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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[DarkCrisis]

Quick sidebar here: has it ever been confirmed that Margaret Weis is a Mormon? We know Tracy Hickman is, but I'm less certain about the other half of the original Dragonlance authorial duo.

I don’t think she is

 

[DEFCON 1]

I blame Plato. What, Socrates wasn’t good enough that you had to go and write his %}#^ down?

In Plato's defense... Socrates was known for occasionally saying the exact opposite to his students of what he said the week before, just to see if they were paying attention. Socrates was a bit of an ass that way.

 

[Minigiant]

I suppose you're saying that Theros is just a Greek-analog so it isn't "new"... Strixhaven is just a Harry Potter-analog so it isn't "new"... Ravnica is just a Sigil-analog so it isn't "new"... Kamigawa is just a Japan-analog so it isn't "new"... Amonket is just an Egypt-analog so it isn't "new"... Innistrad is just a Translyvania-analog so it isn't "new".

I mean those are MTG settings converted impurely to D&D.

WOTC hasn't created in house a full D&D setting designed for D&D play since Eberron.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Out of curiosity, I dug up the final version of the kender from the D&D Next playtests. It basically has all the same concepts in terms of abilities, just different executions:

• Dex +1 and Cha +1 (as opposed to floating ASI)
• Speed 25 feet
• Fearless (immunity to the frightened condition)
• Kender Pockets (25% chance of having any piece of nonmagical equipment after searching for 1 minute, once per day, mundane explanation)
• Taunt (opposed Performance vs. Insight as action, if you win target must attack only you, with disadvantage; only works on target once per day)

So I guess they were pretty happy with the general approach they had way back in 2013, it was just a matter of power and flavor. (I wonder if the mechanical changes might have even been based on ancient Next feedback.)

This i could get behind. I remember liking it at the time in fact. Notice the distinct lack of magical explanations? You can treat them as they were before, or you can adjust the culture to taste. That set of updates doesn't invalidate anything that came before.

 

[Umbran]

Whereas new ideas that the world has moved to gets little to no support.

What ideas, exactly, has "the world moved to"?

 

[This Effin’ GM]

I mean those are MTG settings converted impurely to D&D.

WOTC hasn't created in house a full D&D setting designed for D&D play since Eberron.

What is an impure conversion?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So? What difference does that make? They are all new D&D settings. Why do new fans supposedly need a new setting that WotC has never made before?

Because that way, they can create a world that has all of 5e's setting assumptions (post 2018) in place from the start. Better than mangling old settings the new fans they care about aren't familiar with anyway.

 

[Mind of tempest]

What ideas, exactly, has "the world moved to"?

I second this I want to know what we have moved on to?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean those are MTG settings converted impurely to D&D.

WOTC hasn't created in house a full D&D setting designed for D&D play since Eberron.

Technically, that wasn't In House either.

But the thing is, and I think this is what is being implied here:

What ideas, exactly, has "the world moved to"?

What themes haven't been done? If it hasn't been done in D&D, then MtG has pretty much already tapped every flavour of fantasy well imaginable (at least the PG ones). You might start adapting IPs from novel series I guess.

As the philosopher says, "there is nothing new under the Sun."

 

[Mind of tempest]

Technically, that wasn't In House either.

But the thing is, and I think this is what is being implied here:

What themes haven't been done? If it hasn't been done in D&D, then MtG has pretty much already tapped every flavour of fantasy well imaginable (at least the PG ones). You might start adapting IPs from novel series I guess.

As the philosopher says, "there is nothing new under the Sun."

do you mean a religious text as I hear that is the origin of that phrase?