D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana: Heroes of Krynn Revisited

WotC's Jeremy Crawford has announced a new Unearthed Arcana article today with redesigns from the prior Heroes of Krynn UA based on feedback, and in the following video he discusses that feedback and what's in the article:

• New iteration of Kender based on feedback survey, due to mixed response. This time is a back to basics, aiming to capture 1E AD&D fearlessness, curiosity and taunting skills. Delve into their origins from Gnomes in deep history.
• Kender are no longer fey creatures who grab objects from the Feywild
• Tweaked Feats from prior article
• Tweaked Backgrounds from prior article
• Brand new rule giving a list of free Feats for ANY Background
• Free Feat rule for Level 4 for all characters that doesn't take the ASI away, based on a curated list
• Reveals that in the Adventure, healing magic is already back.

Heroes of Krynn Revisited | Unearthed Arcana | Dungeons & Dragons

Explore updated character options from the Dragonlance setting! This playtest document presents revised races, subclasses, backgrounds, and feats.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Weiley31]

God, that's so smart. I'm just gonna rip those background pages out and re-bind the book with a homebrew renown chart for each order. I don't know how I didn't think of that, especially as someone who shills hard for Ravnica and Theros.

Glad I can ever be of service guv'ner!

 

[Maxperson]

How many UAs have had a revision?

Psionics has had a few.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The thing to remember about these superiority dice is they recharge on a long rest not a short one unlike the battlemaster. Which is why they can be so apparently generous with them; that's proficiency bonus + 2 per day total.

I'm interested to see Alert, Sentinel, and War Caster on the level 4 list. All very useful second tier feats but not in the top tier set. While the level 1 list has tough and skilled as your main vanilla options. That's a limited but pretty good set at 4th and a limited but fun set at level 1 - which seems to match the background.

I think the winning Knights of Solamnia are rangers. Precision Attack helps everyone but is really good for sharpshooters power attacking, and menacing strike is amazing anti-melee control on an archer while goading strike is fun support. But to me the thing no one is talking about is that you get +1 to a stat from the Knight feats - which allows you to "cheat" an extra stat boost if you started with a Dex or Str (or other stat) of 17. (Cheesing it this means you can have at level 4 a Dex 18 ranger with Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, and four superiority dice thanks to variant lineage).

And RIP Kender - and not a thing of value was lost. They're now halfling's blander cousins - but that's a lot better than the OG "Steal from the party" kender.

 

[Maxperson]

They absolutely do not. The background is setting specific unless the DM says otherwise.

Yeah, but on Krynn a 20th level Battle Master Knight of Solamnia would have six d12 superiority dice, four d8 superiority dice and six d6 superiority dice. I wouldn't think the background dice would improve like the class dice do. Still, 16 superiority dice is pretty awesome.

 

[Juomari Veren]

And RIP Kender - and not a thing of value was lost. They're now halfling's blander cousins - but that's a lot better than the OG "Steal from the party" kender.

They already got rid of that is the issue. They had a perfectly playable race that wasn't even problematic in any of those ways, that just had the ability to borrow things from hammerspace a few times a day. They just made it completely vanilla and meaninglessly unique for basically no reason, I really don't get why people would complain about an ability that doesn't require kender to steal anything but retains their "huh, how did I find this?" qualities.

 

[Helena Real]

I'm a happy GM & player. This feels much more in line with a modernized version of Krynn, and the Kender is now 100% less disruptive! Love the immunity to fear and the taunt.

The free feats look strong—and I love them for it! It'll definitely be a great incentive to have more Knights of Solamnia at the table and more arcane spellcasters who dare to undertake The Test in order to get the benefits of becoming a Mage of High Sorcery.

Long live the Lance!

 

[Greg Benage]

I think the winning Knights of Solamnia are rangers. Precision Attack helps everyone but is really good for sharpshooters power attacking, and menacing strike is amazing anti-melee control on an archer while goading strike is fun support.

Yeah, makes total sense. Everyone remembers the Knights of Solamnia for their <checks notes> elite hand-crossbowmen.

 

[ko6ux]

Treat them as Faction rewards in those kinds of scenarios.

Thanks for the suggestion. That's probably how I would handle this current implementation in my own campaign -- just turn the initial feats into faction rewards exclusively.

 

[Neonchameleon]

They already got rid of that is the issue. They had a perfectly playable race that wasn't even problematic in any of those ways, that just had the ability to borrow things from hammerspace a few times a day. They just made it completely vanilla and meaninglessly unique for basically no reason, I really don't get why people would complain about an ability that doesn't require kender to steal anything but retains their "huh, how did I find this?" qualities.

I know. That's why RIP Kender now. The previous version of kender were at least fluffy; these are just ... halfling knock-offs. But there's a major disagreement between people who don't want kender to change and those who think that kender are the worst race ever to hit D&D by a comfortable margin. And to not offend both group kender became bland.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah, makes total sense. Everyone remembers the Knights of Solamnia for their <checks notes> elite hand-crossbowmen.

That was kinda my point There should probably be a "melee attacks only" restriction for the Solamnic Knight maneuvers.

But then the elite hand-crossbowmen are an artifact of 5e feats anyway.