesome! And welcome to the site!

I am also hoping it rocks. Although, truth be told, I'll buy it even if it doesn't. Like I said before, I have no compunctions about ripping the mechanical heart out of a sourcebook and putting it in a dead setting's body. It'll be like Zombie Dark Sun. Or Frankensun.

-O

 

[Nai_Calus]

You forgot the bit where changelings have been re-flavored as a kind of flesh-and-blood warforged, and have been infiltrating the fleet.

I didn't forget that, I just didn't mention it because it's supposed to be a huge shock to the players when they find out. Especially with the requirement that at least one party member is one unknowingly.

 

[drothgery]

Defiling is a mechanic best kept to evil NPCs, I think?
Problem with it is that defiling *IS* more powerful than normal wizardry, the defilers won (the sorceror kings), they wiped out the preservers almost entirely because...defilers are more powerful.

No one, bar the most scummy/despserate of folk will tolerate defilers, because they destory plants (food etc), and only high level defilers can use the "Create Tree Of Life" spell (Tree of Life is a magiclaly imbued tree that's pretty resistant to defiling...sorceror kings have hundreds of them).

So, it'd be hard to balance defiler PCs, and, hard to integrate them into most parties.
??

This. I'd imagine defiling is not a PC option; it's an NPC villian ability.

 

[MrMyth]

Defiling is a mechanic best kept to evil NPCs, I think?
Problem with it is that defiling *IS* more powerful than normal wizardry, the defilers won (the sorceror kings), they wiped out the preservers almost entirely because...defilers are more powerful.

At least one way to have Defiling as a balanced mechanic would be to make it a ritual - you destroy X life force in the area, and get to recharge a healing surge / daily power / etc. Still strong, thematically appropriate, but by removing its combat ability, it doesn't make you too powerful. Meanwhile, you could have a Defiler wizard build that simply has many powers based around absorbing life force and similar effects.

Now, that's just some quick ideas thrown out there - but it does seem like some method would be doable, whether it is this or something else. I definitely agree it will be a tricky task, but I don't think it is an impossible one.

 

[Obryn]

Now, that's just some quick ideas thrown out there - but it does seem like some method would be doable, whether it is this or something else. I definitely agree it will be a tricky task, but I don't think it is an impossible one.

I like the cut of your jib, sir!

-O

 

[Roman]

I haven't read the thread apart from the first post announcing this news, but as a huge Dark Sun fan, I cannot help but feel saddened it is being revived in 4E, which I am not a fan of at all. The reason I care one way or another with respect to what settings make it to 4E is that once 5E or 6E comes along and I might start playing the current edition again, these settings will have been ruined forever by Realms* Shattering Events (*replace 'Realms' by the appropriate setting name) and various retcons to fit the settings into the 4E mold, as was done with Forgotten Realms. With Realms it was hard to swallow, but it will be worse now, because now it is the turn of my favorite official campaign setting to be butchered.

 

[vagabundo]

That's not what I meant to imply at all; I should have phrased it more clearly. If he doesn't want the setting to change, as it's in a state that he likes, and is in that state in a fashion that is playable for a game (or game version) that he enjoys, why would it matter for his play/interest/existential wellbeing if it were changed in a fashion he didn't enjoy in its incarnation in a game (version) he didn't enjoy? It'd be like me being upset however many years ago when White Wolf changed the Trinity/Aberrant/Adventure! timeline (albeit slightly, so not necessarily an apples:apples example) for the games' translation into d20. Sure, it changes things that I liked about the games in a system that I (in the horrible foolishness of my youth, I admit! [Seriously, Aberrant had mechanical problems you could pass a men's big & tall clothing store through.]) preferred to accomodate a system that I did not enjoy, but...I still had the books on my shelf to play the game I wanted to play! It affected literally nothing of my gaming life.

Exactly. If you likes what you see from the previews and impressions then buy the books - covert the stuff you like if you wish. If you dont like what you see then ignore it, your no worse off.

I'm not sure how fans of the setting could be disapointed in anyway by this announcement, becuase they can only gain, they lose nothing. Nothing!!

 

[Aloïsius]

I haven't read the thread apart from the first post announcing this news, but as a huge Dark Sun fan, I cannot help but feel saddened it is being revived in 4E, which I am not a fan of at all. The reason I care one way or another with respect to what settings make it to 4E is that once 5E or 6E comes along and I might start playing the current edition again, these settings will have been ruined forever by Realms* Shattering Events (*replace 'Realms' by the appropriate setting name) and various retcons to fit the settings into the 4E mold, as was done with Forgotten Realms. With Realms it was hard to swallow, but it will be worse now, because now it is the turn of my favorite official campaign setting to be butchered.

If you had read the thread, you would know that the only Desert Shatering Event announced for Dark Sun 4e was... None. The timeline is reset to the original boxed set. Your complaint is misplaced.
By the way, WotC's ability to cancel the revised Dark Sun setting background also "butchers" your other complaint : a setting is not "ruined*" forever.

And one last thing : 6 or 7 more years without a new edition would have killed Dark Sun, as Mystara has been killed, and there would never have been a 5e Dark Sun. To stay alive and keep its traction, a setting needs some kind of support.


* I find this rhetoric offensive. Elminsterization "ruined" the FR more than the spellplague for me. To each his own...