We are proud to announce the release of the 7th and final version of the Dark Sun Core Rules. The final rules set is massively 314 pages, almost three times as large as the previous iteration. It has been many hours of blood, sweat and toil for the project team led by Bruno, and they deserve the applause of an arena filled with spectators. You will find that not only have the existing chapters been expanded and improved upon; we have also included several new chapters to enhance your Athasian experience.

The Races and Classes chapters have undergone some changes. You will find that thri-kreen and half-giants no longer have racial hit dice, and there have been significant revisions to the DS specific classes, i.e. bard, gladiator and templar. One of the key features of the new gladiator is Gladiatorial Performance, which is an arsenal of different abilities unlocked by the gladiator’s level and Perform progression. Templars now have access to all spells on their spell list, vastly improving their versatility, and they gain domains from the Player’s Handbook depending on their Sorcerer-Monarch. Bards also have a few new tricks up their sleeves centered around speed, poisons and secrets. We have also included a selection of prestige classes, which provide additional information and supersede the versions found in the Prestige Class Appendices.

The Magic and Psionic chapters have been greatly expanded. We have converted a lot of second edition spells and powers, in addition to writing brand new ones, and all spells and powers include illustrative descriptions. Cleric domains have been revamped, with the biggest change being that armor proficiencies are no longer tied to domains, but part of the core cleric class, and overall the domains should be more balanced now. The Magic and Psionics chapter now also features information on the Athasian cosmology. Feats and Skills are in new chapter called Heroic Characteristics, and include a great number of new feats along with updates such as language revisions, expanded use of the Warcraft skill, and Survival skill modifiers when foraging for food and water on Athas. Equipment has been expanded to include chapters on magical and psionic items – and the artifacts of Athas, such as the Dark Lens.

For those fans who have requested more setting specific information, your prayers have been heard. The Core Rules now include a chapter on the city-states and other important locations – including Kurn, Eldaarich and Saragar. We have also included a chapter with suggestions for how to play games set in other eras of play, such as the Blue Age and the Green Age. You will also find stats on key DS personas such as Agis, Rikus and Sadira of Tyr, and a host of generic and sample NPCs for added DM convenience. DMs will also note that the Monsters chapter has a completely new and extended format, and the selection of monsters will be familiar to those who own the original Dark Sun campaign boxed set. There is also a new chapter with information on important organizations such as the Order and the Veiled Alliance. Finally, we have included a chapter on how to run Athasian campaigns in the atmosphere we believe defines Dark Sun.

While we start the process of illustrating the final version of Dark Sun 3 Core Rules, we encourage you to provide feedback through the playtest form on the athas.org website. We are primarily interested in reports on typos and such; the rules set will not be altered at this point – you had the previous six revisions to suggest changes to that.

Download DS3 R7: http://www.athas.org/products/ds3/documents/109

Hello and Congrats on the great work guys!
I have started slowly reading through the PDF and anytime I found a typo/grammar issue, I write it down in a word file with the changes highlighted.
Yesterday I submitted a report for the Introduction of DS3 R7, but unfortunately this does not allow for bold or other font formatting, meaning that each change has to be explicitly detailed…
I wonder if there is an email address to which I could send my word document to as an attachment in addition to filling out a the reports so that it is clearer for whoever is in charge of reviewing the reports.
I’m not trying to be a pain, so no worries if there is no such address, I’m just concerned about the poor editor that will have to look at all those reports without any highlighting of the changes.

You can send it to myself and jon, or just fire it off to the templarate templarate@lists.athas.org

Hi. As I have said in another thread, the half-giant and the thri-kreen don’t look too good as a LA +2 races.
They are both melee front line characters, and they suffer greatly the loss of hit dice. I did some testing with several variants of those races, as we are going to start a new Dark Sun campaign next week, and here are my suggestions:
Half-giant: as in the book except:
add:
giant’s toughness – At first level, the half giant adds full constitution score to hit points instead of constitution modifier. The gaint heritage makes half-giants more durable.


This will allow the half giant to decrease the hit point loss due to LA +2, and stay in line with melee oriented races without LA.

The thri-kreens are more troublesome, as they have several abilities that increase their ECL.
I was wondering if it would be OK, to get the previous version (with racial hit dice) and give them virtual psychic warrior levels (like spell weaver has virtual sorcerer levels)? For example 1 virtual for their 2HD.
Either way, something should be done with the current kreen, because, they are weaker than 3rd level characters.


Ps. Hope this is the right thread. And sorry, for any (all?) mistakes. English is not my native language.

Regarding half-giant and loss of hit dice.
-
I’d suggest borrowing from Iron Kingdoms’ ogrun PC race in that the a half-giant receives a bonus hit die of 1d8 at first level. Its not a racial hit die of giant that grants bonuses skill points and improved fort save, but simply additional hit points received in conjunction with a class’s hit dice at first level.

Adding con score makes them more durable than 4.5 on average hp (not very useful, especially if you roll 1). In our campaign we will stick to this idea and see how it works.


In racial traits section (for almost every race) there’s an error in Favorite class description.
There is:
“A multiclass dwarf’s fighter
class does not count when determining whether he takes
an experience point for multiclassing.”

And should be:
A multiclass dwarf’s fighter
class does not count when determining whether he takes
an experience point penalty for multiclassing.




Page 31. bard, NPC Relations: there should be ‘tend’ instead of ‘ten’ (first sentence).


Cabal, the Bard from sample encounter (page 32) is an half-elf, but has elven racial traits (speed 40ft, elf run, extreme heat/cold resistance).

i was curious, what was the rational behind removing the two monstrous humanoid levels and the psionic powers from the thri-kreen? ecl purposes? balance? just wondering, thanks!

ECL if I remember correctly.
Oh, by the way: Welcome to the boards Nijineko.

thanks! i’m glad to be here. =D did i read mention of illustration? i don’t think i mentioned that i’m an artist…. what’s going on in the art side of things?

nijineko, Flip is working (I think) on an illustrated version of r7, I would suggest you to contact him directly, we need artists badly!

guys, I want to say thanks for this great work !
It’s helping me a lot as a DM, and giving my players the thrill of their role-playing life.
thanks to you, Athas is still alive !

Any news for a 3.5core with illustrations?