4E Dark Sun, Now with Books

[Shatteredtower]

Much has changed since 2e, but Athasians still have access to amazing SPF sunblock.

The attempt to adapt current cosmology wasn't too bad. The subjects of the Blue Age and life-shaping are avoided, but the Jagged Cliffs remain, loosely described enough to allow you to employ such elements if you want.

The world is more generous about what avoided extermination. Though the setting book disagrees with itself about ogres, it's helpful with suggestions for PCs of races that don't belong.

Your thoughts?

[ghost_warlock]

Books aren't supposed to be out here until the 17th so I can't really comment.

[huttj509]

Books aren't supposed to be out here until the 17th so I can't really comment.

Never let the local game store owners into your house when you impulse bought a book from Waldenbooks when the local game store hasn't received its shipment yet.

No violence, but I got a reeeeeeally dirty look on that one. Learn from my error. :-)

[ghost_warlock]

Well, I'm hearing talk of the books being out already in a few places, so it looks like I'm going to be stopping by the bookstore tomorrow...just in case.

As for the local game store owners...yeah, not much involvement with them for years. Not since they decided to stop letting people game there because it "might scare away the comic book crowd."

[tcrudisi]

Well darn. I just worked my butt off running the new mods for GenCon to get my hands on an early copy (legitimately)... for some reason, I thought it wasn't supposed to come out for another couple of months yet.

There go my dreams of selling it on ebay for big bucks.

[Shatteredtower]

Books aren't supposed to be out here until the 17th so I can't really comment.

Huh. I've no idea why the local store didn't sell copies they'd had all week until the end of it then.

[Hyozo]

I would comment on the new Dark Sun books, but I thought that I would probably get more use out of Psionic Power, so I bought that one instead. I haven't had much time to read it, but I like what I've seen.

It's nice to have a FLGS that gets all of the monthly books on their shelves at the very beginning of the month.

[tcrudisi]

I would comment on the new Dark Sun books, but I thought that I would probably get more use out of Psionic Power, so I bought that one instead. I haven't had much time to read it, but I like what I've seen.

It's nice to have a FLGS that gets all of the monthly books on their shelves at the very beginning of the month.

Psionic Power isn't supposed to be out yet either? Hmm... no wonder I (accidentally, admittedly) grabbed the last copy.

[Shatteredtower]

I would comment on the new Dark Sun books, but I thought that I would probably get more use out of Psionic Power, so I bought that one instead.

I bought all three, which is probably the end of my game budget until 2011.

I just figured out a possible reason for the early release. They weren't made available here until the 7th. Someone may have missed the 1 in front of it.

One parting comment for the DS setting: Access to wild talents could be popular, though not all were created equal. They may be too fluffy for some, but their convenience may appeal just enough to others.

[Lhurgyof]

Ok, ok, ok. Being GENEROUS on races exterminated? Say what? Please explain. Because if there's anything athas should be, it isn't generous .

[Shatteredtower]

The setting book gives a few suggestions for how you can accomodate a player that wants to play an unsupported or extinct race. That is a recommendation, not a requirement, but suggestions range from unique mutations to castaways from other times or realities, folks that will have a harder time adjusting to conditions.

It already gave me insight into how to accomodate someone that wants to play an aarakocra, a PC race in the revised 2nd Ed setting, in an edition that doesn't allow PCs to have innate flight, so it's not all bad.

You may wish to disregard any mention of minotaurs or gnolls, though, or else opt to replace them with gith or such.

[Lhurgyof]

The setting book gives a few suggestions for how you can accomodate a player that wants to play an unsupported or extinct race. That is a recommendation, not a requirement, but suggestions range from unique mutations to castaways from other times or realities, folks that will have a harder time adjusting to conditions.

It already gave me insight into how to accomodate someone that wants to play an aarakocra, a PC race in the revised 2nd Ed setting, in an edition that doesn't allow PCs to have innate flight, so it's not all bad.

You may wish to disregard any mention of minotaurs or gnolls, though, or else opt to replace them with gith or such.

Ah, ok.
I thought that it just included orcs and such in the campaign setting. That would make me quite upset. xD

[hamlet]

The setting book gives a few suggestions for how you can accomodate a player that wants to play an unsupported or extinct race.

Simple. You say "No."

Seems to be a lost art nowadays, really.

I glanced, briefly, at them in the FLGS the other day. Not for sale, but he had them on the counter so he could read them. I'm not terribly impressed with it since a good deal of the verbiage seems dedicated not to presenting the unique world of Athas, but in how to fit all 4th edition into a vaguely Dark Sun like mileu(sp?), which is to me wrong headed. In the original boxed set, Athas strethced AD&D to its max and turned it inside out in a lot of ways to create a unique and, frankly, violent world that just doesn't fit the concepts of AD&D as it is in the core books. I think that the new Dark Sun should have made the same attempt. Instead, it looks, to me, like Forgotten Realms, but drier.

[Shatteredtower]

I thought that it just included orcs and such in the campaign setting. That would make me quite upset. xD

Well, there is a suggestion for using their stat blocks, with certain modifications, from the Monster Manuals for specific other creatures in Dark Sun, but I think you'll find the way that was done acceptable. That's done for a handful of creature conversions that shouldn't disrupt your image for the world.

Simple. You say "No."

Since "hearing your players out first" and "considering their proposal" didn't take precedent over your suggestion, here's a simple bit of advice for your players: Get another DM.

I'm not terribly impressed with it since a good deal of the verbiage seems dedicated not to presenting the unique world of Athas, but in how to fit all 4th edition into a vaguely Dark Sun like mileu(sp?)...

Go with "setting", though you spelled it correctly. The rest is way off, however.

Athas strethced AD&D to its max and turned it inside out in a lot of ways to create a unique and, frankly, violent world that just doesn't fit the concepts of AD&D as it is in the core books.

2nd Edition Athas was broken Seven Ways from Guthay, before and after the revision. Half the monsters couldn't work if you played them from the rules, lacking prerequisite psionic powers for the powers they had or the strength points necessary to do much with them. Half-giants threw the damage curve out the window before the revision (leading to the crippling of ability score benefits afterward). Crodlu were practically worthless as mounts for anything heavier than a naked female half-elf. The bonus xp charts encouraged a level of antagonism between PCs that practically guaranteed a TPK if the DM wasn't trying to be at least a little bit accomodating toward such antics--and those who talk about the world's violent nature don't sound like they'd tolerate that. Thank goodness for character tree rules, because avangions were unplayable without them--not that you could realistically expect to get a PC up to that level in less than five years if you wanted to have a life outside of your campaign.

The revision just made it worse, rendering telepathic (and some metapsionic) powers completely unusable against any other psionic creature. (When it takes you four or more rounds to beat a creature down to 0 PSPs, you can no longer hope to use powers like daydream or psionic vampirism against it.

Don't even get me started on the work you had to do to make most modules playable.

As for the violence of the setting, that was relative in a fashion that has nothing to do with whether the game's played in 2nd or 4th Edition. That violent setting supported the elven philosophy of living life in the Now. It featured the community mentality of Gulg. It gave us Shakespearean slave tribes, powerful idealists that managed to survive, even thrive, from Balic (with a poet leading its Veiled Alliance) to Draj (where they operated right under the king's nose!), and the selfless, pack-based mentality of the thri-kreen. The option to build armies at high level wasn't all about having them automatically turned into Dragon Chow either.

The capacity for treachery and paranoia hasn't diminished in the least. As it was then, it's all in how you play it. Good grief, the notes on Abalech-Re alone make it clear that the chaos in her city is not a handicap in your favour, but in hers. The notes on the sorcerer-kings provided good reasons why heroic individuals may want to hold off on toppling sorcerer-kings even if they're strong enough to do so, and Tyr is shown to be no picnic for the free people either.

Sure, game design encourages a balanced approach to most encounters. That doesn't rule out PCs making suicidal decisions. It just means that "being born on Athas" isn't meant to be one of them. Striving to change the world was always an encouraged objective for the setting. There's still no guarantee of that.

[Myatar_Panwar]

I really like this setting. I've yet to get the creature cateloge though, which will probably help round it all off.

Themes are pretty great. Here is hoping they continue down this path. More options are always appreciated, especially when they are tied to roleplaying potential.

Simple. You say "No."

Seems to be a lost art nowadays, really.

I glanced, briefly, at them in the FLGS the other day. Not for sale, but he had them on the counter so he could read them. I'm not terribly impressed with it since a good deal of the verbiage seems dedicated not to presenting the unique world of Athas, but in how to fit all 4th edition into a vaguely Dark Sun like mileu(sp?), which is to me wrong headed. In the original boxed set, Athas strethced AD&D to its max and turned it inside out in a lot of ways to create a unique and, frankly, violent world that just doesn't fit the concepts of AD&D as it is in the core books. I think that the new Dark Sun should have made the same attempt. Instead, it looks, to me, like Forgotten Realms, but drier.

What were you expecting, exactly? And what disappointed you?

I haven't looked through any version of dark sun but this one, but it seems like a pretty violent place. Far moreso than FR.

Slavery everywhere. Corruption and truely and openly evil tyrants in every city. The gods being silent and arcane magic often a death sentence. Seas of silt which will swallow and suffocate you with ease. Many of the races we know from conventional D&D are gone, and the ones that arn't are changed. Halflings are barbaric cannibals, elfs are nomadic raiders, dwarfs BEARDLESS.

[Gralamin]

dwarfs BEARDLESS.

But some Mul art has them with hair oddly enough. Muls are supposed to be completely hairless.

I got the books today, and I'm liking them. You can turn Defiling into an incredibly potent mechanic, with the support in the book.

[Shatteredtower]

But some Mul art has them with hair oddly enough. Muls are supposed to be completely hairless.

Would you believe they were appearing incognito?

...Would you believe they were mutant muls?

...Would you believe someone just painted that on there while they were sleeping?

I got the books today, and I'm liking them. You can turn Defiling into an incredibly potent mechanic, with the support in the book.

I was mildly disappointed that you couldn't opt to reroll both attack and damage in a single round, but I'm sure most people find the side effects of one or the other rough enough on the system as it is. Still, there are some pretty neat ways to expand defiling options, as you wrote.

[Kaun]

Is the game any deadlier then normal 4e?

And if so what have they done to make it so?

[Gralamin]

Is the game any deadlier then normal 4e?

And if so what have they done to make it so?

Well, each unsupplied (A creature not in a city, village, outpost, or oasis, who does not manage to forage, and cannot spend a "survival day", a term that is roughly equal to 5 gp worth of supplies.) daylight period of travel causes you to be attacked by "Sun Sickness", a disease that scales by level. There are a number of other dangers as well, IIRC

It's rare to have magic items, using Fixed enhancement bonuses instead. There are a fair number of boons though, which aren't as good, but can help a bit. Metal items are rare, and thus you usually use non-metal items, which are easier to break (if you roll a 1, you can choose to reroll but break the item, or simply miss).

[Kaun]

Well, each unsupplied (A creature not in a city, village, outpost, or oasis, who does not manage to forage, and cannot spend a "survival day", a term that is roughly equal to 5 gp worth of supplies.) daylight period of travel causes you to be attacked by "Sun Sickness", a disease that scales by level. There are a number of other dangers as well, IIRC

It's rare to have magic items, using Fixed enhancement bonuses instead. There are a fair number of boons though, which aren't as good, but can help a bit. Metal items are rare, and thus you usually use non-metal items, which are easier to break (if you roll a 1, you can choose to reroll but break the item, or simply miss).

Have they made resurrection less common by RAW?

[Gralamin]

Have they made resurrection less common by RAW?

Rituals are handled a bit oddly, as a lot of it is explicitly up to the DM how it works. However, Religion based rituals (which Raise dead is not - its heal), straight out don't exist. Potions and enchant items are harder, controlling weather might not work in some areas, divination is very risky, none create food or water. Any ritual that uses nature is harder in defiled areas, and planar travel is near impossible. Teleportation is rare.

In addition, most rituals are connected to the Arcane - and thus distrusted.

[Myatar_Panwar]

Its deadlier in the sense that the DM should run it in a deadlier fashion. Just by way of the setting.

They can't really just make all encounters more difficult, but by the way of the world they naturally are. In a Points of Light Setting, you might be able to walk from one town to another without too much trouble. As tycho from PA said, in Dark Sun "There is no such thing as a good road. Rush hour all the time, and instead of cars, horrific wasteland mutants."

Though they do facilitate it a little more with their survival in the desert rules, which can kill an unprepared adventurer in a few days. (depending on how bad a character rolls, a character can die in three days of not having supplies)

[Lhurgyof]

Hmmm... There was a dwarf with hair in one of the monster manuals, cool pic, though.

And does it actually say what happens when you defile in the books?

And wasn't defiling from PEOPLE somethings dragons could do? And why does it only affect allies? (I'm asking for RAW and fluff answers, please. I want to know the reasoning behind these changes and such).

[Myatar_Panwar]

Defiling from the book only affects allies within 5 squares likely because it would be wayyy too easy to abuse that if it worked on enemies.

And how it works is when you cast a daily arcane power, you can choose to use defiling magic and re-roll either the attack or damage roll. When you do this, all allies within 5 squares loose hitpoints equal to 1/2 their healing surge value.

As for fluff, unless you are a preserver (which means you never activate defiling magic), stuff around you withers and dies when you cast any arcane power. Plants, small animals, etc.

[Shatteredtower]

Hmmm... There was a dwarf with hair in one of the monster manuals, cool pic, though.

The campaign setting book describes them as having little to no hair now, but that's easy enough to adjust.

As for the defiling, it starts off hurting only allies and plant life, but there is a paragon path that gets offensive use out of it and an epic path that gets better benefits from it. A few arcane defiling feats also boost the damage or otherwise benefit the caster, so there's some approximation for what you see from enemy casters.

Defiling rules tend to stack against PCs. Enemy defilers tend to affect only their enemies with such power, using it as an attack.

However it's used, defiling's effect on plant life can sometimes create exploitable, hazardous terrain. It doesn't change too much, but it can make the draining effect on plants feel more meaningful.

[Kurald Galain]

Defiling from the book only affects allies within 5 squares likely because it would be wayyy too easy to abuse that if it worked on enemies.

Wasn't that 20 squares? Otherwise it would be too easy to walk away from your allies and get a reroll for free.

[Myatar_Panwar]

Your right. Not sure where I got 5 squares...


edit: And it was why I thought it would be super abuse-able. Now that I know it is 20, I don't think it would be completely crazy to house rule that it affects both allies and enemies. Though you would have to have some sort of clause where it only does 1/4 of a HS on Elites, and some other fraction for solos (can't remember the exact HP multiplier right now). Don't want low PC's doing defiling magic just so they can do alot of damage to high hitpoint creatures.

[Kurald Galain]

edit: And it was why I thought it would be super abuse-able. Now that I know it is 20, I don't think it would be completely crazy to house rule that it affects both allies and enemies.

I think that would be strongly overpowered. Compare: a level-16 blood mage can, as a standard action, do an automatic 10 or so damage within range 10. A level-1 defiler could, as a free action, do more automatic damage in twice the range.

[hamlet]

Since "hearing your players out first" and "considering their proposal" didn't take precedent over your suggestion, here's a simple bit of advice for your players: Get another DM.

You'll, perhaps, explain to me what is wrong with, when confronted with a player demanding to play an orc, goblin, ogre, or other such creature in a Dark Sun campaign setting, responding with "No, that race/species has been entirely destroyed and no longer exists in this world."

As for the rest of your post, well, I'm not going to bother because I'm not really in the mood for the argument that it would spawn. My one last nerve and I are trying to save energy for the long day ahead.

What were you expecting, exactly? And what disappointed you?

What did I expect? Essentially exactly what there is in the book. I was hoping, though, that I wouldn't see the book encouraging the DM to find ways to allow things that are distinctly "un-Athasian" into the game because a player wants it. To me, one of the biggest things that made Dark Sun great was that it was so wholeheartedly different from the standard AD&D "implied setting" of western European themes, and that so many of the usual things were removed, many of them specifically via genocide and it was NEVER implied in the original boxed materials that existed before the execrable revised boxed set.

This is, seriously, a pet peeve of mine, and I'm not commenting on the objective quality of the book (which, taken by itself, isn't bad), but on it's subjective quality to me and to my tastes. Though I'm not familiar enough with 4th edition mechanics, or with the minutia of the mechanics in the new Dark Sun books having only glanced at them, to conduct an educated discussion on the mechanical aspects, I will say that in my opinion, I do not think that D&D 4.0 and it's general methodology are entirely suitable for play in the world of Athas. The game focuses far more heavily on heroic and cinematic action and the explicit instructions to the DM are to allow things into the campaign that, simply put, shouldn't be there, just because a player wants them. I have no problem, nor do I even see an issue, with explaining to a player that their choice of character race and class is limited to what actually exists in the world setting and that things outside of that list are simply inappropriate. WOTC, and Shatterdtower seemingly, object to that vehemently.

[Dragosai]

So for all the posts about the books not being out yet and all that jazz; The 3 Dark Sun books, and Psionic Power all came out early last week to any "brick & motor" store. WOTC did they same thing with the PHB 3, they gave a "release date" of Aug 17th and as I understand it that will be when ALL retail outfits have it and when the data is released in the CB. I applaud WOTC for the early release to "real" stores, it gives people a little incentive to buy from their local gamming store vs. big internet stores with discounts. Of course do to a lot of local stores having closed their doors a long time ago it can be hard to "support" your local store but for the few that are still around I hope this kind of release schedule helps their sales.

Second I think the Dark Sun books were done very well.
I am a little underwhelmed by Psionic Power, but I have not really gone over all its stuff fully so my opinion may change.
Last about the mul pics with hair, I don't recall these but to be honest I have been reading stuff much more then looking at all the art closely. My question is this; how do we know these pictures are not humans? I don't recall any captions with any artwork, and unless the picture is on the pages were the race is presented how can anyone know for sure if said picture is depicting a mul over a human? I would just use common sense and assume that hair = human.