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.

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Weiley31]

Right?!? Next stop: Ravenloft

The Cyre 1313 is now boarding: last call

AAAAAALLLL ABOOOOOOOOOARDDDDDD!!!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[Erdric Dragin]

I haven’t read it yet, but I have no issue with the concept.

When you have to retcon an entire game to deeply shove the Feywild into every single thing related to D&D, it's pretty degrading. This goes against the entire background origins of the Kender race. Fans don't want their lore messed with for no reason. Pretty sure not EVERY aspect of D&D needs Feywild element. Can't WotC have a few worlds that don't have such a strong fey influence?

 

[This Effin’ GM]

When you have to retcon an entire game to deeply shove the Feywild into every single thing related to D&D, it's pretty degrading. This goes against the entire background origins of the Kender race. Fans don't want their lore messed with for no reason. Pretty sure not EVERY aspect of D&D needs Feywild element. Can't WotC have a few worlds that don't have such a strong fey influence?

Eberron doesn’t have a strong fey influence, and if all we get for fey in Dragonlance is Kender I’d say we made it out pretty unscathed

 

[Erdric Dragin]

I'd firstly say making Kender fey is more tying to their original inspiration. They were dragged from Halflings and dragged more in the direction of mythological little people which are, well, basically the foundation for what Fey are. Fey inspiration is in their blood when they were dragged away from being halflings due to injecting more of it to explain the 'Why are they all good thieves?' question. Kender have always skirted the fey lines since day 1

also can I just say its actually kind of dumb like 90% of races in Krynn come from a single random ass magical rock. can't have no competing mythologies or vagueness, nope. The Graygem did it and any other answer is forbidden


Yeah, that's just called 'realism'. We use gold for coinage because it was relatively rare, relatively easy to get into suitable format for being coinage, and didn't have any other use at the same time

Steel has a very useful other use and is a relative pain to make. Why would it ever be used for coinage and not them just skipping right past into the paper stage?

Because watering D&D and its settings down to be cardboard copies of each other really does take a giant dump on the game's legacies and uniqueness. What's the point of the settings if they all use the exact same premise for everything for the sake of making things liquefied and digestable for the rookies? Surely people can't be that heartless to think it's ok to trash an entire legacy of gamers pre-4e just so WotC can make easy cash pleasing a demographic that can't focus on their books after the first paragraph?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As I said, there are ways to make this more elegant. But instead they went the lazy magic/Feywild path, or as I call it, "the WotC way".

Okay. I have a serious question for you and everyone else that now for some reason hates this new version of Kender. I want a serious answer, because I cannot fathom the logic behind this position besides disliking change for the sake of not liking change.

How in the world is "Kender are magic creatures from the Feywild that get magical pockets to produce items" in any way inferior to "Kender are magically cursed creatures to be kleptomaniacs that are constantly pulling things out of their pockets that they have no idea how they acquired them"? If they were always magical before . . . why in the world are you complaining about them being magical now as if it were a new thing? They just got rid of the part that made people hate them (kleptomania) and gave an excuse for them existing in the rest of the D&D worlds if the DM wants to include them. They moved the magic from "magical curse" to "magical Feywild pockets".

So . . . care to elaborate here?

 

[TwoSix]

Surely people can't be that heartless to think it's ok to trash an entire legacy of gamers pre-4e just so WotC can make easy cash pleasing a demographic that can't focus on their books after the first paragraph?

Oh, I'm absolutely that heartless.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Because watering D&D and its settings down to be cardboard copies of each other really does take a giant dump on the game's legacies and uniqueness. What's the point of the settings if they all use the exact same premise for everything for the sake of making things liquefied and digestable for the rookies? Surely people can't be that heartless to think it's ok to trash an entire legacy of gamers pre-4e just so WotC can make easy cash pleasing a demographic that can't focus on their books after the first paragraph?

(Looks around at thread that has derailed multiple times because a demographic can’t get past the words “fey Wild” and “supernatural”) yeah what a silly generation wotc is going after.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

what races had ties to the Shadowfell? Just shadar-kai as I recall.

Ravenloft is in the Shadowfell, so its lineages probably qualify, too. Dhampir, Reborn, and maybe Hexblood (as a Feywild-Shadowfell hybrid?) count. I would like to see more, though. Like Shadow Dragonborn, Shades, Phantoms, and similar races.

 

[Mecheon]

When you have to retcon an entire game to deeply shove the Feywild into every single thing related to D&D, it's pretty degrading. This goes against the entire background origins of the Kender race. Fans don't want their lore messed with for no reason. Pretty sure not EVERY aspect of D&D needs Feywild element. Can't WotC have a few worlds that don't have such a strong fey influence?

The background of the Kender is they needed a way to explain why halflings (Who were basically hobbits in the day) were always thieves, so they drew from the various 'little people' mythology from real life. It gave them that childlike curiosity and the never-growing-up attitude that is, Kender in a nutshell

Fey has been in the Kender's blood since day 1. If the Feywild existed back then? It would have been their place of origin. The only reason it didn't is because back then fairy stuff was seen as twee and not cool, whereas nowerdays fairy stuff is seen as slightly terrifying, and mystical.

Because watering D&D and its settings down to be cardboard copies of each other really does take a giant dump on the game's legacies and uniqueness. What's the point of the settings if they all use the exact same premise for everything for the sake of making things liquefied and digestable for the rookies? Surely people can't be that heartless to think it's ok to trash an entire legacy of gamers pre-4e just so WotC can make easy cash pleasing a demographic that can't focus on their books after the first paragraph?

Contrarily, I don't think we should be beholden to bad writing decisions that don't make logical sense. If something needs to be relevant in this day and age, you need to account for a modern audience. If something does not work, you shouldn't have to keep it just because someone wrote it in. Do we really need three towns in Kara Tur named after real-life beer brands?

Dragonlance's strength and the reason people talk about it is its story and characters. Dragonlance's strength has never been "This random magical rock made 90% of the actually interesting races" or "The coins are steel"

I was fine with them dumping off half the "Hammer Horror with the serial numbers filed off" Darklords from Ravenloft, along with the non-functional universe to try and make it a campaign setting that apparently never heard of trade or cultural osmosis. You'd better believe I'd ditch the bad baggage from Dragonlance the moment you gave me an excuse to, and I'd start with alignment restrictions on the elves and very specifically just flat out call Certain Groups Of Them evil

 

[This Effin’ GM]

The background of the Kender is they needed a way to explain why halflings (Who were basically hobbits in the day) were always thieves, so they drew from the various 'little people' mythology from real life. It gave them that childlike curiosity and the never-growing-up attitude that is, Kender in a nutshell

Fey has been in the Kender's blood since day 1. If the Feywild existed back then? It would have been their place of origin. The only reason it didn't is because back then fairy stuff was seen as twee and not cool, whereas nowerdays fairy stuff is seen as slightly terrifying, and mystical.


Contrarily, I don't think we should be beholden to bad writing decisions that don't make logical sense. If something needs to be relevant in this day and age, you need to account for a modern audience. If something does not work, you shouldn't have to keep it just because someone wrote it in. Do we really need three towns in Kara Tur named after real-life beer brands?

Dragonlance's strength and the reason people talk about it is its story and characters. Dragonlance's strength has never been "This random magical rock made 90% of the actually interesting races" or "The coins are steel"

I was fine with them dumping off half the "Hammer Horror with the serial numbers filed off" Darklords from Ravenloft, along with the non-functional universe to try and make it a campaign setting that apparently never heard of trade or cultural osmosis. You'd better believe I'd ditch the bad baggage from Dragonlance the moment you gave me an excuse to, and I'd start with alignment restrictions on the elves and very specifically just flat out call Certain Groups Of Them evil

Untrue. I am only here for the Greygem. Give me ball of chaos or give me death, WotC cowards.

Joking you are spot on.