Dark Sun Reconstruction Project

Rules 5th Edition D&D
#21

Hello zontoxira.

I’ve downloaded all the files you’ve made available so far and intend on looking them over in the future (Read: I’m a father of a 15-mth old baby girl… won’t be immediately, so expect it to be SOME time in the future, not like this evening or tomorrow :wink: ).

That being said, if you are still working on this project and accepting feedback, I might be happy to provide some comments.

Only thing I can say at this point from the very quick perusing I’ve done is that Humans getting a +1 to all ability scores – even though they otherwise don’t get much in terms of benefits – seems to be… a little unbalanced. I’d be curious to hear the rationale that went behind such a change, if you’re open to discussing?

Either way, thanks for all the work you’ve done so far! Looks excellent.

#22

Hi Alex, thanks for taking an interest in my work. Any feedback is welcome, at any time. My warm wishes to your newborn as well :slight_smile:
As for humans, this is the standard trait they receive from 5e’s Player’s Handbook. I’ve also reflavoured the variant human with mutations (cosmetic only). Do you find it over- or under-powered?
Make sure you use my Dropbox links, in case you don’t fancy Homebrewery and/or Chrome.

#23

embarassed face palm Well… I’ve demonstrated how little I know 5th edition, haven’t I? Fairly new to it, was always a AD&D 2nd Edition before. :slight_smile:

I’ve looked at the variant and do like the concept a lot; I also find it balances well with the other races.

I have lots of reading left to do but am thoroughly enjoying the material so far. Thank you for making this available at large!

#24

Zontoxira, how are you wanting to tackle elemental priests? I’ve been doing a lot of research into them and have come up with the following rough guidelines on how they could be handled.

The class would be based on the cleric just to keep things simple, with an elemental domain provided for each element.

The domains would be mostly structured using existing rules from 5e books, but with some minor flavor tweaks introduced.

To start with, I would re-use the following existing domains as a basis for each element.

Forge = Earth
Life = Water
Tempest = Air
Light = Fire

Since my current group only has an earth cleric, I’ll start with the changes I made to that domain.

The Forge domain spells were tweaked a bit to give a more earthy feel. Searing smite was replaced with earth tremor, heat metal replaced with spike growth, wall of fire replaced with stone shape.

Domain abilities were mostly fine as is, but I changed Soul of the Forge, Divine Strike and Saint of Forge and Fire to affect bludgeoning damage rather than fire damage.

#25

I’d say go for it! What I’ve been (sluggishly) working on for the past month or so is a somewhat radical take on the priest classes (namely, clerics, druids and templars). Hopefully, I’ll have it ready (but not playtested) before the turn of the year.

Your version might be more acceptable and, since you have people to playtest, balanced out, so you should definitely work on that.

#26

My busy months always have time to interfere with my project, but I have managed to complete this: My take on Priests of Athas, all those who claim an elemental patron, nature itself, or the sorcerer-kings/queens of the Tablelands as their source for primal magic. As always, you are more than welcome to comment and post your feedback.

What this file contains is meatier than the rest of my work: 30 pages of classes, spells, and creatures for you to peruse. I’ve been working on this for a couple months now, and hoped to have it ready by December, but oh well, better late than never. Of the three “priest” classes presented here, only the templar has not been playtested - it might look unbalanced, despite my best efforts, however I make it clear that templars are intended as villainous option, so that DMs can use them at their discretion.

While I’ve designed most of this project with 2e in mind, I’ve borrowed enough from 4e’s take on Dark Sun. To group clerics, druids, and templars into one category, I used the term primal magic to refer to magical abilities that are drawn from the elementals and not from nature itself (as is the case with arcane magic).

Note of worth: At the time of writing this, XGE wasn’t out yet, so I didn’t have access to the new spells and consequently, haven’t included them. When time allows it, I’ll have a better look at them.

So, clerics are a modified reflavoured warlock. This fits neatly since in almost all 2e books about clerics of Athas, we get references of elemental patrons. That, coupled with the restricted list of spells they had, gave me the idea to remodel the warlock class into something more… primal. Elemental clerics choose one Elemental Patron from amongst the four core: Air, Earth, Fire, or Water. I decided not to include paraelementals (Magma, Rain, Silt, Sun), because I wanted to keep things simple. That said, it’s not difficult to design a patron based on the four paraelementals.

Druids have been adapted to Dark Sun setting, but they are mostly unchanged. Instead of Druidic Circles, we now have Druidic Paths, due to druids going nearly extinct and their circles shattered. The wild, shape-changing Path of the Moon has been dropped in favour of the Beast, which is actually the Shepherd refluffed to look more like totemic, spiritualist druid. For the table of expanded spell lists, credits go to azlath’s magnificent post.

Templars are heavily modified paladins. I’ve chosen this route for a few reasons:

  1. Templars are fierce loyalists and devout followers of a certain sorcerer-king/queen (deity).
  2. Templars begin spellcasting at 2nd level.
  3. I once read someone suggesting using a paladin template to build the templar class and found it inspiring.

Since there was no option for paladins as a class on Athas, characters who would enjoy playing a holy warrior, sworn to uphold his or her monarch’s tenets could opt for a templar. To add to the bureaucratic nature of this class, I’ve replaced the Oaths with Devotions, merely different departments of the templar hierarchy: War deals with guard duty, patrols, enforcing law and order, and commanding armies. Clergy deals with administration, taxes, law-making, ceremonies and customs. Sorcery deals with diplomatic matters, policies, and espionage.

What follows after the classes is a list of new (actually, modified) spells suited for Dark Sun, and a few beasts the druid can shapechange into. What is not included are spells that needed alteration due to different conditions on Athas, like create food and water or control weather. I will update the document when I have enough material to include them.

Homebrewery works best with Chrome. I’ve also included a Google Drive pdf file, in case you’re not fond of Chrome. You can find all of my material (updated, as of today 10/01/18) in my Dark Sun 5e Google Drive folder.

Due to my busy schedule, I might not be able to continue my DSRP. I have drafts of social ranking (and backgrounds) on Athas and an alternate take of gladiator (a reskinned barbarian) left to be completed, but eventually I’ll get to them.

#27

These are incredible. They are on the level of a professionally done sourcebook. If you placed these in front of me and told me it was unearthed arcana, I would not be able to tell the difference.

I’m considering running my own 5e version of Dark Sun, and feel like this would be an excellent piece of work. I can help by playtesting, crunching numbers, research, or writing a separate feature.

Examples: warrior path for specific races, building a larger bestiary, defiling rules.

Please let me know.

#28

Thanks mate, I’m trying my best to deliver as highly polished a material as possible. That of course takes some time, even more so when it goes through some playtesting.

Please do that, it’d be awesome to hear a different perspective. My like-minded group occasionally has its opinions skewed in favour of whatever my intentions are for each project, and that might affect the game.

#29

My first issue I’ve run into is a proper monster pool. I try to reskin monsters that already exist in the monster manual and volo’s guide. I wrote an almost identical Baazrag entry, the key being that pack tactics differs them from other animals. As far as the races, I planned to use the basic monsters in the appendix for humans, like bandits.

The second part was how to make psionics integrate into the setting. For monsters, I was going to use spells without components. The unearthed arcana for the psion class was helpful, but I don’t have a framework for making psionics feel distinct from magic, similar to how each spell caster feels distinct in some way despite all being arcane.

I will reply later with some crunch on what I worked from my end.