Fighter Martial Archetype: Banneret 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

The Banneret subclass was initially released in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide under the title of Purple Dragon Knight. Banneret is the setting agnostic name used for it, encompassing the generic supportive build options it offers in a pretty reasonable way.

Banneret isn’t particularly complex, nor does it give you a robust new pool of resources to play with. It lacks even basic new abilities when you’d expect to get them, instead slightly improving the effectiveness of prior abilities. Banneret needs more than it has to be a solid choice for a fighter to pick up. Where it is now, it doesn’t really do anything you can get excited about.

3rd Level: Rallying Cry

Rallying Cry is the 3rd level ability you pick up when you choose Banneret. It empowers your Second Wind to also heal up to three other creatures your fighter level worth of HP which… Well, let's be honest. It's laughable. At 3rd level, this is basically like attaching Healing Word to your Second Wind and saying that’s enough. It isn’t.

Eldritch Knight gets cantrips, spell slots, and weapon bond. Battle Master gets four maneuvers per short rest that give you a suite of new abilities to engage fights with. Even Champion gets a feature that empowers every attack they make, which is a lot more than +9 HP to three creatures once a short rest.

You never get more Second Winds. You get one per short rest. This doesn’t meaningfully add to what a fighter can do in a way a subclass needs to.

7th Level: Royal Envoy

Royal Envoy gives you Persuasion or Animal Handling, Insight, Intimidation, or Performance if you’re already proficient in it, alongside Expertise with Persuasion.

That’s it. Expertise in Persuasion as your 7th level subclass feature and a bonus skill. Expertise on its own is a better feature than this, as it boosts multiple skills and lets you pick. For a subclass feature, this is not nearly enough to feel satisfying. Its nice to have, for sure, and can define your character as the party face if you don’t have a bard or rogue doing it already, but this absolutely needs to be alongside other features that let you do things other base classes can’t just stumble into.

10th Level: Inspiring Surge

Inspiring Surge empowers your Action Surge feature, granting an ally within 60 feet of you a free attack when you choose to surge. That’s a pretty neat effect, and defines you as a supportive leader rallying the troops to attack, but again, it's not worth a 10th level feature.

If Inspiring Surge were bundled with Rallying Cry, at least I’d get that this subclasses goal is to empower your base features to empower the team alongside you. But it being spaced out over seven levels with the next expansion for it coming when you get your 2nd action surge at 17th level leaves me feeling like you’re still not getting enough stuff to do to justify using this subclass over any of its competition.

15th Level: Bulwark

Bulwark extends out the theme of sharing your fighter abilities, this time letting creatures share your Indomitable feature which just is so lackluster. Twice per long rest, you can choose to reroll a save you’d fail. Needing to juice Bulwark requires opting to use this only on saves that apply to both you and a friend, otherwise this has no text.

If this were flavorfully attached alongside another actual ability, I’d say it's a fine addition that you’ll probably use once or twice. It, like basically every other feature in this subclass, is not close to enough on its own.

18th Level: NO NEW FEATURES.

I’m so confused. Why are there no new features here? It says right there on the fighter table that there is supposed to be a martial archetype feature here.

Inspiring Surge scaling up to giving two different allies free attacks is cool and all, especially given the two action surges per short rest, but no, that’s not nearly good enough to replace a capstone feature like this.

This feels like a mistake. At 18th level, full-casters are getting access to Wish. They can rain 40d6 meteors from the sky. All you get is letting your ranger AND rogue friend make a bonus attack! What a joke!

All Together

Banneret is probably the worst of the fighter subclasses. It gets small supportive expansions on its base abilities that just don’t contribute enough to build towards or weaponize in a way that I can really get excited for. Almost every fighter subclass at least can offer you something similar to this; if you want to play a supportive frontline character, base paladin/cleric will do this WAY better than Banneret does while also getting a suite of abilities and spells to focus you towards a cohesive theme. I want the supportive fighter option to feel powerful and interesting, I want to like Banneret, I really do. But it just is so unbelievably weak I can’t ever recommend playing it when Eldritch Knight, Battlemaster, Rune Knight, Psi Warrior, and Samurai are all options you can take instead that will offer you supportive, collaborative tools while also empowering your character to do cool unique things.

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Fighter 5e