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If you need Wikipedia to tell you that Wyan was the Pixie Blight then you aren't a real man. Edit: Thirst snipe 
ManMythLegend fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 05:34
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It must have been awesome and terrible to be Wyan. "So let me get this straight, I just gotta kill all the Pixies and I can be a god king?"
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Jun 24, 2010 11:56
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I'm sure WotC, a company with a PR department, looked at the genocide stuff of second edition, and had visions of headlines "Dungeons and Dragons supports genocide, climate change" on Fox News and the like and said "Lets make some grognards mad instead."
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Jun 24, 2010 12:25
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It must have been awesome and terrible to be Wyan. Pixies are tiny, clever and they can poison you and put you to sleep with their arrows! Imagine having to swat every venomous insect in the world.
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Jun 24, 2010 12:26
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 The troll cleansing was unsuccessful. They're just too drat tough.E: I'm an rear end, and forgot they had more than one troll cleansing. I held my tongue at the encounters table last night. "It's 4e, maybe they have goblins now. Maybe the new monsters weren't fully statted when they wrote this... poo poo, my character was just bloodied by their opening attack." BetterWeirdthanDead fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 14:07
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The only two places they're called "goblins" instead of just some sort of green-skinned waste-mutants is in the DM text. Everything read to the players just says "Green skin, crazy right?". I was imagining them as miniature versions of the green guys from Taarna (second mention of Heavy Metal so far in thread). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pIW5gz8WUU I found myself liking the use of goblins. It says that the wastes of Athas are unknowable, and strange things lurk there--unknown tribes and beasts evolved for harshness. They're goblins mechanically, but they're more truly das Unheimliche: the gnawingly familiar but innately strange. For me, this hearkens back to the first box, that presented a well-realised sketch of the world of Dark Sun. You had some very good basics, and nothing else. As I've said before, i think that the absence of history makes the setting stronger, and the entire Rajaat/Champions backstory was a disappointment that wounded it. I appreciate that all evidence from Wizards implies that the history is being quietly excised, and that blasted lands of Athas are once again filled with an uneven patchwork of das Unheimliche.
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Jun 24, 2010 14:15
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You keep saying das Unheimliche but all I keep hearing is forcing someone to spit or cough something up. Edit: This likely makes me look really uncultured. But I am neutral with regards to the history being there or not, though having no official history (for various reasons, forced literacy included) does make it a lot easier for the DM to have their own history, should they want rather than having to tread lightly over canon. Infinite Oregano fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 14:19
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It's the Unheimliche because you're forcing someone to choke on its impossible reality. 
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Jun 24, 2010 14:30
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:
Was it Caistri or whatever? The elf that has the throw and charge attack? Cause he fell last night in our game, first to exactly 0, then after healing up, fell AGAIN to -3. Everyone else was fine though  the guy that played the Ardent didn't come last night so we were out his healing skills.
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Jun 24, 2010 14:34
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Well, looking at what was presented in the encounter: * The creatures were dressed as skeletons. A race driven close to extinction by death given form that incorporates their lingering extinction by mimicking the undead? * Two of the goblins were "cursespewers" - have the goblins embraced defiling magic in order to survive? Are necromancers the leaders of their culture? Perhaps in embracing death they've learnt to bend it to their will. * Another two goblins are wearing fins on their back into which a pair of minor wind spirits are imprisoned. Is this a unique form of magic to the goblins? I wish I could see more of the info about them, or some art, but I guess I'll have to wait for August.
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Jun 24, 2010 18:11
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It must have been awesome and terrible to be Wyan. Wyan enjoyed his job so much he was one of the two champions who didn't turn on Rajaat.
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Jun 24, 2010 19:13
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This thread seems to be as devoid of divine attention as the wastelands of Athas. So Dark Sun Encounters Sorry for the lovely file-hosting site, I don't have my own webspace. If someone wants to mirror this on their own space, go ahead.
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Jun 24, 2010 19:42
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KGBAgent185 posted:Was it Caistri or whatever? The elf that has the throw and charge attack? Cause he fell last night in our game, first to exactly 0, then after healing up, fell AGAIN to -3. Everyone else was fine though No, I missed the first so, and have been stuck playing "Cervix," the Tiefling Psion. His description says he only has one horn, but he clearly has two in his portrait.
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Jun 24, 2010 19:52
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:No, I missed the first so, and have been stuck playing "Cervix," the Tiefling Psion. His portrait also has him carrying a staff when he only has a bronze dagger in his inventory.
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Jun 24, 2010 19:54
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He wears a prosthetic horn so he doesn't get made fun of.
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Jun 24, 2010 19:54
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his name is cervix I think he's gonna get made fun of
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Jun 24, 2010 20:48
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And the elf is named Castrati. That's the wasteland for you.
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Jun 24, 2010 21:10
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Android Blues posted:Pixies are tiny, clever and they can poison you and put you to sleep with their arrows! Imagine having to swat every venomous insect in the world. Wyan was also a powerful defiler, it was probably like using an aerosol can and a match on an insect swarm. They were also a lot easier to kill in 2e. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 22:14
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poo poo, Wynan probably sucked the life force out of one group of pixies to power the death spell that would snuff out the life force of the next group of pixies.
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Jun 24, 2010 22:22
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The Thri-Kreen is called Shakira.
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Jun 24, 2010 23:12
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Wait. There are literally characters named Shakira (not so bad), Castrati (lol) and Cervix?
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Jun 25, 2010 00:43
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I checked it out, and yeah.
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Jun 25, 2010 00:48
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Shikirr, Castri and Jarvix respectively. Although the new names are growing on me. (Barcan, Phye and Yuka are the other three that make up the gang)
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Jun 25, 2010 00:48
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I'm not too concerned about the goblins or other possible monsters being still alive, what makes athas great its not just the metaplot anyways.Android Blues posted:Wait. There are literally characters named Shakira (not so bad), Castrati (lol) and Cervix? no, its Shikirr, Castri and Jarvix
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Jun 25, 2010 00:53
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:Shikirr, Castri and Jarvix respectively. Although the new names are growing on me. Yuka represent, sporting an acid spear and bug mount now.
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Jun 25, 2010 00:56
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Tolervi posted:This thread seems to be as devoid of divine attention as the wastelands of Athas. So Thank you for this, fantastic!
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Jun 25, 2010 01:32
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Correct me if I'm misreading something, but the Orb in Encounter 5 is kinda useless (apart from being a nice +1 implement, of course). The only character who can utilise it is Jarvix, who has no powers that target Fortitude defense. It's not even a 'you'll realise how good this is when you level up' thing, since he'll only get a utility power at level 2. Edit: Holy crap. Just checked all the characters, not a single one has a power that targets Fortitude. UrbanLabyrinth fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jun 25, 2010 |
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Jun 25, 2010 02:05
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Tolervi posted:This thread seems to be as devoid of divine attention as the wastelands of Athas. So You may be the single greatest person ever. Thank you so much for this.
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Jun 25, 2010 09:52
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WyrdFate posted:You may be the single greatest person ever. Thank you so much for this. I also picked up Bloodsand Arena today (thanks to a fantastic game store putting aside a copy for me), so hopefully I'll scan it for the thread tomorrow. Given that it's another free product, I hope this won't get me banned.
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Jun 25, 2010 10:28
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:(Barcan, Phye and Yuka are the other three that make up the gang) Barcan up the wrong tree, Phye on you, and Yuck Yuck Yuka don't have quite the same ring as the first three. Yeah, I got 11 more weeks of being known as Cervix.
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Jun 25, 2010 13:42
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Tolervi posted:I also picked up Bloodsand Arena today (thanks to a fantastic game store putting aside a copy for me), so hopefully I'll scan it for the thread tomorrow. Given that it's another free product, I hope this won't get me banned. I'm certain they'll put it online themselves, if you just wait. Edit: And Cervix-guy, if you no longer want to be known as Cervix, try (minor spoilers if you haven't read the thread completely) whenever you meet your first primal spirit, re-christen yourself as a sign of your bond with/commitment to it, its mission, etc. "No longer will I be known as Cervix--henceforth, you may call me Hymen." That sort of thing. Ask the spirit to sanctify the baptism. You might get a renown point for awesomeness. Squizzle fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jun 25, 2010 |
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Jun 25, 2010 15:02
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I missed talking about it while I was composing the new OP for the main D&D thread yesterday, but what did everyone think of the Eye on Dark Sun article? I was a little skeptical about the premise, but I found myself enjoying it as I read. I'm not the world's biggest proponent of sparkly zones of What-the gently caress Magic, but the article (by new goon T-Rod) managed to convince me that it can work. First, the article pitches sunwarped flats as less regions of wild-magic wizard-radiation, and more as strange and shifting regions that will degenerate any who linger too long within them because of sure, magic, why not. That fits perfectly into Athas: wretched land making a person a wretch themselves. I even found myself appreciating that it's specifically a magical thing, instead of just expecting that anyone who takes too long in the deserts will find themselves reverting to savage survivalism. Slope-browed Athasian neanderthals in tattered remnants of trade-house finery, or templar armors? I can get on-board with that. In that portion of Taarna I linked earlier, those green dudes were originally noble villagers--they were changed by ambient magics into the degenerate savages you saw. Taarna is a little more apocalyptic than it is dying-Earth, but I can't argue with it working as an influence for Dark Sun. I am, admittedly, loopy with joy that I'm seeing new Dark Sun material after all of these years, and that will push me toward liking this. I don't think that's the only reason I ended up personally filing this article as "good stuff": it's constructed well, with obvious love for the setting, and holy poo poo plot hooks everywhere. You could fill a level or two with adventures solely from ideas in this article. As a bonus, the article mentions a ton of creatures in a fashion that implies expectations of reader familiarity with them. We can assume that the Dark Sun Creature Catalogue will include tareks and baazrags, for instance. Squizzle fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jun 29, 2010 |
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Jun 29, 2010 13:51
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Are Sunwarped Flats new, or were they in previous editions? They seem almost exactly like plaguechanged lands in Forgotten Realms. (not exactly in the sense that a mark is like WoW or a bicycle and a car are the same thing)
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Jun 29, 2010 14:45
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Unless I'm completely blanking on something, they're new. The name is certainly 4E enough. They look like someone said "Pristine Tower? More like terrible Space Halfling history. We need a better reason for waste-mutants", and made a better reason.
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Jun 29, 2010 15:04
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Those sound like a pretty awesome idea. Is there any crunch in the article? I mean, having a template like "Sun Warped <Monster Name>" or maybe some alternate powers like in the back of the Draconomicon seems like a pretty neat idea.
ManMythLegend fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jun 29, 2010 |
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Jun 29, 2010 16:40
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There's a mention of the "Sunwarped Creature theme from Monster Manual 3" in the article as well as a Encounter terrain power (harnessing "a swirling mist of ambient sunwarped magic" to enhance a spell with some extra damage at the risk of taking necrotic damage yourself equal to your healing surge value). It ends with two Sunwarped Wretches (level 3 skirmisher and level 4 brute).
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Jun 29, 2010 17:06
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So I just got back from the first Dark Sun encounter night, and all I have to say is "GOD drat". They aren't playing around. The thri-kreen battle mind died on round two. Not like "Oh I'm below zero and unconcious...", I mean "Oh, I took close to 60 damage and now I am a thin, red, paste...". I was playing the mul fighter and when all was said and done after the fight I had burned 6 healing surges, half of my total allotment. Ah Dark Sun, I missed you... Also Rodney, if you're still around, what's the deal with religion now? Do the people still pay tribute and "worship" the elements like the bad old days, or does the removal of the Divine Power source indicate that most folks are just atheist now and there is no elemental clergy? Are Primal characters supposed to be elemental clerics, or do they revere spirits of the land and stuff? ManMythLegend fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Aug 24, 2010 |
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Jun 30, 2010 05:35
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One of the character themes is "Elemental Priest," so I imagine it's closer to the latter. It actually seems closer to the writers' original intentions and appropriately Dark Sun, so I'm all for it.
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Jun 30, 2010 08:10
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My impression was that elemental worship was now a broad-based nature-animism, instead of piecing it out according to specific elements. The same priest might placate a sand-spirit to end a sirocco, negotiate a survival-day from a water-spirit, and call upon a fire-spirit to keep a camp fire safely burning all night. Edit: Sorry that every time someone asks Rodney something, I open my trap.
Squizzle fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Jun 30, 2010 |
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Jun 30, 2010 13:11
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the first Dark Sun night? are you from 4 weeks in the past? Chris Tulach just sent out a big e-mail the other day basically apologizing for his lil' bro who designed the modules. If your DM runs it by the book and doesn't really read the module ahead of time, people will die every week.
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Jun 30, 2010 13:55
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