Dark Sun

I’m considering running a Dark Sun campaign for 4th Edition d&d
What’s Veeky Forums‘s opinion on the world of Athas?

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4E best E

I remember it being a lot of fun and not being as limited as 5e.
Did you ever play or run the Dark Sun campaign setting?

Bump

Dark Sun is an interesting setting, but it's pretty different from most settings and players can have a hard time adjusting.

I only know about it from 2E, so I can't really comment on 4E, but DS requires players to accept some things that are usually difficult:

1. 90% of the time you can't do magic
2. Psionics are the new magic
3. A lot of your gear is going to suck for a long time.
4. Being an asshole is a way of life, and people will constantly screw you.

I never got totally onboard the whole element of the land itself trying to kill you, but I did think that actually ensuring you can properly survive a journey was a huge element of the game, and considerable resources needed to be devoted to it. I never wanted to have a player die because we ran out of water, but I also didn't think we should just get to wander outside without any major consideration for water either, if that makes sense.

>1. 90% of the time you can't do magic
>2. Psionics are the new magic
This always bugged me. If the point of the setting is that magic is extra powerful but super evil, why shove in not!magic? Aren't you just undermining your own themes?

I think d&d is stuck with the mindset of “a proper party has casters and martial” so druids and psions are the replacement wizards

Did bone and stone swords count as different from steel swords in 2e?
I believe they don’t have stat differences in 4e but maybe I haven’t read that far into the setting book yet.

I get that, but it would have been more a more unique setting had they been willing to sacrifice that sacred cow.

>I believe they don’t have stat differences in 4e but maybe I haven’t read that far into the setting book yet.

They do, though the differences are not gamebreaking. Basically: If you roll a natural 1, you can choose to take a reroll rather than accepting an automatic miss. If your weapon is non-metal, it breaks after making the attack however. Metal weapons get to make the reroll without wrecking them.

You can always homebrew that in

Maximum Edge

mandatory reading: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/DarkSun

How do the different planes work in the campaign setting? I know the astral sea is abandoned and the feywild is shrinking but I’m mostly interested in the Shadowfell and how it interacts with the world. The campaign setting mentions that ghosts linger in abandoned cities in the shadowfell and that there are things called shadow giants that live in the silt sea
Oh interesting, I like that a lot.
I think the complete lack of magical utility would hamper most parties.
Is that good or bad?
Thanks

The Grey (Shadowfell) is still mostly intact. In fact it's the only way to get to another plane, as the Grey has most of the extraplanar portals out.

Also, there was an article in dungeon 190 on one of the city states (Kalidnay) which got pulled into the grey.

I’m not that familiar with d&d I guess. Are there just portals to other planes lingering around?

At least in 2e, a lot of psi shit doesn't have the sheer utility that magic does.

It has, for example, very little direct damage that isn't psionic in nature, or even ways to really affect other creatures so easily with the powers.

It basically still gives you options for fighting enemies, but without a lot of the ability to just end encounters. On the reverse end, Psionics has shitloads of random utility powers that can make surviving far easier, so they're still important to the party.

In 2e?

They have hit and damage drawbacks and can break.

I love Dark Sun and I love 4E, but I found it to be a not appropriate match.

I ran a campaign once using the Dark Sun rules, and I found out the hard way that 4E is kind of hardwired for magical toys, just like 3.5 was, just to a more subtle and less obvious degree.

I was hoping that 4E, and specifically the Dark Sun adjustments for lower-power equipment would provide the freedom from magic item christmas shopping that I craved, but what I found was that combat was long and boring, typically because the hit rolls and damage rolls were below par, but the enemies in the encounter were likewise not terribly threatening, so it felt like running a video game full of easy but long fight bullet-sponge bosses.

Now I'm of the opinion that a game written to have magic items as part of character advancement cannot function without it, no matter how you modify or compensate, even if the system is like 4E, which is more action dependent than item dependent.

Would the 4e Tomb of Horrors be compatible as campaign beginning at 10th or 11th level in the Dark Sun setting
Something like an artifact that can halt the progress of the magical decay waiting at the end of the tomb

notahivemind.jpg

Not contributing either m8