My instinct is for maximal inclusion. I think the systemic error made by the previous team was that they wanted 3E to justify itself to the 2E Dark Sun setting, rather than proceed from the assumption that 3E is the default, and that there needs to be a justified reason why any class should be excluded. As I mention above, I won’t rule out a paladin, but its going to be an oddity, like an incident of a man biting a dog.
The Blackguard was excluded out of hand, without even an attempt to let them fit into the Dark Sun setting. This despite there being some textual basis for it. Page 66, Dragon Kings.
The direct paths from the prime material to the outer planes are called conduits. Anchored firmly at two locations, one on the prime and one in an outer plane, these wormhole conduits ferry beings back and forth regularly. On the prime, fixed locations such as temples are ideal anchors for conduits. Jealous of the unique relationship between the elemental planes and the prime material, some dark powers of the outer planes have fabricated living conduits that masquerade as living vortices, so that they might meddle further in the affairs of the tiny world of Athas.
Could this now allow for a Blackguard? Now - a requirement for a Blackguard is ‘the character must have made peaceful contact with an evil outsider who was summoned by him or someone else’. Not easy, but probably not impossible, either.
I believe you’re reading the below quote wrong and then forwarding an erroneous argument.
They’re essentially talking about disrupting the setting narrative and feel, not the game mechanics.
But, speaking of game mechanics, if someone had instead said: “Psions are a optional class and we’re making them Core to DS 3.5e,nas psions are integral to DS. 3.5e Psions fill the exact conceptual and mechanical niches usually occupied by 3.5e Sorcerers, making Sorcerers pointless.” This wouldn’t continue to be a conversation today.
The same goes for eschew material components then. The chance of getting busted with spell components is way higher than being caught with your spellbook, which is likely stashed away carefully. Yet no one banned that feat.
I feel that Sorcerer and Psion are rather different. Both use abilities spontaneously, but the Sorcerer is far more constrained. Anyway - no Sorcerer = no Beguiler, no Dread Necromancer, no Warmage and so on. I can’t see any reason to exclude them. The starting point should be inclusion. Keep in mind that none of these classes, including Sorcerer, had any precedent in the Forgotten Realms either. Yet there they are.
Apples and oranges. Eschew Materials is similar to Psionic Mimicery, which itself was a NPW in 2e. EM has a legit mechanical benefit, as opposed to just a narrative one, and is takeable by any spellcaster, not just sorcerers or even arcanists.
That’s really the rub, isn’t it? YOU can’t see a reason, not there isn’t a reasonable or legitimate one. Tastes and opinions vary, and for every person who wants Sorcerers in DS, there’s another who hates everything in the Expanded Boxed Set.
There’s no possibility of winning or being right.
If anyone really wants Sorcerers or Warmages and Dread Necromancers, etc in Dark Sun, then write up an article (or a series) for here or on Athas.org, detailing how they’d fit into Athas and how someone could carve out a mechanical niche for the class in their game.
Yeah, ultimately it was a choice. I remember Brax being against the Barbarian, not because the class wasn’t appropriate, but because the name and thus some of it’s abilities didn’t fit. Which is why in some older versions it was called the Brute or something.
Nowadays my thought is that if someone wants the class in and has a reason they’d fit IN THEIR GAME. Then they should do it.
I don’t think the idea that because Monks are not eastern style monks (from the 1-2 examples) in Dark Sun doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be included. If you want a 4 elements monk decide if they’re related to a Clerical group or maybe a druidic circle. Again make what you want.
Eschew material components is literally useless for a non-arcane spellcaster. I am reminded of this thread elsewhere.
You are begging the question about the mechanical niche. You’ve set the mechanical niche as a requirement for some reason without asking yourself why a class needs to provide a mechanical niche. I’ve been on the forums and seen the back and forth for a long time on these issues. Here is another quote from the mailing list, from a fellow called A Hughey.
Come up with an athasian reason that actually works (the pristine tower warped me is obviously not going to be accepted) and a few examples and then people will be more willing to consider it. I know I would.
Many folks have done this several times over the past couple years with rather dissapointing results. There has been lots of resistance that usually breaks up into two main camps.
The first camp has a fairly rigid view of Athas (colored strongly by 2nd ed prejudices) that ends up with a “it wasn’t in the boxed set, it shouldn’t exist” kind of attitude. Many of their arguments hinge on things like the need for spellbooks or some other thing without which Athas won’t make sense. (Flip and I have both demonstrated the flaws in the literacy argument.)
The second camp resembles the first and often has similar arguments, but their main reservation is actually a dislike for the sorceror class itself, Athas or no. Of course, this is a gross generalization covering a variety of opinions, but these are the two main groups oppposing the sorcerers in Dark Sun proposals.
Below are links to my huge post on sorcerors in the archives. It is very rough and just a proposal I made to counter those who said “write it up and we’ll take a look at it.” The most popular kind of response indicated they’d consider it, but only if sorcerors were saddled with some kind of mcguffin to mark them as sorcerors (talisman, tattoo, funny hat, etc.).
An article here or there won’t make it better when people insist that Sorcerers must be descendants of dragons or supernatural beings, even though it doesn’t say that in 3E at all. Even if that were the case, sorcerous powers could be fluffed as force of will or personal practice. For what its worth, here is the 3.5E fluff for Sorcerer.
Sorcerers create magic the way a poet creates poems, with inborn talent honed by practice. They have no books, no mentors, no theories - just raw power that they direct at will. Some sorcerers claim that the blood of dragons courses through their veins. That claim may even be true in some cases - it is common knowledge that certain powerful dragons can take humanoid form and even have humanoid lovers, and it’s difficult to prove that a given sorcerer does not have a dragon ancestor. It’s true that sorcerers often have striking good looks, usually with a touch of the exotic that hints at an unusual heritage. Others hold that the claim is either an unsubstantiated boast on the part of certain sorcerers or envious gossip on the part of those who lack the sorcerer’s gift.
I am putting in bold the parts that cast serious doubt on supernatural ancestry.
The point I am making is that the demand for proof that 3E classes fit in Dark Sun is backwards. Compatibility should be assumed until proven otherwise.
You are mistaken. Practically useless, perhaps; literally, nope.
@raddu I 100% support people using whatever they want in their games - I’ve used the Chameleon PrC myself - and I’m sure the 3.5e Rules folks do too, but if the question is “why did a design decision for the 3.6e rules get made”, that’s different than telling folks they can’t uae something.
Ultimately, no designer owes their consumer anything but good work.
Please look at those spells. Look under “material component”. If it says “arcane material component”, it is irrelevant to you as a divine caster. If it says “material component” and the component is worth over 1gp (1 cp on Athas), then eschew material components is not applicable. If there were more divine spells than I can count on my hand that are applicable to eschew material components, I’ll eat my hat. This is getting hit with a bolt of lightning territory.
I think the concern was compatibility across tables. For example, if someone wanted to play a barbarian, but barbarian was not accepted by the official rules, then there is a good chance it will be excluded from many tables. Ultimately the decision to exclude the barbarians was reversed, and that was a good thing. I just wish the Sorcerer had been accepted also.
The aim was to convert Dark Sun to 3E and then 3.5E. Not convert 3.5E to Dark Sun. When I look at what is should be permitted and what should not be permitted, setting warping is the most important consideration. Sorcerer doesn’t warp the setting.
I think that a big part of why people insist that, is that is for reasons well discussed above, sorcerers don’t add anything new to the setting and to some their existence even detracts.
Making them the descendants of advaced beings give them a niche wholly their own in the setting, without cheapening themselves to wizards knockoff or detracting from the roll of wizards in the settings.
I am not sold on it, but if the same kind of fluff was used (that is, like 3E, leaving supernatural heritage as an open question), it would be alright. To whit -
Sorcerers create magic the way a poet creates poems, with inborn talent honed by practice. They have no books, no mentors, no theories - just raw power that they direct at will. Some sorcerers claim that the blood of sorcerer monarchs courses through their veins. That claim may even be true in some cases - it is common knowledge that certain powerful sorcerer monarchs, such as the sorcerer-queen of Raam, have hundreds of children, and it’s difficult to prove that a given sorcerer does not have a sorcerer monarch ancestor. It’s true that sorcerers often have striking good looks, usually with a touch of the exotic that hints at an unusual heritage. Others hold that the claim is either an unsubstantiated boast on the part of certain sorcerers or envious gossip on the part of those who lack the sorcerer’s gift.
That’s okay, I lean more towards 5e (and pathfinder, as it was pointed out to me) take that their magic comes from a bloodline.
I think it differentiates them from wizards and allows them to be their own thing.
The reason why I raise this is because most people interested in Dark Sun that adhere to the lore about Rajaat creating magic take a materialist approach to magic. In a sense, its more of a science than an occult art. Therefore, “magical” creatures cannot exist. In the setting, psionic creatures take the place of magical creatures. It follows then that Sorcerers, if they are empowered by some supernatural bloodline, represent a challenge to this perspective by their very existence.
I have offered up various alternative reasons for the existence of sorcerers, including magical pollution. But it could just as easily be an approach to magic that relies on force of will rather than scholarly research, like the sorcerers of the Dragonlance setting. Whatever the reason, I prefer it as an open question. Are they descendants of the sorcerer monarchs? The product of magical pollution? Or merely will to power arcanists?
The problem with that is that it raises questions like why weren’t there any sorcerers before Rajaat then? And If all it takes is a force of will, don’t psions fill that roll already, Perhaps even better? Why would you need sorcerers at all then?
We are speaking at cross purposes when it comes to psions and sorcerers. Yes - with psions, it’s “the Will and the Way”. But it’s a different type of will. Psions use their intelligence. Sorcerers focus on force of personality, aka charisma.
If Rajaat is in the setting and is the creator of magic, then force of will alone cannot make a sorcerer. But since Rajaat is an unknown figure, it shouldn’t make a difference to descriptions of sorcerers that are speculative in nature.
My personal take is a combination of two things. Do they enrich the setting in any way? I don’t feel like they do. Do they cause issues and complications with the story of magic in the setting? Yes. Would I say absolutely no sorcerer could ever exist in the setting? No, but making them a standard class that anyone could choose doesn’t make any sense to me. If there are a bunch of them running around innately casting arcane magic that’s warping the setting in my opinion. That sort of innate power is the domain of psionics on Athas. Arcane magic is something that requires a teacher and studying.
Sorcerers require teachers in the Dragonlance setting. I’m fine with that too. In this instance, it’s training to access magic in a way different to wizards.
In the Dragonlance setting, in the Age of Mortals (3E), one can become a Sorcerer if another Sorcerer teaches, assuming they have a Charisma score high enough to cast spells. Palin Majere teaches sorcery at the Academy of Sorcerery, and there is also a very cool Sorcerer prestige class called the academy sorcerer connected with that. It’s also possible to learn to be a sorcerer 1 to 1.
As I mention upthread, if you are taking the materialist approach to magic, then it makes it difficult to countenance creatures with innate magical ability (although the nightmare beast is one such example). So just change the fluff. The idea is to convert Dark Sun to 3.5E, not convert 3.5E to Dark Sun.
That does at least partially solve the issue if they have to be taught. It still leaves the question of who the heck came up with this other way of accessing magic, having multiple arcane traditions like that still feels off to me, but it’s less of a problem since it doesn’t disrupt the SK and veiled alliance control of magic and organization the same way.
I don’t think I fully agree with you on this. There is nothing that say the conversion has to be 100% in one direction. If that was the case then you would be forcing paladins and spellcasting bards into the setting. Also I don’t think that inclusion of all the classes as they are is integral to the system of 3.5. The system is based on the core mechanics, general class structure, and feats/spell formatting. Not on all the particular bit that are part of the presentation. There is no reason why you can’t change a lot of the other details and still consider it to clearly be a 3.5 conversion.
That being said I’m all for bubbles that say stuff like: “If you want to include this in your game, here are some ideas about how to make it work in the setting” Instead of simply banning things that people do have reasonable ideas about how to integrate in an enjoyable way that preserves the integrity of the setting for the most part.
This isn’t what I am saying. I am not the taking a 4E line, where “if its in D&D then its in Dark Sun”. What I am saying is that the default should be inclusion of classes, until they are proven to be unsuitable. Let me give you an example.
2E Bard in Dark Sun: The Bard is different in Dark Sun, and is actually an assassin, not a skald.
2E Paladin in Dark Sun: The Paladin is said explicitly to not exist.
3E Sorcerers in Dark Sun: The material is utterly silent on the matter. Some arcane spellcasters in the PP seem to cast spells like a 3E Sorcerer, however.
3E Barbians in Dark Sun: The material is utterly silent on the matter. There are barbaric tribes out in the wastes, however.
The starting position should be inclusion. So you start by asking “is there any way we can fit the 3E Bard into the setting?”. Since the 3E Bard simply uses the same name as the 2E DS Bard and has an entirely different function, I think the answer is no.
What of the Paladin? We are told explicitly that there are no paladins. Is there any way we can fit the Paladin class into the setting? I think not.
Then what of the Sorcerer? Is there any specific impediment to their implementation in 3E Dark Sun? I can’t see any. Spellbooks and whatnot are minor matters.
How about the Barbarian? They were excluded as “not being in keeping with the flavour of Dark Sun” for some reason, then when they were finally allowed were renamed Brute, until it must have sunk in how ridiculous it is to rename a core class and the Brute became the Barbarian again.
This happened because the basic stance was demanding that 3E justify itself to the 2E Dark Sun setting. Which is back to front. Every effort could have been made to turn DS into a mainline 3E setting, including retconning certain spellcasters as having levels in the Sorcerer class, like WotC did in the Forgotten Realms setting with the Simbul, a major NPC.
That’s the rub. Certain details about the Sorcerer could have been changed, but the Sorcerer was excluded entirely. People spent years (years!) wasting time arguing about whether the 3E Barbarian class was a good fit for Dark Sun, and the reason for that was trying to force 3E to justify itself to the 2E Dark Sun setting, a literal impossibility because it touches on non-existent concepts at the time of the 2E publications. There was a conversion, but it was a conversion of 3E/3.5E to Dark Sun 2E concepts, not the requested (by WotC) conversion of Dark Sun to 3E/3.5E. It may be a subtle distinction, but its a very important one.
ADDENDUM: Its probably worth posting one of the prestige classes for Sorcerers from the Dragonlance setting. In Dragonlance, there are no “natural” users of magic. Rather, both sorcery and wizardry are learned. Despite a handful of differences in the two traditions, they are more similar than different.
There is no reason why this cannot be conceptually applied to Dark Sun to allow for Sorcerers, Warmages, Dread Necromancers, Beguilers and so on. A lot of people have moved onto 5E, so I may be beating a dead kank, but its worth putting it out there now because people are far more receptive to this idea than before.
As I said before. All the other campaign settings did not have sorcerers in there histories, but with the advent of 3E they have adopted them into there worlds like they have always existed. I mentioned this example before, but in the Forgotten Realms they change the mighty Symbol from being a high level wizard to a high level sorcerer. They’re is nothing in any of the novels that explains this its just assumed she always was in 3E terms. Sorcerers can be easily explain in DS, its just a matter of players and DMs wanting them in their campaigns. Its obvious that the powers that be over at athas.org just do not want them as a core class. Which is fine. I just don’t see it being that far fetched that sorcerers can’t exist in DS. I keep hearing “give us a convincing argument that sorcerers should exist on Athas”. How about a good argument that they shouldn’t.
I’ll ask again, what do YOU think they bring to the setting that wizards and psions don’t already bring?
Your pitch as I understand it is to make them more like wizards basically, but then why bother with them in the first place? Inclusion just for the sake of inclusion?
As I’ve said the solution I can live with is the bloodline explanation, and if and when we do a 5e conversation this is the kind of sorcerer I want to see in dark sun, but again, that’s just me.
