D&D’s Dragonlance could supercharge character creation with more feats
Wizards of the Coast is taking another stab at its upcoming reboot of the Dragonlance setting, formally announced on April 21. These new playtest materials clearly state that they’ll be included in Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, a new book due out later this year. But they also hint at what may the most powerful set of character creation options yet.
Jeremy Crawford, game design architect for this project, detailed the changes in the YouTube video embedded above. After a chat about what isn’t changing from the original playtest materials, released in March, he gets to the meat of the matter: Characters are getting bonus feats, which are stunts that they can pull off during play. That’s because everyone at the table — even first-level adventurers — have already survived an apocalypse and emerged from it much stronger.
“In the context of The War of the Lance,” Crawfor said, “if you are playing a group of characters who are participating in this global, fantasy war you have some extra capabilities because of how not only this war has shaped your characters, but also this is a world that has survived an apocalyptic event in the form of The Cataclysm. And so characters here have gone through a crucible that is unusual in comparison to many other D&D worlds.”
The Cataclysm is an in-fiction event in the Dragonlance universe that, among other things, removes healing magic from the world of Krynn for a time. The gods abandon its peoples and dragons, much more numerous in Krynn than in other settings, disappear for a time. And well, there’s this whole bit about a meteorite striking the planet. It’s a lot.
Of course, healing magic and dragons have come back when Shadow of the Dragon Queen takes place, but there’s also an
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