Saying magic is ‘overdone’ is a rather broad statement to put it mildly, but I also consider magic to be anything that breaks the laws of physics. That out of the way, I think the mechanics of magic in any game system hinge a lot on the setting itself. For instance, Shadowrun has magic actively exhaust and potentially kill the caster depending on how reckless they’re being. A lot of urban fantasy and sword & sorcery settings have magic actively be dangerous to use. Play fast and loose with magic and you might give everyone kidney stones or open a gate to hell.
Fortunately for us, Dark Sun takes magic in a rather unique direction. So revamping defiling/preserving for a different game system could provide a neat spin on magic. Perhaps magic is exhausting to cast, but takes less of a toll if you actively defile the land. However, if there is little life around you, casting spells taxes your body further still. In the salt flats even magic missiles can be strenuous spells to pull off.
Edit: The key theme here is that magic is drawn from life no matter what you’re doing. So the mechanics should reflect this. Psionics on the other hand is all about a combination of willpower, stamina, and intuition of the user. One approach to this could be making psionic powers rely far more on technique that magic. I could see some systems treat psionic powers similarly to skills, just hopefully not the way 3.5 uses skills.
Incidentally, your rule for 1 action per spell level is precisely how D&D’s Lankhmar setting handled its magic rules. And most of the rest of your proposed rules would fit well within that setting as well.
I love the idea of a “low magic” campaign, and I even tried to set one up once loosely based on the King Arthur stories of Sir James Knowles. Most of the villains were other humans, and when you did encounter a magical beast or item, it was a REALLY big deal.
I’m going to be an absolute blasphemer here by saying this, but I don’t think the writing in the Prism Pentad was all that good.
Don’t get me wrong, I adored their world building and character construction (hence why I’m here all these decades later), but the author of these books had…shall we say…limited abilities to predict plausible human behaviour and dialogue.
I’m not sure this qualifies as blasphemous. I literally have never heard someone say that they actually liked the writing in the Prism Pentad. Of course, mediocre writing at best is so common in fantasy that my issues with the series have less to do with writing quality and more Troy Denning’s ability to accidentally create a giant pile of never explained mysteries due to him either changing cannon on a whim or just being bad at tying things together in a logical fashion.
All right, it’s been a while since I last read the books so my memory might be a little rusty, but here it goes, in no particular order:
Sadira’s sun wizardry. In book 3 Kaidar (shadow giant) specifically states that what she gained is less than what the champions gained (or states something to that effect, anyway.) Obviously, you would never know it with how the SK’s are portrayed or their abilities in the novel (none of them have sun wizardry or indestructible skin, for example).
The heads of Sacha and Wyan. Are they alive? Undead? No one knows. Undead are discussed in the books, but the heads are never identified as such. What powers do they have? In book 2 they either use dragon magic, or aid Tithian, an apprentice wizard and psionicist, in doing so, but such an incredible display is never repeated. In the prologue of book 3, they appear to summon psionic power to fight Nok before Tithian waves them off. In later books, they just kind of bite a lot and then unceremoniously get torn apart.
Speaking of Nok, what’s up with him? He’s a psionicist, but beyond that is he a druid, a wizard, or even both? A close reading makes it actually seem like he’s a wizard, and, even more bizarrely, can drain animal life, but Troy Denning, and the rest of cannon, made halfling anti-magic, so IDK. Furthermore, who is he really? He’s a big big mystery in books 1 and 3, but his character is pretty much the definition of a setup with no payoff, and that’s before we get into things like him talking from a defiled plant after he died.
The giants in book 4. The book has a confusing and complicated pile of lore around them that might mean all athasian giants evolved from dwarves, or might mean nothing at all, and that’s before we get into things like the Dark Lens maybe granting intelligence to a species or being required to create beast head giants. Oh, and just in general, the books confirm that dwarves once had beards, but now can’t grow them, with no explanation given.
Speaking of giants, what is up with shadow giants and the black? actually, I could go on all day about that one, but let’s just say there’s a lot about them and where they live that feels made up on the spot and wildly inconsistent.
A minor one. Is resurrection possible in Dark Sun lore, according to the Prism Pentad? No one knows. It gets brought up at least twice, once by Tithian in the Obsidian Oracle, asking it Rajaat can grant that power, to which he gets a non committal response, and in book 5, when Sadira thinks about the wraiths storing their life force in gems, and wonders if that means they could be resurrected.
Save the biggest for last. How in the world was Rajaat capable of performing what we saw at the end of prism pentad 5? He’s been trapped in a perfect seal for 10,000 years and he suddenly has the power to move and change the color of the sun, and create life, water, and clouds across a city half the size of the tablelands without blinking? This feels like it should have been a big freaking deal, but the novel just mentions that he has “changed”, and that’s it. What is he, and how was this guy ever defeated?
Concerning #3. Speaking of Nok, what’s up with him? He’s a psionicist, but beyond that is he a druid, a wizard, or even both? A close reading makes it actually seem like he’s a wizard, and, even more bizarrely, can drain animal life, but Troy Denning, and the rest of cannon, made halfling anti-magic, so IDK. Furthermore, who is he really? He’s a big big mystery in books 1 and 3, but his character is pretty much the definition of a setup with no payoff, and that’s before we get into things like him talking from a defiled plant after he died.
Halflings could originally be preserver or defiler illusionists up to level 16 (even though specialists weren’t supposed to be a thing in Athas) as mentioned in the original box set.
Yes, they could, and that explains the Halfling illusionists in book 1. By book 3 however, Troy Denning had developed enough to start dropping in hints to the Blue Age (a Rhulisti in a stasis tank, a hint at the Brown Tide in the Pristine Tower). More importantly, even if he is an illusionist in book 3, he shouldn’t be able to drain animal life. The issue with Troy Denning’s writing is not only that this isn’t explained, but that it’s called out as being weird in the book and then is still never explained (see also, a lot of the stuff above).
Also, I just find it strange that his magic is never clearly identified as wizardry or druidic in nature.
While it’s odd that he’d be a defiler, the idea that a dragon might consume the entire Forest Ridge might cause Nok to be the lesser of two evils? I might have to write some extended backstory on that for my own game.
I have no issue with defiling in general making living beings within the range feel ill or queasy (that’s how I run it in my own game currently). It was even brought up in Defilers and Preservers, but not everyone cares for those rules as a whole. The entire rethink of when defiling happens, between the original box and the revised boxed sets makes everything so muddy. The original defiler class description also makes me think that animals are affected slightly, just not enough to kill or incapacitate.
Thats been in official lore since the beginning, so you aren’t wrong.
This is why it’s so weird. Even if he is a wizard, which itself is not confirmed by any source, Nok is pretty clearly not a defiler, but he has created an item that allows the wielder to drain animal life directly a la dragon magic, and, IIRC, demonstrated in book 3 what might be the same ability.
To be fair to Troy Denning, it has been literally decades since he worked on Dark Sun. However, the lack of communication that seems to have occurred between him and the other people working on the setting back in the day is something I feel a little irritated about. I mean, Beyond the Prism Pentad is a travesty in part because it really did nothing whatsoever to actually explain any of the things listed above or many other lingering problems. Like, did nobody at TSR ask him any questions back then? Or was he actually making it up as he went along? Unfortunately, its decades too late to get answers.
Actually yes. Book 3 at least states in no uncertain terms that Nok created Ktandeo’s Cane as well as the Heartwood Spear. I checked 2 hours ago to make sure. He also drains Sadira’s life with an obsidian sphere.
No, the book, when recapping who is is, basically for the audience, when he shows up for the first time in a while, calls him the creator of the Heartwood Spear and Ktandeo’s Cane. I could check what is said in book 1, but book 3 is at least very clear on the subject.
My point is the possibility that he’s lying. Especially if he’s a defiler himself and uses the cane to pretend otherwise. It gives him more depth as to why it was so important to recover them and having his actions eventually lead to his death.
I get that, but the narration seems to disagree. Frustratingly, we never see how he casts spells, only the aftereffects (turning a wall of fire to steam, enhancing his warriors stamina) and I could see both of those effects being done either by wizardry or elemental magic, but I feel Sadira would have noticed if he’d defiled to do so.
Anyway, lying or not, he was capable of draining animal life, which is not easily done, hence my annoyance with Denning basically pointing a finger at how unusual something is and then never explaining it. (and lets not get into him turning into a prismatic hued thornbush after his death)
Troy Denning has said that he doesn’t always agrees and or follow rules. Be is a story telling and believes in telling a good story even if it breaks the rules. He did say as much in a interview.
He sees him self as a DM and that he can use or not uses what rules he wants to make them fit the story that he wants to tell.
This is why there is some many different things from the Novels vs the Rules Books. I for one don’t totally agree with his thinking, but that is just my opinion and we all have our own.