NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="touc" data-source="post: 8566521" data-attributes="member: 19270">Boo. You can't package nonsense and sell nostalgia under the label Dragonlance, no more than you can call a desert Dark Sun but remove cannibalism, slavery, and psionics. It's something else by then. I'm pretty critical because DL (1) was my starting fantasy book reading, (2) my first major gaming world, and (3) a beloved classic I am currently working on revisiting for 5E.Someone asked what distinguished DL earlier, and to be concise as I can, it was the first D&D setting that had subtypes for dwarves and elves, the first to really link together a narrative story history, and the first to install a story-based adventure path rather than what had previously been sandbox modules for DMs to plug and play. The marketing campaign also set a model for success that had never been done or tried. Project Overlord. Pretty good stuff. Now, onto the bad stuff.BOOKender. First, I think they're a terribly misunderstood gaming race that has been reduced to its worst stereotype by bad writing. Sourcebooks make kender much more complex and meaningful, but those have been lost to time in favor of 1 paragraph descriptors. Sigh. That said, the criticism.Fey-what??? So kender are now magical Fey beings that create reality out of nothing from any container they carry. Did anyone actually read any of the original setting when coming up with this? If they weren't created by the Graygem of Gargath, then they aren't kender. They're something else you're dressing up with nostalgia and calling kender.And home run on the kender physical description: "...look like humans with pointed ears and diverse appearances." Pure bleeping poetry.My solution for kender pockets? Make it a roleplay feature originating from the influence of the chaos stone that created them. Sometimes you unconsciously put something really unique and cool looking in your pouch for later. The roleplay feature allows the DM or even the player to create stories of what and why things are in the pocket that should add to the story. Anyone roleplaying a klepto who steals from the party isn't really getting what a kender actually is. In any event, none of this "you pull a crowbar out of a pouch that only fits 1/5 of a cubic foot" nonsense. Double BOOGold pieces on Krynn? You're whittling away at what makes the setting unique and turning slowly into Forgotten Realms with 3 moons.Yay.Lunar Sorcerer. Looks cool. I don't know how moon phases work on a setting with 3 moons that operate on 3 different cycles, but that can be worked on.Not BadKnights as a background with "I joined for the free meals, but their lessons grew on me over time" is terrible. Feat of Squire is freely given but has a pre-requisite of squireship? At 4th level, I can basically skip the hierarchy of the Knights and go straight to the top with Rose. Sarcastically cool. Working through the ranks is boring. That all said, it's an elegantly simple solution to making Knights of Solamnia mean something more than an organization by offering benefits. I wouldn't want my advancement, however, to be tied to taking a Feat. Wizards. Similar feeling of a simple solution to a complex conversion. I never liked the idea "white robes are always abjurers" as the robes are a philosophy of how magic should be used, but it does tie into original mechanics and I've been busting their chops on keeping things specially tied to the setting. So, a plus, though it's a hard sell to turn down +2 INT at 4th level in favor of a Feat.It also doesn't solve renegades who opt out of the Towers for the lure of forbidden magic. The Towers give you cool abilities and access to the world's stockpile of spells, so it might behoove one to explain why a wizard would turn that all down. In the novels, renegades did things with magic that were terrifically powered and considered forbidden, such as creating Dreadwolves and unleashing what might be seen as wild sorcerery.</blockquote>

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