I was mulling over the idea that the Psion class and sub-classes would be restricted to the Tarandan acadamies. I always like the flavor from The Will and the Way on Tarandas of Raam that laid out that she was the person who codified the six disciplines and how they are taught. That sort of begged the question of just how psionics was taught before she came along. Answering it was troublesome with the first Psionics Handbook so I dropped doing anything about it.
The advent of the wilder class seems to make implementing a regional restriction on the Psion again because there is a class whose basis is gaining psionic powers with little (or without any) tutoring and study. Exactly the situation of almost all of Athas (outside of Saragar) before Tarandas.
Going with that, the Soulknife, Psychic Warrior, and Wilder would be freely available to anyone who has not studied at an Tarandan Acadamy. I'm actually not too fond of the Soulknife as a class and I am tempted to do it as another regionally restricted class. Maybe make it available to some New Race, or new colony of exiled Ur-Draxans...
Anyway, has anyone else restricted full classes by region or culture for their Dark Sun campaign?
I should have been prepared for that...Unless they have a VERY GOOD explanation of how that happened.
The same goes for Thri-kreen Templars and Wizards.
And B'hrog Templars.
And Tarek Defilers.
And Gith Nobles.
And Belgoi...
The base classes I allow from non-core books are:
Scout (Complete Adventurer)
Marshall (Miniatures Handbook)
But I'm willing to let my munchkins prove that they know their fluff by letting them come up with a VERY GOOD explanation of how another class would fit in Dark Sun (Like a Swashbuckler with it's fluff-text changed to become some kind of finesse Gladiator)
I was mulling over the idea that the Psion class and sub-classes would be restricted to the Tarandan acadamies. I always like the flavor from The Will and the Way on Tarandas of Raam that laid out that she was the person who codified the six disciplines and how they are taught. That sort of begged the question of just how psionics was taught before she came along. Answering it was troublesome with the first Psionics Handbook so I dropped doing anything about it.
The advent of the wilder class seems to make implementing a regional restriction on the Psion again because there is a class whose basis is gaining psionic powers with little (or without any) tutoring and study. Exactly the situation of almost all of Athas (outside of Saragar) before Tarandas.
On the subject of the Tarandas academies. The Sorcerer-Monarchs and The Order would probably have their own schools/methods of teaching psionics (probably with a host of Prestige Classes and flavours of psionic use). However, given that the Tarandas only happened within the last 1000 years there must have been many Green Age orders and schools whose knowledge was lost or suppressed after the Cleansing Wars (possibly only preserved by Undead such as the Meorty and in places such as Saragar).
Members of the Tarandas academy would probably have filtered through the various City-States by modern Athas and be able to teach ordered psionics (Psions) to the wealthy few, such as noble families and Merchant organisations. So the Psion class could be a limited, almost Prestige Class (such as though found in the Unearthed Arcana) where you would have to have wealth and/or talent as a requirement.
It does beg the question as to what sort of psionics would you find taught within the Kreen Empire?
I think Erudite fits the Kreen best. They are very communal creatures, especially in the Empire, and so would probably have access to a wealth of Psionic knowledge, and Erudite is the best psionic class for knowing a lot of powers, at least among the higher ranked imperial Kreen. The average Kreen warrior would probably gravitate towards Psychic Warrior, and those more savage Kreen would probably move towards Soulknife.
The Erudite (Dragon #319) does look good, took me a little while to find it.