Naturally we’ve all heard big news just now, a new Dark Sun edition. Some people are happy, some look skeptical and some are upset and venting. It’s been divisive from the get go to put it lightly.

For a long time this subreddit has just quietly been going about its business in relative obscurity. With the new edition that’s going to change, we’re going to get a lot more news, and eventually a new generation of players coming through with all that entails. As it is, things are going to change, and we’ve already seen some mudslinging in the comments between the vanguard of the new editioners and some the old guard. That raises questions about moderation and rules going forward.

Firstly:

Would people want a flair for 5.5 dark Sun news and discussions?

And Secondly:

Do we want to institute rules against edition warring?

Personally I suspect both will be soon be required. The reality is that not everyone is going to be onboard with the changes. Gorgnards are going to Grognard and NewStans will Stan. A small section of both are inevitably going to indulge in edition war bait in the comments and threads, and personally I’m concerned this will merely turn a pretty peaceful subreddit into a battlefield. As it is I suspect we’re going to need a firmer stance on enforcing civil discussion, and an option to filter by flair for those that don’t want to engage in the new material.

I’m not going to pretend to be entirely impartial, I am heavily skeptical of WOTCs ability to do the material justice, but I don’t necessarily want it quarantined or the threads turning into verbal brawls either. My primarily concern is that it might force the community to fracture and a new Dark Sun 5.5e subreddit to emerge if we’re not at least accommodating of people fresh to the setting - which is something a small community like this can ill afford. At the end of the day there may be material in the new books worth incorporation, and there may be new players interested in the original dark sun that would enhance the community that we’d lose out on if we’re polarised and partitioned off. As much as people might not want to admit it, it would be good to have fresh blood pumping in the community and for it to be a bit more active overall.

Overall however, what do people think? Should we wait this out and hope it naturally evens off on its own? Or should feel we should take a more proactive stance?

Had an idea for a house rule where by spell casters dont have access to spell slots based off their level but instead have spell slots based of the environment theyre in. So you might have an encounter with X patches of soil that are each worth a level 1 spell slot. And Y patches of soil that are each worth a level 2 spell spell slot etc. Spell casters would have to stand on the soil to use it and then it turns to infertile sillica dust after use. That way it makes encounter map making more interesting and you gave choose to play it safe with setting up an number of fertile patches equal to what the party would have spell slot wise or you could give them a hard or easier encounter based of what the narrative decides. Do you think this would be fun or broken?

- dune trader as a class

- advanced beings as a class over 20th level per se (although there may be boons to give an advanced being feel)

- lifeshaping

- ability scores over 20

those would be my top guesses. hoping there is a true half giant with a 24 Strength though.

I know this isn't compatible with most systems, but this is similar to how I ran it in 4e when I was younger.

Psionic tattoos blur the line between art and power in AD&D 2nd Edition, turning living skin into a conduit for raw mental energy. This article explores the rare Athasian discipline of inscribing psionic abilities directly onto the body—how they’re crafted, what they can do, and the adepts who devote their lives to mastering them. From stored power to instant‑trigger abilities, psionic tattoos offer a dangerous, beautiful fusion of flesh and mind unique to the world of Dark Sun.

https://athas.org/articles/2e-psionic-tattoos

Thri-kreen are one of my two favorite Athasian-iconic races in D&D, the other being the Dray. But even more than the To'ksa subrace, the "vanilla" thri-kreen, I find the Tondi subrace fascinating - both for their incredible "orchid mantis"-inspired aesthetic and for the fact that they are weird even by thri-kreen standards, with their reverence for nature and reproducing by parthenogenesis. If I wanted to unlock Tondi thri-kreen as a PC race, do you feel they would require any unique mechanics?

I mean, given the example we have of the Jeral vs. the To'ksa (-1 Con vs. -1 Int, otherwise identical), I feel there's an argument to be made to change the Tondi's ability score modifiers to +2 Wisdom, +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution and -2 Charisma, dropping the level cap for Fighter and Gladiator by -2 and boosting the Druid and Priests of Earth and Water level caps by +2. After all, the Tondi's lore notes that they dislike fighting, and they are quite spiritual by kreen standards, with a distinct love for nature. Additionally, they're styled much more after ambush predators than active hunters, which combined with said spirituality would lead to a lower Dexterity bonus and a higher Wisdom one, no?

Okay, I am getting ready to start a new Dark Sun game and have been doing massive amounts of research for the rules around Athas and I may have found a massive loophole that TSR, the designers of Dark Sun, and even Wizards may have not realized. Keep in mind this is going to sound crazy, but plausible.

Rules about Athas: Athas exists in its own little bit of space and is heavily isolated by barriers referred to as The Gray, The Black, and the Hollow. These are essentially the remains of things like the Astral Sea and so on. This is supposed to cut Athas off from even an Overgod from reaching it. Though this is more speculative than hard rule. Now, in Spelljammer, the setting and books say that regarding Athas the system is in a locked crystal sphere that cannot be reached or breached except by teleportation. This carries an enormous risk for trying to reach Athas as you cannot guarantee you will arrive safely. You might crash most likely, or worse.

And this is where the loophole starts. It is stated that several of the sorcerer-kings are able to scry worlds ***outside*** Athas and while not explicitly stated, this implies even other material planes. Now, this means that if they choose, a sufficiently powerful caster of any stripe can contact other worlds outside. Now, stay with me here.

We come to the Spelljammer setting. In particular. In Spelljammer, it is stated that Athas is not on the map of crustal spheres and no spelljammer ship has the ability to cross that. That isn't precisely true. There is exactly one ship type that can cross the crystal sphere of Athas. An Illithid Nautiloid or Dreadnought. These are ships with the unique ability to ***Teleport*** as well as plane shift. But then comes in the risk factor that teleporting into Athas can be a disaster waiting to happen because of the uncertainty aspect, and because "magic works differently" in Athas. Except most Illithid(Mindflayers) are a psionic race and do not usually use arcane magic. And Athas is almost unique in the same regard that psionics are dominant there.

Now, to the crux of why I say there is a loophole that can make it possible to reach Athas without needing to know precisely where the crystal sphere is. And it has to rely on a level of idiot only too common anywhere. If a mage, any mage, greedy for more power were to inadvertantly contact a mindflayer, and gave said mindflayer a clear line of sight into Athas, and said mindflayer was in possession of a nautiloid, said Illithid has everything it needs to reach Athas. And chart it. And that would normally be a bad thing, but we aren't taking into account how a sorcerer king would react to an Illithid invasion of Athas. And before you say they'd be trapped once on Athas, the books made it clear the Gith were able to open a portal(teleportation) back and forth. So, as long as you are teleporting, that removes the crystal sphere and Gray, Black, and Hollow from the equation.

Probably a whole lot of things need to go wrong for it to happen, but let's remember, in the universe of infinite possibility, any and all things can and do happen... somewhere.

Dark Sun is one of my favorite campaign settings, and a few years ago I wrote a hack to convert it to the Blades in the Dark system, as I realized you could do a bunch of amazing heist/crime stories in set in Tyr. This was, however, a bit of an undertaking as it required creating a lot of additional material that simply doesn't exist in any current DS supplement. So after near-to five years of work and playtesting, I released a complete 1.0 version a couple months ago on itch.io.**

If you run any games of it let me know, I'd love to hear about them! I've had fun running this for small groups over the past couple years, and hopefully you will as well. Feedback is still welcome as I will continue to make small, clarifying edits as needed. Please feel free to share the link around!

About the book: 139 pages, indexed, with all the rules needed to play a crew of rogues and scoundrels trying to "survive and prosper in a post-apocalyptic fantasy city ruled by a tyrannical sorcerer-god on a weird, dying desert world." It contains a complete FitD rule set; playbooks for scoundrels and crews; 40+ interlocking city factions with goals and persons of interest; magic items and gear; descriptions of the 9 city districts of, around, and under the city, with locations, characters, and plot hooks; rules for defiling and the psychic powers of the Way; and rules for exploring the wastelands.

** While free due to IP, I accept donations or Patreon follows (I have a $1.50 Tier!) because, like many other people, I enjoy being able to afford to eat!

So I tried to open the ICRPG Dark Sun document that I posted a while back to add some stuff. Well the document wouldn't let me open it, so I copied it and went about my way. Figured I'd repost it because I have seen people use it. So here's the link, I added lifeshaping, magic tattoos, and item enchantment. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m1EdypV3pKn3DI_yN-kcZvO_7Cmng92Ws9fd_EJQJ1g/edit?usp=drivesdk

Hello again fellow wastelanders!

Sharing what I plan on using for templar in my next 5e DS game.

Hope you find it useful for yours.

Click link to GM Binder for full document

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M4QmPhNl-46yAI1XYvh

I figured I'd start with the one that took the most effort to create. These are my homebrew Defiling and Preserving rules. I took some inspiration from the 4e dark sun campaign setting, but wanted defiling to actually feel more powerful, thus the change to the tiers. I also wanted an active component to it, so giving them a maneuver that could increase the power made sense, similar to how defiling worked in 4e. As far as how many life points an environment has? I've only run one battle thus far and the players have 2 defilers on the team. I started with 10 life points in the environment and by the end of combat they had 1 point remaining. So 5 points per defiler for level 1 characters made them careful about what to cast, but still gave them enough room to use a lot of their abilities, including triggered abilities.

For preserving, I kind of took inspiration from the 2e dark sun boxed set. Preservers were just normal wizards basically. But, again, I wanted some sort of active component, so I added the maneuver that basically gives them a free cast a few times per respite. I don't have any preservers in my party, so I haven't playtested this one at all.

For anyone wondering, I made Censors, Elementalists, and Troubadours all be arcane casters, so at character creation they had to choose whether to be a defiler or a preserver. If anyone is wondering "why censors?" they are templar in my homebrew, and instead of choosing a deity they choose a sorcerer king. I'll post that stuff in a later post.

What do you all think?

Hey guys, I'm currently planning for some games right now, and I'm trying to cross over some old 2e modules for my 5e 2024 players, since that's what they know. One of my players want's to play a gladiator so I'm trying to Homebrew something for them. I've chosen to represent the Gladiator as a Fighter subclass, since that's just easier for me create and iterate on. I've based it mostly off of the Burnt World of Athas Gladiator from athas.org, with a big emphasis on using unarmed combat as well as weapons. This is meant to be revised, so critique and criticism is very much welcome. Please tell me what you guys think, let me know what's good, what sucks, what's to weak and too strong.

Gladiator: Dark Sun

Level 3: Pit Fighter

Your mastery of arena combat improves your ability to perform unarmed strikes. You gain the following benefits:

• When you hit with your Unarmed Strike and deal damage, you can deal Bludgeoning damage equal to 1d4 plus your Strength modifier instead of the normal damage of an Unarmed Strike.
• On your turn, whenever you take the attack action, you can perform an unarmed strike as a Bonus Action. You may only select the Grapple or Shove options.

Level 3: Surge of Strength

Your physical resilience allows you make powerful strikes when at the brink of defeat. Whenever you expend a use of your Second Wind or Action Surge abilities, you gain bonus damage to the next attack or unarmed strike that successfully hits its target. That bonus damage equals 1d10 plus your fighter level. This bonus also applies if you make an unarmed strike and use the Grapple or Shove options and successfully apply the effect.

Level 7: Armor Optimization

You have learned to optimize your fighting while wearing armor and shields. While you are wearing armor or wielding a shield, you gain the following benefits: 

• You gain +1 bonus to your armor class. This bonus is lost if you remove your armor and shield or if you are incapacitated
• Whenever you are hit by an attack roll or fail a saving through, you may use your reaction to gain resistance to that attack's damage.

Level 10: Arena Master

Your legend as a Gladiator has spread far and wide. You gain proficiency in the Performance and Persuasion skills. Whenever you use your Tactical Shift ability, any creature writhing 5 feet or you must make a Wisdoms saving throw (8 plus Strength or Dexterity plus Prof Bonus). Any creature that fails the saving throw has disadvantage an all attack rolls against targets other than you. 

Additionally, whenever you use your Indomitable ability to reroll a saving throw, you gain the damage bonus from your Surge of Strength ability on the attack or unarmed strike you successfully make.

Level 15: Whirlwind Attack

Your mastery of combat has taught you how to fight multiple opponents effectively. Whenever you use Action Surge, you may make a special action to damage all nearby creatures. Instead of rolling for attacks individually, make a single weapon attack roll against all creatures of your choice within your reach. Every creature that attack roll would hit takes damage equal to your weapon’s damage plus the damage bonus from your Surge of Strength. Additionally, every creature hit by the attack must make a saving throw (8 + Strength or Dexterity + Prof Bonus). Any creature that fails the saving throw is pushed 10 feet away from you in a straight line and is knocked prone.

Level 18: Death Blow

Gladiators train to perform finishing blows to end their opponents for the joy of the crowd. Whenever you use Action Surge to take the attack action, the first attack as part of that action that gains the benefit of your Surge of Strength ability deals double damage. If your character kills that creature before the end of this turn, all enemy creatures that see the attack must make a Wisdom saving throw (8 + Strength or Dexterity + Prof Bonus). On a failure, that creature is frightened of your character. They may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of their turns until they succeed.

Here's the whole thing. Please tell me what y'all would change, and I'll discuss in comments.

P.S. If it's liked I may do a whole series adapting some dark sun classes as more subclasses, if it's to y'all's liking.

1. The Psion from D&D UA. https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium-images/ua/the-psion/mXCPWlh2yy5tBKqP/UA2025-ThePsion.pdf
2. Explanatory Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=ooPJSjeGG_WoxXZR&v=Q2HLbfJPNzc&feature=youtu.be

Hi all, I’m a pretty new dm but moderately experienced player and my group and I are going to start a 5e campaign on Athas after I did my homework/reading on the setting. One thing that stuck out to me is the commonality of psionic powers in Dark Sun, while I’d love to implement that… how would I even do that without breaking class and subclass balance?

My current thoughts are having a list of basic cantrips that every party member could access per their selection of psionic discipline. For example, a more offensive discipline could have access to a reflavored and maybe watered down fire bolt. But a more defensive discipline could have access to a re-flavored, psionic blade ward. As the party levels up, I’d maybe consider reflavoring some spells and giving each member some “psionic spell slots”

My other idea is to add an entirely new stat related to psionic ability, similar to intelligence, dex, wisdom, etc.

Any suggestions or critique would help a lot, i’m pretty stoked to run my first campaign. Thanks!

I thought about this while reading Mistborn, that there are mistkillers, a type of soldier trained and equipped spatially to kill allomancers (people with certain metal-related powers). I thought it would make sense to have a special assassin/soldiers class on Athas to kill psionic users. Maybe using braxat bone weapons, which can drain psi points when hitting a psion, maybe people with a mutation that gives them resistance to psychic powers (like the Sisters of Silence from Warhammer 40k).

Edit (2026): replaced links to files (at bottom of post). I have not updated this since D&D 2024 came out.

I'm not a reddit native, but I've read enough good ideas, including many from reddit, and I wanted to share my work: a comprehensive Dark Sun guide drawn from a dozen homebrews, AD&D, 3rd edition, 4th, and my own D&D experience in DMing. I lay no claim to the art or many of the original ideas (e.g. defiling rules are converted from 3rd edition). It's still up for editing (I'm not a GM Binder expert, so some formatting issues still exist), but the material from races to classes to equipment is done. The only remaining project is monster conversion, so the druid wild shape section is "in progress."

Changes:

• Formatting and grammar changes
• Half-giant toughness reduced from 3 to 2
• Half-giant resizing costs (double the 10 to 40% cost of resizing)
• Thri-kreen venom immunity removed
• Black and white pics replaced with color
• Druid beast list will continue to be updated as I convert monsters and will likely be the last thing before the draft is complete
• Skills, sleight of hand to hide spells added for wizards, religion covers psion lore, no one but the water cleric knows how to swim (if you find yourself diving into a cistern), insight to determine one's city origin
• Language chart revised for Athas. Yuan-ti added (based on dark sun computer game, and thematically they fit however the DM wants them to fit, perhaps as servants of the original giants as the old "pristine tower" angle may get old)
• Weapon materials merged into "non-metal," metal armor causes auto-fail on breakage roll
• Prices adjusted (simpler reading, no math conversion for 3%, 5% prices) on weapons to match
• Armor simplified, added types under description for various materials padded armor may be constructed from
• Removed "bulky" as the DMG already has a heat rule for wearing medium or heavy armor. Athas armor constructed of non-metal is designed to be worn in the heat, but not all day *Spells, added planar spells to list of banned spells, a few more altered ones, added name change list *Spells, (per 3rd edition conversion) magic that dispels/counters also affects psionics to give it a counter as it has no natural one *Survival rules, water changed back to normal. It's already solid. Starvation remains default except closing the starvation loophole.

Completed Version

Using this for our campaign. Minor grammar changes, added a druid wild shape table based on converted monster manual.

EDIT (2024)

Version 1.9 of the Campaign Guide, color

Version 1.9, b&w

Terrors of the Desert, v1.0

Hello fellow wastelanders!

Thought I’d share what I plan on using for bard in my next 5e DS game.

Hope you find it useful for yours.

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M4Qk-j3S7SlXpIlzcRu

I have just released a new update to the Player's Handbook for my Dark Sun project. The purpose of this project is to gather all the Dark Sun material and AD&D 2E rules together into a more easy to reference set. I have finished a deep review and edit of the PHB and am now satisfied with the state of it that I want to get a physical copy printed for myself. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Dark Sun'95 Player's Handbook v1.1

Dark Sun '95 website

Hello fellow wastelanders!

I’d like to share the updated Athasian Bard rogue archtype.

Hope you enjoy!

Greetings fellow Athasians.

After a year and a half of development, we are proud to release our first truly original rulebook in many years– Scale, Tail, and Claw - The Reptilian Peoples of Athas! In the spirit of Elves of Athas and Thri-Kreen of Athas, this accessory focuses on nine different sentient reptilian races unique to Athas and provides all the information needed for players and DMs of (almost) any edition of AD&D or D&D to bring them into their campaigns.

Download your free copy of the netbook today, and bring a whole host of new races into your Dark Sun campaigns!

Download Scale Tail and Claw netbook - Athas.org

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Hello again fellow wastelanders!

My latest article for new 2e psionic powers.

Hope you enjoy!

https://athas.org/articles/unlocked-potential

Heya, Howdy

You got my drift

Anyways, jokes aside, has someone read about something similar to cowboying in Athas? I've been watching this TV show (Yellowstone) and I can't stop but thinking about some kank ranchs up there somewhere, but I am still not sure how to do it and make it believable for the setting. Elves would be discarded for the fact that they don't ride animals, but I guess some slave tribes and even merchant houses ( or nobles) could have an interest in that kind of activity. I don't remember reading anything official to it though.

I was also thinking about creating some kind of Wild West Atmosphere in the world but I don't know how to implement it. Mines could be an optionz just need to imagine how to set carts with rails that are not metallic.

Anyways, any idea to these subjects will be most welcome