D&D 4E Do the races in 4e remind you of Dragonlance?

[Irda Ranger]

Draconians have already found the means to reproduce, so that kind of rules out that theory (though it's an interesting one) ... Whether that rules out dragonborn in Dragonlance, I don't know.

It's a world of make-believe; nothing is ruled out. If WotC can re-imagine that half the elves in FR are suddently "Eladrin" (they're just not called that), I can re-imagine Dragonborn as the children of Draconians if I chose too; and maybe the 4E DLCS authors (whoever they will be) should consider it too.

I wouldn't just rename the halfling. Looking at 3e, they have some things in common, but a bonus against fear does not equal total fearlessness. There's also taunting to consider.

Also, I disagree with the assessment that kender are disruptive. Kender aren't disruptive; players are. Of course, this is a losing battle...

You're right. It's a losing battle. Any PC race which actively encourages people to play it to be disruptive is a disruptive race.

The 4E halfling is a well play-tested and popular race. It's more than 'close enough' to play the role of Kender. You can probably throw Fearless in there without messing things up too much, but I would leave Taunt out of it. If a player really wants to Taunt, they can take Skill Focus (Persuasion) and make a Skill Challenge (see the Iron Heroes rules) just like anyone else.

I disagree with this assessment. Tinker Gnomes have been a playable race since Dragonlance began. What happens when you have a player who wants to play a tinker gnome and he can't?

First off, saying "it's always been this way" is a losing argument with me. Mistakes should not be repeated out of fidelity to the past. As for what I would tell that player, I would tell them to make a real character. This is D&D, not Looney Toons the RPG.

Tinker Gnomes are not, and never have been, a real, playable option for heroic fantasy. They're jokes. They're comic relief. They're pathetic, and nothing they do ever works (that's the whole point of the Graygem's curse). Anyone who plays a Tinker Gnome that actually accomplishes anything isn't actually playing a Tinker Gnome.

I don't allow Tinker Gnomes for the same reason I don't allow Gully Dwarf or Flumph PC's.

Note however that I was so pissed by the Chaos War/Fifth Age crap that I haven't followed any developments in DL since then. I'm a 1E/2E guy only. So if the curse has been lifted since then I guess they can play a Gnome out of the 4E MM.

A huge theme of Dragonlance is the Balance of Good, Evil, and Neutrality. It is hard-wired into the setting. Perhaps this can become just a flavor piece or perhaps DL will need its own alignment rules. I don't know.

What I was suggesting was that maybe we should take a step back and think about whether having an active force for "Neutrality" is a good idea or not. It doesn't make any sense, and never has. The 4E alignment rules will seem to allow for the tug of war between Good and Evil, but perhaps we're better off without "Neutrality", and just let the (formerly) neutral Gods pursue their own ends (Knowledge, Illusions, Nature, Meditation, etc.) without any great care for the "philosophical" struggles between Takhisis and Paladine.

When I design my own 4E DLCS, I am going to actively consider that some gods (such as Gilean) are Unaligned. They just don't care about Good, Evil, Law or Chaos. Gilean cares about books, and recording history, and prophecy. End of story. To the extent he gets involved in the struggles between Good and Evil is solely to "tip the scales" towards the status quo. He knows that if Good or Evil ever wins that battle they'll then turn on him, as insufficiently zealous in pursuing their goals; which he doesn't want.

If the 4E DLCS authors don't even consider that option, they're not really doing their jobs.

Lawful, yes. Rarely evil? Gotta disagree there too. Minotaurs as a whole worship Sargas (aka Sargonnas), the evil god of wrath. While the Kazelati minotaurs worship Kiri-Jolith, they're a minority. The minotaur nation, as a whole, is LE in alignment.

Again, you need to take a step back. I think you're too close to the subject, and also stuck in a 1E/2E/3E mindset about alignment.

If we understand 4E alignment correctly (and we may not, but it's looking firm), there is no Lawful-Evil. There is only Lawful and Evil; not any combination thereof.

So, you have to ask yourself, are the Minotaurs more Lawful or more Evil? There would be no contest if this was a question of Good vs. Evil, but that isn't the question. Given that we must choose, I choose Lawful for Minotaurs.

This is a good thing, I think, because it makes clear the difference between the Ogres and the Minotaurs. The original race of Ogres has split into several races depending on their alignment and god: Good Irda, Evil Orgres, and Lawful Minotaurs.

That being said, not all Minotaurs are alike. I expect that if we broke down their population of aligned minotaurs it would be 90-95% Lawful and 4-9% Evil, with less than 1% as Good or Chaotic.

Mind you, I would classify both Kiri-Jolith and Sargas a Lawful deities, so Kaz might also be "just" Lawful. He's a much more complex than that, but everyone is. No one could be fully explained by the nine-point alignment system either.

 

[beholdsa]

Dragonborn strike me more as Balkali than Draconians.

 

[Sheltem]

Unfortunately, WotC kind of forced a few things on us with the DLCS. For example, the Rose Knight casting divine spells was a mechanical thing. Traditionally, Rose Knights don't cast spells; that's the purview of the Sword Knights.

But yeah, the DLCS could have been better on a lot of fronts. I'm still disappointed that the art wasn't as good as the FRCS. Oh, well. Once Sov. Press/MWP started pumping out the books, they just got better and better on a lot of fronts. The writing and art improved dramatically.

Well, I don't know about the books and novels, but in the computer games of the 1980s, the Rose Knights could cast spells.

As for the second paragraph... true.

 

[sirwmholder]

...The 4E halfling is a well play-tested and popular race. It's more than 'close enough' to play the role of Kender. You can probably throw Fearless in there without messing things up too much...

I was under the impression that WotC was moving away from 100% immunity and absolutes in general... which is a great thing in my opinion. Am I the only one to infer this from the Criticals affect everything and removal of "Save or Die" Spells?

To stay on topic... yeah, it looks as though Core/Generic D&D will be a blending of all their popular and recognizable settings. DragonLance has Draconians and Paladine... The Realms showcased Teiflings as Player Characters... I feel that the removal of critical immunity has something to do with introducing Warforged in the near future.

Only time will tell,
William Holder

 

[Dragonhelm]

It's a world of make-believe; nothing is ruled out. If WotC can re-imagine that half the elves in FR are suddently "Eladrin" (they're just not called that), I can re-imagine Dragonborn as the children of Draconians if I chose too; and maybe the 4E DLCS authors (whoever they will be) should consider it too.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to your idea so much as I'm thinking of overall continuity. I think your idea is one possible option.

Right now, I'm looking over Races of the Dragon again to see how well dragonborn would fit in Dragonlance. The obvious issue is "too many draconic races." That being said, it seems to me that there is room to add new draconic things to DL. Whether one more race, even if rare, is too much...I don't know. Half-dragons don't exist officially on Krynn (at least for regular humans and such), but there was a half-dragon variant back in 2e that looked practically human. So I think it's up to the player.

The 4E halfling is a well play-tested and popular race. It's more than 'close enough' to play the role of Kender. You can probably throw Fearless in there without messing things up too much, but I would leave Taunt out of it. If a player really wants to Taunt, they can take Skill Focus (Persuasion) and make a Skill Challenge (see the Iron Heroes rules) just like anyone else.

Don't get me wrong. I think the halfling can be used as a foundation for playing kender. I just think that kender need to have a little more (total fearlessness and taunting). In fact, halflings could probably be used to a degree to represent afflicted kender.

This is D&D, not Looney Toons the RPG.

Yikes!

Tinker Gnomes are not, and never have been, a real, playable option for heroic fantasy. They're jokes. They're comic relief. They're pathetic, and nothing they do ever works (that's the whole point of the Graygem's curse). Anyone who plays a Tinker Gnome that actually accomplishes anything isn't actually playing a Tinker Gnome.

I don't allow Tinker Gnomes for the same reason I don't allow Gully Dwarf or Flumph PC's.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I think part of the problem has been portrayal, and that we haven't seen much in the way of good gnome player characters.

Note however that I was so pissed by the Chaos War/Fifth Age crap that I haven't followed any developments in DL since then. I'm a 1E/2E guy only. So if the curse has been lifted since then I guess they can play a Gnome out of the 4E MM.

There are mad gnomes as well, who are gnomes that make small things that work. They don't get too elaborate. In a sense, they're actually better player characters than regular tinkers as they are more mobile and would have fewer inventions to carry around with them.

When I design my own 4E DLCS, I am going to actively consider that some gods (such as Gilean) are Unaligned. They just don't care about Good, Evil, Law or Chaos. Gilean cares about books, and recording history, and prophecy. End of story. To the extent he gets involved in the struggles between Good and Evil is solely to "tip the scales" towards the status quo. He knows that if Good or Evil ever wins that battle they'll then turn on him, as insufficiently zealous in pursuing their goals; which he doesn't want.

If the 4E DLCS authors don't even consider that option, they're not really doing their jobs.

I'm certain the DL4e crew will take 4e alignment into consideration on how to present DL.

Again, you need to take a step back. I think you're too close to the subject, and also stuck in a 1E/2E/3E mindset about alignment.

That may very well be the case. I've been playing Dragonlance for a very long time and have been a freelance designer for MWP. So part of me is probably stuck in a certain mode. I tend to look at the setting first and see how to adapt the rules to the setting, rather than taking the setting and adapting it to the rules.

If we understand 4E alignment correctly (and we may not, but it's looking firm), there is no Lawful-Evil. There is only Lawful and Evil; not any combination thereof.

So, you have to ask yourself, are the Minotaurs more Lawful or more Evil? There would be no contest if this was a question of Good vs. Evil, but that isn't the question. Given that we must choose, I choose Lawful for Minotaurs.

I would agree with that assessment. Service to the empire is paramount.


Anyway, I suspect we probably approach Dragonlance in 4e a bit differently, but I really do appreciate your thoughts on how to tackle it. If you do write your own DLCS 4e document, please submit it to the Nexus. While Cam is going to be working on the "official" conversion document, there's always room for other takes on things.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Well, I don't know about the books and novels, but in the computer games of the 1980s, the Rose Knights could cast spells.

They also could in the SAGA product Heroes of Hope. However, Dragonlance Adventures and Tales of the Lance did not have spellcasting Rose Knights. DLA was the foundation for the DLCS, so I hold it a bit higher than other resources. In the novels, there really isn't an example of a spellcasting Rose Knight.

From the MWP point of view, Rose Knights with spells would just take a few levels of cleric.

So yeah, Rose Knights have had a mixed history, but the majority of sources point to them as not casting spells.

 

[Cam Banks]

Hey Irda Ranger,

If you've not taken a look at anything we've done since the DLCS hit the shelves and SP/MWP got the license, I would strongly encourage you to at least do that before skipping it over. In particular, I think Holy Orders of the Stars, Races of Ansalon, and Knightly Orders of Ansalon stand out as sourcebooks that push the envelope somewhat and make certain aspects of various eras more palatable. Races, especially, dedicates a lot of its real estate to presenting all of the Krynnish races, from humans, dwarves, and elves to kender, minotaurs, and goblins from a game play perspective.

I should note that being a 1e/2e guy and not wanting to hold on to legacy ideas seem to be somewhat counterintuitive points of view.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Irda Ranger]

Hey Irda Ranger,

If you've not taken a look at anything we've done since the DLCS hit the shelves and SP/MWP got the license, I would strongly encourage you to at least do that before skipping it over. In particular, I think Holy Orders of the Stars, Races of Ansalon, and Knightly Orders of Ansalon stand out as sourcebooks that push the envelope somewhat and make certain aspects of various eras more palatable. Races, especially, dedicates a lot of its real estate to presenting all of the Krynnish races, from humans, dwarves, and elves to kender, minotaurs, and goblins from a game play perspective.

Thanks for the tip; I'll check to see if my FLGS or Barnes & Noble has some I can thumb through. No promises though (see below).

I should note that being a 1e/2e guy and not wanting to hold on to legacy ideas seem to be somewhat counterintuitive points of view.

Heh. I make a point of distinguishing rules and flavor/setting info. My longest running PC ever (three years, levels 1-15) was an Irda Ranger (natch) using AD&D 2E rules. But rules don't matter too much for me. I also took a stab at making a 'low fantasy' Dragonlance using the Grim Tales rules, and could probably play an Age of Despair campaign using the Iron Heroes rules (assuming a workable Arcanist variant to support the magic-users). Rules don't really matter to me as long as they don't get in the way of telling the story or presenting the world.

The problem I've had with recent DL sourcebooks and novles is what they've done to the setting. To sum it up: "Too Many Cataclysms." Too much change. The Fifth Age novels/setting materials are just not what the world I liked from the "golden era" of novels (IMO), started by Weis & Hickman of course, but with many other honorable mentions too (Kaz the Minotaur, Legend of Huma and the Elven Nations Trilogy are still staples in my library). Just look at the avatar I picked for myself!

Basically, any setting book set during or after the War of Chaos has been useless to me, as I prefer to pretend it just never happened. (I've written my own timeline which branches off from the official timeline after Dragonlance Legends but before Dragons of Summer Flame.) I know a lot of people feel this way, which is why the 3E DLCS went to such great lengths to present "multiple Eras". In a sense, DL is stuck trying to support 2-3 entirely different campaign settings, a situation I'm not sure is tenable from a business point of view.

No one asked me, but if I were writing the introduction to the 4E DLCS I'd start with Tasslehoff waking up out of deep sleep (sometime around when Second Generations was written) screaming. He calms himself down and says "Wow! What a terrible nightmare! That was almost as scary as those trees in Palanthus."

 

[ferratus]

I think that 4e Dragonlance gaming will be a lot smoother transition than the transition to 3e gaming was for a few reasons.

First, Dragonlance was rather "fossilized" when Sovereign Press took it over, as there hadn't been any serious new D&D supplements since Dragonlance Adventures and the Tales of the Lance boxed set, which contradicted each other. What is more, there wasn't really an explosion of creativity or detail from these projects but merely a rehash of the Modules and Novels. So moving from 1e with a little smattering of 2e to 3e was pretty traumatic. There were endless arguments about class restrictions (can Wizards use crossbows) and racial restrictions (can kender be wizards) before compromises were imposed. For example, Wizards of High Sorcery can use other weapons than staff or dagger but the traditional culture of the Towers of High Sorcery frowns upon it (and thus it isn't good for your magical career). Your kender can become Wizards of High Sorcery if your DM approves it, but there will be none in the official setting, and WoHS will find the prospect of kender using magic terrifying. However, now that 3e has loosened up a lot of the restrictions, there won't be nearly as much culture shock among the fanbase.

Especially since Sovereign Press did a bang up job of trying to reconcile all the various inconsistencies and past screwups and make the setting interesting to play again. In fact, Sovereign Press did such a good job (after the initial Dragonlance Campaign Setting disaster), that I found it less interesting to argue on the message boards so instead I got married and had a baby girl. I can't think of any praise I could give higher than that.

 

[Dragonhelm]

...so instead I got married and had a baby girl.

Hey, congrats Terry! Been a while. I hope all is well with you.