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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[DarkCrisis]

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

The grey gem origin is unique. Just another fey creature is not.

That’s the difference

 

[Mecheon]

The grey gem origin is unique. Just another fey creature is not.

That’s the difference

Every race except humans, ogres, elves, gnomes (surprisingly) and draconians comes from the Greygem. Its... Its not really unique in setting. That's the same origin as minotaurs, dwarves, probably centaur, and the walrus and polar bear people.

Being a Fey race in DL is, shockingly, actually unique for the setting

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The grey gem origin is unique. Just another fey creature is not.

That’s the difference

That's a distinction without a difference. Both of them are "A Wizard Did It" justifications for their supernatural behaviors. It's still magic either way.

Okay. How about this. If they got rid of the Greygem origin and changed it to something else that wasn't "Feywild BS" that was equally unique to the Greygem origin . . . would you still dislike the change? Or do you just not like this change because it's a change?

 

[Parmandur]

What I DON'T love is Feat Chains. Feat Chains should die in a fire. And Backgrounds granting you a feat? That's either significant power creep (which is okay if it's ONLY in DragonLance as its "thing" like Theros' Supernatural Gifts or Ravnica's Guilds or Strixhavens Spell-granting Backgrounds), or else it means these feats shouldn't be feats and are a waste of a feat slot for anyone who didn't take those backgrounds - they're essentially the return of the Feat Tax.

These Background-dependent Feats are identical to what was in Strixhaven, actually. Seems to be the next thing.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Every race except humans, ogres, elves, gnomes (surprisingly) and draconians comes from the Greygem. Its... Its not really unique in setting. That's the same origin as minotaurs, dwarves, probably centaur, and the walrus and polar bear people.

Being a Fey race in DL is, shockingly, actually unique for the setting

It’s unique to the setting. Which again doing away with it just makes the setting more generic.

Which i get is WotCs point.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Gloom Stalker Ranger maybe?

Maybe. I was going for a more "power of light/solar bodies" theme, though.

Oh, I just realized. The Sun Soul Monk would work really well.

Yeah, I think that's it. Sun Monk, Moon Sorcerer and Cleric, and a Stars Druid. That would be cool.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't know, the party of PCs were always fond of the village of Bud-Light.

I don't always play in Kara-Tur.

But when I do, I start in the village of Dos-equis.

Yes, I am the most interesting DM in the world.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Every race except humans, ogres, elves, gnomes (surprisingly) and draconians comes from the Greygem. Its... Its not really unique in setting. That's the same origin as minotaurs, dwarves, probably centaur, and the walrus and polar bear people.

Being a Fey race in DL is, shockingly, actually unique for the setting

The Greygem was a thing of pure chaos though. It did weird and unique things to everyone involved. It's not unthinkable that that chaos uniquely connected the Kender to the Feywild at the time of their creation...

 

[Faolyn]

Their immunity to fear and resultant curiosity are 90% of what made them different. The remaining 10%, the kleptomania, is 90% of what made them obnoxious.

Fair enough.

 

[Faolyn]

twenty say they stop existing.

They got referenced in Tome of Foes and described as "stupid, smelly, and dirty...unsuitable even as servants."

I think if they get brought back, then they'll just be dwarfs that other dwarfs are racist to.