Magic

The sources of magical energy on Athas are very different from those in other AD&D(R) campaign worlds. Athas is a world without deities, where clerics worship the elemental powers themselves. Despite the brutality that seems infused in its soil, Athas is a fragile world, where the very existence of wizardly magic can disrupt and destroy the land ability to support life.

Priestly Magic

The priests of Dark Sun worship the beings that inhabit the elemental planes those of earth, air, fire, and water. In Dark Sun campaigns, priest spells fall into four spheres associated with those four elemental planes, and a separate Sphere of the Cosmos.

This last sphere is by far the largest, though the other four hold generally more powerful, more specialized spells. All priests on Athas thus draw magical energy (the energy with which they cast spells) from the elemental planes.

Sphere of Earth

Magical Stone (1st)

Dust Devil (2nd)

Meld Into Stone (3rd)

Stone Shape (3rd)

Conjure Elemental (Earth) (5th)

Spike Stones (5th)

Transmute Rock to Mud (5th)

Stone Tell (6th)

Transmute Water to Dust (6th)

Animate Rock (7th)

Earthquake (7th)

Transmute Metal to Wood (7th)

Sphere of Air

Dust Devil (2nd)

Call Lightning (3rd)

Control Temperature, 10, Radius (4th)

Protection From Lightning (4th)

Air Walk (5th)

Conjure Elemental (Air) (5th)

Control Winds (5th)

Insect Plague (5th)

Plane Shift (5th)

Aerial Servant (6th)

Weather Summoning (6th)

Astral Spell (7th)

Control Weather (7th)

Wind Walk (7th)

Sphere of Fire

Endure Heat/Endure Cold (1st)

Faerie Fire (1st)

Fire Trap (2nd)

Flame Blade (2nd)

Heat Metal (2nd)

Produce Flame (2nd)

Resist Fire/Resist Cold (2nd)

Flame Walk (3rd)

Protection From Fire (3rd)

Pyrotechnics (3rd)

Produce Fire (4th)

Conjure Elemental (Fire) (5th)

Flame Strike (5th)

Wall of Fire (5th)

Fire Seeds (6th)

Chariot of Sustarre (7th)

Fire Storm (7th)

Sphere of Water

Create Water (1st)

Purify Food & Drink (1st)

Create Food & Water (3rd)

Water Breathing (3rd)

Water Walk (3rd)

Lower Water (4th)

Reflecting Pool (4th)

Conjure Elemental (Water) (5th)

Magic Font (5th)

Part Water (6th)

Transmute Water to Dust (6th)

Sphere of the Cosmos

Animal Friendship (1st)

Bless (1st)

Combine (1st)

Command (1st)

Cure Light Wounds (1st)

Detect Evil (1st)

Detect Magic (1st)

Detect Poison (1st)

Detect Snares & Pits (1st)

Entangle (1st)

Invisibility to Animals (1st)

Invisibility to Undead (1st)

Light (1st)

Locate Animals or Plants (1st)

Pass Without Trace (1st)

Protection From Evil (1st)

Remove Fear (1st)

Sanctuary (1st)

Shillelagh (1st)

Aid (2nd)

Augury (2nd)

Barkskin (2nd)

Chant (2nd)

Charm Person or Mammal (2nd)

Detect Charm (2nd)

Enthrall (2nd)

Find Traps (2nd)

Goodberry (2nd)

Hold Person (2nd)

Know Alignment (2nd)

Messenger (2nd)

Obscurement (2nd)

Silence, 15, Radius (2nd)

Slow Poison (2nd)

Snake Charm (2nd)

Speak With Animals (2nd)

Spiritual Hammer (2nd)

Trip (2nd)

Warp Wood (2nd)

Withdraw (2nd)

Wyvern Watch (2nd)

Animate Dead (3rd)

Continual Light (3rd)

Cure Blindness or Deafness (3rd)

Cure Disease (3rd)

Dispel Magic (3rd)

Feign Death (3rd)

Glyph of Warding (3rd)

Hold Animal (3rd)

Locate Object (3rd)

Magical Vestment (3rd)

Negative Plane Protection (3rd)

Plant Growth (3rd)

Prayer (3rd)

Remove Curse (3rd)

Remove Paralysis (3rd)

Snare (3rd)

Speak With Dead (3rd)

Spike Growth (3rd)

Starshine (3rd)

Summon Insects (3rd)

Tree (3rd)

Abjure (4th)

Animal Summoning 1 (4th)

Call Woodland Beings (4th)

Cloak of Bravery (4th)

Cure Serious Wounds (4th)

Detect Lie (4th)

Divination (4th)

Free Action (4th)

Giant Insect (4th)

Hallucinatory Forest (4th)

Hold Plant (4th)

Imbue With Spell Ability (4th)

Neutralize Poison (4th)

Plant Door (4th)

Protection From evil, 10, Radius (4th)

Repel Insects (4th)

Speak With Plants (4th)

Spell Immunity (4th)

Sticks to Snakes (4th)

Tongues (4th)

Animal Growth (5th)

Animal Summoning 11 (5th)

Anti-Plant Shell (5th)

Atonement (5th)

Commune (5th)

Commune With Nature (5th)

Cure Critical Wounds (5th)

Dispel Evil (5th)

Moonbeam (5th)

Pass Plant (5th)

Quest (5th)

Rainbow (5th)

Raise Dead (5th)

True Seeing (5th)

Animal Summoning Ill (6th)

Animate Object (6th)

Anti-Animal Shell (6th)

Blade Barrier (6th)

Conjure Animals (6th)

Create Tree of Life (6th)

Find the Path (6th)

Heal (6th)

Heroes, Feast (6th)

Liveoak (6th)

Speak With Monsters (6th)

Transport Via Plants (6th)

Turn Wood (6th)

Wall of Thorns (6th)

Word of Recall (6th)

Changestaff (7th)

Confusion (7th)

creeping Doom (7th)

Exaction (7th)

Gate (7th)

Holy Word (7th)

Regenerate (7th)

Reincarnate (7th)

Restoration (7th)

Resurrection (7th)

Succor (7th)

Sunray (7th)

Symbol (7th)

Clerics have major access to the sphere of the element they worship, plus minor access to the Sphere of the Cosmos. Templars have major access to all spheres, but gain spells more slowly. There are no deities in Dark Sun. Those spells that indicate some contact with a deity instead reflect contact with a powerful being of the elemental planes .

Wizardry Magic

Wizards draw their magical energies from the living things and life-giving elements around them. Preservers cast spells in harmony with nature, using their magic so as to return to the land what they take from it. Defilers care nothing for such harmony and damage the land with every spell they cast.

Defiling

Defilers wield magic with no concern for their dying world: Indeed, defilers are much to blame for Athas's current state. With each spell they cast, defilers draw magical energy from the life force of plants in the vicinity and channel it to their own selfish ends. Even the sorcerer-kings, however, are not the most dread users of defiler magic: the great dragon's defiler magic is so powerful that it destroys living animals as well. All magic cast by defilers up to 20^th level, including all 1st through 9^th level spells, destroys plant life only. Any creatures in the area, however, suffer great pain.

Casting Defiler Spells: Spells cast by defilers use all the necessary verbal, somatic, and material components. The absence of any of these precludes the successful casting of the spell. The range, duration, casting time, area of effect, and saving throws remain unchanged. When a defiler casts a spell, a11 vegetation in a sphere around him turns to ash. The radius of that sphere depends upon two things: the abundance of vegetation in the area, and the level of the spell cast.

Defiler Magical Destruction Table

The number shown is the radius, in yards, around the defiler where all vegetation is turned to ash. The effect is instantaneous with the casting of the spell.

Note that these numbers adjust for specific situations. For example, in a city, the mud pits might have no more vegetation than the stony barrens, while the gardens of the sorcerer-king will be equal to a teeming forest.

Casting Multiple Spells from the Same Location If a defiler casts more than one spell from the same location, the radius of destroyed vegetation expands around him. Consult the Defiler Magical Destruction Table for the highest level spell cast from that location, then add one yard for every other spell cast. (Spells equal to the highest level spell are treated as additional spells).

For example, the defiler Grifyan casts a lightning bolt, a 3rd-level spell, while in the scrub plains. The area of ash around him will be 4 yards. In the next round, he casts a magic missile spell, expanding the radius of ash by 1 yard, bringing the total of burnt earth to 5 yards. In the third round, Grifyan decides to unleash an advanced Illusion, a 5th-level spell.

Since this is the highest-level spell cast from this location, the area of ash is recalculated; 5 yards for the 5th-level spell, plus 1 yard each for the two lower-level spells cast, for a total radius of ash of 7 yards. Effects on Living Creatures Though only plants are destroyed within the radius, living creatures are caused great pain. Any being in *the radius of a defiler s magic suffers an immediate initiative modifier penalty equal to the level of the defiler spell cast. No matter how high the resulting initiate roll, though, the pain can never keep a character from performing an action during a round. The initiative penalty only postpones when the action occurs.

Ash

The ash created by defiler magic is black and grey, completely devoid of life or life-giving elements. Nothing will grow in an area of ash for one year. The ash itself is very light and usually blows away, leaving behind a lifeless, circular scar on the ground. Even with the ash gone, though, the defiler's magic has leeched all life-giving nutrients from the soil, so that an area defiled may take many years to recover life, if it ever does.

Trees of Life

A tree of life is a mighty and magical tree, enchanted by a powerful priest or wizard. The magical life forces of trees of life make them virtually eternal. The greatest trees of life are ancient: many solitary trees predate the villages around them and others stand in entire groves, a quiet testimony to the great wizards of a bygone age. Present-day priests and wizards still create new trees to enrich the world or, in the case of the defilers, to pervert their powerful life forces to further their destructive, evil ambitions.

A tree of life is, in essence, a living magical item. It stores and channels energies from all four elemental planes. Thus, though wizards can create a tree of life, only clerics and druids can tap its special powers.

Special Powers

Any cleric or druid in contact with a tree of life receives from the tree four spells, each of which can be cast once per day. The spells gained are heal, augury' divination, and magic font.

Destroying a Tree of Life: A tree of life has two distinct parts its physical form and its life force. The stump, branches, roots, or leaves of a tree of life make up its physical form, and are not inherently magical. The same things that would destroy a normal tree will destroy the physical form of a tree of life (e.g., chopping it down, burning it) with one exception. Neither climate nor terrain effect a tree of life. One will flourish in the middle of the desert or on a rocky mountain face, regardless of drought, severe weather, natural lightning, earthquakes, and so forth. Destroying the tree's life force is much more difficult. A tree of life, at any stage of growth (even sprout) has 100 hit points (10 levels of 10 hit points each) that can only be affected by life-draining magic. The wizard spells vampiric touch' enervation, trap the soul, and energy drain can each drain hit points; death spell, finger of death, limited wish, and raze can each snuff out 3 levels of the target tree; and a wish slays the tree. The priest spells that affect a tree's life force are raise Lad (and its reverse slay living), restoration (and its reverse, energy drain), and resurrection (and its reverse, destruction). Undead creatures that have an energy drain attack can affect the life force of a tree of life.

Defiler magic also affects a tree's life force. Every level of defiler magic cast within 100 yards of a tree of life drains one level of life force from the tree. This negates the effect the spell would otherwise have on surrounding vegetation. The life force of a tree of life is completely snuffed if it falls below zero levels or hit points. The life force will not regenerate if either of these numbers falls below zero, in which case both the life force and the physical form of the tree die.

Regeneration

Both a tree of life's physical form and its life force regenerate. If the tree's physical form is damaged or destroyed, it will grow back, to full size. The tree will regrow at a rate of one quarter of its full size per week. A sprout will appear in one day, grown to a sapling in one week. It will grow to a young tree in two weeks, then to a full-sized adult tree in three. After four weeks, the tree of life will revert to its true form: an ancient and mighty tree. No matter how many times the physical form of the tree is destroyed, it will always grow back in four weeks. The life force of a tree of life regenerates one level (10 hit points) per hour. It regenerates even if the life force reaches zero points, but not if it goes below zero.

Trees of Life in the World of Athas: Though originally created by wizards to combat the destruction of nature, trees of life are now heavily exploited by defilers, who use the trees, powerful life forces to charge their defiling spells. Sorcerer-kings often have large gardens within their cities, even within their palaces, where groves of trees of life are tended and maintained. Thus, defilers can exercise evil magic from their citadels without decimating the cities below - a desperate measure to keep their tiny verdant belts as plentiful as possible.

Magical Items

Use of magical items never causes a defiling effect on the surrounding grounds. However, defilers who create magical items do cause destruction at the time of manufacture.

Rings, Rods, Staves, Wands, and Miscellaneous Magic: These items function just as described in the DMG. Such items rarely consist of metal, but rather are fashioned from the finest alternate materials available.

Armors and Shield: Substitute the following table for its counterpart in Appendix 2 of the DMG.

ARMOR TYPE

METAL ARMOR

Magical adjustment to Armor Class is determined normally. Special armor is also determined normally, but elven chain mail does not exist on Athas; reroll if necessary.

Weapons: All magical weapons found as part of a treasure are metal or have metal components. Nonmetal weapons can be enchanted as well, but magical adjustments must still take into account the inherently poorer quality of the material used. Weapons are determined as in the DMG. Weapons can have intelligence, and those with intelligence 15 or greater can have a psionic wild talent (25% chance).