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.

 

[Valetudo]

I think the better question is did the game devs really need to do world breaking event to change editions? I don't think any of the time jumps where needed in the game itself.

 

[Remathilis]

I think the better question is did the game devs really need to do world breaking event to change editions? I don't think any of the time jumps where needed in the game itself.

Well, let's say you want to introduce a new species in the PHB (like a species Born of Dragons). You either need to explain why they suddenly appeared OR retcon they were always there and you didn't notice. Both have pitfalls. Which is why D&D has alternated between both with various amounts of success.

 

[Valetudo]

Maybe use points of light? I didn't want a wannabe warlord, because I'm a FR superman. I just want a good wannabe over a bad dragon class(treant monk can say whatever he wants it's a bad class). I did read the books and they only got worse with each edition.

 

[WhatTheEyeSees]

The old leadership (Crawford and Perkins) were sprinkling aberrations throughout modules, which made the PDK amethyst connection make a lot of sense from a meta plot perspective (they discussed the mind flayers and the meta plot, not the amethyst dragons in one of the videos). The nice thing about this slow build up of aberrations is that it was over time and not one of the world breaking events. It was also left intentionally vague, because who really understands an aberration?

I am not sure if we will still see the aberration thread going forward with the changes over at WoTC though.

 

[bedir than]

The Banneret is so boring that no one will ever play it. It's a pointless waste of space. Battlemaster is flat better and can fill exactly the same RP role. Champion all fits the role if you want something simpler.

You know what role we don't have a fighter subclass for: dragon rider (or any sort of rider, but dragons are currently popular).

I played the old version. Having one with more power and utility? I'll play that. And I haven't even seen level 7 yet

 

[Mournblade94]

Even among the publishers and writers no one has full grasp of the lore. I assure you, all rpgs are full of books written by writers who added something with no idea another writer is doing something contradictory. Mystara in particular is a whole setting built on it. I once attended a panel lead by Liz Danford, co-writer of Northen Reaches Gazeteer, and someone asked her how it was working with Bruce Heard (who wrote Principalities of Glantri Gazeteer) and said she doesn't know because each person working on GAZ series was writing their own thing, and they would only interact after work, when they went drinking and work topics were strictly forbidden. So by your assumption, each person working on Mystara Gazeteers was inherently wrong because they did not knew full lore, thus meaning their work should be discarded and entire setting no longer exists?

You are addressing a straw man here. The PDK Dragonrider isn't even vaguely close to the situation. Besides the Voyages of the Princess Arc there was not much to develop. I'm not talking about development conflicts I'm talking about the Jerry Crawford " no old lore matters". Completely different. You're making arguments against something else.

Ed Greenwood on his patreon is giving exclusively 5e FR lore. He is still under WOTC NDA, but the lore makes sense and it is rich. Ed Greenwood has virtually ordained fans as the authority on particular areas. So WOTC could do whatever they want with the lore. There's a better more accurate lore source, that is prolific.

If you still cling to Half-orcs and inherently evil Orcs, you should consider if 5.5 is for you, considering the game moved away from both. Including toning Grummsh down (in my opinion they should make Grummsh just Orc aspect of Talos, especially if they're both now Odin-inspired) And was right to do it. "Inherently anything" races is a bad game design that limits roleplay opportunnities to no benefit than cannot be achieved without it.

If they botch the lore of Forgotten Realms bad I will not move to a new system but I have everything I need for this one. I moved to a new system from 4e when they decimated the Lore. Dropped 4e instantly. 5e didn't really fix the mistake that well. It was about as effective Rise of Skywalker was at fixing the Last Jedi Nonsense. Difference here is I LIKE the 5e rules, I'm not going to abandon 5e2024 because I use it to great effect mixed with 5e2014. But if the FR books botch the lore I will not buy products further down the line. They lost alot of the "whales" with 4e. To this day even Developers at the time say the worst mistake they made with 4e was drastically changing the lore. If anything WOTC has a PF like competitor now with Daggerheart. No way I will adopt Daggerheart though.

I am a DM so I can very much disallow Orcs, keep Half Elves, and restrict other races. I have rules mastery of this system. The only thing I need WOTC for is the time I don't have to make subclasses. If I can deal with art like Sandle wearing man bun muffin dwarves bringing his kitty cat to the forge, or prickly pear harvesting orcs in the players handbook racial art I can deal with other people I don't play with making Orcs playable. There is nothing saying I have to allow it.

I teach 11 year olds how to play. They have no problem understanding my race restrictions and the role humanoid monsters play in the world. In a world where good and evil is tangible you are going to have inherently evil races. If you don't want them you're welcome to go along with the rules. If I can deal with art like Sandle wearing man bun muffin dwarves bringing his kitty cat to the forge, or prickly pear harvesting orcs in the players handbook racial art I can deal with a gaff like making Orcs playable. There is nothing saying I have to allow it.

And you would be surprised how annoyingly common are people who demand all Monks be from a monastery and bald-shaven because there was once in one book line of text describing them that way. People who are mad Monks are martial artists and not religious people who spend whole day brewing alcohol, praying and copying books also exist, but are irrelevant.

They probably don't play D&D though.

If anything, I'm making the opposite assumption, I beleive nurture overpowers nature. My entire point in the very post you quoted was that if PDK got bunch of Dragon eggs and raised the dragons, they would not be adhering to principles of "Amethyst Dragon Society", however nonsensical they may be.

Or due to their nature, they would because it is in their nature. The entire modern field of sociogenomics are showing how the Nature vs Nurture argument is complicated. They work hand in hand and the evidence is very strong that the genes influence the environment an organism gets nurtured in. If you're Ok with Cormyr enslaving Dragons against their nature that is a perfectly fine trope to use. I tend to find Dragons don't LIKE being enslaved whether they are inherently Lawful or Chaotic.

I did not see good use of Aligment in this thread, not with the idea Neutral means somehow both fiercely independent and adhering to strict code of rules and refusing to take sides in a conflict at all.

That is ONE of the possibilities of Neutral alignment amid a myriad of others. Some neutral people won't take sides. Some Neutral People like Mordenkainen will take the side of good or evil depending on what one is the most threat. Mordenkainen aids the City of Greyhawk because Iuz is shifting the balance towards evil.

Some neutrals don't give a crap. Some neutrals take the side that benefits them the most. Mordenkainen indeed DOES stick to a strict code but he sides with who ever is needed to preserve the balance.

Alignment has never been restrictive in that there is a huge spectrum of how to play Lawful good and even Chaotic Evil. Good roleplayers can manage this. Alignment was always cosmological.

I have world building explanations for inherently evil orcs, and how they differ from the evil corruption of the Drow. I use and explain alignment to even young new players and they can operate within it with no problem. I had an entire tragic campaign that took two years to complete of a players trying to raise a Red Dragon to be good. It started out with the dragon trying to be good, but sometimes you just can't escape the compulsion of Cosmic Alignment. She never hurt her friends though. Just others.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It is not the prior lore, it is the new lore they published in the UA.

In the UA they said the "PDKs are paragons of valor ... rally to the causes of justice and freedom .... protect the innocent ... enlisted from any realms where chivalry is in abundance ..."

I think what Banana is saying is those traits do not go with Amethyst Dragons. It fits Gold Dragons and Silver Dragons, but Amethyst Dragons are aloof and detached and are NOT these things.

Unless they are going to wholesale change the lore on Amethyst Dragons as well.

Somewhat, yeah. The noble and valorous order of leaders and knight allying with these aloof dragons who learn about planar balance is not an obvious pairing, and the UA didn't offer any reason for it, which leads to wild mass guessing like "lol, they just shoehorned the game's purple dragons into the Purple Dragon Knights," which, without other evidence as to why they're smashing these two things together, certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility.

A Gold or Silver or Bronze dragon would've made more intuitive sense. In that case, my critique would've definitely been more in line with "this is just a bad subclass design."

PDK riding purple dragons dont even make sense with current lore models.

That doesn't mean the story of allying with amethyst dragons can't fit, of course. A subplot about the Far Realm or Mind Flayers or something could tie the two quite comfortably together. And, I'm fond of the tension that could exist between the noble intent and reputation of these valorous knights and the significantly less altruistic or honor-bound dragons that they've allied with. That kind of conflict - allies who want very different things - is a rich vein for storytelling, and it could be a very mature kind of plotline where stated and closely-held ideals chafe up against practical considerations, the responsible use of power, and maybe even an effective defense of the world. If WotC leans into the tension and allows Cormyr to become a little more complex, that story could certainly go interesting places.

Of course, they could just go "Now the Purple Dwagon Knights have purple dwagon fwiends because the dwagons are cool and are good to their fwiends wheeeee! airplane noises" and not explore any of this, and that would be dumb. And they could just leave it completely unexplained like they did in the UA, and that could arguably be even dumber.

And because this is the first significant supplement of a new "edition" and a new leadership team, the scrutiny is extremely high, since this could signify what the next 5 or so years of the game are like. Are we going to try and respect the lore? Advance stories in interesting and story-rich directions? Deal with kind of grown-up topics like the fragility of alliances and how power groups can use each other and if it's possible to maintain your ideals when you ally with people who don't share them? Or are we going to be dealing with a leadership team who thinks things like "Purple Dragon Knights should be friends with purple dragons!" is a good basis for design and storytelling, so good, in fact, that they're ignoring or being deaf to a fandom that is telling them that it is not, in fact, good? Is this going to be a fun run of the edition cycle that adds and expands and develops things, or one that is going to involve tolerating the team's pet ideas of what is good for the game regardless of if they're good or not?

Either way, though, the UA subclass was definitely Not It.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Maybe use points of light?

They tried to make it default. In 4e. By the way that ediotion sold, I do not think it will ever see this setting again.

So WOTC could do whatever they want with the lore. There's a better more accurate lore source, that is prolific.

Then why are you being mad in this thread again?

If they botch the lore of Forgotten Realms bad I will not move to a new system but I have everything I need for this one. I moved to a new system from 4e when they decimated the Lore. Dropped 4e instantly. 5e didn't really fix the mistake that well. It was about as effective Rise of Skywalker was at fixing the Last Jedi Nonsense. Difference here is I LIKE the 5e rules, I'm not going to abandon 5e2024 because I use it to great effect mixed with 5e2014. But if the FR books botch the lore I will not buy products further down the line. They lost alot of the "whales" with 4e. To this day even Developers at the time say the worst mistake they made with 4e was drastically changing the lore. If anything WOTC has a PF like competitor now with Daggerheart. No way I will adopt Daggerheart though.

It's your right to not buy the books, but why make such a big mess about it? And what's with the tangents about Star Wars? Nothing stops you from using the books with whatever lore you want, just say you set it earlier in the timeline.

They probably don't play D&D though.

You;d be surprised how many videos I have seen with this premise and thumbnails like this one from peopel who make playing D&D and talking about it their job

I am a DM so I can very much disallow Orcs, keep Half Elves, and restrict other races. I have rules mastery of this system. The only thing I need WOTC for is the time I don't have to make subclasses. If I can deal with art like Sandle wearing man bun muffin dwarves bringing his kitty cat to the forge, or prickly pear harvesting orcs in the players handbook racial art I can deal with other people I don't play with making Orcs playable. There is nothing saying I have to allow it.

I teach 11 year olds how to play. They have no problem understanding my race restrictions and the role humanoid monsters play in the world. In a world where good and evil is tangible you are going to have inherently evil races. If you don't want them you're welcome to go along with the rules. If I can deal with art like Sandle wearing man bun muffin dwarves bringing his kitty cat to the forge, or prickly pear harvesting orcs in the players handbook racial art I can deal with a gaff like making Orcs playable. There is nothing saying I have to allow it.

Considering you decided to describe in detail the exact same pair of two pictures, no, I do not think you can actually deal with them. If you can deal with something, you don't drop unhinged rant about it twice in span of two paragraphs.

Or due to their nature, they would because it is in their nature. The entire modern field of sociogenomics are showing how the Nature vs Nurture argument is complicated. They work hand in hand and the evidence is very strong that the genes influence the environment an organism gets nurtured in. If you're Ok with Cormyr enslaving Dragons against their nature that is a perfectly fine trope to use. I tend to find Dragons don't LIKE being enslaved whether they are inherently Lawful or Chaotic.

I like how you claim nature vs nurture is complicated and then immediatelly reject any scenario where the nature is not the sole defining factor and compare nurture to slavery.

That is ONE of the possibilities of Neutral alignment amid a myriad of others. Some neutral people won't take sides. Some Neutral People like Mordenkainen will take the side of good or evil depending on what one is the most threat. Mordenkainen aids the City of Greyhawk because Iuz is shifting the balance towards evil.

Some neutrals don't give a crap. Some neutrals take the side that benefits them the most. Mordenkainen indeed DOES stick to a strict code but he sides with who ever is needed to preserve the balance.

Alignment has never been restrictive in that there is a huge spectrum of how to play Lawful good and even Chaotic Evil. Good roleplayers can manage this. Alignment was always cosmological.

Except in argument I was refering to the aligment is used as iron-hard strict unbreakable set of restrictions that define the ONLY way an entire species can act, coincidentally in line with argument of person making these restrictions.

I have world building explanations for inherently evil orcs, and how they differ from the evil corruption of the Drow.

Sounds like waste of time, but ok?

I have world building explanations for inherently evil orcs, and how they differ from the evil corruption of the Drow. I use and explain alignment to even young new players and they can operate within it with no problem. I had an entire tragic campaign that took two years to complete of a players trying to raise a Red Dragon to be good. It started out with the dragon trying to be good, but sometimes you just can't escape the compulsion of Cosmic Alignment. She never hurt her friends though. Just others.

Was it tragic, or did you just took all of player's effort, undid it to "teach them a lesson" about your worldvie, and then told yourself their sad looks meant it was a great tragedy, and not that they were disappointed to see all their hard work and excitement squandered?

 

[Necropolitan]

You know what else hasn't been given an in universe explanation? Why Calimshan is now a magi-tek setting. Why Icewind Dale is now a horror setting (at least Rime of the Frost Maiden gives some background for that). How the Moonshaes morphed into a fully fey kingdom vs Irish x Vikings.

You got the lore wrong again.

The first ever Forgotten Realms trilogy had the Irish-cultured Moonshaes suffering an invasion of fantasy vikings alongside the other villains, and their country has a fey mother goddess and strong druidic traditions! And it's the same with Calimshan being at the forefront of utilizing everyday magic and Icewind Dale having horrors under the ice having already been established as far back as early Legend of Drizzt.

Every single time you've tried to make an example you've cited lore that directly contradicts the point you're trying to make.

This is all why no one should actually want an updated FR campaign setting book for 5E. What you all actually want is the Grey Box republished with a 5E sticker on the front.

No, the majority of fans wanted an update that seemed like a natural progression.

Szass Tam's coup got an entire trilogy of novels dedicated to it but you could have cut it down to a couple paragraphs and it still would have made sense in-setting.

 

[WhatTheEyeSees]

Until we see the new books it is too early to comment on the lore progression and if it feels natural. We got little bits in the UA, but they clearly didn't spoil the meta plot. For example the Calmshan Paladin said nothing about magic tech. Outside of images showing amythist dragons in Cormyr we have no idea what the lore will be. We can suspect a tie-in with dragons, but it hasn't been confirmed yet.

My guess is we got the lore to support the UA subclass, but not the UA subclass itself because they reverted the old SCAG template. So dragon lore, but no dragon riding player characters.