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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[humble minion]

Mind you, speaking as someone who ran a long campaign up to high level in d20 Star Wars, the defence bonuses did not actually make that damn system playable at all...

I reckon 5e is probably a bit more low-armour-friendly than previous editions. You'd probably see every martial character taking one level of Monk or two of Barbarian for the extra AC though. Or playing lizardfolk or tortles. And Str would be EVERYONE'S dump stat, now that you can use Dex for everything. Str is niche enough as it is, there's basically never a reason to put points into it unless you're a heavy-weapon heavy-armour fighter.

 

[James Gasik]

Which is silly, really. Even if using light weapons, strength can be very important. But that ship has long sailed- people want characters that can run off a small number of ability scores, so that's what we have.

 

[humble minion]

Which is silly, really. Even if using light weapons, strength can be very important. But that ship has long sailed- people want characters that can run off a small number of ability scores, so that's what we have.

And even for people using large weapons, balance and agility can be very important. But at some point, of course, you've got to abstract, and i suspect not many people want to go back to 2e Player's Option with multiple sub-abilities for each ability score etc.

My main issue with Str and Dex in 5e is that Str is really only useful for one particular type of heavy combat character, while Dex is so applicable over so many common situations (AC, all the best missile weapons, one of the two most commonly-targeted saving throws, Stealth...) as well as being able to be used for melee combat if you pick your weapon right. It just seems the balance is poor there.

But we're getting waaaay the hell off-topic here.

 

[James Gasik]

I'd start a thread about ability scores, but I'm not sure if people would really want to debate it, or just give me the old "there are other games that do what you want, just stop playing D&D". : )

 

[Hussar]

It helps when you have the money to hire the best lawyers. It helps even more when you have the money to buy the worst politicians.

Anyways, weren't we talking about Dragonlance? So let's say you wanted to play in a "classic" Dragonlance game. How would you set up the Cleric class?

Initially, Goldmoon isn't really a Cleric at all, she simply has the ability to use the Blue Crystal Staff, which is basically a Staff of Healing? My memory is foggy, but I thought it wasn't until she lost the staff that she actually gained the ability to cast spells granted to her by Mishakal.

Rolling back to the topic.

IIRC, it was reading the Disks of Mishakal that created a cleric. That was why they went to Xak Tsaroth in the first place - to retrieve the disks. So, anyone who read the Disks could then respec their character as a cleric. Elistan becomes a cleric this way.

Really, if you were playing a sort of Adventure Path War of the Lance module, that's probably how I would do it. Reading the Disks of Mishakal allow you to convert your class levels into Cleric levels. A complete respec of your character. Reading it twice has no effect. And, of course, you could then train new clerics the traditional way - and they would start at 1st level.

It does rather depend on what level you want to start the AP at. In the original modules, all the characters were 5th level at start, which, in 1ed terms was pretty high. So, it made sense that the Disks could immediately change your character to a cleric with a minimum of fuss.

Not sure if that's a good idea now. Telling a new player, "Oh, sorry, you want to play a cleric or a paladin? Well, you're going to have to complete this entire adventure first and if you are successful, THEN you get to play the character you want to play".

 

[James Gasik]

In Dragonlance Adventures, you had to have a Medallion of Faith (I presume this was the divine focus of the setting).

Yeah, 5e doesn't do "prestige classes" like Dragonlance Adventures's Knights of the Black Rose, 1e Bards, and the like. But it would be a neat concept- you have to earn the right to play a class. Though some players would balk at the idea.

 

[Hussar]

In Dragonlance Adventures, you had to have a Medallion of Faith (I presume this was the divine focus of the setting).

Yeah, 5e doesn't do "prestige classes" like Dragonlance Adventures's Knights of the Black Rose, 1e Bards, and the like. But it would be a neat concept- you have to earn the right to play a class. Though some players would balk at the idea.

And possibly a bit tricky to do with a base class like a cleric.

 

[James Gasik]

I think it could be done, but the question of "is the juice worth the squeeze comes up". However, maybe a game that starts with "0-level" adventurers, and over the course of the adventure, they gain their character classes? I'm pretty sure there was a 1e adventure like this, though I can't remember the name just now.

EDIT: found it, N4, "Treasure Hunt"

 

[Azzy]

Some of the original Dragonlance modules made heavy use of Battlesystem. Any chance that we'll see a mass combat UA next?

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

Some of the original Dragonlance modules made heavy use of Battlesystem. Any chance that we'll see a mass combat UA next?

I hope. It would be the one UA/recent news related to the setting I'd actually be excited to see.