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.
 

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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.
You could kind of make the same case for 3E, though, it had about the same amount of text on each alignment (slightly more), and just has a vague and contradictory "Good vs Evil" and "Law vs Chaos" preamble before it, and some of the alignment descriptions confuse personalities and alignments (which is pretty crap). I'd argue the 3E version of Chaotic Good was actively confusing and showed a misapprehension on the part of whoever wrote it, for example.


In the end, the people who care about alignment as anything more than meme-worthy shenanigans tend to derive their understandings of alignment from 1E and 2E. 4E made a bold attempt to redefine alignment, but it was somewhat misguided and didn't stick.
 


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.
Pretty much.

Because they use loaded language for the moral axis and esoteric language for the ethical one, it's just an inkblot test that wants to add this grand, cosmic angle to the setting, but really just facilitates sparking pointless arguments because no one can agree, but someone will totally say every person they ever met agreed with their view on it, so everyone else must be obviously stupid or immoral.
 

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've seen players use it beneficially a whole lot, and as DM I use it constantly and am grateful that it exists. As for number 2, the game as written doesn't allow that.
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.
Almost. It's not badwrong fun to say that it has hurt your campaigns, that your campaigns have never benefited from it, and that you think YOUR game would be better off without it.

It is badwrongfun to want it taken away from the multitudes of us for whom it works, just because of your bad experience.
 


Alignment doesn't need to exist.


Nothing in the game "needs" 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.

Lots of things exist in D&D which are not about mechanics. In fact, many argue (including me) that it's the non-mechanical aspects of 5e that made it so popular in the first place.

Alignment, for me, serves as a useful shorthand for specific NPCs in published adventures. That doesn't "need" to be there and it isn't having a mechanical effect, but it is having a useful organizational effect on my ability to DM. It is a shorthand reminder to me of some larger personality and background aspects of that NPC. If it varies from my expectation it's a reminder to check the description further, for instance. This is a very useful tool in my games. It's OK if it's not useful in yours.

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 don't know why you keep going on about characters. Alignment is most often used by DMs in my experience, not players. I don't care if alignment is replaced with something else for characters but I do care about it as a DM for NPCs.

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.

I disagree. I saw the negative effect happen in Candlekeep in a direct way. There is an adventure written with alignment in mind. An NPC was listed as good originally, though the visual description of the NPC would normally imply evil and only buried further down in the longer form description did it say they behaved in a good manner. WOTC then wholesale removed alignment from the adventures, WITHOUT consulting with the authors in advance of doing that, and it caused confusion particularly with that particular NPC. IF the PCs happened to wander into that encounter in an unexpected way and the DM was playing catchup on that encounter on the fly (which is not an unusual occurrence for many experienced DMs) they were prone to being caught off guard and running the NPC as evil by accident. Which messed up that part of the adventure. If the shorthand had been left in, literally just two initials of NG, that harm would have been prevented, with no harm to your 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.
Yes, it is in fact badwrongfun that you're declaring it has no "real" place in D&D. That's about as clear an example of badwrongfun as one can produce. It's your use of the term "real" which makes it clear you do in fact think "true" fans shouldn't use it. What else did you mean by "real" in that sentence. Are you retracting that? DO you think it can have a "real" use for some people playing D&D?
 

Krynn War II: The Revised Boogaloo.

It's interesting (and a bit foreboding) to hear that the Moon Sorcerer is getting in, mostly because the feedback on it was "What are you actually trying to say here?" I suppose they cleaned up the language and decided to roll with it, but what they actually meant will still be a mystery until the book comes out.

Kender, the non-fay kind.
The highlights:
30' movement speed is still faster than most halfings.
Fearless makes them immune to fear, which is handy for anyone who isn't a paladin, particularly melee types without wisdom proficiencies.
Kender Curiosity gives a free skill proficiency, in some of the best skills, and doesn't imply an inherent racial kleptomania.
Taunt. This is the feeling you get when someone puts a fly in your soup. An otherwise acceptable entry totally ruined by the inclusion of a tiny thing. Instead of an innate Vicious Mockery, it works as an aggro tool. I disapprove wholeheartedly. No wait. The pick your own casting stat is fine, as is the "This is totally not magical, wink wink" line. Just delete the part where they don't receive disadvantage on attacking the Kender. Otherwise it's going to lead to people thinking you have to play a Kender to be "a tank", and lets just swerve on that before it gets really printed.

Going back to Backgrounds.

Backgrounds are largely fluid, and I can't imagine a Dragonlance game where you couldn't emulate Sturm by being starting off as a knight who isn't actually a knight, so there isn't much to discuss about them again. On the other hand, there is something else that was included with this playtest that is just crazy: Everyone (in the setting) gets a free feat at level 1, and again at level 4. Is this a preview for 5.5? Probably not. At any rate, two feats is about all most people will ever have access too, so these war-torn peoples are already a leg up on their piers from other worlds.

The selection of freebie feats is worth looking over. If you aren't going for one of the new feats, you get your pick of Skilled or Tough. While I can see a case for Tough, I can't imagine that Skilled is something your players are chomping at the bit for. Passing up on free spells or free Battle Master maneuvers is a hard pill to swallow. Now if they feats like Inspiring Leader, and Healer or even half feats including the ones from Tasha's, it would be a veritable buffet of options. I know there are some people who would trip over themselves to pick up the Chef Feat here. The PHB feats available at level 4, on the other hand, are feats that people go out of their way to get normally, so it's just pure gravy at that point.

The agony of the Feats.

As for the new feats themselves, I will start off with the level 1 feats then go to the level 4 feats, for context.

Divinely Favored.
Basically Magic Initiate, with more flavor and flexibility. You are stuck with a Cleric cantrip, but can use your alignment to pick a 1st level spell from multiple different lists. Instead of a second cantrip, you get Augury. This is way more powerful than Skilled, so I don't feel bad about the recommendations to expand the list of free feats at all. Of note: the Divine Communications feat no longer exists, so there isn't any follow up to this one anymore.

Initiate of High Sorcery.
Also basically Magic Initiate, but this time with a more restricted spell list, and you get two first level spells instead of two cantrips.

Squire of Solamnia.
Right out of the way, this is interesting. We know that WotC is exploring taking a step back from Short Rest recharge powers for 5.5, so this might be a preview of how the new Battle Master is going to work. Instead of getting their dice back on a short rest, they get PB/LR dice. How does this work with backwards compatibility? Do the dice stack like with Martial Adept and Superior Technique? Do the dice scale if you are already a Battle Master? We just don't know. Otherwise, it's kind of a half-feat where the other half of the feat is split up into being able to mount up faster. I get the feeling that if mounts are so important to knights, Animal Handling should also be granted by this feat.


Adept of the Black Robes.
Not sure if this is a weird way of acknowledging that enchantment magic is often moraly dubious.
A free level 2 Enchantment or Necromancy spell. While there are some interesting spells in that list, none of the spells from the PHB synergize with the second part of this feat, which is Life Channel. The worst one of the "Use your HD for something other than healing yourself" powers out of the last attempt of this UA. So this feat still sucks when it comes to that, but also got technically worse from a thematic synergy point of view.

Adept of the Red Robes.
Illusion and Transmutation spells this time, and those lists are quite the catch. Magical Balance no longer works on saving throws, but it's still the best secondary effect out of all these adept feats, allowing you to treat a 9 or bellow rolled on a d20 for attacks or skills to be a 10. I can see why Raistlin took the red robes first.

Adept of the White Robes.
While there are a few spells of abjuration and divination I would totally want on any spellcaster, I just don't think the return on investment for Protective Ward is worth it, even when they bumped up the damage dice. It's the trap of combat healing, without actually being able to heal. At least it stacks with other sources of damage mitigation including temporary hit points, resistances, and things like the Clockwork Soul's Bastion of Law power. But the concept is just flawed. Look at Cure Wounds. Look at Healing Word. See how people use those spells, after the target goes down, in order to actually make the spells worth casting. Now look back to this, it's in-between those without the ability to exploit the whack-a-mole factor. Just think of anything else to put here.

Knight of the Crown.
It's a half-feat, but You get another maneuver, two more dice, and your dice jump up to a d8. The maneuvers listed here aren't two I would normally pick.

Knight of the Sword.
Just like the Crown, but with mental stats and better maneuvers.

Knight of the Rose.
In an effort to avoid repetition, I would like to point out you can potentially take all three of these knight feats.
But I have to ask how these dice work with other sources of Superiority Dice, because that needs to be addressed.

Thoughts.
The feats are no longer strictly worse than other feats you would have access to at any given level, and you get them for free from a limited list. While I would love to see that level 1 list expanded, (and the powers of the adept feats reworked) this alleviates most of my previous concerns with getting background feats in general.
 

You could kind of make the same case for 3E, though, it had about the same amount of text on each alignment (slightly more), and just has a vague and contradictory "Good vs Evil" and "Law vs Chaos" preamble before it, and some of the alignment descriptions confuse personalities and alignments (which is pretty crap). I'd argue the 3E version of Chaotic Good was actively confusing and showed a misapprehension on the part of whoever wrote it, for example.


In the end, the people who care about alignment as anything more than meme-worthy shenanigans tend to derive their understandings of alignment from 1E and 2E. 4E made a bold attempt to redefine alignment, but it was somewhat misguided and didn't stick.
The 3e SRD is missing a lot. I'll show LG for both 3e and 5e.

5e: "(LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society."

3e: "A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. She combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. She tells the truth, keeps her word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished."

It's not fantastic, but it has 4x the sentences and is less vague. At least it gives some sense of what LG means.
 

It is badwrongfun to want it taken away from the multitudes of us for whom it works, just because of your bad experience.
I don't think that's quite right.

I think it's reasonable, if you have both extensive experience of a facet of the game, and all that experience is negative, or at best, neutral, to say that facet of the game could stand to be removed or reduced. That's not "badwrongfun". That's a valid experience-based opinion on game design.

By your logic, no-one could object to 4E's design ideas because it worked for "multitudes". Obviously that's not good logic.

I'd suggest rather that it's only "badwrongfun" if they're saying your individual game sucks because you choose to use alignment, not that D&D as a whole shouldn't have alignment.
I was there... when the strength of game designers failed...
I love it lol.
 

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