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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[Eubani]

We get book after book that has spellcaster subclasses and spells only, yet they cannot just let Martial classes keep something as simple as this for themselves.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Guardian Angel

Guardian Angels are angelic beings each assigned to guide a human being and protect them from danger. They move at lightning speed and whisper warnings to their charges when they are at risk. They can be either male or female, though they all share the similarities of being dressed entirely in...

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Qareen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Etiäinen - Wikipedia

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Fetch (folklore) - Wikipedia

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Fravashi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I would like to suggest other theory. The kenders are blessed, or cursed, with the company of a special fey companion, this is provides good luck and protection but also this can cause true troubles. Why? These need glamour (like mana but for faes) as power source, and kenders when feel strong emotions during the adventures and explorations, they provide a lot. When objects start to disappear, and they are in the kender's pocket, this is innocent, in certain way, because the true "thief" has been that fae. Even if it is not canon, that could be the excuse by the kenders when some things appear in the bag.

The kenders aren't goind to erasured, because there are good marketing reasons. If Hasbro believes those cute characters could be usefull to sell dolls, you can guess it.

The rich mythology from "Changeling: the Dreaming" may be a great source of inspiration for lots of roleplayers, but also other companies, even WotC. I guess the future "Witchlight" setting tries to be the D&D answer. And the changes with some humanoids races could have been an indirect influence. I would bet if Hasbro could, they would buy the licence of Changeling the Dreaming.

* Other point is the potential of the "dreamlands". In the novel "Tanis: the shadow years" (This part isn't really a big spoiler) this goes to a "demiplane" created by the memories of an old man. This "domain" could allow a lot of new stories.

* What if really Raitslin is the father of a half-irda girl?

* If fandom likes to write alternate timelines... shouldn't WotC allow the parallel worlds to be canon?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Terrible decision to entirely waste one of the limited slots they have for bringing settings back on Dragonlance, that means basically either Dark Sun or Planescape isn't going to happen, or not any time soon, given we know one of the others is Spelljammer. And if this and some monsters is all the Krynn book has in it, presumably as well as details of Anaslon only, not Taladas, then even I, someone who actually quite likes Krynn, definitely would not buy it. Of course if it does have Taladas in some detail I'll be on it like a bonnet.

However the mechanical approaches are relatively to be praised.

The "Kender solution" is hysterical. "No officer it literally magically appeared from another dimension in my pockets!" is certainly a thing, and a positive divergence from previous Krynn lore, and mechanically the Taunt ability is pretty strong, given it doesn't even get them targeted, is a bonus action, and lasts an entire turn (way to ruin the dragon's day! You could use it back to back round-after-round on the big bad too).

The Lunar Sorcerer is interesting in that it goes to great lengths to not be Krynn specific, and they seem fairly balanced on the face of it (and not too terribly boring).

The implementation of Knights of Solamnia and Mages of High Sorcery cinches that they're definitely actually doing a full-on Krynn book and is interesting because it requires you to use Feats, whether you like them or not, because it's going to hand Feats out, and then ask you to take more Feats. You can really Raistlin the HELL out of yourself with the Black robes ability. I don't know if its worth a feat to blow all your HD at level 10 just to do 5d6 more damage but its certainly thematic to Raistlin (less so to the Black robes I'd say but it works). And there are certainly groups who barely use their HD so it'll work for them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

that means basically either Dark Sun... ...isn't going to happen

Frankly, I can't see any possible way WotC could do Dark Sun without provoking massive anger. You see the reaction to fairly trivial changes to Dragonlance, and more people have more invested in Dark Sun.

I don't expect to see "Planescape" either, but I do expect to see "Vi's Guide to Sigil". Just because of the way WotC approach settings now - more gameplay, less gazetteer.

 

[Minigiant]

Frankly, I can't see any possible way WotC could do Dark Sun without provoking massive anger. You see the reaction to fairly trivial changes to Dragonlance, and more people have more invested in Dark Sun.

I don't expect to see "Planescape" either, but I do expect to see "Vi's Guide to Sigil". Just because of the way WotC approach settings now - more gameplay, less gazetteer.

This why D&D needs to do new settings once and a while and stop doing conversions of old settings and MTG settings.

Do Swashbuckling D&D (D&D with firearms gunpowder and magical, no heavy armor, water domain, piracy, trade, dancing, and diplomacy)
Do Saturday Morning Cartoon D&D (bardic rock music, explosions, transformations/henshin, villianous and heroic factions, talking animals, monster battles)
Do Espionage D&D (Disguises, Forgery, Dialects and Accents, Fighting in plain clothes, Alarms, Mooks, Gadgeetry, Doomsday devices, Evil laughter)
Do Wuxia D&D (Stunts, Weapon Art levels, Supernatural combat arts, Switching fighting styles midbattle, Magic Duels, Old Masters)

But nooooo. D&D keeps wanting to redo the same ideas that fans already have books on, changing them to anger old fans, pushing "dated" themes on new fans, and not striking on themes with the iron is hot.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

I think they wanted to avoid the idea of race being tied to behaviorsiology

Satirical message.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

As someone who started with 3e as a kid, Dragonlance is before my time and I know relatively little about it. What would be the big draw to play in the Dragonlance setting rather than FR or Exandria?

To increase your knowledge of pulp fantasy literature. Joke aside, Dragonlance is a wonderful setting built around a specific narration, so it can be a little railroading as per Middle Earth. Is very schematic and full of dicotomies if you like the genre. A great setting to build epic good vs evil campaign.

 

[Eubani]

Can we please stop comparing Kender with Romani. If Conclusion Jumping was an Olympic Sport we would be handing out meddles.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Since this bit was heavily influenced by the negative stereotypes about the Romani people, it had to go.

40 years of playing and never ever think about kender as romani people. Same old problem: everything you say could be misinterpreted. Avoid misinterpretation must be limited by common sense. If not, the solution leads to intellectual paralysis.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

correct, but it has been, easly by many over the years.

yes, and when someone is told "hey, this sounds like nazi stuff" I assume most people would be like "Oh major opps I didn't mean to be at all like that let me change it"

So if I say that your messages sounds like something awful to me, then you'll consider to remove it? Where is the threshold and who are eligible to set it?