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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[Micah Sweet]

One cleric, who only had any powers to start with because of her McGuffin. One wizard. One rogue. And then Tanis, Riverwind, Caramon, Sturm, and later on Gilthanas and Tika who were all martial characters. It had all the bases covered to a minimal degree, but a typical balanced tabletop party it was not.

It was reasonably typical for the era in which it was designed.

 

[Mordhau]

Yeah it was sometimes a struggle to get someone to play a cleric. Wizards were very weak at low levels and keeping two alive in a party could be a liability. As well as kind of sucking, two thieves could kind of get in each other's way and you could always use another Fighter. Rangers and Paladins really depended on what die roll system was used to generate characters as they had more difficult qualifying requirements. That's not to say I didn't see parties with multiple wizards, thieves or clerics, but on balance Fighters were the most played class and always something safe to introduce to an existing party.

 

[Umbran]

(In either case, since they could have 18 Int and 16 Wis in 1e and 2e, there was no reason that they couldn't be able to understand that other people believed in personal property).

Indeed. And, even if they still couldn't understand personal property, they can understand that folks need things to make life happen. Their tools and belongings shouldn't just go wandering around, because they are going to need them for something.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, actually. I knew a guy in college who always played kender, unless he couldn't, in which case he played halflings.

But this is actually one of my points: kender are, for whatever reason, treated as beloved by the setting (at least by the game books; I don't remember from the few novels I read), no matter how disruptive or awful they prove to actually be in reality.

It really depends on the person. I've seen one Kender played. He somehow ended up in the Forgotten Realms, because that's where the DM ran his games, and joined the party. He was fun to watch and not at all disruptive to the game or group. He was played like a Kender, but balanced against the group's enjoyment.

Kender as originally designed was a race that appealed to a certain type of player, so lots of those players picked Kender and disrupted things. Not of those who played Kender were like that, though.

 

[James Gasik]

Oh they understood alright, that was the thing. Kender weren't supposed to have any malice. They just picked up unattended things (rarely did they actually pick pockets, since not all Kender were "handlers"). If you asked for something that was missing, the Kender would invariably produce it with a "oh I was just holding that for you" or a "how did that get in my pocket?".

Tasslehoff was notably for being more mischievous (infamously gluing one of his allies' sword into it's sheathe) and a little ADHD even by Kender standards. Other stories with Kender characters showed them being more sensible, even if they had an odd way of looking at the world. It's notable that Kender could be Barbarians in 1e (up to 6th level!) and I believe that Lord Toede was beaten by one of these, the so-called Kender "King".

Now of course, Kender suffered from extreme Flanderization in the hands of player characters who played up Tasslehoff's negative traits- remember this was already the era where people thought it was perfectly rational to rob party members because they were "Thieves" after all, and here they had a free license to cause mayhem (as if playing Chaotic Neutral wasn't enough!).

This is what has led to the horrible reputation of Kender among older gamers. The question I have is, will history repeat itself?

EDIT: of note is that many Kender suffered from a sort of racial PTSD in later eras, after losing their homeland of Kendermore. These poor sots were shell shocked and morose, completely unlike their former selves.

 

[Maxperson]

(In either case, since they could have 18 Int and 16 Wis in 1e and 2e, there was no reason that they couldn't be able to understand that other people believed in personal property).

They were set up to be like that psychologically. They literally could not understand the concept. It would be like a sociopath trying to understand the feelings of others. Then they combined the inability to understand personal property with an intense curiosity about things they don't have. That combination is what made the Kender wander off with the stuff of others.

 

[Faolyn]

Now of course, Kender suffered from extreme Flanderization in the hands of player characters who played up Tasslehoff's negative traits- remember this was already the era where people thought it was perfectly rational to rob party members because they were "Thieves" after all, and here they had a free license to cause mayhem (as if playing Chaotic Neutral wasn't enough!).

It doesn't help that the game books emphasized the stealing and lying.

 

[Faolyn]

They were set up to be like that psychologically. They literally could not understand the concept. It would be like a sociopath trying to understand the feelings of others. Then they combined the inability to understand personal property with an intense curiosity about things they don't have. That combination is what made the Kender wander off with the stuff of others.

Real-life people with antisocial personality disorder frequently learn how to at least mimic proper behaviors and fake displays of proper emotions, even if they never truly understand the behaviors and emotions or the reasons behind them. They are fully capable of learning that other people don't feel the same way that they do.

Kender, even those with genius-level intellect (or for that matter, maxed-out Charisma), apparently can't even do that.

 

[Maxperson]

Real-life people with antisocial personality disorder frequently learn how to at least mimic proper behaviors and fake displays of proper emotions, even if they never truly understand the behaviors and emotions or the reasons behind them. They are fully capable of learning that other people don't feel the same way that they do.

Kender, even those with genius-level intellect (or for that matter, maxed-out Charisma), apparently can't even do that.

That's what chaos magic can do, and in this case did. They are incapable of it for a reason.

 

[Faolyn]

That's what chaos magic can do, and in this case did. They are incapable of it for a reason.

Which makes them a very dumb PC race. Not only is this forcing a player to act in a specific way in order for them to play their chosen race correctly, the way they have to act is detrimental to the party and very possibly the group of players as well!

It's also a bad explanation, because "chaos magic," by which I mean the writers, could have made them act in any other way they chose to. Instead, the writers picked "kleptomaniacal sociopath."