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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[Micah Sweet]

Well . . . . Nazism isn't really a culture, but rather an ideology within a culture. Nazi ideology is evil, no doubt. But were all members of the Nazi Party truly evil? Some certainly were, but the average soldier or citizen swept up in the madness? Was German culture at the time evil? Were all Germans, or even most Germans, evil?

IMO, we shouldn't ascribe inherent evil to a race or species . . . but we also need to be careful ascribing inherent evil to a culture.

In the real world, the only real difference between peoples is culture, not biology. The differences in skin tone, facial structure, etc are all very superficial . . . it's culture that makes us diverse and different from each other. There can be negative cultural themes or tropes, but rarely can they be applied to everyone in that culture, that's stereotyping, of course.

I don't disagree, but you also have to be able to generalize in writing, or you can't discuss any group larger than one. As long as it is made clear (preferably early in the document) that a person might vary greatly from their cultural norms, it should be ok to discuss a culture with traits that would be considered negative by many.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The important thing is that we find a way to demonize big swathes of people. How else do you know when it's okay to decimate that village?

 

[James Gasik]

Well if you're a Cleric, God tells you. If you're a Warlock, your Patron tells you. If you're a Halfling Wild Magic Sorcerer, you tried to cast Levitate to reach the top shelf.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The important thing is that we find a way to demonize big swathes of people. How else do you know when it's okay to decimate that village?

Huh, sarcasm. So surprising.

Tell me how you're supposed to discuss groups of people if you can't generalize. If the facts are that an army is decimating villages, how are you supposed to talk about that army?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Tell me how you're supposed to discuss groups of people if you can't generalize.

By describing the actualities of the group and their activities instead of generalizing?

Like, that army is decimating that village instead of 'everyone in that army is a kleptomaniac'.

 

[Yaarel]

I don't like the idea of Dispel Magic cancelling an entire weapon class. Regular black powder/gunpowder for me, thanks.

Probably, the gunpowder has a DC versus Dispel Magic, equivalent to a spell slot, depending on its quality by its creator.

 

[Yaarel]

Tell me how you're supposed to discuss groups of people if you can't generalize.

A group becomes inherently diverse when emphasizing different factions within it.

Personally, I am comfortable with the ideology of a faction as an abstraction being a particular alignment. But even then, the members of the faction can be any alignment with complex feelings about the ideology of the faction. Some factions seem to correlate a "typically" alignment.

 

[Hussar]

Now, let's dig into this idea of defining groups for a second.

Let's posit a Dragonlance Book that uses the War of the Lance as an inspiration. No, it won't be a 1:1 reworking of the old modules, that's not going to happen. But, it's more along the lines of Curse of Strahd, where you have a big goal at the end - defeat Straud/escape Ravenloft, and you start at a fairly small point (we did Death House), and in between you have a fairly wide open sandbox where the players choose the order of events and deal with problems and challenges as they see fit.

I could really see a DL War of the Lance book working like that. You could even set it up as an evolving setting - each "event location" is worth so many points. Score enough points before the world shifts and you succeed which has repercussions X and Y, or fail and that has negative repercussions A and B moving forward which open up this new set of events that the players can choose from.

The old Savage Tide Adventure Path had a similar set up in the Defense of Farshore module - on a much smaller scale to be sure, but the basic concept is solid.

Anyway, we still need to define groups. The different Dragon Armies, for example. In the original modules, Draconians and their humanoid mooks made up the bulk of the antagonists. Which was easy, because, well, goblins need killin' just because they're goblins. But, that's not going to fly quite as well now. So, we need some humanoids on the side of the righteous, as well as some humanoids on the side of neutral ans well as some humanoids being victimized by the baddies, just like everyone else. Being a goblin or an ogre shouldn't automatically make the NPC a baddy. Some certainly can, but, others shouldn't be. It's not terribly difficult - simply broaden the pallets in encounters and that should do the trick.

But, that still leaves Draconians. Now, me, personally? I'd ignore 100% all the later DL stuff where Draconians become their own race. To me, Draconians are the setting's equivalent of demons - they are aberrations, created by a horrible curse and utterly irredeemable, same as demons. Which makes them on the same level as cultists - the sort of thing you can use in an adventure without really having to worry about morality too much.

Problem with that is, what do you do with Dragonborn. Again, me personally, I'd make Dragonborn different from Draconians. Dragonborn are literally what they are - born of dragons. It would not hurt in Dragonlance to have a race that draws it's lineage from dragons. It does make sense, particularly in light of various Dragonlance stories where you have shapeshifted dragons being all romantic with various races.

I'm not sure why we need to make Dragonborn and Draconians the same. I think that's the way they will go, and simply make Draconians that follow Takhisis cultists stand ins - which makes it okay to kill them typically - and then we can have PC and NPC Draconians that aren't followers of Takhisis. Not the way I would go, but, I think that's the most likely path.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Now, let's dig into this idea of defining groups for a second.

Let's posit a Dragonlance Book that uses the War of the Lance as an inspiration. No, it won't be a 1:1 reworking of the old modules, that's not going to happen. But, it's more along the lines of Curse of Strahd, where you have a big goal at the end - defeat Straud/escape Ravenloft, and you start at a fairly small point (we did Death House), and in between you have a fairly wide open sandbox where the players choose the order of events and deal with problems and challenges as they see fit.

I could really see a DL War of the Lance book working like that. You could even set it up as an evolving setting - each "event location" is worth so many points. Score enough points before the world shifts and you succeed which has repercussions X and Y, or fail and that has negative repercussions A and B moving forward which open up this new set of events that the players can choose from.

The old Savage Tide Adventure Path had a similar set up in the Defense of Farshore module - on a much smaller scale to be sure, but the basic concept is solid.

Anyway, we still need to define groups. The different Dragon Armies, for example. In the original modules, Draconians and their humanoid mooks made up the bulk of the antagonists. Which was easy, because, well, goblins need killin' just because they're goblins. But, that's not going to fly quite as well now. So, we need some humanoids on the side of the righteous, as well as some humanoids on the side of neutral ans well as some humanoids being victimized by the baddies, just like everyone else. Being a goblin or an ogre shouldn't automatically make the NPC a baddy. Some certainly can, but, others shouldn't be. It's not terribly difficult - simply broaden the pallets in encounters and that should do the trick.

But, that still leaves Draconians. Now, me, personally? I'd ignore 100% all the later DL stuff where Draconians become their own race. To me, Draconians are the setting's equivalent of demons - they are aberrations, created by a horrible curse and utterly irredeemable, same as demons. Which makes them on the same level as cultists - the sort of thing you can use in an adventure without really having to worry about morality too much.

Problem with that is, what do you do with Dragonborn. Again, me personally, I'd make Dragonborn different from Draconians. Dragonborn are literally what they are - born of dragons. It would not hurt in Dragonlance to have a race that draws it's lineage from dragons. It does make sense, particularly in light of various Dragonlance stories where you have shapeshifted dragons being all romantic with various races.

I'm not sure why we need to make Dragonborn and Draconians the same. I think that's the way they will go, and simply make Draconians that follow Takhisis cultists stand ins - which makes it okay to kill them typically - and then we can have PC and NPC Draconians that aren't followers of Takhisis. Not the way I would go, but, I think that's the most likely path.

See, I really like the idea that draconians fought to become their own race and chart their own destiny. It's the one thing post Legends that I liked the most. Of course, it predates dragonborn as a PH race, so we'll have to slot them in. With a timeskip, dragonborn can be an offshoot of the draconians, or the result of different breeds of draconian "coming together", or even a normalization of the species by the gods.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Probably, the gunpowder has a DC versus Dispel Magic, equivalent to a spell slot, depending on its quality by its creator.

Maybe so, but if it works, it still means your weapons are now useless.