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]

They're actually already official in D&D 5e. They were published in Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy (page 136), which is available on DMsGuild.

WHAT

 

[Micah Sweet]

They kind of did. Since 4e, the Domains of Dread have been moved to the Shadowfell, so the unique races to there have sort of been retconned to be from the Shadowfell (Dhampir, Reborn, Caliban--->Hexblood). And, as has been discussed before, the only creatures that they've retconned to have fey origins are ones that were fey in the folklore (Goblinoids, Changelings, and now Kender, which have roots in Tolkien's Hobbits, which themselves have roots in Hobs). It's not like they're turning Dragonborn, or Tieflings, or Orcs into Fey, or anything like that. They've just taken a few classic D&D creatures that have roots in folklore as Fey and expanded upon their background to relate them to the Feywild. And two of the races that arguably should be Fey/descended from Fey (Halflings and Gnomes) don't have any connection to the Feywild in D&D 5e.

Are you saying I should be glad more races haven't been retconed into the Feywild? I guess I should.

I will say that the concept of the fey, which exists in some form across many cultures, is the primary source of nearly all fantasy creatures in folklore. Saying something has fey roots doesn't really mean much with that in mind.

 

[Weiley31]

This is a tangent, I know, but I've seen you complaining a lot about it recently, so I guess I'll give my viewpoint on this whole "Fey-Craze" thing that you and others have been talking about for several months now.

IMO, the root behind the recent addition of multiple fey races and the retcons to certain races to make them fey/fey-adjacent is largely due to the fact that creatures and options of the Fey type that could be used at the table were very lacking towards the start of D&D 5e.

For example, in the Monster Manual, there were only 8 Fey creatures, with the one with the highest CR being the Coven-version of the Green Hag. For comparison, Elementals (a pretty rare creature type) had 23 creatures, with the highest CR being the 4 Genies at CR 11. Roughly 3 times the amount of creatures in the Monster Manual, with over twice the CR range. Constructs (another rare creature type) had 16 creatures, with the highest CR being the Iron Golem at CR 16, which is twice the amount of creatures and triple the CR range that the Fey had in the core rules. That was it. For years, that was all of the fey that we had in D&D 5e, a paltry amount. If you wanted to do a Fey-centric campaign in D&D 5e using just the 3 Core Rulebooks . . . the tools were just not there. If you wanted to do a Dragon, Demon, Devil, Undead, Humanoid, or even Aberration-focused campaign, you could fairly easily do so. However, you absolutely could not for Fey. You were better off doing a campaign focused around Plants, of all things, than you were for Fey, which I honestly find baffling.

And Wizards of the Coast knew that certain creature types had far too few creatures to base a whole campaign around. That's probably a part of the reason why we pretty quickly got Princes of the Apocalypse (for elementals), Storm King's Thunder (for Giants), and recently got The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. While Wizards of the Coast also wanted to focus around adventures that included more popular creature types (Tyranny of Dragons for Dragons, Rage of Demons and Descent into Avernus for Fiends, Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation for Undead, etc), they also wanted to give tools to DMs that wanted to focus around other more rare creature types for their own campaigns. And through the various monster compendiums and adventure bestiaries that we have gotten throughout the years we have gotten more monsters for the rarer creature types, like the few fey in Volo's Guide to Monsters, constructs in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and plants in Tomb of Annihilation.

And even after all of that . . . we still didn't have a lot of fey. After Volo's Guide to Monsters, we only got 10 more fey (more than the Monster Manual gave us, but still not a lot), with the highest CR one now being the Bheur Hag and Korred tied at CR 7. Then Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes gave us only 4 more fey, the different seasons of Eladrin, boosting the range of CR up to 10, still less than the upper ranges of Elementals, Constructs, and most other rare creature types (soon boosted up to the CR 18 Trostani by the release of Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica a few months later). And, again, that's still much less fey than there are, say, Undead, Fiends, or Dragons, with still a smaller range of CR.

That's about it. 5e started out lacking fey, and it only got worse as more and more books got released when compared to the other more popular creature types, so WotC has recently tried to remedy this by adding more fey creatures and player races to allow for whole campaigns themed around them/placed in the Feywild.

Kobold Press is your go-to provider of Fey for your 5E games. Seriously it's nuts.

 

[cbwjm]

I'll be honest, even as a reboot fan and MtG setting fan in general, I do think trying to use the existing D&D magic system instead of making 5 new caster classes is a bit painful.

I get why they did it, but it's still not the best.

I would have loved to have seen the colour system used for the MtG settings, but that would definitely clash with the current DnD classes and magic system. I think if I was going to run a MtG game using the colours of magic, I'd use savage worlds, much easier to build to type and the magic system allows you to theme spells with trappings that could make it feel like the casters are using different colours of magic.

 

[cbwjm]

Interesting.

Thinking in it, 1st level is so squishy that maybe there is room.

Still want to see a alt human with 1st level feat and one of these backgrounds.

Also want to see non feat chars in the mix and see about any issues.

The squishiness of 1st level is the main reason why I double each classes base starting hp. Much more comfortable throwing bad guys at 1st level PCs when the front-liners have 20-24 hit points before constitution bonuses and squishy wizards and sorcerers have a more comfortable 12hp so they aren't as at risk either.

I want to add feats (if I ever remember) just for a little more 1st level customisation.

 

[Scribe]

Are you saying I should be glad more races haven't been retconed into the Feywild? I guess I should.

 

[Greg Benage]

And their remaining span in the hobby is relatively short.

damn, bro

 

[This Effin’ GM]

damn, bro

Right? Like it’s true but. Damn. I came here to talk Dragonlance, not realize it’s yet another book I won’t be able to run until I get to the final game in the sky.

 

[Weiley31]

Also surprised that after Fizban’s there were no PC options for Draconian characters.

Eh, simple refluff of the Dragonborn race.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Eh, simple refluff of the Dragonborn race.

I honestly kind of hate refluffs/reskins. But, I generally prefer more specific complex mechanics anyway. It's why I'm such a Level Up fan.