Forgotten Realms - Harpers and Purple Dragons

[ruleslawyer]

I found it dissapointing. The spells and magic items are totally over the top. Eg: a 'Harper Pin', that every harper gets for free, is an Epic item if you use 3e magic item creation rules.

Yeah, but that's been fixed in 3e anyway (and was easy enough to fix IM2eC by simply calling the thing the "Master Harper pin"); I recommend 2e material to people on these boards largely when it's rules-light. Of course you don't use the spells, magic items, etc.; we have the FRCS and MaoF to update those.

Also, the attitude that the Harpers are always right and wonderful and better than everyone else gets annoying.

With that I'll sorta disagree. What actually irritates me about Elaine Cunningham's novels, and the consequent influence on the FR sourcebooks, is how all sun elves have turned into LE racists and how the Harpers have become a militarized, rigid organization. The point of the Harpers is precisely that the Harpers have a truly right and wonderful mission. There also aren't many of them, they have more than a few non-good members in their ranks, and they can be quite unscrupulous in how they pursue their goals, and utterly ruthless in the ways in which they put their agents and allies at risk. That's hardly "always right and wonderful and better than anyone else." Are the Harpers the most clearly "good" group in the Realms? Arguably, yes, but SOMEONE has to be the do-gooder. Many would find the (LG/LN) means pursued by the Lords' Alliance or the Purple Dragons more clearly "good" than those of the Harpers (closer to NG/CG/N). It's a matter of comparative philosophy.

 

[Faraer]

Also, these 'over the top' magic items have worked perfectly fine in hundreds or thousands of people's campaigns, 3E dogma notwithstanding.

The Harpers as an organization are far from unambiguously good; they're manipulative and calculating, and some of their aims are obscure. But many individual Harpers are heroes -- this is, after all, heroic fantasy, and objecting to that is like the guy on REALMS-L who complained that Code of the Harpers focused too much on the Harpers.

 

[dreaded_beast]

Great information guys!

I just got access to the Code of the Harpers and have found it invaluable so far!

In terms of the Purple Dragons, I think that if the PCs do decide to join, they may be part of a "specialized branch" that focuses more on covert or "international" missions for Cormyr. More along the lines of travelling all around Faerun and the like.