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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[Mind of tempest]

As far as I am aware outside of home games all Kenders in other worlds are visitors from Krynn that came via portal or Spelljammer.

I believe that is what is being changed to the new fae wild explanation.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The kenders from Taladas are very different psicologically, I guess the ancestros of the ones from Abasalon were exploring and living in the Feywild for a long time, being affected by this.

I guess the official adventures are going to be "modular", meaning optional changes in plot and nPCs to can cause surprised to players who have readen the novels. For example a new characte would be a reincarnation of Huma, or F. and S. would be replaced with others because we know their secret identity.

And today the suspension of disbelief has also evolutioned too. We can be more open-minded about certain things, but also asking more coherence and logic with others. Today the gamers used to play lots of videogame shooters can't believe the rustlers from old Far-West movies with such bad aim. The days of action-movies of one-man-army soldier ended, or the fights where a master of kung-fu can defeat dozens of gunslingers. Even a little child who has played Fortnite a couple of times can notice. Sorry, I mean if kenders are too senseless and confident for their adventures and explorations this element could be parodied mercyless, by professional comedians and by amateurs. We could find dozens of memes in the social networks telling about how the PCs tricked kenders to fall in dangerous traps.

The psycology of the kenders, and the rest of the humanoids, shouldn't a fixed mold, everybody with the same behavior. Even in the sitcons the members of the same family need to be different with their own personality. We shoudln't abuse with the tropes, even when the goal is the laugh we can't everytime the same joke. The sense of humor needs more variety and flexibility.

If you wanted to tell a horror story about kenders in Sithicus, you can guess they are going to suffer something painful because they are too confident and unwise. How would be a horror comedy with kenders? For example a Ravenloft version of the movie "the final girls".

* The trelorans could be a PC race, a nerfed version of the ogre-magi/oni.

* Could the kyrie, an avian humanoid race, to be recycle to become an updated version of the raptorans from "Races of the Wild"?

* Could a kender + lemprechaun to breed a mixed subrace?

 

[Weiley31]

The narrative of the first module is all about getting divine magic back. But 5e doesn't even really have a concept of 'divine' magic that's separate from any other type of magic.

While no character can start the game with divine spellcasting abilities (you can play a cleric/paladin, you just don't get spells until the plot hurdles are cleared)

If I was to play a War of the Lance era DragonLance game, I'd use the rules of Adventure in Middle-Earth and this latest UA + Wizard using the Lunar sorcerer as 3 distinct archetypes + Sorcerer (Chaos, Divine and Draconic, at least).

Sturm -> Human Fighter (Knight), Knight of Solamnia background, Feat Inspiring Leader
Tanis -> Half-Elf Wanderer (PHB Hunter), Wanderer background (Heroic Gift: Lifelong Companion)
Caramon -> Human Fighter (Battlemaster), Mercenary veteran background (Heroic Gift: Unscarred)
Raistlin -> Human Wizard (Red Order), Wizard of High Sorcery background, (Heroic Gift: Echoing Soul)
Goldmoon -> Human Sorcerer (Divine Origin), Far traveler, (Heroic Gift: Oracle)
Flint -> Dwarf Slayer, Clan Crafter background, Feat: Tough
Tass -> Kender Seeker (Burglar)

etc

I really hella like this idea a lot. You can even allow a "promotion/class respec" to a Divine Caster/Lunar Sorcerer once you reach that point where you "unlock" the use of Divine Magic or whatever. And Adventures in Middle-Earth, with its low magic feature would be good to use for the first half of such an adventure. The Classes would probably work too with some swapping out some things to make it fit more. Like the Wanderer's *Foe of the Enemy and Shadow Killer: Bane

 

[Weiley31]

Should the Squire feat be changed to be more of a choice by Martial characters? I believe so as nearly all the knights including squires were martial in flavor. Maybe keep the medium armour proficiency but gain a separate bonus if you are already proficient.

That would probably be the best approach: as it stands, The Squire background is only really "helpful" for classes that don't gain/have Martial Weapon/Medium Armor proficiency. So, every time I looked at that background, I kept on thinking of giving it to a Sorcerer/Wizard(No Bladesinger for obvious reasons)/Non-Valor Bard/Rogues(Non-Assassin) PC.

Fighters/Paladins/Clerics/Rangers already get Martial/Medium Armor proficiency so its moot. Unless they either get a +1/+2 boost to damage rolls to said weapons.

And then, I circle back towards my idea of Racial/Heritage Weapons and how one could spend downtime training to allow a PC to boost their Racial/Heritage Weapon damage die by one or two steps. So, under a similar guideline, a character already proficient in Martial Weapons would be able to raise its damage die like that via this background. (But I'm crazy like that.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And of course in 5e you can have a load of healing in the party without having a cleric (or paladin, or even ranger) at all.

Which is a problem. Why should they care about getting divine magic back when they can get all the healing they want from a druid, paladin or artificer?

 

[humble minion]

Which is a problem. Why should they care about getting divine magic back when they can get all the healing they want from a druid, paladin or artificer?

Well, druids and paladins in DL historically get their magic from gods too, so they're in the same position as clerics initially. But the general point is true, and still stands. A party with bard, an artificer, and a celestial warlock and you've got three healers already, and not a divine caster among them. Mind you, this is hardly a common party, but it's far from impossible.

After about 3e, later editions of D&D have increasingly spread the healing around just so clerics got to do cool stuff with their spell slots other than heal everyone else all the time. The old DL modules were not really written with this development in mind.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, druids and paladins in DL historically get their magic from gods too, so they're in the same position as clerics initially

Paladins get a chunk of healing from lay on hands though, that doesn't need spells or slots.

You could say "no magical healing" rather than "no divine spells".

 

[Weiley31]

Which is a problem. Why should they care about getting divine magic back when they can get all the healing they want from a druid, paladin or artificer?

Well, druids and paladins in DL historically get their magic from gods too, so they're in the same position as clerics initially. But the general point is true, and still stands. A party with bard, an artificer, and a celestial warlock and you've got three healers already, and not a divine caster among them. Mind you, this is hardly a common party, but it's far from impossible.

After about 3e, later editions of D&D have increasingly spread the healing around just so clerics got to do cool stuff with their spell slots other than heal everyone else all the time. The old DL modules were not really written with this development in mind.

Paladins get a chunk of healing from lay on hands though, that doesn't need spells or slots.

You could say "no magical healing" rather than "no divine spells".

How would that affect the Assimar?

 

[humble minion]

Paladins get a chunk of healing from lay on hands though, that doesn't need spells or slots.

You could say "no magical healing" rather than "no divine spells".

I dunno what the original modules said, but the 3e conversions say that ALL god-granted powers for wizards, druids, clerics, and paladins are non-functional until the PC can read the disks of Mishakal (how that would help a worshipper of, say, Reorx, is a question that remains unanswered, but whatever...)

It'd be pretty hard to argue that lay on hands would still worked under those circumstances. In 5e language, paladins and rangers would probably get their fighting styles, and some clerics might get some proficiencies (heavy armour, or skill) from their domain, but probably anything more than that would be a big ask. Rangers would probably do better - more of their class abilities are non-magical.

But of course whether this matters at all all depends on how intent WotC are on sticking to the old storyline (if indeed they're even doing a module/campaign book at all). As we saw in Ravenloft, they have absolutely no qualms in turning the old canon absolutely inside out in their 5e reinventions. I don't know how you could start off a War of the Lance campaign without divine power being missing, but I didn't expect you could do a lot of stuff that VRGtR did either...

 

[James Gasik]

If a new Dragonlance Adventures hardcover were to come out, you'd probably have a set list of allowed races and classes, and there would be a notation that some classes would not be available at the start (as well as certain archetypes). So you wouldn't have Aasimar, Paladins, or Clerics available at the start of a "classic" campaign. But by the time of the later adventures (such as "In Search of Dragons") you totally would.

Artificers wouldn't exist, as while there are Tinker Gnomes, they are far more likely to break a magic item than do anything useful with it (as actually happens in the books). It wasn't until they got into Krynnspace that the Tinker Gnomes became a real threat.

Bards would not be allowed to select healing spells, or have an archetype that disallowed them entire. Bards didn't even exist on Krynn in the 1e era, because part of becoming a Bard required you to get training from Druids (who didn't exist either).

But really, what I expect to happen is any such book would have a brief chapter or sidebar discussing how to recreate a "classic" game, and play would be assumed to happen in the two decades after The War of the Lance (or maybe in Krynn's distant past).

Or in the new era, long after Dragons of Summer Flame (a period where the Gods were lost again and magic was transformed for a time) to fall in line with the most recent books.