Dungeons & Dragons has published updated playtest material for its upcoming Dragonlance adventure book later this year. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast released a “Heroes of Krynn Revisited” playtest that updates several player options and rules related to the Dragonlance campaign setting. Most notably, the Kender has received a major revision from the previous playtest, with the Kender Ace racial ability dropped and replaced with a “Taunt” ability. This Taunt acts similarly to the Taunt feat, with the Kender able to force an opponent to make a Wisdom saving throw or have disadvantage on all attack rolls save for those targeting the Kender target. Notably, Kender are also classified as Humanoid characters instead of Fey, and they are also immune from being Frightened. Previously, Kenders had advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
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The feat system also received some new tweaks to the Feats system presented in the original playtest. Any player who participates in a War of the Lance campaign will automatically receive a free feat at Level 1 and Level 4. However, players must choose from a curated Feat list that includes a mix of martial abilities and Feats specific to the Dragonlance campaign setting. The previous playtest allowed players who selected certain Dragonlance-specific backgrounds to take specific feats at Level 1, and they could build on those with chained feats if they choose to sacrifice their ability score increase. This tweak allows players to keep those chains going without sacrificing their ability score increases. All the feats are now dissociated from alignments, which continues D&D’s continued decoupling from alignment.
The feat tweaks are interesting in that Wizards of the Coast is testing out new variations on how backgrounds and feats work in character building. The Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos campaign setting book first explored giving players feats if they chose backgrounds tied to the Strixhaven setting. Today’s playtest continues to test ways of encouraging players to build certain kinds of characters that are specific to settings. While the playtest seems to expand the feat system to be accessible to all players, limiting which feats players can take should help players build characters that fit thematically in the game, even if they aren’t built using a campaign setting-specific background.
Wizards of the Coast announced last week that it would release Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen later this year. The full playtest can be found on Dungeons & Dragons’ website.
