What does Veeky Forums think of Dragon Knights?

...

>not Knight dragon

Dragon control over knight and knight does shit like page. During the battle, knight support dragon but shielding the neck, poke other dragon and apply first-aid.

>not just killing dragons outright
you what nigga

these monsters are universally bloodthirsty gold-hoarding egomaniacs created by a dark god

What era do you like your dragon riders?

Pretty cool, but I worry that the 'dragon' part might overwhelm the 'knight' part. Just look at the size distance there, that dude's less a knight and more of a pilot.

Even worse if it's a setting with sapient dragons. Then he's a glorified passenger.

This one

better with either archers/mages as riders- since the point of the knight is being heroic and its hard to do that when your mount has 100x your kill count

while archers are good against other riders and mages as riders plays into the whole "sorcerer king" thing i really like and compliments the already impressive AoE damage

>that scrawny thing
>a dragon
>just because you dress your dog up as a monster doesent make it one

only if the rider is a caster, a general, a banner bearer, wields a lance or an artillery piece.

the dragon better be more stupid than the rider

True. Still, hell of a lot more vision than just a dragon.

Cool as fuck.

Current setting has three people who ride full fledged dragons. One of them bullied a dracolich into letting him ride it, another is the half sister of the dragon she rides, and the last is from a lineage that the dragon in question swore an oath to serve after their ancestor bested it in single combat.

There are a great many people who ride lesser dragons though. Wyverns, mostly. One kingdom in particular relies almost entirely on them for it's military power due to much of their territory being steep and heavily forested mountains. Nobody has ever successfully invaded them because of it.

Epic tier characters/enemies. Can be pretty badass but the shear scope of a Dragon Knight's potential power make them OP for most purposes.

I've homebrewed that having a rider helps the dragon be more rational and less instinctual. Dragons were always smart but their instincts force them to act like beasts even when they know better.

Fight off "boarders"

>Dragon Knights
Spellcasters, low poundage archers, or crazy jousters who ride atop pseudowyverns. Their mounts of choice are often the short-necked and animalistic. The cunning and agile Dragonriders of old are too incompatible for use in an army.

>Dragoons
Augmented fighters who borrow(or steal) the might of dragons. Able to leap up or forwards at great speeds, they flank and decapitate enemy forces in the blink of an eye. However, the strain and hunger that plagues their bodies makes them ill-suited for prolonged combat.

>Pactmakers
Rare is the case of an intelligent dragon vowing to serve under a human master, even as far as sacrificing their lifespan as price for the Pact. Pactmakers possess many of the strengths of Dragoons with hardly any of the weaknesses, and can even summon and dismiss their dragon from thin air to take flight.

>Dragonriders
Heroes of legend, admired by the commoners and scorned by the powerhungry. They abandon all forms of human martial prowess, linking their minds to their dragons for truly breathtaking agility and awareness of mind. Their fate is invariably to lose their sense of self and be fused into their dragon, but for the time that they still live, they are paragons of selflessness and enlightenment.

>Dragon Lords
Dragons who aspire for divinity must first become nobles recognized by all races. The largest creatures capable of wielding arms, their presence is akin to a natural disaster, dragging land and foe alike into upheaval.

Only as mounts/thralls for uber-liches and shit. so yes, very cool.

WWI-era. Because this allows one to reinforce the theme of "Old world perishing in the fires of industrial war" with aplomb. There's a romantic tragedy to the idea of these ancient, majestic creatures and the chivalrous knights astride them being laid low, not in glorious battle against equals, but by a few conscripts behind a machine gun.

And, of course, there's a lot of fun to be had in devising ways for dragons to regain relevance on the battlefields of a total war.

>hurr durr, old depictions of dragons r weak and dum

Snakes aren't as thicc as an elephant but can still rek ur shit, kid.

Don't get started on chimpanzees...

Pretty lame, desu. Tho I think that may be from the standardization of it I've been seeing. It feels like trained dragons are more common than force-of-nature dragons.

but they are

its hard to envision the dragonslayers as these great heroes when they kill what looks like a scaled dog while fully armored on horseback

Dragons would be pretty great for recon. Fly in extremely low and get a good look in the dead of night.

>but by a few conscripts behind a machine gun.
nigga, a dragon flying over a trench and napalming the shits would be devastating

and ww1 planes are still shit enough to allow this depending on the dragons power, its only around ww2 that the whole AA thing becomes real

>Scaled great dane

Have you never actually interacted with a big dog? Fuck you know that crocodiles will fucking kill your ass, right?

Honestly, I can't help but think of this guy when someone mentions a Dragon Knight

>big dog
i have

>crocodile
havent

sure, a crocodile is dangerous- but fucking tribesmen hunt them on the regular

either way, slaying one a great hero does not make

>ywn be a dragon-knight
>ywn fly over hill and field

He has a pretty interesting story, honestly. He'd make a neat NPC.

the human is a dragon's pet

I'm not sure a pet works, but some sort of subordinate figure. Maybe a squire?

Or dropped out of a zeppelin in order to shorten time-to-target.

Bit of a problem with that plan:

>dragon lights a trench on fire
>okay, cool, a bunch of the enemy died and a gap has opened up
>wait, actually now we still have a trench in our way but it's on fire
>guess we'll wait for the flames to die down and lob artillery while we wait
>okay, the flames have stopped, tally-ho!
>shit, there's another line of trenches and here comes the enemy's counterattack
>and oh yeah, the enemy's also shelling us from well outside our counter-battery's range
>well, if we call the dragon back, maybe we can take back the initiative and press on
>but radio isn't compact enough to allow that sort of communication with a flying thing
>well, maybe he'll be able to provide us with CAS on his own
>except the fight is now so close that he can't fire on the trenches without killing a bunch of us as well
>man, trench warfare sucks

There's a reason why WWI was so static on the Western Front, and it's because combined arms had yet to be truly invented yet. In order to overcome the advantages afforded to the defenders, the attackers needed a level of speed and coordination that technology simply couldn't provide yet. A dragon could provide a tactical advantage, yes, but translating that to operational success would still depend on factors outside the dragon's influence.

We could argue contrivances and power levels all day, but if we accept the premise that trench warfare exists alongside fire-breathing dragons, it means there's a lot more problems with the military scenario than the dragons can solve.

On another note, your assertion that "AA only becomes real in WWII" is incorrect. All sorts of AA cannons and machine guns existed in WWI, and if dragons are a known quantity in this world, you better believe all sides will have invested in anti-dragon weapons before the conflict starts.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft_warfare#First_World_War

imagine befriending an ant, carrying it around and helping in the war against a rival ant colony

dragons of suitable disposition find us adorable and fascinating

Dragon riding as a combination of Falconry and Equestrianism has always appealed to me, so long as the dragons are bestial. Them being as smart as crows, dogs, pigs, and elephants is great, but I've just never been a fan of sapient dragons.

Ma dude.

dragons certainly wont be some kind of instawin, but a fast flying unit capable of dealing with large numbers of infantry/light armor is certainly better than planes at the time- especially for dogfightsit was still pilots shooting each other with guns in ww1 right?

and if the dragons are the intelligent kind they could even work as a scout/harrasment unit- try reinforcing a position when your convoys are torched and the town is aflame

>nigga, a dragon flying over a trench and napalming the shits would be devastating

that's what a QF 1 pounder Mk II 37 mm "pom-pom" is for. Dragons will certainly still be useful, just like cavalry was still useful even into the Second World War, but losing a dragon which likely takes years to grow to a large enough size to carry a human and additional time to train will become a cost benefit issue. planes are just easier to produce and you only have to worry about training the pilot rather than both the pilot and a t-rex sized fire breathing reptile.

Planes also cant operate solo and dont need a direct hit to down

AA that actually hits its target is rare, and dragons are somewhat more durable that biplanes

I like the idea that the Dragons who do this are basically adolescents who are acting out. So they behave like chads at a kegger.

> Knight: "This is fucking awesome!"
> Dragon: "Yeah bro, yeah!"
> Dragon: "RAWWWRRRR I AM A DRAGON"

either the dragon is about the size of a horse or not too much bigger, or the knight is actually a mage, otherwise it doesn't make much sense because the knight isn't adding anything to the situation

They can be an interesting addition to a setting/story. They can also be contrived pieces of shit. Anyone that says that the idea as a whole is stupid (regardless if the dragons are sapient or not) don't understand what makes a story in the slightest. Literally anything can be put into a story so long as it is plausible, and is important to the story. So long as it is plausible it works in the story. So long as it is important to the story it belongs in the story. Not everyone has to like the story but mechanically it still works in the story. I'm not saying can dislike having them in their settings/games/etc., but to make a blanket statement like "it is dumb" is to show that you don't understand what makes a story a story, or shows that you are incapable of precise speech, or at worst that you are a child that expects the world to have the same opinion as you and that your opinions are actually facts.

TLDR; this is an opinion thread, using definite language like "it is dumb" or even "it is good" without attributing why you like/dislike it is a waste of all of our time and you should try to use more precise language.

Sources: Story by Robert McKee | and several other books about story structure.

I object to dragons being benign creatures. Dragons are an amalgamation of everything that frightened primordial man. They're things to be slain.

>fucking tribesmen hunt them on the regular
>groups of dudes can beat one! You're not badass taking it on 1v1!

Also look at the size of that dragon, dude. It's way bigger than a crocodile. Stop getting blinding by your cr/a/p's sense of scale.

Wasn't this sort of the plot of Dragonheart?

So what does that make the man who tames one?

I didn't know anyone remembered them.

I will always hold a special place in my heart for Fire Emblem wyvern riders. They're not 4-legged Dragon dragons, but still bestial and intimidating.

But user, that wyvern is clearly 4 legged.

I don't like them as some sort of trained militia. A Dragon Knight is a knight worthy of a dragon, and that should be very, very rare.

Why? I think the partnership angle could be interesting. More buddy cops than a knight and his steed.

I thought they were interesting in how they were portrayed in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Without the mental link of a rider the dragon isn't much more than an animal; the rider provides a kind of stabilizing influence and steers them towards their purpose of protecting humanity. The rider's funtions in flight are providing the dragon with coordinates to teleport to and feeding them firestone to fuel their firebreath (they can eat it themselves, but they need a constant supply or else they're prone to running out during extended action).

The west was a mistake

It obviously doubles as a focus for spellcasting.