I hope that from now on the standard is that a background gives you a feat. That makes backgrounds much more mechanically important. They should also "patch" existing backgrounds, at least the ones in the PHB, so that they have their associated feat.
I hope that from now on the standard is that a background gives you a feat. That makes backgrounds much more mechanically important. They should also "patch" existing backgrounds, at least the ones in the PHB, so that they have their associated feat.
I sort of like that, but also wonder about the redundancy suffered by "straight" builds. Let's take the Squire, characters most likely to want to be Solamnic Knights with those feats would be martials. Do any martials need medium armor and. martial weapons proficiencies? It's like if you want to lean into a theme in your background and class selection, your losing mechanical options to players who are strictly doing optimum builds or whimsical background class selections. As the rules are now, at least with a Rogue taking criminal or urchin backgrounds, they have the option to take proficiencies in things other than what those backgrounds grant.
I like the idea in abstract, and I think the possibility is definitely in there with these backgrounds and feats, but I think it needs another iteration if not a revamp of the classes its most likely to serve.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The Squire feat feels like it's desperately looking for a reason for players to take it, but it went in too many directions at once.
Also, it appears to make it possible to build a character who's proficient in all medium armor and martial weapons without being proficient with light armor or all simple weapons. Which is just odd.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I hope that from now on the standard is that a background gives you a feat. That makes backgrounds much more mechanically important. They should also "patch" existing backgrounds, at least the ones in the PHB, so that they have their associated feat.
I'd be up for this. I kind of like how the Star Wars 5E thing handles this. Backgrounds come with a list of like six different feats to pick from. Many of the feats being skill based. 'Gain one in the stat associated with the skill. Get the skill proficiency, or expertise if you already have the skill, and some other flavor bonus related to the skill.' And many of the feats get a level restriction so that if you go for a custom background, you still have to wait a bit to get some feats. Their version of human also manages to be a bit more interesting than base human and they do away with variant humans with level 1 feat, so you don't have someone starting off with two feats. Honestly I kind of hope someone at WOTC looks at SW5E when they do this semi rework thing, whatever it turns out to be.
The Squire feat is utterly useless to a martial character, making it so actual "knights" won't be able to take one of the later feats in the chain. Seems like they should change the Crown/Rose/Sword requirement to "must be proficient with martial weapons and medium armor."
The Squire feat is utterly useless to a martial character, making it so actual "knights" won't be able to take one of the later feats in the chain. Seems like they should change the Crown/Rose/Sword requirement to "must be proficient with martial weapons and medium armor."
It's pretty lackluster but since its a background feat it's not really an issue if you want one of the knight feats. Gives you some little buffs to riding
The Squire feat is utterly useless to a martial character, making it so actual "knights" won't be able to take one of the later feats in the chain. Seems like they should change the Crown/Rose/Sword requirement to "must be proficient with martial weapons and medium armor."
It's pretty lackluster but since its a background feat it's not really an issue if you want one of the knight feats. Gives you some little buffs to riding
Ah, you're right - I forgot you don't really need to burn a feat on it.
I am surprised they chose to tie alignment into some of the feat prerequisites. Maybe alignment is going to play a larger role in the Dragonlance setting material than in base 5e
Alignment has always been a big part of DL. I remember back in 2e the dm had a chart that the dm tracked your actions and if you strayed too far from your alignment, it would affect your powers (for wizard, paladin and cleric)
Honestly I think that a kender lunar sorcerer with the mage of high sorcery(black robes) could be a crazy build, once they show up in homebrew I think it'll be insane. Lol.
Especially with a twinned sacred flame as a go to spell (if it's allowed) could be hella fun.
I have sinned enough against the world. To teach Kender magic would ensure my damnation.
I would rather it be based on the actual moon phase, especially with the three moons on Krynn.
Unnecessary bookkeeping that doesn't really add anything positive to the game and also doesn't work if you want to adapt the subclass to any other campaign setting.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'm aware of the setting's lore. They were still classified as being a type of halfling: any spell or magic item that only worked for halflings worked equally well on kender (there were a lot back in 1E and 2E). Lore made dwarves in Krynn also descended from Tinker Gnomes that had been mutated by the Graygem, but they were still considered dwarves even though they were totally unrelated to Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms dwarves.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'm aware of the setting's lore. They were still classified as being a type of halfling: any spell or magic item that only worked for halflings worked equally well on kender (there were a lot back in 1E and 2E). Lore made dwarves in Krynn also descended from Tinker Gnomes that had been mutated by the Graygem, but they were still considered dwarves even though they were totally unrelated to Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms dwarves.
Well there were no halflings in Krynn so yes they filled that niche, but they were specifically not halflings.
Here's a question about the Knight and Adept feats. Do you think, if you didn't have the squire or initiate backgrounds with their bonus background feats, would they be worth taking during the ASI / feat progression, so taking the squire/initiate feat at 4 and the adept or knight at 8?
Reason why I'm asking is how these feats would track to instances in the actual Dragonlance lore. Raistlin, I thought, was considered exceptionally young for the trials he took ... so while a Raistlin may have initiate as part of their background, many spellcasters in Krynn would be initiated, and thus later recognized as adepts, much later in their careers. With the Knights, honestly the only Knight I can think of who actually exhibited anything resembling the actions granted in the feats was Laurana (who I don't think was even technically Knighted, just sort of given command of then and every other good guy militant group on Krynn) ... and honestly those traits were sort of forged within her individual character as opposed to really being put in their by the Knights or even her Elven martial training.
Don't get me wrong, I like the intent of doing more with feats in this way to sort of create "story paths" through feats and all, or at least I like the intent of trying to do more things within the feat system. I just don't know if these feats really "work" with how Dragonlance stories have been told in the past ,.. as I've said I honestly see everything in the UA more useful for me outside of Krynn (not really being a Dragonlance Dude in the first place).
I'm aware of the setting's lore. They were still classified as being a type of halfling: any spell or magic item that only worked for halflings worked equally well on kender (there were a lot back in 1E and 2E). Lore made dwarves in Krynn also descended from Tinker Gnomes that had been mutated by the Graygem, but they were still considered dwarves even though they were totally unrelated to Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms dwarves.
Well there were no halflings in Krynn so yes they filled that niche, but they were specifically not halflings.
There are multiple types of halflings. Just like there are multiple types of elves, dwarves, and gnomes. Krynn's kender specifically were a type of halfling, this was confirmed multiple times in Spelljammer and Planescape.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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I hope that from now on the standard is that a background gives you a feat. That makes backgrounds much more mechanically important.
They should also "patch" existing backgrounds, at least the ones in the PHB, so that they have their associated feat.
I sort of like that, but also wonder about the redundancy suffered by "straight" builds. Let's take the Squire, characters most likely to want to be Solamnic Knights with those feats would be martials. Do any martials need medium armor and. martial weapons proficiencies? It's like if you want to lean into a theme in your background and class selection, your losing mechanical options to players who are strictly doing optimum builds or whimsical background class selections. As the rules are now, at least with a Rogue taking criminal or urchin backgrounds, they have the option to take proficiencies in things other than what those backgrounds grant.
I like the idea in abstract, and I think the possibility is definitely in there with these backgrounds and feats, but I think it needs another iteration if not a revamp of the classes its most likely to serve.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The Squire feat feels like it's desperately looking for a reason for players to take it, but it went in too many directions at once.
Also, it appears to make it possible to build a character who's proficient in all medium armor and martial weapons without being proficient with light armor or all simple weapons. Which is just odd.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'd be up for this. I kind of like how the Star Wars 5E thing handles this. Backgrounds come with a list of like six different feats to pick from. Many of the feats being skill based. 'Gain one in the stat associated with the skill. Get the skill proficiency, or expertise if you already have the skill, and some other flavor bonus related to the skill.' And many of the feats get a level restriction so that if you go for a custom background, you still have to wait a bit to get some feats. Their version of human also manages to be a bit more interesting than base human and they do away with variant humans with level 1 feat, so you don't have someone starting off with two feats. Honestly I kind of hope someone at WOTC looks at SW5E when they do this semi rework thing, whatever it turns out to be.
The Squire feat is utterly useless to a martial character, making it so actual "knights" won't be able to take one of the later feats in the chain. Seems like they should change the Crown/Rose/Sword requirement to "must be proficient with martial weapons and medium armor."
It's pretty lackluster but since its a background feat it's not really an issue if you want one of the knight feats. Gives you some little buffs to riding
Ah, you're right - I forgot you don't really need to burn a feat on it.
I would rather it be based on the actual moon phase, especially with the three moons on Krynn.
Alignment has always been a big part of DL. I remember back in 2e the dm had a chart that the dm tracked your actions and if you strayed too far from your alignment, it would affect your powers (for wizard, paladin and cleric)
I have sinned enough against the world. To teach Kender magic would ensure my damnation.
Unnecessary bookkeeping that doesn't really add anything positive to the game and also doesn't work if you want to adapt the subclass to any other campaign setting.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Kender Movement should be 25 not 30 IMO, all the other small races are 25 ft and Kender are Krynn equivalent of Halflings,
Mordenkainens Multiverse is making 30ft move standard for all Small and Medium races. Expect Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings to see a similar revision
The Kender has the same size as a halfling but the rest is different. I would still give them infravision.
Kender were explicitly a halfling subtype in previous editions. And infravision isn't a thing in the game- it got done away with two editions ago.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Lore makes them, mutated by the Graygem, descendants from Tinker Gnomes.
I'm aware of the setting's lore. They were still classified as being a type of halfling: any spell or magic item that only worked for halflings worked equally well on kender (there were a lot back in 1E and 2E). Lore made dwarves in Krynn also descended from Tinker Gnomes that had been mutated by the Graygem, but they were still considered dwarves even though they were totally unrelated to Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms dwarves.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Well there were no halflings in Krynn so yes they filled that niche, but they were specifically not halflings.
Here's a question about the Knight and Adept feats. Do you think, if you didn't have the squire or initiate backgrounds with their bonus background feats, would they be worth taking during the ASI / feat progression, so taking the squire/initiate feat at 4 and the adept or knight at 8?
Reason why I'm asking is how these feats would track to instances in the actual Dragonlance lore. Raistlin, I thought, was considered exceptionally young for the trials he took ... so while a Raistlin may have initiate as part of their background, many spellcasters in Krynn would be initiated, and thus later recognized as adepts, much later in their careers. With the Knights, honestly the only Knight I can think of who actually exhibited anything resembling the actions granted in the feats was Laurana (who I don't think was even technically Knighted, just sort of given command of then and every other good guy militant group on Krynn) ... and honestly those traits were sort of forged within her individual character as opposed to really being put in their by the Knights or even her Elven martial training.
Don't get me wrong, I like the intent of doing more with feats in this way to sort of create "story paths" through feats and all, or at least I like the intent of trying to do more things within the feat system. I just don't know if these feats really "work" with how Dragonlance stories have been told in the past ,.. as I've said I honestly see everything in the UA more useful for me outside of Krynn (not really being a Dragonlance Dude in the first place).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There are multiple types of halflings. Just like there are multiple types of elves, dwarves, and gnomes. Krynn's kender specifically were a type of halfling, this was confirmed multiple times in Spelljammer and Planescape.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.