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Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas
'Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas' details the two paths of magic in the Dark Sun campaign and the strange way magic works there. It demonstrates how Athasian wizards power their magic and describes both types of wizards-defilers and preservers.
96 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1996
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July 21, 202231/32 of my Dark Sun reread project and it's possible my irritation here is exacerbated by this fever I've got. (All my covid tests are negative! I don't trust them!)
So, this book is to Dragon Kings as the Revised Box set is to the original, and I figure that's all I have to say about that.
But if you need more: this book updates the magic rules and adds the new ones to bring the rules into line with the story they set up in the Prism Pentad novels. Like: the original idea was preservers vs. defilers -- people who destroy the world for their own power and people who don't. But now magicians can draw power from other things, like the sun (well, that's just one wizard), or the Black (another plane), or the big Cerulean Storm that's... like a big magic storm now that they created for some reason or other.
There's other stuff in the book -- a lot of magic spells and some description of the three different Paths of magic, blah blah blah -- but this is really the central problem I have with the metaplot as it is handled: in the original box, you have a really stark concretization of a metaphor that, frankly, has become only more meaningful in the last 30 years: certain people will destroy the world as long as they have power and comfort. But rather than "power can only come from hurting others," the game offers a less grim, more heroic contrast, with some people trying to gain power without hurting the world and, in some cases, even trying to help the world.
So what do they do with this stark metaphor? Well, let's just throw a few more angles at it that don't really offer much more meaning, but increase playability/options, because players are suckers for that sort of thing.
I can't even get mad at it because it's clear that they're operating under different priorities (create a sandbox for players to do whatever they want, whoo!) than I have, and which I think it's increasingly clear that they hit in the original box almost by accident.
So, this book is to Dragon Kings as the Revised Box set is to the original, and I figure that's all I have to say about that.
But if you need more: this book updates the magic rules and adds the new ones to bring the rules into line with the story they set up in the Prism Pentad novels. Like: the original idea was preservers vs. defilers -- people who destroy the world for their own power and people who don't. But now magicians can draw power from other things, like the sun (well, that's just one wizard), or the Black (another plane), or the big Cerulean Storm that's... like a big magic storm now that they created for some reason or other.
There's other stuff in the book -- a lot of magic spells and some description of the three different Paths of magic, blah blah blah -- but this is really the central problem I have with the metaplot as it is handled: in the original box, you have a really stark concretization of a metaphor that, frankly, has become only more meaningful in the last 30 years: certain people will destroy the world as long as they have power and comfort. But rather than "power can only come from hurting others," the game offers a less grim, more heroic contrast, with some people trying to gain power without hurting the world and, in some cases, even trying to help the world.
So what do they do with this stark metaphor? Well, let's just throw a few more angles at it that don't really offer much more meaning, but increase playability/options, because players are suckers for that sort of thing.
I can't even get mad at it because it's clear that they're operating under different priorities (create a sandbox for players to do whatever they want, whoo!) than I have, and which I think it's increasingly clear that they hit in the original box almost by accident.
January 28, 2015
I'm a bit surprised it took so long for wizards to get a book. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water came out in 1993, but Defilers and Preservers wasn't until 1996. Maybe it's because Dark Sun changed priests more than wizards--there's not much difference other than defiling ash and faster experience for defilers in the original Dark Sun campaign box, and preservers were generic wizards as written in the Player's Handbook. The revised setting did change a few things, though, so I guess they felt the need to put out a book about it.
The first thing I noticed is that the margins are gigantic. All the pre-revised Dark Sun books have the text filling the page pretty well, but this book (and admittedly, some of the other revised books too) has three-inch margins on the outer sides. Sometimes they're filled with useful sidebars, sometimes it seems like they're filled with fluff written to take up space, and sometimes they're not filled and the margins just hang there, crowding the text into a pathetic huddle on the side of the page. I'm not sure why it bothered me so much, but it did.
The writers seemed to have realized that the defiling mechanics given in the revised Campaign Setting, where the energy is drawn when wizards memorize their spells rather than cast them, means that defilers don't actually defile most of the time, so Defilers and Preservers has mechanics for either drawing spell energy when spells are memorized, or when they're cast. Defilers can make a roll based on the local terrain, with a chance of getting either more or fewer spells per day, and preservers get the standard rules. However, it does introduce the complication that magic can be seen as ribbons of green light traveling from plants to the wizard when cast, which means that magic becomes impossible to hide even for preservers, since even illusions to hide the magic would create the ribbons to power the illusion. So either defilers don't obviously defile most of the time, or all wizards effectively shout "BURN THE WITCH!" every time they use a spell. Oops.
Defilers also take half the normal time to memorize their spells, which is a huge benefit since in the rules as written, each spell takes ten minutes per spell level to memorize and a 20th level wizard who wants to memorize their full complement of spells from scratch would need to study for 24 hours straight. Cutting that half is a massive benefit. Now, admittedly a lot people ignored that rule and just gave casters their spells back when they woke up every day, but you can't judge a rule's effectiveness by the outcome of people ignoring it.
The book also explains the cosmology of Athas and retroactively makes Black Spine make sense. Athas is surrounded by the elemental planes; the Grey, which is the abode of the dead; and the Black, which is a shadowy nothing that separates what is real from what isn't real. Punching past all that to get to the Outer Planes or anywhere else in the multiverse is extremely difficult, to the point that even the sorcerer-kings have worse-than-average odds of getting it to work, which explains why Athas doesn't have wizards teleporting elsewhere and coming back with bags of iron and gold. It also makes the afterlife sufficiently sword and sorcery--no glorious reward for heroes who die, their spirits go to the Grey and swirl around fruitlessly for a long while until they dissolve into the background. That makes attaining immortality as some kind of hideous undead abomination an appropriately-tempting prospective.
Dragons now get a monthly save against their animalistic period, which makes them much more playable. But at the same time, half-elves can no longer become dragons because reasons, and there's an explicit note that it's better if PCs don't become advanced beings. See, this is why I don't like revised Dark Sun. Old Dark Sun was "here's the world, it's awful, what do you do about it?" And the answer could be nothing because a man's got to survive, but the players could also accumulate personal power and try to change the status quo. Dragon Kings was all about that, even if the rules were a little odd. And now in the revised campaign setting, NPCs did a lot of the work changing things and there's a note that PCs keep their heads down and not play with the big kids. Ugh.
There are a few kits near the end, but they range from worthless to hilariously overpowered as is traditional with second edition kits. The Necromancer and the Shadow Wizard draw from the Grey and the Black respectively for their magical power, meaning they don't have to draw from plant life to power their spells, but they need to make a Constitution check every time they use their spells and if they fail, they take damage and the spell is lost. Exterminators are defilers who hate all plants and want to ruin the world for ill-defined reasons. Mercenary wizards start with a metal weapon, a gift from their employer like a mount or a month's paid lodgings, and their disadvantage is that sometimes people try to kill them, which, well, they're a wizard on Athas, I'm pretty sure that happens anyway. There are a few others, but they're kind of bland. Free Wizard of Tyr? Great.
The book ends with a selection of spells, including the psionic enchantments originally from Dragon Kings, and the usual assortment of overly-specific proficiencies. Gardening? Probably not useful. Psionic mimicry? Not going to disguise those ribbons of glowing green light. Although "Weapon proficiency: Garden Hoe" is great enough that I don't mind it. +3 Garden Hoe, Vorpal coming up!
While a book about wizards in Dark Sun is a nice addition to the line, Defilers and Preservers has enough oddity and hiccups that I can't entirely endorse it. It's more of a toolkit to remix and draw from than a complete-in-box product, but there is some good stuff in here if you're willing to sift.
The first thing I noticed is that the margins are gigantic. All the pre-revised Dark Sun books have the text filling the page pretty well, but this book (and admittedly, some of the other revised books too) has three-inch margins on the outer sides. Sometimes they're filled with useful sidebars, sometimes it seems like they're filled with fluff written to take up space, and sometimes they're not filled and the margins just hang there, crowding the text into a pathetic huddle on the side of the page. I'm not sure why it bothered me so much, but it did.
The writers seemed to have realized that the defiling mechanics given in the revised Campaign Setting, where the energy is drawn when wizards memorize their spells rather than cast them, means that defilers don't actually defile most of the time, so Defilers and Preservers has mechanics for either drawing spell energy when spells are memorized, or when they're cast. Defilers can make a roll based on the local terrain, with a chance of getting either more or fewer spells per day, and preservers get the standard rules. However, it does introduce the complication that magic can be seen as ribbons of green light traveling from plants to the wizard when cast, which means that magic becomes impossible to hide even for preservers, since even illusions to hide the magic would create the ribbons to power the illusion. So either defilers don't obviously defile most of the time, or all wizards effectively shout "BURN THE WITCH!" every time they use a spell. Oops.
Defilers also take half the normal time to memorize their spells, which is a huge benefit since in the rules as written, each spell takes ten minutes per spell level to memorize and a 20th level wizard who wants to memorize their full complement of spells from scratch would need to study for 24 hours straight. Cutting that half is a massive benefit. Now, admittedly a lot people ignored that rule and just gave casters their spells back when they woke up every day, but you can't judge a rule's effectiveness by the outcome of people ignoring it.
The book also explains the cosmology of Athas and retroactively makes Black Spine make sense. Athas is surrounded by the elemental planes; the Grey, which is the abode of the dead; and the Black, which is a shadowy nothing that separates what is real from what isn't real. Punching past all that to get to the Outer Planes or anywhere else in the multiverse is extremely difficult, to the point that even the sorcerer-kings have worse-than-average odds of getting it to work, which explains why Athas doesn't have wizards teleporting elsewhere and coming back with bags of iron and gold. It also makes the afterlife sufficiently sword and sorcery--no glorious reward for heroes who die, their spirits go to the Grey and swirl around fruitlessly for a long while until they dissolve into the background. That makes attaining immortality as some kind of hideous undead abomination an appropriately-tempting prospective.
Dragons now get a monthly save against their animalistic period, which makes them much more playable. But at the same time, half-elves can no longer become dragons because reasons, and there's an explicit note that it's better if PCs don't become advanced beings. See, this is why I don't like revised Dark Sun. Old Dark Sun was "here's the world, it's awful, what do you do about it?" And the answer could be nothing because a man's got to survive, but the players could also accumulate personal power and try to change the status quo. Dragon Kings was all about that, even if the rules were a little odd. And now in the revised campaign setting, NPCs did a lot of the work changing things and there's a note that PCs keep their heads down and not play with the big kids. Ugh.
There are a few kits near the end, but they range from worthless to hilariously overpowered as is traditional with second edition kits. The Necromancer and the Shadow Wizard draw from the Grey and the Black respectively for their magical power, meaning they don't have to draw from plant life to power their spells, but they need to make a Constitution check every time they use their spells and if they fail, they take damage and the spell is lost. Exterminators are defilers who hate all plants and want to ruin the world for ill-defined reasons. Mercenary wizards start with a metal weapon, a gift from their employer like a mount or a month's paid lodgings, and their disadvantage is that sometimes people try to kill them, which, well, they're a wizard on Athas, I'm pretty sure that happens anyway. There are a few others, but they're kind of bland. Free Wizard of Tyr? Great.
The book ends with a selection of spells, including the psionic enchantments originally from Dragon Kings, and the usual assortment of overly-specific proficiencies. Gardening? Probably not useful. Psionic mimicry? Not going to disguise those ribbons of glowing green light. Although "Weapon proficiency: Garden Hoe" is great enough that I don't mind it. +3 Garden Hoe, Vorpal coming up!
While a book about wizards in Dark Sun is a nice addition to the line, Defilers and Preservers has enough oddity and hiccups that I can't entirely endorse it. It's more of a toolkit to remix and draw from than a complete-in-box product, but there is some good stuff in here if you're willing to sift.
November 27, 2019
This book delves deeply into the magic-users of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting and updates material from Dragon Kings. Lots of spells, subclasses, a fatastic theory of magic on Athas, and how to take characters form 20th level and beyond. Very useful in general, due to the link that magic has with the ecosystem of the planet, and that was a major change from other fantasy settings and give Dark Sun its authentic post-apocalyptic feel.
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