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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 1:30PM
#11
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Draconians. Think dragonborn, but meaner.
Reflavoring: the change of flavor without changing any mechanical part of the game, no matter how small, in order to fit the mechanics to an otherwise unsupported concept.
Retexturing: the change of flavor (with at most minor mechanical adaptations) in order to effortlessly create support for a concept without inventing anything new.
Houseruling: the change, either minor or major, of the mechanics in order to better reflect a certain aspect of the game, including adapting the rules to fit an otherwise unsupported concept.
Homebrewing: the complete invention of something new that fits within the system in order to reflect an unsupported concept.
Default module =/= Core mechanic.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 1:33PM
#12
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Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2010
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Draconians. Think dragonborn, but meaner.
And they explode when they die. Or turn to stone.
"Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
~Mark Twain
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 1:35PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Sep 21, 2006
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Our explanations will be biased, ad hoc, and incomplete. The Wikipedia entry is pretty complete, accurate, and impartial.
Yeah I had a look at that, but it mainly just mentions locations and characters, and I wondered how it was mechanically different.
To be frank, unless there is something I'm not remembering, there was nothing mechanically different from Dragonlance than the "Vanilla" 3.5 setting.
The things I remember off hand from 3.5 setting book, the biggest would be they specifically ruled that magical healing could only be accomplished by divine power source (so the bard lost all it's cure spells). In 4e that would basically be stripping most of the leader classes out, though possibly it could be toned down to just requiring divine power source for all Restoration rituals (so raising the dead and curing afflictions would be divine only, while you could still restore HP by other means).
Draconians were a major new race in dragonlance which eventually became playable in 3.5. In 4e we have stats for them (including new varieties that don't quite fit the original dragonlance origin story) as monsters at least. They were always kinda iffy as a PC race, even beyond the usual 'good monster' issues, because their most distinctive special ability is that their corpses self destruct in various ways, which among other things makes them immune to typical raise dead abilities. 4e at least has a large enough spread between dying and dead that that can be kept from coming up too often.
Other races often had minor tweaks that would be within the range of what you see in other settings.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 1:36PM
#14
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Draconians. Think dragonborn, but meaner.
And they explode when they die. Or turn to stone.
And acid blood. All different flavors to suit a DM's mood. 
Reflavoring: the change of flavor without changing any mechanical part of the game, no matter how small, in order to fit the mechanics to an otherwise unsupported concept.
Retexturing: the change of flavor (with at most minor mechanical adaptations) in order to effortlessly create support for a concept without inventing anything new.
Houseruling: the change, either minor or major, of the mechanics in order to better reflect a certain aspect of the game, including adapting the rules to fit an otherwise unsupported concept.
Homebrewing: the complete invention of something new that fits within the system in order to reflect an unsupported concept.
Default module =/= Core mechanic.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 1:37PM
#15
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And I can't believe no one has brought up Lord Soth yet. He was an amazing character.
Reflavoring: the change of flavor without changing any mechanical part of the game, no matter how small, in order to fit the mechanics to an otherwise unsupported concept.
Retexturing: the change of flavor (with at most minor mechanical adaptations) in order to effortlessly create support for a concept without inventing anything new.
Houseruling: the change, either minor or major, of the mechanics in order to better reflect a certain aspect of the game, including adapting the rules to fit an otherwise unsupported concept.
Homebrewing: the complete invention of something new that fits within the system in order to reflect an unsupported concept.
Default module =/= Core mechanic.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 1:59PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Mar 16, 2011
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Draconians. Think dragonborn, but meaner.
I would have thought if Dragonlance was hypothetically re-imagined, dragonborn would fill this role perhaps, since they didn't exist before 4e?
Sorry I didn't mean to turn this into a 4e dragonlance thread, I was just curious about the game specifics.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 2:39PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Sep 19, 2007
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Draconians. Think dragonborn, but meaner.
I would have thought if Dragonlance was hypothetically re-imagined, dragonborn would fill this role perhaps, since they didn't exist before 4e?
Sorry I didn't mean to turn this into a 4e dragonlance thread, I was just curious about the game specifics.
The game specifics:
For the first time, Clerics were required to worship a single deity.
New Classes:
Wizard of High Sorcery - In Red, White and Black flavors, all with a different experience progression. Each order had particular schools of magic forbidden to it.
Knight of Solamnia - Knights of the Crown, Sword and Rose. Three seperate classes. In order to become a Knight of the Sword, you had to have obtained level 4 and completed several quests as a Knight of the Crown. In order to become a Knight of the Rose, you needed to be at least level 6, been a Knight of the Sword, and complete a more difiicult series of quests. Not that this is really unique, but was the first time it had been done at low levels. The 1E Bard required that you have a specified number of levels as a Fighter, Rogue and Druid (IIRC?) totalling 14 levels (Bards had six levels, one for each of the six Bardic colleges).
Aside from that, Dragonlance distinguished itself with story, rather than mechanics.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 2:48PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Mar 27, 2009
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Other people touch on certain points. The origional setting was like an european midieval "DARK AGE"setting. No divine power source. The gods had in the past rained fire. Left or was dead. So now that I think off it it had elements of Dark fantasy. Post-apocalyptic. Every one was factured, and withdrawn. Xenophobia, and parania were rampet. Wide spreed thievery and banditry existed. The common people where starving, disease was rampet. Think any wartime occupied countries in the past. The people in charge were rotten spoiled, infighting, the pompus, arrogant. The clerics and the gods have gone. The people in charge barely had control of there own houses. The whole world had gone wild and crazy. It was hard times for hard characters...people would rather cut your throat than shake your hand. Intro the dragon highlords! Tahkisis the evil hot chick god, then 5 headed dragon decided to make her move...while the other gods slept. So she summoned her dragon's. Dragons in DL are more than flying tanks w/breathe weapons. They are that too but thier also intelligent, indpendant, and have an almost avatar quities about them. And her dark clerics (to make the first dracoinans by performing dark rites on good dragon eggs). Dragons in DL are only second to the gods. There near invulnerable exept to "the dragonlances". In the books lot of aerial combat!!!Firefights, mid air jousting matches. Magic was tided to the moons (and alinement) it was ancient.
Unncommon. Rare. DL has been refered to as a low magick setting vs FR's highmagic. Someone said in FR's you need a (+20)sword, and a dracolich in every basesment.
No drow.There were darkelfs but it was regular elf outcast, no duergear. Though they did have dark dwarfs. No orcs. Instead the had ogres. No feywild.
Even though there were differences bettween the races. The had a very humanising feel like the LORD OF THE RINGS FEEL everyone dies. And later...don't ask me how but the races can interbreed. So you got half-kender, kendere-gnomes, etc etc. So that's cool.
And to me the character i grew up reading about!
They could do 4e dragonlance if they wanted too.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 3:10PM
#19
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Date Joined:
Jan 30, 2007
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My main objection to Dragonlance is similar to my main objection to the Forgotten Realms pre-4E and Star Wars campaigns set during the Rebellion. The original Dragonlance modules came with pregenerated characters of the heroes of the novels (the Heroes of the Lance, as they came to be known), and it was expected that players would play through the story with those characters. The actions of the main characters are considered canon, and they changed and influenced the world. What chance does a PC have to match the accomplishements of Luke Skywalker, Drizz't do'Urden or Raistlin Majere? The PCs wind up being supporting characters in the story of the world, while the NPCs are the real protagonists.
While other franchises have done a good job of making the PCs important (Star Wars set in the Old Republic and the new Forgotten Realms - much improved, by why is Drizz't still alive), every attempt to advance the Dragonlance timeline have met with failure because most of the Heroes of the Lance are still alive (or their children have taken over their places) and the subsequent books that demand to be published also become canon and, consequently, relagate the PCs to supporting cast status again.
So, it will be impossible if the story insists on following cannon, because then we have the "Drizzt Problem."
Even relatively decent design decisions would make that a non-issue. But I do see your point. I was forever turned off of Forgotten Realms due to people who were WAAAAAY too gung-ho about memorizing cannon. I think that is why I prefer Eberron; there ARE no world-shaking heroes that the world can rely upon, and even if there are, there's so much crap going on that they have something else to do (which is of much less significance than what the players are doing).
Salla, on minions: I typically use them as encounter filler. 'I didn't quite fill out the XP budget, not enough room left for a decent near-level monster ... sprinkle in a few minions'. Kind of like monster styrofoam packing peanuts.
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2 years ago ::
Sep 22, 2011 - 3:15PM
#20
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Date Joined:
Mar 27, 2009
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It had a very epic feel. Dark, and gritty. Honorbound. Sacifice. Duty. Taz the Kender(halfing s..but eternal children, with kleptomania and wanderlust. And generally no fear. though taz latter showed some.) hero of the lance. His antic's was really the bright light that contrasted the off
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