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.

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Hussar]

Again, to be fair, I do think there is a place for monolithic evil. But, like you say @Marandahir, it belongs to things like aberrations, undead or fiends. Anything with a sort of natural life cycle is a lot more problematic. But, I don't have a problem with some Demon Lord of Icky Badness being, well, icky and bad. There's is very much room for the sort of guilt free stuff that just gets killed because it needs killin'.

But, that doesn't also mean that we must have lots of monolithic evil races. Let the stuff that is truly evil be truly evil - that's great. But, don't then try to say, "Well, they're almost all really evil, but, it's just their nature, and if we just raised 'em right, they'd be fine." It's just a really bad road to go down. Much, much easier to go the other way - "here is this race. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad. It all depends on the situation".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

I think it was only in DL1 that they discussed running the adventure without using the pregens.

If someone has a copy it would be nice to see what it actually said!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Older players, the ones that complain a lot, cannot be pleased.

Hey, don't lump all older players together! We don't all hate change!

 

[Micah Sweet]

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 good. 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".

I just said above that Jester David on DMs Guild was my favorite Ravenloft author, so I certainly can be pleased. The Dragonlance Nexus recently released a 5e supplement for Dragonlance that I quite like as well.

I also mentioned above that a friend of mine suggested a change to the kender pockets ability that would have worked for me as well: just make it non-magical but vague it up enough so that, while representing something unconsciously picked up along the way, the player doesn't actually steal anything. Solved.

There are ways to make this change that I would be fine with. I have no problem with the Knights and High Sorcery stuff, aside from potentially some rules tweaks. I just don't like the way WotC did it. I didn't like their disconnected, nightmare dreamscape version of Ravenloft, where everyone but the PCs are fake and nothing you do matters, and it had nothing to do with the Vistani.

Please don't assume that just because I don't like much of what WotC is doing now that I hate all change.

 

[darjr]

I think it was only in DL1 that they discussed running the adventure without using the pregens.

If someone has a copy it would be nice to see what it actually said!

I do. I’ll look when I get a break, as unlikely that’s going to be.

 

[Nikosandros]

I think it was only in DL1 that they discussed running the adventure without using the pregens.

If someone has a copy it would be nice to see what it actually said!

This is what is in DL1:

Players may wish to use PCs from the DRAGONLANCE story, detailed on character cards in the center of the module. It is generally an advantage for players to use these characters rather than bring their own into the campaign.

However, if your players insist on bringing other characters into this game, review them carefully and keep in mind the differences mentioned in this prologue.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is what is in DL1:

So we also need the prologue...

 

[Nikosandros]

The rest of the prologue states that clerical magic doesn't work (and this applies also to "imported characters), dragons are considered a legend, gold is worthless, the only available elves are Qualinesti and Kenders are like halflings which have two additional abilities: taunt and fearlessness.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The rest of the prologue states that clerical magic doesn't work (and this applies also to "imported characters), dragons are considered a legend, gold is worthless, the only available elves are Qualinesti and Kenders are like halflings which have two additional abilities: taunt and fearlessness.

So they didn't say anything about druids? I thought they have covered that loophole. Must have imagined it.

 

[James Gasik]

DL1 has a little more to say as well: