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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[Mecheon]

((Sue me, I picked up a fantastic pdf where someone had done 5e stats for EVERY single monster in Monster Hunter))

... I have that exact same PDF, and am just waiting for the oppertunity to inexplicably drop a Bazelgeuse into the middle of any other fight.

 

[Hussar]

... I have that exact same PDF, and am just waiting for the oppertunity to inexplicably drop a Bazelgeuse into the middle of any other fight.

I’ve never played the game but the monsters are FANTASTIC! Highly recommend.

 

[Mordhau]

Well because they basically replace every weapon. And that’s not the aesthetic I’m looking for.

Frankly I wouldn’t mind winding the clock back from the early Renaissance era that DnD usually inhabits. Drop back to about 1000 AD and I’d personally be happier.

Give me more Vikings DnD than three musketeers.

Well yeah. By all means have no guns. Or have guns like in the sixteenth century where they were common but in many ways pretty crap and people still wore armour and weilded swords commonly. And I'd love to see a bit more flexibility or abstractedness to D&D so not every setting was assumed to have full plate.

But what I don't get is why something as mundane as an arquebus should be treated with kid gloves.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The crossbow was banned in the fight against other Christians, but allowed in the war against the infidels.

Other matter is the impact in the war if "artificers" invented the motor to be used in war wagons, and this could cause the end of chilvary. That motors could be used in the siege machines to destroy walls and doors, something like chainsaws or drills.

War wagon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And mind-remote-controlled war beasts would be the perfect cannon fodders, cheaper to be sacrificed.

And Hasbro could order more no-living-humanoids to be used in the battlefield (constructs, elementals..) because they would rather D&D to be more kid-friendly. Maybe there are pixies riding in plant monsters like an biotech version of mechas, outsiders who disappear or desintgrate when they are defeated (something like the snake men hit by the sword of stellar metal in Conan's cartoon).

What if the cult of the evil elemental eye send agents to the Krynnsphere to break the Graygem and free Chaos? Or to create secret temples in the

Could a zone, a temple or a dungeon, be blesses with a protection against ballistic damage for the defenders? Maybe with a special ritual could be casted by low level spellcasters.

---

Hasbro/WotC has got some partnership with the publisher Farshore, and this has got authors with enough experencie to writte fantasy for teenages. You can imagine what they could do with a franchise as Dragonlance. Of course, it would be like when you ask special meal in certain restaurant and you notice the tast has changed because there is a new cook in the kitchen.

 

[James Gasik]

Some people like their fantasy Ren Faire settings. They don't like modern technology or science fantasy elements in them. They are ok with people not being dirty, with there being running water or indoor plumbing, and magic crossbows and wands of lightning bolts, but a pinfire revolver sends them into a tizzy.

I have a guy who abjectly refuses to have alchemists, artificers, or firearms in his campaigns because he claims to hate "cross genre stuff", but one of his favorite games of all time is Final Fantasy 7, where the hero lives in a world of guns, lasers, industrial revolution and giant monsters- and all he has is a sword the size of Rhode Island.

I don't get it, I mean, science fantasy has been part of D&D's DNA ever since Blackmoor. Tales of crumbling ancient civilizations deep in the earth, the Invoked Devastation, the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O, the Machine of Lum the Mad, Expedition fo the Barrier Peaks, even Psionics, are all weird pulp fantasy elements scattered across the landscape of D&D.

But for some, guns are a bridge too far, because their brains insist that they be treated like death cannons that would drastically alter their beloved fantasy worlds forever. I think Eberron is the most technologically advanced setting produced for D&D, and it's barely tolerated since it's technology is all based on magic and supernatural elements, like harnessed elementals.

But you don't see guns in Eberron. Because someone, maybe Rich Baker himself, realized "people aren't going to like that". In 2e, the Realms was on the path towards becoming an Eberron.

Now it's not. That's not an accident.

 

[Hussar]

Well yeah. By all means have no guns. Or have guns like in the sixteenth century where they were common but in many ways pretty crap and people still wore armour and weilded swords commonly. And I'd love to see a bit more flexibility or abstractedness to D&D so not every setting was assumed to have full plate.

But what I don't get is why something as mundane as an arquebus should be treated with kid gloves.

You're right that an arquebus isn't an issue. But, players being so very pragmatic are going to realize pretty quickly that a small barrel full of gunpowder and nails kills a dragon. There are so many problems that become much easier when you can blow stuff up.

Would make defending castles a LOT easier though. Hey, Mr. Dragon, let's see what happens when I open up a battery of bombards on your ass. Or load grape shot into my cannon.

It wasn't just small arms that ended the age of armor. It was the big stuff that made ENORMOUS differences. You like a castle in your D&D right? Guess what, within a century or so of having gunpowder weapons, the fantasy style castle disappears.

And, let's not forget, sure, we can have adamantine armor. Why not magical bullets? Or, adamantine bullets for that matter.

Imagine how devastating something like Animate Object gets when you have gunpowder artillery.

The point being, it's not quite as cut and dried as people make it out to be. It really isn't hand held firearms that makes the big, sweeping setting changes. It's the big stuff. Cannons mean no more castles pretty quickly. Bombards and grenades have a massive impact on combat. Sure, the massed musket forces come eventually, but, that's centuries after gunpowder has already massively changed the world.

 

[James Gasik]

Considering that Wizards already exist, I would argue that medieval-style fortifications are already obsolete in any setting that has them.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Considering that Wizards already exist, I would argue that medieval-style fortifications are already obsolete in any setting that has them.

There are differences. If wizards are rare, then they have better things to do than be living artillery for some jerkwad noble. If wizards aren't rare, then for every spell in offense, there is a defense. Cannons can't really be defended against other than by changing how fortifications work (well, or wizards developing spells to ward against cannons), and no matter how many wizards you can muster, once cannons are a thing, you can probably make more cannons than wizards.

Granted, there could be some really good adventures to write around the disruptive nature of gunpowder artillery, but it remains that they would be disruptive, so it's understandable why some people wouldn't want gunpowder to be a thing at all in most campaigns.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, I was thinking about spells that can dramatically shift the nature of war, and trivialize fortifications. Move Earth and Passwall were two I considered. WotC has done a good job of removing some of the really problematic spells from the PHB, like Transmute Rock to Mud, but if you were a Wizard or Druid and some jerk's keep was annoying you, I don't think it would take long to think of a strategy to make people realize stone walls do not a fortress make.

And again, this does hinge on how easy the gunpowder equivalent is to come by. If it remains the province of the wealthy (and the adventurous), I don't think it would be any more disruptive than the shenanigans casters can get up to now.

However, I will admit, D&D has no rules to govern large scale conflicts, and that's probably a GOOD thing- the value of an individual Fighter on the field of battle is meaningless. Sure, you can attack three times which means you kill as efficiently as 3 soldiers.

Big deal, a Wizard can launch all the soldiers in a 50' radius 100' into the air and drop them with one spell! You just have to keep him safe from stray arrows and cavalry charges...

But this ties back into D&D's origins with Chainmail, when that is exactly what Magic Users were, portable artillery and siege units!

 

[Hussar]

There are differences. If wizards are rare, then they have better things to do than be living artillery for some jerkwad noble. If wizards aren't rare, then for every spell in offense, there is a defense. Cannons can't really be defended against other than by changing how fortifications work (well, or wizards developing spells to ward against cannons), and no matter how many wizards you can muster, once cannons are a thing, you can probably make more cannons than wizards.

Granted, there could be some really good adventures to write around the disruptive nature of gunpowder artillery, but it remains that they would be disruptive, so it's understandable why some people wouldn't want gunpowder to be a thing at all in most campaigns.

Considering how well something like the Spellplague or various other RSE have occurred in settings, could you imagine the reaction to gunpowder? People still lose their minds over adding dragonborn to Forgotten Realms and that barely causes a ripple. The odds that WotC will ever even consider adding gunpowder are spectacularly small.