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Drox posted:If I had a sig I would add this to it. It'd be a good reminder. The less I hear from you the more I like you.
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Sep 9, 2009 19:01
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oh no the great etherwind is mad at me I'm glad countblanc thinks there's something worthwhile there, at least. I'm far too uncreative to come up with my own settings and don't much care for forgotten realms or eberron. I need as many new campaign settings as I can possibly get. 
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Sep 9, 2009 19:21
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How did a huge area like the Savannah avoid the same fate as the rest of the world regarding Defiler magic? Dark Sun has always interested me, but I've never had an opportunity to play the campaign, so I never bought the books. I still like to geek out on lore for things I never play though.
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Sep 9, 2009 19:33
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Reveilled posted:How did a huge area like the Savannah avoid the same fate as the rest of the world regarding Defiler magic? The Crimson Savannah is dominated by Kreen, known for their short lifespan. While the land was initially depleted by defiling magic same as everywhere else, generations of kreen corpses have quickly rejuvenated the local soil. Ok not really. But for some reason kreen were excluded from the Cleansing Wars that eliminated orcs, goblins and various fey. So I guess their lands were avoided too. Its probably just a loophole in the setting. Theres a bunch of that in the 2nd boxed set, which is why it should be mostly ignored.
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Sep 9, 2009 21:51
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Reveilled posted:How did a huge area like the Savannah avoid the same fate as the rest of the world regarding Defiler magic? It survived only in the dictionary sense of the word. Earlier, I quoted a portion of one of the sourcbooks that said that the area was a testing ground for Rajaat when he invented defiling magic, and his earlier experiments warped and tainted the entire area into something altogether "not nice". There's an adventure somewhere that details having to break into one of the first sorcerer's ancient laboratories which is an upside down pyramid sunken into the swamp.
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Sep 9, 2009 21:56
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ManMythLegend’s Educated Guess On Dark Sun 4E aka Dear God I Hope It Looks Something Like This Races Human, Elf, Half Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling: These can all remain mechanically unchanged. Just refluff them to fit to their Athasian counterparts. Thri-Kreen: Either retool the Eladrin or make a new write up Half Giants: Reskined Goliath Dray/Pterran: Reskinned Dragonborn Muls: Reskined Half Orc Half-Efreet: Mentioned briefly living on some island in the Silt Sea, a perfect excuse to fit Genasi into the setting Warforged: Tough, but not impossible to justify as remnants of the Cleansing Wars. Classes Martial: These can remain more or less unchanged. Just give a few examples of Athasian style beast companions. “Gladiator” is no longer a class, but a function of feat selection. Divine: I would like to see elemental and para-elemental “clerics” be reflavored normal clerics and invokers. Just substitute all radiant keywords with appropriate elemental ones. I think the role of templars can be handled by avengers and paladins, leaving the radiant keyword intact since they’re not worshipping elements. Primal: I think this can stay more or less unchanged. Arcane: The biggest change I would love to see would be to move the Bard to the Psionic power source. Athasian Bards were so different from core Bards I don’t think it’s a simple cut and paste job this time around. Moving them to the Psionic power source skirts the whole “defiler/preserver” issue for them, but still allows them to keep their mystical qualities. I doubt this will happen, but a boy can dream... I think the rest of the classes can be fit into Dark Sun with a little bit of flavor work. The real key will be how to handle preserving and defiling. I’m thinking it will either be via a feat or an optional class feature. I’m really curious as to what they’re going to do. Psionic: Should be a perfect fit. Paragon Paths Cerulean Wizard, Necromancer, and Shadow Wizard would make great Arcane paths. A Gladiator type paragon path the let a character take more than one of the gladiator weapon multiclass feats would be pretty great. Racial paths are tougher, but at the very least the Halflings need a “Life Shaper” one. Epic Destinies Dragon, Avangion, and Elemental are no-brainers. I would also like to see a “Mind Lord” type destiny for psionic classes and maybe a “Spirit of the Land” type for the primal ones. Wild Talents Make these like backgrounds that give a flat bonus to a skill or initiative or something. Feats Lots of things spring to mind, but new channel divinity feats would be great rather than just reflavoring existing ones. A couple of feats to help arcane classes to disguise their powers as psionics would also be neat.
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Sep 9, 2009 23:59
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Reveilled posted:How did a huge area like the Savannah avoid the same fate as the rest of the world regarding Defiler magic? Rajaat thought the Kreen races were animals and below his attention. The Savannah is not really habitable for mammals in any sense either, that's why it's full of races of insect people. That honestly one of the reason there are so many giant insects in the setting, they're the only things that can really thrive on Athas. ManMythLegend posted:Warforged: Tough, but not impossible to justify as remnants of the Cleansing Wars. So why are they going to put in magical robots who are covered in metal into a setting where magic is A) usually massively destructive B)restricted and underground C) and metal is used sparingly? They all would have been stripped down for parts ages ago and the ones that got away from that would have had their life forces depleted by some wannabe Dragon King, not to mention the actual Dragon Kings as well.
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Sep 10, 2009 03:31
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:So why are they going to put in magical robots who are covered in metal into a setting where magic is A) usually massively destructive B)restricted and underground C) and metal is used sparingly? They all would have been stripped down for parts ages ago and the ones that got away from that would have had their life forces depleted by some wannabe Dragon King, not to mention the actual Dragon Kings as well. Maybe not. I could see where slaves who didn't need to eat or drink would be handy, especially in Athas.
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Sep 10, 2009 03:35
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the first law of robotics is that people will try to shoehorn warforged into literally every single d&d game from now on
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Sep 10, 2009 03:41
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Zombies' Downfall posted:the first law of robotics is that people will try to shoehorn warforged into literally every single d&d game from now on They're a core race. It's doubtful that the head editors would allow a setting book to say 'No Race X'. Besides that, it's dead easy to fiddle the 'Forged fluff so that they're composed of stone or obsidian. There was an artifact-grade obsidian golem back in the 2E canon, and it's been made otherwise clear that the material is a strong focus for magical effects in the setting.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:08
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Drox posted:Maybe not. I could see where slaves who didn't need to eat or drink would be handy, especially in Athas. You assume that Athas is populated by reasonable and rational people. Most source material begs to differ. Warforged are also more armored than any slave and almost all warriors, have the ability to flee into the desert unhindered and survive there as long as they aren't eaten, can't really be threatened in the traditional sense that slaves are, and can't have children. Warforged would honestly make terrible slaves, maybe a good gladiator. Even then, the life expectancy is not very long and few people are capable of repairing a Warforged in the setting.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:15
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Warforged are made of bone, leather and obsidian (  ) , and are created through psionics rather than with magic.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:18
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I wouldn't be disappointed in the slightest if they left Warforged out, but I'm not going to wail and cry if they get stuck in there since this is 4E now. Also, this is Athas, Warforged could just as easily be psionicly empowered chitin and obsidian creations. Maybe they were experiments by Rajaat or the Champions in transferring the mind of slaves into something a little hardier that wouldn't deplete their army's food stuffs, and could easily be held in check through the psionic enchantments of their Sorcerer King. With a few of those omnipotent monarchs dead, or MIA, their beholden Warforged were finally able to assert some individuality. YMMV V  VEdit: Beaten on the psionic angle.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:27
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Mushrooman posted:Warforged are made of bone, leather and obsidian ( This answer is better than mine. However, in 4e, warforged aren't "armored". They certainly can be threatened, since they feel pain from injury.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:30
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I really like the idea of warforged made from obsidian as a source of and magnifier for psycho-sorcerous energy. If they could make ships float with a ball of obsidian imagine what they could do channeling life energy out of the warforged and through the obsidian it's made out of.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:40
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It's kind of a pity that Dark Sun can't just be totally divorced from D&D and given its own proprietary system as a stand-alone game.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:42
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ManMythLegend posted:ManMythLegend’s Educated Guess On Dark Sun 4E aka Dear God I Hope It Looks Something Like This Honestly, short of them mangling the setting the only thing that could leave me disappointed would be them not adding a Thri-Kreen race. I mean if they seriously look at giant bugs and say "yeah I don't know what we could do with them...just elf 'em up!", then really they're in trouble because they are out of ideas.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:50
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DeclaredYuppie posted:Honestly, short of them mangling the setting the only thing that could leave me disappointed would be them not adding a Thri-Kreen race. I mean if they seriously look at giant bugs and say "yeah I don't know what we could do with them...just elf 'em up!", then really they're in trouble because they are out of ideas. I'm the complete opposite. Thri-Kreen have never not been broken because of this very train of thought. I would much rather them stick with something we already know is balanced then try to make a something new that fits with what a sentient mantis man "should" have. I mean take a look at the WotC forums and their homebrewed Thri-Kreen. Most of them revolve around some sort of insane quadra-wielding concept just becuase "bugs have lots of legs". They're throwing the baby out with the bath water, and I'm afraid WotC's developers might too.
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Sep 10, 2009 04:58
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ManMythLegend posted:I'm the complete opposite. Thri-Kreen have never not been broken because of this very train of thought. I would much rather them stick with something we already know is balanced then try to make a something new that fits with what a sentient mantis man "should" have. Well I wouldn't use the forums as a good measure of what the designers would do. I don't think there's been a published race yet that you look at and say "gently caress, this is broken!" (Dwarves aside) but it'd take me all of 5 minutes to track down something awful in a fan wiki. fake edit- the biggest mistake in races so far was oversized grip for minotaurs/bugbears, and they fixed that up within a few months of release. I'm pretty sure they'll give some forethought to any sort of "multi-handedness" based on that experience alone.
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Sep 10, 2009 05:04
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DeclaredYuppie posted:Well I wouldn't use the forums as a good measure of what the designers would do. I don't think there's been a published race yet that you look at and say "gently caress, this is broken!" (Dwarves aside) but it'd take me all of 5 minutes to track down something awful in a fan wiki. All I'm saying is that simple is better. Plus, I don't think people appreciate how perfect a fit the crunch of the Eladrin write up fits the Thri-Kreen. That all said, they probably will get a new write up. I can only hope that they do show a little foresight and make it solid.
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Sep 10, 2009 05:10
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Warforged were so much better in 3.X. One of the few times I'll say that about 3.X. They could honestly make Thri-kreen without the whole 4 handed attacks. They could just say the other ones can help in grapples and so on but only the main ones are dexterous enough to attack.
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Sep 10, 2009 05:14
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 "Hey man, what's up?" "Nothin much. Just burnin a village down with my bros." That was the lead chapter art for the warrior chapter in Dragon Kings, the book for taking your PC's above 20th level. Also, Baxa art generally sucks but this picture owns.
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Sep 10, 2009 05:27
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I'd be ok with 'Thrikeen can wield normal-sized weapons as off-hand weapons without any penalty' without needing to be a melee ranger. It's suitable, and marginally useful, but not a game breaking way of implementing 4 arms, since most classes would find it of limited use beyond 'which weapon enchantment should I attack with'. Maybe 'you get the +1 damage bonus for wielding 1-handed weapons as if with 2 hands' I'm just brainstorming though. Or mabye you can wield 2 off-hand weapons in your offhands? Just for various enchantments that might have its uses too, I'd keep a random +1 Parrying weapon on me for it's encounter power.
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Sep 10, 2009 10:17
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There's one question I have. With all this reliance on obsidian instead of iron, are swords really rare then? I mean obsidian doesn't (unless I suppose you managed to create it in that shape) have the nature to be forged into anything, so you end up with little shards that are better for spearheads, arrowheads, daggers, and Macuahuitl for the closest approximate to swords (also possibly axes if you get a large enough shard and chip it into an axehead shape I guess?).
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Sep 10, 2009 11:18
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Attilla posted:There's one question I have. With all this reliance on obsidian instead of iron, are swords really rare then? I mean obsidian doesn't (unless I suppose you managed to create it in that shape) have the nature to be forged into anything, so you end up with little shards that are better for spearheads, arrowheads, daggers, and Macuahuitl for the closest approximate to swords (also possibly axes if you get a large enough shard and chip it into an axehead shape I guess?). "Chains" and stuff like flails are generally made with giants-hair rope. Maces and clubs are generally just rocks tied to sticks.
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Sep 10, 2009 12:09
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tendrilsfor20 posted:For "swords," it's usually described as a petrified wood shard, carved into the shape of a sword and then coated in glue and then pointy bits of obsidian. Other blades will be made by bone. Only very high-ranking members of a city-state's army will have metal blades. Medium-ranking soldiers will have bone or petrified wood weapons with a metal edge folded over on them. Even with (shoddy) materials like these, in 2e if the weapon was magic then it was as durable as normal magic metal weapons, right?
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Sep 10, 2009 15:59
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Aranan posted:Even with (shoddy) materials like these, in 2e if the weapon was magic then it was as durable as normal magic metal weapons, right? I'm not sure on durability (the materials had fewer HP and were easier to sunder in 3.5), but a magic item made from "inferior materials" like wood, bone, or obsidian had inherent penalties to hit. A bone axe may be -2 to hit and damage, and so a +1 Bone Battle Axe would (wood?) actually roll at a -1 bonus.
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Sep 10, 2009 16:18
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Aranan posted:Even with (shoddy) materials like these, in 2e if the weapon was magic then it was as durable as normal magic metal weapons, right? That's a good question. I'm pretty sure you're right, but I don't remember off the top of my head. I'll check the rules when I get back from class this afternoon. I can say with certainty that that will be the case in 4E if they include alternate material rules for the setting which I think is probably doubtful.
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Sep 10, 2009 16:57
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:I'm not sure on durability (the materials had fewer HP and were easier to sunder in 3.5), but a magic item made from "inferior materials" like wood, bone, or obsidian had inherent penalties to hit. A bone axe may be -2 to hit and damage, and so a +1 Bone Battle Axe would (wood?) actually roll at a -1 bonus. Man, Dark Sun is hard, but it doesn't need to be that hard. If somebody told me that my magic weapons had a penalty to hit, I think I'd just walk out of the game right there, or, depending on the game, have a serious talk with the GM. Now I wish I had my old 2e stuff, had some DS books, Ravenloft, all the good poo poo, sold it all off years ago, unfortunately.
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Sep 10, 2009 17:03
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I think that enchanted wood/bone/etc weapons still broke on a critical miss. That, or there was a (gag) item saving throw involved. We just said 'gently caress it' and declared that all magic weapons were metal by default.
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Sep 10, 2009 17:14
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Yes, the best was was to make sure the magic weapons were metal relics of the green age or some such. All the "inferior" weapons required a second roll after a critical to see if it broke.
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Sep 10, 2009 19:24
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Here's the relevant bit from the revised box:Revised Box pg 78 posted:All magical weapons found as part of a treasure are metal or have metal components. Nonmetal weapons can be enchanted as well, but magical adjustments must still take into account the inherently poorer quality of the material used. Weapons are determined as in the DUNGEON MASTER Guide. Weapons can have intelligence, and those with intelligence 15 or greater can have a psionic wild talent (25% chance). So apparently being magical doesn't automatically negate the fact that a weapon is made of sub-standard material. Dark Sun was harsher then I remember I guess.
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Sep 10, 2009 22:15
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What sort of powers do the average inabitants of Athas have? By small psionic abilities, are we talking levitation and ESP or 1d4 damage mind blasts? If someone with the old 2e boxes doesn't mind, could we see a few of the cooler powers your regular low-level NPC in Dark Sun might have that might make them a legitimate threat to an unprepared PC?
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Sep 10, 2009 23:33
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Flash Pan Hunter posted:It's kind of a pity that Dark Sun can't just be totally divorced from D&D and given its own proprietary system as a stand-alone game. What? No. Dark Sun is a D&D setting through and through. Its tropes are based on D&D tropes, and really it's just post-apocalypse D&D. It's great that Dark Sun won't be divorced from D&D and given its own system because D&D has only gotten better in the fifteen years since DS came out. quote:Man, Dark Sun is hard, but it doesn't need to be that hard. If somebody told me that my magic weapons had a penalty to hit, I think I'd just walk out of the game right there, or, depending on the game, have a serious talk with the GM. Well, there's two things to consider. First, Dark Sun was a pretty magic items lite setting. If you play through the published modules, you don't come across a magic item until the end of Road to Urik. Even in Arcane Shadows which has the party teaming up with Urik's Veiled Alliance to help a would-be Avangion, there are only a few permanent magic doo-dads to be had. Second, the players would usually go through gear like they were in a REH Conan story. They'd escape from slavery and loot some decent gear only to lose it to an Elf tribe in the next session. So as a player, you didn't get attached to your gear like you would in a more vanilla campaign. quote:What sort of powers do the average inabitants of Athas have? By small psionic abilities, are we talking levitation and ESP or 1d4 damage mind blasts? Basically, anybody could have any kind of psychic power. So, the bar wench you just slapped around could potentially be packing Life Drain.
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Sep 10, 2009 23:36
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Reveilled posted:What sort of powers do the average inabitants of Athas have? By small psionic abilities, are we talking levitation and ESP or 1d4 damage mind blasts?  It's completely random. You might get "Speak with Otters and Otterkin" or "Fly at your speed" or "Psychic Dragon Breath"
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Sep 10, 2009 23:38
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ManMythLegend posted:So apparently being magical doesn't automatically negate the fact that a weapon is made of sub-standard material. Dark Sun was harsher then I remember I guess. Nonmetal weapons broke if you rolled a 1 on a d20 after inflicting max damage with the weapon. We never played like that for enchanted items though. But the material penalties still applied, so a bone dagger +1 was as good as a normal metal dagger. All of Baxa's art from the Gladiator book was good. Also, hey lets fight a rampager with sticks. 
ritorix fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Sep 10, 2009 |
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Sep 10, 2009 23:38
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PeterWeller posted:Basically, anybody could have any kind of psychic power. So, the bar wench you just slapped around could potentially be packing Life Drain. tendrilsfor20 posted:
Fuuuuuuuuuck. 
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Sep 10, 2009 23:41
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I know a GM who randomly rolled for NPCs' psionic abilities under 3.5 and had a system to determine their daily power points. Due to a bunch of very fluky rolls and some decent role-playing by the players, a certain NPC who was only meant to be scenery filler got something interesting. Long story short, party member goes off with bar wench, party Thri-Kreen (barely more than a savage) thinks the bar wench is being seduced away to be made use of as food, bar wench doesn't take kindly to this and unleashes Ultrablast.
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Sep 11, 2009 00:08
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Athas was a pretty harsh landscape. Hey look an oasis, I'm thirsty.  About that Silt Sea...  Even the cacti fought back.  Sloths? Yeah, we got sloths. No, you cant outrun them. 
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Sep 11, 2009 00:14
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 17:25 |
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So hey thanks to TG I've done three things, get my dad's old Dark Sun books, physically buy the AD&D box set, and buy Ravenloft for 2nd edition. You jerks made me and my group like AD&D... Now I have to run Dark Sun, I hope you're all happy (I am).
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