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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[This Effin’ GM]

Reading over this thread (and Facebook and Twitter) how so many people have "heard" about bad players playing a bad kender in some game they weren't apart of and immediately take it as gospel.

"Well Ive heard Kender are bad so im glad for the change".

I can tell you Ive dealt with far more crappy Drow characters than i have Kender in my 2 decades of playing.

Tabaxi are my bane. Always annoyingly problematic. Always.

 

[cbwjm]

Mathematically the capstone for the prestige class for knight of the rose couldn’t be reached without hitting level 21!

Haha, wow, I did not recall it being that bad! I do remember trying out a couple of different combinations of classes, thinking paladin would be perfect but they got their spells too late so you needed fighter/cleric. I think you also needed a couple of extra skill points since you might need to buy some skills cross-class. Needed enough fighter for bonus feats. It was very messy.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I may not be quite understanding your comment about making them fighter bonus feats

Yeah, brain fart there. I had slipped back into a 3e mindset.

 

[cbwjm]

Reading over this thread (and Facebook and Twitter) how so many people have "heard" about bad players playing a bad kender in some game they weren't apart of and immediately take it as gospel.

"Well Ive heard Kender are bad so im glad for the change".

I can tell you Ive dealt with far more crappy Drow characters than i have Kender in my 2 decades of playing.

The reddit thread seemed to be "I hate kender" in every other comment.

 

[DarkCrisis]

The reddit thread seemed to be "I hate kender" in every other comment.

And you can bet the majority of them have never even touched a DL novel

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Some thoughts...

I don't care enough about Kender to really be critical about this, but get used to this sort of thing going forward, anything in a racial write-up will have to pass a litmus test of whether it can be explained by physiology or magic.

The Lunar Sorcerer seems fine.

I suspect that feats bundled into backgrounds will be standard in the Anniversary Edition.

Don't like the remix of schools associated with the various Robes. Abjuration/Divination, Illusion/Transmutation, and Enchantment/Necromancy were much more flavorful.

Don't like the idea of a squire skipping strait to Knight of the Rose, the orders should build on each other. Maybe designate them as fighter bonus feats, to give the Fighter an edge in acquiring them.

I'm fine with trading divination for conjuration.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Haha, wow, I did not recall it being that bad! I do remember trying out a couple of different combinations of classes, thinking paladin would be perfect but they got their spells too late so you needed fighter/cleric. I think you also needed a couple of extra skill points since you might need to buy some skills cross-class. Needed enough fighter for bonus feats. It was very messy.

Since paladin wasn’t available in the setting you couldn’t use it (I mean. You could. Whatever) and it was designed to effectively make the paladin in the setting cause it got everything a paladin got. But it boiled down to the fastest way you could get to knight of the rose was at like your 12th level and it was insane.

knight if the crown required at minimum base fortitude of +4 and base attack +3 so earliest was 3rd level for starting that prestige class (assuming you multi classed to stack two different classes fortitude) and then to get to knight of the sword you needed bab +6 but base Will of +4 so (previous Multiclass becomes worthless so might as well not) and at least one level of knight of the crown and then to get to rose you needed basically 3 levels of knight of the sword and whew boy it was a mess you couldn’t reach the end of without epic level play

 

[Faolyn]

Double BOO

Gold pieces on Krynn? You're whittling away at what makes the setting unique and turning slowly into Forgotten Realms with 3 moons.

It's a playtest. They are aware that many people who will be downloading this playtest don't know that Dragonlance uses steel pieces and thus this would confuse them. And they also know that many people who do know Dragonlance may not remember the steel-to-gold ratio and won't know what "a pouch containing 10 steel pieces" is actually worth.

If the actual Dragonlance book--whenever it comes out--has gold instead of steel, then you have point here.

 

[JEB]

Strixhaven's model is something I think could really work for Dragonlance, blending setting and adventure into one.

Based on a discussion with a friend, I don't want a setting book. Instead, a 5e version of the War of the Lance as a mega adventure storyline.

Call it a hunch, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly how they'll handle 5E Dragonlance. The backgrounds working very much like Strixhaven's especially add to that vibe.

 

[JEB]

Or, more likely, because they're aware that most people use hombrew settings and scavenge setting books for usefule stuff and WotC is just actively catering to that crowd. But I'm sure that that's not as satisfying as "WotC makes Baby Jesus cry!"

If Wizards thought that most folks aren't interested in setting books, and only scavenge them for useful bits, why wouldn't they just publish the useful bits in a "Worlds of the Multiverse" book or the like? Instead, they keep doing setting books. So I assume they think there must be a market.