Dragon Patron Exists

[jaappleton]

As I understand it, there is a push for all books to provide player options. Make sure they don't feel left out in comparison to DMs and they are about 4/5 of the player base.

Exactly this.

Forgive me, Witty, as I still haven't learned how to splice up posts yet and address each part individually.

But regarding your other point, why couldn't a Dragon Patron be on multiple books?

A tricky question. And none of this is an 'informed opinion', more my own musings.

Could be that it's already earmarked as a subclass for the next Everything book, so less work for them to do.

The team does try to limit reprints of subclasses in an effort to have new and fresh material. And if it does get reprinted in another book, only with changes they deem necessary (Spores Druid, Bladesinger).

Could be they try to stick with the 'two subclasses per splatbook' rule they've had going on. Not to say Fizban's should be considered splat, but I simply don't know what else to call it. (It's a splatbook, isn't it?)

Or that there's currently so many iterations of a Dragon Patron on file, they didn't know which to go with and want to nail it down to a more concise vision of what the audience wants, and they didn't have time?

Could be any combination of the above, or something else entirely.

I know factually there's a lot of player options, entire classes and subclasses, currently shelved.

Now, before anyone gets excited about the fact that I said classes, as in multiple.... They're rough drafts. Not even ready for private playtest, let alone UA. And NO, I haven't heard anything about Warlord. Would have made a topic if I heard even a whisper. Not that it does or does not exist, just that I haven't heard any whispers.

[Witty Username]

Forgive me, Witty, as I still haven't learned how to splice up posts yet and address each part individually.

Oh, at least how I do it is I copy paste the quote and delete the excess post, it isn't fast but it works. A life hack if you want to do that is you can copy the qoute text to a notepad or word document and grab the bits you need, I know I find the post window somewhat restricting at times.
You can also wrap the QUOTE format around any text you want it just won't include the author and post.

The greatest quote

Could be that it's already earmarked as a subclass for the next Everything book, so less work for them to do.

That, actually makes a lot of sense, I know the MTG design team is about 3 years ahead of the outside world, that is probably true for D&D.

Could be they try to stick with the 'two subclasses per splatbook' rule they've had going on. Not to say Fizban's should be considered splat, but I simply don't know what else to call it. (It's a splatbook, isn't it?)

I thought any non-core rulebook was a splatbook, so yes?
But yeah, that is a trend isn't it. That makes sense that they wanted to stick to two, especially if this is more DM aimed anyway.

[thoroughlyS]

Forgive me, Witty, as I still haven't learned how to splice up posts yet and address each part individually.

I just copy-paste the QUOTE and /QUOTE handles around the different parts of the post that I'm replying to.

[jaappleton]

I thought any non-core rulebook was a splatbook, so yes?
But yeah, that is a trend isn't it. That makes sense that they wanted to stick to two, especially if this is more DM aimed anyway.

I think anything with two subclasses or fewer, and/or something with a handful of spells and races is splat.

Something much larger like Tasha's or Xanathar's? That's a supplement book.

Something more like Volo's that has some playable races only... That walks a blurry line between DM material and player material. Though, frankly, its mostly just to get players to also purchase a book created mainly for DMs. Don't know what to call it, though.

[Psyren]

Origin of the term "splatbook"

TL;DR - the "splat" was another name for the asterisk symbol (*) which WW used to denote their non-core books, and then the TSR crowd picked up that terminology. So whether you want splat to mean all non-core or only the non-core with a certain quantity of player-focused options, you're not wrong either way.