Combat

Athas is a violent world: those who wish to survive must fight, and only those who fight well survive. PCs will find themselves battling a lone monster in the desolate seas of sand, a polished gladiator in the roaring arenas, or legions of combatants in a full scale war.

Arena Combats

Every major city on Athas has an arena for holding gladiatorial games. The sorcerer-kings use the games to entertain their slave and noble populations and to hold barbaric executions and trials by combat. On Athas, life is cheap and the champions of the arenas are the popular folk-heroes of the age. Player characters may well find themselves thrust into the arena as prisoners or gladiators. Success can mean great things; failure means certain death. More powerful player characters may become champions or may themselves own entire stables of gladiators. The customs of every arena are unique, but some generalities can be drawn about the various matches made and the treatment of slaves bound for the arena floor.

Games: All arenas feature spectacles that pit gladiatorial slaves against each other or against ferocious beasts. Wagering on these games is the sport of sorcerer-kings, nobles, merchants, and peasants alike.

Matinee: Matinees feature very simple combats, pitting inexperienced gladiators or prisoners against each other in struggles to the death. Matinee warriors are never well armed or armored. Combatants who do well in matinee games sometimes rise to higher contests or are traded from house to house. At times, the sorcerer-king, master of the games, uses matinees for simple executions, as well. Matinees whet the spectators, appetites for more skilled games to come.

Grudge Match: Gladiators who have met before and survived are often called upon to fight again. Wagering on grudge matches is especially heavy. Most often, grudge matches aren't fought to the death, only to severe injury; thus the combatants may fight again.

Trial by Combat Many people accused of crimes by the sorcerer-king or his templars receive the right to trial by combat. Unfortunately for the accused, the sorcerer-king chooses whom the accused will fight, picking from among his best gladiators. Death is tantamount to a confession of guilt. Those who win gain their freedom, but are often accused and imprisoned again unless they flee the city.

Matched Pairs: Many stables present pairs of gladiators to fight side-by-side. Pairs are trained together and selected to complement each others, skills.

Bestial Combat: Gladiators and prisoners are often sent into the arena against savage beasts. The sorcerer-kings sponsor expeditions to capture will animals, or buy them from the many caravans that come to their cities. The crowd finds these bloody affairs particularly enjoyable.

Test of Champions: A test of a champion is often the culmination of a day's gladiatorial games. A popular and powerful gladiator is selected to face a series of unusual tests. They may be as simple as fighting several demihuman or animal opponents at once or more elaborate contests against magical or psionic opponents in a maze of walls assembled just for the occasion.

Advanced Games: Most cities have team games that are popular with their audiences, but make no sense to those from outside the city. The rules are complicated and deadly, involving dozens of gladiators at a time.

Stables: Most noble and merchant houses have stables of slaves. These slaves combat each other as well as the gladiators, criminals, wild animals, and intelligent animals sponsored by the sorcerer-king, himself. Typical stables of slaves have between 10 and 100 potential arena combatants. The sponsoring noble house provides the slaves with adequate food, clothing, and housing - nobles want their investments to pay off, so gladiatorial slaves seldom want for the necessities of life. The slaves are trained for 12 hours virtually every day in the courtyards of the noble's estate, overseen by armed guards and their instructors. Every slave in a stable receives minimal training in armed and unarmed combat before being sent to his first matches. Those who show promise (and who survive the dangerous early days of their careers) are further trained in specialized combat techniques. This training emphasizes skilled unarmed combat, raw endurance, and specialization in arena weapons such as the trident, quabone, and net. Slaves who have survived several matches and undergone this more extensive training are considered gladiators (levels 1 through 4, usually) and are the mainstay of the stables, arena warriors.

Every stable has its champion or champions. A champion is a gladiator of level 5 through 20, the most experienced warrior in the stable. When a single arena hosts multiple high-level gladiators, rivalries can develop. Usually, rivalries between champions within a single stable are not allowed - one stable will not arrange a match between two of its own, no matter how fierce the rivalry. The champion of a stable has performed well in all the matches described above and has gained the attention of every other noble house.

Wagering Bets between spectators run rampant during the games. Noble houses and the sorcerer-king himself cover all wagers against their own gladiators, setting odds based on the gladiators involved and the amount of wagering on each side. The rich very often challenge each other with enormous bets, hoping to wipe out another noble house with the outcome of a single contest.

When player characters want to wager- on gladiatorial games, the DM may handle it in one of two ways. If all players agree, they can roll up the gladiators in question and play the match out themselves. Otherwise, the DM must determine the outcome randomly. The odds on any particular contest will vary, but a player character can rarely do more than double or triple his original bet.

Trading of Gladiators: Gladiators are often traded or sold to other houses. Of course, subterfuge and intrigue run wild in the gladiatorial pits. A bard may be sent to one house just to poison and weaken that house's champion in advance of an offer to purchase him. Also, it is unwise to refuse the sorcerer-king's request to purchase a gladiator, no matter how little he offers.

Battling Undead in Dark Sun

On Athas, undead are still just that dead beings that are somehow animated to function among the living. In the DARK SUN campaign world, undead come in two varieties mindless and free-willed. Mindless undead are corpses or skeletal remains animated by some character or creature for its own purposes. When encountered, skeletons and zombies are always mindless, controlled by their animators. Skeletons and zombies are never free-willed. Undead monsters created using an animate dead spell are always mindless.

Free-willed undead are usually very powerful creatures with great intellect and ambition. Every freewilled undead creature in Dark Sun is unique - each has its own reason for existing and its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Athas has no ghouls, shadows, wights, ghasts, wraiths, mummies, spectres, vampires, ghosts, or liches, though PCs may encounter a host of monsters very much like them. Confronting and defeating a free-willed undead creature in Dark Sun is always interesting and challenging - powerful undead on Athas break all the familiar molds. Quite often, free-willed undead have minions, either living creatures or mindless undead that they have animated. Oftentimes Athas, powerful undead operate undiscovered among the living, while some have even become powerful allies of the sorcerer-kings, themselves.

Turning and Controlling Undead

Athasian clerics draw their spell casting powers from the elemental planes of earth, air, fire, and water. They also can tap the Positive Material plane for augury, other information, and the ability to turn undead creatures. Templars draw their magical powers through their sorcerer-kings, who in turn draw upon the Negative Material plane; templars cannot turn undead, but they can control them. Druids have no powers over undead.

Turning Undead: A cleric on Athas wishing to turn undead must challenge the creature with the power of his elemental plane. A cleric of earth, for instance, must throw dirt or dust toward the undead, but he need not strike them, so no attack roll is needed. A cleric of water must splash water at the undead, and a cleric of fire must toss ash or hold forth a burning object. One of the great advantages granted a cleric of air is that he can turn undead, with a breath. Once the character has made the challenge, he rolls for turning the undead normally. Free-willed undead are turned according to their relative power, which is measured by their Hit Dice only.

Turned undead flee as described in the Player's Handbook. Dispelled undead are spectacularly overcome by the element: suffocated by earth, charred and burnt by fire, dissolved by water, or battered by hurricane-force winds. These elemental catastrophes only effect the undead being dispelled.

Commanding Undead: Templars, wizards using necromancy, and sorcerer-kings can command undead as per the rules for Evil Priests and Undead in the Player's Handbook.

Character Death

Dark Sun is a particularly dangerous place; one where character death is frequent and, at times, gruesome. High PC mortality rates find some relief in the character tree - a fallen player character is immediately replaced by another of similar level, a character with which the player is already familiar.

Still, as deadly a world as Athas is, player characters, especially those at low levels, may die too frequently. Thus, in the DARK SUN™ campaign, DMs should use the "Hovering on Death's Door" optional rule (the so-called "neg 10" rule).

Hovering on Death's Door

(Optional Rule)

DMs may find that their DARK SUN campaign has become too deadly too many player characters are dying. If this happens, you may want to allow characters to survive for short periods of time even after their hit points reach or drop below 0.

With this rule, a character can remain alive until his hit points reach - 10. As soon as the character reaches 0 hit points, though, he falls to the ground unconscious .

Thereafter, he automatically loses 1 hit point each round. His survival from this point on depends on the quick thinking of his companions. If they reach the character before his hit points reach -10 and then spend at least one round tending his wounds (e.g., stanching the flow of blood), the character does not die immediately. if the only action is to bind his wounds, the injured character no longer loses 1 hit point each round, but neither does he gain any. He remains unconscious and vulnerable to damage from further attacks. if a cure spell of some type is cast upon him, the character is immediately restored to 1 hit point - no more. Further cures do the character no good until he has had at least one day of rest. Until such time, he is weak and feeble, unable to fight and barely able to move. He must stop and rest often, can't cast spells (the shock of near death has wiped them from his mind), and is generally confused and feverish. He is able only to move and hold somewhat disjointed conversations. if a heal spell is cast on the character, his hit points are restored as per the spell, and he has full vitality and wits. Any spells he may have known are still wiped from his memory, however. (Even this powerful spell does not negate the shock of the experience.)

Waging Wars

The sands of Athas have been stained red with the blood of a thousand campaigns of conquest. Wars are waged over food, water, territory, and less sorcerer-kings pit armies of slaves against each other, watching with cold-hearted pleasure as hundreds meet their deaths, more often than not all over some wager or just for the enjoyment of the spectacle. Athas is a violent world where the hand of diplomacy bears a sword or chatkcha.

Player characters will eventually be called upon to fight wars, either as soldiers or as commanders of armies . Once player characters must deal with large numbers of troops, waging wars of defense or expansion in the DARK SUN campaign world, the DM should institute BATTLESYSTEM™ miniatures rules to fight these wars. Adopting BATTLE SYSTEM removes the outcomes of important battles from the hands of the Dungeon Master and puts them on the tabletop where they belong.

Followers

Though fighters and gladiators automatically gain followers when they reach higher levels, any character, regardless of class or race, may find himself at the head of a rag-tag army of followers. The political fortunes of Dark Sun characters can rise and fall rapidly: military might keeps powerful forces at bay and gives a character the strength to affect large populations and areas of Athas.

A warrior's followers almost never arrive with all of their equipment. More often than not they join the warrior with nothing more than the clothing on their back. But in general they are highly motivated to follow the warrior and will fight for him regardless of equipment provided. Obviously a warrior will want to arm and armor his followers, and see to it that they are well fed and housed in order to keep them in premium fighting condition, but circumstances and finances sometimes leave little choice.

Piecemeal Armor

Dark Sun characters seldom (if ever) wear complete suits of metal armor. The reasons are manifold, but focus primarily on the oppressive heat of the Athasian sun and the scarcity of metal. It is not uncommon, at least among heroic sorts, for a character to wear scavenged portions of armor, however. Determining the correct Armor Class for someone in piecemeal armor can thus be very important. Each type of armor piece has a specific AC modifier associated with it. When a piece of armor is worn, that modifier is subtracted from the character's base Armor Class (usually 10) to determine his actual AC. Thus, a character who is exploring some ancient ruins and finds an old, battered breast plate from a suit of full plate armor would be able to don it, reducing his AC by 3 places. No more than one piece of armor may be worn to protect a specific region of the body. Thus, it would be impossible for a character to wear two breastplates and claim a double bonus to his Armor Class. The chart above indicates the AC bonus associated with any given piece of armor.

Important Considerations

Although piecemeal armor is lighter than full suits of armor, it can still be quite heavy and cumbersome. Breastplates weigh one half the weight of a complete suit of that armor type and each arm or leg piece weighs one eighth the weight of the original suit. Characters wearing piecemeal metal armor are also subject to the exhausting effects of Athas, hot climate. A character with armor over more than two limbs or wearing a breastplate is subject to the full effects of the Dark Sun's savage heat.

Bonus to AC Per Type of Piece

Armor Type | Full Suit | Breast Plate | Two Arms | One Arm | Two Legs | One Leg
Banded Mail | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0
Brigandine | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0
Bronze Plate | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0
Chain Mail | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0
Field Plate | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1
Full Plate | 9 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1
Hide Armor | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0
Leather Armor | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
Padded Armor | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
Plate Mail | 7 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1
Ring Mail | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0
Scale Mail | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0
Splint Mail | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0
Studded Leather | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0

Since Athas is a metal-poor world, the treasure tables for coins in the Dungeon Master's Guide are inappropriate for coins found in lair. The DM should use these tables instead for all Dark Sun lair encounters.