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]

It helps when you have the money to hire the best lawyers. It helps even more when you have the money to buy the worst politicians.

Anyways, weren't we talking about Dragonlance? So let's say you wanted to play in a "classic" Dragonlance game. How would you set up the Cleric class?

Initially, Goldmoon isn't really a Cleric at all, she simply has the ability to use the Blue Crystal Staff, which is basically a Staff of Healing? My memory is foggy, but I thought it wasn't until she lost the staff that she actually gained the ability to cast spells granted to her by Mishakal.

She destroyed the staff to kill the black dragon in Xak Tsaroth, and died but was brought back as a cleric of Mishakal. I would build her as a cleric, but narratively the staff is doing all the mystical stuff while she has it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Guess what, within a century or so of having gunpowder weapons, the fantasy style castle disappears.

Well, know, absolutely false.

It takes much longer than that, for one thing, but more importantly, people still lived in castles. Hell, people still live in castles. Early on they just stopped building new castles in the same way, they vert rarely went "hey we haven't defended the ramparts in 200 years lets tear down the old castle and build a manor instead."

But, even more important than any of that, a fantasy world doesn't have to follow Earth's timeline. How things played out in what order and with what speed are not inherent to the nature of the universe, they're just how things shook out for us in the single timeline we have direct knowledge of.

 

[James Gasik]

Really castles don't make a lot of sense in a D&D world anyways. What good are they going to be against dragons, for example?

Who needs a siege engine if you have giants throwing rocks. Some creatures have the ability to rip stone fortifications apart with their bare hands. A summoned Earth Elemental literally doesn't care, and so on.

Because it's not as if say, the Forgotten Realms was like our Earth during the medieval period and monsters and magic just sort of happened one day- these things have been part of the world for millenia!

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

o let's say you wanted to play in a "classic" Dragonlance game. How would you set up the Cleric class?

I'd let them be used as written, but they gain powers from their faith in whatever cult, heresy or heathen's way they worship. And, even more than other spellcaster, they are mistrusted. They go around blessing and curing people in the name of weird-*ss invisible creatures, that's some dark sorcery right there! And others profess the same madness that got the last King-Priest a mountain to the head! At least mages are more or less part of a caste system that allows mere commoners to spot the evil mage from 500 feet away, with its dark robe and all that.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

Also side note: jokes on anyone playing a Kender and expecting 5d6 gold pieces: the standard currency in Krynn is Steel. gold is worthless. YOU FOOLS

Ah, the most ridiculous economic system ever devised rears its ugly head.

 

[James Gasik]

More ridiculous than ceramic pieces?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

You may want to look at the Savage Coast Campaign Setting (affiliate link) then, from AD&D 2nd Edition, which does exactly that. As it says in the "Weapons and Equipment" section:

3rd edition Arthaus Ravenloft also had guns pretty integrated into the "advanced" domains of Lamordia, Dementileu, Mordent, Richemulot etc.

 

[humble minion]

3rd edition Arthaus Ravenloft also had guns pretty integrated into the "advanced" domains of Lamordia, Dementileu, Mordent, Richemulot etc.

Well, firearms are fairly prominent in the art for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft too, it's just that they don't get any attention in the text (and VRGtR leans heavily into 'everything except Darklords and PCs are non-real set dressing created by the mists to torment the Darklords' setting conceit, so it sidesteps around all the issues about who invented/designed/manufactures/etc firearms in the setting, which would necessarily impact things like industrialisation levels etc)

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Well, firearms are fairly prominent in the art for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft too, it's just that they don't get any attention in the text (and VRGtR leans heavily into 'everything except Darklords and PCs are non-real set dressing created by the mists to torment the Darklords' setting conceit, so it sidesteps around all the issues about who invented/designed/manufactures/etc firearms in the setting, which would necessarily impact things like industrialisation levels etc)

The 3rd edition setting didn't skate around this I know - explicitly talking about gun manufacturing and the like. Even said walking around with a sword and heavy armor in those domains would mark you as a rube.

 

[James Gasik]

Sadly, D&D is not ready for an armorless campaign without some sort of defense bonus like in Star Wars Saga Edition- ten thousand years ago, I had a DM try to run a Three Musketeers Swashbuckler game after he bought the Mighty Fortress supplement for 2e. We cheesed the heck out of our AC's, with high Dexterity, double proficiency slots in the free hand fighting style out of the Fighter's Handbook (plus the Warrior Swashbuckler's +2 AC in light armor) and it was still pretty rough.