King's Blades

[sirpercival]

I don't know who's read the King's Blades series, by Dave Duncan (it's fabulous, go check it out), but I was wondering how you would go about adapting that as a campaign world in 3.5.

The hardest part is obviously the magic system... but I'm curious what rules would work for the Blades as well.

Any thoughts?

[Treblain]

I read the books a long time ago, so I don't remember the details too well.

I guess you'd make "King's Blade" a prestige class that grants enhancement bonuses to STR and CON and has some bonuses when protecting their target, but some code of contact or compulsion to protect them. You'd probably want to work in Tome of Battle classes to get some more interesting melee combat.

From what I remember of the magic, it's a lot of complex rituals and mystical stuff. You could take out the standard casters, and use Binders and Shadowcasters, Warlocks, and PF Alchemists, and UA incantations (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm) for big spells.

A party would probably be a group of agents of the king, since there's really no other way to work the Blades into it.