Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Dec 11, 2003 16:10:48	I was looking through DS3, and I have several questions: Is it feasible for a PC to be a templar in a standard campaign? If so, does anyone have any suggestions for doing so? In the previous versions of Dark Sun, ability scores ranged from 5 to 20. Do people use that method of generation in this incarnation? In the previous versions of Dark Sun, everyone was a wild talent. Is this still true? Apart from the option to spend longer casting a spell to increase your effective level by 1, and the defilier feat chain defiling does not seem to have much of advantage over preserving (if any). Am I missing something? Persumably in the Dark Sun setting, pearls are far more rare then in most settings. As such, is a pearl still required for the identify spell? Half Giants have -4 to Int, Wis, and Cha, and -2 to dex. Conversely, Athasian Giants do not seem to have any of these penalties. (Desert Giants for example have +4 to dex, +2 to Int and Wis, and no modifier to Cha.) Where do Half-Giants inherit these penalties from?
#2 dawnstealer Dec 11, 2003 17:49:19	I'll give this one a shot. Keep in mind my words aren't official, just suggestions. Let's start with the first one and just go down the list: Is it feasible for a PC to be a templar in a standard campaign? If so, does anyone have any suggestions for doing so? Feasible? Yes. Suggested? No. Templars, in my book, are largely an NPC class, like defilers. If a player wants to give one a shot, that's fine, but the point of Dark Sun is heroism in the face of overwhelming odds and it's hard to do that when you're a part of the oppression. If they insist, you could have them be a dissolutioned templar, someone who has witnessed the horrors of their Sorcerer King first-hand and have lost faith. Of course, the problem here is that the player would no longer be a templar at that point. If you're running a campaign with neutral or evil characters, you could conceivably have one be a templar. Adventure ideas would be running missions for the SK such as rooting out a Veiled Alliance plot, finding a rare spell component for a 10th level dragon spell, and so on. Moving on. In the previous versions of Dark Sun, ability scores ranged from 5 to 20. Do people use that method of generation in this incarnation? This was dropped since there aren't the "cappers" on ability stats anymore. It's the 4d6 method (toss out the lowest ones) and stats of 3-18. In the previous versions of Dark Sun, everyone was a wild talent. Is this still true? I assume it's still true, although I don't remember seeing mention of it anywhere. If you have the new Psionics handbook handy, I would have the players roll to see which group their talent falls in to, then roll to see which power it is. These wild talents should always be 0-level powers (talents). Apart from the option to spend longer casting a spell to increase your effective level by 1, and the defilier feat chain defiling does not seem to have much of advantage over preserving (if any). Am I missing something? This is one that has been argued back and forth. The rules presented are a compromise. I wish we still had access to the old board because Brax came up with an interesting idea that used Raze as a basis. Ideas are still floating out there, but nothing's solid yet. Persumably in the Dark Sun setting, pearls are far more rare then in most settings. As such, is a pearl still required for the identify spell? The beauty of Athas is that it used to be all water, so pearls might not be as rare as you think. Of course, it would require some digging. There's other ideas, too. You could have some animal or plant that produces something similar to a pearl that could substitute. Be creative with it: on Athas, anything that's useful is probably hard to get. Half Giants have -4 to Int, Wis, and Cha, and -2 to dex. Conversely, Athasian Giants do not seem to have any of these penalties. (Desert Giants for example have +4 to dex, +2 to Int and Wis, and no modifier to Cha.) Where do Half-Giants inherit these penalties from? Simplest answer to this one is that Giants are a monster and Half-giants are a PC race. Is that fair? No. It's not supposed to be. They're monsters. That's my take, at least. Mach 2.0, Nyt Crawler, and Jon are good people to ask, as are a few others. The answers above are how I handle these questions, though.
#3 zombiegleemax Dec 11, 2003 18:05:26	Originally posted by Dawnstealer Simplest answer to this one is that Giants are a monster and Half-giants are a PC race. Is that fair? No. It's not supposed to be. They're monsters. Maybe it has to do with the translation of Athasian Giants from 2e to 3e? Back in 2e, Athhasian Giants had Intelligence 5-7, but in 3e they have an Int of 10-12.
#4 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Dec 11, 2003 18:30:04	Originally posted by ante_up Is it feasible for a PC to be a templar in a standard campaign? If so, does anyone have any suggestions for doing so? In a way, I kinda agree with Dawn on this one - however as I tend to run my campaigns by the seat of my pants, building the story frequently by the characters that are generated by my players, I allow Templars. I also allow Defilers - and games I have where those are made do tend to slip into an evil campaign. Of course, not every Templar is evil - while I believe that a templar cannot be more than 1 alignment shift difference from their king or queen (ie: a LE Sorcerer-King can have LE, NE or LN templars - but I have made exceptions to the rule in the past), but there is a Champion that isn't evil - Oronis - and has his own set of Templars. Building off of an idea I saw Brax post a long time ago, I developed them into a spy network that scatters across the Tablelands (or the teachers of Kern) - nothing concrete really, but it was an idea... In the previous versions of Dark Sun, ability scores ranged from 5 to 20. Do people use that method of generation in this incarnation? Not only what Dawn said - but the ability scores scale differently now, and it used to take a score of 18 or higher to get what a score of 16 or even 14 can do now. I rely on the point system for ability generation, as it's the most fair, and doesn't require me to watch my players' dice rolls like a hawk. I generally use 25 points any more, but I've done as high as 35 points in one game (that got.... a little out of hand) In the previous versions of Dark Sun, everyone was a wild talent. Is this still true? Only if they take the feat. This has been brought up before, but in order to keep the DS3 core 100% compatable with the d20 rules, and especially the Psionics Handbook, there is no free wild talents. Besides - you'd be surprised how easily such a thing could be abused by players and throw a game off-balance. Apart from the option to spend longer casting a spell to increase your effective level by 1, and the defilier feat chain defiling does not seem to have much of advantage over preserving (if any). Am I missing something? It's not supposed to - the ds3 team were explicitely told that the Preserver was to be the standard PHB Wizard, and that the preserver & defiler are to be balanced. I believe that there is supposed to be some future Prestige Classes released the expand on them to account for the more radical differences between the two wizard types. Persumably in the Dark Sun setting, pearls are far more rare then in most settings. As such, is a pearl still required for the identify spell? I believe that the athas.org team response is to "Use your own judgement on such things". If a pearl doesn't work for you, figure out something else instead. Half Giants have -4 to Int, Wis, and Cha, and -2 to dex. Conversely, Athasian Giants do not seem to have any of these penalties. (Desert Giants for example have +4 to dex, +2 to Int and Wis, and no modifier to Cha.) Where do Half-Giants inherit these penalties from? My problem with Dawn's response to this one is that with the advent of Savage Species and the d20 3.5 rules, the distinction between monster and race is very, very blurry. The honest answer is that they were balancing the Half-Giants in order to make them on par with other races, and without giving them a god-aweful Level Adjustment. With them having a starting 2 HD and a Level Adjustment of +1, a Half-Giant who has no class levels is treated as the equivalent of a 3rd level character. If there wasn't the attribute penalties in there, the Half-Giant could have a LA of +2 or +3. And while I like the idea of making an adventuring party for Athas start at level 3, I'm not usre if I could stomach one that starts at level 5 (for the beginning level in my games).
#5 dawnstealer Dec 11, 2003 20:20:05	Well put.
#6 zombiegleemax Dec 11, 2003 21:23:58	Additionally, Half-Giants aren't naturally-occurring creatures, they are the result of magical tampering by sorceror-kings. Maybe they just didn;t want their physically-powerful slaves to be too bright.
#7 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Dec 11, 2003 23:14:12	Actually, if I remember correctly, they didn't. The annoying side-effect was that the HG's were more often than not really friendly (big teddy-bears) and not as effective as a soldier (they wanted to hug & squeeze the enemy and call them George more than smash & bash them).
#8 zombiegleemax Dec 11, 2003 23:46:30	Mach 2.0, Nyt Crawler, and Jon are good people to ask, as are a few others. Don't ask me . . . I'm just as likely to ramble on about quasi phase shifts in temporal laterality and steer the thread off into unknown directions as to offer any kind of constructive and well thought out reply.
#9 dawnstealer Dec 12, 2003 8:18:56	But you've upgraded to 2.5!
#10 zombiegleemax Dec 12, 2003 10:46:04	Originally posted by Dawnstealer Feasible? Yes. Suggested? No. Templars, in my book, are largely an NPC class, like defilers. If a player wants to give one a shot, that's fine, but the point of Dark Sun is heroism in the face of overwhelming odds and it's hard to do that when you're a part of the oppression. IMHO that's the sad direction TSR brought Athas in the second box and in the Prism Pentad. The main point of Dark Sun is 'survival of the fittest', everything else (morality, religion, etc.) is secondary to that. My 0.2 cents only.
#11 flip Dec 12, 2003 13:27:27	My answers actually do count. ;) Originally posted by ante_up Is it feasible for a PC to be a templar in a standard campaign? If so, does anyone have any suggestions for doing so? Yes, it's feasable. Of course, it depends in large part, upon the campaign. Obviously, they're not too well suited to a wilderness campaign. Likewise, the goals and the disposition of the party/campaign can affect how feasable it is to be including templars. Also, note that Templars are going to be much reduced in city states that no longer have sorcerer kings, since they no longer get spells... (One of the reasons Secular Authority is run off ranks in Diplomacy is so that templars can multiclass and have a chance of being at least somewhat effective in cities without SKs ...) In the previous versions of Dark Sun, ability scores ranged from 5 to 20. Do people use that method of generation in this incarnation? We're using the 3.5 standard 4d6, drop the lowest. In the previous versions of Dark Sun, everyone was a wild talent. Is this still true? You are a wild talent Iff (if and only if) you take the Wild Talent or Talented feats. No free lunch. The reasons for the above two basically boil down to compatability. D&D 3 tries to quantify the relative power levels of PCs, NPCs and monsters. These come through in Levels, Challenge Ratings and Encounter levels ... and if we skew from these measurements right from level 1, 3e gets very rickety. Apart from the option to spend longer casting a spell to increase your effective level by 1, and the defilier feat chain defiling does not seem to have much of advantage over preserving (if any). Am I missing something? you also increase the penalties to those caught within the defiling radius. But the big benefit there is really going to come from taking levels in Arch Defiler, which is a forthcoming PrC that further emphasises Defiling as a route to power ... Persumably in the Dark Sun setting, pearls are far more rare then in most settings. As such, is a pearl still required for the identify spell? Use your best judgement. Replace it with something of equal value that seems more likely ... the Eleven market is your friend. Unfortunately, to comb through the PHB and replace all of the material components with items that "seem" more athasian would be a massive undertaking, take up quite a bit of space, and would be of questionable "real" benefit ... On the other hand, if somebody wanted to do this, and does a truly good job of it, I'm pretty sure we'd be happy to publish it on athas.org. Half Giants have -4 to Int, Wis, and Cha, and -2 to dex. Conversely, Athasian Giants do not seem to have any of these penalties. (Desert Giants for example have +4 to dex, +2 to Int and Wis, and no modifier to Cha.) Where do Half-Giants inherit these penalties from? Remember, Half-giants are a misnamed race. They breed true, and are not the result of a human and a giant breeding. Matter of fact, a human and a giant can't produce a half-giant. They were magically created, some 500 - 1000 years ago, and while there may (or may not) have been a human and a giant involved in the process, there was also a lot of magical manipulation ...