Dragonlance DRAGONLANCE LIVES! Unearthed Arcana Explores Heroes of Krynn!

The latest Unearthed Arcana has arrived and the 6-page document contains rules for kender, lunar magic, Knights of Solamnia, and Mages of High Sorcery.

In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore character options from the Dragonlance setting. This playtest document presents the kender race, the Lunar Magic sorcerer subclass, the Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery backgrounds, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

Kender have a (surprisingly magical) ability to pull things out of a bag, and a supernatural taunt feature. This magical ability appears to replace the older 'kleptomania' description -- "Unknown to most mortals, a magical phenomenon surrounds a kender. Spurred by their curiosity and love for trinkets, curios, and keepsakes, a kender’s pouches or pockets will be magically filled with these objects. No one knows where these objects come from, not even the kender. This has led many kender to be mislabeled as thieves when they fish these items out of their pockets."

Lunar Magic is a sorcerer subclass which draws power from the moon(s); there are notes for using it in Eberron.

Also included are feats such as Adepts of the Black, White, and Red Robes, and Knights of the Sword, Rose, and Crown.

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[Charlaquin]

Oh, yeah, exactly the same. Each of the five magical Colleges gets a variation Magical Initiate as part of their Background, with a choice of 2 cantrips and a 1st Level spell (with a free cast), all of which count as Class Spells using the desired casting Ability. They can then get a Feat for their College giving a Super Familiar with special abilities. The options in Strixhaven for Spells are as follows:

College	Cantrip Choices	1st-Level Spell
Lorehold	Light, Sacred Flame, Thaumaturgy	From Cleric or Wizard spell lists
Prismari	Fire Bolt, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost	From Bard or Sorcerer spell lists
Quandrix	Druidcraft, Guidance, Mage Hand	From Druid or Wizard spell lists
Silverquill	Sacred Flame, Thaumaturgy, Vicious Mockery	From Bard or Cleric spell lists
Witherbloom	Chill Touch, Druidcraft, Spare the Dying	From Druid or Wizard spell lists

All in all, very similar to what we see for Dragonlance here.

Did they get background-specific trinkets too? I really like those here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, just not very compelling to folks who don’t already agree. I saw comments to the tune of “I’m going to show this to people when they ask why I don’t like the recent lore changes!” and expected something new and illuminating on the subject, but it seems to me to just be more of the same arguments.

It's not a matter of changing opinions, rather a way to help people understand why you feel the way you do.

 

[HammerMan]

On another note, these backgrounds are obviously much stronger than anything pre-Strixhaven, with the addition of the feat. They have to be implementing a new level 1 feat rule, perhaps with a specific feat associated with each background. I've been thinking along those same lines for a while now.

I like the idea, and hope 5.5/6/anniversary edition adopts flavorful feats as part of backgrounds.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I like the idea, and hope 5.5/6/anniversary edition adopts flavorful feats as part of backgrounds.

the background being equal to a feat is more or less to the only thing I really care about in this thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's not a matter of changing opinions, rather a way to help people understand why you feel the way you do.

Right, I didn’t expect it to change my opinion, I just expected it to give me new insight into why people feel that way, and it didn’t actually do that at all.

 

[Parmandur]

Did they get background-specific trinkets too? I really like those here.

Yup, each College gets a full Background writeup with tables for Personality Traits and Trinkets.

 

[Scribe]

why would we WANT the market to decide if racist boarderline nazi propaganda is successful? would we just rather remove that?

Weird, I never associated Dragonlance with Nazi propaganda?

Must have been in some outlier novel?

 

[Charlaquin]

Yup, each College gets a full Background writeup with tables for Personality Traits and Trinkets.

Nice! I hope the rules revision updates existing backgrounds to that format as well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

why would we WANT the market to decide if racist boarderline nazi propaganda is successful? would we just rather remove that?

Do you think Weis and Hickman were borderline racist Nazi propagandists? I've read a lot of Dragonlance, and your impressions of these aspects are not the ones I came away with. I just think the issue can be handled more elegantly than, "it was magic!".

 

[HammerMan]

Weird, I never associated Dragonlance with Nazi propaganda?

Must have been in some outlier novel?

kender fluff is just a hair off of Romoni slander from them... and not really hard to read into. Like I said World Of Darkness brought this to my attention when a descent mechanic book (named the G slur) included it.