Best Feats for Banneret Fighter 5e
by Prince Phantom
Hot take, this subclass isn’t that bad. It’s still the second worst Fighter subclass (Champion is much worse), but the base Fighter is probably the best pure martial, none of our abilities force us to play suboptimally, and all of our abilities are good and will see use. The only problem is that while all of these features are net positives, their actual impact over the course of a day is negligible. A bit of extra healing, some extra attacks from your party (great if you have a Rogue on your team), expertise in Persuasion, and the ability to help our allies when they fail a save (assuming we also failed that save).
All of this combines to make this subclass feel like Fighter+, and that isn’t a terrible place to be. Again, still very bad by modern design standards, but not detrimental. Sadly all this generic design means our feat selection is should be pretty box standard, but I actually surprised myself with some of the feats that actually work really well for us.
Best Feats for Banneret Fighter 5e
Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter (ASAP): We’re already pretty suboptimal with our subclass choice, so we really can’t afford to be suboptimal and fight in melee as well. As usual, take Crossbow Expert first, then Sharpshooter as the later only deals more damage once we have extra attack. We’ll be firing a hand crossbow for our entire career, and doing so 3-4 times a round for most of our life, so get those d6 ready.
Inspiring Leader (Lv 6): Hey, we get a feature that super boosts our Persuasion, so why not lean into that? Investing even just a 14 into our Charisma makes us plenty good at persuasion and qualifies us for this feat. The really sad part is that this one feat sells the flavor of this subclass better than any of our actual abilities. Obviously don’t take this if someone else already has a means of party-wide temporary hp, as you can’t stack it.
Dragon Fear (Lv 8): Let me sell you on playing one of the new Dragonborn from Fizbans. Fighters can take advantage of the breath weapon better than any other class thanks to their extra attacks at higher levels, we get a damage resistance of our choice that we can tailor to what we expect to face in our campaign, and we get access to this wonderful little feat. A selective 30ft AOE of fear that only goes away if our enemy takes damage, keys off of our Charisma that we already have hopefully invested in, and all it costs us is one of our many attacks. This is comparable in power to the actual Fear spell, and we can use it proficiency bonus times per day. You can also play a Metallic Dragonborn for even more breath options, or Gem for telepathy and limited flight. Yeah I’m taking Gem, specifically amethyst as force damage is actually pretty common to see since the release of Monsters of the Multiverse. Oh and it lets you play a literal purple dragon, so there’s that too.
Gift of the Gem Dragon (Lv 8): Since we are playing at range, we can position ourselves to a point where enemies must use most or all of their movement to get to us. We can then push them back 10ft if they hit us (more reliably since we invest in our Charisma) and prevent them from making any more attacks while also giving us an automatic disengage. Fits into the whole “purple dragon” theme too.
Fey Touched (Lv 12): Misty Step helps us escape from melee monsters and since we actually care about our Charisma, we have a few more choices than most. Silvery Barbs is still the best spell of the lot, but Bless, Command, and Gift of Alacrity are also good choices.
Resilient Wisdom (Lv 12): Even if we want to invest in our Charisma, I recommend making sure that taking this rounds us up to at least a 12, preferably 14. Failing a Wisdom save normally takes us straight out of the fight for multiple rounds at least, if not the entire fight. Worst case scenario we’ll be shooting our friends. Indomitable is not enough to bolster our saves. If you needed a 17 or higher to pass that Wisdom save, a reroll probably isn’t going to help you much.
Tough/Lucky (Lv 14): Both of these feats boost our defenses. I’d probably take Lucky before Tough unless I found myself being targeted by attack rolls much more frequently than is normally expected. Lucky helps us dodge crits and reroll saves, basically giving us 3 more uses of Indomitable that can also stack with Indomitable to give us 3 shots at that save.
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