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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[Mistwell]

Its only a feat chain if you do not take the background. I like that certain feats cannot be taken at first level. I would throw the overpowered sharp shooter and great weapon master into this restriction also. Not as much of an issue at high level but very overpowered when taken at first level through the human or Tasha's racial homebrew

Huh. I find those more of an issue at mid levels when people get more than one attack. The polearm master and great weapon master combo for example, where you're attacking three times (often with advantage to offset the penalty). Similar with crossbow expert and sharpshooter.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Of course kenders have got survival instint, but they can't feel fear in the same way. An animal can fear the fire, the humans don't but neither to touch it. A kender don't feel excited with the menaces, but it doesn't mean they wanted to "touch the fire". They can feel something like "dislike" but not a "shock state", at least not for a long time. And they can feel rejects against the potential menaces, but the "fearless" is more like not affected by supernatural powers. If you bet you can fear to lose money, but kenders don't feel any excitement about that but they don't want to lose the bet. They are inmune by fear caused by spell-like abilities but the fear they may feel is not conscious. It is more "I don't get here because it goes to bring me back bad memories". Really the most of times when they face a menace they would rather to escape or run away, but they are too focused in their actions and they forget to worry, they are too busy.

 

[Remathilis]

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

Things change all the time. Marvel and DC constantly redo their heros' origins modernize them. Lucas tinkered with the OT up to the moment he sold it. Tolkien rewrote a whole chapter of the Hobbit to make it jive with Lord of the Rings. Changing things to accommodate be ideas and worldviews happen all the time

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

WotC kinda is painted into a corner with the "no monoculture racial traits" rule. One way of skirting that is too make races have a bit of innate magic, and the easiest source of magic with the least amount of baggage is to claim a fey influence. It's not ideal, but neither is an entire race whose culture is "annoying kleptomaniacs"

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.

D&D has always been awash in magic. Most of the classes get some type of magic or supernatural abilities. Nearly all races do. Don't get my started on monsters, magic items, magical traps, etc. It's just an extension of what has always been.

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.

I love to ask people "what makes your setting unique, and tell me without saying what you DON'T have." Eberron is unique because it has pulp action, magitech elements and a tight focus on history. A Ravenloft is about horror and the dreamlike realms. It's not about if they have orcs or dragonborn or warlocks in them.

Dragonlance is about epic fantasy, war and dragons. Its not about if orcs are there or not. (FWIW: I imagine there still won't be orcs or drow or halflings in it. I do think that any race explicitly not said to live there will be fair game though)

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

History, geography, religion, culture, tone, theme. Dragonlance can and does distinguish itself on these factors. If it cannot, it wasn't much of a setting to begin with.

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.

D&D settings now support D&D, not vice versa. Gone are the days when TSR produced a half-dozen vaguely compatible RPGs all huddled under the AD&D name. D&D settings color the D&D rules, not override them. They support Tasha's and Xanathar's rather than ban them. I get a lot of OS TSR fans can't wrap thier heads around setting being subservient to rules and not the other way around, but that's been the case since 2000.

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.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. Not every change will be liked by everyone, but the term for things that do not grow or change is "dead".

 

[Maxperson]

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.

It's quite literally not evolutionary, though.

Being fearless would mean that you don't even recognize that something IS dangerous because recognizing danger just IS what fear is.

That's not entirely correct. They wouldn't recognize the danger the FIRST time, and then when the giant lizard ate Modo, Dodo and Fogo, even though they won't fear the lizard, they will recognize the danger the lizard represents.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

It's quite literally not evolutionary, though.

That's not entirely correct. They wouldn't recognize the danger the FIRST time, and then when the giant lizard ate Modo, Dodo and Fogo, even though they won't fear the lizard, they will recognize the danger the lizard represents.

Eeh... I guess I can conceptually get on board with this if only because I'm forced to accept that kender might have different ways of experiencing the world that I, a real human, can never understand. Much the same way that I will never know what it's like to be a bat.

 

[Fifth Element]

I think my biggest beef is WotC's desire to change things just because they can.

That's pure presumption on your part. What if they're changing it because they think it's better this way? They believe a huge chunk of the audience will prefer it this way? "Just because they can" is an unsupported assertion.

Taunt is Supernatural... why?

Because plenty of folks find that it doesn't make a lick of sense otherwise, as many people have explained in this thread.

 

[Fifth Element]

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.

Sure, but in a magical world you can't presume that evolution functions the way it does in our world.

 

[Maxperson]

Eeh... I guess I can conceptually get on board with this if only because I'm forced to accept that kender might have different ways of experiencing the world that I, a real human, can never understand. Much the same way that I will never know what it's like to be a bat.

Even humans do this. There are people who are unafraid of heights, yet still understand that falling 200 feet is deadly. They will fearlessly climb the rock face, but use equipment and techniques to avoid the danger.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Sure, but in a magical world you can't presume that evolution functions the way it does in our world.

Not really a point for this thread... but as I pointed out earlier "evolution" is not a fundamental force the way, gravity or the strong nuclear force are. To say that "evolution functions differently" would mean that the basic facts and features of life work differently. Evolution is a theory, not a law, if you're familiar with the technical differences.

So anywhere creatures have the relevant factors to support evolution, it will occur there. What I'm saying is that given living organisms roughly working the same in a D&D setting as they do in our world, it is not metaphysically/conceptually possible for evolution to not occur.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

People pester them about old settings, and people pester them about rehashing the same things. Sometimes at the same time.

So they release old settings but also use their own vision and ideas. That’s how it should be. Straight up stat conversions are non starters.

One of THE MOST popular 5e releases was Ravenloft. So much so they pulled the trigger on the domains of dread book and a special coffin edition. Oh! And praised one of the creators, who is also one of the very writers of Dragonlance, which created a buzz for Dragonlance. I’d think a goodly fair number of new folks would have sought out those books.

When you say "Ravenloft" I assume you mean Curse of Strahd?

I think it's a little difficult to divine broader setting strategy out of that book. Yes it introduces Ravenloft, but it is an adventure first, essentially an expanded remake of the original Ravenloft. And it still took WotC years to release Van Richten's Guide after this. It took a long while for WotC to expand Ravenloft, even after CoS was released.