Dragonlance What do you want from a Dragonlance 5e?

[cbwjm]

I'd like to see factions leveraged in Dragonlance in a similar way to Ravnica. For instance, rather than creating a Knight of Solamnia class/subclass you instead have the Solamnic Knights faction. Then you can have levels within the faction based on renown.

• With 0 renown you are a squire of the crown.
• 3 renown you can become a knight of the crown (perhaps there are some class limitations such as only fighters, paladins, or rangers can become crown knights).
• 10 renown (and must be a knight of the crown) and you can join the order of the a sword.
• 25 renown (and must be a knight of the sword) and you can join the order of the rose.
• 50 renown and you become a lord of your order with the possibility of becoming the High Warrior, High Clerist, or High Justice.
• Other special orders might exist. I think they had an order of white wizards called the order of the kingfisher in later eras, they could be a special role that requires a certain amount of renown.

To me, seeing something like that with more options for joining the knights would be better than creating a single subclass since this way, you can have a range of classes who still bear the title of knight of Solamnia.

I don't think I'd be too fussed about races, looking at the 2e kender, the stout halfling already covers most of what the race entails. About the only thing that is missing is a taunt ability which I'm not sure is absolutely required.

 

[Morrus]

Elmore art. Weis & Hickman writing.

Dragonlance is a story more than a setting. I'm not sure if I'd like to see the awesome OG adventure path revisited for the current generation (yes, I would!) or a setting book. I definitely feel that DL's strength is the War of the Lance itself.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

1) full circle, not backward.
Don’t revisit the War of The Lance as the primary focus, but do use sidebars to explain how to use the material presented in that era. Instead, move the setting just forward enough that it can feel like the era of the War, but with some progress being kept in place, and a new threat to Ansalon/Krynn rising as the campaign begins.

So, Solace is a tree town again, but it still has the tomb in the town square, and the town inn is run by some descendent of Tika and Cameron, the Knights of Solamnia are in decline, but not as badly as before, the elf kingdoms have recovered much, but aren’t in perfectly unaffected shape.
Essentially, treat all the upheaval of the various books like the OG books treat the Cataclysm.

2) A short starter adventure that introduces the rising evil that must be stopped, and then a chapter of advice on running adventures in Krynn.

3) new races/sub races, magic items, and other player options, including an explanation of alternate rewards, and stuff like awarding a Boon, befriending a silver dragon in place of getting a cool magic item.

4) some optional variants for stuff like moon magic

5) some amount of info on playing in several eras.

 

[Azzy]

Ignore the Chaos War and everything after that.

 

[werecorpse]

I don’t know a heap about timelines other than the War of the Lance timeline which to me is what defined the setting so I would want a meta plot setting which is how I’ve always seen it so:
1. A player accessible setting book describing the world, the various magic schools, the knighthoods and the no cleric situation & summarising the state of the war
2. A different war of the lance adventure arc/module for players to play through happening at about the time the book events happen to NPCs but happening to PCs ie DL1 is how the Npc’s brought back deities but maybe the first part of the adventure arc module one PC must either be a cleric and be drawn to help restore other deities & religions in another part of the world, (if no one wants to be a cleric they can rescue one but why have the central hero of the story be an NPC?).

My point in 2 is the war events don’t have to be the ones in the novels - those could be events happening elsewhere or to other people that the PCs hear about while they are doing equally fantastic stuff. Maybe while the heroes of the Lance are defeating the green dragon and freeing the elves the PCs are battling Lord Soths minions, recruiting a Minotaur army or allowing a town to evacuate before an army of draconians arrives or taking a leaf out of Red Hand of Doom (that was a very good War type adventure) maybe they steal the maguffin that the dragon army uses to keep Soth on side so he just retreats to his castle to wait out the war? Maybe a high level side quest to lead him to break the curse?

I would have the part 2 series of adventures set over months and open each one with a set of rumours about the war in other parts of the world. Maybe the first one the rumours are that Xak Saroth (the site of DL1) has been found, a black dragon killed and someone is pretending to be a priestess of X (I can’t recall who is the first god who returns through DL1)

Tyranny of Dragons wasn’t a dragonlance style AP because it wasn’t really about a huge War affecting everyone. It was more about discovering a secret plan by a nefarious cult. It was more like a James Bond or Austen Powers movie where he finds out that Spectre is planning to do X (where X is devastating event in this case summon Tiamat) and he tracks the evil agency (cult) trying to thwart them.

Dragonlance is about dragons sure but imo it should mostly be about an evil non secretive empire seeking to conquer the world through War and conquest and the various battles to stop them - where the secret maguffin is often (but not only) discovering some long forgotten secret (other deities coming back to the world, a way to make a weapon to use against evil dragons*, an ancient alliance with good dragons).

* oh and a Dragonlance needs to be something actually cool. Maybe the ultimate maguffin that the PCs have a chance to find I don’t know what but it can’t be a bait & switch it’s got to be something the PCs can use.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I would like rule variants for high heroic games:

• Shadow/Dark/Corruption point mechanics
• More ways to use Inspiration
• Relationship mechanic for the party, maybe something like Renown, but for the whole party (maybe related to Inspiration)
• Use the Hero Points from DMG
• Mass combat rules (maybe with simple domain/homebase management)
• Moon magic, sidebars on how to choose classes for a low-magic game etc

I also want a huge bestiary depicting draconian foes for low-to-high-ish level fights.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

mouse slip

 

[Urriak Uruk]

1) A rereleased of the original trilogy and nothing else. Not only has that arguably been done already (tyranny of dragons), but is utterly regressive and is frankly the absolute worst way to highlight the strength of the setting. Forcing players to "stick to the script!" of the war of the lance is why the setting has a bad name in some circles and unless they intend to release more than just those modules, I'd rather not waste my one official dragonlance book on a module. Something akin to the eborron book is preferable.

I'll just add that I definitely don't want the original trilogy instead of a setting book, but I wouldn't mind the original modules redone in the style of Curse of Strahd. Meaning, update all the pieces that exist in the modules, but also add more options and detail the world around the paths, so that PCs aren't pressured to do the original module exactly as it was written.

 

[Morrus]

I'll just add that I definitely don't want the original trilogy instead of a setting book, but I wouldn't mind the original modules redone in the style of Curse of Strahd. Meaning, update all the pieces that exist in the modules, but also add more options and detail the world around the paths, so that PCs aren't pressured to do the original module exactly as it was written.

Dunno if that would work. I6 Ravenloft was one single adventure module. The DL series was a 13 part adventure path. Its an order of magnitude larger.

 

[Dausuul]

A remake of the War of the Lance adventure path - drawing on the originals but not in thrall to them, and removing the Heroes of the Lance entirely (the PCs take their place).