New D&D Player's Handbook May Be Teasing An Exciting New Mechanic

Cover art has been released for the upcoming revised and while the prominent imagery of dragons comes as no surprise, the specific types of dragons featured could hint at an exciting new mechanic that pays homage to past editions. Prior to third edition, characters would gain access to a home base and followers as part of normal character progression. The cover art for the new Player’s Handbook features a metallic Gold Dragon and a chromatic Red Dragon. This could hint at a system where heroes gain good-aligned metallic dragon allies as they level up.

The third-party supplement from MCDM games,, adds these subsystems, last seen officially in 2nd edition as core rules back into the modern 5e system.

The strongholds from were inspired by, where powerful characters gained strongholds and followers based on their class. Fighters would gain a keep populated by aspiring warriors, where Clerics would gain a temple with acolytes of their faith. While these rules provided excellent flavor, appropriately showing the societal influence of high-level heroes, they were only appropriate for specific types of campaigns. Games where characters are constantly expanding a frontier or touring the multiverse make it harder to realistically set down roots. Still, for conventional fantasy settings with a regional home base, a stronghold made sense.

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Players can use hirelings effectively in 5e , on occasion, but gaining allies or a home base is typically handled on a case-by-case basis by the Dungeon Master, instead of a predefined part of character progression. Gaining a powerful patron or sponsor is also generally campaign-specific, but returning it to a core rule does open some intriguing possibilities, including good-aligned metallic dragons as party allies. The separation of the evil-aligned chromatic dragons and the good-aligned