Dark Sun in 4E. I had to look up what the 4E rules were for starvation and thirst. For reference, here they are from page 159.
Starvation, Thirst, and
Suffocation
When deprived of food, water, or air, the rule of three
applies. An adventurer can handle three weeks with-
out food, three days without water, and three minutes
without air outside of strenuous situations. After that,
such deprivation is a significant test of a PCs’ stamina.
At the end of the time period (three weeks, three
days, or three minutes), the character must succeed on
a DC 20 endurance check. Success buys the character
another day (if hungry or thirsty), or round (if unable
to breathe). Then the check is repeated at DC 25, then
at DC 30, and so on.
When a character fails the check, he loses one
healing surge and must continue to make checks. A
character without healing surges who fails a check
takes damage equal to his level.
In strenuous situations, such as combat, going with-
out air is much harder. A character holding his breath
during underwater combat, for example, must make
a DC 20 endurance check at the end of his turn in a
round where he takes damage.
As with environmental dangers, a character cannot
regain healing surges lost to starvation, thirst, or suf-
focation until he eats a meal, drinks, or gains access to
air again, respectively.
A character with 0 or fewer hit points who contin-
ues to suffer from one of these effects keeps taking
damage as described above until he dies or is rescued.
Note that a character with 10 healing surges can thus go two weeks without water, even if they fail every endurance check.
Yeah, 4e darksun just sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen. I wonder if they'll restat half the races to match the darksun conception.
The current halflings don't exactly match the crazy cannibal savage racial supremacists.
More disturbing, however, are the _32 page_ race books. I can only imagine what ridiculous price tag will be attached to that shit.
Though this deserves a really huge O Rlly?
James Wyatt: As I mentioned before, I think the overall tone of Dark Sun makes it fit really well in the 4th Edition environment. In many ways, it’s really a perfect fit. Even the idea that characters might wear less armor or rely less on gear in general is easy to implement in the current rules set.
I want to see them pull this shit off. And life draining wizard magic.
Last edited by Voss on Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
A level two cleric can survive indefinately without water, because of Cure Light Wounds (heals, doesn't take a surge).
With Divine Power, you can do it at first level - although you need a pair of clerics to pull it off.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
K wrote:As much as I like Dark Sun and support it's... ummm.... support, it won;t work with 4e. The things that made Dark Sun unique run 100% counter to 4e.
good, that means they didn't just give me a reason to play 4e...
Your ratio of hit points to level is generally better at low levels than at high levels. So a 1st level Fighter with a Con of 12 will perish after 37 days of failed endurance tests (27 hp, 1 hp lost per day). A 5th level Fighter with a Con of 12 perishes after only 21 failed Endurance tests (51 hp, 5 hp lost per day).
The actual tests are basically meaningless in terms of how long you can stay outside. Our 5th level character dies after 21 failures and has a +8 to his Endurance tests. But every time he succeeds, the DC goes up by 5. If it goes up by 5 twice, he can't make the tests any more. The first one he can succeed at he succeeds at on a 12+, so he'll probably get it in the first 2 or 3 attempts, leaving him 18 or more tries to get a 17+ - which he will almost certainly get. So practically speaking, what is going to happen is that some time during the three weeks before he expires after having gone 3 days without water he will succeed on two of those Endurance tests. That extends his test days to 23 and he won't be able to succeed on any subsequent tests. Why it was necessary to roll 23 d20s to determine which two days during the 23 day ordeal were the two days that his condition did not worsen is completely beyond me. It's so many dice rolls that it might as well be deterministic. Seriously, it's a 7 out of 1000 test that you die in only 22 days, is that really worth rolling 23 d20s to determine?
Well, thats the thing. The 'new class' would have to be 'dark sun wizard'. Which is just like the wizard except for the life draining. And presumably, have powers that reflect living in a horrendous desert wasteland rather than shooting people with rainbows and shit.
Thats the part of this whole thing thats confusing me, especially with the comments at the end about dark sun fighters somehow being different than Eberron and FR fighters. And having gear dependent classes.. sorry, *system* that somehow exists without gear.
It doesn't seem like something that WotC can really pull off in even a ridiculously bad fashion, especially in the 2 volume campaign format (players and campaign setting books) they are doing now. They really should be rewriting so many things to make 4e actually work in dark sun that they need a whole new core system.
Plus, well, all the classes that just don't work. Paladin of Air, anyone? Not an air being, but just a paladin of shit you breath.
Titanium Dragon wrote:They may well make a class specifically for that mechanic.
And the life drain power will only do 2d6+bullshit.
It might not even do that. I saw a "Will 4e get Dark Sun?" thread over on WotC where one guy was saying "It's not going to work, the feel is 100% wrong, races won't work, defiling won't work" and another kept responding "Oh, defiling is just a fluff thing. No one really cares whether you preserve or defile." When he finally started to see the light, he changed his tune to "Well, I suppose you might want to have a defiling mechanic--though I still think it should just be fluff, of course--so you could always make Defiler an arcane Paragon Path which lets you spend an action point to weaken a single enemy adjacent to you when you cast a spell! That captures the flavor perfectly without messing up my perfect little wizard!"
So they screwed FR by turning it into Magical Fantasy Fallout and they'll screw up Dark Sun by turning it into a happy place filled with good gods, clerics, friendly wizards, a plenty of magic weapons food and water to go around. Nice.
I wonder what the DS races will be, multiarmed bug people who can only actually hold two things at a time, centaurs that strangely run exactlly the same speed as two legged creatures?
Yes, this one is a major puzzler...Dark Sun was a return to 'hard core' style gaming, while DnD4.0 is all about running away-in-shrieking-little-girl style from that.
Weird thing is, nobody at GenCon seemed to really care, I didn't even realize until I got online that this was the 'big news'.
I like how 2010 is the Year of 3 when Martial Power 2 releases in Feb. At least they've given up on making up new themes and just going with numbers. Shows me I really don't need any of their extra crap on my shelves.
Yeah, well. I'm trying to figure out what will be in the <power source> Power 2+ books. More powers that do roughly the same things? At what point does the system implode and some just writes up a universal list of powers that just has the player choose to do 'level appropriate' damage and a 'level appropriate' effect?
Voss wrote:Yeah, well. I'm trying to figure out what will be in the <power source> Power 2+ books. More powers that do roughly the same things? At what point does the system implode and some just writes up a universal list of powers that just has the player choose to do 'level appropriate' damage and a 'level appropriate' effect?
Never really. They've basically made a modular system like M:tG for which they can keep writing abilities and new classes indefinitely. So long as people like the flavor text to the new "Sword of Judgment" class, then they can write powers similar, but slightly different than a paladin and people will play him.
A level appropriate choice is nice from a design standpoint, but bad from a marketing standpoint, since it basically lets people design their own game, which is bad when you want to spam out books left and right. So keeping everyone pidgeon holed into highly specific classes forces people to buy more books if they like the newest flavor of the month.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
The problem with that is, the classes are already far from 'highly specific'. Maybe it works for the monkeys, but the already the powers for each class are already 85% crap, and the distinctions between the classes are already really, really vague, and thats just two years out and quite a shitload of supplements.
Voss wrote: At what point does the system implode and some just writes up a universal list of powers that just has the player choose to do 'level appropriate' damage and a 'level appropriate' effect?
My guess is that point is about 30 seconds after they announce any sort of license which a 3rd party company might actually use.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sun Aug 16, 2009 5:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Voss wrote:The problem with that is, the classes are already far from 'highly specific'. Maybe it works for the monkeys, but the already the powers for each class are already 85% crap, and the distinctions between the classes are already really, really vague, and thats just two years out and quite a shitload of supplements.
Yeah, mechanically they're very similar, but there are so many players out there that just go by flavor. You know the kind of player who want a specific Samurai class instead of just taking fighter, not because it actually acts different from a fighter, but just because they get a warm and fuzzy feeling from writing "Samurai" for their character's class.
It's pretty illogical, but a lot of people think that way.
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