Purple Dragon Knight Retooled as Banneret in D&D's Heroes of Faerun Book

The much-maligned Purple Dragon Knight Fighter subclass is being retooled towards its original support origins in the upcoming Heroes of Faerun book. Coming out of GenCon, an image of a premade character sheet of a Banneret is making its way around the Internet. The classic support-based Fighter subclass appears to have replaced the Purple Dragon Knight subclass, which received a ton of criticism for not resembling the Purple Dragon Knight's traditional lore.

The Banneret's abilities includes a Level 3 "Knightly Envoy" ability that allows it to cast Comprehend Language as a ritual and gain proficiency in either Intimidation, Insight, Performance, or Persuasion (this appears unchanged from the Purple Dragon Knight UA), plus a Group Recovery ability that allows those within 30 feet of the Banneret to regain 1d4 Hit Points plus the Banneret's Fighter Level when the Banneret uses its Second Wind ability. Scrapped is the Purple Dragon companion that the UA version of the subclass had, which grew in power as the Purple Dragon Knight leveled up.

The Banneret was the generic name for the Purple Dragon Knight in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. The Banneret/Purple Dragon Knight was originally more of a support class that could provide the benefits of its abilities to its allies instead of or in addition to benefitting from them directly. For instance, a Banneret's Action Surge could be used to allow a nearby ally to make an attack, and Indomitable could allow an ally to reroll a failed saving throw in addition to the Banneret.

 

[Remathilis]

I really liked the UA Purple Knight. I wish they had simply responded to the criticism by changing it to a different name and lore. Amethyst Knight or whatever.

I don't doubt that the idea won't come back eventually, but it wasn't going to be in this book. They had a special setup where one subclass was tied to the five theme/settings in the adventure book. Winter Walker for Icewind Dale (cold + horror). Scion of the Three for Baldur's Gate. Oath of Genies for Calimshan. College of the Moon for the Moonshaes. Purple Dragon Knight was the one for Cormyr. The issue was the that it flopped so hard they had to find something else that would fit Cormyr. Generic dragon knight wasn't an option. Hence the attempt to make something usable out of the old PDK/banneret to get it to print.

Maybe the dragon rider comes back in a Dragonlance or a Of Everything book. But unfortunately this is what we got left with to fill the "Cormyr specific subclass" niche.

 

[pukunui]

I don't doubt that the idea won't come back eventually, but it wasn't going to be in this book. They had a special setup where one subclass was tied to the five theme/settings in the adventure book. Winter Walker for Icewind Dale (cold + horror). Scion of the Three for Baldur's Gate. Oath of Genies for Calimshan. College of the Moon for the Moonshaes. Purple Dragon Knight was the one for Cormyr. The issue was the that it flopped so hard they had to find something else that would fit Cormyr. Generic dragon knight wasn't an option. Hence the attempt to make something usable out of the old PDK/banneret to get it to print.

Maybe the dragon rider comes back in a Dragonlance or a Of Everything book. But unfortunately this is what we got left with to fill the "Cormyr specific subclass" niche.

But Cormyr isn't even one of the 5 regions. The Dalelands to the north are, and they're not getting a thematic subclass.

 

[Tonguez]

The 3e PDK did not slay big creatures. It was Cha based and gave bonuses to allies.
Also could cast Fear once per day.
SRD - Purple Dragon Knight

Yeah, I always preferred Banneret as their name as it tied more to the Knight Commander they the class entailed.

The Purple Dragon Knight lore origin starts with Prince Azoun (later King of Cormyr) who with the Cormyr military and Court Wizard managed to kill two dragons. In particular the Purple Dragon Thauglor, was lead into an ambush by Cormyr archers and then with the aid of the royal wizard, Azoun managed to disembowel it. The Commanders of Cormyr adopted the name Purple Dragon Knights after that.

Anyway I think that story alone -Azoun commanding troops and buffing PCs while slaying dragons - is enough to pin a Dragonslaying class to

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't think pets being part of the class just work in 5e. Pets probably should just be NPCs that players can give some instructions. But of course that some classes have to use a huge chunk of their power budget to these baked in pets, it means you cannot give NPC pets to other characters as that breaks the balance.

Good pets are really hard to do in a TTRPG. Lots of difficult design bridges to cross, all at once, and really hard to do many of them elegantly.

The pets that already exist in 5e (familiars, artificer pets, beast master pets, certain conjuration spells, etc) are already really problematic in their own ways. And a frickin' dragon would be something you'd want to be more powerful than any of those. More defining.

Anyway I find this whole line “They’re called Purple Dragon Knights so they should get purple dragon pets!” to be really juvenile, as if D&D players can’t understand the name of faction not being literal. Perhaps the Emerald Enclave should live in a literal castle made of emeralds? Does everyone in the Order of the Gauntlet get a special magic gauntlet? Are we gonna cut up the membership cards of any Harpers who can’t play the harp?

It's giving Colonialism: show up somewhere, refuse to understand the local lay of the land, and declare that you have a better idea than anyone else, and make everyone else obey your weird ideas just because you happen to have achieved a position of temporary authority.

 

[doctorhook]

I guess I care more about the default setting being straightforward and accessible than being deep and meaningful, or not "juvenile" (whatever that means for this elf game that I've often played with literal children).

Once again, to me the whole appeal of the Forgotten Realms is that it is a setting that's cosmopolitan enough to accommodate basically any character option or any monster, which has giant piles of lore easily accessible, which everyone is slightly familiar with, but which, critically, nobody I play with is invested enough in the lore of to care if we change up many or most things to suit our needs or whims. If I wanted lore I care about I'd use my own setting, but then I'd have to either tell players "no" or accept the lore consequences when they wanted to play a cat person in a psyonic subclass. The Forgotten Realms just says yes to everything, and has the sort of lore that comes from that. I don't particularly respect it's lore "vision", but that's part of what makes it useful.

I get that someone's going to be invested in any setting, it just seems a little silly when its a setting that every new non-setting specific bit of content just gets thrown into willy nilly and which has clearly been substantially reinterpreted over the decades to suit changes of edition and such. There has not really been a grand coherent vision for Faerun for a long, long time, and honestly when WotC tries to have some big event ongoing that produces the worst content; I really hate when a published adventure derails the flow to feature something that is just there to be a cool moment for people who played some other published adventure or read some novel (without even the courtesy of a DM note that that's why its there and here's how to skip it if it's not relevant to your group).

In any case as someone who loves the Forgotten Realms because I don't have to care about its lore it's odd to encounter people who love it because they do. Makes me feel like it's time to get a new generic fantasy setting as the default for those of us who just want to roll dice and not have to make up every bit of lore on the fly, and maybe the Forgotten Realms can be preserved as it is for you lore-curating afficianados.

You’ve made an important point here, but probably not the one you intended to make: It was a mistake to turn a popular established setting into the default setting, because newcomers will have no incentive to learn that setting.

4E gave us a perfect default pseudo-setting in “Points of Light”/Nentir Vale because it was deliberately vague except for a handful of anchors intended for DMs to build their own stories around.

5E got lazy and shoehorned everything into Forgotten Realms, with incoherent results.

The issue was the that it flopped so hard they had to find something else that would fit Cormyr. Generic dragon knight wasn't an option. Hence the attempt to make something usable out of the old PDK/banneret to get it to print.

WotC’s mistake with the PDK began the moment someone conceived of turning it into a dragon-themed pet-class focused on a very niche type of dragon. They had to know that pet classes are clunky as hell and that anyone half-familiar with FR would point out how ridiculous the concept was.

This whole exercise seems like something generated by a marketing team focus group of people who had no familiarity with FR anyway.

 

[ECMO3]

This whole exercise seems like something generated by a marketing team focus group of people who had no familiarity with FR anyway.

Agree. And this is a huge problem when writing a book that is supposed to specifically be about the setting.

 

[ECMO3]

I'm not obsessed with stats to be honest - I just think fighters need more HP. All I'm saying is that there should an option with mechanical benefits for players who fancy playing an intelligent, non-magical fighter. Fighters shouldn't be forced to be stupid because that 14 really should go into Dex or Con.

With a d10 hit die and how easy combat is in 5E it is not really forced. In 11 years of 5E I think I have only played 2 fighters with higher than a 13 Constitution at 1st level and one of them rolled really well and had 4 abilities above 14 before adding racial bonuses. I have never had a fighter die (I have had other PCs die).

There is no real need to go higher than a 12 unless you are playing a race or class that has a save or ability that keys off of constitution (i.e. Dhamphir, Dragonborn, Rune Knight etc). Using the 2024 rules I even played a point buy Dwarf Fighter with the tough feat who started with an 8 Constitution. The feat and race gave me plenty of hit points and the race and class gave me the save proficiency with advantage on a lot of those saves.

Evaluated across all three pillars, a fighter (or really any PC) who invests in constitution is usually going to be weaker than a character than one who doesn't. Not always, but on most builds and most games this is the case I think.

 

[Pauln6]

With a d10 hit die and how easy combat is in 5E it is not really forced. In 11 years of 5E I think I have only played 2 fighters with higher than a 13 Constitution at 1st level and one of them rolled really well and had 4 abilities above 14 before adding racial bonuses. I have never had a fighter die (I have had other PCs die).

There is no real need to go higher than a 12 unless you are playing a race or class that has a save or ability that keys off of constitution (i.e. Dhamphir, Dragonborn, Rune Knight etc). Using the 2024 rules I even played a point buy Dwarf Fighter with the tough feat who started with an 8 Constitution. The feat and race gave me plenty of hit points and the race and class gave me the save proficiency with advantage on a lot of those saves.

Evaluated across all three pillars, a fighter (or really any PC) who invests in constitution is usually going to be weaker than a character than one who doesn't. Not always, but on most builds and most games this is the case I think.

What we're finding is more that Barbarians have more hp and more ways to preserve those hp. Toughness will help but can be taken by anyone.

I would have preferred fighters to have had an ability called Tactical Withdrawal where they can impose disadvantage on opportunity attacks and (at highrer levels) riposte against anyone who attacks them or an adjacent ally.