Wizards in a rough patch?

[Vocenoctum]

Dark Sun deviated in quite a few ways from the 2nd ed core rules. A 3rd ed version would have to deviate in similar ways in order to keep the feel. This especially applies to character generation:
* Many of the races need modification.
* Clerics should have a relatively small core list of spells with additional ones depending on element. Ditto for druids.
* Templars should have access to all cleric spells including all the elemental ones, but not cast as many per day (for some reason, the athas.org conversion made templars the opposite, like clerical sorcerers - few spells known, but can cast lots of them).
* Wizards are separated into preservers (like normal wizards) and defilers (faster advancement but kills any plant life nearby when casting spells).
* Bards don't cast spells, but get better access to rogue skills and get special poison abilities.

Those are the main things I can think of at the moment that would need changing in the 3e core rules to play Dark Sun as it is supposed to be.

Basically those are all the same deviations from 2e. A DS setting is certainly possible under 3e, but the Dragon issues had a different focus then the full setting book would. It's still a good starting point IMO.

But anyway, a 3.5 version of DS would be about the same level of modification as Midnight is, so not too hard. I think Midnight did a good job of presenting the setting in the core also. Add on books are nice, but not needed.

 

[Turjan]

I'm much more likely to use some of the funky material from Heroes of Battle or Weapons of Legacy in my game (such as guardian spirits, legacay weapons, dmg II evil-NPC statblocks, etc.) than something like a Dark Sun book, where much of the material is of no value to me unless I play the setting.

I've never understood this sentiment. I often buy setting books exactly for that, mining them for ideas and crunch.

FWIW, I believe that Erik Mona stated that the reason they did things the way they did in the Dark Sun article was to make it accessible to groups using the core rules; it wasn't faithful to the setting, but they decided that the article really wasn't meant for the hardcore faithful anyhow, so it wasn't an issue. IOW, it was a DS article for people unfamiliar with and not fans of DS. Whether or not that was a wise decision is another matter, but there we are.

That's fine. D&D3.x is all about balance. Dark Sun was one of the worst violators in this regard . Unfortunately, that's one of the most difficult barriers to overcome without losses in a 3.x conversion.

 

[Turjan]

Part of the problem a lot of people saw with the Paizo version of Dark Sun was it was trying to fit Dark Sun into the 3e rules set, instead of fitting the 3e rules set into Dark Sun.

Expressing Dark Sun accurately would put it so far afield of what many players consider "D&D", that it would probably be best served by being a separate OGL/d20 entity.

True. This probably means that we will never see it.

Edit: Then again, much of the difference was just flavour. Changing favoured classes, making elves short-lived or portraying halflings as cannibalistic ancestor race may look different, but really isn't. Those races with level adjustment are already a bit more of a problem. Re-defining the role and mechanics of the cleric is tricky. The most severe problem is probably getting flavour and balance of defilers and preservers right. I should think about this a bit more before making statements like above .

 

[Anax]

There've been some pretty interesting comments in this thread--just thought I'd chime in with my thoughts.

I've just recently gone on a spree, and bought all of the Eberron books since the ECS--I like this setting, and (except for EXPLORER'S HANDBOOK, which I'm not sure about yet), it's some nice, solid stuff.

Part of that is that it doesn't have the history that FR or Greyhawk has. Part of it is that it was designed as a campaign setting from the get-go, and didn't evolve out of a lot of stuff that was already around. That means, for example, that there are a reasonably small number of nations to cover... FIVE NATIONS hits the majority of the civilized world, and only has to cover five countries. Because of that, there was plenty of room to give backstory, some detailed NPCs (both singular people and general types), a handful of organizations, maybe a prestige class. And that's just about the perfect density to give a really really good feel for the places. Compare that to either FR or Greyhawk, and you see that either of those settings has trouble partially because there are so damned many places to talk about.

That said, I really wish that they would release more detailed Greyhawk material than just the Gazeteer... a friend of mine has pretty much all of the old GH stuff, but not everybody is that lucky. And even with the old stuff, you have to put some time in to adapt things. And on top of that, we have difficulty thinking about how to fit higher-level campaigning (15+) into the setting.


ANYway. The Eberron stuff is really well done, and I'm looking forward to more. Depending on how our current campaign goes, I may try to run an Eberron campaign (rather than the nearly-one-shot I did right after the ECS came out.)

(Note about the Mindset spells: I hope we see more of those in MAGIC OF EBERRON, and perhaps some back-patches to make some existing spells Mindset spells. I totally failed to notice these in my first pass through RACES OF EBERRON, but they're a great idea... Not only do they give a little more power to the memorizing classes, who get shorted a bit at times, but they also constrain those classes a bit more by making you have to consider memorizing a spell instead of leaving a spot free to fill later in the day when you have a specific task in mind.)


For the other books: I disagree with what seems to be the majority here about some of the books. The "complete" books don't really appeal to me, primarily because they have too many prestige classes. Prestige classes can be fun, but I much prefer the very small number (with detailed background material) in FIVE NATIONS to the great hordes of them in each of the Complete books.

I may be missing out a bit there, though. I'm much less irritated by large selections of feats than I am by large selections of prestige classes--primarily because a feat selection doesn't dominate a character the way a PrC level does, and because individual feats don't carry quite as much weird flavor with them. Because of that, I should probably take a second look at the Complete books to see what I'm missing out on when I discard them for the sake of PrCs I'll never use (or late any player of mine use.)


The environment books are very interesting, though I haven't bought any of them yet. (I've been on a budget the last several months, and the Eberron books were first on my list.) Even though the core rules cover a lot of situations pretty well, having a lot of detailed ideas and rules for specific environments can be very very handy. I don't know how much I'll like them--I'm recalling from glancing through FROSTBURN that there were some weird special materials and such in there, but also that there were some good bits about things like travel by sleigh. At the very least, though, these books provide distinctive background material that you can use to flavor parts of the world (any world), rather than even more character options.


MAGIC OF INCARNUM and WEAPONS OF LEGACY, I've been inclined to avoid. They're potentially interesting, but also kind of big changes to the world (Like the GHOSTWALK stuff, although I must admit I bought that book.)


In the end, I think that WotC is having a rough patch--not because they're starting to suck, but because they're having to think much harder about things they can do *besides* throw together huge masses of prestige classes. A lot of companies have done that, and WotC has done it, too. So, they're moving into the terrain of introducing more detailed images of races, of different climates, and they're introducing some big variant rules stuff (like Incarnum and legacy items.) Some of these things will be brilliant, and some of them won't be so good.

I'm going to keep buying WotC over third-party stuff, though... mainly because I've been burned with too much third-party material that was poorly designed, edited, and balanced than even the worst of the WotC material. (And also was inclined to change *too much*, which I can only attribute to a strange need to one-up WotC.)

And hell, I can always hope that some day WotC will release "The Frigging Huge Book of All Things Greyhawk". Delusions are good, right?

 

[Ranger REG]

Basically those are all the same deviations from 2e.

And yet they labeled DS as a D&D product back then? :\

 

[Turjan]

And yet they labeled DS as a D&D product back then? :\

AD&D 2E wasn't a fully integrated system like D&D 3.x. It was much easier to change even fundamental aspects without having negative results for other rule subsystems, which could stay the same as in basic 2E. Or look at balancing elements like different level progression tables; you cannot do that in 3.x, but you must find balanced abilities per class level that are similar between classes (or have level adjustment, which isn't necessarily the same).

The last thing you can do is make the defiler stronger than the preserver and balance that out with roleplaying penalties. That's where the Dragon/Dungeon undead defiler comes into play.

 

[Ranger REG]

AD&D 2E wasn't a fully integrated system like D&D 3.x. It was much easier to change even fundamental aspects without having negative results for other rule subsystems, which could stay the same as in basic 2E. Or look at balancing elements like different level progression tables; you cannot do that in 3.x, but you must find balanced abilities per class level that are similar between classes (or have level adjustment, which isn't necessarily the same).

The last thing you can do is make the defiler stronger than the preserver and balance that out with roleplaying penalties. That's where the Dragon/Dungeon undead defiler comes into play.

You're not suggesting we go back to separate class XP tables, are you?

 

[tetsujin28]

The problem with a single book for the setting is that after a while it begins to get stale. You want more and when you don't get it, you turn away.

Maybe you want more. But I tend to be more of a hardcore fan who needs a basic idea I can run with.

 

[Turjan]

You're not suggesting we go back to separate class XP tables, are you?

No, I don't. I just used them as example for design limitations that are intrinsic to 3.x because they are integrated into other rule systems. That's principally a good thing, but doesn't always allow for faithful replication of old designs.

 

[Staffan]

Such as?

Elves have no special resistance to magic, sleep just like everyone else, and have a higher base move. Dwarves don't get any racial combat bonuses, but they get a "focus" ability to represent their single-minded dedication to a task. Half-elves are outcasts and should get bonuses to things that make it easier to survive in the wilds. Gnomes (and half-orcs) don't exist. New racial descriptions are needed for half-giants, thri-kreen, and muls (half-dwarves).

So, do we ditch [elemental] domains or change them ? Do we also modify the class spell list for both clerics and druids?

Ditch the domains and rewrite the class spell lists.

Base or Prestige class?

Templars are a base class.

I don't know about faster advancement (if you're referring to XP and level), but I guess they should get a temporary boost of level when ... for lack of a better word ... "empowering" spells, at the expense of killing nature.

In 2e, defilers were exactly like normal wizards, except they destroyed nearby vegetation (nearby in this case could mean up to 30 yards, depending on terrain and spell level, or even more if they cast many spells from the same place) and had a faster XP table (by the time a defiler was 20th level, a preserver (= normal wizard) was 17th or 18th). In my non-playtested writeup, I let them skip a few levels of spellcasting, so that at 17th level they had the same spell progression as a 20th level wizard.

But what happened to the Rogue class? Would it be diminished by the the boosting of the Bard class?

Thieves (in 2e, "Rogue" was the collective name for both thieves and bards, just like "Warrior" was the collective name for fighters, paladins, and rangers) were pretty much unchanged, except that they got a chance of attracting a noble patron instead of being able to create their own guild. The revised edition of Dark Sun also gave them some additional thieving skills (Forge documents, Bribe officials, and Escape Bonds). And while the bard got access to all thieving skills, they didn't get any additional points to spend on them.