The Nametag Above the Head

The name that floats above a player’s head is the one surface dNicks does not render itself. Instead, dNicks publishes the nick as the %dnicks_name% placeholder and lets your dedicated nametag plugin (TAB, and any other that accepts a placeholder) draw the tag. That keeps a single owner for the nametag, so your rank prefix and the gradient name live in one tag with no duplicate and no fighting over the scoreboard.

TL;DR — keep your role plugin’s prefix/suffix placeholders, swap only the name for %dnicks_name%. One line of config in TAB does it.

Why dNicks doesn’t draw it

The nameplate above a head is rendered by the client, from the scoreboard team packet:

team_prefix | teamColor(profileName) | team_suffix

profileName is the raw Minecraft username — max 16 chars, [A-Za-z0-9_], one single team color, no §, no hex, no gradient. That is a client rendering limit; ProtocolLib, TAB, and every packet library hit the same wall. The only way to get a per-character gradient above a head is to render the name as custom text (an entity / an “unlimited nametag” line) instead of the vanilla name slot.

Your nametag plugin already does exactly that — TAB’s unlimited nametags replace the name line with custom, RGB-capable text. So rather than dNicks spawning a second competing text entity, it hands the styled nick to the plugin that already owns that line. dNicks feeds; TAB renders.

Setup with TAB (keep the role, swap the name)

This is the recipe you want: LuckPerms (or any role plugin) keeps the prefix/suffix, %dnicks_name% becomes the name.

Requirements: PlaceholderAPI installed (so TAB can read %dnicks_name%), and TAB’s unlimited-nametag feature enabled so the name line can carry hex.

1. Enable unlimited nametags in TAB (TAB/config.yml) — this lets the name line render full RGB instead of the single-color vanilla slot:

scoreboard-teams:
  enabled: true
  unlimited-nametag-mode:
    enabled: true

2. Point TAB’s nametag at the placeholders (TAB/groups.yml, or per-group / users.yml):

_DEFAULT_:
  tagprefix: "%luckperms_prefix%"    # role prefix — unchanged
  customtagname: "%dnicks_name%"     # the NAME above the head — the gradient nick
  tagsuffix: "%luckperms_suffix%"    # role suffix — unchanged

Result above the head:

[OWNER] DZUSILL          ← [OWNER] from LuckPerms, DZUSILL is a real gradient

tagprefix / tagsuffix keep whatever your permissions plugin already produced. Only customtagname changed — from the vanilla username to the dNicks nick.

The tab list, same idea

The tab list (hold Tab) uses the parallel keys. Either let dNicks own it directly (surfaces.tablist: true, the default) or let TAB render it from the placeholder — not both:

_DEFAULT_:
  tabprefix: "%luckperms_prefix%"
  customtabname: "%dnicks_name%"     # needs surfaces.tablist: false in dNicks
  tabsuffix: "%luckperms_suffix%"

If TAB owns the tab list this way, set surfaces.tablist: false in dNicks so the two don’t fight. See The Tab List.

Other nametag plugins

Any nametag plugin that accepts a placeholder for its name/tag line works the same way: put your role placeholder in the prefix slot and %dnicks_name% in the name slot. If the plugin only exposes a single combined line, use:

%luckperms_prefix%%dnicks_name%%luckperms_suffix%

%dnicks_name% is emitted as legacy §-hex, so per-character gradient survives for any string-based consumer. See Placeholders.

Live updates

When a player runs /nick, dNicks updates its stored nick immediately. The nametag refreshes on your nametag plugin’s own cycle — TAB re-resolves placeholders on its refresh interval (typically sub-second), so the new name appears without a relog. No dNicks-side entity is spawned, moved, or cleaned up.

Migrating from older dNicks

Earlier builds spawned a TextDisplay entity above the head and hid the vanilla name via a scoreboard team. That is gone — there is no surfaces.nametag, formats.nametag, or nametag-display section anymore. If you upgraded:

• Those keys in an old config.yml are simply ignored (harmless). Delete them for a clean file.
• Any leftover text entities from the old version: /kill @e[type=text_display] once, then restart.
• Move your old formats.nametag content into TAB’s tagprefix + customtagname as shown above.

See Integrations for the full TAB + LuckPerms + EssentialsX picture.