I don’t think PD nor the playerbase has really figured out what a banner should “do” in real game terms. I mean sure, theoretically, A Banner is a big LOOK AT ME! ™, a rally point for groups of warriors and a way to direct battle. This does little for the individual of course so originally, they were group buffing items but again, this did little for the person actually carrying the banner.
In reality in my experience, a Banner on the battlefield immediately devolves the game to a “capture the flag”. Players whether playing or monstering cannot seem to resist the urge to nick a flag should they get the slightest whiff of the chance and rather than being a rallying point, banners are instead a giant bullseye for a person who’s carrying effectively a big OC stick that means they effectively cannot fight. So carrying a banner on the battlefield is an extremly niche role that few folk have been able to get the fun out of (which great if they have, I think they’re just the minority)
Banner bearing is great fun, its just the magic banners are incomprehensibly expensive for some reason, which made some sense when they were an extra buff slot, but now they are just talismans that lumber you with a cool but encumbering phys rep. Really they should be extremely cheap as a way to encourage more banners but hey, they probably wont get another look in for a few years.
Next character is a standard bearer again regardless
The reason is that Standards still have a non-linear cost increase for each additional use per day. They have a good discount and are cheaper than say, a +5 mana Rod would be. But they are still the most expensive way to deliver the new Magical Standard goal of “Give the person with the flag superpowers”. You can give the standard bearer more fun things to do by having them carry a mundane flag and a pile of fancy gear and Enchantments. That’s just ironic.
People are still going to make the things, because if you’re having a national banner it’s a small price per group to be able to say “We’ve got a big, badass banner”. But at that point you’ve got a ‘conspicuous consumption’ item. Which is totally fine if you stop pretending it’s worthwhile and revise the text to say “this is the equivalent of putting spinning rims and gold plating on your banner bearer”. That’s a valid thing to do IC.
The way I’d probably solve it is to give all Standards a passive power rather than an active one, and to deeply discount it. No, discount it more than that. No, more. The owner has sacrificed much of their defensive capacity while becoming, as you note, a massive target. Rather than have them be discounted but still hellishly expensive prestige items, they could be clones of existing items that come with the benefit of “uses your Talisman slot instead” and “cheaper” but the massive drawback of “guess you’re not using that arm now”. And then they’d combo really well with “and let’s also give the banner bearer EVEN MORE magic items” rather than being outclassed by that plan.
The Chirugeon’s Ensign is a good example, because it doubles the number of times you can use Stay With Me, and it’s the least expensive of all the ones that cost resources. It’s valuable because the power is both useful and unique. The more you use it, the more cost effective it gets. It makes Scop’s Mead essentially twice as powerful, for example. That is a great incentive for the banner bearer to do stuff.
Banner that gives a cheap pile of bonus ranks for all the MASS call rituals and battlefield demolition ones, provided that you are the target of the ritual and carry the banner when you set it off. Sure you can pull off that MASS VENOM now, but you can’t carry a shield and need to hold a giant SHOOT ME! sign.
Banner that works like a cheaper or better Silent Bell. You know where your exorcist is, but so do the enemy.
Banner that lets you treat two patients with the same dose of a Herb. Again, more efficient the more you use it. Incentivises using it, rather than just giving bigger starting numbers for Hits/mana/etc.
Cheap Banner that is a discount Staff of Life. This would be great for a unit banner-bearer/medic. Someone who isn’t there to fight. It would give a good magician alternative to the Banner of the Bold.
Cheap (8 or so resource) Banner that gives +2 Endurance. Very few banner bearers will get anything out of +5 Hits, but a cheap stacking +2 would be appealing for the banner bearer of a small unit.
Things that give a passive discount are perfect here because they don’t scale well. They’re effective if you have one buffed up Chirugeon’s Ensign person and pile all your spare budget into giving them Hero Point buffs. They are not something you want on all the backliners, because you’ll never make the upfront cost back on all that.
Or even without? In the examples you gave, the characters who were grumbling about things they disliked might not have had religion in mind at all. Whether or not those lay characters saw the problem in religious terms, priests listened, judged that religion was relevant to the issue, and took action.
