Hello,
I have a player that is making the argument that Mules can be preservers or defilers. As far as I can tell this is incorrect. Was there ever anything published on this matter?
1 Like
In 2e they could not be wizards of any kind. 3e removed racial restrictions on base classes, but flavor wise it was discouraged.
3 Likes
Per the original 2e box set, yes:
“A player character mul may become a cleric, druid, fighter, gladiator, psionicist, or thief. When created, the player must decide if his mul character will be considered a demihuman or a human character. As a human, the mul character can have unlimited advancement in any class and become a dual-classed character later in his career. As a demi-human, a mul can become a multi-classed character in accordance with the multi-classed combinations table in the next chapter. Once the decision is made, the mul character will forever be considered either a human or demihuman in all cases.”
4 Likes
If you use 3.5e, then Muls can be wizards. That said, they won’t be great wizards because of their intelligence scores.
2 Likes
What everyone else has said. If you’re going 2e then dwarves couldn’t cast arcane magic in most any setting. Dark Sun was very keen on humans and elves being the only wizards.
Of course in newer editions this is not the case and comes down to the DM and group.
1 Like
Humans, elves and for a while halfings - as long as they were illusionist preservers.
1 Like
I’ve always gone with the idea that halflings and kreen can’t because they existed before arcane magic was invented. And dwarves bring anti magic by nature makes them extremely rare. Muls by virtue of half of their parentage would be the same. I play pathfinder 1st edition rules so the rare races are possible but the player would need a compelling backstory before I would approve it.
It’s good to be King.
4 Likes
One other race I realized could potentially know preserving/defiling is the Dray since they are descended from humans and created by a sorcerer king. Of course Dray are not exactly prime PC material, but we said the same about orcs and drow back in the day.
2 Likes
Funny you mention that. When I was a player I was obsessed with making a second generation Dray Defiler. I was so annoying my DM banned me from ever playing that race.
1 Like
The more I research into the various editions of Dark Sun, the more I become aware that Dark Sun used the racial class limitations as a feature of the world more so than any other D&D setting. Between this and heavily fluctuating psionics rules between editions makes for the main reasons why converting Dark Sun to later editions has generally gone so poorly.
This explains why I would place serious restrictions on certain races learning arcane magic at all. If level restrictions are gone, then getting someone to train you is the main barrier, as wizards are seriously hated by most demi-human races, and most wizards seriously don’t trust other races either.
3 Likes
One of the few changes I didn’t mind in 3e was opening up the race/class options, though I wouldn’t back date it to 2e. (It did allow me to try some really weird and often sub-optimal characters, but then all my characters tend to be quirky. There was the permanently drunk halfling barbarian whose pack animal carried barrels of alcohol that outweighed the halfling, the dwarf fire wizard who was an alchemist and carried around so much explosives that he could have accidentally wiped the party from splash damage and the half-orc barbarian/druid with only a couple of levels in barbarian and no wild spell - he basically turned into a big cat and raged.)
2Es race/class limitations are an interesting idiosyncrasy of the system and well thought out for how they apply to Dark Sun. That isn’t to say that in all my years of DMing I wouldn’t sometimes allow for a non-standard race/class combo if the player really wanted it, but they’d have to come with extra penalties to offset it.
In the case of a mul preserver, I would allow it in rare circumstances if asked, but I’d have to say that they favoured their human side much more than their dwarf side, meaning they would have to choose to be human rather than demihuman and there would be serious reaction penalties among dwarves and muls for abandoning their dwarven heritage and taking up foul arcane magic.
3 Likes
When it comes to race restrictions I am admittedly not particularly strict by 2e standards, though I tend to keep those themes in my 3e.
Dwarves no being able to learn arcane magic is a big one I keep that is meant to line up with their inherent magic resistance, similar goes with halflings. This was why gnomes were a thing imo, they provided an avenue for playing the magical wee folk.
Otherwise druids and paladins were the two I tended to keep a bit of restriction on. Paladins in my settings are a human invented tradition and unless you grew up among humans you’re highly unlikely to become a paladin given the degree of commitment. It’s not exactly something you just dip into one day out of curiosity, but rather the strongest base class in 2e.
As for druids, they are generally reserved for wood elves and humans, but I am pretty flexible with other races that are more “in tune with nature” picking it up, such as lizard folk.
1 Like