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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[JEB]

Okay. How about this. If they got rid of the Greygem origin and changed it to something else that wasn't "Feywild BS" that was equally unique to the Greygem origin . . . would you still dislike the change? Or do you just not like this change because it's a change?

Out of curiosity, why aren't folks allowed to dislike the change because they liked the old version better? It's not like the options are limited to "change always good" and "change always bad."

 

[Scribe]

Out of curiosity, why aren't folks allowed to dislike the change because they liked the old version better? It's not like the options are limited to "change always good" and "change always bad."

If you are against change, well yes, you open yourself up for all kinds of judgment against your character.

 

[Faolyn]

A heck of a lot longer than 10 years. Every read the original folk-tales many of the original Disney animated movies are based on?!

There were entrails in the original Bambi book.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I cant wait to see how The Feywild shows up in Dark Sun.

It’s in the 4e Dark Sun, which most DS fans I know loved overall.

 

[Dire Bare]

Finally got a chance to look over the entire document. Interesting.

Seems like WotC might be moving to advance the timeline of the setting somewhat, to accommodate changes meant to utilize all of 5E's character options. The Wizards of High Sorcery become the Mages of High Sorcery, so non-wizards can join the fun, for example. Or perhaps a reimagining of the setting, redefining what is canon and moving from there . . . not unlike what Lucasfilm as done with Star Wars.

So . . . is the new Dragonlance post War of Souls, with all previous works canon? Or post War of the Lance, with all other works relegated to quasi-canon? Either way, should be interesting.

The Lunar Magic Sorcerer is a neat subclass, but doesn't evoke any classic Dragonlance archetypes. But fits in with the new "Mages" of High Sorcery. Still, I dig it.

I like a lot of the ideas of the new backgrounds for Solamnic Knights and Tower Wizards Mages, but I have a big problem with the mechanic. It prevents from taking other backgrounds and reduces player choice and diversity. One thing I remember from some of the novels is the diverse nature of the Wizards of High Sorcery . . . not in their classes, but in their backgrounds before becoming wizards. I'd rather see these as some sort of faction mechanic instead. Granted, you don't have to take the backgrounds to join the factions here, you can burn a feat/ASI slot . . .

I like the feats so far, no real complaints. With the right background, you have to burn one feat choice to fully join the WoHS or KoS. It's a player commitment which maps well to a character commitment. But, with the divine feats . . . are we getting a Holy Orders of the Stars background?

I've softened on kender being considered "fey", but still don't like the overall magical explanation for their taunt and kender ace (handling) traits.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Out of curiosity, why aren't folks allowed to dislike the change because they liked the old version better? It's not like the options are "change always good" and "change always bad."

I'm not saying they are. I've disliked quite a few changes that WotC has made in the past, I don't agree with everything they've done. However, there do seem to be people that think that any change that WotC makes is always a bad thing.

The reason why this change is good is because it gets rid of the #1 reason why people have hated Kender for decades; their kleptomania. That's just an objectively good reason to make a change. If a D&D race has been nigh-universally hated for decades, changing it to get rid of the thing that makes people hate them is just overall and objectively good thing.

And from what I've seen, most of the people that dislike this change are just disliking it for the sake of disliking change. They haven't said any logical or valid reasons for disliking the change, other than "change bad, old thing that everybody hated good".

People are absolutely allowed to dislike changes . . . but the reason behind those should at least be logical, and not just disliking it because they hate WotC and want to hate on any change that they can twist to fit their narrative. I'm not saying that everyone that dislikes this change or any change that WotC has ever made is doing this . . . but there certainly are people doing this in not only this thread but ones in the past of similar issues (I've seen people complain about the new Ravenloft book for dropping Caliban, when the reason why they weren't included is likely because they are extremely ableist, for example).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Eberron doesn’t have a strong fey influence, and if all we get for fey in Dragonlance is Kender I’d say we made it out pretty unscathed

Eberron 5e was released before the new Fey craze began.

 

[EthanSental]

Like Dire Bear above, I finally was able to read it through and overall I like it. I plan on taking it to our game session this weekend and see what they think. Have read the DL novels starting in the late 80s, it does well enough to capture my “feel” of the setting for me.

 

[Marandahir]

I cant wait to see how The Feywild shows up in Dark Sun.

Eberron doesn’t have a strong fey influence, and if all we get for fey in Dragonlance is Kender I’d say we made it out pretty unscathed

It’s in the 4e Dark Sun, which most DS fans I know loved overall.

Eberron 5e was released before the new Fey craze began.

Dark Sun's Feywild is really cool because it's pocket domains that are hidden in the sandstorms, like fantrastical Djinni palaces in Al-Qadim. Eladrin were tied in in a really intuitive way, much like how Dark Sun turned the Grey into the Shadowfell and the Dray into the Dragonborn (and Half-Giants into Goliaths, etc, etc).

And Eberron has a pretty prominent Feywild. Keith write about it A LOT in his blog, it's heavily featured in Exploring Eberron, and 4e Eberron had Feyspires all over that brought pockets of Fey into the Material (much like the entirety of the Feywild is in Dark Sun, or like a Planar-Fall as listed in Tasha's).

 

[Remathilis]

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.

I literally saw no less than three separate players play kender in my time in 2e, and each of them ended up the same way: stealing things from the party within minutes and leading to conflicts for the rest of the session. Sometimes it ended in PvP.

So any excuse to make the first thing a kender does not be roll pick pockets/slight of hand on other players or every NPC in a 1 mile radius is a good thing.