3.5 Dark Sun
 

Has anyone done a 3.5 Dark Sun data set?

Not that I am aware of.

That is a shame. I am not even sure how to go about doing that because of amount of changes.

Not being familiar with 3.5 Dark Sun that much, I don't know how extensive those changes might be. You could use the editor to replace things and whatnot yourself. Feel free to search these forums and post your questions. I'll help answer what I can.

Dark Sun takes place on Athas. A planet in ruins from a war of great wizards. The environment has become very dessert like because the magic drew the life force out of the planet. It is kind of an apocalyptic situation only the strong are left.

The allowed races are different. Stat changes, new races, almost everything has psionic powers. Metal is very rare so most weapons are wood and stone. Being as the weapons are "softer" there is a greater risk for them breaking on a critical failure. The money is based on cp = clay pieces = ~ 1gp. The best armor available is bronze half-plate. There is not steel armor, iron armor does exist but it cost x5 phb price and weighs +50% over listed weight.

Just a brief summary

Would people prefer the athas.org Dark Sun campaign setting for 3.5 or the Dragon Magazine/Dungeon Magazine version. The Athas.org is more complete but it is user created not "official" like the magazine version would be. Is there a way I could to do both I wonder? Kind of like "Here is the setting choose Athas.org or Dragon Mag version" check boxes.

I have no problem keying in the info for this setting. I made need help with a few things so look for my questions.

Repeating this post in User Projects

Athas.org rules! Haven't seen the dragon mag version!
Do have all the 2nd edition products though!

Love this setting!

This setting is the best! I also have the Athasian Emporium 3.5 conversion with all the fun weapons and armor to choose from.

Athas.org is the official version for 3.5 and is recognized as such by wotc. Wotc dropped the ball on releasing the product line for it in 3.5 but the fans kept it alive. I have most of the 2nd ed material as well. You can use the Athas.org material with the current campaign setting books in a 3.5 or pathfinder game. I am working on a data set for pathfinder based on this with the Athas.org data. I will probably add a few raze feats, but I did keep the 4th edition version of Arcane Defilement... ie the re-roll option. My players like having a re-roll option and I see no reason to change it. The only thing I found Athas.org lacking in is the Psionics department, namely Wild Talents. I had to find a copy of the Will and the Way from 2nd edition. Player Characters may manifest up to 3 psionic abilities as wild talents in Athas and do not have to go by the rolling chart method in the Complete Psionics Handbook. Kind of important but Athas.org did not do very well with the psionics, still the rest of the content works really well.

I had planed on using the Athas.org rules. I was checking to see if there was a "community" preferance. I havn't really thought about the Wild Talents. I assume that the srd psi and xph will contain enough options. I do not normally use any psionics in my games. This setting is the exception.

I have uploaded my race file to the User Projects section.

As an avid psionics supporter I have to agree that both psionics books cover most aspects of the dark sun psionics rules without adjusting too much.

Heck leave em alone as they'll just work as standard options, just tag your races or classes with the psionics tag which should allow psionics feats to be used.

There is a To-do list with the problems I was having.

Dwarf Focus not sure if it can be added via dropdown for +1

+1 morale bonus on all checks directly related to their focus. This includes a skill bonus, an attack bonus, a damage bonus, or a saving throw bonus, or even a bonus to manifestation or spell save DCs.

How are racial weapon handled?

I looked at the Dwarf for an example but I saw no code or anything.


Elf skill bonus for perform not sure how to do

Elves recieve a +1 bonus to all perform skills and I do not think I should have to list them all.

I'm relatively new to Hero Lab editing, so I'm not sure about the best way to handle a racial option like that. You could add a Special Ability for it where you could script the morale bonuses with something like:

#applybonus[BonMorale, hero.child[vWill, 2]

But as for the user entered text for the focus itself, I'm not that cool. The only way I know how to add a user entered field on a racial ability is to utilize the "Charge allows freeform text" option on the editor form.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can give a better assist on this one.

It depends on what you mean by handled. You can assign weapons to the race making all members of the race automatically proficient. You can also assign a "group" to each weapon, thus identifying it as, for example, a dwarven weapon. That would let you then manipulate all members of the group in your code as needed. Does that address your issue?

You can manipulate all perform skills in code with AllPerform. For example:
#skillbonus[AllPerform] += 1


Sherry

Thanks for the Elf skill bonus help. I did not know there was a AllPerfom option. Where did you find that

By racial weapon I meant they count as martial instead of exotic.

The dwarven focus ability is a pain. I do not want to force the user to remember to add it manually. I did have the idea to make it a condition that is selectable but I am not sure how to do that.

Post-Apocalyptic actually. If you go by the canon from the 2nd edition, the world is pretty much dead or dying... The sun is nearing the end of its own life cycle as a result of the Creation of Defiling Magic, and the carrying out of an evil halfling overlord's will to exterminate all the lesser races of the planet. Such as Gnomes, Wemics, etc. Athas is more like a post magical fallout kind of setting... magic is feared and hated by people. The Psionics are what I found to be a real problem though... I am working on converting the 3.5 athas.org material into the pathfinder ruleset. Are you using the Expanded Psionics Handbook from 3.5 in your game to handle wild talents?

Psionics Unleashed by Dreamscarred Press is what my group is currently using, while I never really allowed them into other settings in older editions because of the brokenness of the psionic combat, Dark Sun was always the exception because it was developed with Psionic abilities in mind. Every Athasian Character gets Wild Talents. I am currently comparing the Will and the Way from 2nd edition with Psionics Unleashed and building my own wild talent tables from the originals. I am trying to keep the psionic element of Dark Sun as it was originally intended to be.

If I remember right, I found the AllPerform/AllCraft/AllKnow/AllSkills thing in an old forum post.

To find most of my "how-to" info, I use two sources. I check the advanced search tool here on the forums, which can be hit and miss depending on how you word things. My main source, though, is mimicking Lawful_g. I downloaded his extensive enhancements to the 3.5 stuff from cheeseweasle.net and installed them. Then when I run into something I can't figure out, I use Notepad++'s "Find in Files" feature to search the entire d20 folder. Even if I can't find the exact thing I'm looking for, I can review how he dealt with save bonuses or spells or whatever and get an idea of where to start. (Lawful_g: Thank you, and please remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.)

All that being said, the exotic/martial weapon thing may be tough. In the Editor, the function you are talking about is a trait of the weapon itself. On the custom weapon window you'll see an option for "Easy if Race..." Unfortunately, the editor's help states specifically that it only works with standard races, not user created ones. So if you're working with "new" dwarf race instead of trying to add things to the existing one then it won't work. It might be able to be adjusted in code after the weapon is added to the hero, but that's way beyond my skills at the moment.

A quick note to those using the Athas.org materials... I am inputting the races into the editor as they are actually different from the standard races in the books.

I have already input the races from the Athas.org DS campaign book. I have a working version for d20 if you would like it.

I would not mind seeing what you have for it. I am actually using the Pathfinder system rules for it, and have most of the things coded into hero lab, I am using the Athas.org books as source material but am making tweaks and changes. My players do love that elf base land speed is 40 feet though.

I found that the Wordcasting substitution from Ultimate Magic actually works better for Elemental Priests than the standard method.

Provos, have you drilled down to classes yet, or just races?

I have more info in the HL - User Projects

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=13789

Martial/Exotic workaround
 

Earlier in the thread we were talking about setting weapons that require exotic proficiency as martial for a user-added race. I have the same issue in Conan, and I am thinking about duplicating weapons as a workaround.

The first version requires exotic proficiency, and the second requires only martial and has pre-req of being a member of the correct race. Not very elegant, but it does the job.

This isn't a big deal in the work I'm doing because there are only a scant few of these weapons in the game. Plus, almost every weapon from standard 3.5 is either not available or has different damage dice in Conan. So I've had to replace and/or hide them all anyway.

I don't know if it's practical for Dark Sun, but I thought I'd pass it along.

In Dark Sun metal is very rare. All the regular 3.5 weapons need to be made from Bone, wood, or obsidian.

I am trying to see if I could prevent player from taking the basic version but allowing them to make a custom weapon with the new material that would change some properties of the weapon.

I am just about done coding the Dark Sun 3.5 datafile update for Pathfinder.
The "classes" problem was easy to do via the Archetypes. Templar is just a modified cleric class.

So far I have the Races, Templar and Defiler Archetype (Ultimate Combat covered Gladiator, no need to fix what is not broken there), Weapons, Clothing, Most of the Feats (My only problem is the psionic feats, finding a complete set of psionics data for Hero Lab is troublesome, I may have to code up Psionics Unleashed myself next just for Dark Sun)

I suppose I am lucky as Expanded Psioncis is part of the srd.

Game Selection Screen for Dark Sun

Congratulations!

Sweet! Looking good Provos!

Be really cool to distribute this to the community when you are done. Been doing some research and well be able to add this as a another download option from cheeseweasel's site. It will just need some special instructions to setup is all as it is running over the full version of d20 in a different folder.

It means a person will have to manually load d20 to say d20_darksun and then download the data set and manually change the INSTALL folder to be d20_darksun. Its not really hard but will require a couple of manual steps on the end-gamers part.

Oooh does this mean that this is complete? I'm willing to buy Hero Labs just for the Dark Sun section if it is. Thanks for all the work on this Provos!

Is it Darksun 3.5e or 4e?

This is the d20 or 3.5e version that I was working on.

Status on this
 

Provos,
How close is this to done? I'd love to try out what you've done so far.

I gave up on this project. I got the races and basic classes done. I could not figure out templars, clerics, and damage to equipment.

Here is what I have for Dark sun. It isn't much but maybe someone else can add to it if they want.


DSCS - Athas.og Races - Races
DSCS -Athas.org.user - some skills

I will be adding these files to the next release, but please note a change in file name to conform with community standards. These files will now be named as follows:

Note that the two Athas.org files have been merged into one.

Also note I had to remove all of the "Hidden" things from these files as otherwise it would remove those options for everyone.

If you receive errors after adding these files, you will need to remove the originals.