D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana: Heroes of Krynn Revisited

WotC's Jeremy Crawford has announced a new Unearthed Arcana article today with redesigns from the prior Heroes of Krynn UA based on feedback, and in the following video he discusses that feedback and what's in the article:

• New iteration of Kender based on feedback survey, due to mixed response. This time is a back to basics, aiming to capture 1E AD&D fearlessness, curiosity and taunting skills. Delve into their origins from Gnomes in deep history.
• Kender are no longer fey creatures who grab objects from the Feywild
• Tweaked Feats from prior article
• Tweaked Backgrounds from prior article
• Brand new rule giving a list of free Feats for ANY Background
• Free Feat rule for Level 4 for all characters that doesn't take the ASI away, based on a curated list
• Reveals that in the Adventure, healing magic is already back.

Heroes of Krynn Revisited | Unearthed Arcana | Dungeons & Dragons

Explore updated character options from the Dragonlance setting! This playtest document presents revised races, subclasses, backgrounds, and feats.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[MonsterEnvy]

As we have discussed many times, because it should be there.

Nah. It should be possible for those who don't match the Alignment to join, and if the Orders don't think they fit they can kick them out.

 

[Scribe]

Nah. It should be possible for those who don't match the Alignment to join, and if the Orders don't think they fit they can kick them out.

/shrug

I'm fine agreeing to disagree. 'Non-Good' on a Black robe doesnt seem like it should be too much to ask for, but yet here we are.

 

[JEB]

Nah. It should be possible for those who don't match the Alignment to join, and if the Orders don't think they fit they can kick them out.

In fact, since there's no "detect alignment" spells or the like in 5E, it only makes sense that some would slip through the cracks. They just likely wouldn't last very long. (And there should be explicit lore support for them kicking folks out who don't live up to their ideals.)

 

[Maxperson]

You should be happy that it's even still in the game at all

It's not. There's no way for new players to get a functional idea of what the alignments mean from the one vague sentence each alignment gets in the PHB. Those of us that argue here and understand what alignment means got that understanding from prior editions.

 

[Maxperson]

Alignment is fine in it's current form I think. It has very little mechanical influence, and creatures are marked best as typically being that alignment (Excluding named creatures as they are solidly that thing)

I agree that it needed little mechanical influence, but it also needed more than a single vague sentence for each alignment. At least a paragraph so that new people could get some sort of understanding of what each alignment means.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

How can anyone be bothered by Evil white robes specifically in DL?

This is a setting where the world when to hell because people got so Good they turned evil, so the gods send one dumbass to warn them, who fails utterly and they give up and go with plan be: genocide. In response to people being too good, they murdered thousands, then noped out of fixing their atrocity.

I'd have more of an issue with literally anyone in the setting being considered Good... for so many and layered reasons.

That's not quite what happened. The Kingpriest went super evil in his zealotry, and the Good Gods denounced him. The Kingpriest in response decided that meant the goods were not good enough and created a ritual to enslave ALL the gods to his will. This got the good, neutral and evil gods to agree he was a problem and he needed to be dealt with, and so they told their followers and sent signs down to the world to stop the Kingpriest, this largely fell on deaf ears, so one of them recruited Lord Soth one of the strongest warriors in the realm to go deal with the Kingpriest before the gods ran out of time and needed to eradicate the Kingpriest themselves, which cause a huge Cataclysm. Soth however turned around right before getting to the Kingpriest so he could cause the death of his wife and son, so the gods ran out of time before they would get enslaved, and so dropped a mountain on the Kingpriest and left the world.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

A ton of people also still like alignment. Your declaration that it has no "real" place in the hobby anymore is gatekeeping and unwelcome. You don't have to use it in your games for it to still have a place in the hobby in the games of those who still like it.

Truly, I grow tired of the badwrongfun claims.

Alignment doesn't need to exist. The only mechanical effect that it has in 5e is for a handful of minor magic items. It has no effect on spells, no effect on what class you can be a member of, your race doesn't affect it, your background doesn't limit your alignment, and the Great Wheel is the only true part of D&D's "mechanics" actually connected to it. It doesn't need to exist in 5e. It has no mechanical significance.

From my experience, it has literally only ever been used in one of the following ways in 5e:

1. A small descriptive text that a player chooses upon making their character and forgets about for the rest of the campaign.
2. A bludgeon used to restrict the actions of fellow players due to whatever alignment they chose to write when making their character.

I have never seen it enhance a game. I have literally only ever seen it do nothing to it, or be an active detriment to it. Removing it would both not prevent anyone that actually still uses it from using it in the way the 5e currently does (because it basically doesn't affect anything anymore) and would make it so alignment wasn't a default assumption of the game.

It's not "badwrongfun" to say that something has actively hurt your campaigns, never benefitted it, and you think that the game would be better off without it being assumed in the core rules. I'm not forcing anyone else to stop using alignment. I'm not saying people aren't true fans for liking/using alignment. I just think that it's a stupid sacred cow that shouldn't be in the core assumptions of the game anymore and does more harm than good by being in it in the first place.

If it already doesn't do much in 5e . . . it also doesn't matter for it to be taken out.

 

[Parmandur]

If your yum has been repeatedly used to bludgeon people me in my games, I'm perfectly fine with yucking it. If someone attacked you and how you played based on the new style of D&D at your table and almost got you banned from the table for that . . . I'd be perfectly fine with you yucking it, too.

I'd be fine with alignment existing if it was completely harmless. It isn't, so I'll be happy when it's gone. Since it basically has no mechanical meaning in 5e, adding the occasional two word descriptor to your own game should be easy to do for the people that like it. But including it in the game still encourages in-game alignment debates and player conflicts in destructive ways.

It's not "ironic" to legitimately despise something that's been used as a weapon against you in the past.

It's really not on the way out, though. The nine alignment system is iconic, and part of the brand identity and even memes. It is also helpful for a lot of people in practice, particularly now that it isn't a straightjacket.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

It's not. There's no way for new players to get a functional idea of what the alignments mean from the one vague sentence each alignment gets in the PHB. Those of us that argue here and understand what alignment means got that understanding from prior editions.

I remain unconvinced that any edition ever had a terribly consistent definition of the various alignments or that people haven't always primarily given the alignments whatever meaning they personally brought to them.

 

[Maxperson]

It's not "ironic" to legitimately despise something that's been used as a weapon against you in the past.

It's unable to be used as a weapon in 5e. At all. It literally has no teeth. If you put CG on your sheet and the DM has a hissy fit and says you are acting LG. Just shrug and move on. You still play your character the way you want. You still have CG on your sheet. What does it matter if the DM thinks it's LG?