Dark Sun: The Gladiator

The Fighter class in the world of Athas is pretty much unchanged, the only thing was to remove the Eldritch Knight from the Martial Archetypes options, and to compensate I created the Gladiator as a Martial Archetype.
Some people suggested me doing the Gladiator as a completely separate class of its own. But I think that would be redundant. I was even tempted to use the Champion archetype and just change the name to Gladiator because it kind of fits. but in doing so, I was leaving the rest of non gladiator fighters with no option but the Battle Master.
So I worked on the new archetype. I looked at some of the gladiators from previous editions. The one on the original 2E box didn't had much to choose from, and the prestige class from 3.x was too dependent on the crowd cheering up. I somehow implemented that in one of the features, but also added the ability to impress the enemies, in case there's no crowd around—no, the party does not count as a crowd!
So here it is, my take on the Gladiator of Athas, as a Martial Archetype.

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EDIT: I just changed the previous Favored Weapon feature for the Pit Fighter feature, to make it feel more like the original box gladiator.

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Gladiator

The life of a gladiator is brutish and brief, but it is the one occupation a slave can hold that also brings respect. Gladiators are heroes to the common people. Their trials and victories are the stuff of legend, and many slaves grow comfortable from the accolades their conquests bring.

Dark Sun: Feral Classes

The barbarian an the druid classes didn't required much changes. Just some renaming and tweaking for flavor sake.

The barbarian totems for example, since there are no wolves, bears and eagles in Athas, I had to look around for beasts with similar qualities. The Klar is literally a big nasty bear, so the choice was easy. The Dagorran (as presented in 4E) is a tracking beast that hunts in packs, so very much like the wolf, specially the benefits provided by the wolf totem. Finally the eagle was a hard one, I could not find a bird of prey besides the Kes'trekel, which is more a carrion bird. I really don't like it for a totem, but for now I'll leave at that—perhaps later I'll work a new totem from scratch based on an Athasian beast.

Regarding the druid, I gave the circles a little name tweak, and created new circle spells lists, more appropriate for Athas peculiar geography. I was tempted at first to use just four types of terrains: the Tablelands, the Sea of Silt, the Ringing Mountains and the Forest Ridge—I guess someone can try this simpler approach and use the desert, coast, mountain and forest spell lists, respectively. But I rather worked on the types of terrains presented in the 4E Dark Sun Campaign Setting book. Some of the spell lists may seem repetitive, because the differences are subtle. My three main focuses when creating the lists was theme, traveling, and survival in each particular terrain. Let me know what do you think.

Barbarian

Brutality is a way of life in Athas, as much in some of the cities as in the dwindling tribes of Athas’ harsh wastes. Nibenese sages claim that the potential for savagery is in every sentient race, and the history of Athas seems to support their claim.

Dark Sun on 5th Edition

I remember back in the late 90s when I flip to the back of my AD&D Dungen Master Guide. There was this list of campaigns, with cool logos an tiny covers of material on the side page. There they were all of the now classics, Mystara, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Planescape and Dragonlange. But from all the descriptions this one catched my imagination like no other:

The Dark Sun world is the AD&D game's most savage game setting—a desert realm scorched by a relentless sun, blasted by the destructive magic of generations of evil wizards. It is a land of evil sorcerer-kings and powerful psionincists who command astounding mental powers. In this wild and brutal landscape, a single adventurer can alter the course of history and forever change the world. One of those heroes could be yours!

Most savage game setting! I wanted it so bad. Unfortunately, back in the day getting D&D material in my country (Mexico) was quite hard. Specially in my home town. When I finally got a chance to visit a gaming store in Mexico City, I had to suck it up and buy the only box they had, Forgotten Realms.

Ever since the Dark Sun setting it's a thorn in my side. Now the material is available as PDF in dndclassics.com but my players and I had stopped playing 2E long since, 3E didn't see any Dark Sun official books, and even though there was a Campaign Setting book for 4E, the fourth wasn't my edition at all.

Now I'm back playing 5th Edition. And as I said in my last post, there's a psionics playtest for 5E. Thus and the fact that I'm about to finish my Rise of Tiamat game (All players must die!) I've decided to take that thorn out and play a Dark Sun campaign, even if that means making a whole bunch of house rules.

Starting with the house rules, I present to you my take on the wizards of Athas. I tried to capture the feeling of careful casting and mastery of the Preserver vs reckless casting and quicker advancement of the Defiler. I hope you like it! (Italics are text taken from the original boxed set)

Athasian Wizard

A wizard is able to capture and master magical energies. However, in Dark Sun, magic is irrevocably linked to the environment. The casting of magical spells and the enchantment of magical items always draws energy directly from the living ecology in the vicinity, destroying the life there. Wizards can choose two paths toward mastery of magical energy.