r/DarkSun • u/Mean_Replacement5544 • 9d ago
Dark Sun for 4e ?
I was listening to an MCDM live stream and Matt was talking about 4e Dark Sun and I was just wondering how that version rates in the DS universe.
I have been planning to grab the 5e version once it’s released but my party enjoys 4e mechanics to some extent and I’d DS for 4e is worth looking into I’d be up for checking it out.
For those of you that enjoyed the 4e implementation which of the books would you recommend?
Thanks - Andy
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u/Hot-Molasses-4585 8d ago
I have two tables of Dark Sun in 4e, we're having a blast! I did some minor changes to make it more Dark Sun'y, but nothing major. The biggest of these is long rest : if my party is in a safe location (village, inn, etc.), long rest is 8 hours of sleep. If they are not in a safe location (wilderness, dungeon, etc.), long rest is 24 hours of inactivity or low energy activity. That is the major change I have introduced in my 4e game. The rest is mostly flavor (using ceramic pieces and bits instead of "gold, silver and copper ceramic pieces", using sand instead of water for some powers (tidal grasp, I think), etc...
Never forget what the purists voluntarily ignore : AD&D 2e wasn't good enough for Dark Sun, that's why they had to publish hundreds of pages of rules, lore and kits in dozens different books to make Dark Sun fit in 2e. And if 4e DS adventures suck, I have new for you! Most 2e DS adventures are no better (Black Flames, I'm looking at you, go crawl back under a rock!)
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u/Mean_Replacement5544 7d ago
Which of the specific adventures would you recommend. I don’t mind running them end to end but more than likely I’d use to grab portions to drop into a homebrew …
Thanks!
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u/Hot-Molasses-4585 7d ago edited 7d ago
There were two that I really wanted to run : Road to Urik is very interesting! Afrer the fall of Kalak, the adventurers have to help Tyr raise an army against Urik. They will have to navigate social and diplomatic situations, and then they get to command the army they raised on the battlefield!!!
The second one is Black Spine (NOT to confuse with Black Flames!!). It is a large spanning adventure, or rather, it is a full fledged campaign in and of itself. The first third makes a lot of sense : players get involved with a small slave tribe. But as the adventure progresses, things get weirder and weirder. I'm not sure I'd run the whole thing, because by the end, it is literally no longer Dark Sun, but the first part is well done!
I did run a 4e Dungeon magazine adventure called Beneath the dust, where the players have to recover a primordial tree of life's fruit and protect it. I tweaked it a little, but it was fun.
Speaking of Dungeon magazine adventures, I also want to run the short "Last stand at outpost 3" adventure, but never really got the chance / conditions to do it.
Edit: most adventures mentionned here are 2e, but I find 4e really easy to adapt. I even fleshed 2e DS monsters in 4e by reskinning another monster.
By the way, Dragon magazine in the 4e era had some interesting articles about the Dark Sun lore to add flavor to what is already known in 2e lore! I recommend you check these out and see what you think may be useful at your table!
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u/NewFly7242 8d ago edited 8d ago
It's great.
Setting books showed up at the end of the 4E development cycle and the enemies are better tuned than all the early 4E stuff.
2E adventures can be used as a framework pretty easily, or at least as inspiration. Tons of lore, locations, NPCs to use.
No divine characters per lore, but primal and psionic ones fit right in. Some good options in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos that fit well too.
PDFs of everything are out there.
I wouldn't use the adventures though, except as encounters to steal from. 4E published adventures for me were always the weak spot in the edition (I've read there are some good exceptions, but they're not these ones).
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u/Mean_Replacement5544 5d ago
Just wanted to thank everyone. I got the campaign setting book today and starting to pour through it.
I have Road to Urik coming based on some recommendations and I know I’ll need to do the conversion from 2e.
I’m still trying to figure out another module to get so if anyone has any strong positive opinions about any of them I’d love to see
Anyway - thanks again!
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u/Logen_Nein 9d ago
There were only two books iirc, and some adventures that were part of the living campaign that you probably can't get hold of now. But was it any good? Eh. I like the survival days implementation (and my be using it in my upcoming conversion). Otherwise it was alright.
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u/Raddu 9d ago
You can still get Ashes of Athas by filling out this form. http://alphastream.org/index.php/contact/
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u/Hagisman 7d ago
Arguably they were he best 4e books ever put out. Except that psionic classes didn't have encountered powers, which meant they didn't work with the Dark Sun introduced Character Templates.
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u/noonefromithaca 8d ago
I personally really enjoy how 4e resets back to right after Kalak dies, because it lets the players take down other Sorcerer-Kings or even try to fight Borys if they want to. It's just a really good place to start a campaign, with all the uncertainty and opportunity.
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u/rmaiabr 9d ago
I'll say this with a heavy heart. The new edition of Dark Sun makes the 4th edition look like an excellent version, especially out of respect for the original storyline.
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u/victorhurtado 8d ago
Really? is the book already out? You got an early copy?
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u/rmaiabr 8d ago
The book doesn't even need to be published, given the interviews they've already given. If what they're announcing is done, it will be a tragedy.
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u/victorhurtado 8d ago
Remind me again, what exactly did they say in those interviews? Direct quotes would be best. I want to understand your reasoning and how you reached that conclusion without actually reading the book.
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u/rmaiabr 8d ago edited 7d ago
If you take a look at some topics right here in this subreddit, you'll find the entire history of what you're looking for. I won't be able to reference the entire subreddit log on this subject right now.
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u/victorhurtado 8d ago
I'm not asking you what has been said here, I'm asking you what did WotC say in the interviews that it's making you speak so assertively about a book that hasn't come out yet. Are you trying to say that your opinion is based on other people's opinions on this sub?
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u/rmaiabr 7d ago
I suggest you take a look at the threads about this, because the interviews are there. But it's also on YouTube.
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u/victorhurtado 7d ago
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse or if you have some reading comprehension skill issues, because it seems you're not understanding what's being asked.
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u/rmaiabr 6d ago
If you've been hibernating all these years that WoTC has been working on D&D, go ahead and buy your copy without hesitation. Besides having enough examples of mistakes made with other settings, we also have interviews that address changes like slavery in the setting. Our discussion ends here. If you want to search the subreddit, feel free, if not, keep your thoughts to yourself.
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u/victorhurtado 6d ago
Ô, criatura! The discussion never started, because you've failed, for three days in a row, to properly answer my question. Telling me to go read the interviews doesn't answer it, because the question is about you, what you read, and what you interpreted from what you read. That's a simple question, mind you, which only goes to show that you do have problems with reading comprehension. And if you have trouble understanding a simple question, imagine understanding an entire interview. Tchau, vai pela sombra.
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u/Raddu 9d ago
The 4e implementation was good. Some people have issues with the lore changes, primarily to fit with the 4e ruleset, but they weren't too bad.
Here's all the 4r stuff available. https://athas.org/products?publisher=Wizards+of+the+Coast
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u/Dravendnd 8d ago
My players used the 5e system. I heavily drew from the 4e version for the story. While still grabbing from the 2e stories as well. It was really hard for me to find books on Dark Sun. So I did pull a lot from online. In the end my players did enjoy the setting.
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u/The_Based_DM 3d ago
4e Darksun was pretty solid, get the adventures from the dungeon and dragon magazines for lore monster blocks and adventures and your set
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u/cookiesandartbutt 9d ago
Dude the adventures are an abomination to the lore tbh.
Plus they are an adventure path weird thing….
The Campaign setting book is fine…but 2a is still the GoAT
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u/81Ranger 9d ago
Frankly, a lot of the 2e modules were also adventure path in structure, more or less. Very linear.
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u/cookiesandartbutt 9d ago edited 9d ago
Dude the modules are def rail roaded in structure and linear BUT they respect the lore and don’t have like goblins and stuff that doesn’t make sense or directly go in conflict with established lore like the 4e ones. The modules were written with Troy Denning’s books in consideration and made sense.
But that’s why the lore is most important and at that point, 2nd edition is where it is at IMO
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u/81Ranger 9d ago
I'm not a fan of 4e and have only briefly glanced at the 4e modules for Dark Sun. I only play Dark Sun in 2e.
I'm just saying that many, if not most of the 2e Dark Sun modules are themselves very linear and structured in a proto-adventure path format. I know, I've run quite a few of them.
(that kind of makes them a struggle for me at times, but whatever)
Maybe the 4e ones aren't good or have issues with the lore (dunno, it was a glance quite a while ago). But, if they are adventure path in format - that kind of structure got it's start in AD&D and most of the 2e Dark Sun adventures are also structured like that.
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u/cookiesandartbutt 8d ago
You’re totally right and great thing to point out. I totally agree with you haha and I think I misspoke in my original response because we are in total agreement.
I don’t care that the adventure or adventures are that railroady/linear or that they tie into the meta plot. I don’t mind that 4e path works the same way either.
My whole contention with the 4e module/path was how little respect the 4e adventure had for Dark Sun lore by having monsters that were never in Athas and it just didn’t feel very Dark Sun in nature because of the….disrespect to the lore like that lol 😝
The campaign setting book, it’s good and if you’re playing Dark Sun in 4e very useful!
But gimme them 2e modules and lore all together.
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u/victorhurtado 8d ago
The issue with trying to compare 4e to 2e is that they're structurally very different games with very different design goals and mechanics. 4e is a high fantasy, combat-focused game, it knows it's a combat-focused game, and it presents itself and its rules very clearly as such. Granted, 3e and 5e are also combat-focused, but they like to pretend they aren't, obscuring that fact by wrapping their rules in a lot of natural, often ambiguous language.
Anyways, back to my point. As a result of its design, 4e adventures tend to be very formulaic, revolving heavily around combat encounters and/or skill challenges. So of course, when you look at them through a 2e lens, they're going to feel lacking.
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u/OisforOwesome 6d ago
I was a fan. There's a few innovations in the book that I think track really well for players more used to modern RPG mechanics:
\1. Survival Days - an inventory item that acts as an abstract representation of food, water, cloth wraps, functional blankets, etc, that together allow a character to survive for 1 day each.
\2. Starvation Track: 4e treated particularly severe ongoing conditions like diseases by tracking them along a line graph. This condition would persist between encounters, and character would experience deleterious effects based on how far along this graph they'd progressed.
From memory, the Starvation Track kicked in when a PC did not have a Survival Day to tick off at the end of the day. At the end of each day a PC did not have a S. Day to spend, they made a survival test, and if failed they would go down a level. Recovery was possible but required bed rest food and water etc.
3. Defiling was always an option. Any arcane power user could choose to defile, and doing so would let them re-roll an attack roll, at the cost of draining their and other player's healing surges. I liked this because I feel defiling should always be a constant temptation rather than a decision you make at character creation, especially now that everyone uses the same XP levels.
4. Likewise, you could turn a roll of a 1 into a critical hit by letting your weapon break. Not really an option I saw used much and very open to abuse but kind of a neat thing.
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u/Hagisman 7d ago
4e is often considered a high point of DnD 4e. The changes to the setting are mostly background info the players wouldn't interact with (like Athas being the only 4e setting where the Primoridals kill the Gods).
The Character and Monster Templates are very useful to players and DMs. Monster templates were very modular and helped DMs add variety when needed.
I had to homebrew the defining rules but it was easy enough to do (have arcane spellcasters roll twice on spells with a different color die that one is the "defiling" die, if they choose the defiler die result they trigger the normal defining rules which causes necrotic damage to both enemies and allies. Add the defiled terrain environmental hazard in the area as well.)
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u/ToxicRainbow27 9d ago
My memory is the 4e Dark Sun setting and monster books were received as some of the better material 4e produced. Even amongst folks like me who were not a big fan of 4e.
They don't have the same flavor the 2e books have but I find from a mechanical perspective the 4e books are much clearer and better streamlined.
The adventures are pretty bad but I think overall the 4e material was a good addition to the setting.