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.
This is always a problem with big shared settings - if you want it to change, there will be people who actively try to ignore the change because they liked how it was before or it would stop them from telling the stories they want to tell. And I'm talking here about people working on the setting, not GMs.
This reply really ignores that the post replying to brought up the 125 years of time has passed. Forgotten Realms always had a problem with setting stasis, so I can buy them going agaisnt it here. And 125 years is long enough for someone to make lucrative deal with Amethyst Dragons.
Then no one ever uses real setting because I GUARANTEE you no one ever knows entire official lore.
And what if the official lore is bad or limiting? Do you demand all Monks to be shaven-bald and living in monasteries? All Orcs to be too stupid to be playable? All Drow to be inherently evil by being born with soul tainted by Lolth and unable to not be drawn to betrayal and cruelty? All lore that, I'm gonna be honest, I'm glad is gone.
Also, setting-in-name only isnt' so bad. Dark Sun fans prefer Dark Sun where novels didn't happen, for example.
And you do realize the fact that the moment this book gets published, the hypothetical dragon-riding PDK will become official lore? So if YOU don't use it, YOU are running Forgotten Realms in name only.
The below comments are not facts. They are only my rambling opinions, as a hardcore FR fan that embraced every edition and paradigm shift of the FR, and is NOT against exploring changes made during time-jumps.
A martial "Warlord"/Military Leader has proven to be a popular character concept since 4E. Purple Dragon Knights are military knights. The leadership theme fits them, which is why I believe it was chosen back when SCAG was published. The problem with the SCAG design is that it failed to meet muster. It was mechanically weak and unimpressive. But with the new 2024 power-level paradigm, it can be fixed. I think they could go so far as to overtune it a little bit and I honestly think that would help a lot in meeting the fans' desires for another variant of a warlord-like fighter. Also, Banneret is a more generic title and can be selected to represent all kinds of military leaders, both good and evil. It's more useful to more tables and character concepts. I agree that this would be the best path for this particular book.
As for a Dragon-Rider Knight, that is a popular character concept that is fine in fiction, like Dragonlance or Pern novels, because fiction does not have to be balanced against other character concepts for a collaborative RPG. Dragons in D&D are intelligent and are more powerful than any individual player character. Narratively, the power-fantasy of a dragon rider does not fit into the power/design paradigm of D&D classes, let alone a single D&D subclass. It is so powerful that the character shouldn't even become a real dragon-rider until much higher levels, and therefore fails the litmus test of qualifying as a dragon-rider for most of the class levels. Also, no dragon wyrmling should be let out of the nest to become the pet of a 3rd level knight, and a Young Dragon is too powerful a pet.
Now as for how to make a the popular Dragon-rider Knight work in 5E in a future book? A generic Dragon Knight Paladin subclass that has a special subclass ability to use the Find Steed spell to summon a variant dragon statblock (and the paladin gets to pick the dragon type) is totally possible. It's not a real dragon and has built-in parameters and limitations. I'd be down for that. Some Purple Dragon Knight paladins might select such a subclass, but it wouldn't be ubiquitous in, or limited to, that organization.
As for FR and monster lore, Amethyst dragons are not good guys. They do not fit the understood alignment, theme, or mission of Cormyr or the PDKs. Color isn't enough to pair those two design components up. I understand if it would be a convenient narrative link, but I'm sorry, it doesn't work. Trust me, I considered it myself. In fact, here is my own attempt at a lore update that might allow for it:
Let's just say that at some point since the lore of the 4E Spellplague-era, with the Abolethic Sovereignity and other otherworldly threats causing issues, Gem Dragons became more prevalent in FR. Let's say a family of Amethyst Dragons arrived and decided to claim some mountains in the Eastern Storm Horns because they were opposed to a rising threat of Phaerimm (or other aberrations) from Anauroch to the North. The matriarch and patriarch of this family were curious about this Realm of the Purple Dragon, this realm of people who were obsessed with the concept of Purple Dragons, let alone having never met one. Playing the part of noble, majestic dragon neighbors, they could have offered an alliance with the local mortal nation, as it would give each other access to military allies to help defend against or destroy aberrant threats from Anauroch and other regions. After some years of integration, there could be a dozen+ amethyst dragons, most of them young, who got paired up with purple dragon knights who've proven themselves worthy.
I could see a passionate Cormyrean monarch and nation embracing such an alliance and shift if the dragons were just as dedicated to it (maybe hoping to influence the alignment of Corymr's leadership). But I also admit that this would be purely brand new lore invented primarily to hijack and re-define the concept of Purple Dragons of Cormyr. It also does not solve the issue that real dragon mounts do not fit the power-level limitations of subclass design. It's the kind of thing a DM offers for a personalized campaign that break the norms of a normal table.
However, you know what? There are already multiple pieces of Cormyr/PDK art portraying Amethyst Dragon silhouettes (obvious floating amethyst crystal shards) on the heraldry. You can't ignore the change in a nation's heraldry. I think it's too late to change whatever lore they planned for this. We are going to see something change, and if the forums are any indication, not everyone is going to be happy.
Me? I have an unfettered and open imagination and already have possible variants in mind. Maybe the writers can win me over with their ideas, too. But there are many others that hate any kind of change. We'll see what the writers come up with.
The 3.5e book Lords of Madness includes several prestige classes tied to a number of knightly orders opposing the Far Realm and psionic aberrations (the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign, the Society of the Sanctified Mind, and the Topaz Guardians). I wonder if maybe the WotC staffer/s who came up with idea of having the PDKs team up with amethyst dragons took inspiration from those. As others have suggested, maybe the amethyst dragons have made this deal because they believe the PDKs can help them guard against some extraplanar threat.
yeah sure, let's trust the thing that can hallucinate randomly and without care, and how the only way to truly know if it did hallucinate is if you read the "hundreds of thousands of comments" to confirm or deny, which kinda... defeats the point of the summary... hmm
Summarization of sentiment on a bunch of forum content is not even what I would call AI. NLP has been doing this for years. Whether or not WotC actually did that on responses to do sentiment analysis or summarization I’d be a little skeptical of, but it’s not at all outside the realm of possibility.
I have
Teaming up suddenly, last friday after first meeting doesn't make sense.
Joining forces over the course of events that happenned across 125 years? It can.
Why are you assuming the former is what happenned now?
Also, let's be real here:
Some high-level guy killed an Amethyst Dragon and took ton of Dragon Eggs home, let them hatch and raised them to serve as steeds for PDKs because he didn't like how they didn't have dragons despite having dragon in their name. It was slightly over 100 years ago so we're now having first of those Dragons enter adulthood.
And time makes no difference, the in-universe lore we already have makes it clear why the teamup doesn't make sense as multiple people have pointed out and there's no evidence that there's new lore that makes sense.
It's like insisting that Hershey's Syrup is a substitute for steak sauce because they're both brown.
Amethyst Dragons aren't inherently Evil in any Edition (at worst they were listed as "Always Neutral") and the Purple Dragon Knights aren't trained as dragonslayers, they focus on group tactics. So you got the lore wrong again.
Amethyst Dragons ARE famously independent and isolationist to the point that there's no way there'd be enough of them in the area to make that kind of alliance (parents stay together long enough for procreation and then leave far away, Cormyr's got enough space for maybe 2 of them if they're especially sociable for their species).
Moreover Amethyst Dragons are also noted for preferring diplomacy over violence to the point of trying to mediate conflicts between Fiends, so them sending their children off to fight is ALSO OOC.
Purple Dragon Knights on the other hand are all about banding together and have incredibly strong moral and ethical rules. They're also a nationalist group dedicated to the crown and favor taking action even if it means violence.
So the opposite of Amethyst Dragons.
Multiple people already pointed this out. No in-universe reason has been provided for why this alliance makes sense and it's obvious it was just having the Purple Dragon Knights get paired with dragons with purple scales, which is ridiculous.
