I am only posting here because i have no other recourse.
You would think that the backlash to the purple dragon knight subclass would give the designers at WOTC the hint but the new books push the narrative that the purple dragon knights are defined by their having an amethyst dragon is their core trait.
Like... why? The established lore was sick. A black dragon so old that its scales turned purple? These were supposed to be the arthurian knights -The battlefield warriors; knights riding their horses beneath giant trees.
Who is so obsessed with this idea that they had to get rid of the previous lore to make room for this stupid idea. The new books dont even make mention of thauglor at all. I mean why even bring the banneret back if you were still planning on butchering the lore.
I’m with you on this one, even though I actually liked the mechanics of the UA Purple Dragon Knight. In my opinion, reverting the mechanics of the subclass while keeping the lore is the worst of both worlds.
I think what happened was that WotC saw, when the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide was released, that new players were excited for the Purple Dragon Knight subclass based on the name alone, and were then disappointed that there was no purple dragons involved. The fact that the subclass was rather bad mechanically didn’t help things.
So WotC decided to update the Purple Dragon Knight Faction so they actually do ride Amethyst (Purple) Dragons, commissioned art, setting fluff, and a new subclass that includes a pet dragon! Everything those, then new, players that were originally disappointed were looking for. They just needed to test the new Subclass to make sure it wasn’t too powerful or had unforeseen mechanical problems, so released it in UA.
There was just one problem. It had been ~10 years since SCAG was released, and all those originally new players who were disappointed thar the Purple Dragon Knights didn’t involve Purple Dragons? They learnt that the faction was named for a Black Dragon so old that his scales turned purple, and that these knights are actually meant to be Arthurian style Knights. And that is genuinely interesting. People like the tales of King Arthur and The Round Table, it reminds players that a military order can be named for creatures, and that people can misidentify creatures.
So the UA was trashed by the community. But WotC had not only already paid for all the art and fluff, but the book was already laid out with space set aside for the subclass. The idea that people would turn down a subclass that gives you a pet dragon, and all the fluff that goes with it, never occurred to WotC, and it was to late to commission new art and rewrite the fluff. So they took the original SCAG subclass, tweaked it, and put that subclass in the book, and changed nothing else.
They could have surgically removed the subclass's art and placed it in another book while replacing it with the banneret. While yes that would require much more time and money, it would have at least preserved art and lore that actually makes sense in another book, like 2025's Fizban or something.
The UA was trashed by people more concerned with their uncritical attitude towards, & parasocial relationships with, novel authors & their works, while others didn't realize the fallacious nature of wanting to "preserve the Drakewarden Ranger's uniqueness"-OtherStuffExists is a fallacy well known to Wikipedia editors.
Hence we got a Banneret that's setting neutral, but boring & burns through everything quickly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
The banneret isn’t even setting neutral, it’s meant to be the same ones who killed Thauglor, the black dragon. The book itself still has all the lore changes and artwork, meaning that you practically have to tear off all the flavour to make it setting neutral, it’s kinda the worst of both worlds.
I personally enjoyed the Old Purple Dragon Knights, and loved the support aspect. Like, they killed purple dragons, they didn't ride on them! Personally, just enjoy the warlord-type subclasses, hope the fighter gets something like that...:(
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
The subclass which has barely any mechanical changes, meaning it’s still pretty damn weak and unfulfilled compared to the champion subclass.
Sure, though its easier to make a subclass stronger than weaker as a DM, so I kind of appreciate them resisting power creep in the new FR books mostly. My players have always liked the banneret, it was fun to play and a subclass does only so much for character strength anyhow. The champion is strong but some players find it boring.
I saw this title and felt called out because I just made an amethyst dragonborn genie paladin and an amethyst dragonborn banneret (full PDK themed in regards to the new Faerun book), both brothers and had a great time doing it. I thought the new lore was super cool for the PDK, only to realize that the actually dragon riding was removed, and then shortly after finding out that the original PDK lore was much cooler. Now I'm here with a dragonless dragonrider for made-up faction (in a fictional world....so double made-up?) and the urge to completely ignore the new PDK lore. I tickled the itch, though, so homebrew might be in order. I'm 5 years new to DnD lore and I'm the type of person to watch YouTube videos about unofficial or sunsetted dragon types, so I may not represent the majority of the newbies here.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. [. . .] I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. [. . .] [R]ational people know that things act of themselves or not at all."
Sounds like your having fun. I am not a big fan of the jewel dragons, always felt the chromatic and metallic types to be enough for most settings. But I get it that people love dragons and many feel that more dragons is always good. As for the PDKs I dont really see why old lore and new lore cant be true? So the PDKs wear their purple dragon to honor the vanquishing of that very old black dragon. And some amethyst dragons just liked that banner and in getting to know each other an alliance was formed. That totally works for me.
Sounds like your having fun. I am not a big fan of the jewel dragons, always felt the chromatic and metallic types to be enough for most settings. But I get it that people love dragons and many feel that more dragons is always good. As for the PDKs I dont really see why old lore and new lore cant be true? So the PDKs wear their purple dragon to honor the vanquishing of that very old black dragon. And some amethyst dragons just liked that banner and in getting to know each other an alliance was formed. That totally works for me.
The Gem dragons do fill a blind spot in the dragon line up. Chromatics are arrogant and dominating. Metallics are goodie two shoes and paragons. But Gem dragons are intellectuals. From a player perspective, appealing to them is trickier then the other types.... you have to make a good case, rather than appealing to morality or vanity. Especially with Topaz, since most races are alive by default.... and they have no concern for preserving living things.
As for the original topic........ one of my friends is a dragon nut job. Always plays Dragonborn, keeps trying to tame random dragons and dragon-kin we run into, and wants more than anything to have a dragon mount. So I "get" why people see "purple dragon knight" and think "I get to ride dragons like all those YA novels I grew up with".
Zero reason they couldnt combine new and old lore and fighters getting an actual interesting dragon companion class. I love the story of the ancient purplish black dragon while see the new purple dragon subclass and its lore as an expansion.
Purple dragon Bannerets of Cormyr could be the ones regarding the original lore. Purple dragon rider knights could be for those having the amethyst dragon companions. WotC halfway backpedaling ( on idiotic and vitriolic feedback )on removing such a Drake Warden esque class, blue balling those who loved it ( yesyes can still use the UA but its unreleased AKA unofficial source and might be berated, gated and forgotten )
I cant fathom that myself and a few others seems to get we can have best of BOTH types of these Cormyr knights! Without ignoring/ established lore. If I lived in the US and got a position at WotC I would spear through two sub classes for the Fighter. Banneret ( esrablished purple dragon knights ) and the Purple Dragon knight ( those actually riding amethyst dragons, could gave renamed it Amethyst Deagon Knights )
Would even suggest having a THIRD sub-class for the Fighter. Non associated with anything regarding Cormyr or its old and bew lore. Namely : Dragon Knight. Viable for Dragonlance setting too!.
It could use the UA PDK level setup. HOWEVER. You get a table of choosing between ANY of the well known 5 dragons of Chromatic, Gem and Metallic dragon families. PLUS a box in guide on how to homebrew in and use lesser known dragons through DnD history or original ones.
Comes to mind. Coastal yellow dragons( with wings, not a true dragon without, just an oversized drake, lizard ), Orange jungle dragons ( with wings, not a true dragon without, just an oversized drake, lizard ), actual Purple chromatic dragons either the Richard Alan Lloyd hybrid ( pigment color mixing reasoning, dont have to be! All chromatics have lineage directly from Io/ Asgorath or else with this logic.. green, gray and brown would be hybrids too in official WotC viewpoint ) or the 3e/4e Purple deagons, the Deep dragons are highly suspected to be a sub-species of. Iron, Tungsten, Cobalt, Jacinth, Ruby, Obsidian Dragon Knights even..
Give OPTIONS in offical sourcebooks WOTC! So can DMs and Players decide to pick and balance from. Homebrews and such are easly scoffed, feared and mocked by some DMs who shut down in their eyes non-official= not allowed, a players wish out of spite, its not lore in my eyes or yes actual valid, dosent fit my world reasoning. WotC STOP gutting awesome and potentially rewarding ideas! Stop being spineless by lorefans vitriol and gut ideas like that Amethyst dragon knight idea and rather safeguard and respect the established lire and make the new woven in with respect of it but also make new excting takes and gameplay mechanics from it!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I am only posting here because i have no other recourse.
You would think that the backlash to the purple dragon knight subclass would give the designers at WOTC the hint but the new books push the narrative that the purple dragon knights are defined by their having an amethyst dragon is their core trait.
Like... why? The established lore was sick. A black dragon so old that its scales turned purple? These were supposed to be the arthurian knights -The battlefield warriors; knights riding their horses beneath giant trees.
Who is so obsessed with this idea that they had to get rid of the previous lore to make room for this stupid idea. The new books dont even make mention of thauglor at all. I mean why even bring the banneret back if you were still planning on butchering the lore.
I’m with you on this one, even though I actually liked the mechanics of the UA Purple Dragon Knight. In my opinion, reverting the mechanics of the subclass while keeping the lore is the worst of both worlds.
I think what happened was that WotC saw, when the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide was released, that new players were excited for the Purple Dragon Knight subclass based on the name alone, and were then disappointed that there was no purple dragons involved. The fact that the subclass was rather bad mechanically didn’t help things.
So WotC decided to update the Purple Dragon Knight Faction so they actually do ride Amethyst (Purple) Dragons, commissioned art, setting fluff, and a new subclass that includes a pet dragon! Everything those, then new, players that were originally disappointed were looking for. They just needed to test the new Subclass to make sure it wasn’t too powerful or had unforeseen mechanical problems, so released it in UA.
There was just one problem. It had been ~10 years since SCAG was released, and all those originally new players who were disappointed thar the Purple Dragon Knights didn’t involve Purple Dragons? They learnt that the faction was named for a Black Dragon so old that his scales turned purple, and that these knights are actually meant to be Arthurian style Knights. And that is genuinely interesting. People like the tales of King Arthur and The Round Table, it reminds players that a military order can be named for creatures, and that people can misidentify creatures.
So the UA was trashed by the community. But WotC had not only already paid for all the art and fluff, but the book was already laid out with space set aside for the subclass. The idea that people would turn down a subclass that gives you a pet dragon, and all the fluff that goes with it, never occurred to WotC, and it was to late to commission new art and rewrite the fluff. So they took the original SCAG subclass, tweaked it, and put that subclass in the book, and changed nothing else.
They could have surgically removed the subclass's art and placed it in another book while replacing it with the banneret. While yes that would require much more time and money, it would have at least preserved art and lore that actually makes sense in another book, like 2025's Fizban or something.
The UA was trashed by people more concerned with their uncritical attitude towards, & parasocial relationships with, novel authors & their works, while others didn't realize the fallacious nature of wanting to "preserve the Drakewarden Ranger's uniqueness"-OtherStuffExists is a fallacy well known to Wikipedia editors.
Hence we got a Banneret that's setting neutral, but boring & burns through everything quickly.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
The banneret isn’t even setting neutral, it’s meant to be the same ones who killed Thauglor, the black dragon. The book itself still has all the lore changes and artwork, meaning that you practically have to tear off all the flavour to make it setting neutral, it’s kinda the worst of both worlds.
I personally enjoyed the Old Purple Dragon Knights, and loved the support aspect. Like, they killed purple dragons, they didn't ride on them! Personally, just enjoy the warlord-type subclasses, hope the fighter gets something like that...:(
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
Well, the banneret is back in the new books so you will probably be happy.
The subclass which has barely any mechanical changes, meaning it’s still pretty damn weak and unfulfilled compared to the champion subclass.
Sure, though its easier to make a subclass stronger than weaker as a DM, so I kind of appreciate them resisting power creep in the new FR books mostly. My players have always liked the banneret, it was fun to play and a subclass does only so much for character strength anyhow. The champion is strong but some players find it boring.
I saw this title and felt called out because I just made an amethyst dragonborn genie paladin and an amethyst dragonborn banneret (full PDK themed in regards to the new Faerun book), both brothers and had a great time doing it. I thought the new lore was super cool for the PDK, only to realize that the actually dragon riding was removed, and then shortly after finding out that the original PDK lore was much cooler. Now I'm here with a dragonless dragonrider for made-up faction (in a fictional world....so double made-up?) and the urge to completely ignore the new PDK lore. I tickled the itch, though, so homebrew might be in order. I'm 5 years new to DnD lore and I'm the type of person to watch YouTube videos about unofficial or sunsetted dragon types, so I may not represent the majority of the newbies here.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. [. . .] I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. [. . .] [R]ational people know that things act of themselves or not at all."
-Gene Wolfe, Shadow of the Torturer
Sounds like your having fun. I am not a big fan of the jewel dragons, always felt the chromatic and metallic types to be enough for most settings. But I get it that people love dragons and many feel that more dragons is always good. As for the PDKs I dont really see why old lore and new lore cant be true? So the PDKs wear their purple dragon to honor the vanquishing of that very old black dragon. And some amethyst dragons just liked that banner and in getting to know each other an alliance was formed. That totally works for me.
The Gem dragons do fill a blind spot in the dragon line up. Chromatics are arrogant and dominating. Metallics are goodie two shoes and paragons. But Gem dragons are intellectuals. From a player perspective, appealing to them is trickier then the other types.... you have to make a good case, rather than appealing to morality or vanity. Especially with Topaz, since most races are alive by default.... and they have no concern for preserving living things.
As for the original topic........ one of my friends is a dragon nut job. Always plays Dragonborn, keeps trying to tame random dragons and dragon-kin we run into, and wants more than anything to have a dragon mount. So I "get" why people see "purple dragon knight" and think "I get to ride dragons like all those YA novels I grew up with".
Zero reason they couldnt combine new and old lore and fighters getting an actual interesting dragon companion class. I love the story of the ancient purplish black dragon while see the new purple dragon subclass and its lore as an expansion.
Purple dragon Bannerets of Cormyr could be the ones regarding the original lore. Purple dragon rider knights could be for those having the amethyst dragon companions. WotC halfway backpedaling ( on idiotic and vitriolic feedback )on removing such a Drake Warden esque class, blue balling those who loved it ( yesyes can still use the UA but its unreleased AKA unofficial source and might be berated, gated and forgotten )
I cant fathom that myself and a few others seems to get we can have best of BOTH types of these Cormyr knights! Without ignoring/ established lore. If I lived in the US and got a position at WotC I would spear through two sub classes for the Fighter. Banneret ( esrablished purple dragon knights ) and the Purple Dragon knight ( those actually riding amethyst dragons, could gave renamed it Amethyst Deagon Knights )
Would even suggest having a THIRD sub-class for the Fighter. Non associated with anything regarding Cormyr or its old and bew lore. Namely : Dragon Knight. Viable for Dragonlance setting too!.
It could use the UA PDK level setup. HOWEVER. You get a table of choosing between ANY of the well known 5 dragons of Chromatic, Gem and Metallic dragon families. PLUS a box in guide on how to homebrew in and use lesser known dragons through DnD history or original ones.
Comes to mind. Coastal yellow dragons( with wings, not a true dragon without, just an oversized drake, lizard ), Orange jungle dragons ( with wings, not a true dragon without, just an oversized drake, lizard ), actual Purple chromatic dragons either the Richard Alan Lloyd hybrid ( pigment color mixing reasoning, dont have to be! All chromatics have lineage directly from Io/ Asgorath or else with this logic.. green, gray and brown would be hybrids too in official WotC viewpoint ) or the 3e/4e Purple deagons, the Deep dragons are highly suspected to be a sub-species of. Iron, Tungsten, Cobalt, Jacinth, Ruby, Obsidian Dragon Knights even..
Give OPTIONS in offical sourcebooks WOTC! So can DMs and Players decide to pick and balance from. Homebrews and such are easly scoffed, feared and mocked by some DMs who shut down in their eyes non-official= not allowed, a players wish out of spite, its not lore in my eyes or yes actual valid, dosent fit my world reasoning. WotC STOP gutting awesome and potentially rewarding ideas! Stop being spineless by lorefans vitriol and gut ideas like that Amethyst dragon knight idea and rather safeguard and respect the established lire and make the new woven in with respect of it but also make new excting takes and gameplay mechanics from it!