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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[Marandahir]

Ah well. Personally I always liked that Dark Sun and Eberron had different cosmologies than the other worlds of D&D - part of what made them feel unique. I'm certainly not here to yuk anyone's yum, but I think it kind of diminishes the setting to made everything homogenous - and I say that as a huge Planescape fan.

I mean, neither Eberron nor Athas use the Planescape model in 5e. Both used the World Axis model in 4e, but that was due to forced symmetry across Material Plane Settings.

5e returns to Eberron's planes being the planets in Siberys that influence Eberron, and as far as I can tell, the only planes with connection to Athas are the Shadowfell and the Feywild (and maybe the Inner Planes?). Eberron's Feywild and Shadowfell are their own planets that act much like their equivalents of the Inner and Outer planes. In fact, the Eberron Shadowfell is made up of two planes: Mabar, the Endless Night (a bit more like Zehir's plane in Core 4e - Tytherion, the Endless Night), and Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead (a bit more like the Grey Wastes of Hades). At the same time, Cyre fell into Ravenloft when it became the Mournland, and thus it's clear that there's a relationship between the Mist of the Mournland, the Mists of Ravenloft, the Shadowfell as Faerûnian and Oerthian and Nerathi scholars understand it, and these two planes of Dolurrh and Mabar.

 

[Alzrius]

I mean, neither Eberron nor Athas use the Planescape model in 5e. Both used the World Axis model in 4e, but that was due to forced symmetry across Material Plane Settings.

I thought it had recently been confirmed that Eberron's entire cosmology was a demiplane within the Great Wheel cosmology.

 

[darjr]

Hmmmm now I recall someone somewhere saying something about Eberron fey things being an inspiration for the fey things now, or was that in 4e? Or both?

 

[Hussar]

Funny to see all the defenders of Kender. Hrmmm. Let’s take the worst player behaviours and roll them up into one race option. That’s a great idea.

The single most loathed race in gaming and people are defending it. Blows my mind.

Same goes with steel pieces. Steel wasn’t a currency because of setting stuff. That was the justification. It was the currency because every DL adventure had a dragon. And every dragon came with a hoard.

So they used steel pieces so the pcs weren’t ludicrously rich after the third or fourth dragon.

 

[JEB]

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).

Unless someone comes out and says so, there's no cause to assume that someone who complains about the general trend of Wizards' changes is fundamentally opposed to any change Wizards makes, or hates Wizards. All you can assume is that they dislike the specific changes they complained about.

You also seem to be missing the folks - in this thread and others - who agree that there's an objectively good reason for changes, but disagree that a given solution is the only logical or valid choice.

Also...

So you're just going to cop out, then? Ignore everything in my post and just say "It's just my opinion, I don't have to justify it." Okay. Proves my point, then.

Why is anyone obliged to justify their reasons for disliking a change to you, or anyone else?

 

[Marandahir]

I thought it had recently been confirmed that Eberron's entire cosmology was a demiplane within the Great Wheel cosmology.

You're citing the section from Eberron: Rising From the Last War, yeah?

Page 228:

"Eberron is part of the Great Wheel of the multiverse, as described in the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide. At the same time, it is fundamentally apart from the rest of the Great Wheel, sealed off from the other planes even while it's encircled by its own wheeling cosmology. Eberron's unique station in the multiverse is an important aspect of the world: its planes have profound and shifting influences on the Material Plane, and it is sheltered from the influences and machinations of gods and other powers elswhere on the Great Wheel."

This doesn't speak to demiplanes so much as Crystal Shards. Eberron's its own Material Plane with its own Cosmology. The Core Rules assume the Great Wheel, which is shared amongst most planes, but some Materials have their own planar siblings.

Also, please excuse me, upon citing the above reference, I notice that Eberron does indeed have its own Plane of Shadow. Therefore, what we understand as the Shadowfell in the core setting is actually distributed across 3 planes. Furthermore, I mistakenly called the planes in Eberron as parts of Siberys, rather than as Dragonshards (the 13 moons that are beyond the Ring of Siberys). Finally, people have travelled through space to the Ring of Siberys and beyond to the Dragonshards physically, but nothing has ever been found physically beyond these realms. It's like a vast empty space beyond the locus of Eberron. You'd need some way to break through to another set of planes, like a Spelljammer perhaps, or Planeswalking, or some other form of Planar travel like getting caught on the Dread Metrol and somehow breaking out of Ravenloft and into a different material plane, if you wanted leave Eberron/Siberys/Khyber.

 

[Marandahir]

Hmmmm now I recall someone somewhere saying something about Eberron fey things being an inspiration for the fey things now, or was that in 4e? Or both?

I know that Eberron was designed with 3.5e in mind specifically, but 4e was designed with Eberron in mind specifically. Haven't heard anything about the Feywild being specifically related between Eberron's Faerie and the new core Feywild, but the idea of Feywild domains having fundamental stories being told and reenacted is something that seems to be shared between ALL Fey domains in Eberron and the Domains of Delight in Wild Beyond the Witchlight and its associated supplemental document.

 

[ersatzphil]

...that was due to forced symmetry across Material Plane Settings...

This is admittedly the part that grinds my gears. If others like it, I applaud them.

At the same time, Cyre fell into Ravenloft when it became the Mournland, and thus it's clear that there's a relationship between the Mist of the Mournland, the Mists of Ravenloft, the Shadowfell as Faerûnian and Oerthian and Nerathi scholars understand it, and these two planes of Dolurrh and Mabar.

I believe when Eberron was first released, Ravenloft was part of the Deep Etherial*. I actually really like the idea of the Cyre 1313 domain, but explicit connections between the Mournland and the Domains of Dread are a new thing, so far as I know.

*I have a vague recollection of it being resituated in the Demiplane of Shadow for awhile in 3e, but I could be wrong.

 

[Alzrius]

You're citing the section from Eberron: Rising From the Last War, yeah?

No, I thought there was something in FToD (or some similarly-recent book) that said its entire cosmology was within the Ethereal Plane. But I might be misremembering.

 

[Marandahir]

No, I thought there was something in FToD (or some similarly-recent book) that said its entire cosmology was within the Ethereal Plane. But I might be misremembering.

You're right, sorry. That's Page 232:

"It is theoretically possible to travel between Eberron and other worlds in the multiverse by means of the Deep Ethereal or various spells designed for planar travel, but the cosmology of Eberron is specifically designed to prevent such travel, to keep the world hidden away from the meddling of gods, celestials, and fiends from beyond.
"The three progenitor wyrms worked together to form Eberron and its planes as a new cosmic system in the depths of the Ethereal Plane. They recreated the elves, orcs, dragons, and other races found throughout the multiverse and placed them in their new world, but allowd them to develop beyond the reach of Gruumsh, Corellon, Lolth, and the other infleunces for good and ill."

The section goes on for suggestions about either keeping the barrier intact or creating planar rifts. I would note that Keith has said on his blog that he doesn't find it useful for the story of Eberron to have planar travels from other worlds, but he regularly has Eberron Planeswalkers travelling in games in other settings that he's a Player in.

So yeah, you're right, by 5e lore it's not a Crystal Sphere so much as something formed in the Deep Ethereal. Though we really need to understand how Spelljammer will interpret the Crystal Spheres in the future. Perhaps Spelljamming will be across the Ethereal in 5e while they were in the Astral in 4e and in their own thing in earlier editions?

I should have reviewed the whole chapter before going off with quotes. Sorry!