I’ve decided to try and run a 3rd ed dark sun adventure and am making preperations. I’m looking through the excellent core rules presented by athas.org, but have hit a rather basic stumbling block and was hoping for some assistance…
For the life of me I can’t figure out the game mechanics for defilers vs preservers. I’ve read through the core rules, but i can’t seem to find the spot where it explains what the benefit of defiling is…
Is someone able to point me in the right direction?
“When defiling, a wizard can extend the casting time of
her spells to 1 round and gain a +1 bonus to caster level.
Her defiling radius increases by 5 ft. Spells with a normal
casting time of 1 round or longer require an extra round
to be cast in this manner. Experienced defilers often
increase their spellcasting power further through Raze
feats” -Dark Sun 3 page 123
Great - thanks for your help! I saw that but thought it was in addition to whatever the base bonus must be. The thing that threw me off was the text saying that defiling radius increases by 5ft. To my mind that means there is no bonus/advantage to defiling 5ft (as I read the rules defilers must always defile).
As the prof pointed out, the basic advantage is that, in exchange for your move action, you can gain a +1 caster level bonus.
Which, to a lot of folk at the time, didn’t seem like much, but … it’s an extra d6 on a Fireball, extended range, extended durations, possibly increased number of targets. It’s a subtle but powerful boost. And thats without training yourself on how to use that extra juice. The Raze feat chain ends up with some fairly significant advantages.