New Prestige Class (needs reveiw)

[tape_measure]

ok, so here's the premise:

Requirements: +9 BaB, Non- Good alignment, worshipper of Hextor (or appropriate substitute)

Skill points 2+int per level
class skills as blackguard

HD: d10

BaB +1 /lvl
Will: +2 1st +32nd and up one/ 2 lvls afterwards
Ref: sdame as will
Fort:+) 1st, +1 2nd up one per 3 lvls afterwards

Abilities
1st lvl -
Light fortification,
Unnatural Resistance (+1 saves vs mind affecting effects,
poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, ability drain and energy drain
),
immune to fatigue, exhaustion, and nonlethal damage
Skill bonus 1/2 class level round up to bluff, intimidate, listen, sense motive and spot checks


2nd lvl
+2 saves for above effects,
Resistance (fire/5, cold/5)
Detect Good at will,
Wis +2, Cha +2,
Aura of Fear (as spell, only shaken on failed save, no effect on successful save, DC 10 + ½ HD + Cha)

3rd lvl
Immune to disease and sleep,
spell resistance 5+HD,
darkvision 30 feet,
Con -2, Str +2, Int +2,
Resistance(Fire/10 and cold/10),
see invisibility 3/day


4th lvl (tired of using bold and underline...sorry)
Immune to paralysis, stunning, poison.
Medium Fortification,
Aura of Fear(Frightened on failed save, shaken on successful)

5th lvl
Immune to poison,
+3 saves vs mind affects, energy
drain, death effects,
Fireball 1/day (As HD, DC 10 + Cha +1/2 level)

6th lvl
Type changes to Undead, with all benefits and hindrances
Damage reduction 5/good and bludgeoning, power word Blind 1/day +2 Turn resistance

7th lvl
+2 Str, +2 Wis,
immune to fire and cold

8th lvl
+4 turn resistance

9th lvl
Aura of Fear (As spell)

10th lvl
Unholy Toughness,
DR 10/good and bludgeoning,
SR 11 + HD,
Turn Immunity, +2 Str, power word kill 1/day


Apearance:
Imagine a death knight and a lich combined. Hector takes the soul of the character and mutates it to his will. Stripping the body to useless features like, flesh, hair, things we take for granted and embibes the undead template for all intensive reasoning. However, it;s not all at once. It prgresses as the charcter advances into the class;

lvl
1 - Eyes appear bloodshot, skin tightens and slightly pales
3 - Skin cracks and peels, hair begins to fall out
5 -Body starts to appear skeletal, eyes become red.
6 - Skeleton form, flaming balls for eyes


Inaddition the creature is first "tested" by the church of Hextor, at an earlier level to see if the creature is willing and able to complete the process. Finally, before taking on the PrC, the creature is sacrificed and raised by the church's clerics, thus starting the unholy transformation.



ok, it needs tweaking. I like where it is, but Im sure it unbalanced as a....something unbalanced....(not feeling very clever right now)

[Splendor]

Death Knight of Hextor
Requirements: Base Attack: +9, Evil Alignment, Worshiper of Hextor, Knowledge (religion) 6 Ranks

Skill points: 2/Lv
Class Skills: Intimidate, Knowledge, Sense Motive, and Spot
HD: d10

Level/
Base Attack F/R/W
1 2/0/2
2 3/0/3
3 3/1/3
4 4/1/4
5 4/1/4
6 5/2/5
7 5/2/5
8 6/2/6
9 6/3/6
10 7/3/7

1 Unnatural Resistance +1, Detect Good at will
2 Darkvision 30’, Detect Magic 3/day, See Invis
3/day, +1 STR
3 Unnatural Resistance +2, Fire Ball 1/day, +1 Wis,
+1 CHR
4 +1 NA, Immune to stun & non-lethal damage,
20% Fortification
5 Immune to disease and sleep, SR 15 + Death
Knight Level, +1 STR
6 Fear Aura, +1 Wis, Unnatural Resistance +3
7 50% Fortification, Detect Magic At will, See Invis
at will, Dispel Magic 1/day
8 +2 NA, Immune to poison, +1 STR
9 Improved Fear Aura, Unnatural Resistance +4,
+1 CHR
10 Undead Apotheosis, Dispel Magic 2/day, Power
Word 1/day, +1 STR, +4 Turn Resistence

Save DCs: 10+ ½ death knights level + CHR modifier

Unnatural Resistance: Bonus against mind affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, ability drain and energy drain,

Fear Aura: 6th: All enemies with in 5’ must make a Will save or be effected by the Scare spell, if you make the save you are immune to this effect for 24 hours, At 9th level this effect changes to the Fear spell.

Undead Apotheosis: Type changes to undead with all benefits and backdraws. Hit points do not change due to conversion. All future addition HD gain CHR modifier to hit points.

Power Word: Character may use one of the power word spells per day (Not each one once, just once per day total).

[Gyrfalcon]

Eh.... it looks overly powerful to me. One question - your abilities go up to only level 9 - what's the capstone ability of level 10?

So for 9 levels, you gain:
+9 BAB
+5 Will *assuming Level 10 / +5 Reflex *assuming level 10 / +4 Fortitude

immunity to fire and cold
Str +6, Con -2 (which doesn't matter once you turn undead), Int +2, Wis +4, Chr +2
Aura of Fear
SR 11+HD
DR 10/good or bludgeoning
Immune to turning

See invisibility 3/day
Fireball 1/day
Power Word Blind 1/day
Power Word Kill 1/day


From changing to undead:
Darkvision 60ft
Immunity to mind-affecting effects
Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease and death effects
Immunity to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain or energy drain.


There's absolutely no downsides to the class, which means that it should be pretty difficult to get into, but right now all you have to be is a level 9 fighter and you're good to go.

Suggestions:

Requirements:
As blackguard, must have peaceful contact with an outsider in the service of Hextor. (you sort of mention this at the bottom, but it's worth sticking in the requirements section)

Knowledge: Religion (4 ranks)

Feats/Abilities:

1st Level
Unnatural Resistance (+1 saves vs mind affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, ability drain and energy drain)
Skill Bonus 1/2 class level rounded down (IIRC, most stats round down when dividing in half) to bluff, intimidate, listen, sense motive and spot checks.

*trails off*

And Splendor posts before me... and I like his setup, so I'll just go and recommend that. ^_^;

[Orion-the-G]

Honestly, seems pretty overpowered to me, a half a ton of immunities, SR, DR, total of +14 non-typed attribute bonuses, d10 hit dice, Fighter BAB, and two good saves. Honestly all that alone is too good, not even taking into acount the dangerous spell like abilities.

As far as what to do about it I'm not sure. I think you need to choose one 'path' for it. As far as I can see you've got several =

Becoming crazy tough, strong, & resistant
Becoming undead
and the spell-like abilities which seem more or less miscelanous.

[tape_measure]

heh, i meant to add in teh lvl 10 heading at the end....sorry. I'll edit the first post.


I agree that there is no down side visible, but i think becoming mostly mindless undead is a pretty awful side affect. That and being owned by hextor in most ways would be my second least favorite thing to acquire.

I'd like to add in more flavor to it obviously, so you get the idea that its like communism; it looks good on paper, buuuuutt, There are a few things that really arent too desirable. (ie being killed horribly and brought back as a near zombie-ish type)

[Orion-the-G]

uuuuh...mindless undead?

From the stat's presented it's actually smarter than it was when it was 'alive'.

That said, the flavor aspect of being undead isn't really enough to justify as a downside.

The 'owned by hextor' bit might depending on what exactly you mean by that. if it means the anyone choosing this class will now be the personal slave/bodygaurd to some random priest of hextor then it is a valid disadvantage. Still definitely not enough to balance out the power-house aspect of the class though.

[Gyrfalcon]

Eh, it's not mindless though - you said it was a cross between a lich and a death knight, both of which are pretty intelligent undead. If it was something like a ghoul or ghast, where the only intelligence is based around finding more food and taking it effectively, I'd agree... but its pretty intelligent. And yah, giving your soul to Hextor to play with might be bad, but there's no stat or ability consequences. You might want to add some DM notes for how horrible the character's existance is supposed to be though. ;)

I would also give some sort of circumstance diplomancy/reaction check penalty when conversing with any neutral or good creature (An undead just walked up to you and wanted a horse. You're going to be scared out of your mind. ;) )

[tape_measure]

hmmm....think ing of something that works around The Book of Iron Might's Iron Born races. They get a negative to Diplomacy, gather info..yada yada. I think that woulde examplify the social disorder inherited.

I agree the mindless slave was a bit too much..sorry, wrong choice of words. I'd like there to be a two fold part in it, such as the lich, something the DM can fall back on just in case, they do get too powerful.

How does it compare to 19th lvl fighter? or paladin? or for that matter a paly/ PrC OR fghtr/paly/prc?

there are builds much stronger than this, its just a mtter of looking hard enough.

[Gyrfalcon]

Well, if both characters are stripped naked, then the 19th level fighter will have more feats, but MANY less special abilities and spells.

Fully equipped, I'd say the Death Knight of Hextor is getting the benefit of items the fighter would have to buy to have (copying my list):

immunity to fire and cold
Str +6, Int +2, Wis +4, Chr +2
Aura of Fear
SR 11+HD
DR 10/good or bludgeoning
Immune to turning

See invisibility 3/day
Fireball 1/day
Power Word Blind 1/day
Power Word Kill 1/day

From changing to undead:
Darkvision 60ft
Immunity to mind-affecting effects
Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease and death effects
Immunity to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain or energy drain.

which means that the Death Knight is going to have more money to spend on other items that provide freedom of movement, a better sword with Unholy Avenger on it, and so on. :)

And I'm sure there are better builds out there, but this one does feel sort of munchkin-y for PCs.

Might make a sweet BBEG though...

[Orion-the-G]

Yes while there might be better builds, there are not better prestige classes, at least not any that come to mind.

And making note of the discussion of the items, most of it's attribute bonuses have no listed type meaning a 20th fighter may be fighting with just a +6 girdle of giant strength, but a this guy gets that and the +6 from class.

Of course if this is meant as a 'villian' class for NPCs then really don't worry too much about balance, you're the DM after all.

[PhoeKun]

If this is supposed to be an NPC type thing, then I think this might work better as a template. If it grows in power according to hit dice like a half-fiend, then the challenges could be scaled to be thrown at PCs of almost any level, and you'd get the benefit of applying it to more types of creatures. Things that can't have that many class levels before going Epic, like Giants. And really, I'd think Hextor would love to have Giants in his army of death knights.

[hyenahyena]

wow,

wait a second.

First level you get an immunity to exhaustion and fatigue and non leathal damage? Whats to stop a barbarian working towards taking this class and laughing off fatigue after raging? He doesnt need to get to level 17 or whatever, he can just get to lvl 10 take this class, and not bother about the rest of barbarian.

Or maybe it doesnt work that way. Heh, I'm not too bright : )


And, another concerning thing, and maybe i read this wrong, but by the tenth level, the character gets like, +6 strength, +4 wisdom, +2 charisma, and -2 con. Holy susy cream cheese.
So the guy becomes an undead zombie with flaming eyes and he gets +2 to charisma and a negative to con? *confused!*

If an average fighter took this class, say he had 20 strength by the time he could take this. He'd end up with 26 strength 'before' magic items? my god.

Also, why does he become immune to poison and stunning 'before' he actually becomes undead? shouldn't all that happen around the same time? or after?

Also, you said 'benifits and hinderances' of being undead. He ends up being immune to turning, and immune to fire, and he resists bludgeoning damage. How many more hinderances are there? Again, if a barbarian took this class, it would be at least 12 kinds of broken.


Also, aura of fear at the second level? Why? according to your description he just looks like a cocaine addict, or like, really ugly nerd. Which 'is' scary, but not enough to be super-naturally scary. more creepy. Or weird. maybe.

The fear aura is so not justified at level two. By level 6, when he's a skeleton with flaming eyes. yeah. THAT is scary. Fear aura for totally.

Also, other weird things. Why does he get a fear aura at lvl 2, then get it as a spell later on, why does he get turn resistance when in a few levels he becomes immune anyway, why is he casting fireball if hes got a resistance to both cold and fire, why can he casting all evil cleric skills when hes using fireball, (arcane? divine? what?)


Seriously. Undead is pretty hardcore all by itself. and in the same level he becomes undead, you give him the ability to blind someone once a day too?

lol, ill stop typing. but, just, really solidly think about this class. right now, its more then overpowered, its like, cartoony

[Ing]

mygod, a barbarian immune to fatigue, who can rage endlessly and is immune to most forms of damage...you have created


JUGGERNAUT!!!!

[Splendor]

barbarians immune to fatigue.... Like a warforge or any character with the tireless feat?

[hyenahyena]

the next prestige class can be 'magnetico' and he can have the ability to control all metal at level one.

at level two he gets the 'i win' dice, which is a d20 covered in the number 20. he can substitute this dice for any dice roll in the game, even if the roll doesnt require a d20.

at level 3 he gets to float, and wear pink and not have anyone question his sexuality.

I should work for wizards.