New UA...has Kender? Wat?

[PhoenixPhyre]

https://media.wizards.com/2022/dnd/downloads/UA2022HeroesofKrynn.pdf

Yes, that's an official Dragonlance UA. With kender.

[KorvinStarmast]

https://media.wizards.com/2022/dnd/downloads/UA2022HeroesofKrynn.pdf
Yes, that's an official Dragonlance UA. With kender.
This is why we can't have nice things. :smalltongue:
WoTC has jumped the shark. :smallfrown:

[Amnestic]

Alignment locked feats? Guessing it makes more sense in-setting. That's a first for 5e though.

[Marcloure]

Thought Kenders would be just Halflings... guess not.

Now, I was expecting some dragon-oath paladin, that would be cool.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is why we can't have nice things. :smalltongue:
WoTC has jumped the shark. :smallfrown:

Agreed. And the rest isn't all that much better. Maybe makes sense for the setting, but certainly not something I'd even consider allowing.


Alignment locked feats? Guessing it makes more sense in-setting. That's a first for 5e though.

And feat chains. And (although this isn't new), backgrounds giving major feats. A background that gives medium armor and martial weapons as only one of 3 significant benefits for that one feat? And where that feat is a prerequisite for other powerful feats? Wat? No. Just...no.

[Wasp]

Zero sorcery point metamagic? I mean only transmutation and divination seem relevant, but that has to be exploitable....

[Lord Torath]

Feat chains?!?!?!?
:yuk:

If a feat's too powerful for first level, by all means, give it a minimum level requirement. But don't make the PC take weaker feats to get the strong one. That's just obnoxious design.

[Warder]

Agreed. And the rest isn't all that much better. Maybe makes sense for the setting, but certainly not something I'd even consider allowing.



And feat chains. And (although this isn't new), backgrounds giving major feats. A background that gives medium armor and martial weapons as only one of 3 significant benefits for that one feat? And where that feat is a prerequisite for other powerful feats? Wat? No. Just...no.

"This is why we can't have nice things" - I kind of hate that saying, but it does carry across the sentiment fairly well. Setting specific books is exactly where this sort of stuff belongs. It's intensely frustrating to me to see Wizards finally taking some chances and breaking the intensely boring routine they've gotten stuck in, by creating stuff that makes sense for one particular setting, and then have people tear it apart because it doesn't make sense for generic D&D.

Meaningful differences between settings and content usable in all settings - pick one, you can't have both.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Feat chains?!?!?!?
:yuk:

If a feat's too powerful for first level, by all means, give it a minimum level requirement. But don't make the PC take weaker feats to get the strong one. That's just obnoxious design.

The weaker ones aren't that much weaker. They're basically magic initiate (Wizard) and a better Medium Armored + other benefits. And they come via background for free! Completely breaking the idea that backgrounds aren't somewhere for build optimization. As reference, the "feature" of the Knight of Solamnia background is the same as that of Acolyte...plus a major feat. So if you're variant human or Custom lineage, you can pick up two major feats at first level. Whether that's prereq + step 2 in the chain or prereq + other feat of your choice. That's stupid and borked.


"This is why we can't have nice things" - I kind of hate that saying, but it does carry across the sentiment fairly well. Setting specific books is exactly where this sort of stuff belongs. It's intensely frustrating to me to see Wizards finally taking some chances and breaking the intensely boring routine they've gotten stuck in, by creating stuff that makes sense for one particular setting, and then have people tear it apart because it doesn't make sense for generic D&D.

Meaningful differences between settings and content usable in all settings - pick one, you can't have both.

If it was carefully locked to that one setting, that'd be one thing. But the current culture is that setting locking is bad (hence MotM and Tasha's opening things that were setting locked to everyone). And they're absolutely presented as cross-setting. See the background for the Mages in this one. And that's the borken thing--the idea that these are anywhere appropriate for anything else. They're power creep on steroids, presented in a way that guarantees they'll try to be shoehorned into every setting possible. And people will complain if you don't let them play them wherever.

[Luccan]

As usual, this sorcerer subclass is better than all that came before it. Potential free metamagic (and reduced cost regardless) and 15 bonus spells, albeit on set swap lists. Not surprised Kender are separate from halfling. Not only are they separating out the subraces into their own things, it gives the Kender's well known traits without making it obnoxious for the party to deal with. Just roll to see if you picked up something useful is much better than "you have RP license to steal from the party"

[stoutstien]

"This is why we can't have nice things" - I kind of hate that saying, but it does carry across the sentiment fairly well. Setting specific books is exactly where this sort of stuff belongs. It's intensely frustrating to me to see Wizards finally taking some chances and breaking the intensely boring routine they've gotten stuck in, by creating stuff that makes sense for one particular setting, and then have people tear it apart because it doesn't make sense for generic D&D.

Meaningful differences between settings and content usable in all settings - pick one, you can't have both.

Bad design is bad design and this is building off one of the worse implemented concepts in 5e(turning backgrounds into a exponential power growth at no cost) and adding in one if the worse ones from 3.x(feat chaining) the lore of dragonlance is fine as a whole but slapping it onto the feat/background systems isn't the answer.

[Warder]

If it was carefully locked to that one setting, that'd be one thing. But the current culture is that setting locking is bad (hence MotM and Tasha's opening things that were setting locked to everyone). And they're absolutely presented as cross-setting. See the background for the Mages in this one. And that's the borken thing--the idea that these are anywhere appropriate for anything else. They're power creep on steroids, presented in a way that guarantees they'll try to be shoehorned into every setting possible. And people will complain if you don't let them play them wherever.

I completely agree that people whining about not letting them play anything is bad for the game - and I would even go so far as to say that it is WotC's own fault that things have gotten that far. But it doesn't have to be that way. If generic stuff is what people want - if it is what you want - then by all means complain about it, make your voice heard. But if you want noticably different settings, the only way leading to that is to embrace ways things can be different in each setting. On Krynn, the moons govern magic, and the moons are tied to alignment. On Krynn, you have to become a Knight of the Crown before you become a Knight of the Sword before you become a Knight of the Rose. The homogenization of every setting and every race and everything in D&D is by far my greatest issue with 5e, and balance concerns or demands to play everything everywhere are very, very distant concerns.

[EndlessKng]

"This is why we can't have nice things" - I kind of hate that saying, but it does carry across the sentiment fairly well. Setting specific books is exactly where this sort of stuff belongs. It's intensely frustrating to me to see Wizards finally taking some chances and breaking the intensely boring routine they've gotten stuck in, by creating stuff that makes sense for one particular setting, and then have people tear it apart because it doesn't make sense for generic D&D.

Meaningful differences between settings and content usable in all settings - pick one, you can't have both.

Yeah, seriously this.

This is exactly why they haven't experimented more in other settings. If you wouldn't allow something in your campaign, fine, don't allow it - but this setting has been HEAVILY demanded by fans for YEARS, and has very specific setting expectations. Evaluate them critically against the other content within and stuff that it could interact or compete with IN the setting, but don't knock the experiment that fits a setting just because you wouldn't use it in yours. Not every book has to be equally useful to everyone at all times. That's the idea of the d20 OGL: take what you want, change it how you like, leave the rest behind.

(Now, I will say I CAN have both, but to do so I have to create a custom setting where they work together.)

[Pex]

I appreciate they try to keep the spirit of kender without telling players to steal from everyone and everything and provoke NPCs into combat because they aren't afraid of anything. They know the justified hatred people have toward them. They had to do something.

[Warder]

Bad design is bad design and this is building off one of the worse implemented concepts in 5e(turning backgrounds into a exponential power growth at no cost) and adding in one if the worse ones from 3.x(feat chaining)

Being a Knight of Solamnia does not come without cost. It comes with duties and stigma and codes of conduct. It's not that I disagree that these are powerful - probably too powerful - just that looking at them in a vaccuum is incredibly harmful to the future of campaign books. They need to be looked at through the context of the book they're published in, if and only if you believe that different settings can and should have different mechanics. If you're a generalist and crunch is what matters, then I completely get your point.

But I will say this - I can count on one hand the number of characters from all the 5e campaigns I've played across all players who would've taken these feats if they came pre-packaged with all the roleplaying stipulations attached to being a Solamnic Knight, despite how powerful they are.

[KorvinStarmast]

This is just some sloppy UA.
1. Kender Stuff

Size. You are Small.
Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet.
Dwarves gnomes and halflings get 25. WTF? :smalltongue:
Brave. I can live with that.
Kender Ace
Generally no, except for a game table where silly and whimsy is the tone overall. (FWIW, this would fit in the Witchlight campaign well enough). But this is potentially an unending stream of stuff / GP... so not in this form.
Taunt. Maybe. It is limited by language, workable.
(Fiddly, but so are a lot of 'humanoid only' features and spells.

On the other hand, Kender are not acceptable to me as a DM no matter how much they polish this turd. The damage has been done already, at the concept level.

2. Lunar Sorcerer Stuff:
a. Pointless power creep of sacred flame cantrip. a free cantrip is a sufficient benefit.
b. Lunar Spells (Maybe). Sorc bonus spells by origin are a thing, these seem to be a goodly selection.
c. Lunar Boons: more DM overhead keeping track of the phase of the moons. Too fiddly.
d. Lunar Empowerment: actually like this.
18th level feature: OK, probably OK as there is a sorc point cost.

3. Feats:
No, make class features class features, don’t mess with the feats structure as is. What is the point of making a mess of how feats work, which works.
Hard No.
Why are they doing this?
“Let’s overcomplicate things”

Concept on Knights of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery.

Why not build them like the Hunter Ranger? You get various options at various level ups. Pick one and go. Why are they making these feats? Why the feat chains?

Traveling backwards on alignment.
:smallmad:
This is not a good thing.

[stoutstien]

Being a Knight of Solamnia does not come without cost. It comes with duties and stigma and codes of conduct. It's not that I disagree that these are powerful - probably too powerful - just that looking at them in a vaccuum is incredibly harmful to the future of campaign books. They need to be looked at through the context of the book they're published in, if and only if you believe that different settings can and should have different mechanics. If you're a generalist and crunch is what matters, then I completely get your point.

But I will say this - I can count on one hand the number of characters from all the 5e campaigns I've played across all players who would've taken these feats if they came pre-packaged with all the roleplaying stipulations attached to being a Solamnic Knight, despite how powerful they are.

That's kinda my points. Feats are mostly disconnected by nature which makes them a a poor medium for something this important for the core of a setting. I don't like dragonlance but I can understand the reasons why people would and seeing it lazily stapled on and being just clumps of raw creep irks me.

[tokek]

Alignment locked feats? Guessing it makes more sense in-setting. That's a first for 5e though.

Alignment locked spell choices are not new. Having that in a feat instead of a class is new but it does not seem that radical

[Willie the Duck]

I appreciate they try to keep the spirit of kender without telling players to steal from everyone and everything and provoke NPCs into combat because they aren't afraid of anything. They know the justified hatred people have toward them. They had to do something.

Agreed. If there is going to be a Dragonlance book for 5e, this had to be addressed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Being a Knight of Solamnia does not come without cost. It comes with duties and stigma and codes of conduct. It's not that I disagree that these are powerful - probably too powerful - just that looking at them in a vaccuum is incredibly harmful to the future of campaign books. They need to be looked at through the context of the book they're published in, if and only if you believe that different settings can and should have different mechanics. If you're a generalist and crunch is what matters, then I completely get your point.

But I will say this - I can count on one hand the number of characters from all the 5e campaigns I've played across all players who would've taken these feats if they came pre-packaged with all the roleplaying stipulations attached to being a Solamnic Knight, despite how powerful they are.

That's the thing. It can't come with all those roleplaying stipulations when detached from the setting. And these are written in this UA as cross-setting things. Not tied to any of the roleplaying stipulations. And that's the problem.

I'm 100% in favor of setting-specific stuff being able to break the rules. I do a lot of that myself in my (very different, non-Multiverse-compliant setting). But it has to be presented from the first as "this is only valid in this setting, and only with the constraints imposed internally." Not "here's free power creep for anyone."

Basically, WotC has gone all in on the "there is no setting-specific published material. Everything is valid everywhere." And that demands that you can't do things like this. That fork was passed with Tasha's (if not before). And one of the reasons I really don't like the current design patterns.

[Dork_Forge]

So.. .are we fully through the looking glass now?

Feats that make no sense balance-wise held against their predecessors and more ridiculous backgrounds?

To those saying about it being setting specific: Then they should have come up with a setting specific system, like they did for Theros and Ravenloft, not broken the convention of what backgrounds are for.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So.. .are we fully through the looking glass now?

Feats that make no sense balance-wise held against their predecessors and more ridiculous backgrounds?

To those saying about it being setting specific: Then they should have come up with a setting specific system, like they did for Theros and Ravenloft, not broken the convention of what backgrounds are for.

Hard agree. And these backgrounds make feats rather not optional. Which is another lie, hidden away.

[KorvinStarmast]

So.. .are we fully through the looking glass now?

Feats that make no sense balance-wise held against their predecessors and more ridiculous backgrounds?

To those saying about it being setting specific: Then they should have come up with a setting specific system, like they did for Theros and Ravenloft, not broken the convention of what backgrounds are for.
I hope you'll join me in providing the useful feedback when the survey comes out.
Why not just make the Knight of Solamnia Class/sub class, or High Sorcery Wizard, class or sub class, and build it like a proper class?
Grr.

[Sigreid]

Kill it with fire and make the UA designers homeless.

[togapika]

Lunar Magic Sorcerer? Uh oh, Sailor Moon characters incoming...

[Amnestic]

Kill it with fire and make the UA designers homeless.

Glad to see people are still giving totally reasonable responses to playtest material.


That's the thing. It can't come with all those roleplaying stipulations when detached from the setting. And these are written in this UA as cross-setting things. Not tied to any of the roleplaying stipulations. And that's the problem.

I'm 100% in favor of setting-specific stuff being able to break the rules. I do a lot of that myself in my (very different, non-Multiverse-compliant setting). But it has to be presented from the first as "this is only valid in this setting, and only with the constraints imposed internally." Not "here's free power creep for anyone."

Basically, WotC has gone all in on the "there is no setting-specific published material. Everything is valid everywhere." And that demands that you can't do things like this. That fork was passed with Tasha's (if not before). And one of the reasons I really don't like the current design patterns.

Also this is, frankly, incredibly hyperbolic. The stuff that Tasha's brought over from other settings* isn't remotely problematic from a balance perspective. Did MotM bring over the Strixhaven backgronds? Did Tasha's import the Ravnica backgrounds or the dragonmarked or the aberrant dragonmarked feat? They did not. Yes, some things from some settings books (subclasses and the Artificer) were reprinted. But the things you're actually concerned about - the backgrounds, the setting-specific feats? Nope, not seen hide nor hair of them.

*and though Artificer was first published in Eberron in 5e, calling it Eberron-specific isn't true historically, since I believe originally it was a 2e wizard subclass/specialty, so its concept predates Eberron.

[Ortho]

Wow, those feats are a mess. It really feels like they're trying to make a subclass without officially making it a subclass, so they're shoehorning it into feats. Is this a second attempt at class-agnostic subclasses?

Feat chaining really bad in 5e - the designers apparently forgot that most classes only get like 5 ASIs, so you really can't afford to take prerequisite feats. And some feats have two or three prerequisites besides, which is...excessive. I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't have to jump through hoops like that. Also, I am not a huge fan of locking feats behind levels. That's always seemed a very arbitrary restriction, especially if the level gate is the first level you'd normally be able to take the feat anyways.

[Dienekes]

Man the feats.

Squire of Solemnia is a feat that’s kinda amazing for everyone who doesn’t already start with medium armor and martial weapon proficiencies. Otherwise it’s pretty bad. 1/day advantage on one saving throw as a reaction is not worth a feat. And the riding thing is just a ribbon.

So, to advance in the knighthood you have to either take a bad feat, or be a caster.

I am still astounded how long it’s taken them to figure out that this stuff is bad design.

[Ralanr]

While I don't mind the idea of backgrounds giving feats (if it means future reprints of human don't get a feat for free and maybe something else), I'm not a fan of returning feat chains, especially with how limited you are in feat options currently.

Maybe the revamp changes that, but we can't say so.

[Christew]

Well, if tying in with the upcoming trilogy won't drive sales enough, use power creep to bring in the non-DL fans. Cool WotC, real cool.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Also this is, frankly, incredibly hyperbolic. The stuff that Tasha's brought over from other settings* isn't remotely problematic from a balance perspective. Did MotM bring over the Strixhaven backgronds? Did Tasha's import the Ravnica backgrounds or the dragonmarked or the aberrant dragonmarked feat? They did not. Yes, some things from some settings books (subclasses and the Artificer) were reprinted. But the things you're actually concerned about - the backgrounds, the setting-specific feats? Nope, not seen hide nor hair of them.

*and though Artificer was first published in Eberron in 5e, calling it Eberron-specific isn't true historically, since I believe originally it was a 2e wizard subclass/specialty, so its concept predates Eberron.

Precedent is precedent. One can see that the road being taken will have issues well before those issues actually arise. And going back isn't so simple once the Rubicon is passed. Some slopes really are slippery. And we're seeing the effects with this, which, I'll remind you, is explicitly written as cross-setting. Not even a hint of setting-locking. And is problematic as all get out. From both power creep and just sheer jank perspectives.

And we've seen on these forums that the player-base's expectation is "if it's officially printed, it's fair game and how dare you restrict me!"

[ironkid]

Just read the Heroes of krynn UA... strikes me as odd that KNIGHT OF SOLAMNIA background works better for wizards/sorcerers (training in medium armor!) and MAGE OF HIGH SORCERY for rangers/paladins (potentially learning the shield spell for the cost of a background - and some cantrips to boot!)

Edit: to clarify, both backgrounds grant feats that supply said benefits. I thought strixhaven backgrouds were typical MTG overpowered, but is seems its the new trend.

Not sure if thats a good or a bad thing.

[Telwar]

This suggests that feats may be more common in 5.5. And while they're optional now, frankly, almost everyone uses them, and it's not like all the other rules aren't optional, either.

[Evaar]

1) Lunar Magic seems fine. Seeing people talk about free metamagic - it's proficiency times/day. It's basically a few bonus sorcery points, but less flexible. It's fine. Don't panic.

2) Kender seems okay. Not for me, but whatever. They've reflavored the "steals things all the time" trait to "finds stuff in pockets that they legitimately did not steal, it's magic." Sure, okay. Seems like a race for goofball concepts, but plenty of tables like that. Go nuts. No reason this needs to be played any more toxic than any other race as written.

3) Backgrounds giving feats is bad. Even if those feats are weak. The prereq feats are pretty bad on their own, so that's arguably even worse - now only characters with a particular background want to get those prereq feats, because you wouldn't spend an ASI on them normally, so then the whole feat tree is locked out for most players. What is gained by designing it like this? Why not just delete those prereq feats and these backgrounds?

4) Squire gives Medium Armor and Martial Weapons, but no Shields. The Shield is the crucial thing, and why Medium Armor Proficiency as a feat is so good. At the moment, I struggle to imagine the character who really strongly benefits from that clause of this feat - non-Hexblade Pact of the Blade Warlock maybe?? The mount thing is probably not going to come up in most games - I have yet to be knocked off a mount in 5e. Giving an ally 1/day advantage on a save is pretty handy, but certainly not game-breaking. If you set aside the first two clauses, you would not take a feat that grants only the 3rd feature.

5) Initiate just seems like a less flexible Magic Initiate? You get to pick your casting stat, though, and you learn the spell. Still seems like you'd just take Magic Initiate or Fey Touched.

6) Divinely Favored is pretty weak, again being a worse Fey Touched or Magic Initiate, though it's interesting you can use a holy symbol as a focus for spells with a casting stat of your choice. Theoretically that means you could put a holy symbol on a shield and not require a free hand to access components or a focus, though I'm struggling to figure out who that will really meaningfully benefit. Sword and Board Eldritch Knights?

7) The feats locked behind the prereqs are actually mostly decent to solid. You might consider taking some of these if you have some extra ASIs you don't desperately need. They should just flat out delete the prereq feats and the backgrounds. Write into the subsequent feats themselves that the DM must give you permission to use this feat, leave it up to DMs to decide if a character merits membership in the Red Robes or whatever... or the DM can choose not to care because they're not playing in Krynn and the feat itself is fine. Whatever. It doesn't need the additional layer of complexity caused by imposing prereq feats, then mitigating that cost by giving those feats free via background. Just do it the way we've been doing it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just read the Heroes of krynn UA... strikes me as odd that KNIGHT OF SOLAMNIA background works better for wizards/sorcerers (training in medium armor!) and MAGE OF HIGH SORCERY for rangers/paladins (potentially learning the shield spell for the cost of a background - and some cantrips to boot!)

Not sure if thats a good or a bad thing.

FYI--there's another thread already about this UA. But I agree. It's poorly thought out all in all.

[Amnestic]

Precedent is precedent.

You're stating a precedent has been set when there hasn't been. Your argument is that the setting specific backgrounds and feats will be reprinted in setting-neutral books, but that 'precedent' hasn't happened yet. Not in Tasha's. Not in MotM. And not in any other books we've seen snippets of.

No, a class that fits in literally every published 5e setting (Artificer) is not the same as "you went to Strixhaven university" or "you have an Eberron dragonmark" or "you are a Knight of Solamnia". You might as well propose that since humans are in all the settings that settings don't exist and it's a free for all. Shenanigans, I call on that.



One can see that the road being taken will have issues well before those issues actually arise. And going back isn't so simple once the Rubicon is passed. Some slopes really are slippery. And we're seeing the effects with this, which, I'll remind you, is explicitly written as cross-setting. Not even a hint of setting-locking. And is problematic as all get out. From both power creep and just sheer jank perspectives.


What do you mean there's no hint of setting locking? It's a UA called Heroes of Krynn, not Heroes of Generic Fantasy Setting

The exception is the subclass - which mentions other settings - but that's not what you're complaining about; you're complaining about the backgrounds and the feats. Are there a lot of Orders of the White Robes in your setting? No? Then I guess that feat's probably not on the table for you.



And we've seen on these forums that the player-base's expectation is "if it's officially printed, it's fair game and how dare you restrict me!"

Okay, so tell them no. I know you already do that, so you're keenly aware that it's possible.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I think this might be the first UA in a long time where I just don't see how this got the "presentable" mark to put this out.

The backgrounds literally come with feats. There was already an argument to be made that races starting with feats is an outlier (a long and storied discussion in itself) and we've had ample time to discuss why having powerful backgrounds is problematic (Ravnica Backgrounds) so slapping the two together with objectively very strong feats is quite a design choice.

I suppose the saving grace is that I don't see much argument for allowing these outside of the Dragonlance setting, but even then it would be a strange dichotomy to look at how effective a level 1 Dragonlance Hero is allowed to be compared to another setting. This is definitely encouraging a DM to gatekeep content or the gates have opened for a Spellcaster to take Knight of Solamnia for direct access to medium armor where Moderately Armored at least required their class to already be proficient with light armor, at no ASI cost to boot because it's from a background. At least it doesn't give Shields.

Not a fan of feat chaining, not a fan of backgrounds being a significant source of power, not really a fan of the "lol random" Kender either. The only thing I don't have any strong feelings towards is the Sorcerer subclass but it's once again highlighting the difference between PHB Sorc's and more recent designs, there's just such a noticeable power difference.

[Khrysaes]

Bad design is bad design and this is building off one of the worse implemented concepts in 5e(turning backgrounds into a exponential power growth at no cost) and adding in one if the worse ones from 3.x(feat chaining) the lore of dragonlance is fine as a whole but slapping it onto the feat/background systems isn't the answer.

Lacking punctuation, I can only assume where your sentences are.
I agree that these are bad design.

HOWEVER, I would argue that using the lore of dragonlance in backgrounds are almost exactly what backgrounds are for. That said, The continuation of adding power to backgrounds as a design philosophy does not seem like a good idea to me.


This is just some sloppy UA.
1. Kender Stuff
Dwarves gnomes and halflings get 25. WTF? :smalltongue:
Brave. I can live with that.
Kender Ace
Generally no, except for a game table where silly and whimsy is the tone overall. (FWIW, this would fit in the Witchlight campaign well enough). But this is potentially an unending stream of stuff / GP... so not in this form.
Taunt. Maybe. It is limited by language, workable.
(Fiddly, but so are a lot of 'humanoid only' features and spells.

On the other hand, Kender are not acceptable to me as a DM no matter how much they polish this turd. The damage has been done already, at the concept level.

The small races in Vanrichten's, Monsters of the Multiverse, and Witchlight, all have at least 30ft movement speeds. So if anything, the PHB ones need to be updated. That they didn't include the changes in the errata with the removal of all the alignment sections is frustrating.
I do think that the Kender Ace has some potential for abuse, what with being able to conjure items, but they do disappear after 1 hour. Forge cleric can also conjure objects worth up to 100gp that are permanent for their channel divinity.
I like taunt.



2. Lunar Sorcerer Stuff:
a. Pointless power creep of sacred flame cantrip. a free cantrip is a sufficient benefit.
b. Lunar Spells (Maybe). Sorc bonus spells by origin are a thing, these seem to be a goodly selection.
c. Lunar Boons: more DM overhead keeping track of the phase of the moons. Too fiddly.
d. Lunar Empowerment: actually like this.
18th level feature: OK, probably OK as there is a sorc point cost.

I don't think a. is too much power creep, if any. Other first level subclasses grant extra cantrips among other features, including sorcerer, cleric, and warlock 1st level choices. the Death domain also has the same functionality as adding 1 cantrip, and the ability to target two creatures within 5ft of each other, in addition to the bonus spells.
I like the bonus spells, it just sucks that older Sorcerer Subclasses DON'T have them. It is also a bit ranking that the lunar Sorcerer effectively has 15 bonus spells, even if until 6th level they are limited to 5 per long rest, and not the 10 that Aberrant or Clockwork have, though those two can customize their list.
Lunar boons seem tied to the lunar phase from the lunar spells choice, not the actual phase of the moon. I am not sure what DM overhead you are talking about.




3. Feats:
No, make class features class features, don’t mess with the feats structure as is. What is the point of making a mess of how feats work, which works.
Hard No.
Why are they doing this?
“Let’s overcomplicate things”

Concept on Knights of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery.

Why not build them like the Hunter Ranger? You get various options at various level ups. Pick one and go. Why are they making these feats? Why the feat chains?

Traveling backwards on alignment.
:smallmad:
This is not a good thing.

I also don't like the feat chaining design, particularly free feats with the backgrounds, though I guess since the BGs don't have bonus spells to the spell lists they are moderately better than Strixhaven's BGs. Some of the features are cool, I like Life Channel and Protective Ward. Divinely Favored and Initiate of High sorcerery is similar to many of the Magic Initiate feats.

The knight feats seem fine, so long as they aren't apart of the background feature and required feat chain

[Catullus64]

Huh. Not exactly surprised to see so many negative responses to this, but I think it's all pretty neat, and exactly the sort of thing I'd like to have were I running a Dragonlance game.

I like the particular manifestation of a Kender's sticky fingers. It's done in a way that's fluffy, potentially quite useful, but doesn't disrupt the flow of gameplay with actual stealing. It's a neat solution to the problem this race has had since its inception as an actual player option, which is that the annoying in-universe traits of Kender (fine) translate to actual annoyance at the table (not fine.)

The new subclass is really neat. The only real bone I have to pick with it is that I think your lunar phase should be dependent on... you know, the actual state of the moons, not just how you're feeling that day. I felt the same thing about Eladrin seasons.

As for the Feat/Background stuff... it's fine. Nothing super neat to my taste, but certainly not worth panicking over. I well and truly don't mind a background feature having a little crunch behind it if it encourages the player to really engage with the world and the setting elements, like it is here.

In short, Dragonlance isn't exactly my thing, but if it were I would be leaping for joy. If they do some pre-release material for Dark Sun that fits this mold, you can bet I'll be posting up a storm.

[Sigreid]

Glad to see people are still giving totally reasonable responses to playtest material.


I wasn't sure whether that or "Nuke WoTC from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!" was the proper level of overblown negative. :smalltongue:

[Dr.Samurai]

A background that gives medium armor and martial weapons as only one of 3 significant benefits for that one feat?
I was just sitting down to lunch when I felt a great disturbance in the Force...

[ZRN]

Agreed. If there is going to be a Dragonlance book for 5e, this had to be addressed.

I disagree. Unless I missed something big in the 500 Dragonlance books that came after the first couple trilogies, they're completely reworking the kender race from being mundane, innocent kleptomaniacs to misunderstood magical creatures with weird racial Bag of Tricks magic. Like, they're explaining away major parts of kender culture (communal ownership, etc) just so that crappy players don't try to steal from party members? Is anyone who wants to play a kender really happy with that?

[Dienekes]

I was just sitting down to lunch when I felt a great disturbance in the Force...

It is very weird, and another strange example of WotC trying to make a feature for a certain group of classes (Fighters and Paladins by the description), and accidentally making something that benefits literally everyone else more.

[Catullus64]

It is very weird, and another strange example of WotC trying to make a feature for a certain group of classes (Fighters and Paladins by the description), and accidentally making something that benefits literally everyone else more.

Yes, it turns out that when you ignore the explicit guidance about what kind of characters this is designed for, it doesn't function as intended.

[Dienekes]

Yes, it turns out that when you ignore the explicit guidance about what kind of characters this is designed for, it doesn't function as intended.

Good game design is making the best way to play fits your design parameters, and is fun for the player. Failing to do that, and saying we're playing it wrong is on the designers.

[Rukelnikov]

Anyone else noticed Lunar Sorc has Death Ward as a 3rd level spell? I think its the first time I see a spell at 2 different levels, maybe it was unintentional?

I'm a moron, they gain it at 5th level, they don't have 4th level spells, so they cant cast it, but they could cast it at 6th level by creating a slot with flexible magic.

Also blanket advantage on all saving throws

All in all this cements the heavier weight given to backgrounds, which is a design with which I agree in principle. Backgrounds give 1 feat, as long as its a fixed feat, and not a "free" feat, I think thats a good move.

Feat chains is something to keep an eye on, up to now they've always been followups to background provided feats, which imply furthering your characters path, and in a way, simulate sub archetypes, wanna be chosen one of your deity, without having to be a cleric or paladin, or a few chosen subs? Take Divinely Favored od Divine Communication, and you can be a Rogue bleesed by the gods. Were you knighted by the king even though you are a Druid? No prob. As long as they follow that principle I think its ok.

Specifically though, Medium armor prof in a background sounds too strong tbh, maybe it could be light armor prof, and med armor prof in the 4th level feats.

I like Knights of the Sword's active Willpower, spending a hit die to improve a save, I've been running Indomitable this way for while.

[ZRN]

As usual, this sorcerer subclass is better than all that came before it. Potential free metamagic (and reduced cost regardless) and 15 bonus spells, albeit on set swap lists.

In terms of power level it looks pretty close to aberrant mind but a little more finicky in execution. AM got UNLIMITED free subtle spell on its bonus spells, and it got 11 of them total IIRC; lunar only gets 6 spells at a time (including sacred flame) and has to spend bonus actions and sorcery points to swap between lists, AND only gets the reduced sorcery point cost PB times per day. Lunar gets one free casting of each bonus spell, which is major, but AM gets a cheaper conversion rate for casting its bonus spells with sorcery points. AM gets a powerful, cheap, short-term effect at level 14, and Lunar gets to pick a seemingly permanent but less powerful effect.

Moreover, all the lunar subclass abilities are linked to your particular moon phase, which can be limiting in interesting ways. Getting ready to sneak into the dragon's lair at level 14+? Hope you don't need Freedom of Movement, because you turn into a living flashlight when you switch to Full Moon!

From an optimization perspective, it seems likely to me that AM allows for more powerful combos. (Greater Invisible, flying, casting subtle Synaptic Static for 5 sorcery points over and over.) Lunar might be more fun because it allows for you to do some really powerful stuff if you're nimble about switching up your phase.

[Warder]

You're stating a precedent has been set when there hasn't been. Your argument is that the setting specific backgrounds and feats will be reprinted in setting-neutral books, but that 'precedent' hasn't happened yet. Not in Tasha's. Not in MotM. And not in any other books we've seen snippets of.

No, a class that fits in literally every published 5e setting (Artificer) is not the same as "you went to Strixhaven university" or "you have an Eberron dragonmark" or "you are a Knight of Solamnia". You might as well propose that since humans are in all the settings that settings don't exist and it's a free for all. Shenanigans, I call on that.



What do you mean there's no hint of setting locking? It's a UA called Heroes of Krynn, not Heroes of Generic Fantasy Setting

The exception is the subclass - which mentions other settings - but that's not what you're complaining about; you're complaining about the backgrounds and the feats. Are there a lot of Orders of the White Robes in your setting? No? Then I guess that feat's probably not on the table for you.



Okay, so tell them no. I know you already do that, so you're keenly aware that it's possible.

I had a reply typed out but you said it way better than I could!

On a personal note it is so intensely exhausting and frustrating to finally get design in a direction I am actually excited for in D&D, after so many years of disappointments, only to see it met with this sort of backlash. I don't fault or blame any of you for your preferences - everyone enjoys different things about the game, after all, and I certainly won't begrudge anyone their way of playing. I've just longed for WotC to stop sucking out all the wonder and magic out of the game in favor of streamlined generic rules, and if the reaction here is anything to go by, there's not even a place for that in settings books in modern D&D. I guess we won't know until this book hits the shelves for real, but my last hope for 5e was in setting books, and that certainly feels bleak now.

[Ganryu]

Lunar Sorcerer unlocks Death ward at 5th level...?

What?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I had a reply typed out but you said it way better than I could!

On a personal note it is so intensely exhausting and frustrating to finally get design in a direction I am actually excited for in D&D, after so many years of disappointments, only to see it met with this sort of backlash. I don't fault or blame any of you for your preferences - everyone enjoys different things about the game, after all, and I certainly won't begrudge anyone their way of playing. I've just longed for WotC to stop sucking out all the wonder and magic out of the game in favor of streamlined generic rules, and if the reaction here is anything to go by, there's not even a place for that in settings books in modern D&D. I guess we won't know until this book hits the shelves for real, but my last hope for 5e was in setting books, and that certainly feels bleak now.

They already have better ways of doing the whole "important background element locked to one setting" thing. And that's not letting backgrounds give actual feats. It's actually making setting-locked things. And I'd be 100% in favor of that, even if they were powerful. They'd not see play at my table (because I use my own setting), but I'd support that design.

I don't support having things that pretend to be one thing (setting-locked backgrounds) but are actually "anyone can take this for free power". Which is what these are.

It's not the concept of setting-locked things or even feat-like things like this that I object to. It's the execution. The execution sucks. The concept is ok.

[Catullus64]

Good game design is making the best way to play fits your design parameters, and is fun for the player. Failing to do that, and saying we're playing it wrong is on the designers.

You know what, my initial response was unnecessarily snide, and it completely made a hash of my point. Unqualified apology, let me say that again but with sincerity.

I don't think it's bad game design to set limits within which a particular piece of content is meant to function. They created a background option that is intended for a certain character type, and went so far as to clearly and honestly communicate that fact. This is a game meant to be used and run by humans capable of reading intent and context. If you want to ignore that intent and context when it's provided to you this expressly, I don't know that you can fully blame the developer for the consequences.

The game writers gave a piece of advice about how something ought to be run, which you are free to follow or ignore. That could describe every piece of text ever published in this game, because the only real mechanic in this game is that of human consent. If you follow that advice, you'll probably get something closer to what the developers envisioned, and if you don't you won't.

[Psyren]

Backgrounds shouldn't be giving feats. If they want more feats in the game, they should include an optional high-power game variant that does that across the board, one that can be used by any campaign (setting-specific or not, MTG or not etc.)

I'd be fine if they said something like "if you're running {high-feat variant}, Knights of Solamnia typically start with the Squire of Solamnia feat" or guidance along those lines. But packaging them in the backgrounds just makes those backgrounds extremely strong relative to other backgrounds a player could be selecting, even if they're playing exclusively in that campaign world.

[Keltest]

You know what, my initial response was unnecessarily snide, and it completely made a hash of my point. Unqualified apology, let me say that again but with sincerity.

I don't think it's bad game design to set limits within which a particular piece of content is meant to function. They created a background option that is intended for a certain character type, and went so far as to clearly and honestly communicate that fact. This is a game meant to be used and run by humans capable of reading intent and context. If you want to ignore that intent and context when it's provided to you this expressly, I don't know that you can fully blame the developer for the consequences.

The game writers gave a piece of advice about how something ought to be run, which you are free to follow or ignore. That could describe every piece of text ever published in this game, because the only real mechanic in this game is that of human consent. If you follow that advice, you'll probably get something closer to what the developers envisioned, and if you don't you won't.

I'm not particularly sold on the idea of saying "please dont abuse these mechanics we've put out." as a substitute for actually good design. If theyre intended to be used on martials only, then tie them into something that martials have that mages dont, like requiring armor/weapon proficiencies as a prerequisite or something. If you have to ask people not to play in a certain way or the game breaks, that just smacks of laziness, IMO.

[Temperjoke]

Nice to see in these times that the market for pitchforks and torches purchases is still going strong. Also good to see lots of unbiased, totally well-considered with careful evaluation opinions on here.

Kender - It's interesting that they've turned kender into their own race instead of a subrace of halfling like they used to be, if I recall correctly. Kender Ace is sort of random, could be very useful, but also extremely pointless given how many layers of random are rolled into it. It looks like an ability that'd be used by players for a random joke every now and then. I honestly think the more overpowered parts are Brave and Taunt. Advantage on avoiding being frightened can be huge, and the potential chance at making your opponent's attacks be at disadvantage is amazing too.

Lunar Sorcerer - only thing I really have an issue with is Lunar Boons, I think its a little confusing as written, and will probably cause a lot of double-checking regarding the phase you're in and what school the spell is from that you're trying to affect. Yes, potentially you know a lot more spells than other sorcerers do, but until you hit level 6, you are stuck in a specific mode until after a long rest, which limits what you have immediate access to.

Background feats - I don't mind this, honestly. Initiate of High Sorcery is almost identical to the Magic Initiate feat, just more specific on what you get to choose from. Squire of Solamnia is a little stronger, but 2 of the 3 parts are very situational on when they apply, so that mitigates it's usefulness. Truthfully, they're not deal-breaking on their own, given how many DMs give players a feat at first level anyways. From an RP standpoint, it makes sense because both scenarios could easily be a level 1 character, maybe you started as a squire or initiate, but quit or dropped out. The later feats are rewards for continuing your training/practice.

Honestly, if anything, it sounds like you guys are mad about this stuff because it means you have to be firm with players and tell them no when they're trying to bring this stuff outside the setting they're made for. Which happens with every single new setting release, I've noticed.

[Dienekes]

You know what, my initial response was unnecessarily snide, and it completely made a hash of my point. Unqualified apology, let me say that again but with sincerity.

I don't think it's bad game design to set limits within which a particular piece of content is meant to function. They created a background option that is intended for a certain character type, and went so far as to clearly and honestly communicate that fact. This is a game meant to be used and run by humans capable of reading intent and context. If you want to ignore that intent and context when it's provided to you this expressly, I don't know that you can fully blame the developer for the consequences.

The game writers gave a piece of advice about how something ought to be run, which you are free to follow or ignore. That could describe every piece of text ever published in this game, because the only real mechanic in this game is that of human consent. If you follow that advice, you'll probably get something closer to what the developers envisioned, and if you don't you won't.

So yes, they directly and honestly said this feature was designed for Fighters, Paladins, War Clerics, and Valor Bards.

The problem is, the feature they designed is objectively bad for precisely those characters. And really only those characters. Everyone else gets more from this feature. Their intention, and their design is at odds. And I think it’s fair to point that out. It is not exactly difficult game design to make features that benefit the groups it is supposed to benefit. Really all that takes is basic system knowledge.

[heavyfuel]

Kender seem grossly underpowered.

Love 'em or hate 'em (personally, I'm the "hate 'em" side), players who want to play Kender in a dragonlance campaign, where they are a canon race, shouldn't be actively punished.

Free metamagic sounds broken, but it isn't really free. It still costs resources because you can't use the baility at will. It's effectively the same as having more SP per day equal to your PB, but you can only use these points with certain schools.

Feat chains can go choke. One of the best design philosophies of 5e was doing away with them.

The Squire feat is a tad too strong to be given for free

/2cp

[Kane0]

Kender seems fine mechanically, endless GP aside

Moon sorcerer look like it could be pretty great with the usual polish and balance pass, biggest thing im concerned about is the complexity and potentially the wording allowing you to spend 1 SP to get a new set of moon spells each usable once for free.

Backgrounds are fine if you took out the +feat part of each one, i would instead specify the feats are campaign specific and you get one of your choice at level 1 or just rework them as 'Krynn boons'. Instead of chaining them just set the secondary branching benefits to a specified later level. Alignment restriction i find distasteful but not offensive.

[Catullus64]

So yes, they directly and honestly said this feature was designed for Fighters, Paladins, War Clerics, and Valor Bards.

The problem is, the feature they designed is objectively bad for precisely those characters. And really only those characters. Everyone else gets more from this feature. Their intention, and their design is at odds. And I think it’s fair to point that out. It is not exactly difficult game design to make features that benefit the groups it is supposed to benefit. Really all that takes is basic system knowledge.

What's so bad about it for those characters in particular? The Medium Armor proficiency is kind of a nothing for most of the suggested classes, I suppose (with the notable exception of Swords Bard, and I think Swashbuckler could be as passable a fit for a Solamnian Knight), but all martial weapons is still going to be a gain for a number of characters, and the other features both seem pretty class-neutral. None of these features are especially game-changing, which is also fine considering the feat is, you know, free.

[LibraryOgre]

Halflings have been kender since 3e, so that doesn't plus me, much.

[Boci]

You know what, my initial response was unnecessarily snide, and it completely made a hash of my point. Unqualified apology, let me say that again but with sincerity.

I don't think it's bad game design to set limits within which a particular piece of content is meant to function. They created a background option that is intended for a certain character type, and went so far as to clearly and honestly communicate that fact. This is a game meant to be used and run by humans capable of reading intent and context. If you want to ignore that intent and context when it's provided to you this expressly, I don't know that you can fully blame the developer for the consequences.

I'm pretty sure you can. 5th ed is rules heavy. It is bad form to introduce an option in a rules heavy system with a recommendation on who can and who cannot use it. Staff of Fire isn't "recommended" to not be allowed for fighters, it straight up can't be, as attunement requires the wielder to be a Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard.


What's so bad about it for those characters in particular?

Because it gives martial weapons and medium armour proficiency, which does nothing for classes that already have it, like paladin and fighter.

[RSP]

Dislike Kender Ace being a magical ability. Tas is now some sort of Sorcerer rather than someone who “accidentally” collects stuff? Nothing comes out of their pouch in an AMF?

Def power creep on the Sorc class: free Prof Bonus of SPs (effectively), free castings of spells and more spells know.

It seems they codified RP stuff into feats. Can you not join a faction without taking the feat? Conversely, can I just join a faction without any RP associated with it?

Likewise with the backgrounds.

[Catullus64]

I'm pretty sure you can. 5th ed is rules heavy. It is bad form to introduce an option in a rules heavy system with a recommendation on who can and who cannot use it. Staff of Fire isn't "recommended" to not be allowed for fighters, it straight up can't be, as attunement requires the wielder to be a Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard.

If you let a Fighter use a Staff of Fire, your dice won't refuse to roll and your books aren't going to explode. That's what I mean when I say the only real mechanic in D&D is human consent. In a video game built of coded systems, there's a real difference between what you're not meant to do and what you can't. In this game? Not so much. The rules are just suggestions worded more emphatically.

Likewise, if you tell a player that their Necromancer Wizard doesn't make any sense as a Knight of Solamnia and ask them to rebuild as a Fighter or Paladin or something similar, nothing has been violated which will otherwise cause the game to cease functioning. I'm glad Wizards doesn't feel that their games need to meet some standard of hard-coded balance, and are willing to make some content that needs to be run with some human discretion.


Because it gives martial weapons and medium armour proficiency, which does nothing for classes that already have it, like paladin and fighter.

Marginal inefficiency is not harm. Getting something redundant with your (again, italics for emphasis) free feat should not upset a player just because some theoretical other player could get more out of it.

[Kane0]

Def power creep on the Sorc class: free Prof Bonus of SPs (effectively), free castings of spells and more spells know.


Seems mostly fine alongside Tashas sorcerers, which is the new balancing point for better or worse.

[Unoriginal]

So.. .are we fully through the looking glass now?

Not really, WotC has put out more outrageously weird (or weirdly outrageous) UAs in the past.

They're likely testing the water with a looooong shot.

[Boci]

If you let a Fighter use a Staff of Fire, your dice won't refuse to roll and your books aren't going to explode. That's what I mean when I say the only real mechanic in D&D is human consent. In a video game built of coded systems, there's a real difference between what you're not meant to do and what you can't. In this game? Not so much. The rules are just suggestions worded more emphatically.

And yet we have rules, and "Fighters and paladins make up the bulk of the knighthood’s forces" is not a rule. Consistency is key. Its bad form to have rules light "lore that might be intended to be a ruling guidline" in a rules heavy "things have requirements explicitly spelt out" system. Yes, the DM can change anything, that doesn't make inconsistencies not be glaring. PCs are special, they often ignore setting lore and rules, from the option of freely assigning stats from their race to simply the ability to level, which NPCs typically do not have.



Marginal inefficiency is not harm. Getting something redundant with your (again, italics for emphasis) free feat should not upset a player just because some theoretical other player could get more out of it.

No one else is talking about upset players, you've injected that angle, others merely said that redundancy makes a feat weaker objectively, which is true. You are getting more out of a feat if non of its benefits are redundant than if part of it is.

[Catullus64]

No one else is talking about upset players, you've injected that angle, others merely said that redundancy makes a feat weaker objectively, which is true. You are getting more out of a feat if non of its benefits are redundant than if part of it is.

I assumed that by criticizing the feat for being weak, you (and others) were asserting that there was some negative consequence because of it being weak, and I further assumed that said negative consequence was that the game would be less fun for players who picked this option or had it in their game. I then contested whether that would actually be the case. If that's not the reason why a feat being weak matters, what is?

I stand by what I said about rules vs. suggestions, but I think it's a sufficiently deep disagreement between us that it goes beyond this thread's scope, so I'm not going to press it further.

[Dienekes]

What's so bad about it for those characters in particular? The Medium Armor proficiency is kind of a nothing for most of the suggested classes, I suppose (with the notable exception of Swords Bard, and I think Swashbuckler could be as passable a fit for a Solamnian Knight), but all martial weapons is still going to be a gain for a number of characters, and the other features both seem pretty class-neutral. None of these features are especially game-changing, which is also fine considering the feat is, you know, free.

All the listed characters already have martial weapon proficiency as well as the medium armor. The one exception is sword bard, which only gets 1 martial weapon from the subclass.

The rest of the ability is, as you said class neutral but mostly ineffective. They’re fluff features. So, yes, it is an ability whose design is better for everyone except those the designers claim it was made for. So now the player has to choose between a background that fits their fluff, or a background that helps them mechanically. And then has that as a gate behind actual potentially interesting features.

This is annoying, because it’s the only one designed this way. The others are set up in such a way that they are always a non-overlapping benefit. Anyone can use their full potential, that’s usually considered good design. No one is missing out by being forced to take it. Everyone can use a new cantrip.

But not everyone can use more medium armor or martial weapon proficiencies. In fact those that can’t are exactly the classes the context say the feature is designed for. So again, I find this bad design. Where the main effect (armor and weapon proficiency) does not improve the classes the designers claim they are for.

Which is not to say, there are no classes that benefit from them. Not at all, a lot of people could enjoy armor and weapon proficiencies. Just not the ones the designers specifically list. Which was your initial statement, that the designers point out how it’s supposed to be used, so it should be observed through that context. And from that context, my analysis is that for any of those classes, picking the other backgrounds provides more benefits.

[Boci]

I assumed that by criticizing the feat for being weak, you (and others) were asserting that there was some negative consequence because of it being weak, and I further assumed that said negative consequence was that the game would be less fun for players who picked this option or had it in their game. I then contested whether that would actually be the case. If that's not the reason why a feat being weak matters, what is?

Because you are claiming that there is clear designer intent that this was made with paladins and fighters in mind, so others are quite reasonable asking, if it it was made for paladins and fighters, why, in an addition that freely assigned specific requirements to abilities and options, do the two classes this background was was apparently specifically designed for, objectively get less from it than other classes would?


I stand by what I said about rules vs. suggestions, but I think it's a sufficiently deep disagreement between us that it goes beyond this thread's scope, so I'm not going to press it further.

So you're just going to ignore that player character don't often don't follow world building lore in 5th ed, and that even for NPC world building lore "Fighter and paladins make up the bulk of the knighthood’s forces" is a pretty weak suggestion, since it explicitly says "there are totally members of this order that aren't paladins and fighters"?

[PhoenixPhyre]

And from that context, my analysis is that for any of those classes, picking the other backgrounds provides more benefits.

Unless, of course, you want the follow-on feats. Basically, for the people this is designed for, this background is now a tax. A mild one, because it comes for free, but it's basically null. While it provides positive value in and of itself for other people.

I agree that that's bad design. Feat taxes were a bad idea in 3e, they're a bad idea here. I have no objection to locking feats or other optional things behind a DM having to greenlight the application of that feat to the character (by roleplaying or otherwise). This is just half-baked gatekeeping that also causes power creep for other builds. And those other builds? Didn't need the help. It's a free armor/weapon proficiency in exchange for something that wasn't providing build power anyway.

[Hael]

My quick thoughts. I love the new sorceror class. Very flavorful, with interesting abilities that synergize and that seems roughly on par with clockwork/aberrant (you cant switch spells out). I would definitely be interested in playing one and dont think they should change anything. A+

Kender. Very mechanically underpowered. They’re going to need something like the lucky feature. I dont mind thieving in game, but tie it to a background.

Level locked/alignment locked feats. I dont mind the mild form this takes here. The problem is the feats are bad or mostly redundant.

However the magic feats are not ok. First of all, the initiate feat is already going to be very strong, solinari gives find familiar to everyone. But the black robes feat is bonkers if i’m reading that right. Dropping a fireball on top of everyone with those extra hit die is very powerful.. The triumphant return of blaster wizards? The red robe feat is also amazing.. The white robe feat is of course underwhelming…

[heavyfuel]

Kender seems fine mechanically, endless GP aside

The items disappear after an hour, so it's more an unreliable handful of extra coins rather than endless money

[Dragonus45]

"Kender are just magical so things wind up in their pockets" sounds like excellent in universe Kender propaganda, and is roughly that I'm probably going to treat it as myself. The rest looks just ok, interesting to see 5e struggling with a setting where Alignment matters as well.

[Scots Dragon]

If you want to know why we really can't have nice things, it's some of the responses in this thread.

These aren't quite the methods I'd have used to represent Dragonlance personally, but I appreciate they're trying to be more flexible in allowing for the two big factions of the setting to apply to a larger variety of characters. And getting a free Magic Initiate feat to represent being an Order of High Sorcery initiate is... pretty much how you'd have to represent things. Many other elements of 5e are super limited, and bending the rules in this way is really the only option if you want it to be applicable to multiple classes.


The rest looks just ok, interesting to see 5e struggling with a setting where Alignment matters as well.

I don't even wanna know how they'd try and handle a fully-fledged Planescape.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm a moron, they gain it at 5th level, they don't have 4th level spells, so they cant cast it, but they could cast it at 6th level by creating a slot with flexible magic. I thought you had to be a 7th level caster to have a level 4 slot.

Get the feats out of the backgrounds. Make the backgrounds like PHB backgrounds. (grr) (For the record, I dislike the Ravnica backgrounds and they need to stay in that setting and not pollute other settings)

Medium armor prof in a background sounds too strong It is.
Knights of Solamnia: make it a fighter sub class, give it features at the usual levels, like Purple Dragon knight but do a better job of it. As a background that violates what backgrounds do.

Backgrounds shouldn't be giving feats. This. Way out of whack, balance wise.

Staff of Fire isn't "recommended" to not be allowed for fighters, it straight up can't be, as attunement requires the wielder to be a Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard. Good point.

Because it gives martial weapons and medium armour proficiency, which does nothing for classes that already have it, like paladin and fighter. *I am a Knight of Solamnia but I am a wizard* That breaks the fiction and the setting.
KofS needs to be a sub class of fighter.
Or a sub class of Paladin.

I agree that that's bad design. Feat taxes were a bad idea in 3e, they're a bad idea here. In my view, it goes beyond that, in that it does violence to what backgrounds are. They are putting sub class features into a background. :smallfurious:

[Sigreid]

If you want to know why we really can't have nice things, it's some of the responses in this thread.

These aren't quite the methods I'd have used to represent Dragonlance personally, but I appreciate they're trying to be more flexible in allowing for the two big factions of the setting to apply to a larger variety of characters. And getting a free Magic Initiate feat to represent being an Order of High Sorcery initiate is... pretty much how you'd have to represent things. Many other elements of 5e are super limited, and bending the rules in this way is really the only option if you want it to be applicable to multiple classes.



I don't even wanna know how they'd try and handle a fully-fledged Planescape.

Speaking only for my own flippancy, in my opinion, the past few things they've put out have cast aside the design rules and principals that were used at release of 5e and I don't find it to be a net benefit. Hence my being flippant and dismissive with regards to a lot of their offerings lately.

[Catullus64]

"Kender are just magical so things wind up in their pockets" sounds like excellent in universe Kender propaganda, and is roughly that I'm probably going to treat it as myself. The rest looks just ok, interesting to see 5e struggling with a setting where Alignment matters as well.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to run it (if I do run it) as "you definitely just grabbed these things in that innocent Kender way, nothing magical about it. But I'm officially using my DM powers to declare it Not A Big Deal, and we're all going to get on with saving the world."

A Dragonlance setting book is definitely going to need to have big talk about alignment. "You know how we've told you throughout this edition that alignment is mostly just a loose framework for thinking about your character's beliefs and actions? Well, shelve that. Good and Evil are specific active forces in the world, they don't get along, they have literal color schemes, and they both have a lot of dragons."

[Boci]

A Dragonlance setting book is definitely going to need to have big talk about alignment. "You know how we've told you throughout this edition that alignment is mostly just a loose framework for thinking about your character's beliefs and actions? Well shelve that. Good and Evil are specific active forces in the world, they don't get along, they have literal color schemes, and they both have a lot of dragons."

Isn't that 5e already? Fiends and celestials exists, and dragons are colour coded in the base game. So the big change I'm seeing here is there are more dragons, fitting given the name, but doesn't seem like it necessitates a vast change of how alignment is handled.

[Psyren]

On a positive note, I like that these Kender don't have kleptomania as a racial anymore. Just straight up making their ability to quite literally rectally-source the random junk* they tend to have on hand be magic, rather than dependent on robbing the party or random NPCs, solves a lot of issues I had with how they've been encouraged to be played at the table in the past.

*Moreover, a lot of the items they can whip out in this version aren't junk at all - even the "Trinket" entry can net you some fun stuff that could be put to creative use in a campaign.

[Scots Dragon]

Speaking only for my own flippancy, in my opinion, the past few things they've put out have cast aside the design rules and principals that were used at release of 5e and I don't find it to be a net benefit. Hence my being flippant and dismissive with regards to a lot of their offerings lately.

If the design principles of D&D 5e break down on contact with Dragonlance, one of the oldest and most venerable campaign settings that D&D has, then those design principles are what need to change.

[Sigreid]

If the design principles of D&D 5e break down on contact with Dragonlance, one of the oldest and most venerable campaign settings that D&D has, then those design principles are what need to change.

In my opinion, the design principles break down on contact with the current design team. It's not Dragonlance that I see as the problem, it's the direction the design team has chosen to go moving forward.

[Aliess]

We used to just play kender (the one we had in the group anyway) as being able to trade items with players at range.
Kender "I really need a healing option right now."
Pc the other side of the room "I've got one, here have it."
Kender "pulls healing option out of his pocket."

Worked well enough for us although I'm sure you could probably abuse it if you wanted to.

[Boci]

If the design principles of D&D 5e break down on contact with Dragonlance, one of the oldest and most venerable campaign settings that D&D has, then those design principles are what need to change.

Hard disagree. Dragonlance hasn't been relevant to D&D for ages, most new players and at this point quite a few old players know nothing about the setting. I've been playing D&D for over 15 years, and the only reason I know anything about the setting is I picked up 2 books in it from a dollar store. (They were not terrible...a poorly aged kidnaped elven princess who falls in love with her captor and a story about a fight between a village and some creepy tribe folk and their respective patron dragons, definitely the stronger of the pair).

[Unoriginal]

If the design principles of D&D 5e break down on contact with Dragonlance, one of the oldest and most venerable campaign settings that D&D has, then those design principles are what need to change.

...No?

Castle Greyhawk is the oldest and most venerable campaign, period. Do the principle of every D&D editions needs to be changed in order to run this campaign as it was back when the Gygax and friends group ran it?

[Dienekes]

Unless, of course, you want the follow-on feats. Basically, for the people this is designed for, this background is now a tax. A mild one, because it comes for free, but it's basically null. While it provides positive value in and of itself for other people.

I agree that that's bad design. Feat taxes were a bad idea in 3e, they're a bad idea here. I have no objection to locking feats or other optional things behind a DM having to greenlight the application of that feat to the character (by roleplaying or otherwise). This is just half-baked gatekeeping that also causes power creep for other builds. And those other builds? Didn't need the help. It's a free armor/weapon proficiency in exchange for something that wasn't providing build power anyway.

Yeah, I think the same effect could have been gained by having each of the feats have “Prerequisite: Must join the Order of the Rose, Order of the Red Robes, etc.

As for the point about the knights needing to be a squire to gain the follow up feats, honestly, all of them are pretty martial neutral anyway. I mean they’re not bad feats. But none them even require armor, weapon proficiencies, or mounts. Which just makes the whole thing seem odd.

I mean, on the one hand. Yeah, support martials are cool. WotC just make a warlord already.

As to the kender. I’m of two minds. On one hand, a kender who isn’t a kleptomaniac/strange views of ownership isn’t really a kender to me. That’s the weird feature that defined the race.

But, I hated kender. So, glad they’re gone.

[Catullus64]

Isn't that 5e already? Fiends and celestials exists, and dragons are colour coded in the base game. So the big change I'm seeing here is there are more dragons, fitting given the name, but doesn't seem like it necessitates a vast change of how alignment is handled.

I would say that Dragonlance is a rare example of a setting where D&D concepts of alignment are consciously held, in one form or another, by the people in the setting. Generally, D&D of the modern age doesn't assume that your alignment necessarily places you on one side or another of a cosmos-spanning war between Good and Evil (which is generally a good thing!). But Dragonlance does. To be Good in this setting (of course I'm generalizing) is not just to be individually virtuous, but to plant your flag on the side of Goodness itself. That, more than anything, is what still gives it a distinct identity among many other similar settings, and what makes it a setting of High Fantasy rather than Heroic Fantasy: its distinct philosophical outlook which, what do you know, I can't talk about in more detail because Forum Rules.

[Scots Dragon]

Castle Greyhawk is the oldest and most venerable campaign, period. Do the principle of every D&D editions needs to be changed in order to run this campaign as it was back when the Gygax and friends group ran it?

If you're releasing a Castle Greyhawk book and want to provide rules for the Greyhawk campaign setting as part of it then... yes?

The various settings having individual rules and ways of working is a good thing. Gives them more identity than just being a weird homogenous mush of fantasy tropes.

[Luccan]

Personally, I think the Kender thing works almost perfectly like this, but making it magical is a little weird from what I know of the setting. I think disappearing in an hour can work, though. Just like you didn't think about it when you picked it up so you don't know where it came from, you dropped it without thinking about it when it was no longer relevant

[LibraryOgre]

We used to just play kender (the one we had in the group anyway) as being able to trade items with players at range.
Kender "I really need a healing option right now."
Pc the other side of the room "I've got one, here have it."
Kender "pulls healing option out of his pocket."

Worked well enough for us although I'm sure you could probably abuse it if you wanted to.

That's really elegant, I have to say. I went with "You can choose to pick pockets, but so can I", combined with the 1e Kender Pockets tables, which functioned not too dissimilarly to this, but without the implication of magic.

But halflings have been kender since 3e came out, just without the recreational adderall that standard kender are on.

[cookieface]

Just pointing out a few things that are getting massively overlooked:

1) The Kender Aces trait says that the items only last for an hour. No unlimited GP here.

2) The lowest-level Feats require the corresponding backgrounds as prerequisites. If you don't want them (and therefore Feat chains) in your non-Dragonlance game, don't allow those backgrounds just like you wouldn't allow a House Agent in your non-Eberron campaign.

3) This UA is pretty heavily implying that these backgrounds and feats do not exist outside of this setting. Treat it as such.

Now, for something I haven't seen mentioned that is way OP is in the text for Lunar Embodiment (aka the bonus subclass spells).


While in the chosen phase, spells of the associated phase in the Lunar Spells table can be cast once without expending a spell slot. Once you cast a spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

My reading is that these sorcerers get to cast all of their Lunar Spells once per long rest without a spell slot, and once they can change their list they can cast up to fifteen spells without spell slots?!

[Hael]

That, more than anything, is what still gives it a distinct identity among many other similar settings, and what makes it a setting of High Fantasy rather than Heroic Fantasy: its distinct philosophical outlook which, what do you know, I can't talk about in more detail because Forum Rules.

Agreed, and that more than anything is why its great that it comes back. The kitchen soup philosophy in the current game meta makes for incredibly bland settings. Dragonlance at least sets up some ready made conflict, potential moral dilemmas for parties and reintroduces romance into the world. Where something bigger than your own parties issues are at play.

[Boci]

Agreed, and that more than anything is why its great that it comes back. The kitchen soup philosophy in the current game meta makes for incredibly bland settings. Dragonlance at least sets up some ready made conflict, potential moral dilemmas for parties and reintroduces romance into the world. Where something bigger than your own parties issues are at play.

I don't think moral dilemnas are lacking in 5th ed. In fact, one of my friends said so much fantasy recently has been ultra-realistic, "good intentions still hurt", "there is no perfect solution to complex world problems", that to them, clear and exaggerate good and evil, that doesn't blur at the edges is such a buy gone aspect of fantasy that seeing that is refreshing, not moral dilemnas based on how it can be to be good in a complex, multifaceted world.

[Psyren]

Personally, I think the Kender thing works almost perfectly like this, but making it magical is a little weird from what I know of the setting. I think disappearing in an hour can work, though. Just like you didn't think about it when you picked it up so you don't know where it came from, you dropped it without thinking about it when it was no longer relevant

I like the baseline being that it's magic, and then individual tables can make it mundane in a way like how you describe. This way, the tables that have a mundane justification they're okay with can use that, and for the ones where no mundane explanation would be sufficient, they can fall back on "it's magic" and get on with their day.


We used to just play kender (the one we had in the group anyway) as being able to trade items with players at range.
Kender "I really need a healing option right now."
Pc the other side of the room "I've got one, here have it."
Kender "pulls healing option out of his pocket."

Worked well enough for us although I'm sure you could probably abuse it if you wanted to.

I've always been intrigued by post-hoc abilities like this, like Blades in the Dark letting you rewrite parts of the heist on the fly during the heist.

But this is another example of something, that works great for a group that buys in but could be a tough sell to the ones that aren't already on board.



My reading is that these sorcerers get to cast all of their Lunar Spells once per long rest without a spell slot, and once they can change their list they can cast up to fifteen spells without spell slots?!

I read "once you cast a spell in this way..." to mean you get to do so once, but I agree it's ambiguous and that could be a good thing to leave feedback around.

[OvisCaedo]

I'm really just not convinced feat chains are a very good fit for a system where access to getting feats is so generally limited, and of significant opportunity cost. Though looking at it, I suppose for now these examples are basically two deep, with the first step being bundled in backgrounds. Not really horribly inaccessible yet, I suppose, and maybe they don't plan on pushing the concept any further.

[Rukelnikov]

I thought you had to be a 7th level caster to have a level 4 slot.

Normally yes, but sorcs can use 6 sorcery points to crate a 4th level slot with the flxible casting feature. Since their SP cap is their Sorc leve, they can't do it by 5th, when they get Death Ward, but they can do do it by 6th.


Get the feats out of the backgrounds. Make the backgrounds like PHB backgrounds. (grr) (For the record, I dislike the Ravnica backgrounds and they need to stay in that setting and not pollute other settings)

Honestly, I disagree, with how much homogeneous races have become, I like the greater weight given to backgrounds. You don't need the 2 "free skills" background, since you can change any skill your race gives you for another. Making backgrounds a complete package, like Strixhaven's and this one, means you get preselected skills along with an ok but not build defining feat.


Knights of Solamnia: make it a fighter sub class, give it features at the usual levels, like Purple Dragon knight but do a better job of it.¨

There's a sidebar next to these feats which somewhat tangentially addresses this. It tell how most knights start by being Crown Knights and then migrate to other orders, and how some even keep changing orders, but retain what they learned in their previous one. You could codify this into a subclass somehow, but as feats it allows you to only ever be part of one order, or to try and pass thru all of them, or only the two you want. It also aligns quite well with how I DM, where I will often reward players with stuff like training, charms and boons. This kind of feats lend themselves perfectly for that. You got knighted during the adventure? Awesome, you don't need to "pay" the feat with an ASI, you get it as a story reward.


As a background that violates what backgrounds do.

But the knighthood is not part of the background, the background is the squireship.

Its obvious they are trying new things in preparation for 50 year edition. I think we should give them a try before lighting the torches.

[Kane0]

Just pointing out a few things that are getting massively overlooked:

1) The Kender Aces trait says that the items only last for an hour. No unlimited GP here.

2) The lowest-level Feats require the corresponding backgrounds as prerequisites. If you don't want them (and therefore Feat chains) in your non-Dragonlance game, don't allow those backgrounds just like you wouldn't allow a House Agent in your non-Eberron campaign.

3) This UA is pretty heavily implying that these backgrounds and feats do not exist outside of this setting. Treat it as such.

Now, for something I haven't seen mentioned that is way OP is in the text for Lunar Embodiment (aka the bonus subclass spells).

My reading is that these sorcerers get to cast all of their Lunar Spells once per long rest without a spell slot, and once they can change their list they can cast up to fifteen spells without spell slots?!

1) you cant stockpile is but its still free money, there are tons of ways to spend gold that wont exist in an hour

2) standard arguments of power creep and the purpose of backgrounds, but i think this would have been better fitted into a world-specific boon system, like prestige classes/features in addition to your standard build

3) as above, i hope it is done more explicitly as has been done for say dark gifts versus MTG backgrounds.

yes i picked up on that, though you do have to spend the SP to swap spell lists around for the second and third set of free castings. Conveniently the metamagic cost reduction frees up said SP to do this, and i think this trick was unintended and should be ironed out before release.

[Amnestic]

Agreed, and that more than anything is why its great that it comes back. The kitchen soup philosophy in the current game meta makes for incredibly bland settings. Dragonlance at least sets up some ready made conflict, potential moral dilemmas for parties and reintroduces romance into the world. Where something bigger than your own parties issues are at play.

I'm confused. You're complaining about "kitchen soup philosophy", presumably talking about moral grey settings like, idk, Eberron? But that's dripping in ready made conflict and moral dilemmas with issues bigger than your party in play.

I'm not going to comment on "reintroducing romance" because I frankly don't know what that means in context. Saving princesses from dragons? Regardless, I don't see how Dragonlance's more 'classical' fantasy is better in the areas mentioned than less 'clear cut' settings.

But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

Moving back to the UA, I can understand the confusion/frustration that a feat for a knightly order serves non-knightly classes (eg. wizards) more than it does "knightly" classes (eg. fighters) that already get medium armour/martial weap prof. Narratively I understand why: You're a member of this order, so you're all getting the same training. In the case of some classes that training ends up duplicated. Mechanically it means you're 'missing out'. My mechanical solution would be a "You gain medium armour/martial weapons prof. If you already have these, you instead gain [some other knightly thing]" to represent you've already got a leg up in the training.

Clumsy perhaps, but giving out any armour proficiency (which I think they should have, if they're a knightly order in armour) will either need it, or leave some feeling let down.

[Amechra]

To talk less about Dragonlance's virtues as a setting (spoiler: I do not much like Dragonlance as a setting) and more about the feats...

I actually kinda like the Knight of ____ feats. I kinda wish that they weren't feats (because having to spend a valuable, once-every-four-levels resource on a narrow trick is pretty meh), but they're still interesting.


Knight of the Crown: A Str/Dex half-feat that effectively lets you Help someone as a reaction a few times per long rest. This is cool, and helps you put the boot in when you're in melee.
Knight of the Sword: Resilient for a mental ability score, except you replace the +1 to an ability score with a huge bonus to a mental ability score 1/long rest. This is a really strong feat, especially on, say, a Barbarian (who want that Wisdom save proficiency, don't care much about that +1 to Wis, and who have the HUGEST hit-dice). As a side note, I'm intrigued by the fact that so many of these feats cost hit-dice.
Knight of the Rose: A Cha/Con half-feat that is a sidegrade for Inspiring Leader. I'm actually a little confused on whether or not it costs hit-dice to use — I'm leaning towards no, which makes it INCREDIBLY strong.


Unlike the Adept of the ___ Robes feats, though, I don't really see a reason why these feats need prerequisites. Yes, they're on the stronger side of things, but they aren't "spend two ASIs, get the feat + a ribbon" powerful.

[Just Helping]

Kender and mechanical alignments? This UA is not doing it for me, no idea why this is the first we see after the hiatus.

[KorvinStarmast]

Speaking only for my own flippancy, in my opinion, the past few things they've put out have cast aside the design rules and principals that were used at release of 5e and I don't find it to be a net benefit. Hence my being flippant and dismissive with regards to a lot of their offerings lately. Yes, the team has lost the plot.

A Dragonlance setting book is definitely going to need to have big talk about alignment. "You know how we've told you throughout this edition that alignment is mostly just a loose framework for thinking about your character's beliefs and actions? Well, shelve that. Good and Evil are specific active forces in the world, they don't get along, they have literal color schemes, and they both have a lot of dragons." Yes. Setting specific, you can tighten the screws on alignment, but you only have three. Good, Evil, and Neutral, or Law, Chaos and Neutral. (I prefer the latter, but I am pretty sure DL goes with the former). There is no two axis alignment.

even the "Trinket" entry can net you some fun stuff that could be put to creative use in a campaign. Yes.

If the design principles of D&D 5e break down on contact with Dragonlance, one of the oldest and most venerable campaign settings that D&D has, then those design principles are what need to change. No. Dragonlance was a setting that enabled grief play, and was (did you ever try to get through the four modules, while riding on the Krynn Railroad!) in a lot of ways ill constructed (for all that the books were successful, hooray for that).

My reading is that these sorcerers get to cast all of their Lunar Spells once per long rest without a spell slot, and once they can change their list they can cast up to fifteen spells without spell slots?! Yeah, sloppy work on this UA, needs correction. My suggestion is change phase only after a long rest, and no change otherwise. Prevent loophole diving.

[Anymage]

The "Due to their curiosity, many kender have found themselves falling through gates and portals to other planes and worlds" part worries me, but that's mostly because the sort of player who is drawn to kender will use that to justify their character being in other settings and won't give a toss about the way that kender stealing is downplayed in the current design ethos. I'd probably leave the communal property idea as fluff, and explain that kender who don't want to be kicked out of parties or towns have come to understand and respect how other people see things. Maybe even an explicit sidebar to lean into the idea that it might be what your character would do, but it would also be reasonable for everyone else's characters to give you the boot after that.

Lunar Spells getting bonus casts has questionable wording that might allow some cheese. (Use your free casts, then Waxing and Waning to get a whole new set of free casts has potential to be problematic.) Otherwise looks okay for playtest.

The feat chains are bad for a couple of reasons, mostly boiling down to the very small number of potential feat picks most characters have available and the high opportunity cost of taking one. Knight of Solamnia is particularly rough, since we just covered how giving weapon and armor proficiencies on a race discourages martials from picking them up (they already have the proficiencies) and incentivizes casters instead.

The backgrounds, in addition to being power creepy for handing out free feats (and encouraging more wizards who started as knights of solamnia than paladins who do), feel a bit off to me in that they encourage characters who started their life seeking an adventurer's path. My character should be as able to be fully embraced by the mages of high sorcery if they spent their upbringing on a ship or the streets, instead of needing "Mage of High Sorcery" on their sheet from first level.

I've said before and I'll say again. If they want to make prestigious organizations, start from the organizational renown idea on P. 22 of the DMG. I don't even mind if cool powers come at certain renown levels, since both renown rewards and the very existence of these organizations is DM dependent. (Yes, technically everything is DM dependent. It's a lot less costly in terms of DM credibility to say that there aren't any Harpers on Krynn than it is to turn down the new character someone is excited about.) Give me reasons to seek out adventure objectives for these groups and feel like my character is attached to them, instead of just having me ask myself when this feat is worth it over XBE or +2 to a stat.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've said before and I'll say again. If they want to make prestigious organizations, start from the organizational renown idea on P. 22 of the DMG. I don't even mind if cool powers come at certain renown levels, since both renown rewards and the very existence of these organizations is DM dependent. (Yes, technically everything is DM dependent. It's a lot less costly in terms of DM credibility to say that there aren't any Harpers on Krynn than it is to turn down the new character someone is excited about.) Give me reasons to seek out adventure objectives for these groups and feel like my character is attached to them, instead of just having me ask myself when this feat is worth it over XBE or +2 to a stat.

This. Exactly this. Things intrinsically tied to one particular organization (and yes, this includes the Ravnica guilds) should be organizational renown elements. You can even give one free at level 1, in addition to the regular stuff. What they're not is generic character building elements that even have a chance of existing outside of that particular setting and only that one particular part of that one setting--run Dragonlance during the War of the Lance and there's exactly 1 remaining Knight of Solomnia in much of the land, IIRC, and similar for actual Robed ones. And both of those are named characters, for which being the only remaining member in that area is a Defining Trait.

[Anymage]

Clumsy perhaps, but giving out any armour proficiency (which I think they should have, if they're a knightly order in armour) will either need it, or leave some feeling let down.

In the real world, knights wore armor because it was their job to fight, and armor is very good at helping people not die while they're fighting. Just like how weapons make them a lot better at winning their fights.

In a fantasy world where someone can wander a battlefield in robes and not quickly keel over (usually because they have magic to assist in the jobs of fighting and not dying), I see no reason why a wizard-knight wouldn't rely on their magic over a suit of their metal armor. If they really want a suit of metal armor in addition to their magic, they have options. (A one level dip for heavy armor is its own problem, but that's much deeper entrenched into the game and I wouldn't expect a setting book to fix it.) It really isn't necessary here, and has perverse incentives as a background feature.


As a side note, I'm intrigued by the fact that so many of these feats cost hit-dice...

I think the hope is to have more engagement with hit dice, since as it stands they wind up underrepresented. I will say from my admittedly limited experience at tables, I saw more people quaffing healing potions after fights than I did people setting up short rests to recover.

I will hope that in 5.5 they make hit dice easier to use while also maybe broadening their applicability. (I wouldn't mind if martials got bonus hit dice on top of their hit dice being larger, because taking hits is part of their job and they should have a bit more in the selfhealing tank.) Having said that, using them to fuel offensive powers is something I'd want to be very careful about, since otherwise they wind up just being offensive power fuel and players go back to potion quaffing and/or expecting a healbot.

[Dragonus45]

Backgrounds giving a feat makes perfect sense, and it would make sense to me if they were less build a bear and more strict but also gave more mechanical benefit in general in the final product. Feat chains as they are presented here also seem interesting and make more sense when a feat is tied to a background. Only members of x order need apply and so on. Considering that this edition is allergic to things like racial or alignment based class restrictions this is the only real way left to capture a lot of the dragonlance specific crunch I guess. I think it's exciting to see something so far out there compared to the more milquetoast design philosophy coming from first party D&D nowadays though so I can't wait to see more.

[Amnestic]

In the real world, knights wore armor because it was their job to fight, and armor is very good at helping people not die while they're fighting. Just like how weapons make them a lot better at winning their fights.

In a fantasy world where someone can wander a battlefield in robes and not quickly keel over (usually because they have magic to assist in the jobs of fighting and not dying), I see no reason why a wizard-knight wouldn't rely on their magic over a suit of their metal armor.

Costs a spell slot ;)

More seriously though I think it's narrative/aesthetic: They're a knightly order, so they wear armour, because "that's what knights do" - so if you're part of the order, you wear armour. It doesn't matter if you sling spells or swing a sword, the armour is part of the 'uniform', so you get trained to wear it, and you're expected to do so.

[Pex]

I hope you'll join me in providing the useful feedback when the survey comes out.
Why not just make the Knight of Solamnia Class/sub class, or High Sorcery Wizard, class or sub class, and build it like a proper class?
Grr.

Makes sense, but they wanted (not wrongly) to open them up from the traditional classes that used them in the past (kit, prestige class). They're aren't to be exclusive to (Paladins or Fighters) and Wizards. However, as a previous playtest taught them, players don't want a subclass that more than one class could take. To make two new complete classes has its own issues. Another way is make many subclasses for each class, to make a Solamnia sub class for each class having different abilities based on class. Every solution is worse than the next one. The in my opinion best one, a subclass that can be chosen by more than one class, players voted down, so all they can do is use the already existing mechanics. The Psionic Die incident taught them players don't want new mechanics. Artificer overcame that hurdle because of precedence. Fans of Eberron were demanding an Artificer that made magic items.

[MinimanMidget]

You learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown on the Lunar Spells table. Each of these spells counts as a sorcerer spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of sorcerer spells you know.

Seems like everyone else is reading this differently, but as far as I can tell, they get all the spells as spells known, it's only the free casts that are restricted by phase.

As a side note, is anyone else heartily fed up with reading the phrase "a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest"? Lately it seems like every racial or class feature is its own resource pool. They're a pain to keep track of, especially if your session doesn't end on a long rest. And sorcerers already have 2 class resources, (spell slots and sorcery points), so why not just use those?

[LibraryOgre]

Unlike the Adept of the ___ Robes feats, though, I don't really see a reason why these feats need prerequisites. Yes, they're on the stronger side of things, but they aren't "spend two ASIs, get the feat + a ribbon" powerful.

Hadn't looked, but it's interesting to me that they removed the "must progress through the orders" requirement for Knights of Solamnia... you can go from a Squire to the Rose without muddling about in the middle.

And, looking at it, Sword loses its pseudo-paladin status.... and black robes their status as conjurers.

[Psyren]

The "Due to their curiosity, many kender have found themselves falling through gates and portals to other planes and worlds" part worries me, but that's mostly because the sort of player who is drawn to kender will use that to justify their character being in other settings and won't give a toss about the way that kender stealing is downplayed in the current design ethos.

I personally don't mind it, because it enforces the idea that Kender are not Halflings by another name. If a Kender shows up in your world, it's indeed a Kender. That means fewer people playing Halflings LIKE Kender.

Now if Kender had kept the encouraged klepto thing I would be pretty livid, but with that gone I'm okay with them being outside Krynn.


1) you cant stockpile is but its still free money, there are tons of ways to spend gold that wont exist in an hour

I mean, it's glowing money that disappears, in a setting where people are naturally distrustful of Kender (especially shopping Kender) to begin with. Can you score a "30 gp" max roll and pull off an occasional con with this ability, sure, but I wouldn't expect this to work in nearly anything above a hamlet and word would travel fast even if it did.



I think the hope is to have more engagement with hit dice, since as it stands they wind up underrepresented. I will say from my admittedly limited experience at tables, I saw more people quaffing healing potions after fights than I did people setting up short rests to recover.


Early in my 5e journey we had a campaign where nobody used Hit Dice at all, we just didn't remember that was a thing. (I mean, we had a Celestial Warlock, Moon Druid, a Devotion Paladin and a Ranger so healing was pretty covered.)

[Amechra]

As a side note, is anyone else heartily fed up with reading the phrase "a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest"? Lately it seems like every racial or class feature is its own resource pool. They're a pain to keep track of, especially if your session doesn't end on a long rest. And sorcerers already have 2 class resources, (spell slots and sorcery points), so why not just use those?

I'm thinking of houseruling them back to "you can use it once, and you recover it whenever you rest".

As a side note, I really wish that 6e at least considers having a unified set of resources to pull from, just to avoid the whole "I have to track a unique resource for every damn class feature I have" feeling that some of the newer races/feats/subclasses have had.

[Sparky McDibben]

As a side note, is anyone else heartily fed up with reading the phrase "a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest"? Lately it seems like every racial or class feature is its own resource pool. They're a pain to keep track of, especially if your session doesn't end on a long rest. And sorcerers already have 2 class resources, (spell slots and sorcery points), so why not just use those?

I am very tired of this phrase, mostly because it futzes with my favorite mechanic in the game: short rests. Short rests in 5e should feel like a major risk for an uncertain reward, kinda like hacking in Deus Ex. But now? Eh, screw it, it comes back when you rest.

[MinimanMidget]

As a side note, I really wish that 6e at least considers having a unified set of resources to pull from, just to avoid the whole "I have to track a unique resource for every damn class feature I have" feeling that some of the newer races/feats/subclasses have had.

I think they might have started there. In the PHB, the Monk subclass features mostly cost ki points. The problem is, they don't have enough to support their core class features, let alone all of the other things they can do with them.

[Psyren]

I'm thinking of houseruling them back to "you can use it once, and you recover it whenever you rest".

As a side note, I really wish that 6e at least considers having a unified set of resources to pull from, just to avoid the whole "I have to track a unique resource for every damn class feature I have" feeling that some of the newer races/feats/subclasses have had.


I am very tired of this phrase, mostly because it futzes with my favorite mechanic in the game: short rests. Short rests in 5e should feel like a major risk for an uncertain reward, kinda like hacking in Deus Ex. But now? Eh, screw it, it comes back when you rest.

I'm guessing that their own surveys and direct feedback from AL are showing that short rests are wildly inconsistent between tables, which leads to wildly inconsistent opinions of/approaches to races and classes that rely on them.

Personally my preferred compromise would be PB/Long Rest, but you get one use of {thing} back on a SR. That would smooth out the differences between tables with 0-1 short rests per day and the ones with 2-3 I think.

[Christew]

As a side note, I'm intrigued by the fact that so many of these feats cost hit-dice.
Me too. It is a largely untapped resource and it has some interesting algebra between ability use and healing. Could be an interesting way to limit the efficacy of short rest healing without compromising player agency.

[Hael]

I'm confused. You're complaining about "kitchen soup philosophy", presumably talking about moral grey settings like, idk, Eberron? But that's dripping in ready made conflict and moral dilemmas with issues bigger than your party in play.

I'm not going to comment on "reintroducing romance" because I frankly don't know what that means in context..

I can't comment on Eberron b/c I have never played in that setting. I was referring more to the FR or like what one might see in the Witcher, where the conflicts are mostly what is set up by the DM or are rather generic local problems. Regarding romance, I was referring to the literary genre. Say chivalric romance like 'Le Mort D'Arthur', which Dragonlance is much more closely associated with. So you get themes like being bound to chivalric codes and vows, even when it means having to do something awful but where the narrative pushes you into considering greater good . But yes, perhaps another thread.

[Hael]

No. Dragonlance was a setting that enabled grief play, and was (did you ever try to get through the four modules, while riding on the Krynn Railroad!) in a lot of ways ill constructed (for all that the books were successful, hooray for that)..

The original modules were terrible and never really did the setting any justice (the player options were interesting though). Much better were the gold box crpg games.

[Boci]

I can't comment on Eberron b/c I have never played in that setting. I was referring more to the FR or like what one might see in the Witcher, where the conflicts are mostly what is set up by the DM or are rather generic local problems. Regarding romance, I was referring to the literary genre. Say chivalric romance like 'Le Mort D'Arthur', which Dragonlance is much more closely associated with. So you get themes like being bound to chivalric codes and vows, even when it means having to do something awful but where the narrative pushes you into considering greater good . But yes, perhaps another thread.

I don't think "for the greater good" is something unique to the Dragonlance era of fantasy. Its a fairly common concept throughout the fantasy genre, as well as much other fictional genres, and real life.

[loki_ragnarock]

Reading, then writing thoughts as I have them

Kender get hammerspace as a defining feature, huh? Not fear immunity. Okay.

My god.

They gave sorcerer's Moonbeam.

I can't even remember why I was excited about that possibility a year or two ago, but it's happened.

*continues reading* Wow, a bunch of free spell slots... that's a little overtuned, but maybe not since you probably couldn't upcast anything (taking the wind out of the Moonbeam sails), but definitely kinda finicky wording.

Lunar Boons has potential for abuse, and I'll try to think of ways other than making everything subtle later, but given the otherwise limited spells known on sorcerers it'd be difficult to throw everything into one or two schools. It's finicky and adds to the sorcerer analysis paralysis that they already suffer from rather than alleviating it.

Wait, does Waxing and Waning mean that they can shift for a sorcery point to then get a bunch of new faux spell slots? And then shift back again to cast Moonbeam a second time? Because, uh, that's... uh, that's something. A little more efficient than the normal spell slot spawning, methinks.

Lunar Empowerment is a ribb... oh. Actually, it kind of slaps.

Lunar Phenomenon suuuuuuuuucks. Swing and a miss on a high level feature.

I like some of the ideas here, but this is certainly a rough draft.

Backgrounds that give feats? I'm not turned off, but that does a good job of making it very much a setting specific thing, and could theoretically serve a similar purpose to those second category of backgrounds in Theros without defining them as some additional thing. I'll keep reading.
Hmm... what I don't like, though, is that these backgrounds can't really be grabbed by just any character. Play and abjuration wizard as a knight of solwhachit and you've run counter to the image their trying to cobble together, and same for the rogue mage of high 420. That's a bit of a design deviation that I don't like. Even Ravnica - though it unfairly favored mages - left room enough for you to basically be a *whatever* in the guilds. This is being presented with a "hey, these are the classes that are appropriate" section. No bueno.

Feats, eh. Let's look at those background feats first. Oof. Squire of Sowachit has a whole first bullet point that is irrelevant to everything you put in the class guide you presented, but is an enormous boost to wizards, huh? Lame. The second bullet point is practically a ribbon, and the third is 1/day. Pretty lame.
Meanwhile the other background feat gives a useful ability to whoever takes it, regardless of who takes it. So they've inherently incentivized people to play fighters as High Sorcerers and wizards as either, but probably as Knights.
That's dumb design.
I hope that Divinely Favored thing is supposed to be attached to an unpublished background, because otherwise it's a feat chain and feat chains are $%^&. And this feat chain sort of falls into that exact pattern by being not so great for the investment, so blech.
Black Robes get that alternate use for hit dice everyone's been talking about, but in a needlessly wonky way and fairly weak to boot. Red Robes get a high level Rogue feature, but for every d20 roll with no proficiency gating, proficiency times a day; that's too much man, narrow that down. White Robe seems terrible; lose a spell slot to get a random amount of very small damage reduction seems a terrible trade, as that's *more* table time to roll out the results only for them to be relatively unimpressive regardless of the roll. And because all of these are doing the "two specific schools" thing like their precursor, these are going to require a level of system mastery that's going to turn off the people what lack it. Not great design, there, certainly not welcoming to new or more casual players, but consistent with their recent work. It'd likely be better from a player friendliness perspective to just say "all black/red/white robes know this specific spell, that's how you know they're E/TN/G guys."
Knight of the Crown is worse than Red Robes, plus Robes get a spell in addition. Crown might stack up better if it was short rest refresh, but it'd still be down a spell. Sword is crippled by the 1/day aspect, and was otherwise *this* close to interesting. I mean, why? It already has an inherent limiter coupled with a cost. Why knee cap it like that? Just let the hit dice be the limiter for craps sake. Knight of the Rose runs into the same problem; the ability is cool and all, but why have two layers of limiters when the pool of hit dice serve as a limiter/sacrifice already? Why double up?


Overall, not terribly impressed with this incarnation of things. Backgrounds in particular.

[LibraryOgre]

The original modules were terrible and never really did the setting any justice (the player options were interesting though). Much better were the gold box crpg games.

Some of the best materials were written for the Saga game. Even for the previous age, Saga was hands down some of the best setting material for Dragonlance.


Reading, then writing thoughts as I have them

Kender get hammerspace as a defining feature, huh? Not fear immunity. Okay.

I think I prefer this. We see Tasslehoff and other kender get scared. It doesn't happen often, and they have "flight, fight, fiddle with" fear responses, but them being immune to fear was always difficult. Irrationally resistant to fear works better, IMO.

[jaappleton]

If I were to guess, they are probably working on something that includes rules for mass combat (yeah they are back on that again). Possibly for another game, not necessarily for 5e. Board game?

Maybe a series of adventures at various tiers, part of a larger overall plot, involving a war in Krynn.

If you know me, you know. Can't say more, as I was... kindly informed of some things. >_>

[Psyren]

I think I prefer this. We see Tasslehoff and other kender get scared. It doesn't happen often, and they have "flight, fight, fiddle with" fear responses, but them being immune to fear was always difficult. Irrationally resistant to fear works better, IMO.

Agreed - I'd rather fear resistance than immunity. You can still have the super special awesome kender like Tas be fear immune (except for plot reasons) if you want.

Besides, most "frightened" effects are magically induced. You can still have them be foolhardy in the face of scary situations where the rest of the party is trepidous if you want, that's just roleplay.

[Hytheter]

Mage of High Sorcery: Here, have a caster themed background pertaining to a cabal of mages. It gives you a free feat that provides useful benefits to casters.
Knight of Solamnia: Here, have a martial themed background pertaining to an order of knights. It gives you a free feat that provides useful benefits to casters.

Yeah, cool. You really nailed it, guys.

I don't hate background feats as a general principle but it's clearly out of whack for an edition where all the base backgrounds only provide mild flavour benefits. It's blatant power creep. Ravnica was bad enough with its expanded spell lists, but at least you were still limited by your spells known/prepared. But Strixhaven and now this has me shaking my head.

I don't hate feat chains in principle either but that comes with a lot of caveats and one of those is not being in a system where just taking a feat at all has a huge opportunity cost.

But maybe whatever they've got planned in 2024 will alleviate those concerns.

[Luccan]

Part of the problem with the imbalanced backgrounds is that they can be imbalanced within the party. Like, you are actively shooting yourself in the foot if you play a Ravnica game and don't play a caster in one of the guilds. Despite being a goblin street gangster or regular merc Fighter supposedly being a valid PC choice. These present the same issue, arguably worse, regardless of if they fulfill their purpose narratively.



But maybe whatever they've got planned in 2024 will alleviate those concerns

I think this might be part of the issue, they're rolling out stuff that will totally be balanced and work with the rest of the system... in 2 years. It's not 2024 yet.

[RSP]

Seems mostly fine alongside Tashas sorcerers, which is the new balancing point for better or worse.

I mean, after 6th level you not only essentially have 15 more spells known, you have 3 extra slots for each level you can cast: 1st-5th (so 15 extra spells cast a day at 9th). You get this at a cost of 2 SPs, yet you also, essentially, get 3 extra SPs.

Other than that, interesting that the Subclass has another version of the “can’t hide casting” of the Tashas subclasses.

[paladinn]

Wow, I was a huge Dragonlance fan back in the day, from 1e all the way through the Saga period. I've been looking forward to a 5e treatment of DL. This is Not what I've hoped for..

I wonder if this is the direction they're considering for 5.5. This would be jumping the shark, methinks.

[Petrocorus]

I haven't been able to read MotM and didn't pay attention to the last setting books, but is is really the rule now to have not only ASI but also life span and height and weight to be disconnected from race?
It really seems the idea now is that race should be nothing more than a layer of fluff and a couple of ribbon features.

Concerning the power creep, I'm under the impression this stem from the long standing problem of (almost) never fixing broken things but instead makes new things to compensate for the broken thins (like the Hexblade for the Pact of the Blade or the more powerful subclasses for the base class in the case of the Ranger).
This notably pushed them to give more stuff to the Sorcerer to compensate for the small limit of spell known and the limitation of the spell list.
And obviously the tendency is to make the less recent things obsolete and overshadowed.



I hope you'll join me in providing the useful feedback when the survey comes out.
Why not just make the Knight of Solamnia Class/sub class, or High Sorcery Wizard, class or sub class, and build it like a proper class?
Grr.

Do they actually pay that much attention to survey feedback?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Concerning the power creep, I'm under the impression this stem from the long standing problem of (almost) never fixing broken things but instead makes new things to compensate for the broken thins (like the Hexblade for the Pact of the Blade or the more powerful subclasses for the base class in the case of the Ranger).
This notably pushed them to give more stuff to the Sorcerer to compensate for the small limit of spell known and the limitation of the spell list.
And obviously the tendency is to make the less recent things obsolete and overshadowed.


Exactly. And that's the inescapable problem with "buff, don't nerf." It always spirals until things fall apart. It can't do anything else.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Do they actually pay that much attention to survey feedback?
Noticeably more to UA survey's than the others (at least, as far as we know) though it's still not exactly a frequent thing. Just to name a few examples off the top of my head; Theurgy Wizard, UA Redemption Paladin, Strixhaven Subclasses, Mystic, Artificer.

[Pex]

Exactly. And that's the inescapable problem with "buff, don't nerf." It always spirals until things fall apart. It can't do anything else.

Old stuff becoming obsolete isn't necessarily a bad thing. The issue is if they admit it. On the player side is worry the increase in power goes beyond tolerance level. Players can only take so much before they had enough. Increase in power has potential to break the game, but it's not automatic. For years people have said Sorcerer does not get enough spells. Now they are providing it. That's a good thing. Those same people would likely prefer the old subclasses also get the bonus spells. Buff the old stuff so they don't become obsolete. It's still a power creep for those people bothered by that, but it helps those who want the old stuff.

New stuff should be evaluated as to whether it's too powerful for the game and if so changed to compensate or scrap the idea altogether. I do not view the existence of power creep to be a horrible thing to avoid.

[Kane0]

I mean, after 6th level you not only essentially have 15 more spells known, you have 3 extra slots for each level you can cast: 1st-5th (so 15 extra spells cast a day at 9th). You get this at a cost of 2 SPs, yet you also, essentially, get 3 extra SPs.

Other than that, interesting that the Subclass has another version of the “can’t hide casting” of the Tashas subclasses.

Yes I would drop the free castings altogether myself, the subclass is already basically three that you can choose between with a common feature of +prof bonus in SP by way of cost reduction.


Old stuff becoming obsolete isn't necessarily a bad thing. The issue is if they admit it.

Hear hear.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Old stuff becoming obsolete isn't necessarily a bad thing. The issue is if they admit it. On the player side is worry the increase in power goes beyond tolerance level. Players can only take so much before they had enough. Increase in power has potential to break the game, but it's not automatic. For years people have said Sorcerer does not get enough spells. Now they are providing it. That's a good thing. Those same people would likely prefer the old subclasses also get the bonus spells. Buff the old stuff so they don't become obsolete. It's still a power creep for those people bothered by that, but it helps those who want the old stuff.

New stuff should be evaluated as to whether it's too powerful for the game and if so changed to compensate or scrap the idea altogether. I do not view the existence of power creep to be a horrible thing to avoid.

Keep buying these books or you'll not be able to play well with those that do. That's pay to win. And yes, it's a problem. And it's exactly the sort of thing that ruins game cultures. Because now new people have to buy "the right thing". It's standard "milk the whales".

Not only that, the system as a whole was designed around the initial offerings. The more you push, the less the whole system coheres. MM? Not valuable because you have to rework everything to challenge players. DMG? Obsolete. This happened in 3e, where very little of the printed material was actually useful, because the power levels had outstripped it 10x.

Spirals are bad. And one-sided buffs without nerfs guarantees a spiral. Because anything not stronger will be ignored and the meta shifts to the new hotness. And the system crumbles under the weight, and the community fragments into those who chase power and those who don't, who can no longer (after a while) play together.

Simply adding new op crap is the worst possible option. Best to fix the old if it's broken and nerf the things that are too strong. Stay in a stable range, instead of spiraling ever higher.

[Leon]

Hadn't looked, but it's interesting to me that they removed the "must progress through the orders" requirement for Knights of Solamnia... you can go from a Squire to the Rose without muddling about in the middle.

And, looking at it, Sword loses its pseudo-paladin status.... and black robes their status as conjurers.

5e has a tendency to water a lot of things down to match its simplicity so this would be more of that.

Overall i like the look of the UA and am happy that Dragonlance is getting some love, being UA its of course only a teaser so much more will come along eventually.

A lot of what seems to be getting people worked up in this thread is the notion that X in Y will break Z as the forum does, assuming that everything is in a vacuum and that is all allowed willy nilly at the table. Outside of the Adventure league Setting lock means nothing if you DM doesn't enforce it. The Backgrounds getting a minor feat is cool, its the feature of that background, nothing more nothing less. If your only Picking the background for some armour on your caster your missing the Point of being a Knight of that Order.

Given that the last time these were out they were a Prestige class that anyone meeting the Reqs could be so having it as a Class/subclass doesn't make much sense where as a Background/Feat chain lets you be the Knight without having it wholly define your character by limiting you to a fighter/Paladin etc



As a side note, is anyone else heartily fed up with reading the phrase "a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest"? Lately it seems like every racial or class feature is its own resource pool. They're a pain to keep track of, especially if your session doesn't end on a long rest. And sorcerers already have 2 class resources, (spell slots and sorcery points), so why not just use those?

More proficiency scaling is good. I'd like to see them do away with Hitdice and make them into Reserve dice that you can spend on either Healing or replenishing a portion of your class features.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

This is fantastic news!

Not only are they experimenting in making the background an element of character building that can now match race for mechanical importance, they’re developing the feat system into something with intentional design!

The Lunar Sorcerer also presents a fantastic design space: consider how a draconic sorcerer could look swapping between colours within type or types!

Or an abberant one expressing different forms of mutation themed around eyes, tentacles or gills.

Or elemental sorcerers who can channel all 4 elements

This is the kind of design that could be what that class needs to get out of the “caster trash tier”

Like the dabbling in alignment based stuff (hope they couch it in player facing agency. The player should be deciding what their alignment is, not the DM)

This and Strixhaven are painting a picture of what 5.5 is likely going to look like from a pc perspective: floating stats, racial ribbons that do something impactful, backgrounds as starting feats and more access to magic.

I’m onboard, even if it isn’t all my bag. Enough here to convince me that they will bother to develop stunted mechanics like feats while leaving the “feat less” version of the game for the grogs

[CMCC]

I appreciate they try to keep the spirit of kender without telling players to steal from everyone and everything and provoke NPCs into combat because they aren't afraid of anything. They know the justified hatred people have toward them. They had to do something.

People don’t like Kender? That’s a thing?

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

Keep buying these books or you'll not be able to play well with those that do. That's pay to win. And yes, it's a problem. And it's exactly the sort of thing that ruins game cultures. Because now new people have to buy "the right thing". It's standard "milk the whales".

I seem to recall the SRD is still free and runs the game just fine.

Every table should have access to the same resources, so how can you “pay to win”? The whole table “wins” if the new book makes their game better. And if it doesn’t, toss it out, revert to the SRD.


Not only that, the system as a whole was designed around the initial offerings. The more you push, the less the whole system coheres. MM? Not valuable because you have to rework everything to challenge players. DMG? Obsolete. This happened in 3e, where very little of the printed material was actually useful, because the power levels had outstripped it 10x.

Ah the hyperbole of 3E. 15 years dead and still the edition warriors wage on!

Levels 1-5, where most of the game occurred, played just fine mixing the old with the new. And CODzilla existed in the core books. The splat books were the icing, not the cake.

And you could play perfectly fun games without all 200 splat books. The PHB 3.5, the MM and a DMG worked just fine on a camping trip.

Of course, there is a way to design that isn’t gonna cause powerlevels x9000, and this is actually a good example of that: design wide.

I suspect 5.5 is gonna be a bunch of feats updated to be half feats, and a bunch of half feats getting the axe or a boost to match the S Tier feats in the PHB.

Haven’t seen anything published that outstrips then yet, so the cap is still on.



Spirals are bad. And one-sided buffs without nerfs guarantees a spiral. Because anything not stronger will be ignored and the meta shifts to the new hotness. And the system crumbles under the weight, and the community fragments into those who chase power and those who don't, who can no longer (after a while) play together.

That would be what 5.5 does, redesigns that. It’ll have been 10 years, what was a good idea in 2014 doesn’t hold up. Say what you will about 2E, it was a good decision to clean up the janky and disjointed mechanics of AD&D. The OSR was basically founded on the same principle.

They’re designing to be backwards compatible, meaning games can still run sans feats.


Simply adding new op crap is the worst possible option. Best to fix the old if it's broken and nerf the things that are too strong. Stay in a stable range, instead of spiraling ever higher.

What’s OP? None of these designs will break a game.

And they ARE fixing the old. Notice how some of these new feats are revamps of old ones?

Sheep in wolves clothing, an opportunity to play test the revamped Core Feat with a setting specific cloak to shield it from the flames.

[Leon]

If your only after a mechanical advantage and not into playing to the Theme that both of those offer maybe.

[ATHATH]

Due to their curiosity, many kender have found
themselves falling through gates and portals to other
planes and worlds.
no, nonononononono, waitwaitwaitwait, WAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT (https://youtu.be/VM3uXu1Dq4c)

[ATHATH]

Aw, kender don't get free sleight of hand proficiency. Combined with the flavor text there, I'm wondering if WotC is actually trying to retcon kender being kleptomaniacs.

[Kane0]

Yeah definitely appears to be a retcon or propaganda, no trace of kleptomania or concept of ownership anyhere. They just really like trinkets i guess.

[ATHATH]

Wait, hold up. If I'm reading this right, choosing your phase for Lunar Embodiment just determines which spells you get free castings of that day. As far as I can tell, you get ALL 15 of those Lunar Embodiment spells as extra spells known, even if they don't match your currently-chosen moon phase. The hell??

EDIT: Also, uh, is waxing and waning literally just "spend 2 sorcery points to get 10 extra spell castings today". It's pretty flavorful, I guess, but holy power creep, batman, that's two extra 5ths, two extra 4ths, two extra 3rds, two extra 2nds, AND two extra 1sts at 9th level.

[Kane0]

Yes Lunar spells has some silly wording, thats where i would focus the second pass.

Edit: by my reading all the spells are added to your spell list and count as spells known, and it is only the free castings that change in availability depending on the phase. I dont think that was the intent and should be cleaned up regardless, especially since as previously mentioned using the level 6 feature to trade in a different phase gives you another set of castings.

[Zhorn]

Aw, kender don't get free sleight of hand proficiency. Combined with the flavor text there, I'm wondering if WotC is actually trying to retcon kender being kleptomaniacs.
Yeah definitely appears to be a retcon or propaganda, no trace of kleptomania or concept of ownership anyhere. They just really like trinkets i guess.
I thought that was the whole point of Kender Aces, making the kleptomania a 'victomless crime'. The kender is idling grabbing random things here and there subconsciously. You don't actively steal, you just have a random assortment of things you've nabbed.

[Kane0]

I thought that was the whole point of Kender Aces, making the kleptomania a 'victomless crime'. The kender is idling grabbing random things here and there subconsciously. You don't actively steal, you just have a random assortment of things you've nabbed.

It doesnt say that though, you just have a racial robe of useful items because youre feytouched and are really into baubles

[ATHATH]

Lunar Sorc seems pretty solid as the basis for an Armor of Agathys build. Adept of the White Robes + a Warlock dip (while grabbing AoA with Divinely Favored would be nice, that requires you to be of an Evil alignment, and AotWR requires a non-Evil alignment) lets you burn spell slots to make your AoAs last longer. Normally, this'd make you hemorrhage way too many spell slots to be viable, but because Lunar Sorcs get up to 15 free spells per day (admittedly, ~half of them are utility spells or long-term buffs), you should have more spell slots to spare than normal.

[ATHATH]

People don’t like Kender? That’s a thing?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/573530012800778250/951017087185322014/JaQfYcu.png

[tokek]

People don’t like Kender? That’s a thing?

I've never actually seen a Kender in play - because my DM for the only game that might have had them banned them.

They were famously the absolute nadir of "its what my character would do" annoying nonsense. Maybe it was overstated but that was the general opinion of them, cause trouble, break games.

[Tanarii]

https://media.wizards.com/2022/dnd/downloads/UA2022HeroesofKrynn.pdf

Yes, that's an official Dragonlance UA. With kender.About ti...

Doh! When it came to kender, you had TWO THINGS TO DO WotC. Handling and Taunting. And you didn't do either of them right. :smallmad:

[sambojin]

How much do I like this UA as a fluff junky, where you can do all kinds of things and niche right the hell out in the game world you are in? I don't know. Not that much. They are flavourful backgrounds and feats, and the sorceror subclass is pretty sweet, but I've never done a lot of Dragonlancing. Seems like 3e a bit in a way, but with way more openness if when you have a prestige class.

As a rules junkie, I do like that any class/race can now take a Tasha'd lvl1 feat (whatever. Feytouched?), with a background feat (crappola high magic), and at lvl4 gets to wear a white robe as their feat. Simply so they can take Summon Beast as their spell. Flyby 18Str summoning (that can grapple a medium creature/ you) for *everyone*! Yay!!!


((Not saying this is the best use of a lvl2 spell, especially considering most casters get an ok'ish summon at lvl5 anyway, but whatever. It's something that you can dump slots on later or something))

[Psyren]

About ti...

Doh! When it came to kender, you had TWO THINGS TO DO WotC. Handling and Taunting. And you didn't do either of them right. :smallmad:

I thought they did both better than they've ever been done personally.

[werescythe]

I hate the new background feats thing. I hated it with Strixhaven (it was one of MANY things that stopped me from running a Strixhaven campaign) and I hate it here.

Lunar Sorcerer is kind of cool.

Feel kind of meh about Kinders (insert Tinder joke here).

[Keltest]

I thought they did both better than they've ever been done personally.

Making it literally magic was a mistake IMO, and a pretty serious one. Just say that after an hour it goes back in the pouch and you lose track of it, you dont need to make them little fairy people.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I said TCoE was the beginning of the end of the 5e I know and love.

Now you all know it.

[diplomancer]

First things first: KRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYNNNNNNN! Yay!


I'm also at the "this is why we can't have nice things" camp, so let's address this first:

I think people don't appreciate the constraints WotC is dealing with here; no new mechanics (because we can't have nice things... I still liked the psionic die, grrrr), no subclasses for different classes (ditto). Given that, feats are probably the best way to implement these builds, specially if you consider that feats can be boons acquired during game, quite apart from ASIs. With that said:

Background feats: Absolutely nothing wrong with it, in principle, if it's setting locked. Just make sure that you either have the other backgrounds for the setting to be as nice, or that you enforce the roleplaying costs of choosing it (kinda like the Ravnica backgrounds). And if you say "this will break my game, players will demand it even if it's not in Krynn", all I have to say is "have the Ravnica backgrounds (over 3 years old now!) broken your game? Or were you able to just "Nope!" them as needed?". Because they are arguably at least as good as this.

Now, do I like these starting feats? Well, the High Sorcery one is alright, but I do agree that the Solamnia one is stupid. Scrap that first benefit and give something that martials want more than casters. Can be as simple as an extra fighting style from a limited list, I don't know. Heck, just give the Mounted Combatant feat instead, since they are supposed to all be good mounted knights.

Before we go look at individual features, I just want to say that I also like that they are giving new uses to Hit Dice in this UA. I believe this is a first, and it's high time they did it.

Now let's see each feature individually:

1- Kender: I burst out laughing when I read it, as it's so obviously Kender propaganda to justify their thieving; still, it might be enough to stop problem players from playing them, so this is good. Taunting is good.

2- Moon Sorcerer: Overall, I like it, but should be reviewed for clarity. I think both RAW (and very probably RAI), it's one free casting a day of one spell, not 15!

Once you cast a spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

The indefinite article makes it clear enough, though it would be more clear to say "any spell". Probably better to revise it to make it clearer.

I'm not so sure whether the intent is for them to have up to 15 extra spells known (which is what's written, and is crazy), or to have up to 5 extra spells known that can be shifted around (which is more reasonable, but not what's written). Requires also a rewrite, I hope.

I believe the 18th level features are weak, though from my reading you DO get 3 uses a day before having to spend 5 sorcery points to repeat them, as long as you use the 3 different ones. Still weak.

Don't overthink Death Ward at level 5. It's UA; it's gonna be errata'ed when and if it gets published.

Other features are fun and thematic.

3- Backgrounds: See above. And, yes, it's UA, but the other problem with these backgrounds has gone unnoticed amongst the cries of "power creep!". They are incomplete. Where are the bonds and flaws?

4- Feats:
a- Squire of Solamnia: See above
b- Solamnia "higher feats":
b1- Crown- Weak, but can be fun if paired with other characters that REALLY want that advantage;
b2- Sword: Not very imaginative (a refluffed Resilient, which can be paired with it to get the "big 3" saves), but alright. Specially nice for Bards that want to improve their saves, as they can get Res (Con) for concentration saves, and this one for Wisdom Saves (almost all the other full-casters get Wis saves).
b3- Rose- Almost an Inspiring Leader feat for Barbarians. I'm not sure whether you spend the hit die when you use it. Good anyway, but obviously better if you don't spend it.
c- Divinely Favoured: Balanced, a bit like Magic Initiate, better in some respects, worse in others. I don't like the "warlocks are evil, clerics are good" choice, though. Rangers, Valor Bards, and Eldritch knights that go S&B are gonna like that last bullet point.
d- Divine Communications: "Hey, let's give a 5th level spell as a half-feat at level 4 (and a few other nice bonus as well)! No way this is going to cause trouble, right?!" I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet. Yeah, that's a no. Maybe if you level-lock it to level 8, or if you give the DM the power to decide when to use it, but so many people hate that sort of thing that I don't see it happening.
e- Initiate of High Sorcery: Like Divinely Favoured, a weird flavour of Magic Initiate. Far more restricted than it (only 1 cantrip, instead of 2, from a limited list, and the cantrip you choose is more or less locked by the 1st level spell you choose). On the plus side, you learn the spell, so you can cast it if you have slots, and you get to choose which mental ability to use with it. I'd say it's slightly more powerful than Magic Initiate (or at least that there are more builds that can make good use of it). One thing I didn't like, though. WHY OH WHY did they NOT give Lunitari the illusion school, or the minor illusion cantrip? Lunitari has been associated with Illusion magic from the very beginning of Dragonlance.
f- High Sorcery "higher feats":
f1- Black Robes: Powerful, fun and thematic. I believe the "life chanelling" can only apply to 1 creature, so no life chanelling Fireballs! Which is good. The fact that you cast it after you know that the creature failed the saving throw but before you roll the damage for the spell is a problem, though. Not so much for its power, but I believe it will slow down play. It's a power increase, but I'd put it after you roll the damage, just to speed things up.
f2- Red Robes: Too powerful. Way too powerful. Rogues are crying. And still no illusion spells. Grrr.
f3- White Robes: FIND STEED!!! Protective Ward is a reaction Healing Word; which is worse if someone's going down by a lot of damage but not enough to kill him outright, but better if someon's going down by a little (or by so much that it IS going to kill him outright!). But FIND STEED!!! How has no one mentioned this yet? or did I miss it? Paladins would be crying, but they are too stoic for that, and who cares anyway :smalltongue:

[Dragonus45]

Hard disagree. Dragonlance hasn't been relevant to D&D for ages, most new players and at this point quite a few old players know nothing about the setting. I've been playing D&D for over 15 years, and the only reason I know anything about the setting is I picked up 2 books in it from a dollar store. (They were not terrible...a poorly aged kidnaped elven princess who falls in love with her captor and a story about a fight between a village and some creepy tribe folk and their respective patron dragons, definitely the stronger of the pair).

I think you are really underselling the massive impact and longevity of Dragonlance, just because it was never a part of your personal D&D experience doesn't mean it isn't massively successful and the books floating around libraries and friend circles have been pulling people into the hobby to this day as an entry point. This is like me trying to say that Critical Role was never that big of a deal in a few decades because it's format ages inherently poorly or whatever reason it will eventually drop from being a huge defining entry point into the hobby by then.

[Psyren]

Making it literally magic was a mistake IMO, and a pretty serious one. Just say that after an hour it goes back in the pouch and you lose track of it, you dont need to make them little fairy people.

Disagree - I already explained (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643457-New-UA-has-Kender-Wat&p=25388961&viewfull=1#post25388961) why I think making it magic baseline was the right call. I think the groups who want it to be mundane can more easily modify it to work that way than the reverse.

[Sigreid]

I think you are really underselling the massive impact and longevity of Dragonlance, just because it was never a part of your personal D&D experience doesn't mean it isn't massively successful and the books floating around libraries and friend circles have been pulling people into the hobby to this day as an entry point. This is like me trying to say that Critical Role was never that big of a deal in a few decades because it's format ages inherently poorly or whatever reason it will eventually drop from being a huge defining entry point into the hobby by then.

I think you have a fair point, but it goes both ways. People, being people tend to assume they're the norm. Those who don't care about Dragon Lance are going to be prone to think most people don't care. Those who are really excited for Dragon Lance are going to be prone to assume most people do. I assume WoTC has done some market research to determine where the profit really lay.

[Boci]

I think you are really underselling the massive impact and longevity of Dragonlance, just because it was never a part of your personal D&D experience doesn't mean it isn't massively successful and the books floating around libraries and friend circles have been pulling people into the hobby to this day as an entry point. This is like me trying to say that Critical Role was never that big of a deal in a few decades because it's format ages inherently poorly or whatever reason it will eventually drop from being a huge defining entry point into the hobby by then.

I'm not saying it wasn't important, I'm saying it isn't now. There would be no D&D without Gygax, but a lot of his thoughts about the game have been left behind, and most people consider "Gygaxian DMing" to not be a compliment.


I think you have a fair point, but it goes both ways. People, being people tend to assume they're the norm. Those who don't care about Dragon Lance are going to be prone to think most people don't care. Those who are really excited for Dragon Lance are going to be prone to assume most people do. I assume WoTC has done some market research to determine where the profit really lay.

Not really. I love Eberron, but I don't think that's too relevant to D&D either. Makes for a good source book, change things up, and its certainly more relevant than Dragonlance, but not terrible so. It does things different, at most you could point to it as being a starting point for the divorcing of traditional society and alighment for D&D cultures, but even that seems to have predated Eberron, so likely deserves only minimal credit.

What I like and what is relevant to D&D are 2 different things.

[Keltest]

Disagree - I already explained (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643457-New-UA-has-Kender-Wat&p=25388961&viewfull=1#post25388961) why I think making it magic baseline was the right call. I think the groups who want it to be mundane can more easily modify it to work that way than the reverse.

I don't think that will ever be true. Non-magic abilities need at least some sort of grounding in reality that people can understand. Magic does not. It will always, invariably, be easier to just declare that a wizard did it than to try and explain how something works without magic.

[diplomancer]

I'm not saying it wasn't important, I'm saying it isn't now. There would be no D&D without Gygax, but a lot of his thoughts about the game have been left behind, and most people consider "Gygaxian DMing" to not be a compliment.



Not really. I love Eberron, but I don't think that's too relevant to D&D either. Makes for a good source book, change things up, and its certainly more relevant than Dragonlance, but not terrible so. It does things different, at most you could point to it as being a starting point for the divorcing of traditional society and alighment for D&D cultures, but even that seems to have predated Eberron, so likely deserves only minimal credit.

What I like and what is relevant to D&D are 2 different things.

Well, it seems that WotC disagrees with you, as they are investing money in it. And as they are not the most sentimental of companies, I think it's fair to say that they've done their market research and concluded that Dragonlance IS relevant (though perhaps less relevant than the already published classic settings).

This is even more evident by the fact that they are doing it DESPITE Dragonlance being a bit of a thorn to convert to the realities of 5e, like all the different casting classes, the "alignment isn't important" philosophy, etc. They still want to try to pull it off; it's not because Dragonlance is irrelevant and they are just doing it for old times' sake.

[Boci]

Well, it seems that WotC disagrees with you, as they are investing money in it. And as they are not the most sentimental of companies, I think it's fair to say that they've done their market research and concluded that Dragonlance IS relevant (though perhaps less relevant than the already published classic settings).

We also have a Strixhaven book. Making a setting book does mean WotC thinks the featured world is a core defining feature of the game. I didn't say a Dragonlance book wouldn't sell, I said the setting wasn't relevant to the state of the game. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't use it.

[KorvinStarmast]

But halflings have been kender since 3e came out, just without the recreational adderall that standard kender are on. *snort*

but not build defining feat. feats and skill proficiencies and tool proficienies and class features are each a different thing. Unless every single background has a feat, no background should have a feat. Build a consistent framework and use it. :smallfurious: Knights of Solamnia as a background can be done as a background (standard PHB structure) and then if you really want to, since they gated feats behind races in Xanathar's (We hates that, Precious) you can gate some other feats behind that pre-requisite just as you gate Elemental Adept
Prerequisite: The ability to cast at least one spell behind a standard feature.

Awesome, you don't need to "pay" the feat with an ASI, you get it as a story reward. That's like DMG boons. (IIRC, we got a feat or ASI as a quest reward in a campaign last year, similar to what you do. That's an optional rule). But structurally, this isn't consistent.

I think we should give them a try before lighting the torches. I disagree, given their track record. The evergreen promise of D&D 5e is being eroded and welched on. It's a sound structure that is very playable, all they have been doing is opening loop holes left, right and center. (Hexblade is but one example of this).

Backgrounds giving a feat makes perfect sense, and it would make sense to me if they were less build a bear and more strict but also gave more mechanical benefit in general in the final product. Then offer a feat with every background. :smalltongue:

Artificer overcame that hurdle because of precedence. Fans of Eberron were demanding an Artificer that made magic items. {Artificer side eye excised in the interest of brevity}. Good post, good analysis.

Much better were the gold box crpg games. I have a collection of 12 CRPGs from the AD&D 1e era somewhere in the closet, I wonder if I ought to put it up for auction.

Irrationally resistant to fear works better, IMO. Advantage on frightened condition saving throws seems to fit that well enough.

Part of the problem with the imbalanced backgrounds is that they can be imbalanced within the party. Yep.

I think this might be part of the issue, they're rolling out stuff that will totally be balanced and work with the rest of the system... in 2 years. It's not 2024 yet. 6e or 5.5?

Wow, I was a huge Dragonlance fan back in the day, from 1e all the way through the Saga period. I've been looking forward to a 5e treatment of DL. When the books came out I liked them. The Twins trilogy was good enough, but the setting was already showing its uneven concept. I am glad a lot of folks enjoyed 2d Dragonlance, it wasn't in the 2e stuff that I got to play.

I wonder if this is the direction they're considering for 5.5. This would be jumping the shark, methinks. Yeah.


I haven't been able to read MotM and didn't pay attention to the last setting books, but is is really the rule now to have not only ASI but also life span and height and weight to be disconnected from race?
It really seems the idea now is that race should be nothing more than a layer of fluff and a couple of ribbon features.

Concerning the power creep, I'm under the impression this stem from the long standing problem of (almost) never fixing broken things but instead makes new things to compensate for the broken thins (like the Hexblade for the Pact of the Blade or the more powerful subclasses for the base class in the case of the Ranger).
This notably pushed them to give more stuff to the Sorcerer to compensate for the small limit of spell known and the limitation of the spell list.
And obviously the tendency is to make the less recent things obsolete and overshadowed.




Do they actually pay that much attention to survey feedback?


Keep buying these books or you'll not be able to play well with those that do. That's pay to win. And yes, it's a problem. And it's exactly the sort of thing that ruins game cultures. Because now new people have to buy "the right thing". It's standard "milk the whales".

Not only that, the system as a whole was designed around the initial offerings. The more you push, the less the whole system coheres. MM? Not valuable because you have to rework everything to challenge players. DMG? Obsolete. This happened in 3e, where very little of the printed material was actually useful, because the power levels had outstripped it 10x.

Spirals are bad. And one-sided buffs without nerfs guarantees a spiral. Because anything not stronger will be ignored and the meta shifts to the new hotness. And the system crumbles under the weight, and the community fragments into those who chase power and those who don't, who can no longer (after a while) play together.

Simply adding new op crap is the worst possible option. Best to fix the old if it's broken and nerf the things that are too strong. Stay in a stable range, instead of spiraling ever higher.

[Psyren]

I don't think that will ever be true. Non-magic abilities need at least some sort of grounding in reality that people can understand. Magic does not. It will always, invariably, be easier to just declare that a wizard did it than to try and explain how something works without magic.

...But that's exactly my point. By making it magic, they don't have to come up with a "grounding in reality" that all or even most tables will agree with. The ones who care enough about it being mundane will come up with their own, and the ones for whom no such grounding would be acceptable, can simply shrug and say "it's magic now, problem solved."

[KorvinStarmast]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643457-New-UA-has-Kender-Wat

Granted, the title may not have captured what you think that a UA review thread would look like. :smallsmile:


Just read the Heroes of krynn UA... strikes me as odd that KNIGHT OF SOLAMNIA background works better for wizards/sorcerers (training in medium armor!) and MAGE OF HIGH SORCERY for rangers/paladins Yeah, it's counterintuitive.

[Keltest]

...But that's exactly my point. By making it magic, they don't have to come up with a "grounding in reality" that all or even most tables will agree with. The ones who care enough about it being mundane will come up with their own, and the ones for whom no such grounding would be acceptable, can simply shrug and say "it's magic now, problem solved."

They already dont have to come up with one! They already had one, that people identified with Kender! They pick stuff up, put them in their pouches, and forget they had them. That's like, their defining characteristic. It harkens all the way back to classic Hobbit where Bilbo put a ring in his pocket and forgot about it.

And now its some bizarre fairy conjuring, because the entire species are now apparently unconsciously sorcerers?

[Petrocorus]

The issue is if they admit it. On the player side is worry the increase in power goes beyond tolerance level. Players can only take so much before they had enough. Increase in power has potential to break the game, but it's not automatic. For years people have said Sorcerer does not get enough spells. Now they are providing it. That's a good thing. Those same people would likely prefer the old subclasses also get the bonus spells. Buff the old stuff so they don't become obsolete. It's still a power creep for those people bothered by that, but it helps those who want the old stuff.
That's my point (but better said). This power creep, mostly made to fix an issue they wouldn't explicitly fix, create a balance issue.
Since Tasha came out, it really feel that a sorcerer player is shooting himself in the foot by choosing to play a draconic or storm sorcerer.
They could have just admit the Sorcerer's spell known limit was way too low and publish a new spell known progression (maybe the same that the Bard) and keep all subclasses more or less balanced, but instead tied it to new subclasses which make the older subclasses underpowered in comparison.

They did the same thing with the Ranger, they gave three level 3 features instead of one to the Xanathar's and Tasha's subclasses, including more spell known, instead of admitting the class needed a complete rewrite and the spell known limit was not just too low, but should not exist in the first place.

They did the same thing with the Warlock, giving the Pact of the Blade fix as a feature to a subclass that would already be on the upper half of Warlock subclasses without it make this subclass basically mandatory to anyone who wants to play a bladelock but also probably made it the best subclass for all kind of Warlock, instead of adding Hex Warrior to the Pact of the Blade.

Their inability to admit explicitly a mistake despite that they know there was one and that they know that we know there was one is really creating issues and start looking quite dishonest.


Old stuff becoming obsolete isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It is when the old stuff have their unique fluff and taste and roleplay reasons to be used.

[ZRN]

Yes Lunar spells has some silly wording, thats where i would focus the second pass.

Edit: by my reading all the spells are added to your spell list and count as spells known, and it is only the free castings that change in availability depending on the phase. I dont think that was the intent and should be cleaned up regardless, especially since as previously mentioned using the level 6 feature to trade in a different phase gives you another set of castings.


Yeah, the wording seems crazy. I assumed at first read it was intended that you only have access to cast the bonus spells of your current phase (even using spell slots), and that you only get free castings of one "phase" per long rest (meaning no more freebies when you use the level 6 feature to switch phases), but that in fact is not how it's currently worded. 15 bonus spells at all times PLUS fifteen mostly-free castings (just spending sorcery points to Wax and Wane between phases) is obviously overpowered.

[Psyren]

They already dont have to come up with one! They already had one, that people identified with Kender! They pick stuff up, put them in their pouches, and forget they had them. That's like, their defining characteristic. It harkens all the way back to classic Hobbit where Bilbo put a ring in his pocket and forgot about it.

Yeah and people hate Kender. Out of game, even. Do you not get why they felt the need to change it? :smallconfused:


And now its some bizarre fairy conjuring, because the entire species are now apparently unconsciously sorcerers?

They're fey-descended, like a dozen other races in this game. It's hardly earth-shattering.

[diplomancer]

That's my point (but better said). This power creep, mostly made to fix an issue they wouldn't explicitly fix, create a balance issue.
Since Tasha came out, it really feel that a sorcerer player is shooting himself in the foot by choosing to play a draconic or storm sorcerer.
They could have just admit the Sorcerer's spell known limit was way too low and publish a new spell known progression (maybe the same that the Bard) and keep all subclasses more or less balanced, but instead tied it to new subclasses which make the older subclasses underpowered in comparison.

They did the same thing with the Ranger, they gave three level 3 features instead of one to the Xanathar's and Tasha's subclasses, including more spell known, instead of admitting the class needed a complete rewrite and the spell known limit was not just too low, but should not exist in the first place.

They did the same thing with the Warlock, giving the Pact of the Blade fix as a feature to a subclass that would already be on the upper half of Warlock subclasses without it make this subclass basically mandatory to anyone who wants to play a bladelock but also probably made it the best subclass for all kind of Warlock, instead of adding Hex Warrior to the Pact of the Blade.

Their inability to admit explicitly a mistake despite that they know there was one and that they know that we know there was one is really creating issues and start looking quite dishonest.


It is when the old stuff have their unique fluff and taste and roleplay reasons to be used.

I see your point, but I also sympathize with their decision. Maybe it's not ideal that a clockwork sorcerer is better than a wildmagic sorcerer, but it might still be a better solution than "wildmagic sorcerer 2022 model is better than wildmagic sorcerer 2014 model". True, errata is free, but there are still plenty of people who play the game and don't even know about erratas, just playing the game with the books they have.

Once they publish 5.5 in 2024, this problem will be mostly solved.

[Amechra]

D&D Setting books are ‘wafer thin’ in terms of depth of focus.

*Gestures emphatically.*

This. This this this this this.

One of the growing issues I've had with D&D 5e in particular is how theme-park-y everything feels like. I don't get a sense that any of the settings are lived-in places, or that there's any real attempt to have player characters come from a setting (and not, say, whatever the person playing them feels like playing this time). It just feels overly fake.

I think my biggest annoyance is honestly those damn name tables in Xanathar's. They're just wasted space filled up with something you could get from literally any baby naming website... except the baby naming websites would also give you etymology for your names. They could've put literally anything else at the end of that book, but they chose to just fill it with nonsense. For shame, WotC, for shame.

(I haven't been this annoyed by a TTRPG since Werewolf: The Forsaken 2e came out and I saw that they spent the vast majority of the space in their bestiary on dumb superbosses instead of the stuff you're actually going to use.)

[Keltest]

Yeah and people hate Kender. Out of game, even. Do you not get why they felt the need to change it? :smallconfused:



They're fey-descended, like a dozen other races in this game. It's hardly earth-shattering.

So it has absolutely nothing to do with the original kender anymore except the name? And you dont get why this is upsetting to people who happen to like the setting?

To say nothing of the fact that Kender being able to pull items out of their pockets was not the reason people didn't like them.

[Psyren]

So it has absolutely nothing to do with the original kender anymore except the name? And you dont get why this is upsetting to people who happen to like the setting?

Sure I do, but bringing in original klepto Kender would have been upsetting to me.


To say nothing of the fact that Kender being able to pull items out of their pockets was not the reason people didn't like them.

This provides a non-klepto explanation for how those items got there in the first place.

[ProsecutorGodot]

So it has absolutely nothing to do with the original kender anymore except the name? And you dont get why this is upsetting to people who happen to like the setting?

To say nothing of the fact that Kender being able to pull items out of their pockets was not the reason people didn't like them.

It's directly related though, the reason they had those items is because they are encouraged to steal them and given an excuse as paper thin as "it's not stealing in my culture how dare you accuse me of that."

Handling is a natural extension of every kender’s day-to-day life, and is the basic panacea to their rabid curiosity. The distinction between the handling of the kender, and the pickpocketing and skulduggery of the thief or rogue, is an important one; unfortunately, only the kender themselves seem to truly comprehend the subtlety of it.
I don't think it's all that unfortunate, I'm not very interested in a race of kleptomaniacs and if being a born thief (let's be honest, that's what they are) wasn't enough they're encouraged to be annoying and are given a near magical ability to incite a mind altering rage into someone on a whim.

No thanks, if they have to be here at all I'm glad we're pretending they weren't just a race of thieves.

[Willie the Duck]

So it has absolutely nothing to do with the original kender anymore except the name? And you dont get why this is upsetting to people who happen to like the setting?
The setting and actual-play always had a conflict. A race of habitual unintentional thieves was great worldbuilding (or at least novel-making), but ran into serious problems for many once the pencil hit character sheets. I'm not sure how often the 'kender=license to be jerk' situation actually arose (any more than 'it's what my character would do' or 'I'm Chaotic Neutral'), but I can see why WotC might decide to nip it in the bud. What I'd like to see is an actual sidebar acknowledgement about the why's of this (and especially whatever they do with Gully Dwarves), and what one can do if you want to play Kender more true to BITD (and have a group with the maturity not to turn it into a nightmare scenario).


To say nothing of the fact that Kender being able to pull items out of their pockets was not the reason people didn't like them.
Well, there was always the notion that much of it was stolen, but I agree that this could have been remedied in another way. This update (which is magical for some reason) seems more like part of the whole aesthetic of not being able to create permanent objects of value out of nothing (see Forge Cleric being able to make things, but only by inputting cash). For a version of the game that doesn't have a huge amount of clear (non-optional) uses for gold and lots of high-level PCs running around with more gold than they have use, this version of the game seems to have a real fear of infinite money loops.

[ironkid]

Of all the complaints I've reading, I'd like to affirm the following:

1) I DO like the alignment compromise they did on the feats, in fact I LOVE it. To be a white robe you don't have to be good, you have no be non-evil; thats a no-compromise at all if you ask me, since many DMs (myself included) don't allow evil PCs. And for the same reason, black robes are playable now!

Heck, I always wondered why people in Krynn didn't just implicitly trust white robes and killed black ones, if you ask me this compromise fixes the setting itself.

2) I don't understand what's so wrong with nested feats, everyone keeps being extremely acid about them, can someone enlighten me?

3) Kender are a blight on this earth (well, on Krynn) and cannot be fixed. I friend of mine said he was to start a Dragonlance campaign, my first choice was a Ranger focused on hunting and killing Kender. They know what they did...

(Obligatory disclaimer because many people don't get irony/jokes: the third point was [mostly] a joke. I know Rangers aren't supposed to be focusing in a favored enemy anymore and all that)

[Petrocorus]

I see your point, but I also sympathize with their decision. Maybe it's not ideal that a clockwork sorcerer is better than a wildmagic sorcerer, but it might still be a better solution than "wildmagic sorcerer 2022 model is better than wildmagic sorcerer 2014 model".
I can understand this.
And IMHO, this is why they should fix a problem exactly where it is.

The problem with the Sorcerer was mostly the spell known limit, not the subclasses.
I personally quite much dislike the Wild Magic for being too randomly risky for the PC themselves, and probably for being too setting-specific for the PHB (i do feel it's really tied to the nature of magic in Toril), but i don't think it is under or overpowered.
So let fix the spell known limit and let the subclasses be.


True, errata is free, but there are still plenty of people who play the game and don't even know about erratas, just playing the game with the books they have.
But it should not be erratas.
An errata normally is for spelling or copy-pasta error, or maybe correcting and ambiguous wording.
The way they disguising actual rule changes as erratas (like the removal of negative ASI for Orcs and Kobold, or the PAM suddenly working with spears) is really not the way to go for me.
And as you pointed out, the erratas goes under the radar of many players, contrary to rule changes in books.


Once they publish 5.5 in 2024, this problem will be mostly solved.
I myself am more and more afraid of how the 5.5 may turn out.

[diplomancer]

Of all the complaints I've reading, I'd like to affirm the following:

1) I DO like the alignment compromise they did on the feats, in fact I LOVE it. To be a white robe you don't have to be good, you have no be non-evil; thats a no-compromise at all if you ask me, since many DMs (myself included) don't allow evil PCs. And for the same reason, black robes are playable now!

Heck, I always wondered why people in Krynn didn't just implicitly trust white robes and killed black ones, if you ask me this compromise fixes the setting itself.

Good is not necessarily nice, nor necessarily in accord with another good person's goals. And black robes ARE feared and hated (well, in the original setting, all Wizards were feared and hated, but Black ones doubly so). Still, wasn't there an Italian who once said "it's better to be feared than to be loved, for people love you when they will, but fear you when YOU will"? There's something to be said to the tactic "yes, I'm evil, but I'm also so powerful that I can blatantly TELL you I'm evil and you STILL will do as I say".


I can understand this.
And IMHO, this is why they should fix a problem exactly where it is.

The problem with the Sorcerer was mostly the spell known limit, not the subclasses.
I personally quite much dislike the Wild Magic for being too randomly risky for the PC themselves, and probably for being too setting-specific for the PHB (i do feel it's really tied to the nature of magic in Toril), but i don't think it is under or overpowered.
So let fix the spell known limit and let the subclasses be.


But it should not be erratas.
An errata normally is for spelling or copy-pasta error, or maybe correcting and ambiguous wording.
The way they disguising actual rule changes as erratas (like the removal of negative ASI for Orcs and Kobold, or the PAM suddenly working with spears) is really not the way to go for me.
And as you pointed out, the erratas goes under the radar of many players, contrary to rule changes in books.

Well, rule changes in published books ARE either free erratas (at least in the sense of "what's in the book you have in your hands is not valid anymore"), or paid new content. And it would be a pretty unlikable move to publish a new version of the PHB with all the better balanced subclasses only to those who are willing to pay for it.

[Keltest]

It's directly related though, the reason they had those items is because they are encouraged to steal them and given an excuse as paper thin as "it's not stealing in my culture how dare you accuse me of that."

I don't think it's all that unfortunate, I'm not very interested in a race of kleptomaniacs and if being a born thief (let's be honest, that's what they are) wasn't enough they're encouraged to be annoying and are given a near magical ability to incite a mind altering rage into someone on a whim.

No thanks, if they have to be here at all I'm glad we're pretending they weren't just a race of thieves.

You know what, youre right. We should also remove evil and neutral characters from the game. Chaotic Good Robin Hood types too, they steal and get people into trouble sometimes. Nothing in this game that could even possibly be annoying should be allowed to exist.

Or alternatively we could just trust our fellow players to not deliberately annoy us, and treat it like the out of character problem that it is when it does occur.

[Psyren]

You know what, youre right. We should also remove evil and neutral characters from the game. Chaotic Good Robin Hood types too, they steal and get people into trouble sometimes. Nothing in this game that could even possibly be annoying should be allowed to exist.

Right, because Kender and Robin Hood archetypes have provoked exactly the same reactions from D&D players over the years :smallsigh:

[loki_ragnarock]

It's rough; though there's alot of experimentation, the execution of those experiments is very first draft.

The hit die expending mechanics don't need a 1/day or prof/day limitation, for instance, because hit dice already serve as a meaningful limiter. But they're finally playing with the idea, so that's kinda cool.

They're continuing the "magic as divided by spell school" schtick they introduced in Tasha's with the robes feats, which is going to make the system mastery types all excited and cause headaches for the more casual players. As the casuals form the larger portion of the player base, that extra level of system mastery being baked into one of the core setting features is... a choice, I guess. Letting people play wizards say "Oh, I'm playing an evocation wizard and definitely focusing on booms, so I'm probably a black robe since their associated with that sort of thing" is one thing, and probably hits the level of simplicity you'd want. But slicing up the spell list via spell school when there is no published spell list divided by spell school? As the baseline for interacting with the setting?
Seems a bad decision to me. It won't bother the forumites here, because system mastery to a greater or lesser degree is what floats the boat round these parts. But for the normal people who just play a game? It's the sort of fiddliness that's gonna be a turn off in a system where approachability was sort of the design intention.

The Squire feat runs counter to their intention of "this is for warrior types" by being better for non warrior types. It's just bad design. The backgrounds coming with an explicit "this is for these specific classes" section is a hard deviation from how background has been previously handled, which is bad enough. But that the mechanics serve only to undermine that aim misses the mark so wildly that I'm actually perplexed.
If you want a "this background for these classes" kind of caveat, then just make it real distinction by requiring medium armor proficiency to take the background; if you're going to make that kind of extreme deviation, deviate hard.

Lunar needs to drop the free spell casting. It interacts with the other abilities in confusing ways, or the intent was to give 15ish free spell slots which is a no on another level. They also need to clarify that they only treat the bonus spells as spells known while in whichever phase. They also need to clean up the bonus spell list. And they are once again continuing to go the "we're dividing these by spell school while never publishing spell lists organized by spell school, so have fun with that you #$%^ing casual" into the features of another setting pillar. The complications that come from the granularity of that sixth level free spell points feature are... something.
Look, you get Tasha's with "advanced player options" or whatever with some level of buy in; if it's fiddly like that, then it's just part of the fun. Shoving it this hard into the core mechanics of a setting book is a great way to alienate potential players.
The rules for this magic class are bordering on too arcane.
While I understand that spell school was a part of the old setting, if they aren't going to spend *alot* of pages reprinting spell lists organized by spell school, then that's going to be a tall ask of your player base who were just looking to pick up the book and start playing.

Kender aren't kender. I'm not sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, it's a bit of a rug pull for the fans of the setting who were eager to play the little troublemaking wee ones. On the other, they aren't kender.


I think I'd prefer to see the two backgrounds (and associated feats) set up as an organization similar to the piety system they use in Theros. That way you can advance through the ranks of the Knights of Sowhachit organically, rather than spending an ASI on it.

[diplomancer]

Right, because Kender and Robin Hood archetypes have provoked exactly the same reactions from D&D players over the years :smallsigh:

I had never heard of this problem with Kenders before I entered this forum, and I've played with a few of them back in the day. So the problem really is not with Kenders, but with players. I HAVE heard those horror stories, and I can see how problem players WOULD be drawn to play Kenders, so I sympathize with those who have lived through them, but I still feel it's unfair to the race. Maybe publish the race with the fluff as it originally is, but with player guidance "please don't make other players hate you. If you do, that's on you".

[Petrocorus]

Well, rule changes in published books ARE either free erratas (at least in the sense of "what's in the book you have in your hands is not valid anymore"), or paid new content. And it would be a pretty unlikable move to publish a new version of the PHB with all the better balanced subclasses only to those who are willing to pay for it.

Oh, i do wholeheartedly agree rule changes should be available for free. But they should be released in a separate free document, actually labelled as rule changes, in addition of being published in a books.

What i don't like is calling rule changes "erratas" as if they always have been intended like this. They are not erratas, they are rule changes.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I can understand this.
And IMHO, this is why they should fix a problem exactly where it is.

The problem with the Sorcerer was mostly the spell known limit, not the subclasses.
I personally quite much dislike the Wild Magic for being too randomly risky for the PC themselves, and probably for being too setting-specific for the PHB (i do feel it's really tied to the nature of magic in Toril), but i don't think it is under or overpowered.
So let fix the spell known limit and let the subclasses be.

But it should not be erratas.
An errata normally is for spelling or copy-pasta error, or maybe correcting and ambiguous wording.
The way they disguising actual rule changes as erratas (like the removal of negative ASI for Orcs and Kobold, or the PAM suddenly working with spears) is really not the way to go for me.
And as you pointed out, the erratas goes under the radar of many players, contrary to rule changes in books.

I myself am more and more afraid of how the 5.5 may turn out.

I agree with all of this. They could have "fixed" all sorcerers everywhere by doing one of (say in Tasha's):
1. new Sorcerer Optional Feature: When you reach levels A, B, C, ..., you can learn an additional spell.
2. new Sorcerer Optional Feature: Add the following bonus spells to subclasses ... (and then print new subclasses with bonus spells)

What they did was the worst of the choices
3. don't give existing sorcerers crap in the way of new spells, but load up all the new subclasses with bright shiny new features and bonus spells and bonus flexibility with spells.

It's exactly the classic MtG/gatcha/WH40k technique--always be printing new shiny stuff, never fix the old stuff. We want you to buy new books/models/cards, so we're just going to continually pump the power level so your old stuff becomes worthless.

[Psyren]

I had never heard of this problem with Kenders before I entered this forum, and I've played with a few of them back in the day.

Whether you've personally heard of it or not is irrelevant. Other people are telling you they've both heard and seen it, and more importantly WotC themselves have clearly heard it since they're just as clearly reacting to it.


Maybe publish the race with the fluff as it originally is, but with player guidance "please don't make other players hate you. If you do, that's on you".

Hell no, this is absolutely the worst way to design any feature; appending a sticky note to it that says "we know this has a lot of potential to ruin people's fun at the table, please don't abuse!"


I agree with all of this. They could have "fixed" all sorcerers everywhere by doing one of (say in Tasha's):
1. new Sorcerer Optional Feature: When you reach levels A, B, C, ..., you can learn an additional spell.
2. new Sorcerer Optional Feature: Add the following bonus spells to subclasses ... (and then print new subclasses with bonus spells)

What they did was the worst of the choices
3. don't give existing sorcerers crap in the way of new spells, but load up all the new subclasses with bright shiny new features and bonus spells and bonus flexibility with spells.

It's exactly the classic MtG/gatcha/WH40k technique--always be printing new shiny stuff, never fix the old stuff. We want you to buy new books/models/cards, so we're just going to continually pump the power level so your old stuff becomes worthless.

I agree that #3 is greedy. but #1 is the wrong way to go (too generic). #2 is superior but Tasha's is the wrong vehicle (splat shouldn't depend on each other, so fixing Xanathar stuff in Tasha's would be a mistake.) Ideally it would be a patch of some kind to Xanathar's and the PHB, unfortunately the only "patch" mechanic they have is errata. Ideally there should be some kind of web enhancement or supplement that gets loaded into DDB somehow and contains the "missing" bonus spells for the XGtE and PHB Sorcerers. With that said I suspect the latter will get taken care of in 5.5.

[diplomancer]

I agree with all of this. They could have "fixed" all sorcerers everywhere by doing one of (say in Tasha's):
1. new Sorcerer Optional Feature: When you reach levels A, B, C, ..., you can learn an additional spell.
2. new Sorcerer Optional Feature: Add the following bonus spells to subclasses ... (and then print new subclasses with bonus spells)

What they did was the worst of the choices
3. don't give existing sorcerers crap in the way of new spells, but load up all the new subclasses with bright shiny new features and bonus spells and bonus flexibility with spells.

It's exactly the classic MtG/gatcha/WH40k technique--always be printing new shiny stuff, never fix the old stuff. We want you to buy new books/models/cards, so we're just going to continually pump the power level so your old stuff becomes worthless.

But if they are correcting the old stuff in a new book, doesn't that have the same effect of pushing people to buy the new books? So whatever the reason is for they not to do it, it can't just be "let's make them buy the new books mwahahahaha".

[Dragonus45]

I'm not saying it wasn't important, I'm saying it isn't now. There would be no D&D without Gygax, but a lot of his thoughts about the game have been left behind, and most people consider "Gygaxian DMing" to not be a compliment.


And I'm saying you underestimate it now. Your wrong. There are numbers to show you are wrong, WOTC itself collects them. This is just one poll, but it's not the only poll and among the first party owned settings of WOTC Dragonlance has always done well in these various polls even if exact numbers for some of them aren't public. https://www.enworld.org/attachments/image-jpg.74851/

[Unoriginal]

Still, wasn't there an Italian who once said "it's better to be feared than to be loved, for people love you when they will, but fear you when YOU will"?

In context, what he said was closer to "It is best to be both feared and loved, but if you have to choose only one, choose to be feared".

[Glorthindel]

In my mind, where those "free-feat" backgrounds go wrong is not if they leak out of the setting, but its what it does within the setting.

The original Dragonlance party had one Knight of Solamnia and one High Wizard, but since these feats are free bonuses, you'll find whole parties of Knights of Solamnia and High Wizards, because why wouldn't you take one of the two backgrounds that give you free stuff? And worse, it wont be the Fighter and the Paladin that are Knights of Solamnia, it'll be the Sorcerer, Druid, Rogue and Warlock, since they benefit from the free stuff - the Fighters and Paladins will be High Mages, because they benefit from the freebies of that background! It's completely backwards.

[Petrocorus]

I was just thinking the kleptomania of Kenders would probably have players call for new versions or variants of spells like Alarm, Arcane Lock or Glyph of Warding.


This is just one poll, but it's not the only poll and among the first party owned settings of WOTC Dragonlance has always done well in these various polls even if exact numbers for some of them aren't public.

On my part, i though the reason they were not working on Dragonlance until now was a copyright issue.
Haven't the rights to Dragonlance been sold in the past?

I think there are also some copyright issues with Greyhawk, is this true?

[diplomancer]

Whether you've personally heard of it or not is irrelevant. Other people are telling you they've both heard and seen it,

Well, if I had never played with Kender, my experience would indeed be irrelevant. But the fact that I HAVE seen Kender being played without creating problems at the table is absolute proof that Kender can be played without creating problems at the table. That you have experienced otherwise in no way disproves that. It's not the race that's the problem, except, perhaps, by being attractive to problem players (but problem players are a problem, and need no incentive to be a problem, so the existence of such incentives is irrelevant)


and more importantly WotC themselves have clearly heard it since they're just as clearly reacting to it.

I would not be so sure that this is why they are doing it. It's certainly possible that this is one of the motivations; Kender hatred definitely exists, but, as usual with those things, it's very easy to overestimate the problem, as those who hate them tend to be more vocal about it than those who don't. However, it might just as easily be an example of how they are rewriting old content to make it more in line with 2022 real-world racial sensibilities. "Race of thieves" is real-world problematic in too many ways to count; so much that they would probably do something like this even if no one had ever experienced problems playing with kender PCs at the table.




Hell no, this is absolutely the worst way to design any feature; appending a sticky note to it that says "we know this has a lot of potential to ruin people's fun at the table, please don't abuse!"


Well, they did it with Kenku (and maybe others that I can't recall right now), so why not do it with Kender? It even has the same first syllable... And it strikes at the root of the problem. It's not the race, it's the players.

[KorvinStarmast]

It harkens all the way back to classic Hobbit where Bilbo put a ring in his pocket and forgot about it. Not in the DL novels, no it didn't. TSR publishing were smart enough to avoid a cease and desist order from a certain estate.

And now its some bizarre fairy conjuring, because the entire species are now apparently unconsciously sorcerers? I think they fit into the feywild whimsy theme (Witchlight does this also) in terms of tone. Kender are one more group of refugees from the feywild. Maybe they got exiled, as a race, by the Archfey for stealing his stuff one time too many. :smalltongue:

To say nothing of the fact that Kender being able to pull items out of their pockets was not the reason people didn't like them. Yep, it was the enabling of grief play (and in my own case/tastes, just bad world building by Weiss and Hickman) that got people into the anti Kender camp.

I don't think it's all that unfortunate, I'm not very interested in a race of kleptomaniacs Bad enough that some players do that without ever knowing what a Kender was.
1) I DO like the alignment compromise they did on the feats, in fact I LOVE it. To be a white robe you don't have to be good, you have no be non-evil; thats a no-compromise at all if you ask me, since many DMs (myself included) don't allow evil PCs. And for the same reason, black robes are playable now! Interesting take, I'd not thought of it that way. :smallsmile:

Heck, I always wondered why people in Krynn didn't just implicitly trust white robes and killed black ones See Terry Goodkind, wizard's first rule. :smallwink:

I friend of mine said he was to start a Dragonlance campaign, my first choice was a Ranger focused on hunting and killing Kender. They know what they did... In 5e kender can be a favored enemy. Yes they can!

The problem with the Sorcerer was mostly the spell known limit, not the subclasses. They could have made domain/origin spells like they did for Paladins, Clerics, Land Druids, right? Always known/prepared.

Right, because Kender and Robin Hood archetypes have provoked exactly the same reactions from D&D players over the years :smallsigh: *snort*


But slicing up the spell list via spell school when there is no published spell list divided by spell school? As the baseline for interacting with the setting? Seems a bad decision to me. Needlessly complex with marginal to no value added.

Lunar needs to drop the free spell casting. It interacts with the other abilities in confusing ways, or the intent was to give 15ish free spell slots which is a no on another level. I am keeping this for my feedback survey.

While I understand that spell school was a part of the old setting, if they aren't going to spend *alot* of pages reprinting spell lists organized by spell school, then that's going to be a tall ask of your player base who were just looking to pick up the book and start playing. Half baked execution, but at least it's UA and they get a chance to improve the execution.

I think I'd prefer to see the two backgrounds (and associated feats) set up as an organization similar to the piety system they use in Theros. I'll review that again, might suggest that in the feedback as well

It's exactly the classic MtG/gatcha/WH40k technique--always be printing new shiny stuff, never fix the old stuff. We want you to buy new books/models/cards, so we're just going to continually pump the power level so your old stuff becomes worthless. Once ya get 'em hooked on crack, you don't stop selling them crack.

[Dragonus45]

On my part, i though the reason they were not working on Dragonlance until now was a copyright issue.
Haven't the rights to Dragonlance been sold in the past?


Dragonlance was probably left behind simply because the people at WOTC had other things they wanted to do and a specific mandate not to put out much content to avoid bloat and thought it wasn't worth trying it without Weis and Hickman attatched. The only reason this is happening now is because Weis and Hickman licensed the rights back from them to write some more novels, and that turned into a vague lawsuit they then had to settle to keep this moving. The whole thing's a mess. I wonder how much input those two had on this though. The good and bad of these ideas feel a lot like they came from outside WOTC's internal design philosophy. Other then the Kender, that feels absolutely in line with how WOTC handles things nowadays.

[Sigreid]

In context, what he said was closer to "It is best to be both feared and loved, but if you have to choose only one, choose to be feared".

He also explained that very, very few people have the capacity to be both feared and loved. There's a lot of good, solid explanation of human nature and behavior in that man's works.

[Boci]

And I'm saying you underestimate it now. Your wrong. There are numbers to show you are wrong, WOTC itself collects them. This is just one poll, but it's not the only poll and among the first party owned settings of WOTC Dragonlance has always done well in these various polls even if exact numbers for some of them aren't public. https://www.enworld.org/attachments/image-jpg.74851/

Those numbers say I'm right, not wrong. Dragonlance losing out to Eberron, barely beating Dark Sun, this proves its lack of relevance.

Look I love 2 of the 3 setting I just mentioned, but none of them are particularly relevant to D&D 5th ed.

That's not to say they're bad, or we should have books for those settings. No no, they're just not relevant. Which is a separate thing.

[Psyren]

I would not be so sure that this is why they are doing it. It's certainly possible that this is one of the motivations, but it might just as easily be an example of how they are rewriting old content to make it more in line with 2022 real-world racial sensibilities. "Race of thieves" is real-world problematic in too many ways to count; so much that they would probably do something like this even if no one had ever experienced problems playing with kender PCs at the table.

I'm not touching this one except to say it really doesn't help your case at all. If WotC truly sees even more reasons they could be a problem beyond the main one we're talking about here, that only lends more support to what they ultimately decided to do.


Well, if I had never played with Kender, my experience would indeed be irrelevant. But the fact that I HAVE seen Kender being played without creating problems at the table is absolute proof that Kender can be played without creating problems at the table. That you have experienced otherwise in no way disproves that. It's not the race that's the problem, except, perhaps, by being attractive to problem players (but problem players are a problem, and need no incentive to be a problem, so the existence of such incentives is irrelevant)
...
Well, they did it with Kenku (and maybe others that I can't recall right now), so why not do it with Kender? It even has the same first syllable... And it strikes at the root of the problem. It's not the race, it's the players.

Even if your thesis ("players are the real problem!") is correct, you can't change players. You can change design.

If a plurality of players cause problems when they come into contact with X design, then changing X is a reasonable response. (Kenku, by the way, are actually the perfect example of this.)

[Keltest]

Not in the DL novels, no it didn't. TSR publishing were smart enough to avoid a cease and desist order from a certain estate. I mean, in the very first novel Tas pulls a ring out of his pocket that he couldnt remember picking up twice (the same ring even), but the ring has no real significance to the story.

I think they fit into the feywild whimsy theme (Witchlight does this also) in terms of tone. Kender are one more group of refugees from the feywild. Maybe they got exiled, as a race, by the Archfey for stealing his stuff one time too many. :smalltongue:

Well theres another problem. The origins of Kender in Dragonlance are fairly well known, dwarven outrage not withstanding. They were created from gnomes by the Graygem of Gargath, along with the dwarves. Im not aware that they feywild even exists within the dragonlance setting, since they dont hold to the more typical D&D cosmology very tightly.


Even if your thesis ("players are the real problem!") is correct, you can't change players. You can change design.

If a plurality of players cause problems when they come into contact with X design, then changing X is a reasonable response. (Kenku, by the way, are actually the perfect example of this.)

Using in-character solutions to out of character problems is never, ever, the correct response. If somebody is being annoying, you talk to them like an adult, you dont take away their play privileges.

[Psyren]

Using in-character solutions to out of character problems is never, ever, the correct response. If somebody is being annoying, you talk to them like an adult, you dont take away their play privileges.

That's true for an individual DM. Not for the corporation making this game.



Well theres another problem. The origins of Kender in Dragonlance are fairly well known, dwarven outrage not withstanding. They were created from gnomes by the Graygem of Gargath, along with the dwarves. Im not aware that they feywild even exists within the dragonlance setting, since they dont hold to the more typical D&D cosmology very tightly.

Isn't the Graygem the embodiment / prison of Chaos itself in the setting? How is that incompatible with a fey origin? The feywild is known for being pretty chaotic.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But if they are correcting the old stuff in a new book, doesn't that have the same effect of pushing people to buy the new books? So whatever the reason is for they not to do it, it can't just be "let's make them buy the new books mwahahahaha".

But it's a much more mild version. Print books can't be reasonably "patched".

So yes, the ideal would be releasing a free "rules update" document with those changes. Basically a balance patch, done errata-like. But that's not likely.

I guess I was going for the "more likely and more optimal" method of fixing things.

[diplomancer]

I'm not touching this one except to say it really doesn't help your case at all. If WotC truly sees even more reasons they could be a problem beyond the main one we're talking about here, that only lends more support to what they ultimately decided to do.



Even if your thesis ("players are the real problem!") is correct, you can't change players. You can change design.

If a plurality of players cause problems when they come into contact with X design, then changing X is a reasonable response. (Kenku, by the way, are actually the perfect example of this.)

You can't change players, true. You can (and should) kick them out, until they learn how to play a game without making it unpleasant for everybody else. Because, guess what, those players WILL be a problem, no matter what. I can't imagine a player that would be helpful, useful, cooperative, and in line with the game's design philosophy of "it's a group game, so make everyone in the group happy" suddenly become a problem that annoys everyone around him all of a sudden if their character dies and happens to get reincarnated as an (old style) Kender.

But, for myself, I don't mind this change that much. As I said, my reaction was to burst out laughing, it's exactly the kind of thing a Kender would claim as an excuse. But then, I like Kender, so I don't mind it that WotC just created a new excuse for them. The old excuses were getting worn.

[Psyren]

But, for myself, I don't mind this change that much. As I said, my reaction was to burst out laughing, it's exactly the kind of thing a Kender would claim as an excuse. But then, I like Kender, so I don't mind it that WotC just created a new excuse for them. The old excuses were getting worn.

If you want it to just be propaganda at your table to throw the scent off their continued thievery, great, go nuts. Like I said repeatedly, setting the published default to be "it's magic" and having individual tables decide whether to accept or reject that is the way to go.

[Evaar]

f3- White Robes: FIND STEED!!! Protective Ward is a reaction Healing Word; which is worse if someone's going down by a lot of damage but not enough to kill him outright, but better if someon's going down by a little (or by so much that it IS going to kill him outright!). But FIND STEED!!! How has no one mentioned this yet? or did I miss it? Paladins would be crying, but they are too stoic for that, and who cares anyway :smalltongue:

Huh, yeah, good catch. Good way to get your own Shadowfax.

[Unoriginal]

Im not aware that they feywild even exists within the dragonlance setting

It does in 5e. The Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes talks about both.

[tokek]

I had never heard of this problem with Kenders before I entered this forum, and I've played with a few of them back in the day. So the problem really is not with Kenders, but with players. I HAVE heard those horror stories, and I can see how problem players WOULD be drawn to play Kenders, so I sympathize with those who have lived through them, but I still feel it's unfair to the race. Maybe publish the race with the fluff as it originally is, but with player guidance "please don't make other players hate you. If you do, that's on you".

The way I heard it back in the day the problem was players who wanted to be a jerk would literally point to the race fluff and say "It says here that it's what my character would do". Game-breaking arguments ensued apparently.

So take out the text and any associated rules that caused that problem.

As for guidance text - see also all the comments on this forum about the guidance in the UA about which classes should take which background. The immediate assumption here is that players will ignore the guidance for their own purposes.

[Dragonus45]

Those numbers say I'm right, not wrong. Dragonlance losing out to Eberron, barely beating Dark Sun, this proves its lack of relevance.

Look I love 2 of the 3 setting I just mentioned, but none of them are particularly relevant to D&D 5th ed.

That's not to say they're bad, or we should have books for those settings. No no, they're just not relevant. Which is a separate thing.

Ok if you think Eberron of all things is irrelevant to 5e I don’t see conversation going any further. Have fun.

[Boci]

Ok if you think Enerron of all things is irrelevant to 5e I don’t see conversation going any further. Have fun.

What influence of Eberron do you see in the base game of 5th ed?

[Evaar]

What influence of Eberron do you see in the base game of 5th ed?

The Artificer class being introduced across all settings?

Or are we defining "base" as PHB only?

[Boci]

The Artificer class being introduced across all settings?

Or are we defining "base" as PHB only?

Nah that's a pretty relevant influence yes. A PHB class would obvious count for a greater influence, but still, even splat, being the direct influence of the only base class added to the game is certainly an influence. Maybe I was wrong about Eberron.

Dragonlance? Seems I was correct on that one though.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's not the race that's the problem, except, perhaps, by being attractive to problem players It is enabling behavior. Bad design.

Well, they did it with Kenku Yes, they made another bad design choice with Kenku in 5e. :smalltongue:

Those numbers say I'm right, not wrong. Dragonlance losing out to Eberron, barely beating Dark Sun, this proves its lack of relevance. Or it may give us hope that Dark Sun is coming? :smallbiggrin:

Isn't the Graygem the embodiment / prison of Chaos itself in the setting? How is that incompatible with a fey origin? The feywild is known for being pretty chaotic. Fits.
The Artificer class being introduced across all settings? Happened in Tasha's. It's initial intro was in Eberron: Rising From the Last War, and before that the pdf that Baker put out (I bought it) as play test material. IIRC the AL implementation was "Eberron stuff is only in Eberron specific AL games" or something like that. (I'd stopped AL at that point). You might say it got an extended play test before the "for everyone" Tasha's version(s) showed up.

[Dragonus45]

What influence of Eberron do you see in the base game of 5th ed?

Every single Oracle of War table I have ever sat down at at any convention I have run at being slammed full of people who were all excited to play in the Ebberon. The single most requested setting expansion for as long as WOTC has been asking.



Or it may give us hope that Dark Sun is coming? :smallbiggrin:

One might hope, but my understanding is that in a upper tier Hasbro levels of management that Dark Sun is tied to closely with the failure of 4e in some people's eyes to get a fair shake for a good while. That understanding is years out of date though.

[tokek]

Nah that's a pretty relevant influence yes. A PHB class would obvious count for a greater influence, but still, even splat, being the direct influence of the only base class added to the game is certainly an influence. Maybe I was wrong about Eberron.

Dragonlance? Seems I was correct on that one though.

It would be a fine trick for the future Dragonlance book to have already influenced the base game. Pure chronomancy. I'm pretty sure that Eberron only influenced the base game with Artificer some time after it had been published.

Although dragonlances themselves are already in the base game if you own Fizban's. Fizban's, for fairly obvious reasons, is already full of Dragonlance flavour and influence.

[Boci]

Every single Oracle of War table I have ever sat down at at any convention I have run at being slammed full of people who were all excited to play in the Ebberon. The single most requested setting expansion for as long as WOTC has been asking.

After we already got FR as a base setting. Any comparison of setting that doesn't involve FR as a control is going to be of limited use if we're trying to measure how relevant they are to the game as a whole.


It would be a fine trick for the future Dragonlance book to have already influenced the base game. Pure chronomancy. I'm pretty sure that Eberron only influenced the base game with Artificer some time after it had been published.


So your argument AGAINST Dragonlance not being relevant to the game is to point out how unfair it is to expect the setting to have somehow influenced the game until now, 10 years since 5th ed first dropped?

Sounds like you're arguing for it not being relevant.

[diplomancer]

After we already got FR as a base setting. Any comparison of setting that doesn't involve FR as a control is going to be of limited use if we're trying to measure how relevant they are to the game as a whole.



So your argument AGAINST Dragonlance not being relevant to the game is to point out how unfair it is to expect the setting to have somehow influenced the game until now, 10 years since 5th ed first dropped?

Sounds like you're arguing for it not being relevant.

But, see, your argument is odd. "Dragonlance is irrelevant, so why publish it? How do we know it's irrelevant? Why, it hasn't even been published!"

[Boci]

But, see, your argument is odd. "Dragonlance is irrelevant, so why publish it? How do we know it's irrelevant? Why, it hasn't even been published!"

Nope, never said "so why publish it". That's something you read into my posts that was never there. I even said multiple times something doesn't need to be relevant to the game as whole to be published, like Strixhaven.

[Dragonus45]

After we already got FR as a base setting. Any comparison of setting that doesn't involve FR as a control is going to be of limited use if we're trying to measure how relevant they are to the game as a whole.


Ok what? I'm responding to this post.


Hard disagree. Dragonlance hasn't been relevant to D&D for ages, most new players and at this point quite a few old players know nothing about the setting. I've been playing D&D for over 15 years, and the only reason I know anything about the setting is I picked up 2 books in it from a dollar store. (They were not terrible...a poorly aged kidnaped elven princess who falls in love with her captor and a story about a fight between a village and some creepy tribe folk and their respective patron dragons, definitely the stronger of the pair).

Which was a response to this post.


If the design principles of D&D 5e break down on contact with Dragonlance, one of the oldest and most venerable campaign settings that D&D has, then those design principles are what need to change.

I'm telling you that just because Dragonlance was not a part of your personal D&D experience does not mean that mean that it is totally irrelevant to D&D in a modern era. I'm pointing out how popular it still is, at least among people inclined to fill out these surveys. Whatever your talking about seems to have wandered into being a totally different conversation with a totally different goal involved.


...No?

Castle Greyhawk is the oldest and most venerable campaign, period. Do the principle of every D&D editions needs to be changed in order to run this campaign as it was back when the Gygax and friends group ran it?

If you look at all the rules 5e considers "optional" combined with the much more restrictive approach to monster alignments then in the more recent editions then it's hard to say 5e didn't do exactly this.

[Petrocorus]

Yes, they made another bad design choice with Kenku in 5e. :smalltongue:
I didn't really pay attention to this race. What is the biff with Kenkus?

[Psyren]

I didn't really pay attention to this race. What is the biff with Kenkus?

They were originally printed in Volo's with a very annoying drawback/fluff. After receiving feedback on it, WotC eventually removed that ability in the latest printing of the race (Monsters of the Multiverse.)

What's happening with Kender appears to be similar, except Kender have been seen as annoying since before 5e existed, so they appear to be correcting them pre-emptively.

[Dragonus45]

I didn't really pay attention to this race. What is the biff with Kenkus?

They can only speak by repeating things they have heard. Which while really cool tends to be just actually ignored and never used for anything creative and occasionally just annoying to work around, exacerbated at public play tables because everything is just MORE when you are playing with random strangers. I have also seen some people really turn it into a cool chance to play a different character a player from my Tomb of Annihilation table having a document he would keep updated with things he heard in play real time to use for his vocalizing. Like everything in this game, it really just comes down to who you know.

[Boci]

Whatever your talking about seems to have wandered into being a totally different conversation with a totally different goal involved.

No. my stance has remained consistent: Dragonlance is not relevant enough to 5th ed as a game to warrant a change in design principles to the game. The origional comment you just quoted and I responded to said it was, I said it wasn't, and my argument hasn't changed since then.

[Rukelnikov]

*snort*
feats and skill proficiencies and tool proficienies and class features are each a different thing. Unless every single background has a feat, no background should have a feat. Build a consistent framework and use it. :smallfurious: Knights of Solamnia as a background can be done as a background (standard PHB structure) and then if you really want to, since they gated feats behind races in Xanathar's (We hates that, Precious) you can gate some other feats behind that pre-requisite just as you gate Elemental Adept behind a standard feature.

I think that's what they are going for, evey background will give a feat, they are probably gonna rewrite backgrounds heavily in 50YE. And As I said, I agree with the design direction of giving 1 feat with the background.


That's like DMG boons. (IIRC, we got a feat or ASI as a quest reward in a campaign last year, similar to what you do. That's an optional rule). But structurally, this isn't consistent.

Yup, its the "other rewards" part, I really like those, because they are closely related with the story. And about the structural consistency, they need to break it in order to try new things. In a way, I see this as "beta testing" for 50YE.


I disagree, given their track record. The evergreen promise of D&D 5e is being eroded and welched on. It's a sound structure that is very playable, all they have been doing is opening loop holes left, right and center. (Hexblade is but one example of this).

The evergreen promise has been broken for a while, probably because it was severely limiting the design space. With 7 years of experience with the system, they probably have ideas they think would improve the system, which btw, while people love to talk s*** about Crawford, he's the lead guy from the system a lot of us here consider the best DnD has ever been, so I think they deserve a bit more credit.


Then offer a feat with every background. :smalltongue:

I guess that's what they're going for.

[Psyren]

If "one free feat with your background" is the design direction moving forward I'm okay with that. I just don't want the massive discrepancy between backgrounds that have one and the ones that don't that I'm currently seeing.

I'd also like feat-less games to get something too.

[Dragonus45]

No. my stance has remained consistent: Dragonlance is not relevant enough to 5th ed as a game to warrant a change in design principles to the game. The origional comment you just quoted and I responded to said it was, I said it wasn't, and my argument hasn't changed since then.

Odd you hung so much of that on personal relevance then, but as it goes hat's even worse. EVERY setting should frankly be breaking whatever core system it is attached to over it's knee to make a point about why it exists, what is unique about it, and why you should want to play it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If "one free feat with your background" is the design direction moving forward I'm okay with that. I just don't want the massive discrepancy between backgrounds that have one and the ones that don't that I'm currently seeing.

I'd also like feat-less games to get something too.

Right. There are breaking changes that require rebuilding the whole core. And this is one of them. Because if some backgrounds give feats, then feats aren't actually optional any more. And that's a massive breaking change.

I'd prefer them to do a UA around that, where they revamp all the PHB backgrounds into feat-based instead and flat out say "ok, we're experimenting with making feats a core part of the game for everyone." Not shove it in as a hidden part of a completely different UA.


Odd you hung so much of that on personal relevance then, but as it goes hat's even worse. EVERY setting should frankly be breaking whatever core system it is attached to over it's knee to make a point about why it exists, what is unique about it, and why you should want to play it.

If the settings all break the core system willy-nilly, why have a core system? I don't mind departures, but let's be intentional about it and do it only where it can't be done with existing mechanisms. And I prefer, if we need new mechanisms, that those mechanisms be tied to new setting features, not hacked into core features.

Something like Theros does with divine gifts/divine standing. Or using organizational renown. Which is an existing mechanism that's sorely underused and perfect for this case. Shoving it into feats is just bad design.

[Evaar]

If we're doing setting-limited backgrounds with a feat, fine. I don't like it, but fine. I think it's crappy design that if you're playing in Krynn you want to be an Initiate or a Squire and not, say, a Soldier, Criminal, Entertainer, or Charlatan, but I'm almost certainly not going to play in Krynn so whatever. The Ravnica backgrounds didn't influence any games I played and they're also not balanced.

If the design direction moving forward is all backgrounds come with a feat, proceed with extreme caution. While most Wizards are probably Sages, it would be lame if a feat attached to Sage made it so all optimal Wizards are Sages. It would be even worse if all optimal Wizards were, say, Sailors because Sailor comes packaged with Resilient: Constitution. Making backgrounds very minor in terms of practical power application was a smart decision in early 5e, and I don't think it would be wise to go back on it. Given the kind of design we're seeing a lot lately (i.e. "here, martials, have a feat which gives you stuff you already got; wait, hey, casters you aren't supposed to take this feat no stop") I have very little faith that attaching feats to backgrounds would increase the quality of life for players during character creation. I think removing ability score bonuses from races was a good step to increase flexibility during character creation; adding feats to backgrounds is likely to restrict it again at a different step.

[Boci]

Odd you hung so much of that on personal relevance then, but as it goes hat's even worse. EVERY setting should frankly be breaking whatever core system it is attached to over it's knee to make a point about why it exists, what is unique about it, and why you should want to play it.

And did previous settings do that? Eberron, Ravnica, Strixhaven? If no, then Dragonlance doesn't deserve any special treatment here. If they have, then there's no need to make a big deal out of Dragonlance doing it, that's just how 5th ed handles settings.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If the design direction moving forward is all backgrounds come with a feat, proceed with extreme caution. While most Wizards are probably Sages, it would be lame if a feat attached to Sage made it so all optimal Wizards are Sages. It would be even worse if all optimal Wizards were, say, Sailors because Sailor comes packaged with Resilient: Constitution. Making backgrounds very minor in terms of practical power application was a smart decision in early 5e, and I don't think it would be wise to go back on it. Given the kind of design we're seeing a lot lately (i.e. "here, martials, have a feat which gives you stuff you already got; wait, hey, casters you aren't supposed to take this feat no stop") I have very little faith that attaching feats to backgrounds would increase the quality of life for players during character creation. I think removing ability score bonuses from races was a good step to increase flexibility during character creation; adding feats to backgrounds is likely to restrict it again at a different step.

Agreed. Giving mechanical power to backgrounds means that they'll just be used for optimization, destroying their utility for expressing the character on orthogonal grounds. It's racial ability scores on steroids, in a place that hasn't been much for mechanical power (since you could already swap skills around and the feature was minor).

[Rukelnikov]

And did previous settings do that? Eberron, Ravnica, Strixhaven? If no, then Dragonlance doesn't deserve any special treatment here. If they have, then there's no need to make a big deal out of Dragonlance doing it, that's just how 5th ed handles settings.

Conform or go is the death of creativity, whatever has been done before shouldn't limit what can be done in the future.


Agreed. Giving mechanical power to backgrounds means that they'll just be used for optimization, destroying their utility for expressing the character on orthogonal grounds. It's racial ability scores on steroids, in a place that hasn't been much for mechanical power (since you could already swap skills around and the feature was minor).

I like the new backgrounds from a mechanical perspective precisely because of the changes to races and the floating ASIs, skills, etc.

Narratively I think both will be worse, becuase yeah, unless there's a never seen before level of parity across the board, they'll end up being a lot of X Wizards, or Y Fighters. Though tbh, what's the ratio of Urchin PCs overall??

[PhoenixPhyre]

Conform or go is the death of creativity, whatever has been done before shouldn't limit what can be done in the future.

Design principles? Consistency between products? What's the value of that?

Creativity is not an independent, overriding positive thing. Creativity should be balanced with a clear, consistent aesthetic and set of design principles for the product as a whole. Otherwise you don't have a single product, you have a bunch of somewhat allied games that are mutually incompatible at a system level. Which is directly counter to what they've been going for (having the only real fixed thing being the multiverse itself).

Doesn't mean you can't play around with things and depart from some conventions, but those conventions should be more in thematics than in raw mechanics. Settings should use the same mechanics to the greatest degree possible, but those mechanics should be built to be flexible and modular.

Here, we have them breaking with everything...for something that's much better handled in a different way and doesn't really exemplify the setting. It does, on the other hand, accomplish every munchkin's dream--give more power to casters while not doing anything for martials.

[ZRN]

If "one free feat with your background" is the design direction moving forward I'm okay with that. I just don't want the massive discrepancy between backgrounds that have one and the ones that don't that I'm currently seeing.


I guess in general, we should assume that any wacky playtest mechanics we see now is at least partially a test-run for whatever they're doing with the 5.5 books.

Backgrounds with a feat attached as a part of the system sort of makes sense - playing with an extra feat at 1st level is a common houserule that really does add a lot of flexibility in current 5e - but in practice 99% of people would probably make a custom background with Polearm Master or whatever power feat they want bolted on, rather than take something like this Solamnic Squire feat.

[Boci]

Conform or go is the death of creativity, whatever has been done before shouldn't limit what can be done in the future.

We're 10 years into D&D 5th ed, with 5.5 apparently on the horizon. It really doesn't feel like we need Dragonlance to save us from otherwise totally inevitable and guaranteed to happen death of creativity.

[Rukelnikov]

Design principles? Consistency between products? What's the value of that?

Creativity is not an independent, overriding positive thing. Creativity should be balanced with a clear, consistent aesthetic and set of design principles for the product as a whole. Otherwise you don't have a single product, you have a bunch of somewhat allied games that are mutually incompatible at a system level. Which is directly counter to what they've been going for (having the only real fixed thing being the multiverse itself).

What you ask for is a fixed system, you have that in the Core Rulebooks, the splatbooks are additions, Backgrounds as in the PHB are pointless to print, they might as well be just examples, since you can customize your BG basically making "backgrounds" a "choose 2 skils" for every character, they are trying to give BGs more weight, and of course it willl be inconsistent with the previously established ones, since every change willl be.


Doesn't mean you can't play around with things and depart from some conventions, but those conventions should be more in thematics than in raw mechanics. Settings should use the same mechanics to the greatest degree possible, but those mechanics should be built to be flexible and modular.

I agree, and as I said, I think they are going for 1 feat with BGs across the board, I expect to see very different BGs in the 50YE.


Here, we have them breaking with everything...for something that's much better handled in a different way and doesn't really exemplify the setting.

OMG THEY ARE BREAKING EVERYTHING! They just added fixed feats to backgrounds, and have been doing souped up BGs since Ravnica, its not exactly new.


It does, on the other hand, accomplish every munchkin's dream--give more power to casters while not doing anything for martials.

I disagree with the implementation, as I said, medium armor prof in a background is too strong. But disagreeing with the implementation doesn't mean disagreeing with the idea.

[Dr.Samurai]

Could the following be considered Eberron's influence:

1. Artificers
2. Warforged
3. Changelings
4. Group Patrons
5. Loosening of Alignments
6. Planar Influences

I think the first three are sort of obvious, but genuinely asking on the last three.

[ZRN]

Agreed. Giving mechanical power to backgrounds means that they'll just be used for optimization, destroying their utility for expressing the character on orthogonal grounds. It's racial ability scores on steroids, in a place that hasn't been much for mechanical power (since you could already swap skills around and the feature was minor).

My assumption, based on nothing, is that if they did this you'd be able to swap out the included feat (maybe with some restrictions) the same way you can swap out skills or proficiencies from your backgrounds.

[Boci]

My assumption, based on nothing, is that if they did this you'd be able to swap out the included feat (maybe with some restrictions) the same way you can swap out skills or proficiencies from your backgrounds.

Probably, which will effectively mean "Varient rule: All characters start with a bonus feat (maybe with some restrictions)". And it probably better that we get there as quick as possible with minimal preamble.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My assumption, based on nothing, is that if they did this you'd be able to swap out the included feat (maybe with some restrictions) the same way you can swap out skills or proficiencies from your backgrounds.

Great. So now you can pick "big flavorless combat feat" for free. Much improvement. Such wow.

If that's the intent, they should flat out give a few feat at level 1 to everyone. Much less messy, doesn't really break much if you're already using feats. And that lets you have it as an option: if you're using feats, everyone gets a free feat. If you're not, everyone gets X instead. Baking it into backgrounds but letting that be subbed out at will is extra work for less benefit, with the side effect of making backgrounds incoherent and making all games use feats or lose a feature entirely.

Plus, these particular feats aren't even good representation of what they are supposed to be representing.

I'll note that I'm not opposed to making backgrounds more powerful. But it should reflect the actual state of the world, not just be a free power-up. I have a design (currently in limbo) for an additional background element called "Origin". Each Origin represents a physical place in the world that you come from, with its culture. And they give additional proficiencies, mainly. Generally one language, with a fallback if you already know that language and your choice of one other proficiency from a list per origin. Which could be weapons (most generally have at least one weapon option), armors (I think one gives light armor), a tool, a skill, or a language. But the goal here is to tie the characters more firmly into the world. So I can say that someone's not just a human Criminal, they're a human Criminal from Byssia, where people generally know how to <X>.

[Dragonus45]

If the settings all break the core system willy-nilly, why have a core system? I don't mind departures, but let's be intentional about it and do it only where it can't be done with existing mechanisms. And I prefer, if we need new mechanisms, that those mechanisms be tied to new setting features, not hacked into core features.

To give a baseline, and hacking into core features works great for most games. What we are seeing here is creative game design slamming face first into the limitations of 5e as a system entirely.


And did previous settings do that? Eberron, Ravnica, Strixhaven? If no, then Dragonlance doesn't deserve any special treatment here. If they have, then there's no need to make a big deal out of Dragonlance doing it, that's just how 5th ed handles settings.

No. But they should have. They really really should have. Eberron in specific should have been the setting to finally put "magic items are optional and have no prices" 6 feet under and buried it there for example. Forgotten Realms works fine as a generic fantasy place for generic rules, but D&D is filled with a history of unique settings with clear identities and I don't want them all to bow to Faerûn as a lowest common denominator for what cool things they are allowed to do.


We're 10 years into D&D 5th ed, with 5.5 apparently on the horizon. It really doesn't feel like we need Dragonlance to save us from otherwise totally inevitable and guaranteed to happen death of creativity.

Creativity in 5e died somewhere in the design process. Not to say that any player can't make a creative character independent of the tools 5e gives them, but on a mechanical level almost every character is one of the same three characters and on average your last meaningful choice happens around level 3. There is a reason 5e's (mostly accidental to any merits it has as a system) rise has coincided to closely with the "disposable meme character"

[PhoenixPhyre]

Creativity in 5e died somewhere in the design process. Not to say that any player can't make a creative character independent of the tools 5e gives them, but on a mechanical level almost every character is one of the same three characters and on average your last meaningful choice happens around level 3. There is a reason 5e's (mostly accidental to any merits it has as a system) rise has coincided to closely with the "disposable meme character"

Funny. I've been running roughly 2 games a week for ~8 years now in 5e. Not once have I had a character that was basically the same as a previous one...except the one guy who did literally that. Not even mechanically. And I've never had any disposable meme characters.

[Psyren]

Could the following be considered Eberron's influence:

1. Artificers
2. Warforged
3. Changelings
4. Group Patrons
5. Loosening of Alignments
6. Planar Influences

I think the first three are sort of obvious, but genuinely asking on the last three.

Warforged aren't really universal yet but Changelings are so that's definitely an influence, along with Artificers. Can't speak to the other three much. I think "loosening alignment" was a natural consequence of 5e's "play it your way, everything is optional" approach - which quite honestly I think is good, for the drastic reduction in "make my paladin fall!" threads if nothing else.

[Dragonus45]

Funny. I've been running roughly 2 games a week for ~8 years now in 5e. Not once have I had a character that was basically the same as a previous one...except the one guy who did literally that. Not even mechanically. And I've never had any disposable meme characters.

My brain may be poisoned by running to many public games. No it's almost absolutely poisoned by that. But at the least I have seen and made a very very wide cross section of characters at various levels and helped new players make more level one characters, and helped people level their characters between sessions at a con, then you would believe and mechanically they all fall into the one of very few buckets with just the flavor of their numbers changing. This is similar to the "99% homebrew is just warlocks because Invocations are the best tool in the game for providing a variety of choices as you level" issue. I don't want to go too deep on that tangent though it's probably not the right thread for it.

[loki_ragnarock]

Ok if you think Eberron of all things is irrelevant to 5e I don’t see conversation going any further. Have fun.

Uh, I kind of do. Eberron - an interesting setting and all, not trying to bash it in any way - was a setting made for a specific edition, one that tried to create a world within the context of the rules of the system in question. Magic item creation rules in 3e were such that dishwashers (prestidigitation machines reduced to one specific use of prestidigitation) would have been incredibly cheap, to the point of ubiquity in middle class households. And when you take that truth and start branching out with it... things start to feel a lot more modern. It was kind of brilliant; an expression of the many, many threads where people would detail how they could basically make the modern world with the item creation rules. Magitech - and the societal consequences of such - was basically there in the rules, it just needed someone to massage that preexisting concept into being. Modernity kind of flows from there.

The 5e version... isn't that. It's very much not what it was. It's still a fun magi-tech/steampunk/pulp adventure setting with a loyal following and some decent history, enough so to justify a class out of nostalgia. But it's not... relevant in the same way as the previous incarnation.

It's no longer a setting as an expression of the rules. You could as much play in Eberron with Savage World rules as 5e rules, really, these days.

[Petrocorus]

I'll note that I'm not opposed to making backgrounds more powerful. But it should reflect the actual state of the world, not just be a free power-up. I have a design (currently in limbo) for an additional background element called "Origin". Each Origin represents a physical place in the world that you come from, with its culture. And they give additional proficiencies, mainly. Generally one language, with a fallback if you already know that language and your choice of one other proficiency from a list per origin. Which could be weapons (most generally have at least one weapon option), armors (I think one gives light armor), a tool, a skill, or a language. But the goal here is to tie the characters more firmly into the world. So I can say that someone's not just a human Criminal, they're a human Criminal from Byssia, where people generally know how to <X>.
I like what they did with Scarred Lands. Your background is actually composed of 2 half-background, one regional and one social. Each giving one skill prof from a very limited list and one tool/language.

This allow to build a realistic combination while implement differences. You can be a craftman from a small village or from a big city.
It also mean you don't need to fiddle with the system, you already have enough versatility in the system.




No. But they should have. They really really should have. Eberron in specific should have been the setting to finally put "magic items are optional and have no prices" 6 feet under and buried it there for example.
All the rules about magic items have been wonky. Crafting an item can cost more than buying it or selling, scribing a 3rd level scroll can cost the entire WBL of 5th level character, etc.
At some point, this is contradictory to the fluff of the universes. Including in FR.

[Boci]

My brain may be poisoned by running to many public games. No it's almost absolutely poisoned by that. But at the least I have seen and made a very very wide cross section of characters at various levels and helped new players make more level one characters, and helped people level their characters between sessions at a con, then you would believe and mechanically they all fall into the one of very few buckets with just the flavor of their numbers changing. This is similar to the "99% homebrew is just warlocks because Invocations are the best tool in the game for providing a variety of choices as you level" issue. I don't want to go too deep on that tangent though it's probably not the right thread for it.

Yet when I say I've been playing for over 15 years and yet have barely know anything about Dragonlance, that's just irrelevant personal anecdote, unlike your personal anecdote, which is of course highly relevant and couldn't possibly be misleading.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I like what they did with Scarred Lands. Your background is actually composed of 2 half-background, one regional and one social. Each giving one skill prof from a very limited list and one tool/language.

This allow to build a realistic combination while implement differences. You can be a craftman from a small village or from a big city.
It also mean you don't need to fiddle with the system, you already have enough versatility in the system.


Yeah. My current (very rough, very WIP) design is as follows (capitalizing the game-mechanical pieces):

Race: Just the biological parts. Some setting-based restrictions on Origin in some cases[1].

Culture: Replaces sub-race. Has the non-biological parts. May have different expressions on different races, but not always[2]. Does restrict Origin, but not 1:1.

Background: As it currently exists. Some Backgrounds don't work well with some Culture + Origin combinations--the land-locked Wyrmholder culture doesn't have significant pirates, at least not as part of a Sailor background. And they barely have any Sailors. And the very egalitarian(with twists) Wallbuilders of the Holy Kaelthian Republic don't have Nobles. That's actually a point of cultural emphasis. So Backgrounds tend to be more narratively constructed, custom for each character.

Origin: New. Tied, but not 1:1 with Race/Culture. Gives a few proficiencies and establishes facts on the ground, especially around what that character would know without any possibility of a roll (such as local history, customs, monsters, etc).

I guess that, for me, character creation is not something that can be meaningfully done independent of a campaign and a particular game and involves a conversation with the DM. Preferably an ongoing conversation. It's something that only can be really done in context. Just throwing some mechanics together isn't really creating a character, it's creating a soul-less meat-suit. And you can't really just retrofit, IMO, the rest of it later. What you get is something obviously cobbled-together and contrived. Instead of a real person you could find on the streets of this fantasy world, a person who grew up somewhere and had a real life before being an adventurer.

[1] e.g. the Soul-forged (a warforged expy, but not the same) only come from one region in Byssia and one region in Wyrmhold. Why? No one knows. The secret of why these things are awakening is still secret. They just happen to awaken sometimes. Another example: there aren't halflings outside of a trio of regions. Because those are all the halfling families that exist, anywhere in the world.

[2] e.g. wallbuilder halflings and wallbuilder humans are basically the same. But wall-builder dwarves are substantially different. Same macro-culture, very different micro-culture.

[Dragonus45]

Yet when I say I've been playing for over 15 years and yet have barely know anything about Dragonlance, that's just irrelevant personal anecdote, unlike your personal anecdote, which is of course highly relevant and couldn't possibly be misleading.

Your personal anecdote is “I don’t like this thing therefore all evidence that it’s still a popular desired IP is irrelevant.” My “anecdote” is I’ve run several hundred hours of public D&D games a year between in person conventions and online games for almost as long as 5e has been out and noticed clear trends over time. Take my statements with whatever sized grain of salt suits you though because it’s not like I take surveys and run a spread sheet.

[Boci]

Your personal anecdote is “I don’t like this thing therefore all evidence that it’s still a popular desired IP is irrelevant.” My “anecdote” is I’ve run several hundred hours of public D&D games a year between in person conventions and online games for almost as long as 5e has been out and noticed clear trends over time. Take my statements with whatever sized grain of salt suits you though because it’s not like I take surveys and run a spread sheet.

No it wasn't. My personal anecdote was in over 15 years of playing D&D I've barely encountered it. I've heard people recount games they played in FR, Darksun, Eberron and Ravenloft. But Dragonlance? Not one. Darksun got 2 that I can recall. I've seen Dragonlance mentioned in the forums a few times, and I've read 2 books about it, that where all my knowledge comes from.

I'm not saying that means it can't have any fans, it clearly does, its one of the OG settings. But I do question just how relevant and popular for today's players it can be if I can avoid seeing any real reference to it for over 15 years of playing.

I don't even dislike Dragonlance, so you misread that part too. I don't know enough about it to truly dislike it, and several of the ideas I did read about in those 2 books were kinda cool. Though I think they were both post-Catacylsm.

[Sindeloke]

Well, they did it with Kenku (and maybe others that I can't recall right now), so why not do it with Kender? It even has the same first syllable... And it strikes at the root of the problem. It's not the race, it's the players.

A guy who ran an internet forum once talked about moderating that forum like this:

If we're lucky as a species, 5% of people are Mister Rogers. They'll absolutely always do the right thing, always deescalate, always try to make life better for the people around them.

Probably 10% of people are the Joker. They just want to watch the world burn. They will always do the wrong thing and troll and disrupt and they don't need an excuse.

Everyone else is some degree of Han Solo. If you leave Han alone, he'll leave you alone. If he thinks you're a threat, he will shoot you before you have a chance to draw your gun. Most people can be absolute jerks, but won't be unless you give them a reason.

Your goal as a moderator is to create an environment where they don't have a reason, ie, one with no Jokers. Because if the Jokers are there, they'll aggravate the Han Solos, and the Han Solos will fight back, and now 95% of your forum is arguing and the whole place is a toxic cesspool. But if the Jokers are gone, the Han Solos have nothing to fight, and 100% of the forum will be calm and friendly.

What is true in forum management is equally true in gaming. Most people will not be jerks at the table... unless you give them a reason. Like, say, a race of fearless kleptomaniacs whose explicit characterization is "steals incessantly from both other players, and NPCs who the party might want to be on good terms with, and intentionally starts fights the party can't win." That design space is the Joker. It is a disruptive troll, all by itself, with the same effect on the Han Solos who encounter it. That you can find 5% of people who are Mister Rogers and engage politely with trolls doesn't make them not a problem.

(My personal anecdata, if we're allowing that into evidence, is that I have seen a person who was a model party member through four campaigns become an unholy game-ruining terror when allowed to play a kender. That is not the player, that is the race.)


Disagree - I already explained (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643457-New-UA-has-Kender-Wat&p=25388961&viewfull=1#post25388961) why I think making it magic baseline was the right call. I think the groups who want it to be mundane can more easily modify it to work that way than the reverse.

WRT this, though, I will split the middle; I think it's an excellent move to divorce it from racial kleptomania, but I don't think that's sufficient justification for it to be magical. You don't have to be a thief to find ten dollars in your winter coat the first time you put it on in November. Just say they're natural hoarders with short attention spans who might, at any moment, rediscover anything they've ever (legitimately) owned somewhere on their person, and then misplace it again an hour later. I obviously don't mind changing the race's prior disruptive fluff, but there's no reason to change their longstanding non-disruptive fluff by adding innate magic for no reason. Like... does this not work in an AMZ? That seems like a really weird restriction on "the player might have a spare dagger."

Speaking of which, the results in general seem poorly thought-out to me, like it can't quite decide if this is a feature or a ribbon. If it's a feature, put only genuinely valuable things on it like money, health potions, weapons, masterwork tools, and spell components and give it a stricter use per rest limit. If it's a ribbon, drop it to 1st level, take valuable things like gold and gear off of it and make it purely lint and dice and trinkets, and remove the use limit entirely. It's pretty overpriced to have to wait until third level and spend a limited resource to pull a peacock feather out of your pocket.

[ATHATH]

Wait, why do Lunar Sorcerers get Death Ward at 5th level, not 7th? It's a 4th level spell, no?

I guess they can still use it with their free spellcasting ability (or if they're a multiclassed character)?

[Psyren]

What is true in forum management is equally true in gaming. Most people will not be jerks at the table... unless you give them a reason. Like, say, a race of fearless kleptomaniacs whose explicit characterization is "steals incessantly from both other players, and NPCs who the party might want to be on good terms with, and intentionally starts fights the party can't win." That design space is the Joker. It is a disruptive troll, all by itself, with the same effect on the Han Solos who encounter it. That you can find 5% of people who are Mister Rogers and engage politely with trolls doesn't make them not a problem.

Agreed.



WRT this, though, I will split the middle; I think it's an excellent move to divorce it from racial kleptomania, but I don't think that's sufficient justification for it to be magical. You don't have to be a thief to find ten dollars in your winter coat the first time you put it on in November. Just say they're natural hoarders with short attention spans who might, at any moment, rediscover anything they've ever (legitimately) owned somewhere on their person, and then misplace it again an hour later. I obviously don't mind changing the race's prior disruptive fluff, but there's no reason to change their longstanding non-disruptive fluff by adding innate magic for no reason. Like... does this not work in an AMZ? That seems like a really weird restriction on "the player might have a spare dagger."

If it's not magical then you need to explain where these items came from. If not theft then where? And you can say they were mundane items the Kender always had on their person but that begins to beggar disbelief when they're pulling stuff out of hammerspace like Brewer's Supplies or a 10lb dulcimer (Tools are not subject to the Gear table's weight limit). More importantly than attaining the object however, magic also explains why these things disappear after the Kender hands them off to someone else, which is essential to keeping the feature balanced. Like I can buy a Kender losing track of the Cartographer's Tools he just pulled out of his pouch, but not the elf ranger who borrowed them and is currently actively helping the party find their way through the wilderness.


Speaking of which, the results in general seem poorly thought-out to me, like it can't quite decide if this is a feature or a ribbon. If it's a feature, put only genuinely valuable things on it like money, health potions, weapons, masterwork tools, and spell components and give it a stricter use per rest limit. If it's a ribbon, drop it to 1st level, take valuable things like gold and gear off of it and make it purely lint and dice and trinkets, and remove the use limit entirely. It's pretty overpriced to have to wait until third level and spend a limited resource to pull a peacock feather out of your pocket.

It is first level, because it's a racial (and what is this "masterwork" you speak of? :smalltongue:)

As for the items themselves, all of them are balanced for that level provided they disappear - which the magic explains. No need to remove the useful stuff like oil flasks and thieves' tools from that list.

[Dragonus45]

No it wasn't. My personal anecdote was in over 15 years of playing D&D I've barely encountered it. I've heard people recount games they played in FR, Darksun, Eberron and Ravenloft. But Dragonlance? Not one. Darksun got 2 that I can recall. I've seen Dragonlance mentioned in the forums a few times, and I've read 2 books about it, that where all my knowledge comes from.

I'm not saying that means it can't have any fans, it clearly does, its one of the OG settings. But I do question just how relevant and popular for today's players it can be if I can avoid seeing any real reference to it for over 15 years of playing.

For today's players? Interestingly complicated since D&D has had the right IP to ride the zeitgeist into the stratosphere as nerd stuff becomes more mainstream and some numbers I have seen point to more new players joining to play D&D in the past 4 years or so then have ever played ever. We are in a world of adorable new players to whom almost literally everything is new and nothing that existed before is relevant. You you have two real ways to gauge something like that, like the poll I linked above which I already mentioned before has a degree of self selection to it since people likely to have an opinion about this kind of thing are probably older players who experienced the various settings first hand. The second way to gauge it? It's what the people who need to cater to this new audience think is relevant enough to put in front of them. Like say, a new splat book accompanied by a series of books being written in a multi million dollar publishing deal. Looks relevant to me.


As for Kender, the more I think about my experiences playing one/playing with others playing as one I think trying to mechanically gauge the borrowing of things doesn't work. It's always been more of a plot device anyways, just mention that Kender have a species wide case of ADHD and wild curiosity and a habit of picking things up that look cool and wandering off with them forgetting they have them (lord knows I've done it while having an ADHD moment more then once) and leave it to people to engage with as desired by leaving out of the mechanics entirely. Or just say that at some point in an edition change the gods voted to give the entire species better medication and pull it from them entirely. The magical spontaneous object creation feels weirder and weirder to me the more I sit on it.

[KorvinStarmast]

The origins of Kender in Dragonlance are fairly well known, dwarven outrage not withstanding. I was attempting to contextualize the new idea on Kender with 5e baseline assumptions. I am painfully aware of their narrative origin. :smalltongue:

One might hope, but my understanding is that in a upper tier Hasbro levels of management that Dark Sun is tied to closely with the failure of 4e in some people's eyes to get a fair shake for a good while. That understanding is years out of date though. I now have an excuse to hate 4e, which I never played. It cost us Dark Sun in 5e? {rants and foams at the mouth} But I'll not ride the hate train...

Although dragonlances themselves are already in the base game if you own Fizban's. Fizban's, for fairly obvious reasons, is already full of Dragonlance flavour and influence. It's foreplay, or foreshadowing. Pick a descriptive. :smallbiggrin:

I didn't really pay attention to this race. ? You have chosen wisely.

while people love to talk s*** about Crawford, he's the lead guy from the system a lot of us here consider the best DnD has ever been, so I think they deserve a bit more credit. By and large I think that JCraw has been a good spokesman and team lead for this edition, but I wish he'd have tweeted less and thought more. :smallfurious: He kept/keeps contradicting himself ... I'll stop. If I go soup to nuts, he still gets a good grade. :smallsmile:

We're 10 years into D&D 5th ed, with 5.5 apparently on the horizon. It really doesn't feel like we need Dragonlance to save us from otherwise totally inevitable and guaranteed to happen death of creativity. No, we don't, but we are getting it.

Could the following be considered Eberron's influence:
1. Artificers
2. Warforged
3. Changelings
Yes.

4. Group Patrons Maybe

5. Loosening of Alignments
No, that has a hundred fathers.

6. Planar Influences That goes back to AD&D 1e: every spell drew energy from the positive or negative plane, or an elemental plane, if one is to believe EGG.

Eberron - an interesting setting and all, not trying to bash it in any way - was a setting made for a specific edition, one that tried to create a world within the context of the rules of the system in question. Magic item creation rules in 3e were such that dishwashers (prestidigitation machines reduced to one specific use of prestidigitation) would have been incredibly cheap, to the point of ubiquity in middle class households. And when you take that truth and start branching out with it... things start to feel a lot more modern. It was kind of brilliant; an expression of the many, many threads where people would detail how they could basically make the modern world with the item creation rules. Magitech - and the societal consequences of such - was basically there in the rules, it just needed someone to massage that preexisting concept into being. Modernity kind of flows from there. Thanks for that, really paints a picture.

You could as much play in Eberron with Savage World rules as 5e rules, really, these days. KB would still want a royalty check, right? :smallbiggrin:

[Dr.Samurai]

No, that has a hundred fathers.
This literally made me chuckle out loud :smallbiggrin:.

[KorvinStarmast]

This literally made me chuckle out loud :smallbiggrin:.
Glad to have a positive impact. :smallsmile:
OT: By the way, congratulations on your Caster's thread, it appears to be headed to the 50 page autoclose status. *tips cap*

[Boci]

For today's players? Interestingly complicated since D&D has had the right IP to ride the zeitgeist into the stratosphere as nerd stuff becomes more mainstream and some numbers I have seen point to more new players joining to play D&D in the past 4 years or so then have ever played ever. We are in a world of adorable new players to whom almost literally everything is new and nothing that existed before is relevant. You you have two real ways to gauge something like that, like the poll I linked above which I already mentioned before has a degree of self selection to it since people likely to have an opinion about this kind of thing are probably older players who experienced the various settings first hand. The second way to gauge it? It's what the people who need to cater to this new audience think is relevant enough to put in front of them. Like say, a new splat book accompanied by a series of books being written in a multi million dollar publishing deal. Looks relevant to me.

You're talking about the future, which I never was. I literally never disputed that Dragonlance couldn't become relevant in the future, merely that it in all likelihood wasn't terrible relevant now or in the recent past.

You seem to think I dislike Dragonlance and don't want the book published. Neither is true. I probably won't play in dragonlance, but I don't play in any official setting. I take the stuff from them and put them in my own setting, and I'll do the same with Dragonlance when that book arrives. I bear no ill will to the setting, I'm just puzzled multiple people objected to me down talking the relevance of a setting to 5th ed when, at this moment, it hasn't had a setting book published in what, 3 editions?