Playtest: Dragonspring Player Options (Ancestries, Backgrounds, Subclasses, Feats & More)

Hello everyone!

This playtest is part of a trial for a new method of character creation that we're trying out that will replace Ancestries & Cultures of Hemelin if we like how it turns out. To build a character using this trial playtest, you choose an Ancestry, a Background and a Class - and you're done. We will refer to this as the ABC method for the time being.

Dragonspring Player Options Index:

This playtest contains options that players can use to play characters from the Tova's Peak region, including the glorious hoard-city of Dragonspring and the vast Tovanaren mines below it.

This playtest features the following new and updated player options:

Backgrounds

• Deep-Touched
• Miner
• Stonespeaker
• Dragon Devotee
• Drake Rancher
• Glorious Duelist

Ancestries

• Notes on dragon people
• Dragonborn
• Dragon-Kin
• Dwarf
• Kobold

Subclasses

• Cleric: Greed Domain
• Monk: Way of the Stone Fist
• Warlock: Dragon Patron

Feats

• Enduring
• Innate Magic
• Natural Flight
• Magic Apprentice
• Monster Handler
• Signature Attack
• Ritualist

Why new character creation rules?

Now that we have been using the Ancestry & Culture system for a few years, we have found two major drawbacks to it:

1) It is incompatible with popular digital character creation tools. As more people move to digital, this has increasingly become a point of frustration.

2) It is not compatible with other character creation options from 5th edition, and this limits the ways both players and game masters can use its character options in their own games and worlds.

We think the rules presented in this playtest will allow us to solve the above issues.

The Future of D&D

We made the decision to start using an Ancestry & Culture method for character creation because the way 5th edition uses Race as a player option is problematic and doesn't fit with our game world very well. However, this is changing soon.

An updated version of 5th edition is scheduled to be released in 2024. There have been numerous public playtest documents so far that have shown previews of updates to character creation and we like the direction they’ve taken.

The biggest core changes they’re making are as follows:

• Race becomes Species, and will feature only physical / biological / innate traits.
• Background is seeing multiple updates. Most importantly, it now includes the Ability Score Increase previously attributed to Race, and each background is given a Feat.

We will continue to refer to a character’s biological traits as their Ancestry, but our Ancestries are designed to be mechanically interchangeable with the new 5e player Species.

What happened to Culture?

Culture no longer provides any game mechanics -- those features are delegated to the Background option now. Instead this playtest includes a Player's Guide to Tova's Peak section which provides a player-focussed exploration of culture, including:

• Iconic religious, magic & martial traditions
• Personality traits: Ideals, Bonds, Flaws & Habits
• Character names
• Cultural backgrounds

Future Playtests

We plan to introduce new ABC-style character options playtests one at a time, each focussed on one region of Hemelin. We've started with Dragonspring, and you can expect to see a revised Seasong Islands playtest and new Soddenweald and Silver Spires playtests next.

Let us know what you think!

Did you enjoy the player options in the playtest? Are you excited to play the new subclasses? Do you like this new direction for player options? If you have any suggestions, questions or concerns, let us know!

Thanks for your support <3

- Niels & Rose