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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[Yaarel]

So a temptation? That's good.

Cmon! Ruining the game because of overpowered broken mechanics? Thats bad!

The trouble is that the defilers in the fiction didn't match up with the defilers in the mechanics. In the mechanics, they were separate classes. In the fiction, they were all just magic-users...when they didn't care, they defiled. When they needed a quick spell, they defiled. So making them distinct mechanically undermines the fiction. I'd rather preserve the fiction and make the rules match the fiction. Rather than ignore the fiction and preserve the 2E mechanical distinction.

Here, the defiler and the preserver are the exact same Wizard character. The preserver is the one who doesnt use the highest spell slot. The defiler is the one who does. Both are normal Wizards. The flavor is, using the most powerful slot is slightly more than they channel safely and they end up destroying the element of water (almost like nuclear fission). The destruction of water has mostly drained the Elemental Plane of Water, which is why Athas is so out of whack.

Now the feats are something different. The dragon sorcerer knows how to destroy water in a way that optimally benefits from the destruction of water, to boost the power of spells above what a Wizard can normally do. This technique is kept secret and only taught to a select few. The defiler feat represents this forbidden knowledge. The feat taker can heighten the highest slot, but only if water and plantlife is nearby to be destroyed, which isnt always available on Athas.

The preserver feat represents the knowledge of the evangelions, to use the highest slot safely (like a normal Wizard) but also to actually create new water and plantlife, seemingly out of nothing. This feat represents the knowledge that can save Athas from apocalyptic destruction.

Everyone has psionics on Athas. Everyone and everything has psionics. Even the plants and animals.

But some are better at psionic than others. The Wizards rarely bother with it.

 

[overgeeked]

Cmon! Ruining the game because of overpowered broken mechanics? Thats bad!

If you think the game is ruined by overpowered stuff, I've got bad news for you.

The preserver feat represents the knowledge of the evangelions, to use the highest slot safely (like a normal Wizard) but also to actually create new water and plantlife, seemingly out of nothing. This feat represents the knowledge that can save Athas from apocalyptic destruction.

So it's something that maybe 3 people in the history of the setting should ever have...yet it will be taken by everyone. So, again, creating a dissonance between the fiction and the mechanics.

But some are better at psionic than others.

Sure. But literally everyone and everything has it.

The Wizards rarely bother with it.

Maybe on your Athas. But not in the fiction.

 

[overgeeked]

Just to add it wasn’t that long ago that I really thought we’d never see legal sales of the older stuff again, especially IN PRINT of all things.

Right. Now if only the POD prices weren't jacked.

Or a third party publishing an almost perfect clone of BX with expansions in an over half million Kickstarter.

One of several different clones and one of several different Kickstarters focused on retroclones. It's a great time to be a fan of older D&D games.

My grognard inside is giddy.

Same.

WotC making the prior happen and allowing the latter is fantastic.

They should be praised when they deserve it. PDF and POD of the older stuff is great.

Once they put out the OGL and SRD the latter was inevitable. There's nothing they could really do about it anyway.

 

[teitan]

I've three basic opinions on this:

• I like the new sorcerer subclass
• The new Kender are vastly improved. And no longer something that tells players to behave antisocially. Old Kender were some of the few things I outright banned. I'm not sure what to think of the new version - but not sure is a vast improvement on Kill It With Fire.
• Raistlin was always a warlock. He tired out and ran out of spells easily but recovered them by resting - and had an explicit Undead patron. 5e rules allow him to be much closer to the book version than the edition he was designed for did.

Ehhhh no. Raistlin wasn’t a warlock. All wizards in Dragonlance novels were described as being worn out when they ran out of spells. Raistlin had a much wider spell arsenal than any warlock would ever have. Now in 5e his relationship with Fistandantilus is hard to represent beyond hand waving and there is nothing wrong with hand waving. We don’t need a mechanic for everything or to explain things, that’s a cancerous outgrowth of 3.x that sucked the fun right out of the room.

 

[Ogre Mage]

1. Kender, as written, were absolutely loathed as a race. Probably the most banned race in the history of the game. Yes, I'm not saying it was universal and obviously some people liked them, but, as written, kender were a huge problem at the table.

Back in the old days, whenever I saw a kender my impulse reaction was to cast a spell which would cause its death.

 

[Mecheon]

Yes, there's no rationale for them to be Feywild.

See, I'd say on the other hand the Kender concept comes from fairy beings. Little People is a big 'Fey' thing. Its the wellspring gnomes and halflings always drew from, and Gnomes went further on the fey side since day one. 'Hobbit' is possibly a super obscure term for a fairy of some sort, probably a hobgoblin, and, well, hobgoblins are 'house goblins'. Brownies, house elves. They've always had that fey side, just, tried to hide it away

Plus, y'know. The whole 'Kender literately have elven ears, which in this day and age is p much a sure sign of fey'. Youthful lack of being able to tell stealing is wrong, fair stab of seeming Peter Pan influence. Fey is absolutely in their blood.

And, well, Dragonlance has a sort of proto-Feywild around. Mythical planar forest thing

The argument would be the same if I proposed that we make Dwarves into Fey because they too were created by the Greygem.

I'd argue more its a case for dwarves to get more magical stuff. Also the ability to turn into badgers. Also possibly turning into stone if the sun hits them. Depends what myth you're pulling on

 

[AnotherGuy]

They already did and it was GLORIOUS.

And this coming from the guy that doesn't want to hamstring the planescape cosmology onto every setting
(Just a cheeky dig)

 

[Yaarel]

If you think the game is ruined by overpowered stuff, I've got bad news for you.

Striving for balance is good enough.

So it's something that maybe 3 people in the history of the setting should ever have...yet it will be taken by everyone. So, again, creating a dissonance between the fiction and the mechanics.

It is possible for a Wizard to take a psionic feat, and not take a preserver feat or a defiler feat.

The Wizard would still defile or preserve depending on whether they use their highest slot or not.

The feat is special enhacement of defilement or preservation.

Sure. But literally everyone and everything has it.

Maybe on your Athas. But not in the fiction.

Maybe the special feats for preservers and defilers are psionic after all. To actually destroy the element of water is normally impossible. That is something arcane cant do. Perhaps it is the psionics augmenting the arcane that unleashes the water into arcane energy. Of course, now Athas is broken, and any abuse of arcane futher destroys water. But the use of the feat accelerates the apocalyptic destruction of water.

Oppositely to create water out of nothing is something arcane cant do. But psionic augmenting arcane can. This feat helps in its own small way to restore the elemental balance.

 

[Lycurgon]

I like how they solved the klepto issue with Kender. Rather than promoting PVP thieving, replacing this with an interesting ability that gives people a reason to think they might be thieves is a good idea in my opinion.
But I do think that the UA kender are weak. I am not sure there is a need for the Ace ability to wait until 3rd level, it is flavourful but not much more than a ribbon ability. I also think GP that glimmers is pretty useless, people are unlikely to accept it as real. They need more, need to be improved in some way, maybe another ability or 2.

I am okay with setting specific backgrounds giving feats and would be happy if it become standard for backgrounds in then 2024 revision. My biggest issue is that all character types need to have equal access to them. It is unfair if Mages, Knights and religious characters have options but rogues and non-Knight warriors don't have the options. I assume they haven't shown us everything, but I am not confident that they will have something for all concepts.

I really like the concept of the Moon Sorcerer but seems too powerful. Knowing 3 extra spells per spell level up to 5th is great but having the ability to cast each of them once for free is too good, particularly from 6th onwards when you can cast the spells of all 3 moons for free each day. That is up to 15 extra castings per day.
I think it would be better if you only had access to the spells of 1 moon at a time and at most could cast 1 of each level for free per day. That would still be very powerful.

I am happy that DL is making a comeback.

 

[Eubani]

My issue is with the Solamnic Knight Squire background. The classes most likely to be Knights of Solamnia are Fighters and Paladins. The backgound feat provides Medium Armour & shield proficiency as 1/3 of the feat which is absolutely useless to those classes. Before anyone says what about other classes, if the Knighthood is written as per the world there are many ways the "Oath and The Measure" limits potential membership. The Knights till late Chronicles was all Human FightersI suppose this goes with the 40 odd year old tropes that Fighter cannot have nice things and that they have to always share their lunch