D&D 5E Would You Play This - "Dragons Must Die"

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Or lift the PC races from Seas of Vodari, although that setting is more upbeat than yours seems to be.

 

[aco175]

I said no, but could be swayed with what most of the others are saying. I would keep the human-ish races like halfling, dwarf and elf and some sort of casting. You could have some spells such as cleric only or levels 1-3 only. Reading the OP, it felt like the idea was kind of Native American or Viking-ish. Not sure if that was the intent.

 

[cbwjm]

I actually quite like the fact that it is only human, much more interesting to me than shoehorning in all the standard races, plenty of other settings where they exist, so I say leave them out.

 

[not-so-newguy]

Sounds fun. I'd be game to try with a DM I trust.

+1

 

[WyrmworksDale]

No. Because of this.

Yeah, while I'm good with something like, "You're from a place where there's only humans, and you just discovered these other peoples," (although there's some colonialist & orientalist tropes close to that which would be tricky to navigate around, but it could be done), "Those people over there are too strange for comprehension," has some very uncomfortable racial overtones. (I'm sure that wasn't your intent.)

But otherwise, there's a lot of good here. Making all magic wild magic could make for a fun campaign.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think I would have to tweak the basis for the campaign if I were to run it or play in it.

For one thing, as stated, the smartest thing a dragon could do would be to get a bunch of spellcasters together and just have them cast spells all day long. Their evil plan would be to create Hogwarts, which is probably not what you're going for here.

From a mechanical side, I would treat it like getting rolling two zeroes on a wild magic check, rather than "well, someone just cast prestidigitation, so a giant rat popped into existence."

Additionally, I think a lot of players would chafe at the human-only setting.

Basically this yeah.

If any spell is that bad, then the setting kind of becomes a bad joke itself.

It should probably more about either higher-level spells being bad, or a "defiling"-type deal like Dark Sun, where spells are easier to cast or more powerful if you use the dark side approach.

Also it doesn't seem, from the synopsis, that there's any necessity at all for it to be a "humans-only" setting. I think it's fine for settings to have specific, bespoke sets of races allowed, but humans only? It's like you're just ripping out a key part of D&D (in every AD&D and later edition). I'd say pick a small number of races which fit the theme. Bonus points if a couple of them are weird-but-appropriate rather than the usual Tolkien crowd. Give them specific back stories to the island chain and so on. Like maybe the lizardfolk have always been there, interacting with the humans, but the hobgoblins arrived on a slowly sinking ship 200 years ago, and integrated into the human society - enhancing the canoes with their oar designs, and introducing new fighting techniques.

 

[Clint_L]

In a world where using magic is terrible...monks will finally get their chance! Mercy monks FTW!

But seriously, not for me. Human only, most PHB classes non-viable, the whole apocalyptic vibe. It just doesn't gel well with D&D. Like, seriously just doesn't work with D&D rules. Seems like there would be a lot of other systems that would suit it better - PbtA systems in particular.

 

[Reynard]

Humans only + magic bad = sword and sorcery. In.

 

[TwoSix]

This talk is great, it's giving me further ideas. Thinking possibly of having spell thieves, who kill magic creatures to use their spell/magic energy to power spells or items and get around creating more monstrosities.

Potions (or other magic items) could be really nasty things - made from the blood or entrails of magical creatures (or maybe a bone in the case of a magic weapon) with weird or possibly detrimental effects.

Having a robust potion/item creation system based around collecting parts of magical beasts would make the game 5x more palatable for me.

 

[Zardnaar]

What would be your "curated list" for races, especially considering it would be an island-hopping campaign?

I'm considering something similar but with bird and Lizard type folk.

Probably human, elf and things like tieflings, aasimar, half elves, genasi if you wanted it human centric. Yuan ti maybe.

That's just me though mono race setting wouldn't interest me to much 6-12 races is more my jam ymmv of course. What those races are depends on the DMs vision.

I'm fine with liw magic but haven't tried it since 3.X and probably wouldn't use 5E (2E probably).