Dark Sun

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Ares

Grandmaster Knight
So I hear this may be the next 4.0 setting.
Back in they day it was my favourite settin ever. Any of you guys have fond memories? Want it re released?
Just curious as to who remembers it and how you felt about it.
 
Meh, 4th edition is entirely too immersion breaking for my group, so we don't play it.
That said, aside from the two excellent video games they made I never really encountered the setting as a kid. Then again, I never got into any of the pen and paper D&D games until third edition came out; it was too hard to find players.
 
Dark Sun was probably one of my favourite settings after Planescape. Always thought of it as "D&D Mad Max" for some reason (possibly the prevalence of deserts :lol:).

Doubt WotC can pull it off, but it would be nice to see it make a return.
 
Aren't magic users gimped in that setting? You're either a defiler and are hunted down by the god kings, or a preserver and have practically no juice whatsoever compared to the elemental priests.
 
Considering how powerful psionicists were, I never really noticed the magic users. Still, this is 4th edition so every class will be stripped of any flavor and all will be carefully balanced so that no one is special or distinct.
 
fisheye said:
Aren't magic users gimped in that setting? You're either a defiler and are hunted down by the god kings, or a preserver and have practically no juice whatsoever compared to the elemental priests.
Defilers get the most powerful spells, but they can only cast them where they can suck up the juice to do so (since most of the big nasties tend to be found out in the wastes, this can be a rather big issue) the preserver on the other hand has weaker powers, but can use them virtually anywhere. The Elemental Priests tend to sit between the two; moderate powers with moderate casting restrictions.

As for persecution, some areas are ran by/fine with defilers, others are ran by/fine with preservers. Each will usually persecute their opposite, so it generally depends on where you are based and the DM really.
 
4th is optimized for the heroic dungeon crawl, so it's going to play very differently from 3.5. I do like how some aspects are far less retarded (spellcaster-melee balance, item creation, DM encounter creation), but at the same time, I miss some of 3.5's little idiosyncracies.

Anyway, it's likely that any power boosts or penalties will be built into the environment. They could create powers that get to roll extra dice in addition to the damage boost in a certain geographical area, but those would be prone to abuse.
 
I... really do not miss the 3.5 disparity between classes (cannot excuse it as 'flavour' either, Being a fighter-type sucked. Always.) and the ridiculous amount of number crunching involved.

I am no math geek.
 
Night Ninja said:
They could create powers that get to roll extra dice in addition to the damage boost in a certain geographical area, but those would be prone to abuse.
It's not a power boost per se. The difference between defilers and preservers is more how they draw out their power rather than where. Defilers take what they need as quickly as possible which usually kills the subject. Preservers take it slowly so that the subject has time to recover. One of the main dangers of playing a preserver was the risk of inadvertently sucking up a tiny bit too much juice and killing the source; do that too often and your alignment would start spiralling downwards (plus most of your preserver comrades would consider you a traitor).

In fact, they'd be better off just using the spell casting times to do it. The quicker you cast a spell, the more damage caused to those nearby to fuel it. The alignment rules should dictate whether the character would fall in with the preserver or defiler category; though of course deliberately identifying with a given group would be a roleplaying choice. In theory, anything a defiler can do a preserver could also achieve, given sufficient time and/or subjects such that they could siphon off the necessary life force without killing anything. In practice, you can't exactly ask something to refrain from eating you for an hour or two while you siphon off enough power for a decent fireball.





 
I have this feeling that that fluff is going to go away because it's too inconvenient for them to incorporate.  They've done the same with the Forgotten Realms, it might happen with Dark Sun.
 
Defilers and Preservers are the raison d'être of athas, and defiling is the source of the power of the demi-god dragon kings. It'll be in somehow, but probably big changes will be seen since 4e is highly simplified. Keeping track of where you've defiled is a pain in the ass (can't cast fireball twice without physically moving) and the preserver is poorly balanced vs other classes (as it should be). Basically makes magic-users unworkable.

I agree that the bonuses to psionics and the penalties to arcane magic make the magic route somewhat unimportant unless you're really gunning for ascension as a dragon or avangion in an epic-level campaign (but who gets to epic-level on athas?). Almost anything you can accomplish with spells you can get to a certain extent with psionics.

The natural thing to me would be to make magic users become an NPC class in athas and replace their party roles with psionicists and clerics. I guess this is what Night Ninja means.
 
They could also go with refluffing by saying that the Sorceror, Warlock and Wizard count as variations of psionicists in that setting and changing some keywords.

Losing the arcane classes isn't much of a loss anyway (Warlock is made of fail, archers kick the sorceror's ass, and there's always the swordmage, fighter and invoker if you need control) unless you're into orb-locking things, and that's smelly munchkin cheese of the highest order. :razz:
 
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