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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dnd.wizards.com

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Because old mistakes can't be corrected, apparently.

That's my biggest takeaway from the past few years of playing D&D. Older players, the ones that complain a lot, cannot be pleased. They got upset when Ravenloft was updated and changed things (which I thought was amazing, and have used that book a ton), they complained when Goblinoids got a background expansion in the Feywild (which I absolutely loved), and now they're complaining about Wizards of the Coast fixing a huge problem that one of the most-hated D&D races in all of history had? They complain about Wizards updating and "ruining" older settings instead of making new ones, and then complain about how the newer settings suck.

Like . . . a lot of the changes to Ravenloft were objectively good things (removing racism from Vistani, replacing the Caliban with the Hexblood) and this change to Kender is absolutely better than the previous versions. A race that encourages problematic behavior is not a good thing, so removing that part of the race is just absolutely a boon to the game and setting.

Can you guys just not be happy anymore? Do you seriously have to find some minor thing about this reprint of a setting that you love and make a mountain out of a molehill over it? Even if you don't like the change . . . there will be others that do and you can just ignore it. If you don't like that the Kender is magic . . . just don't make them magic. Just say that they're so forgetful that they always lose the item after an hour instead of having it disappear back to Fairyland. If you somehow feel strongly about the name change from "Wizards of High Sorcery" to "Mages of High Sorcery" . . . literally just change one word.

There are people (including me) that enjoy these changes and will buy these books. There are people that will buy these books because of the changes (I never would have bought a 5e Dragonlance book that had Klepto-Kender in them, but I will buy this one if Kender stay largely the same as they are in this UA). Tradition is not law and change is not inherently bad. Change is also not inherently good, but changing things that used to be problems to make them no longer be problems (like the Kenders' kleptomania) is literally the definition of a "good change".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Every page just confirms the fact that D&D needs to invest and promote setting that match the current mechanics, current promotion, and current mix of old and new fans.

Dragonlance is nice and dandy. But it will come with issues and arguments.

Maybe it's time for Dragon... Drake.... Drakesword?

We can all have our cake, eat it too, and also have pizza in this situation. There is no "only publish older settings or completely new ones" dichotomy that you seem to be setting up.

For the people that want older D&D settings to be updated to 5e's ruleset, along with changes to the setting to modernize it? Wizards of the Coast is currently making books just for them.

For the people that want older D&D settings updated to 5e's ruleset, but don't want any changes to the setting to modernize them? Well, WotC officially publishing them will open up the settings on the DMsGuild, allowing for people that don't like the changes to make their own version of the setting and make money off of it.

For the people that want completely original, new D&D settings? Well, Wizards of the Coast is making two currently, which seem pretty likely to be published based on the fact that we've heard them mentioned several times.

It's an absolute win-win-win. Michael Scott would be jealous.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Sometimes change does suck. It certainly isn't automatically good.

And (I'm capitalizing this because I'm tired of having to repeat it) LITERALLY NOBODY IN THIS THREAD HAS SAID THAT CHANGE IS AUTOMATICALLY GOOD.

No. One. Has. Said. That.

There has not been a single person in the entirety of this 68 pages that has said "change is an inherently good thing", because that would be idiotic. And most of us here, even though we're passionate nerds debating about something that doesn't matter, are not idiots.

This change, however? Yeah, this is a good thing. People have hated Kender for decades, so changing them to get rid of the main characteristic that made them infamous is absolutely a good thing. I don't care if you hate fey and I don't care if you hate magical races. Changing a core aspect of an old D&D race that made as many people hate them as how many hated Kender? That's a good thing.

Again, no one here is saying that this change is "perfect", or that change is inherently good, they're just saying that this change is a good thing.

 

[Minigiant]

We can all have our cake, eat it too, and also have pizza in this situation. There is no "only publish older settings or completely new ones" dichotomy that you seem to be setting up.

Well that's what we have.

All I'm saying is since 2014, that's all we've got. Conversion of old settings and MTG settings.

Not a single complete D&D setting made for D&D since Eberron. And only a partial partial setting since Nentir Vale. And the conversation is completely dominated by discussion of conversions. Discussion of new creation dies quickly. It's all FR, DL, GH, SJ, DS, PS, BR, etc etc. And the discussions go south because the tug of war between preservation of setting purity and adaption to attract new fans causes arguments.

Whereas the energy on attraction and creativity could be well spent on a new setting and new ideas it could explore.

 

[Hussar]

No, I don't own them but I read them. And that is definitely not from DL1 Dragons of Despair (1984). Aside from the colour printing the characters are too high level, and those NPCs are not in it.

It's possibly from the DL Classics reprint (1990)?

Well, true, that's not DL1. It's further along than that. But, the pre-gens do level up throughout the modules. It's not like they're 5th level all the way along. And, a number of the later modules did have full color character sheets.

 

[James Gasik]

Like the one I posted, from DL13.

 

[Hussar]

Well that's what we have.

All I'm saying is since 2014, that's all we've got. Conversion of old settings and MTG settings.

Not a single complete D&D setting made for D&D since Eberron. And only a partial partial setting since Nentir Vale. And the conversation is completely dominated by discussion of conversions. Discussion of new creation dies quickly. It's all FR, DL, GH, SJ, DS, PS, BR, etc etc. And the discussions go south because the tug of war between preservation of setting purity and adaption to attract new fans causes arguments.

Whereas the energy on attraction and creativity could be well spent on a new setting and new ideas it could explore.

Well, be fair.

1. The first five years or so of 5e they had to do MASSIVE amounts of fan service to build up the goodwill again. They were going to hit all the high notes that they could. Do a couple of side projects - Magic the Gathering setting books and whatnot - to prime the pump, maybe a little side trip into the world of Critical Role but the first years of 5e the mantra has been DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.

2. A new setting is a HUGE undertaking, particularly given WotC's sales goals. As popular as Eberron is, it would be seen as a complete and utter failure by 5e standards. That's not a comment on quality, simply that as much as I like Eberron (and I really, really do) I also recognize that no Eberron 3e book probably cracked the 50k copies mark and most of them wouldn't even come close.

With that in mind, to come out with a complete new setting that generates enough buzz to sell in the neighborhood of a Tasha's or a Mordenkainnens is a very, very steep hill to climb. When they do announce a completely new setting, you're going to see a couple of year run up before you actually get that new setting in print.

 

[Marandahir]

Well that's what we have.

All I'm saying is since 2014, that's all we've got. Conversion of old settings and MTG settings.

Not a single complete D&D setting made for D&D since Eberron. And only a partial partial setting since Nentir Vale. And the conversation is completely dominated by discussion of conversions. Discussion of new creation dies quickly. It's all FR, DL, GH, SJ, DS, PS, BR, etc etc. And the discussions go south because the tug of war between preservation of setting purity and adaption to attract new fans causes arguments.

Whereas the energy on attraction and creativity could be well spent on a new setting and new ideas it could explore.

Nerath was pretty much a complete setting by the end of 4e. Not as WELL fleshed out as earlier ones, but it had had 5.5 years of source books and magazine articles directly supporting the setting. It didn't have a Nentir Vale or Nerath gazetteer book, but its setting was infused in every non-setting-branded book or article released in the edition, as well as the Nerathi Legends setting-branded articles.

But we haven't gotten a 5e release of the setting yet (just release it, WotC! I swear you'll get even more fans of the setting than your entire player base last edition!). I KINDA think they haven't because they are holding out for a World of Greyhawk release; a LOT of Nerathi, Karkothi, Iron Circle, and Vaillen locations are looted directly from Greyhawk, or if not there, from Mystara. Because the setting is supposed to be the "Greatest Hits of D&D World."

And I'd argue that Arcavios (Strixhaven) was designed with Dungeons & Dragons directly in mind. It was created as a cross-project setting. It's not a Magic: The Gathering conversion so much as a setting made for both Magic and D&D.

Critical Role was also ESSENTIALLY a new setting. Nobody had the setting guide materials; we only knew the setting through the show previously. Sure, Mercer made it for past editions, but this is the edition it was RELEASED IN.

Finally, Acquisitions, Incorporated is technically a brand new setting guide. Sure, the Acquisitions, Inc. team is based in the Forgotten Realms this edition, but they're an inter-planar organization. They were based in Nerath in 4e, and that canon hasn't gone away. They have offices in Ravnica. I believe one of their members shows up in Avernus? Correct me if I'm wrong. They had their first setting book in 4e, and now have a 5e setting book. So there's been 2 new settings since Eberron, NOT COUNTING Magic: The Gathering Planes (which you should, especially for Strixhaven).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

To be fair, all of those things are cultural, and cultural evil seems to get a pass.

Of course it does.

I mean, "duh".

"Evil" is cultural in the real world (and a personal choice), not genetic.

Seriously. "Duh." Of course "cultural evil gets a pass". What the hell are you trying to say here?

Like . . . the classic example: Nazis. A culture that was evil. There's a reason they've been used as movie villains for decades. Not because Germans in the 1930s-40s were "born evil", but because their culture was evil and lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people.

So, freaking of course cultural evil gets a pass for humanoid races in D&D now, but racial evil doesn't.

Seriously, what are you trying to say? That having evil attached to cultures is somehow as bad as having it attached to race?

 

[Marandahir]

To that end:

There's no reason we can't have hard crunch and mechanics for cultural evil. I don't think anyone's saying we should be ridding the game of Menzoberranzan or Erelhei-Cinlu. But those cultural evil mechanics? They belong in backgrounds and classes and spells and weapons and setting write-ups and character write-ups and SPECIFIC monster & NPC statblocks. They don't belong in GENERAL Drow lineage features or a monster stat block simply named "Drow."

There's even a place for evil-based campaigns. Book of Vile Darkness exists for a reason. But completely compelled to be evil with no chance of free will or change of heart? MAYBE you could get away with it for a monstrosity, aberration, undead, or fiend. But even then, I'd argue that there should be a way for them to change their nature. They just might no longer be the thing they were if their nature changed (a fiend that ceases to be evil may become a celestial, for example).

Klepto-Kender culture CAN be included in the game. I don't think it should be, but they can definitely get away with it. But it MUST NOT be a compelled thing, that the Kender has no choice in the matter but to pickpocket you. And if they're smart? They'd make it a subculture and not a defining feature of ALL Kender on Krynn.