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

 

[Kalashtar]

It will be interesting to see how doing away with alignment affects the Test of High Sorcery. In previous editions, all mages that wanted to join the order needed to undergo a (sometimes deadly) Test. The purpose of the Test, aside from evaluating magical competence and skill, was to reveal the true allegiance to candidate's true allegiance, to the White, Red or Black robes.

I last used the Test in my recent 5e game where i incorporated parts of The Deva Spark (a Planescape adventure dealing with morality) into the Test. The player's actions during the Test fell a short of "good" as defined as by the adventure and so was offered the Red, much to his dismay. In this particular case the player grudgingly went along with result but I forsee that this might cause issues with others.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This is the worst version of Kender yet

It feels lacking as is.
They could have at least toyed with the kenders' penchant for borrowing more - even as a variant with something mild like spending a full day within a settlement may see them acquire a randomly determined mundane item, with the requirement that they have the space available to carry it, with the rarest of chances that the item is enchanted. And suggest the possibility of gaming tables determining the frequency and power of it, similar to the way they left it open ended for when Wild Surges occur for Sorcerers or when the Bend Luck feature returns.
Kender could also be themed borrowers such as a curiosity for manuscripts, books and scrolls or trinkets and baubles or cutlery...etc

 

[Raunalyn]

Dragonlance was always centered on the concept of the balance between good and evil, law and chaos. They were the world where bad guys always wore black, etc. That didn't bother me much because it was kind of meant to be a pulp fantasy world. The stories were focused on what happens if there was too much evil (dragons and dragonlike creatures sweeping the world and causing death and destruction), or if there was too much good (the Gods throwing a fiery meteor and causing death and destruction....yeah, one of the aspects of the world I didn't like very much).

When I run Dragonlance, I don't have a problem easing up on the alignment issues in regards to good/evil. I instead focus on the Order/Chaos axis.

 

[Azzy]

In Dragonlance our cowboys wizards wear white hats robes if they're good or black hats robes if they're evil.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In Dragonlance our cowboys wizards wear white hats robes if they're good or black hats robes if they're evil.

Yeah, it's a bit on the nose, isn't it?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Don't forget they also murder anyone who:

A) Doesn't take the test.

or

B) Uses too many spells from the "wrong Moon".

Except when they don't, because they make exceptions for people they like. So yeah they are definitely small-e evil, and probably capital-E Evil in modern D&D terms.

Quite

I suspect all this will be retcon'd out of existence for the DL adventure.

May be may be not, I have always mixed feelings about DL as a setting. I liked the novels, is spite of some of their issues at least initially. I lost interest after the first couple of trilogies, not sure which ones.
I liked the wargame and always though it would be cool setting for media like TV or movies. I never adventured there nor ran adventures their, it was too overshadowed by the NPCs changing the world. A bit like adventuring in Middle Earth. The Central Matter, is out of the hands of any PCs.
I am interested in the mechanics of the UA, but more as it indicates how the designers are moving on various issues. I approve of the free feats at level one. This strongly aligns with a position I have held for a while. It was something I was thinking of introducing in to the next campaign I run and I think I would also give the free feat at fourth level also .
I think that feats are under utilised in the game. I also think that the use of a curated list is a pretty good fix. I also like that the designers are also going for additive solutions rather than restrictive ones for setting flavour.

I have little time for canon and the purity of canon in general, as well as lore light approach to settings in general, so I like the flavour as well as the mechanical aspects of the Solamniac knights as well the Mages of High Sorcery, both specifically and as a general approach to this kind of world building. Though I can see why some people are bothered, I am not interested in arguing the toss with them and I do not see why the older version of alignment cannot be simply imposed by DM fiat anyway. It is your campaign anway.

 

[DarkCrisis]

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 B: 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.

There are literally real world similarities from The Great Flood in Christianity to the Crusades and even modern day stuff.

In DL The majority of people became prideful and made demands of the gods. The real lynchpin being the King Priest who thought he could run things better than Paladine. (Kind of sounds like Lucifer’s origin).

The “good priests” wanted to kill or exile all none humans and justified things like slavery.

Doesn’t actually sound unrealistic to me…

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Given that a Mage of High Sorcery can now be a fighter, I think some modifications to the test might be required...

 

[DarkCrisis]

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.

You may have read something I haven’t but the scene in Legends is the King Priest simply making demands of the gods.

IE far to much pride. Which they also say was happening to all the races of Krynn. They all started taking the gods for granted and expected to have their whims met.

So once the King Prost made a big show and made his big demand of “Let me run things I can do it better” was the last straw. There was no god enslavement magic.

Soth was supposed to stop him from his last big final demand but was tricked by Tahkesis to return home and slay his wife and kid.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It will be interesting to see how doing away with alignment affects the Test of High Sorcery. In previous editions, all mages that wanted to join the order needed to undergo a (sometimes deadly) Test. The purpose of the Test, aside from evaluating magical competence and skill, was to reveal the true allegiance to candidate's true allegiance, to the White, Red or Black robes.

I last used the Test in my recent 5e game where i incorporated parts of The Deva Spark (a Planescape adventure dealing with morality) into the Test. The player's actions during the Test fell a short of "good" as defined as by the adventure and so was offered the Red, much to his dismay. In this particular case the player grudgingly went along with result but I forsee that this might cause issues with others.

This is one of the central issues with D&D alignment, all at the table have to buy into it, have to have worked out what the alignments mean and/or are willing to accept the DM's arbitration and trust the DM not to weaponize alignment to enforce their vision of the story on the players.