Tales from Thedas

*Tales from Thedas* is a conversion for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition to fit the setting of the Dragon Age games by BioWare. It is a loose collection of borrowed content and homebrew, adapted from the Tantervale 9:21 Campaign Guide DMed by Gem. It now includes content by Gawain, Drew, and other DMs from the D&DA server.

## Tales from Thedas Portal

* Introduction
* Character Creation
	+ Races
	+ Origins
	+ Classes
	+ Features
* Equipment
	+ Armor
	+ Weapons
	+ Consumables
* Spells (coming soon!)

## Introduction

Hello! Welcome to the Player Handbook for Tales From Thedas, a conversion for the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons for the Dragon Age setting of Bioware fame. This handbook was adapted from the campaign guide for Tantervale 9:21, a campaign currently being DMed by Gem for players on the Dungeons and Dragon Age server. That campaign guide was originally created as a means to an end, to provide a set of mechanics by which I might run a single campaign.

However, thanks to the community I’ve found on the D&DA server, I’ve decided to repackage my ruleset into a more universally usable one. The purpose of this handbook is to take the mechanics from that campaign guide and make them available to any stories or settings within Thedas, rather than being specifically rooted to that campaign. The design of the following handbook was based around a few core principles.

The first of these is to retain the game balance and intuitive playstyle of base D&D 5E. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, after all. All the pre-existing spells, equipment, and rules are carried over from vanilla D&D. The Origins and Classes in this handbook are also adapted from base 5E, although they have undergone notable revision. Essentially, any differences from base 5E are explicitly stated--unless otherwise specified, things work the same in vanilla as they do in Tales from Thedas. Thus, it is expected that anybody reading this handbook is already familiar with the mechanics of base 5E.

The second goal of this conversion is to retain the feeling of Thedas from the games, and to stay as lore-friendly and immersed in that world as possible. After all, if you’re going to play something different from vanilla D&D, it should *feel* different, and why bother playing in the Dragon Age setting if it’s not gonna feel like Thedas? The rules of magic are different between the free-wheeling, ubiquitous magic of the Forgotten Realms versus the highly regulated, taboo magic of the Dragon Age games. The changes made to the vanilla classes reflect that, all with the goal of grounding the story on familiar ground.

The third goal is to offer the players a chance to explore beyond what the games did, to provide more of what people loved from Bioware’s games and expand it to our own stories and ideas. A number of the classes available in TfT (Runesmith, Saarebas, Templar) are specifically based around mechanics that the games hinted at but weren’t fully explored in the RPGs. This handbook hopes to provide you with the tools to continue telling stories in Thedas--your own stories, built off the bedrock of the shared experience of playing the Dragon Age games, but uniquely your own.

*Ma ghilana mir theranas.*

And have fun!

-- Gem

P.S. If you have any questions feel free to drop a line in the Herald’s Rest chat on the Discord, DM me there, or email me at someonenamedgem@gmail.com!