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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[doctorbadwolf]

Where is the line between a charm person to get a friendly reaction and the high level bard turning on the manipulation/charisma roll?

You’re kidding. The fact that the mechanics make it so the bard PC essentially can’t fail, doesn’t make their words within the fiction into mind control.

Also a sword can be used to defeat someone without killing them IRL. It…happened quite a lot, throughout history.

 

[Cadence]

Edit: Just reread your #1599 post (quoted in the one following this, where you mention charm person in particular). It feels like we aren't that far off...

You’re kidding. The fact that the mechanics make it so the bard PC essentially can’t fail, doesn’t make their words within the fiction into mind control.

The bard using their words and charisma to beguile, gaslight, and brainwash someone without fail feels a lot worse to me than momentarily making the guard drop their weapon (with command), making them forget you snuck past (wiping out a few seconds of memory), making them not see you (invisibility a la the Shadow), or making them tell you where the kidnapped kids are (digging for that one fact in their brain).

If we're comparing full beguile-gaslight-brainwash effect to full beguile-gaslight-brainwash effect, the mundane bard talking way doesn't seem incredibly better to me than using magical mind control to do it. What makes it so different if the chance of success is the same?

Is the effect of "Charm Person" (make them think you're a friendly acquaintance for an hour) in 5e more limited than what cult leaders often end up doing? (Which, granted, is a pretty low bar!)

Using hold person seems likely to cause less long term damage than sapping them or less likelihood of cardiac arrest than a stun gun.

Also a sword can be used to defeat someone without killing them IRL. It…happened quite a lot, throughout history.

It was "maim or kill". Sure, you can knock them out with the pommel? (Concussion risk?) Flat of the blade seems a bit non-efficient if they're going to be fighting back while armed. How was it usually done?

 

[Hussar]

I really wish we could just straight up relegate most enchantment to "monster stuff", frankly. Charm Person can be seen as closer to illussion than mind control, and worded in a way that supports that usage, but beyond that..."I heroically take control of his mind and make him murder his best friend" is not a statement with any sensible usage.

I know too many people who have been abused and who are uncomfortable with fantasy mind control for that reason, to agree.

It's nice when we can agree on something.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, magic is problematic, it can be very easily abused, and we give it to Wizards, who generally have no sense of right or wrong "hey, what would happen if I magically spliced an owl and a bear?" "I don't know, dude, try it out!".

Joking aside, if a player was triggered by abuses of Enchantment, I would take it seriously, but I'd have to (gently) point out that this is a game, and bad things happen sometimes in this one. Like the time I accidentally triggered a player's phobia by having an Imp take the form of a centipede.

I'm not going to go out of my way to attack you with zombies if you have necrophobia, but it's D&D. Zombies happen.

That's not really the issue though. Or, at least, not the issue I was thinking of. I wasn't so much worried about triggering trauma (although, maybe I should be) but, taking a more higher altitude view that when you break it down, as @doctorbadwolf points out, literally forcing someone to murder their friend is rarely a heroic thing. Sure, we have Jedi mind tricks of "This is not the droid you're looking for" but, then again, in most genre works, any sort of mind control is seen as evil or at least evil adjacent.

Even in the comics, the point is examined with characters like Professor Xavier and then David Halleran (sp) as Legion. In the TV show of Legion, David's rape of his girlfriend is a major plot point.

D&D tends to elide the whole issue and not look at it too hard. But, really, it is there.

 

[Hussar]

"Well, we can't have Karma or Xavier or Moondragon just freeze up his mind or make him drop the gun. Guess we need to shoot him to save the kids." (and don't read the other one's mind to see where the folks are being held captive, and don't make the third one forget we walked by so we don't have to do something worse to stop them from saying we snuck in, or...)

I mean, Xavier has done awful stuff, and it shouldn't be held up as good. And folks with swords and fireballs and illusions and gp have done awful stuff too.

You do have a point. There are gradients here.

After all, is a Fear Spell or Hypnotic Pattern more evil than Fireball? Cloudkill? After all, while you can potentially not kill someone with a sword, you can't with fireball. That's it's sole purpose is to kill something with fire. Like you say, incapacitating the bad guy without actually killing them or forcing them to do something (other than stop) isn't really any more evil than covering them with acid.

I wonder if there shouldn't be a split in Enchantment between Compulsion (spells that force the target to actively take actions) and ... I'm struggling for a word... Stopping? Incapacitating? (spells that force the target to just stop what they are doing in a fairly non-lethal way). What @doctorbadwolf is talking about is the compulsion spells where you force someone to do something and you can force them to do, more or less, anything. What you are talking about are the Incapacitating spells, which, I would agree, generally aren't going to be any more evil than direct damage stuff.

Granted, this is a pretty far tangent from Dragonlance.

 

[James Gasik]

It came about because supposedly the authors had a disagreement about certain legacy elements of D&D that haven't...aged...well. Kind of like a Lich. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, then we need to really examine the good old game closely, because there's a LOT of stuff that falls apart under the microscope of our world's morality.

Either you accept that D&D has different stakes when it comes to right and wrong (as it was written to have in the dawn of time) or you accept that D&D has to change into something very different than the swords & sorcery hijinks where a random trap can turn the Paladin into a woman for the yuks.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's nice when we can agree on something.

Once in a blue moon!

 

[LongTimeLurker]

But there are also much more mundane/morally good uses of Enchantment magic. You can use Suggestion to force your child to eat their vegetables. You can use Geas on a villain to keep them from doing evil. You can prevent a criminal from getting away with Command. Dominate Person can be used to force a murderer to confess their guilt.

All of those examples strip a person of their free will and personal autonomy. That you think they're examples of moral/good uses of enchantment magic is quite telling.

 

[Scribe]

You can use Suggestion to force your child to eat their vegetables.

As this is the most gentle of your examples, I'll call it out.

Its still forcing someone to do something against their will. Its still removing choice from a person. If they remember this after the spell has worn off, they will still live with the fact they have been forced (in this case by their Parent no less) into performing an action they would not have done otherwise.

As I'm currently going through 'that teenage phase' with my son, let me tell you, this would not go well.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

I won't argue that enchantment magic certainly is very dubious in terms of morality, but in at least a few instances mentioned it certainly seems to be more moral than actually physically harming/killing the person in question.

Using Command to stop a fleeing criminal suspect seems more moral than trying to shoot an arrow into their leg for example. Geas does actually cause potential physical harm, so it's a bit harder to justify it. Although the alternative is probably locking them in a dungeon somewhere, so it's not like they are keeping their autonomy in any case.

The dominate person to learn the truth is problematic because the spell would force them to say whatever you want, so it could easily be abused. Zone of Truth is a far better example of an enchantment spell that could be used for that purpose. The suggestion spell for making a child eat their vegetables seems like extreme overkill, and a bad idea in the long run for reasons Scribe already mentioned.