My favorite is that some weapons (slashing and piercing) can break if you roll a natural 20 AND deal maximum damage in the first two dice. The crunch: coming up with an elegant solution that doesn't penalize fighters with multiple attacks is not easy, but there are a few options. This means most weapons are made of obsidian, bone and flint. The fluff: Dark Sun is the most metal of all D&D settings, but actual metal is scarce in Athas. Fortunately, there are already some good ideas online. There are enough choices an options to fill a whole book on the subject. ![]() Druids must choose appropriate animals bards might be assassins with an adequate background. Even paladins can be refluffed as templars, ascended champions of the sorcerers kings (I love the idea of a paladin of vengeance gaining dragon wings or causing necrotic damage whit lay on hands!), or even inspired zealots of forgotten gods. Monks make some sense thematically (unless you're using the mystic), although there were banned in 2e Dark Sun. ![]() Sorcerers feel a bit redundant to me, and wild magic is certainly too much if you're using random defilement rules (although you can certainly consolidate one single table and create a new "pure defiler" class from there). Warlocks make decent templars, and clerics can worship the elements with the appropriate domains. The crunch: personally, I don't like banning classes outright. Sorcerers, warlocks, and druids must also be adapted to the setting. Traditional clerics and paladins do not fit. The fluff: as you might have guessed, some classes don't make much sense in Dark Sun. Any optional rule to raise an stabilized characters to 1 HP after combat would also be useful (just make a DC 10 medicine check or use a healing kit, as long as you're not in combat). Using the "healing surges" option in the DMG (page 266) is a good idea to balance things out. The easiest way to do that is to ban healing magic from the spell lists (trade them for something appropriate), and disallow some features that restores hit points ("lay on hands", etc.). The main difference is that healing magic is uncommon in Athas. The crunch: there are no active deities in Athas, but, traditionally, Dark Sun allows the sorcerer-kings and the elements to be worshiped instead of actual gods, so you still have cleric-like classes. ![]() There is no one to hear your prayers, no one to bind your wounds, and no one save your soul. Did the gods abandon the people of Athas, or was it the other way around? Doesn't matter anymore. The fluff: the burned world of Athas is, quite literally, a godforsaken place. But hey, that is what role-playing is about!
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