Dark Sun: Bringing it back

[DontEatRawHagis]

About 2 years ago I wanted to start a blog and after a month of posting I stopped. But the main topic I focused on was called the Dark Sunday where I wrote about Dark Sun and tried to come up with homebrew items. I might restart the idea sometime later, but I wanted to ask a couple of questions before I do it.

Taking from 4e's Eight Guidelines for Dark Sun:

The World is a Desert
The World is Savage
Metal is Scarce
Arcane Magic Defiles the World
Sorcerer-Kings rule the City-States
The Gods are Silent
Fierce Monsters Roam the World
Familiar Races are not what you expect


These were posted in every adventure they released for Dark Sun as well as the topic of a few Con panels. Along with these "ideals" what else would make a good 5e Dark Sun? And what would be necessary for you to play Dark Sun currently in 5e?

My current list of subjects to tackle:

Removing the Cleric and Paladin
Converting 4e Themes to 5e Backgrounds
Creating rules for Defilers
Creating Wild Psionic powers
Playing with a Mystic(playtest v2)
Playing without Psionics
Weapon/Armor Breakage variant
Various magic/cursed item ideas
Various NPC Factions, with special abilities for their members
Various Monsters


This leads to the big question, is it even viable to play Dark Sun in 5e?

[KorvinStarmast]

My current list of subjects to tackle:
Removing the Cleric and Paladin

Why? Rework their divine spells/skills as psionic. For Wild Psions, look to Wild Magic Sorcerer and see where there's some overlap.

[Blas_de_Lezo]

Why? Rework their divine spells/skills as psionic. For Wild Psions, look to Wild Magic Sorcerer and see where there's some overlap.

Because Athas is a wicked world. Paladins don't exist anymore. They were massacred a long time ago. Furthermore, no one who upholds to a Paladin code of conduct survives in Athas. Naïveness is synonim for death here. In this world, even the LG are cunning, sly and astute.

Magic is scarce. World is isolated. No god nor outsider concedes spells and arcane magic is very rare. Remove warlock, eldritch knight, arcane trickster, use the spell-less ranger (remove pretty much that has magic except druid, cleric and wizard), remove spells from bard and give him powerful poisons knowledge, craft and use.

Also remove tieflings (it's an isolated world with no connections to outsiders), gnomes (exterminated in the cleansing wars by Hamanu), dragonborns (there are no dragons in Athas, they were exterminated in the cleansing wars), gnolls (exterminated), drows (exterminated), half-orcs & orcs (exterminated), goblinoids (exterminated), kobolds (exterminated) and horses (exterminated). :smallbiggrin:

Monsters are really frightening, almost all have powerful psionics. Dwarves have no hair at all, elves are mischiveous and untrustworthy, halfling are cannibals, wizards are hated and executed when possible, defilers destroy the little plant life remaining to gain power and pleasure. City-states are ancient sumerian/babilonian flavored ruled by tyrants with iron fist in their way to becoming dragon kings (cruel beasts with absolute power). The Gods abandoned this wicked world time ago. The most similar are the dragon kings, something like gods-in-earth who conced divine power to their dread templars (something like the SS with magical powers).

Welcome to Athas.

[SharkForce]

honestly, i wouldn't say those ideals are even entirely accurate. defilers defile, but preservers don't, therefore, arcane magic does not (always) defile the world. sorcerer-kings rule most city-states, but not all. the gods are not just silent, they don't exist. and parts of the world are not desert.

anyways, to your specific points:

paladin needs to go (unless you refluff it into templars, could totally work with a few adjustments imo). clerics need to stay, but the spell list should probably change some and you need totally new archetypes (elemental and paraelemental priests are still basically clerics, just not clerics of gods).

themes to backgrounds makes sense i suppose.

defilers are going to be a problem for you if you want it as a character option, most likely. i've found that in 2nd edition players seemed to be much more accepting of imbalanced classes than they are now, and for defiler to make any sense at all it pretty much has to be more powerful (if you wanted to reflect the main 2nd edition advantage - a much more favourable XP table - you could handle that with preserver being a separate class that you multiclass into or out of, that only has a couple of levels. give it some interesting features, but not features that improve spellcasting other than perhaps giving spell slot progression and some cantrips, and you could probably get the right feeling (just don't go more than 3 levels on the preserver class). but going back to removing classes, i think the classes to remove would be warlock and sorcerer, at least flavourwise.

wild psionics depends a lot on how you want to handle it. if you want it relatively balanced, giving a single psionic discipline from mystic and the equivalent of 1/3 caster progression on psionic points seems like it should be fine, provided you give it to everyone... so long as you give some minor buff to actual psionic classes to compensate for every other class getting a small power boost.

mystics... honestly, they're playable right now, but only for a given playstyle. telepath is fairly well represented, and psychometabolic and psychoportation are represented somewhat, but that's all. tbh, i'd want to wait until mystic is fully released...

playing without psionics wouldn't really feel like dark sun, imo. unless you mean that as in you try and refluff a bunch of spells into being "psionics" or something.

weapon/armour breakage, well, i don't think armour breakage was really a thing last i recall. weapon breakage would probably be best handled by just doing something on a natural 1.

magic items and cursed items on athas mostly consisted of removing stuff that doesn't belong... should be relatively easy, imo.

NPC factions, honestly, i don't feel like they played a crucial role in the dark sun i remember, and i don't think i'd want them to be necessary in a new dark sun. there should definitely be a variety of factions, just as there would be in any setting... but none of them would really have a very large area of influence. a priest of water probably respects other priests of water, but there's no hierarchy, nor is there any hierarchy for druids. there are psionicist schools but they exercise very little influence outside of their school halls, and are generally attached to a given city. the sorcerer-kings each have power in their own city and surrounding lands, but that's really about it. merchant houses would be the closest to having a "global" reach, but even they really only have a few outposts here and there, even for the large ones. elven tribes are sort of like merchant houses, minus any sort of permanent infrastructure. villages full of escaped slaves are subject to disappearing for one reason or another at almost any moment as well. the veiled alliance would be better described as the veiled alliances, because each city has their own separate one that only barely has anything to do with other cities, if at all. ultimately, i think any use of factions would need to be specific to an individual campaign, and even then would probably only work if the campaign had a relatively limited geographic scope.

monsters... well, that might take you a while.

[Sir cryosin]

About 2 years ago I wanted to start a blog and after a month of posting I stopped. But the main topic I focused on was called the Dark Sunday where I wrote about Dark Sun and tried to come up with homebrew items. I might restart the idea sometime later, but I wanted to ask a couple of questions before I do it.

Taking from 4e's Eight Guidelines for Dark Sun:

The World is a Desert
The World is Savage
Metal is Scarce
Arcane Magic Defiles the World
Sorcerer-Kings rule the City-States
The Gods are Silent
Fierce Monsters Roam the World
Familiar Races are not what you expect


These were posted in every adventure they released for Dark Sun as well as the topic of a few Con panels. Along with these "ideals" what else would make a good 5e Dark Sun? And what would be necessary for you to play Dark Sun currently in 5e?

My current list of subjects to tackle:

Removing the Cleric and Paladin
Converting 4e Themes to 5e Backgrounds
Creating rules for Defilers
Creating Wild Psionic powers
Playing with a Mystic(playtest v2)
Playing without Psionics
Weapon/Armor Breakage variant
Various magic/cursed item ideas
Various NPC Factions, with special abilities for their members
Various Monsters


This leads to the big question, is it even viable to play Dark Sun in 5e?

Why take out paladin in 5e they are oath bounded and don't have to rely on a god to fuel there magic. They will tho need to use a component pouch instead of holy symbolize that is a Arcane Focus.
But with that said I do not know anything of the dark sun setting.

[DontEatRawHagis]

My current list of subjects to tackle:

Removing the Cleric and Paladin
Converting 4e Themes to 5e Backgrounds
Creating rules for Defilers
Creating Wild Psionic powers
Playing with a Mystic(playtest v2)
Playing without Psionics
Weapon/Armor Breakage variant
Various magic/cursed item ideas
Various NPC Factions, with special abilities for their members
Various Monsters


This leads to the big question, is it even viable to play Dark Sun in 5e?

So now I have a revised list based on your feedback. Thank you all again, if there are any more suggestions I'll keep looking at this post:

Removing the Cleric and Paladin
Converting the Cleric and Paladin to Dark Sun
Races to remove from the setting
Races of Dark Sun
Converting Races that don't exist in Dark Sun to the setting.
Converting 4e Themes to 5e Backgrounds
Converting 2e material to 5e
Creating rules for Defilers
Creating Wild Psionic powers
Playing with a Mystic(playtest v2)
Playing without Psionic Player Characters
Weapon/Armor Breakage variant
Various magic/cursed item ideas
Various NPC Factions, with special abilities for their members
Various Monsters


Looking at the Dungeon Masters Guild has excited me to no end at what I can look at. The top 5 non-comic book materials are currently:

Forest Maker 2e
Campaign Setting 2e
Beyond the Prism Petad 2e
Dungeon 195 4e
Campaign Setting 4e

I kind of what to know why Forest Maker is so popular.

[Regitnui]

Clerics aren't gone. They worship elements.

Oath of the Crown paladin = templar. Bam.

[DanyBallon]

As for myself, I would stay as far as possible from 4e Darksun, as I think it wasn't DS at all.

2e material, as well as what athas.org produced in the 3.x era

[R.Shackleford]

I saw an online explanation of a campaign once so this might be a bit off but...

They set it up where Athas was originally a prison state within a larger Spelljammer setting. The world of Athas was intentionally made in such a way and the dragon kings were originally wardens.

That was a couple thousands years ago. Now it isn't used as a prison but entertainment/scientific research. How can life survive on such a place? What's going to happen next?

[Submortimer]

So now I have a revised list based on your feedback. Thank you all again, if there are any more suggestions I'll keep looking at this post:

Converting the Cleric and Paladin to Dark Sun




Seconding this: What clerics need are Earth/fire/wind/water/(heart?) domains.
Paladins as Templars devoted to the Dragon Kings would be amazing
Preserver/Defiler Wizard subclass

[R.Shackleford]

Seconding this: What clerics need are Earth/fire/wind/water/(heart?) domains.
Paladins as Templars devoted to the Dragon Kings would be amazing
Preserver/Defiler Wizard subclass


Nah, just Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Do you remembaaah

[saintstardust]

Dwarves have no hair at all, elves are mischiveous and untrustworthy, halfling are cannibals...

I like the idea of adding Racial Background Traits relevant to some of the Dark Sun race behaviors. It would make it easier to introduce to new players.

[R.Shackleford]

I like the idea of adding Racial Background Traits relevant to some of the Dark Sun race behaviors. It would make it easier to introduce to new players.

In all honesty, no matter what settings I'm playing in, I keep the "halflings are cannibals" from dark sun.

New players love it.

[Regitnui]

In all honesty, no matter what settings I'm playing in, I keep the "halflings are cannibals" from dark sun.

New players love it.

Well, would fit fine in Eberron, since the Talents halflings are dinosaur-riding barbarians. However, the Dragonmarked Houses of Hospitality and Healing are halfling businesses as well...

[R.Shackleford]

Well, would fit fine in Eberron, since the Talents halflings are dinosaur-riding barbarians. However, the Dragonmarked Houses of Hospitality and Healing are halfling businesses as well...

Works just fine, healing and hafling* business is a front for their more sinister ways. Yeah, corruption runs deep.

*lol My phone changes halfling to hacking haha

[DontEatRawHagis]

I just bought some more of the 2e books. The reviews I saw of "The Valley of Dust and Fire" have it down as the hardest adventure ever written. I can see why as far as power level goes, damn valley is filled with Giants and Magma Golems. The environment definitely trumps any of the giants with the likelihood of dying by sand storms before even getting anywhere highly possible.

Highlight of the first section if a Fire Drake dares attack a giant camp a hunting part of 20 giants will track it down and kill it.

It surprised me how little the last section goes into detail about the Dragon. Especially considering how high level this adventure seems to be.

[Inevitability]

dragonborns (there are no dragons in Athas, they were exterminated in the cleansing wars)

I must disagree here. Ever heard of the dray? Basically: an insane sorcerer-king (is there any other kind?) who had already taken on some draconic characteristics decided to create a race of creatures in his image. The result were the dray, which 4e subtly changed to fit that edition's dragonborn stats. In other words: dragonborn do exist on Athas.

[EvilAnagram]

The Blade Warlock makes a good Templar class. Fey Pact is the only one that makes sense to me.

[PaxZRake]

Also remove tieflings (it's an isolated world with no connections to outsiders), gnomes (exterminated in the cleansing wars by Hamanu), dragonborns (there are no dragons in Athas, they were exterminated in the cleansing wars), gnolls (exterminated), drows (exterminated), half-orcs & orcs (exterminated), goblinoids (exterminated), kobolds (exterminated) and horses (exterminated). :smallbiggrin:

There is the one Dragon, and that could be super interesting from an adventure hook perspective to have a PC that is somehow related to him.

EDIT: And personally I like to think that Kalak succeeded in his ascension.

[DontEatRawHagis]

I like the idea of adding Racial Background Traits relevant to some of the Dark Sun race behaviors. It would make it easier to introduce to new players.


I must disagree here. Ever heard of the dray? Basically: an insane sorcerer-king (is there any other kind?) who had already taken on some draconic characteristics decided to create a race of creatures in his image. The result were the dray, which 4e subtly changed to fit that edition's dragonborn stats. In other words: dragonborn do exist on Athas.


There is the one Dragon, and that could be super interesting from an adventure hook perspective to have a PC that is somehow related to him.

EDIT: And personally I like to think that Kalak succeeded in his ascension.

With the interest in Athasian Races, which races should I focus on?

[Anonymouswizard]

First off, can I go on record with my opinion that 5e is too magic heavy for Dark Sun? Thank you, onto the thread topic.


Removing the Cleric and Paladin

The cleric actually works better in 5e than it did in 3e. You'll want to remove all the existing domains (although Tempest might be okay for air, I'm AFB) and replace them with Air/Earth/Fire/Water, but it works great for Dark Sun elemental priests.

Paladin is one of the two options for Templars. The other, and my preferred option, is Warlock with a Dragon King pact (not currently statted), and to be honest Warlock could be used for Elemental Priests if you really do want to get rid of the Cleric (just make a set of Air/Earth/Fire/Water pacts).

For that matter, if you're not using them for Templars/Elemental Priests, Warlocks need to die in a fire. Sorcerers should as well, a rather neat thing about Athas is that all mages are trained, not born, because drawing life energy is difficult (and putting it back even more complex).


Converting 4e Themes to 5e Backgrounds

Eh, I think most of the 5e backgrounds would work, and the only new one I can definitely see being needed would be Slave. I like the idea of Templars as either Fighters or Wizards with the Acolyte background.


Creating rules for Defilers

Here we need to know if you mean 2e defilers or 4e defilers. 2e defilers had no choice but to defile but got extra power (specifically they gained levels significantly faster, Athas.org changed this a bit for 3e), while Preservers didn't defile (although I think they technically could if they wanted to, it had no benefit in the original boxed set). In 4e I believe defiling was just something any arcane character could optionally do when casting a spell, and there were no mages forced to defile. Each has different flavours, although the 2e model makes a lot more sense for Athas.


Creating Wild Psionic powers

Wild Psionics subclass on whatever system you use for psionics.


Playing with a Mystic(playtest v2)

Eh, either do this or make a new version of the Sorcerer.


Playing without Psionics

Just don't have any players use psionic classes/subclasses.


Weapon/Armor Breakage variant

Eh, not really a big deal, you want to represent how stone and bone weapons are inferior somehow, but it doesn't have to be fragility.


Various Monsters

That's a given.


This leads to the big question, is it even viable to play Dark Sun in 5e?

To me? No. Too many classes in the PhB rely on magic. To someone who doesn't mind more preservers running around it might be okay, but not to me.

[EvilAnagram]

To me? No. Too many classes in the PhB rely on magic. To someone who doesn't mind more preservers running around it might be okay, but not to me.
Well, you have two Fighter archetypes, two Rogue archetypes, the non-caster Ranger variant, the Monk, and the Barbarian. You can refluff Warlocks as Templars, use Wizards with two school options (defiler, preserver), and use Wild Sorcerers and Mystics for psionics. Tempest Cleric makes a solid air elemental priest, Light Cleric for fire, Druid for earth, and Cold Dragon Sorcerer for water.

Seems fine to me.

[DontEatRawHagis]

Wild Sorcerers and Mystics for psionics.

I'd personally stick away from the Wild Sorcerer. Its randomness is not like a Wild Psionist. Wild Psions are more untrained. Where as Wild Sorcerers are likely to turn your nearest ally into a sheep or summon modrons by accident.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well, you have two Fighter archetypes, two Rogue archetypes, the non-caster Ranger variant, the Monk, and the Barbarian. You can refluff Warlocks as Templars, use Wizards with two school options (defiler, preserver), and use Wild Sorcerers and Mystics for psionics. Tempest Cleric makes a solid air elemental priest, Light Cleric for fire, Druid for earth, and Cold Dragon Sorcerer for water.

Seems fine to me.

Excepts Druids are separate from clerics in 2e... they are much more about preserving nature.

[EvilAnagram]

Excepts Druids are separate from clerics in 2e... they are much more about preserving nature.

True. Maybe use the Cleric or Sorcerer chassis, but focus on the earth spells. There are a ton of earth transmutation spells this edition.

[Regitnui]

If I recall correctly, the druids of dark sun were quite... Aggressive in their protection of what few wild places still exist. To the point where murder was their primary interaction with those who didn't know the Druidic language. Even if they were good aligned.

[Anonymouswizard]

If I recall correctly, the druids of dark sun were quite... Aggressive in their protection of what few wild places still exist. To the point where murder was their primary interaction with those who didn't know the Druidic language. Even if they were good aligned.

Not quite. Murder was their primary interaction with those who misused their lands. If you used them correctly (stopping by an oasis, letting your flocks graze for a while) you'd rarely seem them. So you're correct, but lacking context.

[Regitnui]

Thanks. I thought I had forgotten some detail.

[JackPhoenix]

GoO pact warlock is easily refluffed as some sort of psion: telepathy, Telekinesis and various mind controlling abilities in spell list, Agonising Blast turns Eldritch Blast into a telekinetic strike...propably tome (to nab some flavorful cantrips) or blade (I've used blade pact refluffed as changing users hand into a weapon, which IIRC was part of psionic's arsenal... tentacle working as whip, claws working as short sword, long bone blade working as longsword, massive plated bone fists as warhammer...think Alex Mercer from Prototype), chain doesn't fit.

Light domain cleric is pretty much fire priest, only needs a refluff for few abilities (and perhaps change their automatic Light cantrip to Produce Flame or Firebolt

As for races, Mul (half-dwarves), half-giant (modified Goliaths?) and Kreen are pretty much all that's needed.

[DontEatRawHagis]

The backgrounds look like they might be the ones I finish first. However, the races and class variations are going to be sprinkled in between.

[KorvinStarmast]

Because Athas is a wicked world. Paladins don't exist anymore. I guess you don't want to try reskinning. Got it.

[Theodoxus]

The question is, are you using the world as it existed in 2E or 4E or are you updating it to 5E?

I think it would be interesting, given how paladins have changed to Oaths, that there would be a resurgent of orders. A bit like the Jedi post Return of the Jedi - someone stumbles upon a mystical force, call it the precursor to the Oath of Devotion, that opens their eyes to the injustices of the Sorcerer-Kings - and, more importantly, grants them the power to actually counter them. It would probably be akin to the power of the Avangoin.

Anyway, as much as I love the 2E DS take on Athas, I think it'd be far more fun to update the whole world to reflect inclusion of all the classes - though as above, cleric domains need to be swapped out for elemental ones. Though I've been a heavy proponent for more domains, so this would make me happy in general...

[DontEatRawHagis]

The question is, are you using the world as it existed in 2E or 4E or are you updating it to 5E?
My plan for the Blog when I build up my articles is for it to be timeline neutral. Mainly due to how split it seems about what people like of the setting. If I mention a specific city-state for an adventure it will most likely assume 4e/2e Tyr Rebellion, i.e. immediately after Kalak dies. But I might do an adventure that is based on the first Prism Pentad book.


I think it would be interesting, given how paladins have changed to Oaths, that there would be a resurgent of orders. A bit like the Jedi post Return of the Jedi - someone stumbles upon a mystical force, call it the precursor to the Oath of Devotion, that opens their eyes to the injustices of the Sorcerer-Kings - and, more importantly, grants them the power to actually counter them. It would probably be akin to the power of the Avangoin.
Cool idea. There is one mention of a Paladin-like entity in one of the books. I can't remember which, but it was described as the last follower of a deity and that it guarded the candles inside the temple making sure they would never go out. Apparently if an evil person walked through the temple's threshold one of the candles would go out permanently.

It stopped the Templar in the story from pushing to go inside when they noticed none of the candles were out.