IMO, The orders of magic add a refreshing change to the typical play style of magic casters. I hope to incorporate some ideas from Ansalon in future campaigns at my table. As for me, I like the red robes.
Jenna is my favorite wizard and it's because she's actually kinda normal. Like, yeah she's this incredibly power red wizard, but she owns an incredibly successful jewelry store in Palanthas. It's so rare to see a wizard with an actual job, and also one that openly appreciates worldly things and not just magic like she does.
You kind of glossed over the spheres of magic, and this is something you might talk about a bit more when you come back to this subject as it is the biggest difference between magic on Krynn vs other settings. In first and second edition, as well as 3.0, wizards of a particular order could ONLY use certain schools of magic starting from the 3rd level and beyond. The Black Robes in particular really got the short end of the stick, losing access to Evocation (no fireballs or lightning bolts for them) in favor of Necromancy... a school with exactly four spells in the original setting (animate dead, feign death, clone and reincarnate). This really became excessively punishing if you wanted to be a specialist wizard, because the only schools available for Black Robes to specialize in further locked out the few remaining schools available to them. It was only slightly better for the White Robes. Only the Red could specialize without it being a major handicap, and they also got the most favorable spell tables for memorization and advancement. Also if you pay close attention to how it is written, no wizard on Krynn can ever be higher level than the current head of their Order. For Black Robes this limit is level 13, which is why they "top out in power faster". This also means that only ONE living Black Robe on Krynn at any given time is allowed to access either 8th or 9th level spells, since BOTH levels inexplicably become accessible at level 13 under the original rules. The 3.5 supplement Towers of High Sorcery changed the rules to better reflect the novels. Each Order has two specialty schools, and they get "Order Secrets" that benefit those schools. Specialization and advanced specialization are optional however, and there are no longer any arbitrary limitations on level and Order. Because lets face it, a lot of Black Robes were casting high level spells they supposedly did not have access to in the novels. Under the original rules, neither Raistlin or Fistandantilus could have even cast the Timereaver spell...
Thank you for the extra information! I will be returning in the future to magic, but I have to hit some other aspects of the campaign world first. Thanks for watching.
As someone who just joined months ago, I love that the views are ticking up. If anyone deserves the success for all their hard work, it’s Adam and his channel. Pure fun and nostalgia, while also making everything familiar feel new again. Bravo
Favorite Order? The Red Robes. Favorite wizard? Raistlin... In my role-playing days, I even created a Red Robe Mage for myself - physically a combination of Raist and Caramon, by the name of Conrad Mallanoth :) Thank You so much for this channel! I've just recently discovered it, though I've loved Dragonlance for almost 20 years now.
Thanks! If you saw Conrad without his robes, you would indeed never think he could be a wizard :D He is a handsomer, more muscled version of myself. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed Human raised by the dark-skinned Ergothians ever since being shipwrecked on the island as a baby.
I love everything about magic in the Dragonlance Saga. It added something fresh to playing a wizard. I’ve always leaned towards playing magic users in my gaming. This just got me in deeper. I love Raistlin most of all the characters in the saga. I wish there had been more books dedicated to mages and the towers in general.
You said the heads of the orders of magic served for life, but I think I recall that Par-Salian (white robe) & Ladonna (black robe) both retired when they felt they were too old & tired for the responsibilities of their positions & the issue of Raistlin was resolved. Dalamar took over after Ladonna & Dunbar Mastersmate took over for Par-Salian. Justarius continued as head of the red robes, but I never learned for how much longer nor who took over after him.
Many games don't have alignment of any sorts, but it's still good v evil in them. So DL will need some tweaking in that case but it can still work mostly the same.
I generally seperate alignment strictly from each order. Most players tend to play good aligned wizards but take the red robes because they don't want to be outright claiming the righteousness of good. I tend to instead give the alignment to the magic itself with white robes being "white magic" and black robes being "dark forces". That way you can have an evil "ends justifies the means" white robe like Par-Salian or an anti-hero who is seduced by dark magic but fights on the side of the heroes consistently like Dalamar.
Its great to finally check a channel for Dragonlance. My books (along with my comics) was destroyed when our house was flooded more than a decade ago. I guess its time to hunt those books again!
One of the things I like the most about the orders is that it really is a number of ever more challenging tests. To often I see people or settings use magic as basically unlimited power for free with on restrictions. If you think about it in most settings a mid level mage opening a gate to the lower planes ( or so other terrible places) and actually losing control is more dangerous than a high level fighter intentionally going on a rampage. So the fact that there is a order just to control and minimize these overwhelming consequences makes a lot of sense. At the same time there were usually only a few people that were powerful enough to really bend a large battle to their favorite single handily. In dragon lance mages don't get a lot of near godlike powers that are so freely available in other words. What I mean by all this is that they are more balanced and actually make sense compared to a lot of other settings. However there is one more thing that I really like, the moons. Using the few times when all three align to use otherwise game breaking magic is a great way to tell a story. Perhaps you are stuck in a groundhog day situation and the only way to win is to convince all three masters of the orders to help send you back further in time stop the BBEG before he achieved UNLIMITED POWER!
Given that magic on Krynn, at least before the 5th age, is godly magic, that actually makes the mages a kind of cleric. Which is interesting to think about because that means that Raistlin must have had the support of Nuitari when he challenged Takhisis. Or perhaps he had inadvertently begun to access the natural magic of Krynn, which Palin rediscovers in the 5th age. There is a contradiction in the material, or at least a secret!
@@DLSaga It does occur to me now that this was probably the reason that Raistlin had to challenge Takhisis in her own domain. Apart from the reasons mentioned in the books, which I recall being that it was only here that he could challenge her true essence rather than an avatar, this would also bring Raistlin outside of Krynn, thereby removing him from the sealed sphere of the three gods of magic. Outside of Krynn he would have been able to draw on other sources. This does still leave the question of how, and which sources, and where did he learn how to do this, but it does provide a reasonable answer to my initial query.
@@RabbitShirak Could be. But the magic question in Krynn in a murky one. Why does it function so differently from other worlds and planes? Why are its wizards so dependent on divine influence? Is this deliberate, or, like so much else, an accident of the gods?
my favorite MAGE has always been Raistlin i have created him in my gaming of dungeons and dragons awhile back he has advance quite rapidly he is now a MAGE of very high power he can call upon 3,000 skeletal warriors or send 90,000 thousand death spirits and so much more .........
@@DLSaga Hello Wizards of the Coast , I really love the art of dungeon and dragons can you sell me the art boom came out in 1986 there’s a bunch of art by Larry Elmore, Parkinson so on the art in this book is what D&D is all about the front cover shows a warrior fighting a dragon I really would like to obtain this art book .
Dragonlance's 3 moon/3 color magic and the Brotherhood & balance between each Order are one of the best features of the setting in my opinion, the mechanics derived for D&D were extremely cool and unique. On a side note, I still cringe every time I see the cover of "The Magic of Krynn". What a bad book. Especially the derivative, generic Sea Demon tale... lol
I loved how DL handled Magic and most other things better than standard AD&D. The choices you made had consequences and I felt it provided a more epic level experience. However, my friends thought DL was a little too complicated. So eventually the group focused on playing Forgotten Realms. Since DL is supposedly making a comeback I what WOTC will do to make DL both unique yet accessible for most players. I wasn’t a big Greyhawk or Forgotten Resalms fan but those worlds were easier for pick up games or classic dungeon crawling, whereas DL was more The Lord of The Rings type stories.
@@DLSaga Speaking of complexity...one of the challenges of running a DL campaign is it seems geared towards epic level campaigns as mentioned in my previous post. Dragonlance is a world of consequence. The order of magic you join, to even what god you worshipped had major consequences in DL. For example, in 1st Ed AD&D when we played DL, No one can just simply be a knight of Solamnia, and go questing for fun like their Paladin counterparts in D&D, instead the knight must go quests to fulfill their duty to the Order at 3rd level (if I remember correctly) and that quest had a lot of requirement attached to it. Now, if I remember correctly, in 1st ED AD&D and even later editions, one of the requirements for the initiate knight had to travel at least 500 miles to the quest's locations. Now Ansalon is a small continent, so 500 miles would nearly put the knight on the other side of Ansalon. While that's epic it does limit the DM's options and makes it more complicated for the PCs. Even many of the DL stories involve major wars, the death of gods like Takhisis etc. So trying to run a "normal" D&D game where your characters could just go adventuring without getting involved in major world events seems out of place nd in some cases hard to do, if that makes any sense. So while I personally loved these things about DL it kinda turned my players off and eventually they went with easier to play worlds like Forgotten Realms.
I really like the way DragonLance does magic. The extreme white robes look after the good of others, so they broadcast energy out. The extreme Black Robes look after their own self interests, so they take in energy and power. The Red Robes are the voice of reason that prevent the others from drifting too far away. And they all come together and collaborate based upon their love with magic, and their shared interests which include protecting their own kind, and their lifestyle. A lifestyle of lab research, and mastering spells. I would lean towards Red. Edit:. Looking at the Legends Trilogy, The King Priest (Cleric Class) gave out a white glowing aura of goodness, so he was broadcasting out good vibes. In a way these good vibes were almost like a charm spell. But sadly, he was insecure and became paranoid even in his sacred church. Raistlin did a great job of helping Lady Crysania see the real King Priest (Wisdom saving throw). Great part in the book! The gods tried to send the King Priest signs that they were not happy with his extremist convictions because the scales were out of balance. Even Lord Soth, Knight of the Rose 🌹 was given a chance to repent and go talk with the King Priest but failed.... horribly and absolutely. With the Cataclysm came the end of the Age of Might. The scales were balanced. But were they? Evil slowly started to grow out of Neraka at the Dawning of the Age Dispair. Years before the War of the Lance the scales were out of place again. I feel like Raistlin thanks to the power of Fistandantilus was the real wild card to return the scales to balance. The weapon that the Mages in the Tower of High Scorcery sought after. In a way they forged that weapon during Raistlin's test at the Tower. That is what is so cool about Black Robes Mages. They put the Dark Queen third at best. First comes the magic, then the Order of Robes. That is why I believe they were not aware of the Dark Queen's return. The moons are kind of different, they stuck around during the Age of Dispair. Plus, the Arch Mage Black Robes are wise enough to know that evil turns upon itself and would eventually turn upon their sacred moon. So the Dark Queen could be too much of a disruption, but I'm sure a few young Mages would gladly help the Dark Queen for more power. The Golden General was big time too in Spring Dawning. She represented love and how nothing bad can come from love.
@@DLSaga Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for making these videos! Character Alignment is huge with DragonLance, I'm surprised that so many D&D gamers really don't care about it. At my table, a Paladin (Knights of the Sword or a lone wolf) can add their PB to their Initiative roll bonus if there is an evil creature in the mix. The Divine Sense feature gives them the hook up.
If I'm not mistaken, don't the mages of high sorcery have magic using bodyguards called mage knights (or something similar)? In fact isn't that how the Eldritch knight fighter subclass came to be?? Like I said before I could be completely wrong about this...
It is unfortunate that they decided to have a god of necromancy (Chemosh) seperate from the god of dark magic. Nuitari is instead specialized in enchantment and conjuration (summoning) which doesn't have the eeevil asthetic that necromancy does.
I'd like to read a complete test of high sorcery walkthrough. I know that they give some instruction on how to create your own, but I'd like to see something with some more detail to see how a test utilizes the conditions set forth in the source books.
@@DLSaga Which I indicated that I had already read. What I'd like to read through is a "sample" test, for lack of a better word. Like the sample adventures they published online for 3e. This would allow DMs to see how the instructions are put to use. By reading through the sample they could refer back to the sourcebook to better understand how an encounter checks a box. Even an incomplete sample would've been helpful. Maybe just the first couple encounters with an explanation of what was accomplished. Which I was unable to find in a quick search of the sourcebooks I have available.
can you attack them? I want my character to eventually learn that they manipulated his blood line and killed his parents and mentor when it was believed they were straying from the ordained path. As a result, my character eventual life goal is to bring them to ruin...but I don't know if that's possible or if it breaks the game
You can do whatever you want in your game. I would say it should be incredibly difficult to destroy the orders of high sorcery. They are protected by the gods of magic to some degree and are used to taking care of renegades. To put it in perspective, Raistlin Majere at the height of his power couldn't defeat them all, until he defeated the god Takhisis and took her powers.
I've been thinking about running a dragonlance campaign but utilizing Shadowdark, do you have any experience or suggestions on utilizing osr style games to capture the feeling of the original?
Favorite Mage: Magius (and no, its not Raistlin, or Dalamar, who has a strange obsession of tearing his robe away to expose his chest *cough*). Close second: Fistandantilus. Favorite Order: Red, for its flexibility. Tracking the moons was a pain in the lower behind, mostly for the GM though. There are rules where you can roll dice to determine the phase though and we usually stuck with that to avoid keeping track of the moons. The limiting factors of the spheres connected with the colour of robes was a novel approach and made playing them rather interesting. Hm. The two towers where exploded by the arch mages of the towers, wrecking destruction on the near cities. The Kingpriest agreed to let the other towers stand partly because the first two destroyed where rather remote, or in smallish cities. The ones in Palanthas or Istar though stood in capital cities and their destruction by the mages could have killed literally millions. Since no one could read Wayreth anyway, he "agreed" to the compromise. The mage casting the dying curse on the Tower of Palanthas was called Andras, a black robe mage used, manipulated and tricked by Fistandantilus to keep the tower unreachable. He considered himself to be the Master of Past and Present the dying mage, impaled on the spikes of the fence, spoke about. He just wanted to make sure the tower was ready and waiting for him.
The full story of how the Palanthas tower was cursed and the other towers were destroyed is told in the second novel of the Kingpriest trilogy by Chris Pierson. The mage who cursed the tower of Palanthas, Andras Rannoch was radicalized and manipulated by Fistandantilus to sacrifice himself to arrange for the archmage's post-Cataclysmic return.
Don’t let others change or effect your love of the setting…. With a setting as varied and vast as Dragonlance, what others think should only matter to them. Like and dislike what you want, ignore anyone that tries to change that.
@@DLSaga I think the setting itself is half responsible. My interest starting waning after the sextant. And I found the Dragons of Summer Flame to be bad. Dragonlance was always pulp. But with Dragons of Summer Flame they lost sight of what was good about the setting. Kryng n didn't need a new Cataclysm. They had already built a great world. Dig around and explore it more.
As a DM, this was a PITA. It didn't add to the story any when DMing a home campaign. All it did was make life even more of a pain for the players of the already nerfed magic user class characters. 4e actually tried to address the over-nerfing of magic users, but it also had a lot of other problems. And now in 5e, once again magic casters are totally nerfed in actual play still. The further nerfing of them by the moon cycle didn't add anything of real heroic interest to the story for a home campaign. The best way to run Dragonlance is to use Castles & Crusades, and ignore "spell slots per day" for magic casters. Do the story, not tell the story.
Nerfed magic users? Lmao. Wizards are the most powerfull class in the game once you get to 8th level or so. 4e ruined the game, was glad to see they corrected it again in 5e. Did wizards take real skill to play from 1st level to bout 5th level? Yes they did. Which is why i loved them, you had to play smart. But by time i was 11th level i was the one doing massive damage and the utility spells saved the day so many times. If you try to hack and slash with a wizard , yes they dont do much. Although my favorite wizard i played was an oddball at times and did love to mix it up with dagger fighting at times lol
![[TH] VALORANT Champions Seoul - Grand Final - EDG vs TH](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WvObMc9VelI/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you for watching today's video. Do you have a favorite Order of High Sorcery? Are the orders too limited in their spells? Leave a comment below.
IMO,
The orders of magic add a refreshing change to the typical play style of magic casters. I hope to incorporate some ideas from Ansalon in future campaigns at my table.
As for me, I like the red robes.
Jenna is my favorite wizard and it's because she's actually kinda normal. Like, yeah she's this incredibly power red wizard, but she owns an incredibly successful jewelry store in Palanthas. It's so rare to see a wizard with an actual job, and also one that openly appreciates worldly things and not just magic like she does.
I agree with you. She is a great character.
You kind of glossed over the spheres of magic, and this is something you might talk about a bit more when you come back to this subject as it is the biggest difference between magic on Krynn vs other settings. In first and second edition, as well as 3.0, wizards of a particular order could ONLY use certain schools of magic starting from the 3rd level and beyond. The Black Robes in particular really got the short end of the stick, losing access to Evocation (no fireballs or lightning bolts for them) in favor of Necromancy... a school with exactly four spells in the original setting (animate dead, feign death, clone and reincarnate). This really became excessively punishing if you wanted to be a specialist wizard, because the only schools available for Black Robes to specialize in further locked out the few remaining schools available to them. It was only slightly better for the White Robes. Only the Red could specialize without it being a major handicap, and they also got the most favorable spell tables for memorization and advancement. Also if you pay close attention to how it is written, no wizard on Krynn can ever be higher level than the current head of their Order. For Black Robes this limit is level 13, which is why they "top out in power faster". This also means that only ONE living Black Robe on Krynn at any given time is allowed to access either 8th or 9th level spells, since BOTH levels inexplicably become accessible at level 13 under the original rules.
The 3.5 supplement Towers of High Sorcery changed the rules to better reflect the novels. Each Order has two specialty schools, and they get "Order Secrets" that benefit those schools. Specialization and advanced specialization are optional however, and there are no longer any arbitrary limitations on level and Order. Because lets face it, a lot of Black Robes were casting high level spells they supposedly did not have access to in the novels. Under the original rules, neither Raistlin or Fistandantilus could have even cast the Timereaver spell...
Thank you for the extra information! I will be returning in the future to magic, but I have to hit some other aspects of the campaign world first. Thanks for watching.
As someone who just joined months ago, I love that the views are ticking up. If anyone deserves the success for all their hard work, it’s Adam and his channel. Pure fun and nostalgia, while also making everything familiar feel new again. Bravo
I really appreciate that, thank you.
Favorite Order? The Red Robes. Favorite wizard? Raistlin... In my role-playing days, I even created a Red Robe Mage for myself - physically a combination of Raist and Caramon, by the name of Conrad Mallanoth :) Thank You so much for this channel! I've just recently discovered it, though I've loved Dragonlance for almost 20 years now.
Thank you for watching! That's a great name for a character. I have always liked the idea of physically fit wizards that didn't look like wizards.
Thanks! If you saw Conrad without his robes, you would indeed never think he could be a wizard :D He is a handsomer, more muscled version of myself. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed Human raised by the dark-skinned Ergothians ever since being shipwrecked on the island as a baby.
Mages in Taladas were all renegades lol. Great idea to have an aligned Magi show up in Kristophan and have a "heretics everywhere" moment.
yea, that would be a record scratch moment lol.
I love everything about magic in the Dragonlance Saga. It added something fresh to playing a wizard. I’ve always leaned towards playing magic users in my gaming. This just got me in deeper. I love Raistlin most of all the characters in the saga. I wish there had been more books dedicated to mages and the towers in general.
They are sprinkled throughout and some books focusing on it all.
You said the heads of the orders of magic served for life, but I think I recall that Par-Salian (white robe) & Ladonna (black robe) both retired when they felt they were too old & tired for the responsibilities of their positions & the issue of Raistlin was resolved.
Dalamar took over after Ladonna & Dunbar Mastersmate took over for Par-Salian. Justarius continued as head of the red robes, but I never learned for how much longer nor who took over after him.
Yea I think stepping down is different than having the opportunity to serve for life, but your point is well taken.
With the abolition of alignment I really am interested to see how Dragonlance can still maintain it's identity going into 2022
Is that a 5e thing? I’m not familiar with those rules. That will be an issue as DL is all about good over evil.
Many games don't have alignment of any sorts, but it's still good v evil in them. So DL will need some tweaking in that case but it can still work mostly the same.
People often call alignment in general 'fake news'. IF dnd one gets rid of the concept, Dragonlance my be a setting that keeps it
My esteemed Red Lady, Lunitari, gave me the strength to join the Red Robed Order. I am sure that your work here pleases her.
Thank you for watching!
I generally seperate alignment strictly from each order. Most players tend to play good aligned wizards but take the red robes because they don't want to be outright claiming the righteousness of good.
I tend to instead give the alignment to the magic itself with white robes being "white magic" and black robes being "dark forces". That way you can have an evil "ends justifies the means" white robe like Par-Salian or an anti-hero who is seduced by dark magic but fights on the side of the heroes consistently like Dalamar.
It’s an interesting approach.
Its great to finally check a channel for Dragonlance. My books (along with my comics) was destroyed when our house was flooded more than a decade ago. I guess its time to hunt those books again!
That's terrible! There's always a library. Thanks for tuning in.
i would love to know more lore about the order of the white robes!
This video covered the foundations of the orders. I’ll have to see if there’s more detailed information.
One of the things I like the most about the orders is that it really is a number of ever more challenging tests. To often I see people or settings use magic as basically unlimited power for free with on restrictions. If you think about it in most settings a mid level mage opening a gate to the lower planes ( or so other terrible places) and actually losing control is more dangerous than a high level fighter intentionally going on a rampage. So the fact that there is a order just to control and minimize these overwhelming consequences makes a lot of sense. At the same time there were usually only a few people that were powerful enough to really bend a large battle to their favorite single handily. In dragon lance mages don't get a lot of near godlike powers that are so freely available in other words. What I mean by all this is that they are more balanced and actually make sense compared to a lot of other settings. However there is one more thing that I really like, the moons. Using the few times when all three align to use otherwise game breaking magic is a great way to tell a story. Perhaps you are stuck in a groundhog day situation and the only way to win is to convince all three masters of the orders to help send you back further in time stop the BBEG before he achieved UNLIMITED POWER!
Yea they are great role playing tools. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!
Just found your channel.
Man, what a tidal wave of happy memories and nostalgia from my earliest days of geekdom!
Subbed!
Welcome to the channel!
Given that magic on Krynn, at least before the 5th age, is godly magic, that actually makes the mages a kind of cleric. Which is interesting to think about because that means that Raistlin must have had the support of Nuitari when he challenged Takhisis. Or perhaps he had inadvertently begun to access the natural magic of Krynn, which Palin rediscovers in the 5th age. There is a contradiction in the material, or at least a secret!
Or, we fans looking deeper into the lore than the authors did.
@@DLSaga Very likely, but it is peculiar, and it's something that has bothered me for many years.
@@DLSaga It does occur to me now that this was probably the reason that Raistlin had to challenge Takhisis in her own domain. Apart from the reasons mentioned in the books, which I recall being that it was only here that he could challenge her true essence rather than an avatar, this would also bring Raistlin outside of Krynn, thereby removing him from the sealed sphere of the three gods of magic. Outside of Krynn he would have been able to draw on other sources. This does still leave the question of how, and which sources, and where did he learn how to do this, but it does provide a reasonable answer to my initial query.
@@fjdoucet1465 Didn't the books briefly mention that Raist may have travelled in other dimensions? Maybe that's how?
@@RabbitShirak Could be. But the magic question in Krynn in a murky one. Why does it function so differently from other worlds and planes? Why are its wizards so dependent on divine influence? Is this deliberate, or, like so much else, an accident of the gods?
I Grew Up Reading These Books Thanks To A Old Friend Thank You For This Just Subed
Thanks for the sub!
Best series of novels, ever!
Absolutely!
my favorite MAGE has always been Raistlin i have created him in my gaming of dungeons and dragons awhile back he has advance quite rapidly he is now a MAGE of very high power he can call upon 3,000 skeletal warriors or send 90,000 thousand death spirits and so much more .........
That’s cool
@@DLSaga Hello Wizards of the Coast , I really love the art of dungeon and dragons can you sell me the art boom came out in 1986 there’s a bunch of art by Larry Elmore, Parkinson so on the art in this book is what D&D is all about the front cover shows a warrior fighting a dragon I really would like to obtain this art book .
Running a Dragonlance game. NOT tracking moon cycles or exact place on alignment spectrum, though choices have consequences
Right on.
Dragonlance's 3 moon/3 color magic and the Brotherhood & balance between each Order are one of the best features of the setting in my opinion, the mechanics derived for D&D were extremely cool and unique. On a side note, I still cringe every time I see the cover of "The Magic of Krynn". What a bad book. Especially the derivative, generic Sea Demon tale... lol
Lol, well I stand by the painting. It’s great.
I loved how DL handled Magic and most other things better than standard AD&D.
The choices you made had consequences and I felt it provided a more epic level experience.
However, my friends thought DL was a little too complicated. So eventually the group focused on playing Forgotten Realms.
Since DL is supposedly making a comeback I what WOTC will do to make DL both unique yet accessible for most players.
I wasn’t a big Greyhawk or Forgotten Resalms fan but those worlds were easier for pick up games or classic dungeon crawling, whereas DL was more The Lord of The Rings type stories.
It is more complex for sure! Personally, I can get frustrated with some of the AD&D mechanics as much as I appreciate them. Thank you for watching!
@@DLSaga Speaking of complexity...one of the challenges of running a DL campaign is it seems geared towards epic level campaigns as mentioned in my previous post. Dragonlance is a world of consequence. The order of magic you join, to even what god you worshipped had major consequences in DL.
For example, in 1st Ed AD&D when we played DL, No one can just simply be a knight of Solamnia, and go questing for fun like their Paladin counterparts in D&D, instead the knight must go quests to fulfill their duty to the Order at 3rd level (if I remember correctly) and that quest had a lot of requirement attached to it.
Now, if I remember correctly, in 1st ED AD&D and even later editions, one of the requirements for the initiate knight had to travel at least 500 miles to the quest's locations. Now Ansalon is a small continent, so 500 miles would nearly put the knight on the other side of Ansalon. While that's epic it does limit the DM's options and makes it more complicated for the PCs.
Even many of the DL stories involve major wars, the death of gods like Takhisis etc. So trying to run a "normal" D&D game where your characters could just go adventuring without getting involved in major world events seems out of place nd in some cases hard to do, if that makes any sense.
So while I personally loved these things about DL it kinda turned my players off and eventually they went with easier to play worlds like Forgotten Realms.
Black was my favorite order. But, honestly, only because I liked to play magic-users that fought against their personal desire…
That sounds like some fun roleplaying for the DM and other players!
I really like the way DragonLance does magic.
The extreme white robes look after the good of others, so they broadcast energy out.
The extreme Black Robes look after their own self interests, so they take in energy and power.
The Red Robes are the voice of reason that prevent the others from drifting too far away.
And they all come together and collaborate based upon their love with magic, and their shared interests which include protecting their own kind, and their lifestyle. A lifestyle of lab research, and mastering spells.
I would lean towards Red.
Edit:. Looking at the Legends Trilogy, The King Priest (Cleric Class) gave out a white glowing aura of goodness, so he was broadcasting out good vibes. In a way these good vibes were almost like a charm spell. But sadly, he was insecure and became paranoid even in his sacred church. Raistlin did a great job of helping Lady Crysania see the real King Priest (Wisdom saving throw). Great part in the book!
The gods tried to send the King Priest signs that they were not happy with his extremist convictions because the scales were out of balance.
Even Lord Soth, Knight of the Rose 🌹 was given a chance to repent and go talk with the King Priest but failed.... horribly and absolutely.
With the Cataclysm came the end of the Age of Might. The scales were balanced.
But were they? Evil slowly started to grow out of Neraka at the Dawning of the Age Dispair.
Years before the War of the Lance the scales were out of place again.
I feel like Raistlin thanks to the power of Fistandantilus was the real wild card to return the scales to balance. The weapon that the Mages in the Tower of High Scorcery sought after.
In a way they forged that weapon during Raistlin's test at the Tower.
That is what is so cool about Black Robes Mages. They put the Dark Queen third at best.
First comes the magic, then the Order of Robes. That is why I believe they were not aware of the Dark Queen's return. The moons are kind of different, they stuck around during the Age of Dispair.
Plus, the Arch Mage Black Robes are wise enough to know that evil turns upon itself and would eventually turn upon their sacred moon. So the Dark Queen could be too much of a disruption, but I'm sure a few young Mages would gladly help the Dark Queen for more power.
The Golden General was big time too in Spring Dawning. She represented love and how nothing bad can come from love.
Very well put!
@@DLSaga
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for making these videos!
Character Alignment is huge with DragonLance, I'm surprised that so many D&D gamers really don't care about it.
At my table, a Paladin (Knights of the Sword or a lone wolf) can add their PB to their Initiative roll bonus if there is an evil creature in the mix. The Divine Sense feature gives them the hook up.
If I'm not mistaken, don't the mages of high sorcery have magic using bodyguards called mage knights (or something similar)? In fact isn't that how the Eldritch knight fighter subclass came to be?? Like I said before I could be completely wrong about this...
That is definitely not from DL. It sounds kinda cool though.
Sounds like Dragon Age Origins. They have knights to keep the wizards in check. Not sure about the bodyguard aspect, though….
It is unfortunate that they decided to have a god of necromancy (Chemosh) seperate from the god of dark magic. Nuitari is instead specialized in enchantment and conjuration (summoning) which doesn't have the eeevil asthetic that necromancy does.
He’s the only reason I loved Dark Disciple trilogy as much as I did.
Incredible
Thank you for watching!
I'd like to read a complete test of high sorcery walkthrough. I know that they give some instruction on how to create your own, but I'd like to see something with some more detail to see how a test utilizes the conditions set forth in the source books.
There is info in the fifth age supplement and the 3e supplement. Referenced in this video.
@@DLSaga Which I indicated that I had already read. What I'd like to read through is a "sample" test, for lack of a better word. Like the sample adventures they published online for 3e.
This would allow DMs to see how the instructions are put to use. By reading through the sample they could refer back to the sourcebook to better understand how an encounter checks a box.
Even an incomplete sample would've been helpful. Maybe just the first couple encounters with an explanation of what was accomplished. Which I was unable to find in a quick search of the sourcebooks I have available.
Amazing content.subscribed 👍🏻
Thank you!
can you attack them? I want my character to eventually learn that they manipulated his blood line and killed his parents and mentor when it was believed they were straying from the ordained path. As a result, my character eventual life goal is to bring them to ruin...but I don't know if that's possible or if it breaks the game
You can do whatever you want in your game. I would say it should be incredibly difficult to destroy the orders of high sorcery. They are protected by the gods of magic to some degree and are used to taking care of renegades. To put it in perspective, Raistlin Majere at the height of his power couldn't defeat them all, until he defeated the god Takhisis and took her powers.
I've been thinking about running a dragonlance campaign but utilizing Shadowdark, do you have any experience or suggestions on utilizing osr style games to capture the feeling of the original?
I’m sorry to say that I am unfamiliar with Shadowdark.
Favorite Mage: Magius (and no, its not Raistlin, or Dalamar, who has a strange obsession of tearing his robe away to expose his chest *cough*). Close second: Fistandantilus.
Favorite Order: Red, for its flexibility.
Tracking the moons was a pain in the lower behind, mostly for the GM though. There are rules where you can roll dice to determine the phase though and we usually stuck with that to avoid keeping track of the moons. The limiting factors of the spheres connected with the colour of robes was a novel approach and made playing them rather interesting.
Hm. The two towers where exploded by the arch mages of the towers, wrecking destruction on the near cities. The Kingpriest agreed to let the other towers stand partly because the first two destroyed where rather remote, or in smallish cities. The ones in Palanthas or Istar though stood in capital cities and their destruction by the mages could have killed literally millions. Since no one could read Wayreth anyway, he "agreed" to the compromise.
The mage casting the dying curse on the Tower of Palanthas was called Andras, a black robe mage used, manipulated and tricked by Fistandantilus to keep the tower unreachable. He considered himself to be the Master of Past and Present the dying mage, impaled on the spikes of the fence, spoke about. He just wanted to make sure the tower was ready and waiting for him.
Yea. I didn’t want to get into too much detail in this as it’s a general overview. I’ll get more detailed as I go. Thank you for sharing though!
The full story of how the Palanthas tower was cursed and the other towers were destroyed is told in the second novel of the Kingpriest trilogy by Chris Pierson.
The mage who cursed the tower of Palanthas, Andras Rannoch was radicalized and manipulated by Fistandantilus to sacrifice himself to arrange for the archmage's post-Cataclysmic return.
Silently one of the better trilogies in my opinion.
Oh I remember how much I loved Dragonlance. But now it feels kind of vapid to me.
Don’t let others change or effect your love of the setting…. With a setting as varied and vast as Dragonlance, what others think should only matter to them. Like and dislike what you want, ignore anyone that tries to change that.
@@DLSaga I think the setting itself is half responsible. My interest starting waning after the sextant. And I found the Dragons of Summer Flame to be bad.
Dragonlance was always pulp. But with Dragons of Summer Flame they lost sight of what was good about the setting. Kryng n didn't need a new Cataclysm. They had already built a great world. Dig around and explore it more.
As a DM, this was a PITA. It didn't add to the story any when DMing a home campaign. All it did was make life even more of a pain for the players of the already nerfed magic user class characters. 4e actually tried to address the over-nerfing of magic users, but it also had a lot of other problems. And now in 5e, once again magic casters are totally nerfed in actual play still. The further nerfing of them by the moon cycle didn't add anything of real heroic interest to the story for a home campaign. The best way to run Dragonlance is to use Castles & Crusades, and ignore "spell slots per day" for magic casters. Do the story, not tell the story.
That’s an interesting thought. Pair down mechanics for story’s sake, though for some players that would be heresy.
Nerfed magic users? Lmao. Wizards are the most powerfull class in the game once you get to 8th level or so. 4e ruined the game, was glad to see they corrected it again in 5e.
Did wizards take real skill to play from 1st level to bout 5th level? Yes they did. Which is why i loved them, you had to play smart. But by time i was 11th level i was the one doing massive damage and the utility spells saved the day so many times.
If you try to hack and slash with a wizard , yes they dont do much. Although my favorite wizard i played was an oddball at times and did love to mix it up with dagger fighting at times lol