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

 

[Maxperson]

On the one hand . . . Krynn wears its good-neutrality-evil axis on its sleeve.

On the other hand . . . the novels already have several examples of more nuanced characters that defy alignment stereotypes, some of those characters being Wizards of High Sorcery and Knights of Solamnia.

Alignment is a relic and a straightjacket. I'm perfectly fine with not having alignment restrictions on the High Sorcery and Solamnia backgrounds.

Alignment has never been a straightjacket. Some classes were more constrained than others, but they still had leeway in how they acted.

 

[Scribe]

Alignment has never been a straightjacket. Some classes were more constrained than others, but they still had leeway in how they acted.

Raistlin went from Red to Black, a true straightjacket that Alignment is.

 

[Maxperson]

Raistlin went from Red to Black, a true straightjacket that Alignment is.

Even 1e Paladins could engage in some chaotic or neutral acts without changing their alignment. If they knowingly did something chaotic, they had to atone. If they knowingly AND willingly did something evil, they ceased to be a paladin, but remained LG. Alignment even at its harshest was never a straightjacket.

 

[Mistwell]

I now feel like the Kender need one more thing to give them a bit of umph. Like a extra free interact with object on their turn in addition to the normal one.

 

[Maxperson]

I now feel like the Kender need one more thing to give them a bit of umph. Like a extra free interact with object on their turn in addition to the normal one.

Give them advantage when using Sleight of Hand to steal something worth less than 1g or maybe weighing less than 1 pound.

 

[Yaarel]

Feat at L1 and a Feat at L4. Interesting, definitely a change of direction from the "Yo Feats are totally optional" of 5E initial. I get that this is campaign-specific but unless it's unpopular I daresay DND2024 will make not having Feats be the weird optional state.

I agree that setting/background feat will likely be the default.

But perhaps a setting like Greyhawk might completely remove feats.

 

[Scribe]

Give them advantage when using Sleight of Hand to steal something worth less than 1g or maybe weighing less than 1 pound.

Yes, something flavourful and accurate to the old lore like that would be great.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They already got rid of that is the issue. They had a perfectly playable race that wasn't even problematic in any of those ways, that just had the ability to borrow things from hammerspace a few times a day. They just made it completely vanilla and meaninglessly unique for basically no reason, I really don't get why people would complain about an ability that doesn't require kender to steal anything but retains their "huh, how did I find this?" qualities.

Because it changed their origin story, and gave an explicitly magical ability. For fluff reasons, in other words.

 

[darjr]

Kender in their original appearance (DL1) & the new UA release.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Man. Ok so while the fey wasn’t popular, now we are back to “you actually have to actively steal things and pretend like you didn’t know” kender which I’m sure everyone at the table that ISNT the Kender is going to love.

But at least they will know you aren’t a fey.