The Dark Sun Own Zone (56k Likes Dragonlance)

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Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

I wonder how they will do defilers - if they are more powerful than everyone else, that would be pretty unfun to deal with, but if they aren't then why does anyone become a defiler in the first place?

JohnnyCanuck posted:

Not that I can remember any of them now, but I was sure that I'd found hints in some of the modules that Athas was the far future of Aeber-Toril (FR).

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the modules hinted at that, but it's not the official backstory or anything.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2009 11:41

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 13:56

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kerison posted:

What niche exactly do warforged fill other than "robot"?

Edit: I guess you could say half-giants fill the "created laborers race."

Or muls, for that matter. (not literally created, but they only really exist from being bred as slaves)

# ¿ Oct 2, 2009 04:19

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

just retitle one of the sorcerer kings as "warforged scrapper" and be done with it

# ¿ Oct 4, 2009 11:43

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Squizzle posted:

The perfect answer. Really, no setting except Forgotten Realms (being the novel-selling cash cow it is) ever needs published sources that advance the timeline beyond the most recent setting-summary guide.

oh thank god, the worst thing about dark sun was that all the later stuff had to work in some idiot's fanfiction-quality plot into everything

# ¿ Dec 19, 2009 16:21

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

I find it very funny that shortly after this was published they kill like half of the Sorcerer Kings and the Dragon in The Prism Pentad.

I can only hope that whoever the hell was responsible for them making that guy's poo poo an official part of the setting will be nowhere near 4e dark sun

# ¿ Feb 6, 2010 04:26

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Angry Diplomat posted:

yeah honestly you'd think with humans being willing to hang out with elves and halflings and all kinds of crazy dudes they'd see half-elves and be like "wow slightly prettier humans with neato pointy ears, you can hang out in our clubhouse!!"

humans don't generally hang out with elves in dark sun though, they have their own society and even the non-nomadic ones mainly intermingle with humans to trade with/steal from them

Angry Diplomat posted:

yeah I mean half-elves are humanlike in physique but a little leaner and more graceful, with exotic features. basically some random human guy could run into a half-elf and think, "what a handsome foreigner!" but then notice his ears and say, "oh, silly me, he's a half-elf. what a handsome half-elf!"

there's literally no reason for any ordinary human to look down on half-elves except for profound and deep-seated racism, and even then the shared characteristics are pretty convincing. you'd have to be getting into some hardcore apartheid fear-of-miscegenation poo poo before humans would refuse to associate with half-elves

the only way I can make sense of this post is if I assume you have just never heard of real-world racism, goddamn

# ¿ Feb 26, 2010 16:01

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Gomi posted:

Prescriptivism is rad, descriptivism leads to loss of culture. Look at the amount of footnotes in a high school edition of Shakespeare, it's shameful. It's good for a language to evolve in useful ways but that doesn't mean people should just start making up new meanings for things and be all 'feels good man' about taking a jackhammer to important communication tools like language.

(I might be the language grognard)

haha this would be incredibly stupid in any situation but specifically bringing up shakespeare in your rant against the evolution of language is really something else

# ¿ Feb 27, 2010 17:25

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Bieeardo posted:

I remember an article in Dragon, and a mention in a book or two out there as well, about a grand Illithid plot to turn World X's sun red and dim so that it wouldn't harm their dark-adapted eyes.

that would be ridiculously goofy even if it wasn't made redundant by the possibility of just inventing sunglasses

# ¿ Mar 7, 2010 02:10

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

shotgunbadger posted:

I was going to compare it to an everburning torch, but no even then that's a perfectly reasonable 'well done you have found a very useful item to replace some annoying book-keeping!' thing that won't gently caress your game

well no not really, annoying book-keeping is a bad feature to have in your game in the first place

# ¿ May 26, 2010 03:11

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

well duh, since it's anthropophagy

# ¿ Jun 14, 2010 21:45

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Tolervi posted:

Making up definitions and then correcting people on them up in here

yeah, anthropophage literally means "man-eater"

liesmith is probably incorrectly extrapolating from "anthropomorphic", but the "morphic" there is the part that makes it "human-like", the anthropo- root just means man

# ¿ Jun 14, 2010 21:58

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kerison posted:

just call them anthropophagi (people eaters)

and don't say that means man-eater. andropophagi means man-eaters.

(corrected a spelling mistake)

don't be retarded, "anthropos" means human, which is a very common meaning of "man"

# ¿ Jul 1, 2010 10:52

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kerison posted:

Andropophagi and anthropophagi are two separate words and do not mean the same thing. Do not transliterate languages, it makes you look like a loving moron. "People eaters" is a perfectly acceptable definition of anthropophagi.

not if you're trying to draw a distinction between "people" and "humans" it isn't

quote:

just call them anthropophagi (people eaters)

and don't say that means man-eater

you didn't claim that it was a "perfectly acceptable" definition of anthropophagi, you claimed that "man-eater" wasn't. because you are stupid

# ¿ Jul 1, 2010 11:06

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kerison posted:

I hope you caught where I edited in that you're a sniveling, pedantic rear end in a top hat.

If you can't accept that anthropophage/anthropophagi is the closest you're going to get to a correct term for Dark Sun halflings, you can go gently caress yourself.

gently caress you, you do not get to (mis-)correct other people about the meanings of words and then whine when they disagree with you

if you want to use anthropophagi to talk about halflings that is fine, what you actually did was tell people not to say it meant "man-eater" (it does)

# ¿ Jul 1, 2010 11:16

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Kerison posted:

I was offering a term for him to use since he didn't have one (and trying to short-circuit whiny geeks like you who bitch up every cannibal discussion with this poo poo). You're the douche who comes in uncivil-like. You're one of those geeks who should gently caress right off in life, because no one wants your smarmy-rear end input. Die, or

if you are going to be such a massive loving child about being told you're wrong, perhaps you should perhaps consider not correcting other people when you have no idea what you're talking about?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2010 11:36

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Squizzle posted:

What the gently caress?

Edit: And d% vs. d% is not only no different, statistically, from a coin-flip, but it's also a mechanic stolen from FATAL.

well since you have to roll under his number you actually have a 49.5% chance of success rather than 50%, pretty sure that justifies busting out the 100-siders :v:

# ¿ Jul 13, 2010 20:36

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Laex posted:

I'm glad that Sorcerer kings look just like powerful magic users and they haven't pulled anything like "unless you slay her under the full moon using a branch from the last tree she reforms in 2d10 turns", also look at her curse and all the stuff it does, looks like an awesome encounter.

I'm glad that we're working with 4e casters rather than 2e/3e casters, the level of power available to wizards of a sorcerer-king's level in old editions made it bizarre that they worried so much about armies and resources and poo poo.

Now they are powerful enough that it's easy to see how they could control the city states, but not so powerful that they don't need them

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 02:25

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

Well, it was a balance of power thing. As long as one SK had an army at his command, every other SK would follow suit. That and the steps in their transformations required huge inputs of resources that could only be effectively collected through an apparatus like a city state. The Prism Pentad also added the explanation that the city states were basically one big pyramid scheme to keep Rajaat trapped.

well no, because an army of regular dudes is literally useless against a level 30 (or whatever they were exactly) 2e/3e spellcaster. There's some advantage to them gathering a bunch of slaves to build massive wacky obsidian balls or whatever they need, but keeping an army, maintaining the templerate, worrying about sources of resources etc., that was all completely pointless

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 18:07

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

TheAnomaly posted:

except that casting spells required life energy. Only a few artifacts existed in Dark Sun that allowed people to channel anything other than plant energy (The staff that the head of the veiled alliance in Tyr carried could channel humanoid life energy, the stupid obelisk that let Sadira of Tyr channel sun energy). So if you had enough mooks, you could run a sorcerer king out of spell energy and then beat him down.

Well no, they can drain your mooks just as well as their own, that's not a problem at all.

TheAnomaly posted:

Also, 2nd edition. If that sorcerer king took 1 point of damage, no casting spells this turn.

Not really an issue when there is plenty of magic capable of making a spellcaster completely immune to taking any damage at all from low-level soldiers.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 19:15

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

Well no because you're seriously overestimating the abilities of a 2E caster in the low twenties. An army of regular dudes could overrun a SK.

uh no, regular dudes are level 0/level 1 if they're lucky in 2e/3e, a simple protection from normal weapons makes a mage completely invulnerable to an entire army of regular guys

PeterWeller posted:

Otherwise, why would Abalache be so afraid of her subjects?

because they didn't think through the implications of the rules for these guys, that's the point

PeterWeller posted:

Also, who is going to protect their slaves making massive wacky obsidian balls, and who will protect their massive wacky obsidian ball stash against other SKs when they're off researching how to become a bigger lizard? Not to mention that they need more than just obsidian balls and life energy to perform their transformations.

well not their armies, because their armies are completely worthless against other SKs anyway

PeterWeller posted:

And their templars don't need maintenance. They get their power automatically as a side effect of the SK's awesome powers. Why not have an army of divine spell casting worshipers/mooks when it doesn't require any expenditure of effort on your behalf? Finally, what's the point of having gobs and gobs of temporal power if you don't have someone to exercise it over? That's the big one. You are seriously wondering why very powerful evil wizards decided to take something over and control it. Does this only concern you in Dark Sun? You don't have a problem with this in every other setting for D&D ever?

Edit: You're also seriously overestimating how much effort they put into running their city states. The only SK who really takes an active interest in his city is Hamanu. Kalak ran Tyr as a literal pyramid scheme. The city existed to build his pyramid (ziggurat). Tectuctitlay is similarly running a "pyramid scheme" in that Draj basically exists to sacrifice people to him on top of pyramids. Abalache only sticks around Raam because if she set off on her own, Hamanu would probably kill her in a day or two. Nibenay lets his templars run his city while he chills in his giant palace. Gulg is barely a city to begin with, and it too is pretty much run by the templars. And Andropinus lets Balic run itself through his faux democracy.

Well, for instance, we have Nibenay in the thing above, caring about a source of metal. And under the old rules this would do absolutely jack poo poo for his actual level of power. And yes, this is a problem in other old settings for 2e/3e too, basically none of them account for how ridiculously powerful wizards are under the rules. Another reason it's good that things have changed!

And it's not a question of why they would want power, it's why they would care about a bunch of things that are completely unnecessary to maintaining power. (ie. mundane military strength)

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 21:19

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

Besides the already stated fact that the sorcerer monarchs are not omnipotent or omnipresent, and require some sort of mortal servitors to keep their kingdoms together, the templar and armies are also required to keep the cities in one piece when the sorcerer kings enter the animalistic stages of the dragon transformation.

There's a reason all of the sorcerer monarchs are chilling between 21st and 23rd level and that's because they're scared about what happens to them next between levels 25 and 28. They already saw what happened when Borys changed a millennium before, and what Dregoth did when he tried it a few centuries later. The hope is that an empowered templar class will help the various kings cope with the pain and stress of that stage or, failing that, keep the cities running smoothly so that the sorcerer monarch still has access to his hordes of slaves and worshipers to use in keeping the transformation chugging.

besides the already stated fact that no, they really don't gain anything from mortal soldiers given the abilities available to high-level 2e/3e spellcasters, a) that doesn't work precisely because the sorcerer-kings are deliberately avoiding the dragon rage anyway, and b) that doesn't have anything to do with my point, which is not that it isn't helpful to force regular to help you, it's that they have no real reason to care about their armies or their iron mines or the threat of rebellion or whatever. which is bad, because those are the kind of things you would want the tyrants of your setting to work with, it gives them interesting motivations to work with

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 21:31

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

I think at this point you are deliberately trolling. It's clear that armies do matter in Dark Sun, and that non-epic characters can in fact hurt sorcerer kings and muck with their plans. I mean besides the whole "Kalak being killed by regular shmoes thing", one of the published adventures involved the player characters helping stop an army being led by a sorcerer king.

The fact that you think the sorcerer kings are all powerful, and can do everything by themselves, tells me you have only the faintest idea about anything in the setting.

So, you've just completely missed the point here, which is that with the powers of sorcerer-kings as written under the old rules, none of that should happen. It's not that the setting doesn't have that happening, it's that the setting is inconsistent with the powers they give them. Which is why it's good that they appear to be making them more reasonable in the new edition, because that makes it actually believable that they would care about mundane armies, and that non-epic characters should be able to threaten them, etc.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 21:54

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

You're right. I forgot that the idea of very powerful people in both fiction and real life being so cocky and overconfident that they make mistakes that lead to their downfall is unheard of. I'm glad that you cleared that up.

ah yes, sorcerer kings maintain all these armies and so on because they are afraid they'll forget to cast protection from normal weapons some day, compelling

Squizzle posted:

Rules are game-related abstracts, not the game-world's physics. If they all maintain armies, but wouldn't need to by the rules, you can assume that the rules-model fails to properly represent the realities of the game world in this area, somehow.

Also, armies defend the city, not just the sorcerer-king; the city is a huge base of power, with the slave labor and such necessary to shorten the road to dragon transformation.

so your response to me saying that the rules are inconsistent with the setting is to say "you don't understand, the rules are inconsistent with the setting"

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 22:20

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Squizzle posted:

Except I end the sentence with "and that's not a flaw with the setting".

Correct, it's a flaw with the rules.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 22:30

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

Your responses aren't consistent either. You're happy because they're using 4E style sorcerer kings because they're not as powerful as something, yet I challenge you to show me a bunch of level 1 characters and monsters that can pose a challenge to the level 28 Ablache-Re encounter.

A few thousand level 1 guys (ie. an army) should pose some degree of threat, given that none of her powers let her instantly teleport miles away, fly, or become immune to all of their weapons.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 22:39

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Squizzle posted:

I would argue that it's just the nature of the game. Otherwise, you end up with people thinking that rules for (e.g.) stairs are necessary.

Well it's one thing to say that the rules don't really handle high-level character v. army combat at all well, that's fine, because it's not what the game's about. But it should at least be plausible fluff-wise that the powers given could work with what they actually do, even if the rules to make that work aren't actually necessary.

PeterWeller posted:

They could be taken out, and there are at least two adventures where a party in the mid to high teens is expected to win in a fight against a dragon in the low twenties.

A party in the mid to high teens isn't really a comparable situation, though. They should have access to all or almost all of the most powerful spells in the setting, which means that a high-level spellcaster can't render them irrelevant in the same way they could low-level guys.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 22:50

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ritorix posted:

Monster power level in 4e is relative to the party level. So, the powers listed for the Oba are what she uses against players. What she can do against whole armies or players vastly underlevel is pretty much whatever she wants.

Previous editions went to granular detail to identify exactly what dragons could do (complete spell lists from level 1 to 9, every psionic power they know, etc). 4e is just ballparking it because who really needs to know all that poo poo.

It's not "whatever she wants", although it is presumably "a lot". The rules don't require you to say that she can wipe out an army at will, and a sensible dm wouldn't rule that she could if it came up.

Whereas before, it actually was spelled out, as you say, and what was spelled out pretty much did come down to "whatever she wants" w/r/t low-level dudes, which is (or was, I should say) the problem.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 00:24

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ritorix posted:

Whatever she wants means, of course, whatever the DM wants.

Putting on my Dark Sun grognard hat, there was a point to having armies under the old ruleset. The SK's were all-powerful and only feared one thing: Rajaat's return. That was the problem, they were all competing for biggest penis while simultaneously trying to meet the Dragon's quota. One thousand people per city per year, every year for a thousand years. That requires expendable people, which means armies to capture them, slaves to feed the army, merchants to supply them and templars to administer the whole thing.

All that infrastructure existed to keep the quota flowing every year, so Rajaat would stay locked up and thus the Kings would survive. What the Kings were capable of in any ruleset was irrelevant, because they were incapable of creating 1000 living beings out of thin air every year for the duration of their immortal lives.

The old 2e book Ivory Triangle has a lot on this, since Gulg and Nibenay are right next door and always competing for the same forest resources, yet never destroy each other. These were not populous cities either...Gulg had 13,000, Nibenay 24,000, so they really were just scraping by.

Well like I said, they do have reasons to care about ruling regular guys, but none of this really supports them being concerned about the things they are concerned about (and that story-wise you would want them to be concerned about) - Abalach-Re being worried about rebellions, various sorcerer kings being worried about their strategic position vis-a-vis other sorcerer kings, everyone really wanting iron mines etc., because you don't need these things to capture slaves and the rest is invalidated by being a high-level wizard.

edit: I may be mistaken, but isn't Rajaat and all the ancient history stuff from revised edition being thrown out for 4e anyway?

Jeb Bush 2012 fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jul 18, 2010

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 01:59

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

Why wouldn't they be concerned about rebellions when there is a very public demonstration that yes, sorcerer kings can be killed by normal folks. As the student of Gygaxian Naturalism that you have demonstrated yourself to be, certainly you must realize that there are 1d100 per 10,000 members of a city state between levels 10 and 16 who, by your own admission can pose a threat to a sorcerer king. What better way to protect yourself from them by empowering a templar caste that is beholden to you and army to support them to act as a screen.

This is of course in addition to the already stated reasons why it would be more then plausible for a sorcerer king to maintain a city state that you continue to ignore based on the fact that they can cast teleport.

if you were in the habit of reading posts before replying to them you would notice that I didn't say they had no interest in keeping a city state, I said they have no good reason to bother with large armies of level 1 dudes or iron mines or any of the poo poo like that. and they wouldn't be concerned about rebellions because as written they can't be killed by normal folks. (and maintaining armies of level 1 dudes would be a singularly stupid way of dealing with anything that can threaten a highlevel spellcaster)

insofar as those godawful novels have normal folks killing sorcerer kings this just strengthens my point about it being stupid to give them powers which mean this should never happen

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 04:43

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

Oh, so it makes perfect sense for them to have city states, but it doesn't make sense to do the things required to keep those city states functioning. I see.

are you functionally illiterate or what, no, that is not what I said, I said that a bunch of the things they do aren't remotely necessary to keep a city state functioning given the degree of personal power they are written as having

ManMythLegend posted:

Also, Kalak was killed in adventure.

by which you mean he was killed in the books, and then they wrote an adventure where you get to be around while the npcs from the books kill him

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 05:33

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

ManMythLegend posted:

No I can read, but the idea that you honestly think it's not remotely necessary for a city state of 10,000+ people to need farms, and mines or some other sort of industry, and armies to defend these things simply because they have a level 20+ wizard running the show is so patently stupid that I assumed that wasn't what you were trying to write.

I guess I was wrong.

no, I didn't say that either, it would be great if you could make a single post that actually argued with what I said instead of what you fantasised that I said

yes they need farms, yes they need "mines and some sort of industry", no they do not need proper defensive armies or iron mines (as iron is supposed to be only used for weapons and this is supposed to make it really important), no they do not need to worry about large scale strategic concerns, no abalach-re does not need to worry about being overthrown by people who are literally incapable of harming her

Doc Hawkins posted:

If Dark Sun single-class adventurers all start at 3rd level, then clearly, so would fresh recruits to the army, unless they were either completely useless farmer conscripts (1st level fighters, because that's the Wasteland for you), or experienced defenders of their village (5/3 Fighter/Psionicists or whatever). And then, overcoming challenges and receiving training could only increase their total level.

nah, pcs start at level 3 because they have to to be bad enough to survive, regular soldiers are still level 1. and regular guys basically don't gain levels at all over the course of their life

Doc Hawkins posted:

Further! How are such armies organized?

So armies require lots of guys way above 0/1st level filling their hierarchy to even exist (they also get the ability to supervise the construction of defenses at 6th, and to make various war machines at 9th, and start off being able to train people in weapon proficiencies), just like the existence of cities requires Templar with the ability to arrest people, pass judgements, etc.

that only means, what, 20 level 7 fighters? (an army of 2000 guys would be really big for a city state of 14k people which is only barely capable of producing enough food to feed its inhabitants) and you would worry about those fighters, not the random guys they order around. and those fighters are still in absolutely no position to threaten a high-level spellcaster (remember that equal-level fighters can't really do that without tons of help from magic items)

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 15:58

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

My point was that all those templars and soldiers create a nice buffer, so the SK doesn't have to personally deal with the adventurers.

Except they're not really much good for dealing with any adventurers who could actually threaten a sorcerer-king. (given that said adventurers probably have access to some sort of fast travel or whatever, they're really only going to have to fight however many guards the sorcerer-king has with them

PeterWeller posted:

They need proper defensive armies so they don't have to waste some valuable spell slots and even more valuable time every time some raiders show up in the fields. They need iron because it makes better tools (never has a Dark Sun sourcebook said it's just used for weapons; the Wanderer's Journal has a number of examples of how iron tools make for more efficient labor). Yes they need to worry about large scale strategic concerns because the world is a zero sum game. When Tyr stops selling you iron tools for your obsidian mines, everyone loses out on giant wacky obsidian ball production. And yes Abalace Re needs to be worried about being overthrown, not by the level 0 peasants, but by all the citizens, nobles, gladiators, and rebels who possess class levels.

That's not a reason to need proper defensive armies, it's a reason they need whatever small force it takes to repel raiders. I didn't remember about them using metal tools as well, leaving aside the fact that that really doesn't work as set out (metal is about 100x as expensive as it is in other places, this is basically equivalent to farmers in fr using +1 plows or something), it still doesn't make iron mines the same life-or-death thing they're set out to be. and by "strategic concerns" I mean stuff like how you will be able to defend against other city-states, the balance of power etc. (since as written this balance of power will basically come down entirely to the personal power of the sorcerer-kings_

and a) just having class levels doesn't make these guys a threat, b) then she should just be concerned with the handful of those guys that can actually threaten her and buying them off/straight up killing them, she wouldn't need to worry about rebellions in general

basically the general thing is that sorcerer-kings act like people who are much less powerful than they are written to be. which is good in some sense, since the less-powerful versions are much more interesting, but that's why they should be written to be less powerful as well

edit: this also good because it means that pcs fighting a sorcerer-king will be a potentially interesting combat rather than the mess that is high-level combat in old editions, of course

Laex posted:

_{this discussion is on par with minions dying offscreen, because they have 1 hp so clearly if they trip and fall they will die}

man I totally covered this already, it's one thing to abstract the mechanics in that way, that's great, but if you say that sks are capable of certain things in fluff terms a coherent setting should take those things into account

Jeb Bush 2012 fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Jul 18, 2010

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 16:46

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

Abalache Re plus her high templars and half giant bodyguards are much more of a threat than Abalache solo. And if she is so loving powerful, how is a group of adventurers just going to teleport in on her unannounced?

And as I said, maintaining an army is absolutely useless here. having high-level bodyguards would be handy, but maintaining a bunch of low-level soldiers is useless for that

PeterWeller posted:

Considering that most raider bands are basically proper armies in their own right, I think you're underestimating the size of the force necessary. We're not talking about a dozen starving desperates. We're talking about organized groups in the hundreds. And we're talking about fields outside the cities, fields that take up acres and acres and miles and miles of land. Someone has to patrol those fields.

Well no, they aren't, that would be completely unsustainable.

PeterWeller posted:

No, it's the equivalent of farmers in FR using plows that don't break constantly or miners in Dragonlance using picks that can actually break rocks. A worker with iron tools can do two or three times the work as one using a bone or stone tool. Now you can get as much work done with only half the manpower as before. That's a lot less mouths to feed, a lot less slaves to worry about escaping, and a lot less slaves you have to go out and capture to get the work done in the first place. Not to mention, you need a lot smaller workforce dedicated to maintaining your tools.

no, because metal items in dark sun are insanely expensive (about 100x the equivalent item made out of bone), whereas "farmers in FR using plows that don't break constantly or miners in Dragonlance using picks that can actually break rocks" is not

PeterWeller posted:

Except the balance of power doesn't entirely come down to the personal power of the SK. None of these guys want to risk their own hides, so they solve their problems via proxies.

PeterWeller posted:

Having class levels makes the more of a threat. Why are there only a handful of people who can threaten her? Between the Veiled Alliance, the Merchant Dynasties, the nobles and their retainers, the local masters of the Way, and any adventurers who happen to be about, there are probably a hundred or more people powerful enough to harm her.

And how is she going to kill them or buy them off when she doesn't know who they are? Without some sort of police apparatus, how is she ever going to know who is plotting against her? Is she going to scry every back alley and back room in the city looking for plotters? How does she make the time for this when she is busy personally dealing with every other threat to her city and person?

Let's just think for a bit about what it would be like if Abalache didn't have her army and templarate. Since there is no army, raiders attack the fields every day. So Abalache has to go out and deal with every group personally. This isn't too difficult for her, but it does use up her spells, and it does let every field slave and interested observer know what she does when she fights a large group of lesser beings. Since there is no templarate, Abalache also has to deal personally with every petty revolt and riot that strikes her city. Again, it's not too difficult for her to do this, but people see what she does, and they learn her tactics. Now, maybe there comes a day when there are a lot of raids and a lot of riots. Abalache, having to deal with all this poo poo personally, ends up running out of spells and pp. Now the people learn that there is a limit to her abilities.

Now a group of nobles and merchants see all this and begin to hatch a plot to take her out. They know she will protect herself from mundane weapons, so they make overtures to the Veiled Alliance to provide them with magical weapons and ammunition. They gather the best psionicists, wizards, and gladiators together, and they gear them up for the planned revolt. There is no templarate enforcing Abalache's will and laws, so all of this goes on without her becoming aware of it. She could have the time to scry and read minds, but she's too busy fireballing raiders and rioters to ever sit down and take care of real business.

Now the day of the revolt comes, raiders attack the fields at all corners and riots erupt in every district. Abalache is criss-crossing Raam to stop these situations and burning up her spell slots as she does so. She comes to the largest group of rioters towards the end of the day, and is surprised to find them shooting magical arrows at her, arrows capable of piercing her protection from normal weapons spells. She also finds a group of powerful mages, psionicists, etc. at the center of this riot, waiting to challenge her. Desperate, she offers them riches beyond their wildest dreams, but the merchants and nobles have already promised them first dibs on her treasury, and they know that she wouldn't be trying to make a deal unless she had used up most of her power and was worried about not surviving the showdown.

Now, one of a few different things could happen. 1)The hired warriors take down Abalache. 2)Hamanu shows up at that moment and tears her apart (see he was smart enough to keep a templarate and sent some of them to spy on her; thanks to them, he knew more about what was going on in Raam than she did; maybe he was ultimately behind the revolt.) 3)Borys of Ebe shows up and he is pissed. Abalache has been too busy dealing with raiders and revolts to send him his quota of a thousand slaves. He kills her outright and takes a couple thousand citizens as slaves right then and there. or 4) One of those 0 level commoners whom she never considered a threat busts out some crazy wild talent and fries her brain before a shocked crowd.

Abalache could have avoided all of this by simply keeping a decent standing army around to deal with raiders and bandits and putting forth the absolutely zero amount of effort it takes her to empower a templarate.

a standing army would be completely useless here, the only threatening part of that is the high-level characters, maybe (really only those of them who are spellcasters), and an army is useless for defending against them

PeterWeller posted:

I agree with this sentiment in general, but you are still seriously overestimating how powerful the SKs were in 2E.

no, you are forgetting how ridiculously overpowered magic was in 2e at high levels compared to low-level guys or even high-level non-casters

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 18:07

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

bgaesop posted:

You didn't answer his question at all. His question was "are the classes like Cleric going to exist, using the same mechanics just with different flavor (like worshipping SKs)?" and your response was "Priests don't exist, instead people worship the SKs."

The divine power source isn't in 4e athas, that's what he was referring to with them taking out elemental priests. (in 2e and 3e everything that would have been divine was elemental instead, but now there are actually elemental equivalents so that makes less sense)

# ¿ Jul 18, 2010 18:09

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

With Dark Sun using the new 4E cosmology, there really isn't any problem with demons and devils existing in their traditional D&D roles. There still better be Psurlons, though.

idk, I think not having traditional demons and devils works well in athas because it reinforces the theme that things suck because of things humans (and other sentients) have done rather than because of athas somehow being fundamentally evil (psurlons etc. are of course similar in being powerful evil beings but they have motivations rather than being dudes whose primary characteristic is being evil for its own sake)

"the primordials killed the gods and now things suck" is a bit unfortunate for the same reason

# ¿ Aug 4, 2010 03:51

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

I'm not sure if having demons and devils fill their trad D&D roles enforces this idea that Athas is fundamentally lovely. It can remove some of the responsibility for that from the mortal inhabitants, though.

That's what I meant by it being "fundamentally lovely", inexorable forces of the cosmos screwing things up rather than its inhabitants screwing it up.

Laex posted:

So the far the only thing that is attributed to the primordials is the sea of silt and some intrusions of the elemental chaos in Athas. The whole state of the world is because of the defiler magic as far as I know so I don't get this whole "its all the primordials' fault" deal

Well, having "the gods have all been killed" and "the world is terrible" does strongly imply these are connected. (if only because the gods would have presumably stopped it happening if they still existed) It's possible that they could set it up differently, but that's what it looks like. And the silt sea is one of the biggest icons of "Athas is hosed up".

I guess what I'm saying is that one of the things I like about Dark Sun is that unlike a lot of d&d settings and like the real world, everything that happens comes down to people and their environment, not gods or primordials or destiny.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2010 22:42

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

PeterWeller posted:

Right on. But the existence of corrupting outsiders doesn't make the world fundamentally lovely in other settings. While some of the responsibility could be attributed to evil things convincing mortals to do lovely stuff, it's pretty clear that mortals in any D&D setting are capable of lovely stuff all on their own.

Other settings have good gods and poo poo though, if the balance of outsiders skews way towards the evil that does suggest something fundamentally evil about the world.

PeterWeller posted:

I get your point, but I don't think Dark Sun is as different as you think. Everything that happens doesn't come down to people and their environment. It comes down to god kings and supernatural forces and heroes who are a cut above the rest.

Sorcerer-kings and heroes are just very powerful people, though, not gods or beings built out of the essence of evil or whatever

Anisotropic Shader posted:

There's a sidebar at the back of the book though which details the "secret history of athas" in which the victory of the primordials is mentioned (the gods being driven or killed off by them). It says that the destruction of divine power introduced a 'fault' into the world - the possibility of arcane magic. Rajaat is mentioned as the discoverer of arcane magic and his teaching of preserving to a great many while saving defilement for a select few still remains.
It asserts that arcane magic is "inherently flawed" due to rising from this fault. The cleansing wars still exist and Bory's uprising still remains.

so it literally is "the primordials killed the gods so now the world sucks", welp

# ¿ Aug 7, 2010 00:41

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Cabbit posted:

Yeah but it's supposed to be a bad idea because it kills the planet, not because it's tactical suicide for a marginal benefit.

I don't know how you actually can make it work in the d&d framework though, balancing combat advantages for one character against general out-of-combat disadvantages just doesn't work. Like, either preserving and defiling are balanced, so why the hell does anyone defile in the first place, or defiling is straight-up better, which sucks for players who aren't defilers

# ¿ Aug 17, 2010 19:49

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Cabbit posted:

It's supposed to suck for players who aren't defilers. You're giving up easy power for a clean conscience and a degree of anonymity.

actually I am going to go ahead and say that games are not meant to suck for anyone

one of the Big Things that 4e does right is that the various players get to contribute about the same amount in combat, what you are proposing would poo poo all over that

# ¿ Aug 17, 2010 20:18

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 13:56

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Drox posted:

Wrong, it's dark sun, it's supposed to suck for EVERYONE, marginally less so defilers.

Uh, it's meant to suck for the characters, not for the players.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2010 20:27

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