Dragonlance Dragonlance: Solamnic Knights & Mages of High Sorcery Preview

WotC has shared another preview of the upcoming Dragonlance setting/adventure with a look at backgrounds and feats for Solamnic Knights and Mages of High Sorcery.

Feats include Squire of Solamnia and Initiate of High Sorcery. Interestingly, one prerequisite is "Dragonlance Campaign", which implies that the feats can't be used outside that setting.

Dragonlance Backgrounds and Feats: Answer the Call as Knights and Mages

Will you join the Knights of Solamnia or the Mages of High Sorcery? Each offers a unique background and feats for Dragonlance characters. Get a sneak pe...

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[pemerton]

It shouldn’t be an enforced rule, and I don’t think anyone’s arguing that. It should be present in art as a visual element which this image does but the 5e art does not. Visual style helps establish the feel of a setting. 5e has enforced a uniform art across its settings, which I feel is a mistake.

The "feel" of DL is knights, dragons, knights charging dragons sometimes riding dragons.

It's hopeless romance, rifts between siblings, honour and justice and love and compassion and how these come into conflict.

Moustaches seem a very secondary element to me.

 

[wellis]

It's an iconic look for them, even in-setting.

Sometimes makes me wish they made it so those who normally can't grow mustaches, like women, would need a special paste to spread on their upper lip to grow a luxurious mustache. And as the months pass, it slowly fades and fall off before they repeat.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Huh, the official piece of art of him while alive I have seen have him has him clean shaven.

Which piece? He has facial hair on the cover of the Lord Soth novel, and the “idealised” Lord Soth from When Black Roses Bloom also has a moustache. (It’s also a reuse of the Vinas Solamnus art so maybe not great example). The art on the wiki is fan art, so take with grain of salt.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Which piece? He has facial hair on the cover of the Lord Soth novel, and the “idealised” Lord Soth from When Black Roses Bloom also has a moustache. (It’s also a reuse of the Vinas Solamnus art so maybe not great example). The art on the wiki is fan art, so take with grain of salt.

The novel cover:

You don't get much fiercer a mustache than that.

WAIT is Lord Soth basically a rip-off of Darth Vader?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The novel cover:

View attachment 265094
You don't get much fiercer a mustache than that.

WAIT is Lord Soth basically a rip-off of Darth Vader?

He kills his wife so…

 

[wellis]

Does that mean he's Vader with a porn stache essentially?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

He kills his wife so…

Pretty sure Soth killing his wife was before Revenge of the Sith came out.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Soth is also pretty different from Vader in a lot of ways, even if both are scary guys in creepy armour.

 

[cbwjm]

Soth is also pretty different from Vader in a lot of ways, even if both are scary guys in creepy armour.

And similar in that they are both horrifically burnt.

 

[Dire Bare]

The complete lack of mustache on those Knights is killing me.

Like, why even change that? Why was that needed to change?

Modern gamers don't like moustaches?

You guys just keep killing me. Complaining about mustaches based on just a few pieces of artwork. Complaining about mustaches when the actual source material has non-stached knights going back to the original novels and games.

Paladine on a cracker, I'm now in the camp WotC should publish errata for the upcoming book canonically stating all knights have shaved their staches and suffer expulsion from the order should they grow them back . . . just to fuel the foolish fire while I munch popcorn.

 

[Dire Bare]

If they allow women i somehow doubt women would be subject to the mustache rule.

DL has distinct eleven cultures with distinct positions within the War of the Lance. I would be surprised if 5e DL even mentioned it, let alone made it matter.

I didn't say "bad" I said "deep." Good or bad aside, WotC has completely eschewed deep world building. There isn't a single example of it. Even the Forgotten Realms, the most used of 5E settings, doesn't actually get any deep world building.

"Mustache rule"? There is no such thing in the Dragonlance canon, going back to the original novels and games. I just can't take you seriously on this at all.

 

[Azzy]

Yeah, the whole stache controversy is bad comedy. So is the idea that something that was the fashion in the time Huma would stay so hundreds of years later. No fad last that long.

 

[Velderan]

And similar in that they are both horrifically burnt.

I mean the gods did have the high ground when they dropped a mountain on Ansalon..

I'll see myself out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You guys just keep killing me. Complaining about mustaches based on just a few pieces of artwork. Complaining about mustaches when the actual source material has non-stached knights going back to the original novels and games.

Paladine on a cracker, I'm now in the camp WotC should publish errata for the upcoming book canonically stating all knights have shaved their staches and suffer expulsion from the order should they grow them back . . . just to fuel the foolish fire while I munch popcorn.

I was making a joke. Tough thread.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

And similar in that they are both horrifically burnt.

Pretty sure Soth is a skeleton.

 

[cbwjm]

Pretty sure Soth is a skeleton.

Yeah, a crispy burnt one.

 

[Reynard]

I would disagree with this. It was a thing common in the '80s and '90s. Some of us like the original Greyhawk and FR box sets precisely because they are not overwrought settings requiring Ph.D.s to understand every nuance. Some people like having flexibility and room to breathe with their settings, which is what I believe is the main philosophy behind 5e settings. What you call shallow worldbuilding, I call a practical DM's toolkit.

Those people are free NOT to buy the follow up setting material.

 

[Reynard]

Pretty sure Soth is a skeleton.

I don't think there is any form in the armor, but it has been a long time since I read Legends.

 

[Morrus]

I don't think there is any form in the armor, but it has been a long time since I read Legends.

A blackened skull with pinpricks of flame for eyes. He's skeletal, not wraithlike.

 

[Fifinjir]

Listen,

Women who join the Knights of Somalia have mustaches on their souls, which is what really matters.