Dragons of Despair Prologue: Clerics, Elves, Kender, Dragons, Gold and Steel.

Dragons of Despair is the first part of the Dragonlance Saga as such it serves as an intro to the world. Right off the bat the GM is hit with some class and character limitations. 

First the game lets you know there are no clerics. So healing in the earlier version is going to be a challenge. Here is the quote:

There are important differences between the world of Krynn and standard AD&D® game campaigns. True priests have been unknown in Krynn for centuries. There are priests, but they do not have spell powers since they worship false gods. PC priests who enter Krynn from other worlds lose all their powers (but these can be regained, if all goes well). 

So immediately the party is at the disadvantage under the old rules of lack of healing. 5E somewhat negates this challenge as PC’s get all hit points back after a long rest. 

Even still it means that imported characters who relied on other world deities are out of luck. So the party should take into consideration the shortage of healing. This is something that the older systems could use to push the action and intensity of the game. 

PCs were reduced to “Natural Healing” or hoping the GM allowed them to stock up on healing potions prior to the game. Effectively there was no recovery from taking a rest. Natural Healing ment you got 1 HP back per day of inactivity. Now to be clear you couldn’t do anything more intense than hiking or riding. So anything other than travel got you one lousy HP per day. If you did nothing but bed rest and recovery you could get back 3 HPs per day. 

So your fighter who takes six points of damage in a fight in a world with no healing and stays on the move is gonna need about a week to get back to 100%, or they will need 48 hours of down time. 

That is pretty brutal compared to 5e “Short Rest” 

A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.

A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the CON modifier to it. The character regains HP equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.

So a character with a +2 CON modifier likely has a greater than 50% chance of getting back in an hour what would have taken a week under the old system.

They are guaranteed to get all HPs back after a long rest. 

A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.

A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

So effectively the capacity of PCs to mitigate this issue is reduced by the new rules. I won’t go further on this until we get into the adventures, but this is going to be a key aspect of what GMs will need in order to adequately challenge the players. 

But what about clerics from other worlds? I recommend keeping the severance factor to the old god. Religion and reemergence of the Gods is a key theme in Dragonlance and something that introduction of a meddling off world god would upset. But as I always say if it works for your group then do it. I would just advise any player of what they can expect prior to starting the game to ensure they understand what to expect and don’t feel the DM is cheating. 

The next limitation the old version puts into the game is regarding elves. 

All PC elves are Qualinesti elves. Other elves appear in later DRAGONLANCE ® adventure modules. 

This is an unnecessary limitation. While Elves from other parts of the world would likely have different information about the state of affairs where they are from, the fact the elves have been pretty isolationist for a long time is enough to wave this limit in the 5E system.

The only exception to this is the Drow. In short Dragonlance doesn’t have the Drow. So anyone wanting to play one will be an offworlder. Dragonlance does have “Dark Elves” but that is a term used to refer to exiles ousted from elven societies for wielding dark magic or other unethical behaviors. 

Next limit is a racial option of the Kender who are significantly different in 5E from the early versions. Here is the passage in the Prologue:

The equivalent of a halfling in this world is called a kender. Kender resemble wizened 14-year-olds and, unlike halflings, they wear shoes. These folk have two special abilities (in addition to the usual halfling abilities: 

1. Taunt. Kender are masters at enraging others by verbal abuse. Any creature a kender taunts must roll a successful saving throw vs. spell or attack wildly at once for 1d10 rounds with a -2 penalty to their attack roll and a +2 penalty to their armor class.

2. Fearlessness. Kender are immune to fear, both magical and nonmagical. They are, however, curious about everything—a tendency that often gets them into trouble.

Taunting has evolved quite a bit under the new rules. (From SOTDQ)

Taunt. You have an extraordinary ability to fluster creatures. As a bonus action, you can unleash a string of provoking words at a creature within 60 feet of yourself that can hear and understand you. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw, or it has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you until the start of your next turn. The DC equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifier (choose when you select this race).

You can use this bonus action a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

So effectively this is a bonus action instead of an action, a saving throw is still required, but instead of a -2 penalty to hit they get disadvantage for attacks to everyone other than the Kender. The attack also no longer is unlimited and no longer gives a penalty to the creature's AC. So this ability has been Nerfed quite a bit, but not as much as the Fearlessness feature. 

Fearless. You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the frightened condition on yourself. When you fail a saving throw to avoid or end the frightened condition on yourself, you can choose to succeed instead. Once you succeed on a saving throw in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

So Kender are no longer fearless, but simply really unlikely to feel fear. While this means in most all situations Kender will pass the check, it isn’t a guarantee. 

Which is kinda stupid since the Frightened condition only means the PC can’t move closer to the person/place/thing they are frightened of and they have disadvantage on attacks, and ability checks while they can see the thing that has them spooked. 

From a tactical point Taunt is effective if the Kender succeeds in taunting an enemy that needs to move past allies to get to them. (Thus provoking attacks of opportunity from said allies!) But on its own it isn’t a good tactic as it doesn’t lower the AC of the victim.

While the change is notable it isn’t game breaking. Keep in mind it only puts disadvantage on attacks levied on other creatures other than the kender. 

I recommend allowing this to work out as the old system suggested against lower level creatures and/or unimportant NPCs. IE: The city guard yells “You son of a!” and comes charging at you! 

But against smarter and higher level creatures and NPCs, GMs should keep a few things in mind.  Note the 5E rules state the creature is “flustered” vs “attacking wildly”. More experienced and tougher creatures aren’t gonna fall for cheap tricks. Keep in mind being “flustered” doesn’t mean you give up actions or are forced into making idiotic moves out of rage. 

I recommend the disengage or dodge actions be taken. The insults and flustering could have the effect of causing a leader to take a step back and tactically reassess the situation to ensure he isn’t being lured into a trap. 

Alternately taking the dodge action and not moving denies the players any bonus attacks they may have been hoping to obtain from the taunt while at the same time puts them at disadvantage to hit the victim of the taunt. Since 5E rules have no AC penalty to being taunted, the dodge action might end up costing the PCs more time and actions than they would otherwise. 

So no real changes need to be made to the mechanics, just some minor adjustments to the game tactics.

The next bit of information in the prologue is on dragons.

Finally, dragons have been absent from Krynn for nearly 1,000 years. They are considered merely legends by all who have not personally beheld them. Characters may be thought foolish, or liars, if they talk about dragons to the wrong people. 

So wrong people should read “general public”. This is like someone claiming dinosaurs were walking down Main Street the other day. It is a well known thing that dragons are NOT real to the common people of this world. 

The last part of the Prologue is a notation of economics in Krynn:

Gold is worth a lot less on Krynn than on other campaign worlds. Steel is the metal standard on Krynn; one steel piece (stl) is the equivalent of one standard gp in purchasing power (i.e., on Krynn, the prices for common items found in the Player’s Handbook are in stl rather than gp). But when players from other campaigns convert their gp to stl, their wealth decreases greatly. The official conversions are as follows: 1 stl = 10 gp = 20 sp = 100 cp = 2 ip (iron pieces) = 2 bp (bronze pieces) = 1/5 pp. 

(The most commonly given reason for the relative values placed on gold and steel is that, in a world as wracked by turmoil and conflict as Krynn, a metal that can be crafted into weapons is much more valuable than a soft, fragile metal.)

5E rules moves the game to the Gold Piece standard. Which makes a lot more sense. After all the reasoning is that due to all the war steel is in high demand and thus more valuable. But if the world was on the gold standard then steel would just cost more in gold. Steel being a highly valuable commodity would not be wasted on minted coins. So for the conversion go with gold and not steel pieces. 

But as always do what works best for your specific gaming group. Next up we will jump into the specific events in Chapter 1 and what changes and adjustments should be made.