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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[Umbran]

Does anyone consider the kender to be dangerous? I was under the impression--by what 2e and 3e Dragonlance game books I've read--that most non-evil humans very much liked kender for their childlike innocence.

"Childlike innocence" is has been, in my experience, generally interpreted as "extremely unwise" or "does not consider consequences of actions" which can, in fact, be dangerous when the party is in life-or-death situations.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

My point was that folks who dismiss the negative and harmful tropes embedded in some of our favorite D&D races because they don't match up with real-world peoples on a 1-to-1 correspondence are deliberately missing the point. IMO.

100% agree. And the reason for this is the fact that bigotry and caricatures are never truthful. Bigotry is, by definition, dehumanizing real groups of people. So the dehumanized people often get labeled as "not actual people" as a No True Scotsman and turned from humans into evil monsters/primitive animals to try and make themselves appear superior to those they're oppressing. (Example: Holocaust propaganda about Jews and American WWII propaganda about the Japanese.)

Bigoted caricatures of real world people always depict humans as not actually being human, and blows minor aspects of their culture out of proportion.

That is why the argument "but they don't 100% match up with the real world people they're coded as" is especially idiotic. No duh. Any racist depiction of real world people is never going to match up completely (or at all) with the real examples of those people because racism is inherently inaccurate and always dehumanizes people. That literally what racism is. "X can't be racist because it's not accurate" is just laughably wrong because of course it's freaking inaccurate, that is inherent in the concept of racism. The Vistani aren't suddenly okay because they're not accurate depictions of the Romani people, they're racist because of that fact in the first place.

(Note: I'm not saying that all inaccurate depictions of real-world cultural/ethnic groups in fictional media are inherently racist, I'm saying that dehumanizing a real world cultural/ethnic group is. Being inaccurate isn't inherently racist, but racism is inherently inaccurate.)

 

[Omand]

Eh,

It's not that far off from Keith Baker's "In MY Eberron" and Ed Greenwood's "In MY Forgotten Realms"… It's just that they the creators have their own vision of the settings than the copyright holders. That's NORMAL.

JRR Tolkien would NOT have approved of many of Peter Jackson & crew's choices on LotR & Hobbit films, but that doesn't make them necessarily bad (they're essentially like a streamlined "reboot" of the franchise to reach new customers). He certainly would have disapproved of the old Middle-Earth Roleplaying. But he also appreciated the royalties and licensing fees he got. They helped get his family through some hard times. And the Tolkien Estate has been caught in that same position ever since - not really liking the new adaptations, but passively supporting them while also snubbing their noses because the money and attention to the original works are flooding in, too.

Sorry, slight thread hijack here.

You are way off on your timing @Marandahir

JRR Tolkien died in 1973, MERP was published in 1982. Tolkien saw no royalties from any RPGs in his lifetime. The Tolkien Estate is the group that has been involved in the vast majority of licensing deals (movies, RPGs, etc.).

So, perhaps not the best example for this thread as aside from book royalties, Tolkien really did not hit the jackpot in any other areas until after the author's death.

Cheers

 

[Umbran]

Ah, I can understand the Vistani correlation, but you're saying they somehow identify themselves with a short child like race that suffers from an impulsive control disorder. That is not a good look.

"They had a problem with it" does not equate to "had a problem with YOUR description of them". Folks have laid out aspects of them that some find problematic. That you choose to dismiss those and push your own preferred assessment doesn't make them incorrect.

You cannot insist the thing away.

 

[toucanbuzz]

After 50+ pages, amazed that the word "kender" can evoke so much passion from a setting that's been out of print for two decades. The UA should have started with something simpler, like Irda.

 

[Eubani]

After 50+ pages, amazed that the word "kender" can evoke so much passion from a setting that's been out of print for two decades. The UA should have started with something simpler, like Irda.

Some people do not like censorship just because from their point of view some rando on the net is offended by it and that in some forums can lead to weaponized moderation to kill off conversation about ideas that differ on the topic or free speech.

 

[darjr]

What what they have planned?

 

[Eubani]

I understand that some people have had badly played Kender negatively affect their games or have heard of it. In my past DL games with various groups I have had seen some really good role play and fun times involving Kender players. Did they keep us on our feet or cause mischief at time sure, did we ever wish they were not there never. I think it is more the players in question that are the issue not so much the race.

 

[darjr]

Oops! All kender?!?

 

[Parmandur]

What what they have planned?

A schmancy fancy version of whatever WotC has in the pipeline, no doubt. Exciting times.