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.

 

[tombowings]

They don’t read it. To employ people to read through and analyse all the text responses would be much much more expensive than looking at the basic numbers.

Grok summarize this.

 

[TiQuinn]

They don’t read it. To employ people to read through and analyse all the text responses would be much much more expensive than looking at the basic numbers.

A lot of WOTC folks with social media accounts took to those same accounts to directly refute that.

 

[Remathilis]

They don’t read it. To employ people to read through and analyse all the text responses would be much much more expensive than looking at the basic numbers.

They do read it, they don't act on it like we think they do.

For example, if WotC read all the comments on a class revision (say, the sorcerer, artificer or psion) and WotC gets feedback like "this class shouldn't exist, delete it from the game" that feedback isn't helpful to answering their questions (does this class work mechanically, is it fun to play, does it capture the fantasy?) All it says is you reject the fundamental premise of the question and nothing of value can be gleaned beyond "no". WotC rarely rejects the premise, only the implementation. Even the mystic died not because of any anti-psionics crusade but because that version of psionics was not well received.

WotC reads for certain types of feedback. It doesn't weigh all feedback equally. I don't think anything short of a "hadozee level media blitz" would have deterred the PDKs and actual ADs from teaming up. It touches more than just one subclass. So if your feedback was on how mechanically it wasn't good, you got listened to. If your feedback was "but teh LOAR!" you got ignored.

 

[TiQuinn]

WotC reads for certain types of feedback. It doesn't weigh all feedback equally. I don't think anything short of a "hadozee level media blitz" would have deterred the PDKs and actual ADs from teaming up. It touches more than just one subclass. So if your feedback was on how mechanically it wasn't good, you got listened to. If your feedback was "but teh LOAR!" you got ignored.

I agree in principle but I will caveat that it depends - if the complaints about the lore were consistent and contained the same general complaint (i.e. the same keywords), that could've bubbled up.

 

[mellored]

Forums are self selected, so their feedback is not neccicaraly the same feedback from more casual players, which is most of the players.

So it could of easily been 50% of form replies where about the lore changes, but only 15% of the survey mentioned it.


Also we still haven't seen the higher level Banneret features. Getting a dragon at 7 isn't entirely out of the question. Though i personality don't expect it.

 

[Remathilis]

Forums are self selected, so their feedback is not neccicaraly the same feedback from more casual players, which is most of the players.

So it could of easily been 50% of form replies where about the lore changes, but only 15% of the survey mentioned it.


Also we still haven't seen the higher level Banneret features. Getting a dragon at 7 isn't entirely out of the question. Though i personality don't expect it.

They mentioned the dragon is no longer part of the subclass. The banneret is going to be a support/warlord type fighter now. We still don't know what the later features are, but I wager none will involve dragons.

 

[Remathilis]

I agree in principle but I will caveat that it depends - if the complaints about the lore were consistent and contained the same general complaint (i.e. the same keywords), that could've bubbled up.

Even if it did, the opposition would have to be near unanimous for it to go beyond the subclass and affect the general idea of the union. Like "purple dragons are racist" levels of blowback. So while I do think some of that anti-lore change feedback bubbled up, I don't think it was sufficient enough for them to go back and change the stuff in the background, the Dalelands chapter, reorder art, etc.

I just want to make it clear that the change from PDK dragon rider to banneret was not due to the alliance of amethyst dragons and knights being scrapped. That level of change wasn't in the cards and no matter what you told WotC, they weren't going to change it based on subclass feedback. Which is why I have zero sympathy for people who try to down vote stuff on surveys based on opposition to the very idea (cf people who have redlined the psion because they hate the very idea of psionics). UA is not design by committee, it's a vibe check to see if what they are working on feels fun to play.

It's something I wish more survey respondents would consider when responding.

 

[TiQuinn]

Even if it did, the opposition would have to be near unanimous for it to go beyond the subclass and affect the general idea of the union. Like "purple dragons are racist" levels of blowback. So while I do think some of that anti-lore change feedback bubbled up, I don't think it was sufficient enough for them to go back and change the stuff in the background, the Dalelands chapter, reorder art, etc.

I just want to make it clear that the change from PDK dragon rider to banneret was not due to the alliance of amethyst dragons and knights being scrapped. That level of change wasn't in the cards and no matter what you told WotC, they weren't going to change it based on subclass feedback. Which is why I have zero sympathy for people who try to down vote stuff on surveys based on opposition to the very idea (cf people who have redlined the psion because they hate the very idea of psionics). UA is not design by committee, it's a vibe check to see if what they are working on feels fun to play.

It's something I wish more survey respondents would consider when responding.

And now it seems they have the worst of both worlds - the lore changed, and the class is, to my eye, plain Jane vanilla and boring.

 

[Mournblade94]

Orcs of Thar pre-dates Complete Book of Humanoids. They were playable in Basic first

Its not a good book, sure, but, its the first time they're playable.

Thank you for that. I stand corrected. I often overlook Mystara. I bought the material but never really read it.

Adding entire continents to the world who interact with the main part of it absolutely alters the Realms. If Ed was going to add his own versions of those (which, he's said he wouldn't do and doesn't consider KT, Zakhara or Maztica to be part of the realms), it'd fit in with the Realms more.

I agree with that. But inserting the real world analogs did not effect a player playing in the FR Box Set. They only interacted in so far as an occasional reference to an NPC.

And I disagree. One unrealism doesn't mean you can just slap every single one on. Plus, well, the Warcraft defense remains in place, where I can just point at Warcraft which has the same, yet doesn't have inherently evil races. Same with Elder Scrolls, which even goes harder given the whole organic time machine dragons and esoteric Deep Lore side that'd make any way D&D's ever handled polytheism stare in awe. There's quite a lot of difference given the powerhouses those two are. Even the most popular D&D thing of the current era, Baldurs Gate 3, hasn't hit either WoW's "In its peak, it caused notable drops in the number of people buying MtG and D&D" power or Skyrim's sheer availability

Any time I hear about inherently evil races, I think of this scene from He-Man, when instead you're also losing out on stuff like the scene where the orc who damned his people instead gives his life to defend them.

Its not piling more unrealistic aspects on, its simply about what unrealistic aspects do I care about. I am a scientist and now science educator by trade. I tend to play fantasy more than sci fi because science unrealistic bothers me more than it does other people. Fantasy relieves that for me because its magic not science.

Likewise I'm not very interested in exploring Humanity in any of the games I run so having D&D races being evil doesn't bother me or my players.

I also run Elderscrolls UESRPG. Unofficial ESRPG. Really good. I dont use alignment in that at all because its not part of the world building. Likewise in the Traveller game I have no inherently evil races because in reality that's not a thing.

But I am 100% ok with it in a world where Cosmological Alignment is a force coordinating nature.

People in general have warped Alignment to biological determinism and it has poisoned the entire conversation around use of alignment.

 

[WhatTheEyeSees]

I want to point out that in a recent interview McKenzie (sp?) stated that they got a lot of feedback on the banneret and took what people liked most about the old subclass and what they liked most about the new subclass and combined them into the new Banneret.

So unless she is lying, it is that they actually read the feedback and made changes to the subclass based on the feedback about the subclass, which is contrary to what some think happened.

I think this actually shows how the current system is not functional. A lot of folks gave the higher level abilities good scores because they worked with the dragon as well as party members at the same time. I know I sure would not have marked them highly if the goal was to back port them to the old PDK from SCAG (Banneret).

Regardless of what side you are on the fact that this thread is over 300 posts shows that WoTC failed to make changes to the subclass that made everyone happy.