Dungeons & Dragons Drops Ardlings From One D&D After Backlash

Bad news for Ardling fans. The furry-friendly species that was being playtested for the upcoming D&D One has been dropped after the latest Unearthed Arcana survey revealed they’re not quite ready for prime time.

Ardlings were announced last summer as a new playable species that could potentially come in D&D One, the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons that will follow in the wildly successful footsteps of Fifth Edition. Ardlings were a race of humanoid animal hybrids that offered players the opportunity to don an animal head that was different from the collection of anthropomorphic species already present in D&D, such as the Loxodon, Tabaxi, Aarakocra, Kenku, Harengon, and many others.

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And while an animal-agnostic species was fine, the explanation for Ardlings left a lot to be desired. Ardlings were described as being "touched by a higher plane" at some point in their lineage, implying that they had celestial heritage. However, the Aasimar are already playable angels, and the explanation of mythical beasts being the source of Ardlings didn’t sit well with players.

And those players made it clear in the latest Unearthed Arcana survey that Ardlings weren't quite there yet. "In that survey, there's one friend who isn't going to make it, and that is the Ardling," said Jeremy Crawford, lead rules designer for D&D at Wizards of the Coast. "There are a lot of fans of the Ardling, but the Ardling's time has not yet come."

Crawford said that the survey revealed most players felt the Ardling's celestial origins just didn't quite make sense from a narrative perspective. "And we get that; this is a storytelling Game and the Ardling felt a bit too much like it just came out of nowhere," Crawford said. "And so our takeaway is, as enchanted as we are by these animal folk with celestial origins, the place to introduce them is a place where we can provide more story context for them and their entry into the multiverse."

Ardlings might not be in D&D One when it eventually arrives, but Crawford promised fans that the species isn't gone forever, and they may return "in some future year." After all, what's a new D&D edition without expansions?

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