New Unearthed Arcana Released, With 8 New Forgotten Realms-Themed Subclasses

Today, Wizards of the Coast has announced a new Unearthed Arcana playtest featuring eight new Dungeons & Dragons subclasses that will appear in the upcoming Forgotten Realms Player's Guide. The new subclasses include five classes tied to Forgotten Realms regions, as well as the return of the Knowledge Domain Cleric subclass from the 2014 Player's Handbook and the Bladesinger Wizard subclass and Purple Dragon Knight Fighter subclass from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

Each of the five remaining subclasses are themed to one of the five regions explored in the Forgotten Realms Adventure Guide also coming out in November. The College of the Moon Bard subclass is tied to the Moonshae Isles, the Winter Walker Ranger subclass is tied to Icewind Dale, and the Oath of the Noble Genies is tied to Calimshan. The Scion of The Three is tied to the Dead Three (of Baldur's Gate fame). Meanwhile, Spellfire Sorcery dates back to 2nd Edition and can both heal allies and harm foes.

The eight new subclasses can be found below:

• College Of The Moon (Bard)
• Knowledge Domain (Cleric)
• Purple Dragon Knight (Fighter)
• Oath Of The Noble Genies (Paladin)
• Winter Walker (Ranger)
• Scion Of The Three (Rogue)
• Spellfire Sorcery (Sorcerer)
• Bladesinger (Wizard)

The Forgotten Realm's Players Guide comes out on November 11th.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

View attachment 394626

I was more thinking:

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Is it though? Or was it bad work to have a subclass called purple dragon knights that don’t tame purple dragons, aren’t part of a knightly order, and are tied to one specific nation in one specific setting that your fanbase is kind of sick of anyway?

:laughs:

My goodness! There's so much snot-nosed snark in your reply I'm tempted to tell you to wipe your nose and go to your room. And while you're there, read a book. (It's a little above your reading level, but you might learn something.)

 

[Parmandur]

As a FR-hater, I say that this is nonsense.

Hardly, they have been using it that way fir years.

 

[JPL]

As to Purple Dragons and retcons . . . look, crap gets retconned all the time. There are suddenly ten kinds of goliath and they can get big, Not All Orcs, etc. Don't like it, don't use it.

 

[Weiley31]

I'm not a big FR fan at all but I absolutely hate the PDK incarnation. It feels like a retcon and I don't really see it doing anything that the drakewarden doesn't. Why naughty word with both the lore of Cormyr and Amethyst Dragons when we already have a solution?

Heck, we've already got a race with an ancestral bond to a specific dragon color (githyanki and red dragons). Add in some lore connections between the two "pacts" to really add some already-existing flavor.

Purple Dragon Knight#1: Man, I wish I could suggest something to upper command so I can get promoted. Then I'd be really cool.

Purple Dragon Knight#2: Yeah. I wish we were cool like them Githyanki and their Red Dragons.

Purple Dragon Knight#1

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

:laughs:

My goodness! There's so much snot-nosed snark in your reply I'm tempted to tell you to wipe your nose and go to your room. And while you're there, read a book. (It's a little above your reading level, but you might learn something.)

Mod Note:

Personal attacks are really unnecessary and unwelcome in the kind of polite discussions we encourage here. Do better going forward.

 

[Stormonu]

I'm not a fan of the new Purple Dragon Knight.
I would like to see a Fighter subclass with a pet, but I would rather see two different subclasses, one dedicated to leadership and support, and another dedicated to the companion, rather than mixing the two and diluting them both.

I think it would be smarter to make a pet a Feat - one that could be taken as a background feat or later on. Shouldn't have to devote an entire specialty to it via subclass (though a subclass that improves the standard pet, like the Ranger's subclass, I would not be opposed to). And it should probably scale to at least a small degree so it doesn't get killed the first round a combat breaks out.

 

[Azzy]

A lot of people probably raised eyebrows at the Purple Dragon Knight (since it was notorious for being one of the least-liked subclasses of 2014). Boy did they change that. Basically a fighter pet class now. Does every class have a pet subclass version now? Is that the go-forward, like in 2014 when nearly every class had a spell casting subclass?

It is an odd choice, not one a saw coming.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Conceptually, I like how these classes are very tied to FR specifically. That's a wonderful bit of design kit and it's something I hope to see more of - classes that evoke some local flavor.

Specifically, my biggest gripe is about the Purple Dragon Knight.

Maybe this is a hot take but I really couldn’t care less that it’s a retcon. If you’ve got a subclass called “purple dragon knight” and it’s something other than a knight with a purple dragon, you’ve messed up. If fixing that requires retconning lore only a tiny fraction of the people playing the game have even heard of, there’s no question that retconning it is the correct choice.

This is backwards.

If what you want is a class option that is evocative of a setting, forcing the setting to conform to an outsider's idea of what it should be is actually erasing what the setting actually is. It's giving colonial vibes.

There's a thing in FR called a purple dragon knight. It is cool on its own - an elite military commander, belonging to an order of legendary dragon-slayers (the purple dragon in question was an ancient black dragon whose scales turned violet). It has a good story and has even had some pretty interesting mechanics over the years, driven by realizing ther fantasy of an elite military commander. That's a good fantasy, and one that 2024 Fighters could certainly be better at realizing.

It's not a dragon-tamer. That's not a purple dragon knight. That's something different.

If the purple dragon knight isn't cool enough to be a subclass based on its own lore, then don't use the name. Don't gut the concept and pretend it's an upgrade.

What I want out of a PDK subclass is a Fighter who makes a good military commander - inspiring, supportive, granting courage and hope enough to turn the tide of a battle.

If you wanted a Middle-Earth setting, you wouldn't give Gandalf a Hogwarts House just because that's something that a general audience thinks wizards should have. If you wanted a world based on The Last Airbender, you wouldn't say that the Air Nomads were a tribe of bloodthirsty headhunters just because it is more exciting than a group of monastic ascetics. Words have meanings, and "purple dragon knight" doesn't MEAN this thing in the UA.

There are a few other features that make me curious, like the quantity and combat focus for Knowledge cleric spells, but this mangling of the PDK is the most concerning to me, because it speaks to a very...2008...kind of perspective, where the words are just there to steal and repurpose for whatever the designer thinks is neat.

I'd love a dragon-knight kind of class. It's a cool idea. It's not a Purple Dragon Knight, though. These are two different things.

 

[Stormonu]

Yikes!

The class text for the PDK is written for someplace that isn't Cormyr. Consider:

Although the Purple Dragons were originally founded in Cormyr, new recruits are enlisted from any realms where chivalry is in abundance, including the Silver Marches, Damara, and Chessenta. Characters with this subclass are special among the order...

Firstly, the Purple Dragons are a standing army, not a chivalrous organization.

Secondly, there are no knightly orders in Cormyr's armies! Just as there are no knightly orders associated with, or part of, Cormyr as a nation.

Thirdly, Cormyr recruits its Purple Dragons internally. Never externally.

That's just really bad work. (And I'm the guy who constantly defends WotC, so please understand that I don't write these words lightly.)

So, how do we fix it? Well, I'm working on that.

I guess it depends on how much time has passed since the original founding of the Purple Dragons - if they stick to the current timeline, it's been over a hundred years and it's possible they've undergone some changes (including become a real knightly order with a semi-exclusive recruiting process).

However, in the end I think it is just a Flanderization of the order because it sounded cool to someone.