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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dnd.wizards.com

 

[JEB]

The Survey's Up.

Done.

It's interesting that they're still asking us about the Creating Your Character rules, I honestly thought those were a lock. Maybe they're still weighing how to handle that in 2024 edition.

 

[GreyLord]

Took the survey. Honestly, the biggest problem I had was making the Knights and Wizards as feats rather than archetypes. As I mentioned, WoHS were literally like the first archetype ever made for D&D...why switch from what would mesh so well now...

 

[Mind of tempest]

done the survey asked for a psion at the end to make them have to deal with it, the light background really need to be better for martial characters

 

[JEB]

Took the survey. Honestly, the biggest problem I had was making the Knights and Wizards as feats rather than archetypes. As I mentioned, WoHS were literally like the first archetype ever made for D&D...why switch from what would mesh so well now...

Pretty sure they really wanted to do floating subclasses as originally intended for Strixhaven, but when that wasn't well received they fell back to super-backgrounds and feat chains as the replacement. My feedback was that they should consider trying floating subclasses again.

 

[darjr]

Also a thread for the survey if you are so inclined

D&D 5E - Heroes of Krynn Survey is live!

https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6777654/D-D-UA-Survey-59-Heroes-of-Krynn the the following if the above link doesn’t work. https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/survey-heroes-krynn

www.enworld.org

 

[Faolyn]

Pretty sure they really wanted to do floating subclasses as originally intended for Strixhaven, but when that wasn't well received they fell back to super-backgrounds and feat chains as the replacement. My feedback was that they should consider trying floating subclasses again.

I really like the idea of floating subclasses, but I really don't think it would work in this edition. In 6em they could make it so that all classes gain archetype abilities at the same time, or at least within a level or two of each other, and that you pick your archetype at the same level (assuming they continue with archetypes in 6e). At that point, floating subclasses would work. But it's too uneven right now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

As long as the Jedi mind trick is considered funny (at least as recently as Episode 7), you're not going to get the system to vilify enchantment magic in general.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, in D&D anyway, where you can declare you're hitting for non-lethal.



If you're using it to lock someone down with some kind of mental hold or making them drop a weapon with a command spell, how is that different than a taser? Where is the line between a charm person to get a friendly reaction and the high level bard turning on the manipulation/charisma roll?

Anyway, it still feels to me like it might be the better choice in some situations. (The three I gave in the previous post.) And, of course, better is not necessarily good and I agree that actually controlling someone for anything extensive is not good, and I'd expect Xavier to be ostracized.

In any case, if someone said in session 0 of a not-psionically-focused game that they hated it then I'd leave it out. Just like if someone had a horrible reaction to bladed weapons and brought it up in session 0 of non fantasy-combat game I'd leave them out. And I'd portray Xavier or the brutal bladed killer as not good bad even if no one had said anything.

Actually, every sword strike in D&D is nonlethal except (maybe) the last one.

 

[Weiley31]

Yeah, no. Mind control is mind control.

The recent Wandavision show heavily dealt with the negative aspects of mind control. I think it’s a reasonable subject for games too and not something to merely dispense with.

RE: Mind Control, et. al.

In the 616 we have Professor X, Mantis, Jean Grey, Karma, Moon Dragon, Dani Moonstar.
In the MCU we have Mantis and Wanda.
In Star Trek how close is the Vulcan mind meld?
In Star Wars we have the Jedi Mind Trick

In Wanda's case, she herself has serious mental and emotional problems. It doesn't condone her actions, but sometimes it makes her sympathetic. Professor X is clearly a jerkass. He goes on and on about using his powers responsibly, but he has repeatedly done things even supervillains would look at and go "dude...no".

Now, can a hero use mind control powers in a good way? It's a tool, like any other. I'm sure you could. Modify Memory could be used at someone's request to remove painful memories (the ethics of this are debatable, of course, but it's possible this could be a good thing). And using your powers to stop evil people is probably at least a Neutral act, if not actually Good.

The real debate happens on the Law/Chaos axis, which is when sparks will really fly.

Let's not forget Revan: Straight up gets his mind reprogrammed in an unconscious state to become a soldier of the Republic. Or the Clones Troopers, who pretty much get reprogrammed/mind controlled via artificial means

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Zone of Truth doesn't prevent the subject from remaining silent. It would be useless by itself against a hostile witness.