Defiling in 4th Edition Dark Sun
What do people think of the new defiling rules? I think they aren't quite appropriate. It needs to be more tempting to use defiling, either by making preserving more difficult, defiling more powerful or both. Ritual defiling needs to be much more destructive (I'm not even sure it's possible right now). I find it hard to believe that the whole world could be dessicated if it had to be done one 100' circle at a time. The lore for the Dragon suggests that a high level arcane ritual should destroy a huge area: Borys' ascension destroyed the entire city of Ebe!
I like the idea this fellow has. It shouldn't be a full standard action though. Make it a minor action, and it only lasts until the start of your next turn. That way, casters can't do their sustain minors and continue to both move and attack. A commenter suggested that it should give a penalty to defenses, which I think is justified as well: -2 to all defenses until the start of your next turn.
Another commenter had written something on rituals. It should be nastier though: anyone other than the caster(s) caught in the area takes 1d10 damage per tier, is stunned (save ends) and weakened (save ends) and loses a healing surge per tier. Anything which doesn't have enough surges takes damage equal to its healing surge value for each surge it is short.
Aiding should make things worse: it may help make things go quicker and more smoothly to have someone else help out, but it's not going to be as energy efficient and that should be reflected. Each character aiding in the ritual casting should be able to choose whether to preserve or defile independent of what the others are doing. Each extra preserver adds 5% to the casting time -- they have to spend more time looking for nearby energy sources which aren't already being used to their nondestructive limit. The destruction caused by a single defiler aiding a preserver isn't as bad as if he were casting the ritual himself: the radius is half of what it would be if the defiler were the primary caster. Each extra defiler increases the destructive radius by 5% (whether the primary caster is defiling or preserving) since they have to go farther out to get the energy they need -- the close-by stuff is already taken and it's harder to find stuff far away.
I like the idea this fellow has. It shouldn't be a full standard action though. Make it a minor action, and it only lasts until the start of your next turn. That way, casters can't do their sustain minors and continue to both move and attack. A commenter suggested that it should give a penalty to defenses, which I think is justified as well: -2 to all defenses until the start of your next turn.
Another commenter had written something on rituals. It should be nastier though: anyone other than the caster(s) caught in the area takes 1d10 damage per tier, is stunned (save ends) and weakened (save ends) and loses a healing surge per tier. Anything which doesn't have enough surges takes damage equal to its healing surge value for each surge it is short.
Aiding should make things worse: it may help make things go quicker and more smoothly to have someone else help out, but it's not going to be as energy efficient and that should be reflected. Each character aiding in the ritual casting should be able to choose whether to preserve or defile independent of what the others are doing. Each extra preserver adds 5% to the casting time -- they have to spend more time looking for nearby energy sources which aren't already being used to their nondestructive limit. The destruction caused by a single defiler aiding a preserver isn't as bad as if he were casting the ritual himself: the radius is half of what it would be if the defiler were the primary caster. Each extra defiler increases the destructive radius by 5% (whether the primary caster is defiling or preserving) since they have to go farther out to get the energy they need -- the close-by stuff is already taken and it's harder to find stuff far away.