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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[Stormonu]

Couldn't he have been a Pact of the Tome Warlock with some Wizard-spell granting feats?

It depends on whether you want a literal or holistic interpretation of Raistlin. Literally, he should be a Wizard. However, mechanically/storywise it would probably be a closer match if he was started up as a Warlock (Pact of the Tome, Undying patron).

I’ve always questioned why Sturm was statted up as a fighter, not a Paladin. He certainly had the ideals, and with the absence of the gods at the start of the War, that could explain his lack of clerical spells/abilities.

 

[Weiley31]

I'm sure if WOTC made rings that that transform heroes or summon mystic beasts and paired it with College of ROCK! and College of Hip Hop bards to foight a list of Monsters of the Week, you'd see a who lotta support.

You are correct and this is probably the next best fit for that.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[DarkCrisis]

As someone mentioned earlier, I think my biggest beef is WotC's desire to change things just because they can.

You want to make Kender less child-like thieves? Fine. But connect them to the Feywild... why? Taunt is Supernatural... why?

Why does everything have to be magical in 5E? A human fighter scratches his ass its a magical effect tied to the Underdark. You can't throw a copper in 5th ed without hitting some magical person or effect.

Not all Elves have to have ties to the Feywild. The origin of Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Kender, etc are unique to Krynn. Not having Orcs or Drow (or Eldarin or Tieflings or whatever) also makes Krynn unique.

When does it stop being Krynn and become Faerun or Eberron or whatever with Knights of Solomnia feats?

And if its to bring "every setting in line with each other".... YIKES. Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Faerun, Plansescape, etc don't all have to have the same rules and shades of grey.

Fixing something that some might consider problematic is worth fixing (I guess), but changing something just make it fit into everything else just hurts everything as a whole.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The tinker gnomes were created as a parody of the engineers (who created more troubles than fixing them), and I can say it because my brother bought the original trilogy with comments by the own authors, and one of these was about the gnomes from Krynn. I read it with my own eyes.

Kenders are more like Dennis the menace. The things appearing in their pocket or bag is a secondary effect of their kender ace trait. The kenders need a revision because if we want them to be fun characters then we should avoid typecasting.

Maybe the original kenders weren't linked with the Feywild, but when they started to explore this and other worlds, then they current link became stronger.

* I guess WotC will publish a handbook and an updated version of the original modules, and adding to the DM Guild to know the reaction by the fandom with the ideas of other authors.

* What about the dragonspawns? It is a too intersting concept.

* If the timeline of Dragonlance is reseted, then the high humber of novels wouldn't be canon any more, and then not published again.... and becoming valious pieces for the collectors. (I could say the same one about Ravenloft).

* WotC would rather all the crunch and fluff in their books could be used by the DMs in their homebred campaigns. Let's imagine somebody who gets inspired by Brom's picture for the cover of "Wild Elves" and then he creates a new setting mixing things from Dragonlance and Dark-Sun. It is better the crunch to be designed to be used by the rest of lines to sell more.

 

[darjr]

Well there is this. If Dragonlance is available to DMSGUILD then the authors could do exactly what Ed and The Eberron author has and publish their own stuff.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Would evolution permit a fearless race, like the kender, to exist/survive?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Would evolution permit a fearless race, like the kender, to exist/survive?

It is a Fantasy World, what has evolution got to do with it? Ok! fair enough if you want the world to work that way but quite a lot of people do not. They want their fantasy more fantastique.
The world could equally be the product of conflicting divine/mystical forces and what ever WoTC puts out should have enough lee way to accommodate both approaches.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

It is a Fantasy World, what has evolution got to do with it? Ok! fair enough if you want the world to work that way but quite a lot of people do not. They want their fantasy more fantastique.
The world could equally be the product of conflicting divine/mystical forces and what ever WoTC puts out should have enough lee way to accommodate both approaches.

Right but evolution isn't like a discrete cosmic rule - it springs naturally from a few simple facts about the way life operates. If all kender were just flattly immortal, I could buy that. But I don't think, at least for me, this is something that can be hand waived any more than you could hand waive a square circle.

It's just, for me, this huge gaping plot hole. Kender are fearless!... So they're going to die a lot. Maybe they reproduce at an incredibly early age so that temporally they can bare children before anything happens to them, (assuming that, as time goes on, their chance of survival gets lower and lower as they have more and more opportunity to be curious and fearless in situations that would get them killed).

Since being literally completely fearless is incomprehensible to the human mind and experience maybe I don't understand how this wouldn't be a maladaptive trait.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Right but evolution isn't like a discrete cosmic rule - it springs naturally from a few simple facts about the way life operates. If all kender were just flattly immortal, I could buy that. But I don't think, at least for me, this is something that can be hand waived any more than you could hand waive a square circle.

It's just, for me, this huge gaping plot hole. Kender are fearless!... So they're going to die a lot. Maybe they reproduce at an incredibly early age so that temporally they can bare children before anything happens to them, (assuming that, as time goes on, their chance of survival gets lower and lower as they have more and more opportunity to be curious and fearless in situations that would get them killed).

Since being literally completely fearless is incomprehensible to the human mind and experience maybe I don't understand how this wouldn't be a maladaptive trait.

Just because you arent afraid to die does not means you dont care if you die. Kenders are animated by a deep curiosity and wanderlust. Being dead kinda takes the fun out of adventuring. There's still a margin between reckless and suicidal.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Just because you arent afraid to die does not means you dont care if you die. Kenders are animated by a deep curiosity and wanderlust. Being dead kinda takes the fun out of adventuring. There's still a margin between reckless and suicidal.

I see it as being as disadvantageous as not being able to feel pain. I definitely see being literally fearless as a huge evolutionary disadvantage. Being fearless would mean that you don't even recognize that something IS dangerous because recognizing danger just IS what fear is.