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.

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Maxperson]

Doesn’t seem all that different to me. Brave and curious are halflings’ most prominent traits.

Curious I will give you. Fearless I will not. Hell, bravery isn't even a full part of their historical racial abilities. 1e/2e halflings don't have anything about it. 3e halflings get an insignificant bonus to saves vs. fear. 5e halflings already have advantage, so the kender ability isn't even a kender ability.

What set kender apart from the halfling was the curiosity combined with the FEARLESSNESS. The kleptomania wasn't as big a part of the kender identity, but it was the vast majority of their annoyance to others.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

The ticket here is that WotC is treating Setting books as Genre theme packs in 5E, which they have been pretty explicit about. They expect thst people buy Van Richten's Guide so thst they have Horror themed material as much as to play in Ravenloft according to Canon, or get Ravnica for Urban Fantasy with Factions more than to stick to strict Magic canon.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

I hope they do it like they did it in 3.5: the phases of the moon affect all arcane magic across the board. When one moon is full, certain spells get stronger. When it’s not in the sky, those spells get weaker. I use that system in my 5e Dragonlance game and it works just fine

My only thoughts on why the letting the players pick which phase isn't a terrible idea? It does make it a heck of a lot easier to track. That moon chart is a nightmare to keep track of and we all know it.

At the risk of weighing in on the heated kender topic, I do see the merits of some sort of lore change to shy away from potentially problematic stereotypes, though I do feel that the kender hatred for purely the theft reasons in the d&d community is a bit overblown. Change the lore for the problematic racial stereotype issues sure, but one should not blame the race mechanically speaking because a$#hole players who think breaking the social contract and being a d%&k to other players at the table is acceptable.

One thing I often try to do with my kender NPCs or suggest to players who want to try want is to lean far more into the "childlike optimism" side of things if they've got to pick a roleplaying extreme. There's a reason why most of the characters in those books were described in such a way, and frankly I'll say it, hot take: Tasslehoff is the least interesting named kender in the entire series. Gotta rep my man Nightshade Pricklypear or Blister Nimblefingers.

 

[Charlaquin]

Curious I will give you. Fearless I will not. Hell, bravery isn't even a full part of their historical racial abilities. 1e/2e halflings don't have anything about it. 3e halflings get an insignificant bonus to saves vs. fear. 5e halflings already have advantage, so the kender ability isn't even a kender ability.

What set kender apart from the halfling was the curiosity combined with the FEARLESSNESS. The kleptomania wasn't as big a part of the kender identity, but it was the vast majority of their annoyance to others.

Personally, I think going with bravery in place of complete and total lack of fear is a good change. Because actual inability to feel fear would be a truly detrimental adaptation to the survival and propagation of the species. The closest you get to that in real life is geese, but they aren’t actually fearless, their fight or flight reaction just leans very heavily towards fight. Now, I’ll grant that in a world with such direct divine intervention as Krynn, there’s no need for a species with such a trait to arise through natural selection, but a race created to be fearless would still struggle to survive.

 

[Hussar]

Not to mention they were just copying Dracula who had “gypsys” as servants.

Don’t blame them, blame Bram Stoker.

Oh good grief.

This is 2022. Are we STILL having this discussion.

It's not about BLAME. NO ONE CARES ABOUT BLAME. Is that clear enough?

It's about NOT CONTINUING TO USE THE SAME THING WHEN YOU KNOW BETTER.

See, we can argue pretty easily that Weiss and Hickman probably didn't know any better writing Dragonlance in the late 70's and early 80's. It's not like it was common knowledge nor was it particularly being taught in school. It was pretty much ignored for a long time because marginalized people are... well ... marginalized. Pretty much by definition.

But, it's not 1978 anymore. We DO know better. We DO know that Romani people have suffered incredible amounts of racism for centuries.

So, here's the choice. We continue to use Kender, knowing that they are based in racism, or we change them and move on. What does it say about us if we continue to use material that we know is based in racist elements? Heck, you point to Bram Stoker. Do you think that somehow that makes it okay?

"Hey they were just parotting the same bigotted, racist stuff that their parents and their parents spouted. That makes it perfectly fine for us to do the same thing"

 

[Hussar]

Change the lore for the problematic racial stereotype issues sure, but one should not blame the race mechanically speaking because a$#hole players who think breaking the social contract and being a d%&k to other players at the table is acceptable.

Yes, you really, really should blame the race.

They took every social contract breaking table behavior and made it the standard for playing this particular race. Don't steal from other PC's. Don't be disruptive. Don't be a spotlight hog. Don't be a dick. These are all basic table etiquette ideas. And you have a race that says, "Hey, know all that crap that you HATE about players? The stuff that would get you kicked out of a group? Yeah, play this race and now you can justify to the table why you are being an asshat."

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And on top, that makes Kenders actually usable in a real game.

 

[Mecheon]

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.

"Cyre was dragged off to Ravenloft and that caused the Mourning" was actually a bit of a big fandom theory for a while as quite a few details of the Mournland match up with the one other example of a region we have that was dragged off to Ravenloft: Kalidnay from Athas.

It was a cheaky external thing, mind, but enough of a fandom theory there's been that link for a while

 

[Maxperson]

Personally, I think going with bravery in place of complete and total lack of fear is a good change. Because actual inability to feel fear would be a truly detrimental adaptation to the survival and propagation of the species. The closest you get to that in real life is geese, but they aren’t actually fearless, their fight or flight reaction just leans very heavily towards fight. Now, I’ll grant that in a world with such direct divine intervention as Krynn, there’s no need for a species with such a trait to arise through natural selection, but a race created to be fearless would still struggle to survive.

The Kender came about when the Graysgem, an item of chaos, brought them into being. It's not an adaption and has nothing to do with natural selection. Even with the new "fey" change, fey are like demons, devils and angels. They aren't races that came about due to evolution, so the fearlessness could easily be part of Kender.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

This is a fascinating UA.

First, I'm just glad to see Dragonlance on its way. I'm not sure I'll ever play another DL campaign (I ran a TERRIBLE one in high school...because everything I ran in high school was terrible) but this book will be an automatic buy for me.

Second, there are some really interesting design choices. Like: spending hit dice to fuel abilities. I've been waiting to see this since the Next playtest. It seemed like an obvious evolution of 4E's healing surges. Also: attaching feats to backgrounds and using feats to replicate prestige classes.

Third, it's obvious that WotC is building a big tent for players in Dragonlance. So while the grognard in me rebels at the suggestion that classes other than wizards can take the Test of High Sorcery, as a practical matter its more fun at the table if players can choose from a multitude of classes. Ditto with the Knights of Solamnia. I was certain that both Wizards of High Sorcery and Knights of Solamnia would be represented through subclasses. This approach is probably better.

Fourth, there are some choices here that I simply do not agree with. Linking kender to the Feywild, for example. Starting to feel like everything is linked to the Feywild. Getting kind of lame. And as awesome as the lunar sorcerer is, that means that no other class or subclass is impacted by the moons of Krynn -- even though that's a cornerstone of the worldbuilding.