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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 7161640" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>Druids were in Dark Sun all along, with the change that they gained their power from a pact with a particular Spirit of the Land, and their spell access was determined by the land they were guarding (they would have major access to the sphere of Cosmos as well as that of an element appropriate to their guarded land, and possibly minor access to a second appropriate element - a druid guarding an oasis would have major access to Water, but one guarding a volcanic hot spring would have major access to Water and minor to Fire).</p><p></p><p>The late-comer druid thing you're thinking of is probably a particular group of druids mentioned in Mindlords of the Last Sea, the surfing druids of the tiny beach village of Cuarsen. That was a horrible, horrible idea, and should be expunged in any reasonable rewrite (assuming they even describe the lands outside the Tyr region in a hypothetical 5th edition version).</p><p></p><p>That said, you do make a good point otherwise. To take Dark Sun as an example, it changed quite a lot over its run, particularly as a result of the Prism Pentad-fueled metaplot. My personal opinion is that some of those changes were good and brought some variety to the setting (which was kind of monotonous in the original version), but the means by which those changes came about were bad and heavy-handed.</p><p></p><p>For those interested who don't know much about Dark Sun, the original boxed set covered an area called the Tyr Region or the Tablelands, about the size of Spain. This region had seven city-states, all governed in much the same way: a mighty sorcerer-monarch (who was a dual-classed level 21+ wizard/psionicist, with the equivalent of a prestige class that gradually transformed them into a dragon) at the top, served by a hierarchy of templars (priests who received magical power from the sorcerer-monarch, and had a number of civic powers like being able to command/accuse/judge the citizens of their particular city-state), and with noble houses owning most of the city and its slaves. There were some differences - for example, Balic made pretenses of being a representative democracy (but if the people voted wrong, the sorcerer-king Andropinis had a tendency to become wroth), and Draj had some heavy Aztec overtones with human sacrifice and stuff, but by and large those differences were cosmetic.</p><p></p><p>The Prism Pentad was a pentalogy of novels that drove some heavy change in the setting, particularly in the first and fifth books. In the first book (the Verdant Passage), we follow a group of heroes who learn that Kalak, the sorcerer-king of Tyr, is going to attempt a ritual that will rapidly progress him through the stages of dragon-hood (in game terms, from 21st to 30th level) at the cost of draining the life of the whole city of Tyr. They manage to stop and kill him before he can complete this ritual, and proclaim Tyr to be a democracy and end slavery.</p><p></p><p>In the final book, the heroes manage to first kill another sorcerer-queen, and later to kill the actual Dragon of Tyr (the guy who Kalak wanted to be like). However, doing so meant the release of the ancient being who originally powered the Sorcerer-Kings in their genocidal wars that caused the world to become what it is. Before they manage to trap this being in new bonds, he slays/banishes an additional two sorcerer-monarchs.</p><p></p><p>The end result is that after the Prism Pentad, four out of seven sorcerer-monarchs are dead or missing, and their city-states are all dealing with this in different ways. This means that there's some additional variety between the different city-states - in my opinion, a good thing. But the way we got to that point was extremely ham-handed.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 7161640, member: 907"] Druids were in Dark Sun all along, with the change that they gained their power from a pact with a particular Spirit of the Land, and their spell access was determined by the land they were guarding (they would have major access to the sphere of Cosmos as well as that of an element appropriate to their guarded land, and possibly minor access to a second appropriate element - a druid guarding an oasis would have major access to Water, but one guarding a volcanic hot spring would have major access to Water and minor to Fire). The late-comer druid thing you're thinking of is probably a particular group of druids mentioned in Mindlords of the Last Sea, the surfing druids of the tiny beach village of Cuarsen. That was a horrible, horrible idea, and should be expunged in any reasonable rewrite (assuming they even describe the lands outside the Tyr region in a hypothetical 5th edition version). That said, you do make a good point otherwise. To take Dark Sun as an example, it changed quite a lot over its run, particularly as a result of the Prism Pentad-fueled metaplot. My personal opinion is that some of those changes were good and brought some variety to the setting (which was kind of monotonous in the original version), but the means by which those changes came about were bad and heavy-handed. For those interested who don't know much about Dark Sun, the original boxed set covered an area called the Tyr Region or the Tablelands, about the size of Spain. This region had seven city-states, all governed in much the same way: a mighty sorcerer-monarch (who was a dual-classed level 21+ wizard/psionicist, with the equivalent of a prestige class that gradually transformed them into a dragon) at the top, served by a hierarchy of templars (priests who received magical power from the sorcerer-monarch, and had a number of civic powers like being able to command/accuse/judge the citizens of their particular city-state), and with noble houses owning most of the city and its slaves. There were some differences - for example, Balic made pretenses of being a representative democracy (but if the people voted wrong, the sorcerer-king Andropinis had a tendency to become wroth), and Draj had some heavy Aztec overtones with human sacrifice and stuff, but by and large those differences were cosmetic. The Prism Pentad was a pentalogy of novels that drove some heavy change in the setting, particularly in the first and fifth books. In the first book (the Verdant Passage), we follow a group of heroes who learn that Kalak, the sorcerer-king of Tyr, is going to attempt a ritual that will rapidly progress him through the stages of dragon-hood (in game terms, from 21st to 30th level) at the cost of draining the life of the whole city of Tyr. They manage to stop and kill him before he can complete this ritual, and proclaim Tyr to be a democracy and end slavery. In the final book, the heroes manage to first kill another sorcerer-queen, and later to kill the actual Dragon of Tyr (the guy who Kalak wanted to be like). However, doing so meant the release of the ancient being who originally powered the Sorcerer-Kings in their genocidal wars that caused the world to become what it is. Before they manage to trap this being in new bonds, he slays/banishes an additional two sorcerer-monarchs. The end result is that after the Prism Pentad, four out of seven sorcerer-monarchs are dead or missing, and their city-states are all dealing with this in different ways. This means that there's some additional variety between the different city-states - in my opinion, a good thing. But the way we got to that point was extremely ham-handed. [/QUOTE]
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