Best Purple Dragon Knight

[Easy_Lee]

As per the title, this thread is about the Purple Dragon Knight Fighter.

Some quick notes for reference:

The PDK heals allies for an amount equal to his Fighter level who can see and hear him when he uses Second Wind.
The PDK effectively gains expertise with Persuasion.
The PDK can grant allies reaction attacks when he uses Action Surge.
Finally, the PDK's allies can benefit when he uses his Indomitable feature. Yes, you do have to fail a saving throw before you can help your allies pass it. And yes, it's limited only to mental saves.

The fourth feature is trash, but healing, reaction attacks, and persuasion expertise are interesting. The PDK adds some party support and face to the fighter.

How can we make the most of that? My only thought so far was to put Inspiring Leader on the character. This seems to fit both mechanically and thematically with the character. Other than that, make sure there's a rogue in the party? Don't pick this archetype if your party already has a face? I'm not sure how best to use its features.

[Foxhound438]

Only ever having one second wind makes the heal pretty limited, even though it is per-short-rest, and not insignificant when used. I would, as you suggest, add inspiring leader to this to make your team's extra HP go a lot farther.

As far as the actual build goes, it's probably just a standard fighter build. I would be tempted to double down on being a "support" fighter and take shield master to give advantage to melee allies, but at the same time this could cost you if the rogue is only ever going to attack from range.

My biggest problem here is that a battlemaster can do the best that this can earlier and more often thanks to commander's strike, plus have a ton of great tricks to back it all up. BM does have to lose an attack to do it, but trading a shield wall's attack for a sharpshooting rogue's seems like a fair trade to me. Party support can be done almost as well with just the healer feat, although it's not an AOE effect, and being able to pick up any number of other maneuvers gives you a lot more options in combat.

[JBPuffin]

PDK w/ Martial Adept and Inspiring Leader feats. You're now playing a 4e Warlord (choose Commander's Strike at the very least, along with whatever floats your boat) in 5e, and can do so by Level 4 (do MA first, methinks). It can obviously be improved with some multiclassing and such, but it's a quick and dirty solution for a problem a lot of former 4e players get snagged on.

[MaxWilson]

How can we make the most of that? My only thought so far was to put Inspiring Leader on the character. This seems to fit both mechanically and thematically with the character. Other than that, make sure there's a rogue in the party? Don't pick this archetype if your party already has a face? I'm not sure how best to use its features.

Take Inspiring Leader and Healer on the purple dragon knight (Healer has unlimited heals from 0 HP -> 1 HP as long as you don't use the other feature; once they're at 1 HP you can use your Second Wind to grant them even more HP) and hire a bunch of low-CR minions to be your goons. Take Sentinel + Defensive Duelist so you can tank for your goons while they shoot things with arrows. (You can also do the trick where you Dodge the other time, to eke out your HP, since enemies can't just ignore you and Disengage away due to Sentinel.) I'd probably go ahead and take Sharpshooter as well just to be sure you can contribute as an individual when you're not tanking, which means that you'll be emphasizing Dex over Strength. Despite that, make sure you are Athletics-proficient, just in case opportunities arise.

Other than that, the thing you can do to exploit it are all IMO roleplaying-oriented and not build-oriented. Name your mercenary something like Falkenberg's Other Legion or the Black-ish Company But Not Quite So Black As That Other Company. Study up on tactics. Affect a hard-bitten attitude and adopt a mercenary's code: do your job but be as wary of your employer as your enemy, since if you die he doesn't have to pay you. Do the job, get paid.

Honestly I think it could be a fun campaign, even though it wouldn't look like your typical four-party superhero campaign. Could work either as a solo campaign or a small party of mundanes, if your players can handle having one PC being "officially" the boss of everyone else (and potentially much higher level, if the other players are playing some of the grunts).

Edit: BTW, Robin Hood was obviously a Banneret/Purple Dragon Knight.

[Quoxis]

PDK w/ Martial Adept and Inspiring Leader feats. You're now playing a 4e Warlord (choose Commander's Strike at the very least, along with whatever floats your boat) in 5e, and can do so by Level 4 (do MA first, methinks). It can obviously be improved with some multiclassing and such, but it's a quick and dirty solution for a problem a lot of former 4e players get snagged on.

Multiclassed with 3 levels of the *other* worst scag subclass, the mastermind rogue, your warlord can also grant advantage by bonus action help up to 30ft, to continue being useful after the one die you get is spent.

Really, i don't see the pdk as an optimal choice. Its features are nice - in a "why thank you, i am grateful for the healing" kind of way. A party of those guys might be fun, but i don't see it be useful out of multiclassing.

Edit: i also love how the optmal way to play a pdk is copying a battlemaster instead.

[Unoriginal]

I'm not the biggest fan of the "multiclassing to optimize a class" approach, but wouldn't multiclassing Bard and Purple Dragon Knight be very worthwhile? You would have access to even more ways to boost your allies and heal them.




Edit: BTW, Robin Hood was obviously a Banneret/Purple Dragon Knight.

Not sure why you would qualify Robin Hood of Purple Dragon Knight. He's mostly known for being an incredible archer and escape master, then as being a very good melee fighter/athlete/master of disguise, and only after that as being a competent leader for his Merry Men, and no version of him that I know off involves him tanking his enemies while giving orders to his troops.

[Quoxis]

I'm not the biggest fan of the "multiclassing to optimize a class" approach, but wouldn't multiclassing Bard and Purple Dragon Knight be very worthwhile? You would have access to even more ways to boost your allies and heal them.

That idea made me think of something else:

Maybe the pdk was created to prevent the boring standard dump-Cha-who-cares-fighter from becoming mainstream - while most fighters, even some eldritch knights, dump int instead (at least according to what i've encountered so far).

[Aett_Thorn]

I think that the best way to build a PDK is to just build a Paladin or BM Fighter instead. There's almost nothing that the PDK does well that the BM doesn't give you a similar option for, and the BM gives you more flexibility for using it.

Rallying Cry at level 3 heals three teammates for 3 HP only when you also need healing. Compare to the Rally Maneuver: 1d8 + Cha (let's say an average of 6.5), heals only one teammate at a time, but uses a bonus action to do, and you can do it four times per short rest, and you don't need to possibly "waste" healing.

Royal Envoy is okay, but it's basically a weaker form of Expertise from the Rogue or Bard (and they get it much earlier), since you only get the double prof in one skill versus two. You'd be better off taking a level of Rogue.

Inspiring Surge does not compare very favorably to Commander's Strike, especially given that you can use Commander's Strike at least 4 times as often.


Bulwark is really the only unique feature, and even that may end up being extremely situational.

[mephnick]

The SCAG needed community testing like Xanather's had. PDK would have been laughed off the PDF. The Storm Sorcerer basically requires multiclassing as its abilities all require being in melee range to be effective but it grants no armor or weapon proficiencies. No one ever chooses Mastermind,Sun Soul or Undying. Battlerager needs work to compete. Even the Totem choices are balanced poorly. Oath of the Crown is competent IMO. Bladesinger, Arcana Domain, Long Death and Swashbuckler do their job. A sub-50% success rate isn't really the goal here though, even for a fluff book.