I am a huge fan of Dark Sun, and I agree with you whole heartedly on this post. The thing that made the setting unique was not just the lore, it was also the challenges to "normal" fantasy operations. IMO, 5E is just not mechanics heavy enough to stand up to what Dark Sun 2E achieved.
As for Lore, I think the answer is what you mention in the second paragraph. Currently I pay ~50USD for a book. About half of it is lore that I just don't like (being older and set in my ways) and basically pointless. It reskins something that's already been reskinned before. I would happily pay $30 for a mechanics book only. I have the lore, thanks. Give me some mechanics and then make me pay $50 for a Tome of Beasts size book of monsters.
Pretty much. One or two of those terms showing up in a UA could be anything. But five? That stretches the credibility of any explanation other than Dark Sun.
Defiling magic, preservation magic, and characters that gain their power from a sorcerer-king are all concepts D&D has only explored through Dark Sun, which is a post apocalyptic setting that had gladiators as the primary fighter variant of the game world. All they needed was an entertainer based rogue subclass (since Dark Sun Bards didn't really have many, if any spells. It's been a while since I've cracked open any 2E books) to solidify things. And perhaps a couple other psionic based background feats.
Although I actually like the presentation of this UA, it's very tight. 4 subclasses, nothing else to deal with. If Hasbro really wants to dive deeper for playtesting, they can always do another UA later with background feats, another subclass or two that needed more work before the playtest reveal, and of course, the Thri-kreen as a playable species. I'll probably never actually play them in a Dark Sun campaign, but it's easy enough to port some things over provided there is a player who has interest. I am well aware of the fact that my interests aren't what everyone else has. Worst case scenario is there is a book I don't want to buy.
And it would also fit a similar "setting aesthetic... on a fresh world, without all the baggage", which was Ace's original post
It all depends on what value WOTC is placing on the actual IP of Dark Sun, versus just having a new setting that they think will scratch that itch narratively
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
And it would also fit a similar "setting aesthetic... on a fresh world, without all the baggage", which was Ace's original post
It all depends on what value WOTC is placing on the actual IP of Dark Sun, versus just having a new setting that they think will scratch that itch narratively
If that was all they were going for, why reuse Dark Sun terminology? About the only people whose interest is going to be seriously piqued by it are the ones who’ll be most upset if they’re not getting actual Dark Sun content.
What if we are getting a Prequel setting to Darksun, and not what has come before. What is this is "Para apocalyptic" and not "Post Apocalyptic." What if what we are given, is like Shadow of the Dragon Queen, stuff that happens before the stuff we knew?
Or more shortly, What if, this is a campaign setting set during the fall, and not after? Now that, could be interesting.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
What if we are getting a Prequel setting to Darksun, and not what has come before. What is this is "Para apocalyptic" and not "Post Apocalyptic." What if what we are given, is like Shadow of the Dragon Queen, stuff that happens before the stuff we knew?
Or more shortly, What if, this is a campaign setting set during the fall, and not after? Now that, could be interesting.
If this doesn't portend a Dark Sun book of some kind, I will be very impressed with WotC's misdirection abilities.
Lore-wise, I think they can make it work more easily than some assume. Mechanically, while I don't dislike this UA, I don't think subclasses can carry the weight of Preserving/Defiling either...
And it would also fit a similar "setting aesthetic... on a fresh world, without all the baggage", which was Ace's original post
It all depends on what value WOTC is placing on the actual IP of Dark Sun, versus just having a new setting that they think will scratch that itch narratively
If that was all they were going for, why reuse Dark Sun terminology? About the only people whose interest is going to be seriously piqued by it are the ones who’ll be most upset if they’re not getting actual Dark Sun content.
Somebody's going to get upset (and likely be loud about it) no matter how they try to thread the needle on this, so that really shouldn't even be a consideration
They should be putting out a book they think will appeal to the widest audience, not trying to appease folks who might not even be appeasable
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If they are updating/revising Dark Sun for the new 5.5e rules, can we also get more impactful and useful Exploration rules? Like, yes, more stringent resource management (and reworking certain low level spells) fits with that, but so does stuff like tying Bastion development to features of outdoors/urban/cave exploration, modifying rules to make Bastions at least semi-portable, creating templates for NPCs to have more impact across multiple towns or regions so it's not just "NPC gives quest, NPC gives money, NPC wants to sell stuff to you", and making it possible to improve skill proficiency through doing stuff besides killing monsters.
If they are updating/revising Dark Sun for the new 5.5e rules, can we also get more impactful and useful Exploration rules? Like, yes, more stringent resource management (and reworking certain low level spells) fits with that, but so does stuff like tying Bastion development to features of outdoors/urban/cave exploration, modifying rules to make Bastions at least semi-portable, creating templates for NPCs to have more impact across multiple towns or regions so it's not just "NPC gives quest, NPC gives money, NPC wants to sell stuff to you", and making it possible to improve skill proficiency through doing stuff besides killing monsters.
More about the exploration pillar might be nice, but the specifics you list are largely covered. You can choose to have more stringent resource management today. The rules are there for it. Just people don’t because it gets tedious. That said, this could be a good opportunity for them to make a new set of exploration rules (less tedious ones) a group could use in extreme conditions. Athas is basically a desert, but other biomes might have similar challenges.
Bastion facilities tied to location seems easily solved by flavoring the facility to match the location.
Nothing in the rules stops bastions from being mobile. You can easily make it a caravan of carts and wagons or a flotilla of ships.
NPCs having long term interactions with the party is something a DM can just do. They just need to create an interesting enough NPC that the party wants to meet them again.
DMs can give xp (or milestones) for things besides killing monsters already.
Honestly a preserver druid or ranger casting goodberry cancels out most of the logistics headaches of Athas, and that spell does not exists as far as I remember back in 2e when Athas was brutal. Weapons become a slightly bigger problem as you may be reduced to stuff like slings, clubs, and staves. Weapon selection changes a bit, but not drastically. Instead of a sword, I use a stone mace for example or even a plain wooden staff. if I am not worried about food and water because of preserver magic (or even defiler) being able to sustain me, the big killer (the environment) is just gone.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Honestly a preserver druid or ranger casting goodberry cancels out most of the logistics headaches of Athas, and that spell does not exists as far as I remember back in 2e when Athas was brutal. Weapons become a slightly bigger problem as you may be reduced to stuff like slings, clubs, and staves. Weapon selection changes a bit, but not drastically. Instead of a sword, I use a stone mace for example or even a plain wooden staff. if I am not worried about food and water because of preserver magic (or even defiler) being able to sustain me, the big killer (the environment) is just gone.
The spell goodberry was available in 2e, important to note is that this spell in this edition only enchants berries, and does not summon them out of nowhere.
If they are updating/revising Dark Sun for the new 5.5e rules, can we also get more impactful and useful Exploration rules? Like, yes, more stringent resource management (and reworking certain low level spells) fits with that, but so does stuff like tying Bastion development to features of outdoors/urban/cave exploration, modifying rules to make Bastions at least semi-portable, creating templates for NPCs to have more impact across multiple towns or regions so it's not just "NPC gives quest, NPC gives money, NPC wants to sell stuff to you", and making it possible to improve skill proficiency through doing stuff besides killing monsters.
More about the exploration pillar might be nice, but the specifics you list are largely covered. You can choose to have more stringent resource management today. The rules are there for it. Just people don’t because it gets tedious. That said, this could be a good opportunity for them to make a new set of exploration rules (less tedious ones) a group could use in extreme conditions. Athas is basically a desert, but other biomes might have similar challenges.
Bastion facilities tied to location seems easily solved by flavoring the facility to match the location.
Nothing in the rules stops bastions from being mobile. You can easily make it a caravan of carts and wagons or a flotilla of ships.
NPCs having long term interactions with the party is something a DM can just do. They just need to create an interesting enough NPC that the party wants to meet them again.
DMs can give xp (or milestones) for things besides killing monsters already.
The point of having better outlined Exploration rules is to incentize people to write and publish modules with more Exploration included. Right now the oudoor Exploration pillar is poorly represented in published modules. Example: There are only a few books where anything like Navigation or Cartographer's tools would even remotely be worth choosing. That's because most modules take place in a city, in a dungeon or some kind of place where you are intentionally supposed to get lost via magic (Feywilds, the Abyss). That's just one example.
Ofc the DM can, theoretically, make NPCs that are more active. D&D can be played a lot of dfferent ways. The point is that many do not and this is partially b/c the RAW does not incentivze or make it easy to do so in a way that is organized and meaningful. Rolling on a table to generate PC traits and known relationships is the very opposite of meaningful NPCs, but that's what we are encouraged to do. The published modules from WotC itself does not incetivize meaningful NPCs outside of a handful of recurring famous people. That's the point; to make Exploration meaningful, it has to start from the Top, not just say "Well, DMs can do anything if they want to." I, mean, DMs can also not run D&D if they want to. That's not really a good argument for the lack of Exploration tie-ins.
Honestly a preserver druid or ranger casting goodberry cancels out most of the logistics headaches of Athas, and that spell does not exists as far as I remember back in 2e when Athas was brutal. Weapons become a slightly bigger problem as you may be reduced to stuff like slings, clubs, and staves. Weapon selection changes a bit, but not drastically. Instead of a sword, I use a stone mace for example or even a plain wooden staff. if I am not worried about food and water because of preserver magic (or even defiler) being able to sustain me, the big killer (the environment) is just gone.
A good example of how D&D spells are not written for a survival/resource mgmt setting like Dark Sun. Create Food & Water is another spell that mostly overides a lot of the presumed challenge of surviving on a desert planet blasted by over-use of demi-god-tier magicks. So some spells will need to be nerfed (at least on Athas) to carry the resource mgmt through to be a meaningful challenge, even at low levels.
If they are updating/revising Dark Sun for the new 5.5e rules, can we also get more impactful and useful Exploration rules? Like, yes, more stringent resource management (and reworking certain low level spells) fits with that, but so does stuff like tying Bastion development to features of outdoors/urban/cave exploration, modifying rules to make Bastions at least semi-portable, creating templates for NPCs to have more impact across multiple towns or regions so it's not just "NPC gives quest, NPC gives money, NPC wants to sell stuff to you", and making it possible to improve skill proficiency through doing stuff besides killing monsters.
More about the exploration pillar might be nice, but the specifics you list are largely covered. You can choose to have more stringent resource management today. The rules are there for it. Just people don’t because it gets tedious. That said, this could be a good opportunity for them to make a new set of exploration rules (less tedious ones) a group could use in extreme conditions. Athas is basically a desert, but other biomes might have similar challenges.
Bastion facilities tied to location seems easily solved by flavoring the facility to match the location.
Nothing in the rules stops bastions from being mobile. You can easily make it a caravan of carts and wagons or a flotilla of ships.
NPCs having long term interactions with the party is something a DM can just do. They just need to create an interesting enough NPC that the party wants to meet them again.
DMs can give xp (or milestones) for things besides killing monsters already.
The point of having better outlined Exploration rules is to incentize people to write and publish modules with more Exploration included. Right now the oudoor Exploration pillar is poorly represented in published modules. Example: There are only a few books where anything like Navigation or Cartographer's tools would even remotely be worth choosing. That's because most modules take place in a city, in a dungeon or some kind of place where you are intentionally supposed to get lost via magic (Feywilds, the Abyss). That's just one example.
Ofc the DM can, theoretically, make NPCs that are more active. D&D can be played a lot of dfferent ways. The point is that many do not and this is partially b/c the RAW does not incentivze or make it easy to do so in a way that is organized and meaningful. Rolling on a table to generate PC traits and known relationships is the very opposite of meaningful NPCs, but that's what we are encouraged to do. The published modules from WotC itself does not incetivize meaningful NPCs outside of a handful of recurring famous people. That's the point; to make Exploration meaningful, it has to start from the Top, not just say "Well, DMs can do anything if they want to." I, mean, DMs can also not run D&D if they want to. That's not really a good argument for the lack of Exploration tie-ins.
Well, published adventures are a different story, I was thinking in terms of homebrew. And I guess it remains to be seen if this will be an adventure or a setting book, or what.
But I will say there’s no rule that’s going to help people make a compelling NPC. Even if they write one in a campaign book it will fail to the DM to bring it to life, and I think we’ve all seen plenty of well written but poorly acted movies to know how that sort of thing turns out. Teaching a DM to create a good NPC would be more like a fiction writing workshop coupled with an acting seminar than something they can cover in a rule book.
I 100% agree. I think that players get spoiled by options that are SAD and come to expect that everything should be SAD. you wan to dip into multiple areas? Pay the attribute piper.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Plus, Fighters are least hobbled by MAD features in the first place with their increased and accelerated ASI progression
I agree with both points in principle. My issue is that the Gladiator's Cha focus feels especially restrictive.
Say you start the game with 14 Cha. That means you get two Brutality "maneuvers" per short rest, following which you're a subclassless fighter with a small skill bonus. Now compare that to Battlemaster, who starts off with 4 maneuvers and gets to be SAD; they can max out their attack stat early and pick up Skill Expert to showboat just as much as a Gladiator if not more, even if they dump Cha. Or compare that to Psi Warrior, who is also MAD, and starts off with 4 dice to fuel their own "maneuvers" too. Then there's the scaling; even with the Fighter's faster ASI progression, the Gladiator is probably not maxing out Cha until level 10 at the earliest since they also need to be keeping up with Str or Dex, at which point they will top out at 5 "maneuvers" per short rest; at the same level, Battlemaster will have an equal amount of their own fuel but more room for feats since they didn't need to pump Cha, while Psi Warrior will be similarly MAD to the Gladiator but have 60% more fuel and counting.
You could instead start with 16 Cha - but doing that limits your build possibilities even further, especially if you're playing at a table (or AL) where custom backgrounds aren't a thing. At the end of the day, it's not like Cha is doing as much for a Gladiator Fighter as it is for, say, a Paladin, or as much as Int is doing for an EK or Psi Warrior, and that makes the split a bit thornier.
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I am a huge fan of Dark Sun, and I agree with you whole heartedly on this post. The thing that made the setting unique was not just the lore, it was also the challenges to "normal" fantasy operations. IMO, 5E is just not mechanics heavy enough to stand up to what Dark Sun 2E achieved.
As for Lore, I think the answer is what you mention in the second paragraph. Currently I pay ~50USD for a book. About half of it is lore that I just don't like (being older and set in my ways) and basically pointless. It reskins something that's already been reskinned before. I would happily pay $30 for a mechanics book only. I have the lore, thanks. Give me some mechanics and then make me pay $50 for a Tome of Beasts size book of monsters.
Pretty much. One or two of those terms showing up in a UA could be anything. But five? That stretches the credibility of any explanation other than Dark Sun.
Defiling magic, preservation magic, and characters that gain their power from a sorcerer-king are all concepts D&D has only explored through Dark Sun, which is a post apocalyptic setting that had gladiators as the primary fighter variant of the game world. All they needed was an entertainer based rogue subclass (since Dark Sun Bards didn't really have many, if any spells. It's been a while since I've cracked open any 2E books) to solidify things. And perhaps a couple other psionic based background feats.
Although I actually like the presentation of this UA, it's very tight. 4 subclasses, nothing else to deal with. If Hasbro really wants to dive deeper for playtesting, they can always do another UA later with background feats, another subclass or two that needed more work before the playtest reveal, and of course, the Thri-kreen as a playable species. I'll probably never actually play them in a Dark Sun campaign, but it's easy enough to port some things over provided there is a player who has interest. I am well aware of the fact that my interests aren't what everyone else has. Worst case scenario is there is a book I don't want to buy.
Think they'll bri g Bron back to do the art? No the setting by reputation but its about time we had some 80s dark fantasy sword and sorcery action
And it would also fit a similar "setting aesthetic... on a fresh world, without all the baggage", which was Ace's original post
It all depends on what value WOTC is placing on the actual IP of Dark Sun, versus just having a new setting that they think will scratch that itch narratively
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If that was all they were going for, why reuse Dark Sun terminology? About the only people whose interest is going to be seriously piqued by it are the ones who’ll be most upset if they’re not getting actual Dark Sun content.
It just Occurred to me.
What if we are getting a Prequel setting to Darksun, and not what has come before. What is this is "Para apocalyptic" and not "Post Apocalyptic."
What if what we are given, is like Shadow of the Dragon Queen, stuff that happens before the stuff we knew?
Or more shortly, What if, this is a campaign setting set during the fall, and not after? Now that, could be interesting.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Honestly, I'd be cool with that, for sure.
If this doesn't portend a Dark Sun book of some kind, I will be very impressed with WotC's misdirection abilities.
Lore-wise, I think they can make it work more easily than some assume. Mechanically, while I don't dislike this UA, I don't think subclasses can carry the weight of Preserving/Defiling either...
Somebody's going to get upset (and likely be loud about it) no matter how they try to thread the needle on this, so that really shouldn't even be a consideration
They should be putting out a book they think will appeal to the widest audience, not trying to appease folks who might not even be appeasable
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If they are updating/revising Dark Sun for the new 5.5e rules, can we also get more impactful and useful Exploration rules? Like, yes, more stringent resource management (and reworking certain low level spells) fits with that, but so does stuff like tying Bastion development to features of outdoors/urban/cave exploration, modifying rules to make Bastions at least semi-portable, creating templates for NPCs to have more impact across multiple towns or regions so it's not just "NPC gives quest, NPC gives money, NPC wants to sell stuff to you", and making it possible to improve skill proficiency through doing stuff besides killing monsters.
More about the exploration pillar might be nice, but the specifics you list are largely covered. You can choose to have more stringent resource management today. The rules are there for it. Just people don’t because it gets tedious. That said, this could be a good opportunity for them to make a new set of exploration rules (less tedious ones) a group could use in extreme conditions. Athas is basically a desert, but other biomes might have similar challenges.
Bastion facilities tied to location seems easily solved by flavoring the facility to match the location.
Nothing in the rules stops bastions from being mobile. You can easily make it a caravan of carts and wagons or a flotilla of ships.
NPCs having long term interactions with the party is something a DM can just do. They just need to create an interesting enough NPC that the party wants to meet them again.
DMs can give xp (or milestones) for things besides killing monsters already.
Honestly a preserver druid or ranger casting goodberry cancels out most of the logistics headaches of Athas, and that spell does not exists as far as I remember back in 2e when Athas was brutal. Weapons become a slightly bigger problem as you may be reduced to stuff like slings, clubs, and staves. Weapon selection changes a bit, but not drastically. Instead of a sword, I use a stone mace for example or even a plain wooden staff. if I am not worried about food and water because of preserver magic (or even defiler) being able to sustain me, the big killer (the environment) is just gone.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
The spell goodberry was available in 2e, important to note is that this spell in this edition only enchants berries, and does not summon them out of nowhere.The point of having better outlined Exploration rules is to incentize people to write and publish modules with more Exploration included. Right now the oudoor Exploration pillar is poorly represented in published modules. Example: There are only a few books where anything like Navigation or Cartographer's tools would even remotely be worth choosing. That's because most modules take place in a city, in a dungeon or some kind of place where you are intentionally supposed to get lost via magic (Feywilds, the Abyss). That's just one example.
Ofc the DM can, theoretically, make NPCs that are more active. D&D can be played a lot of dfferent ways. The point is that many do not and this is partially b/c the RAW does not incentivze or make it easy to do so in a way that is organized and meaningful. Rolling on a table to generate PC traits and known relationships is the very opposite of meaningful NPCs, but that's what we are encouraged to do. The published modules from WotC itself does not incetivize meaningful NPCs outside of a handful of recurring famous people. That's the point; to make Exploration meaningful, it has to start from the Top, not just say "Well, DMs can do anything if they want to." I, mean, DMs can also not run D&D if they want to. That's not really a good argument for the lack of Exploration tie-ins.
A good example of how D&D spells are not written for a survival/resource mgmt setting like Dark Sun. Create Food & Water is another spell that mostly overides a lot of the presumed challenge of surviving on a desert planet blasted by over-use of demi-god-tier magicks. So some spells will need to be nerfed (at least on Athas) to carry the resource mgmt through to be a meaningful challenge, even at low levels.
Well, published adventures are a different story, I was thinking in terms of homebrew. And I guess it remains to be seen if this will be an adventure or a setting book, or what.
But I will say there’s no rule that’s going to help people make a compelling NPC. Even if they write one in a campaign book it will fail to the DM to bring it to life, and I think we’ve all seen plenty of well written but poorly acted movies to know how that sort of thing turns out. Teaching a DM to create a good NPC would be more like a fiction writing workshop coupled with an acting seminar than something they can cover in a rule book.
Who cares if it's MAD? MAD classes can and should exist.
I 100% agree. I think that players get spoiled by options that are SAD and come to expect that everything should be SAD. you wan to dip into multiple areas? Pay the attribute piper.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Plus, Fighters are least hobbled by MAD features in the first place with their increased and accelerated ASI progression
I agree with both points in principle. My issue is that the Gladiator's Cha focus feels especially restrictive.
Say you start the game with 14 Cha. That means you get two Brutality "maneuvers" per short rest, following which you're a subclassless fighter with a small skill bonus. Now compare that to Battlemaster, who starts off with 4 maneuvers and gets to be SAD; they can max out their attack stat early and pick up Skill Expert to showboat just as much as a Gladiator if not more, even if they dump Cha. Or compare that to Psi Warrior, who is also MAD, and starts off with 4 dice to fuel their own "maneuvers" too. Then there's the scaling; even with the Fighter's faster ASI progression, the Gladiator is probably not maxing out Cha until level 10 at the earliest since they also need to be keeping up with Str or Dex, at which point they will top out at 5 "maneuvers" per short rest; at the same level, Battlemaster will have an equal amount of their own fuel but more room for feats since they didn't need to pump Cha, while Psi Warrior will be similarly MAD to the Gladiator but have 60% more fuel and counting.
You could instead start with 16 Cha - but doing that limits your build possibilities even further, especially if you're playing at a table (or AL) where custom backgrounds aren't a thing. At the end of the day, it's not like Cha is doing as much for a Gladiator Fighter as it is for, say, a Paladin, or as much as Int is doing for an EK or Psi Warrior, and that makes the split a bit thornier.