D&D 5E (2014) What do you want in a Dark Sun book (sans psionics)?

[Hoffmand]

My dark sun array is 17 16 15 14 13 11

 

[Fenris-77]

My dark sun array is 17 16 15 14 13 11

What would you set the max at?

 

[humble minion]

To me, the essence of dark sun is scarcity and deprivation - of water, of magic, of metal, of PC choices. I want that to bleed over into any 5e book. The whole 'everything in every sourcebook is playable in every setting!' paradigm that WotC has been sticking too since at least the release of 4e - I don't think it fits in Dark Sun. It's hard to find conceptual room in Athas for spellswords, or spellcasting bards, or dragonblood sorcerors, or arcane tricksters etc. I hope WotC are willing to say 'X do not exist in Athas' - not in a 'badwrongfun' kinda way but in a 'this is the nature of the setting as written' way. Stuff like paladins are a very awkward fit, but i can see room for them if the default oaths are changed a bit (Oath of Ancients paladins among the forest ridge halflings, maybe?)

As for content:

• thri-kreen, muls, half-giants
• templar and elemental cleric domains - which should include, you guessed it, restrictions cos water clerics shouldn't be throwing flame strikes around even though it's on the core cleric spell list. There'll probably need to be a bunch of new cleric spells to support this. (and/or a bunch dragged over from the druid list)
• preservation should be the harder path - any preserver should have the option to cast as a defiler at any tine for a quick power boost when desperation calls. The temptation should always be there
• sorcerer-king warlock pact is a cool option, and i hope it makes it in. I like the idea of warlocks, defilers, fighters, thieves and psions etc all being able to be part of a sorceror-king's templarate from an organisational point of view without being capital-T Templars from a game mechanic point of view.
• guidelines (and even possibly a new skill) for how to run trade. Trading caravans are a huge part of the setting, PCs should be able to run one, and they should have to work hard to make a buck. None of the existing skills fit. Some sort of trader subclass could be an option, but i don't really like the idea of 'if you can trade you also must be able to sneak attack' thing. Maybe a beefed-up background, or a feat? I'll leave the details to the game designers, but i hope the issue is addressed.
• maybe a page or so on dragon/avangion transformation, but don't overdo it. Vanishingly few campaigns are going to get to this power level anyway, and the 2e DS stuff devoted far too much pagespace to the nuts and bolts of it all. It's a staggeringly epic and world-shattering occurence when it happens, don't overly mechanic-ise the process.
• rules for non-metal vs metal equipment. Don't go too far into the weeds with this (or there's silly arguments etc about why a metal-tipped spear is massively harder to break than an obsidian-tipped spear...), just something rules-light but still significant to make metal equipment meaningful.
• Setting should be either pre-Prism Pentad or post-Kalak, I've got a mild preference for the latter because it makes Tyr a very DIFFERENT setting to the other city-states, but I'm good either way. Throw the rest of the Prism Pentad storyline out the window, let the PCs choose how it pans out. And while we're at it, mine the Lynn Abbey novels for the 'feel' of how city-states operate, how the templarates run, and how sorceror-kings think. 2e stuff tended towards a very Manichean viewpoint where good was good and evil was evil and defilers sought to destroy preservers simply because they were preservers and sorceror-kings were all cackling moustache-twirlers. More messiness, ambiguity, and survival compromises lends verisimilitude to the setting i think.

 

[Ogre Mage]

I'd like the Create/Destroy Water and the Create Food and Water spells to be exclusive to water domain clerics. Since Dark Sun is a land of scarcity, perhaps the spells should be limited to 1/2 power.

The food and water finding ability of the outlander background should be reduced as well.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I don't care how they solve it with game mechanics, but defiling should be easier and more powerful than preserving.

 

[Maxperson]

This is what I would like to see.

1) The Dark Sun races as they were in 2e. Elven runners, Mul, Half-Giants, etc. No new races, especially Dragonborn. The only dragons should be the ones that rule the place.

2) I'd like Tyr to be free. It's a rough and tumble world, so it's nice to have one bastion of "freedom" somewhere for the PCs to go.

3) A Templar Cleric subclass and Elemental Druid Subclass.

4) Dark Sun Monsters.

5) Lore, since it can't be assumed that people will have access to the 2e stuff.

 

[Parmandur]

Elemental Druid Subclass

Circle of the Moon has the Elemental angle kind of covered, though?

 

[Maxperson]

Circle of the Moon has the Elemental angle kind of covered, though?

Not really. The Elemental Druids of Dark Sun were more elemental than that. They would also have magical abilities keyed to elements and some new elemental spells.

 

[humble minion]

Not really. The Elemental Druids of Dark Sun were more elemental than that. They would also have magical abilities keyed to elements and some new elemental spells.

DS druids were more localist and generalist, weren't they? Very concerned with their guarded lands etc. They weren't anything like as tightly tied to the elements as elemental clerics were. A druid associated with a volcanic area, for instance, might focus more on fire-related spells but I don't think there was ever much in the way of mechanical support/enforcement of that.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I’d really love to see defining and preservation as things any caster (or at least any arcane caster) can do, rather than just arcane traditions. If that means subclasses for all the caster classes I’d be down with that, but it would be pretty disappointing if they were tied to a single class.

Maybe have variant Preservation/Defilement spellcasting rules that apply to all forms of spellcasting, and then dedicated subclasses for a few classes that take it further than the variant rules?