Recent content by JPL

I guess my head canon is that "Purple Dragons" or "Purple Dragon Knights" are acceptable terms for the organization as a whole, but only the ones who have paired up with dragons are "Knights" per se. Pendragon sometimes uses the title "Esquire At Arms" for someone who is a former squire and now...

Another point to ponder --- how many actual Purple Dragon Knights are there? It's really a question of how many amethyst dragons are signed up. More specifically, I think this must be something almost exclusively limited to Wrymlings (Medium, and able to carry Small riders) and Young dragons...

Oh, I dunno...they set up the idea, I think, that this is a relatively recent arrangement, and they don't override the original lore, they just add something new. That said . . . absolutely no attempt to explain how DMs are supposed to wrangle it when the PCs say, gimmee my dragon. In fact...

Funny and true. All I know is they just did a book that has like six pages about your exciting new career flying all over the place on a purple dragon and kicking ass, and dammit, I want that.

I figured that they needed to be Large dragons (assuming medium-sized riders) and that means young / CR 9, unless I wanted to fudge things a little.

Actually, that would be a crazy design challenge to adopt that Power Rangers model. Assume five 6th level Purple Knight riders. Assume five young amethyst dragons (CR 9). So your adventure can largely be geared toward a standard 6th level party, but then the climax has to be something that...

So assuming a DM is crazy enough to run an all-Purple Dragon Knights party, what's a good level to actually pair up the rider and the mount? Because if you start the characters at 5th level per the "epic fantasy" suggestions of the new books, that's not a bad starting point for some squires on...

Thanks for the additional references.

So I'm pretty sure that the 3rd edition Epic Level Handbook is where we first encountered the LeShay. They were a race of extremely powerful immortal albino elves, aloof and mysterious and possibly the surviving original elves from back when elves were a new thing. I don't recall that the...

Well… I gather that big ruddy blonde guys like Jack were more in fashion, but there are occasional references to the idea that Stephen is capable of cleaning up pretty nicely, and is in his own way just as attractive as Jack. Oh, it would take a week to stat Stephen out in GURPS.

Stephen is a system-breaker. Brilliant surgeon / naturalist. Espionage agent. Speaks a dozen languages. Crack shot, deadly fencer. Maxed out in Intimidation. Cellist. Does just fine with the ladies, when he tries.

A further thought --- a great tactician who was not known for book learning said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." The banneret is more the guy who improvises in the heat of the moment, rather than the chess master who is ten steps ahead.

One of the bits I really liked out of 4th ed. was the warlord, a leader class which depending on billed could benefit from a high Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score. I hope we will eventually see a fighter build for 5th ed. for smart and/or cagey leaders. For now, the new banneret is a...

What it probably requires is some deep thought about how it affects the world that there are guys who can throw around ninth 10th and 11th level spells, even when those guys aren’t around. Maybe make it a metaphor for multi billionaires?

Or. . . .Romans were kinda mystified by the pyramids, which were as ancient to them as the Romans are to us. And Faerun has had some cosmic shifts and resets that we haven't had. As far as we know....