Libertad
Hero
Happy New Year everyone! I figured that my Let’s Read for 2020 should cover an appropriately iconic Dungeons & Dragons setting: Dragonlance during the War of the Lance!
As of 2020 the Dragonlance setting has had 4 official rulesets: 1st Edition AD&D, 2nd Edition AD&D, the unique SAGA System, and 3rd Edition D&D. For the first half of its lifespan the world’s primarily taken place during the War of the Lance, the notable conflict of the first adventures and novels and their immediate after years. The SAGA System was controversial, partly due to being a very wonky rule set and partly due to the fact that it took place during Dragons of Summer Flame. Said time period was Dragonlance’s Spellplague equivalent in regards to being a fandom base breaker. In 2003, novels were still being written for the current era by Margaret Weis and other authors, so when Dragonlance got a 3rd Edition sourcebook it took place at this time.
One of the largest demands by fans after its release was to provide aid on setting games during the War of the Lance, aka the 4th Age/Age of Despair. Being eager to please, Sovereign Press made a War of the Lance sourcebook one of their first major releases. This sourcebook was also notable for being one of the few D20 Dragonlance books where Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman got together to help write it. Although both authors individually (Weis in particular) worked on various 3rd Edition books such as Towers of High Sorcery, the Legends of the Twins was the only other product of which they both had credits. And who better than to write a setting sourcebook than the ones who created the setting over twenty years ago?
I should first note that this sourcebook is not a D20 conversion of the 14 original Dragonlance adventures; those were made into their own trilogy of sourcebooks. Rather, War of the Lance is a holistic overview of the continent of Ansalon during the time when the Dragonarmies are conquering much of it in the Dark Queen’s name. It’s technically set right before the first adventure opens up (Qualinesti has yet to be invaded, the Discs of Mishakal haven’t been retrieved from Xak Tsaroth, etc) but there is information on how the war develops and changes places over the years.
Chapter One: Characters
350 years ago, there was a mighty Empire by the name of Istar, and under the dominion of the Kingpriests sought to remove all evil from the face of Krynn. But it was this very zeal that led them to commit many atrocities. When the last Kingpriest sought to challenge and command the gods themselves, the pantheon answered him with a fiery mountain which plunged the capital and much of eastern Ansalon beneath the waves.
The world would never be the same again.
None of the Races of the Age of Despair were not left untouched. The loss of divine magic made plagues grow out of control. The sinking of land and alterations in climate led to many famines and forced migrations. Old treaties and friendships were abandoned, while elves and dwarves became isolationist and cut themselves off from the world. The minotaurs forged a new empire, their enslavement in Istar now a memory. People grew bitter at the gods, or in turn forget them as the centuries waned on and found solace in newer, false religions.
Humans, due to their short lifespans, were one of the quickest to forget the gods, and in time the divinities became much like fairy tales for children. Empires and nations were replaced with city-states, and even Solamnia broke up into semi-autonomous provinces. Even its renowned Knights found themselves in disrepute when commoners blamed them for either being unable to protect them or from too many of this once-noble order forgetting the spirit of the Oath and Measure. Cities quickly became havens of filth and disease, as the lack of divine magic and the withering of crops destroyed many more settlements; even those far from Istar’s reach.
Beyond the walled towns and sedentary farms, nomadic humans suffered from the disruption of their own food supplies. Migration routes and herds changed, and tribes passed into distant memory as they died off or were conquered and assimilated by stronger neighbors. There were some among the nomads who believed that this was all a test by the gods to measure their devotion, while others found new religions with ancestor worship growing increasingly common.
Elves still have grand civilizations in their forests, but they are a shadow of their former selves. Even this otherwise aloof and xenophobic people were horrified at the brutality the gods had wrought, but blamed the humans of Istar (and later all humans by extension) into provoking the Cataclysm. They still believed in the gods, but no longer worshiped them, angered at their abandonment. The Qualinesti kingdom closed down its borders when human and goblin warlords invaded their cities in the belief that they harbored magic and riches long since lost. The Silvanesti elves, who neighboring Istar, lost much of their own forests beneath the waves. They were similarly isolationist but viewed the abandonment of the gods as a “wise choice” for them to do likewise in regards to a world they felt was not worth saving. Both kingdoms noticed the rise of the Dragonarmies via magical surveillance, and the Silvanesti signed a nonaggression pact with these forces. Both kingdoms sought to prepare for a diaspora, and the invasion of Silvanesti by the Dragon Empire and its subsequent destruction was all the incentive Qualinesti’s inhabitants needed to start sailing west.
The Kagonesti elves long lived on Southern Ergoth but had scattered bands all across Ansalon. They met their brethren in exile upon their shores, and extended them permission to settle. A permission that would be exploited by the refugees, who used the opportunity to put the Kagonesti into indentured servitude. The Sea Elf tribes of the Dimernesti lost countless numbers from the Cataclysm, while explorers from the remote Dargonesti kingdoms inhabited the sunken ruins of Istar’s capital. Both clans remained isolated from each other and the surface world, something the Dark Queen took advantage of by sending sea dragons to menace their lands.
An Age of Despair was nothing new to the Ogre Races, whose lives were always of violence and hardship. The fall of their main adversary of Istar allowed them to invade lands now unable to defend themselves, and their societies existed mostly as independent bands. It was ironic then, that they would be the first victims of Takhisis’ chromatic dragons who sought to unite the ogre tribes under her new Empire. This of course meant killing off many of their leaders and rival tribes to impress the sheer might wielded by the newly-fledged Dragonarmies.
The Irda, those ogres who were spared from the good gods’ curse of ugliness for turning their backs on Takhisis eons ago, lived much as they did before: on isolated islands far from Ansalon’s coasts. But the Cataclysm caused a large schism in their society: some viewed it as a sign that their isolationism was wrong by letting evil go challenged in the world while others kept to the old ways. The former ventured into Ansalon disguised as wizards to battle warlords, murderers, and worse, but they suffered greatly for anti-wizard prejudice earned them hostility even from those they sought to protect.
The minotaurs, once enslaved by Istar, found themselves a free people in their new island homes. They viewed the Cataclysm as divine justice, of their god Sargas (known by other races as Sargonnas) freeing them from toil and servitude. They are now an empire unto themselves, claiming many islands beyond the known coasts of Ansalon, although their leadership was rife with infighting and treachery. The current Emperor Chot Es-Kalin entered into an alliance with the Dragonarmies; although neither side trusted the other, they both saw much to gain. Chot assigned rival houses to fight in the Dragonarmies in exchange for loot brought home, which motivated minotaurs for greed and vengeance upon old enemies while moving said rivals away from his empire.
Half-elves and half-ogres are outcasts, looked down upon by both sides of their ancestry. They are usually the result of sexual assault; among the elven nations half-elves are either pitied or mocked (among the Qualinesti) or cast out into the wilderness as mongrels (among the Silvanesti). Among human communities they fair little better, and in the Dragon Empire they are hunted down and executed like their elven parents. Half-ogres face similar prejudice, humans looking upon them as no different than monsters and ogres looking down upon them for being comparatively small and weak. Both half-elves and half-ogres are more likely than not to end up among groups which are more tolerant of the forsaken: mercenary companies, criminal guilds, cults, and wizarding Orders.
The Dwarves once had an interconnected civilization, but the Cataclysm tore their realms apart. The flooding of surface lands and destruction of old trade routes prevented the kingdoms of Kayolin, Thoradin, and Thorbadin from contacting each other. Food shortages in Thorbadin forced the dwarves to close their mountain gates, even from those of their brethren living outside. Those stranded would become the Neidar clan, aka hill dwarves, and a bloody civil war between them and the mountain dwarves over this. Meanwhile, the nation of Thoradin was overtaken by a horrible mold plague, with much of its pre-Cataclysm territory crushed and flooded. Many of the survivors were turned evil by the plague and formed the new nation of Zhakar.
The mountain dwarf kingdom of Thorbadin rests in an uneasy peace; new trading partners are hard to come by, and worshipers of the now-gone true gods clash with new cults unsatisfied with the old ways. Food is strictly rationed which caused more than a few riots. The hill dwarves were forced to fend for themselves, having to train much more of their populace in fighting due to the many bandits and monsters roaming the surface world. The more liberal mountain dwarves of Kayolin allowed the Neidar to settle in their kingdom, which was difficult initially but over time won the respect of neighboring Solamnia with who they established trade networks with to alleviate the food and space shortages.
The dark dwarves, aka the evil dwarf clans, are under the thumb of tyrannical governments. In Thorbadin the Theiwar and Daegar have more power than ever upon the Council of Thanes: both seek to overthrow the ruling Hylar clan and claim the mountains for themselves. The Theiwar are united and have a veritable amount of wizards in their ranks, but the Daegar cities are lawless and full of gangs of the poor and private militias serving the rich who are the closest equivalent to justice.Trade embargoes imposed by the mountain dwarves have resulted in food shortages, forcing the Theiwar and Daegar to rely upon fungus crops with little success. The Zhakar, being truly alone, see more and more of their people go insane and are thus exiled, and their forges begun supplying weapons and armor to the neighboring Dragonarmies as a means of enriching their kingdom.
The gully dwarves live much as they did in prior Ages, but the large amount of abandoned territories and ruins spawned post-Cataclysm give them more places to live. Their lives are ones of survival, and no other races of Krynn enjoy their presence; in Thorbadin they are viewed more as vermin than fellow dwarves, while those living in the Dragon Empire or other places of evil end up as slaves. The dwarves of Kayolin, however, are a relative exception: the gully dwarves are tolerated as a laborer class of street sweepers and vermin hunters and are treated with courtesy and respect when others do have to interact with them.
Nice to see that Kayolin’s overall open-mindedness has paid off in spades.
Gnomes of Ansalon have always been a strange bunch. They moved on from the Cataclysm relatively unscathed; while many gnomes died it was accepted as the inevitability of life. Their island home is relatively isolated from Ansalon’s mainland, and they long used technology of dubious quality to make up for the loss of magic. In fact, many gnomes sought to journey out into the world to catalogue events and make sense of this new Age: their city-state of Mount Nevermind did much to transport food and medicine to their suffering human neighbors, earning them a strong friendship with their neighbors in Sancrist and Solamnia.
Kender never fail to have an upbeat outlook on life, but even so many couldn’t help but be saddened by the disappearance of the gods. The kender cities of Hylo and Kendermore in the continent’s west and east suffered from the Cataclysm, with Kendermore’s flooding forcing many to flee and be displaced as nomadic tribes. During the Empire of Istar they were declared an inherently evil race, which caused a rather unlikely alliance between goblin and kender in defending their communities from soldiers and bounty hunters. In modern times this legacy still lasts in Northern Ergoth, where humans, kender, and goblins have their own neighboring regions but live peacefully with each other.
Centaurs are much like elves in that they are isolationists and keep to themselves in forests, but they also live on the open plains. Although mostly good-aligned, the Kingpriest also declared them inherently evil and to be put to the sword, which made them distrustful of outsiders well into the Fourth Age. The increasing violence wrought from desperation by their neighbors made the normally-benevolent centaurs more aggressive and warlike as a result. Most of them settled in isolated regions of Ansalon in order to find long-term peace, although a few nomadic tribes became regular trading partners of equally-mobile humans in the Plains of Dust and the deserts of Khur.
Draconians are the youngest race in Krynn, artificial creations of the Dragonarmies made from the corruption of good dragon eggs. Born and raised to be soldiers, draconians are brainwashed into a life of war and forced to fight each other for scraps of food by their human pseudo-parents during childhood. Although they are physically stronger and in some cases more magically talented than their human counterparts, Dragonarmy officers maintain reproductive control over their population by only hatching male dragon eggs and keeping secret the origins of their species.
Each subrace of draconian is based on their true dragon parentage, and have different inherent abilities which often determines their roles and duty in the Dragonarmies. The Baaz (brass) form the largest number of draconians and are regarded as expendable infantry; they have a rivalry with the kapaks artificially generated by officers who pit them against each other during training, which is another measure the military uses to prevent possible draconian uprisings. Kapaks (copper) are the second-most populous subrace and are often scouts and assassins due to their knack at remaining quiet and inherently-poisonous saliva glands. The women’s saliva can heal, but this is not known yet. Bozaks (bronze) have natural arcane spellcasting capabilities as a result of their draconic ancestry, but are taught that their powers come from Takhisis and often act as leaders and magical support to baaz and kapak units; this upbringing makes them quite zealous and arrogant.
Sivaks (silver) are the largest subrace of draconians with the ability to take the shape of those they murder, making them both expert spies and elite soldiers and bodyguards. They are the least likely draconians to defect, as they are more able to blend in among and thus get along with the human soldiers while also preferring action and battle to the relative sedentary life of administration in the upper ranks. Finally, the auraks (gold) can also take alternate physical forms but have powerful innate arcane magic. As a result, they are never in the front lines and used as part of special teams or as diplomats and spies. They’re the subrace which has cottoned on to the fact that their spells are not the result of Takhisis’ divine providence, and ironically have the highest rates of defection.
There are five more subraces of noble draconians, who are created from chromatic dragon eggs. But they won’t be created until the final months of the War of the Lance in desperation. Although the ‘metallic’ draconians do not inherently gravitate to evil, noble draconians are invariably good-aligned due to the gods imposing a sense of ‘cosmic balance.’ Said draconians end up defecting or get executed when it becomes clear that working for the Dragonarmies violates their principles.
Class in the Age of Despair
Dragonlance has been a setting closely wedded to Dungeons & Dragons as a ruleset, and the Fifth Age/Age of Mortals were congruent to the switching of systems to 2nd Edition AD&D and SAGA. With the Cataclysm and return of the true gods being a big thing in the original adventures, certain D20 classes have to be revised or excised to remain authentic to pre-5th Age eras.
Overall the Age of Despair is at a point when magic on Ansalon is both the least common and trusted among the populace. The departure of the gods more or less made all divine casters disappear, with heathen priests and charlatans filling the void with either arcane magic* masquerading as miracles or using sleight of hand and other means of psychological trickery. Takhisis was the first to violate her pantheons’ retreat, and evil clerics among the Dragonarmies would openly cast spells during their new empire’s founding. It would not be until after Goldmoon’s** epiphany and discovery of the Discs of Mishakal that clerics of good and neutral deities would start appearing in Krynn once again. While people could still take levels in Cleric, Druid, etc the supernatural aspects of their class would remain untapped until they turn to worship of the true gods and gain their Medallions of Faith. It was common for people with noncasting Cleric or Druid levels to represent a heathen (false) priest who coasted on by with knowledge, charisma, and/or mundane alchemy and herbalism.
*the Wizards of High Sorcery hated such people, as they were most often renegades and when discovered inflamed anti-wizard sentiment. The Orders had their own division of “miracle-busters” dedicated to exposing such frauds during the Age of Despair.
**or the Prophet PC stand-in if playing your own heroes during the 3rd Edition Chronicles.
Speaking of which, wizards are the only form of arcane casters among non-draconian mortals, with sorcery and spontaneous casting solely the gift of dragons, fey, and the like. And even with wizards the Tower of Wayreth is their only true last bastion. Most are either lone travelers or teachers and apprentices not always welcome in many communities. Sorcerers, mystics, and spontaneous casters wouldn’t come into existence until long after the War of the Lance when the Graygem is broken and lets Chaos into the world.
The noncasting classes more or less exist without alteration, although monks are usually isolated philosophers in monasteries. As to who or what powers their supernatural abilities, the book doesn’t say. Speaking of which…
The Master is a new skill-centric core class meant to represent exceptional craftsmen, sages, and bards of the non-magical variety. They are explicitly meant to be to the Expert NPC class what the Warrior is to Fighters in 3rd Edition parlance. And as you can imagine it’s a pretty weak class: it has the same proficiencies/hit dice/skill points as the Rogue but lacks said class’ offensive and utility features and more exotic weapon choices like the rapier. Its major class feature is its Primary Focus, where you choose either Craftsman/Performer/Professional/Sage which corresponds with one of the four multi-skill specialties. Said Focus determines which skills are class skills and also what types of Knacks you can choose.
A Knack is a special ability you can take every couple of levels which corresponds to your Focus. Each Focus has a Knack where they treat a primary Craft/Perform/etc skill as granting half its ranks as “shadow ranks” to all other skills in said group (10 ranks in Knowledge-Arcana can give you 5 ranks in all other Knowledge) plus a Knack to make more money when using weekly/daily checks of your Focus’ skills.
The Craftsmen can build Items of Renown, which are “half-magical” items which are just really expertly made: weapons grant bonuses on attack (but not damage), armor reduces armor check penalties (but no AC bonus), but perhaps the best feature is raising the bonus on skill checks for appropriate tools (usually +2 with masterwork) to as high as +10!
Performer knacks are less powerful versions of bardic music, and are basically inspirational buffs and debuffs to various rolls.
Professional, oddly, has two sweet-talker Knacks: one where you gain bonuses on skill checks involving deception and falsehoods, and another where throw a person off-balance with bluster as a minor debuff (-1 on attack/skills/saves per time the Knack’s taken), but most of them are rather meager non-combat downtime things like “get Leadership followers but only for your profession.”
Sage Knacks have options like being able to learn new languages upon first encounter, gaining the equivalent of bardic knowledge, substituting Knowledge for Charisma-based skills when among scholarly types, and two “exploit enemy weakness” knacks where one lets you add your Intelligence bonus on attack rolls and the other grants +2 on attack rolls when making a successful Knowledge check to recognize a creature or character.
The only other things the Master has going for it are +2/+2 to two skills as potential bonus feats, gaining access to Knacks from a second Focus at 7th level, and can gain Skill Mastery as per a Rogue at 10th level.
For Prestige Classes we have both new ones and revisions to existing classes. Due to the loss of divine magic the 3 Knights of Solamnia PrCs from the corebook get revised: the Knight of the Sword no longer requires or uses spellcasting, and the same applies for Knights of the Rose (but Swords can still detect and smite evil!). They also have the option of trading in levels of one PrC when they get promoted to a higher order. It wouldn’t be until Knightly Orders of Ansalon that the Prestige Classes were made self-contained with easier prerequisites, aka no needing Crown levels before Sword, Sword before Rose. Before then pretty much all of your class and feat options were pre-determined if you wanted to eventually be a Knight of the Rose.
Chorister is a cleric who honors their god through holy (or unholy) music and dances. While they can represent any deity, some gods have philosophers more suited to it than others. It’s a half-casting progression which grants access to spells from the bard list as one gains levels in the class. The other major feature are “church choir” equivalents of bardic music which includes things like the ability to apply metamagic feats to divine spells after several rounds of chanting or listeners using the chorister’s Perform result in place of a saving throw vs divine magic.
Overall it’s got some pretty cool features, although its “+1 caster level every other level” may be a turn-off to some primary casters.
Dragon Highlord represents the leaders of the five respective Dragonarmies (and also Emperor Ariakas), those pledged to Takhisis in service of conquering the world! They are a short 3-level class and center around battlefield morale. They extend the duration of demoralization penalties on Intimidate checks, grant bonuses on attack/damage/Will saves equal to their level to non-good humanoid, giant, and dragon type creatures serving under them, and apply their Charisma bonus on all saving throws and Improved Resist Dragonfear* feat for free.
*+8 bonus on Will saves vs a dragon’s Frightful Presence.
The morale bonuses to enemy minions is pretty good, and as most statted Dragon Highlords in the 3rd Edition Chronicles have all 3 levels and rarely fight by themselves this will definitely see use. You have to be evil alignment and high-ranking in the Dragonarmies, so this isn’t a Prestige Class most PCs will have.
A Gnomish Tinker is the pinnacle of gnomish drive and ingenuity, a master craftsman who can assemble non-magical gadgets out of the most disparate parts. They are a pretty easy class to enter, with the main barrier an appropriately gnomish role-playing one:
They carry a unique toolbelt which holds tool points they use to fuel their class features. The Kitbash class feature can either take apart an item or trap to convert to tool points, or coax greater performance by giving an object an enhancement bonus on relevant attack/saves/skill/DCs up to half their class level by spending tool points. They can also create MacGuffins, devices which can replace a 0 to 2nd level wizard spell, but only a limited number of times per day and such devices are considered non-magical. The rest of their class features are hohum, like skill-centric bonus feats, increased bonuses on aid another actions, and bonuses on Charisma skills when interacting with gnomes among other minor things.
The Tinker isn’t going to replace the party wizard anytime soon, but the bonuses for kitbashing can be a useful long-term buff (lasts for 1 hour per Intelligence bonus). They don’t really have much offensive or utility features beyond this, which limits their attractiveness for PCs.
A Handler is the kender cultural equivalent of a thief. You see, kender detest deliberate robbery, but holding onto an item due to curiosity and amassing such trinkets over time is regarded as socially acceptable because this is not done out of greed or the intentional desire to deprive someone of something. They are international celebrities in kender communities, for they have many interesting stories to tell from their travels.
The Handler is heavily rogue-focused in both class features and prerequisites, but more defensive and “straight thief” in utility. They gain bonuses on Sleight of Hand checks and new maneuvers such as being able to steal objects in combat without penalty, Kender Tales which function as bardic knowledge, adding their Charisma on saving throws which represents incredible luck, and more straightforward rogue class features such as Defensive Roll and Improved Evasion.
This may sound like an appealing class for “disarming” opponents of valuable items in the middle of battle, but the Handler has absolutely no offensive features or even a sneak attack progression, which heavily hurts it for a Rogue Prestige Class.
Minotaur Marauder is our final entry for this section, representing wild card sailors among their race who owe allegiance only to themselves and their crew. They are hunted by their brethren loyal to the empire as well as other sailors who are often the target of their depredations. They are a 5-level class, where they gain a pithy sneak attack equivalent (dirty strike) which caps out at 2d4 damage and is limited to one use per target per day; +2 to +4 bonus on confirming critical hits; a poor man’s Intimidate called Bull’s Wrath which imposes a -1 on attacks and saves on a successful DC 25 Intimidate check (demoralization from Intimidate is -2 and can stack as Bull’s Wrath is an untyped bonus); and Opportunist, which lets them make one attack of opportunity against a target who is hit in melee by someone else.
This is an underpowered class, and its features across five levels don’t stack up to other features which you can better get through straight Rogue and such. It’s actually meant to key off of the Mariner class which I reviewed in Legends of the Twins, a similarly-weak core class.
New Feats
The overwhelming majority of feats have been reprinted from the Dragonlance Campaign Setting. A few are new but have been covered in my Legends of the Twins review. I’ll cover a few of the more interesting ones both unique to this sourcebook and which featured in others:
Alternate Form can be taken by a true dragon of at least adult age category. It lets them assume a single specific alternate form of humanoid or animal type of indefinite duration but can shapeshift in such a manner only once per day. Fun fact: the silver dragon D’Argent had this feat in the 3rd Edition update of the Chronicles, taking the form of a random NPC instead of mind-swapping with them via the magic jar spell which she did in AD&D.
Astrological Forecasting is a rather situational one, where you can read someone’s horoscope once per week and give them a spendable +1 to +3 bonus on a single check any time during the next 7 days. The concept is cool, but the piddly bonus and infrequent rate blunt its use.
Create Draconian is a spell that lets you spawn baby draconians from dragon eggs. The following chapter has more rules on this, but overall you need one other spellcaster of another discipline (arcane if you’re divine and vice versa), and if the ritual is interrupted you and the other caster take Constitution damage.
Heroic Surge was a reprint from the base setting, but grants you a per-day use of one bonus move or standard action per round to be performed at any time during your regular actions. Said feat was very popular among gaming groups for letting martials make full attacks while moving more than 5 feet.
Improvise Masterwork Item lets you temporarily treat a non-masterwork item as such with 10 minutes of work. It can be recognized as temporary by others via the appropriate Craft or Appraise skill, so don’t think of trying to use it to make easy money.
Improved Taunt improves the kender taunt racial ability. The base taunt is a Bluff check vs the target’s Sense Motive, and if the target fails they take a -1 on all attacks and Armor Class. This feat increases the penalties to -2.
Spellcasting Prodigy treats a spellcaster’s primary casting stat as 2 points higher for the purpose of determining bonus spells per day. It can only be taken at 1st level.
Thoughts So Far: The looming legacy of the Cataclysm is a unifying factor among Ansalonian civilization, and the first chapter gives a detailed view on what kind of setting you’re getting with the War of the Lance. Things are bad all over, and most of the civilizations are on poor terms or too busy dealing with their own things which makes them ripe pickings for the invading Dragonarmies. There’s a lot of problems, providing for a good setting in which to adventure.
However, the class options aren’t exactly appealing for PCs. The Master class is underpowered, with only the Chorister being an attractive choice. Dragon Highlord is good, but not really suitable unless you’re doing a very offbeat Dragonlance campaign. The few feats which I can say are truly new to this book, Alternate Form and Create Draconians, are more for NPCs to take than PCs.
Join us next time as we learn of the power of the moons and gods in Chapter Two: Magic of Krynn!
