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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[darjr]

For Kender players in D&D what is the original definition of them? From the 1e setting book?

Btw I do encourage everyone in the debate to reread it.

 

[Remathilis]

Taunt is a cultural ability. None of the kender stuff is mechanically different from how the 5e halfling is represented. They should just say that Krynn halflings are called kender, talk about their setting-specific cultures, throw out a "Taunt" feat, and Bob's your uncle. Would have avoided all this.

To be perfectly blunt, Dragonlance could easily get away with using lightfoot halflings as kender and rock gnomes as tinker gnomes. Before the death of subraces, I naturally assumed kender would be a halfling subrace. Ever since halflings stopped being hobbits, they were just diet kender anyway. This would be the perfect time to remarry the kender and halfling into one race and treat the "kender" as a distinct culture of halflings unique to Krynn. (Like how the Vulkoor are a distinct culture of drow unique to Eberron).

 

[Parmandur]

To be perfectly blunt, Dragonlance could easily get away with using lightfoot halflings as kender and rock gnomes as tinker gnomes. Before the death of subraces, I naturally assumed kender would be a halfling subrace. Ever since halflings stopped being hobbits, they were just diet kender anyway. This would be the perfect time to remarry the kender and halfling into one race and treat the "kender" as a distinct culture of halflings unique to Krynn. (Like how the Vulkoor are a distinct culture of drow unique to Eberron).

5E made Halflings Hobbits again...but with small feet.

 

[Hussar]

5E made Halflings Hobbits again...but with small feet.

Shhhh. Careful. Lots of people don’t know that DnD halflings haven’t had hairy feet since WotC started publishing DnD.

 

[Fifth Element]

Dragonlance was explicitly predicated on the rules and culture of D&D as they existed at the time. Because of that, no modern re-imahining of the setting is ever going to look right. They would be better off opening the setting to the Guild to great fanfare and leaving the past alone.

Nah, that's way too limiting. Not all settings could survive a modern update I'm sure, but if "some kender abilities are now magical" is the sort of change we're looking at here, there's nothing that would prevent a successful update.

 

[Fifth Element]

Not worth it.

 

[darjr]

Wait a second.

Let’s look at it another way. How closely to the AD&D rules does the fiction cleave?

The fiction isn’t in my mind, so I truly don’t know, at the moment. But even though it was written with the idea it was going to be part of a D&D multimedia product, I’d bet that M&W dispensed with any D&Disms if it conflicted with the story.

Am I wrong?

 

[James Gasik]

I'm trying to think of anything that happens in the original three books that would stand out in a D&D setting. Many of the elements existed before Dragonlance, like a five headed dragon queen, a platinum dragon who took the form of a befuddled old man (usually with canaries in tow who were actually gold dragons), Death Knights, the Orbs of Dragonkind...

So let's look at what was new. Dragonlances, minor artifacts tied to a mythical past age. Most of the Gods are new. Wizardry tied to the moons, a single magical society that dominates all arcane spellcasting on the planet, Tinker Gnomes. Kender. Walrus men (though if I remember, that part of the adventure was cut from the second book). A world where divine magic was just emerging (or re-emerging). Draconians as an artificial race made from the eggs of good Dragons. Flying castles seems to generic a concept to be really "new".

Yeah, I'm inclined to say that Dragonlance was just a regular D&D campaign with a really good story.

 

[Hussar]

That’s another issue with the adaptation @darjr. By DL do you mean the modules or the fiction? And by fiction, which do you mean?

The early DL stuff stuck very close to the rules. Setting elements, world building etc. all were pretty kosher. Your magic users were clearly mu’s and whatnot.

Later on, things broaden quite a bit more.

But at its heart I’d say it very much did cleave pretty close to adnd rules. Only humans and elves could be wizards for example. All of the characters follow adnd rules. Gil thanks is the only multi class I can think of. No one has a race/class combo that didn’t work.

At least in the oringinal trilogy, I’d say it follows prett closely.

 

[Dire Bare]

5E made Halflings Hobbits again...but with small feet.

And big heads! Disturbingly big . . .