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Jormengand
2014-03-09, 02:16 PM
One day, I swear I will compile all these somewhere. And yes, this is going to read very similarly to antipaladin/Paladin of Slaughter/whatever. Deal with it.


The Blackguard
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial 1st2nd3rd4th5th6th
1st+1+2+0+0Aura of Evil, Detect Good, Poison Use0—————
2nd+2+3+0+0Dark Blessing, Smite Good 1/day1—————
3rd+3+3+1+1Command Undead, Aura of Despair20————
4th+4+4+1+1Sneak Attack 1d631————
5th+5+4+1+1Smite Good 2/day32————
6th+6/+1+5+2+2Contagion 1/week320———
7th+7/+2+5+2+2Sneak Attack 2d6331———
8th+8/+3+6+2+2Fiendish Servant, Dark Purpose +1332———
9th+9/+4+6+3+3Contagion 2/week3320——
10th+10/+5+7+3+3Sneak Attack 3d6, Smite Good 3/day3331——
11th+11/+6/+1+7+3+3Dark Purpose +2, Undead Companion3332——
12th+12/+7/+2+8+4+4Contagion 3/week33320—
13th+13/+8/+3+8+4+4Sneak Attack 4d633331—
14th+14/+9/+4+9+4+4Dark Purpose +333332—
15th+15/+10/+5+9+5+5Contagion 4/week, Smite Good 4/day333320
16th+16/+11/+6/+1+10+5+5Sneak Attack 5d6333331
17th+17/+12/+7/+2+10+5+5Dark Purpose +4333332
18th+18/+13/+8/+3+11+6+6Contagion 5/week333333
19th+19/+14/+9/+4+11+6+6Sneak Attack 6d6333333
20th+20/+15/+10/+5+12+6+6Dark Purpose +5, Smite Good 5/day, Fiendish Apotheosis333333

Alignment: Any Evil
Hit Die: 1d10

Class Skills:
The blackguard’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Profession (Wis), and Ride (Dex).
Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int modifier) × 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier

Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Blackguards are proficient with all simple and martial weapons, with all types of armor, and with shields.

Aura of Evil (Ex)
The power of a blackguard’s aura of evil (see the detect evil spell) is equal to his class level plus his cleric level, if any.

Detect Good (Sp)
At will, a blackguard can use detect good as a spell-like ability, duplicating the effect of the detect good spell.

Poison Use
Blackguards are skilled in the use of poison and never risk accidentally poisoning themselves when applying poison to a blade.

Dark Blessing (Su)
A blackguard applies his Charisma modifier (if positive) as a bonus on all saving throws.

Spells
A blackguard has the ability to cast a small number of divine spells. To cast a blackguard spell, a blackguard must have a Wisdom score of at least 10 + the spell’s level, so a blackguard with a Wisdom of 10 or lower cannot cast these spells.

Blackguard bonus spells are based on Wisdom, and saving throws against these spells have a DC of 10 + spell level + the blackguard’s Wisdom modifier. When the blackguard gets 0 spells per day of a given spell level he gains only the bonus spells he would be entitled to based on his Wisdom score for that spell level. The blackguard’s spell list appears below. A blackguard has access to any spell on the list and can freely choose which to prepare, just as a cleric. A blackguard prepares and casts spells just as a cleric does (though a blackguard cannot spontaneously cast cure or inflict spells).

Smite Good (Su)
Once a day, a blackguard of 2nd level or higher may attempt to smite good with one normal melee attack.

He adds his Charisma modifier (if positive) to his attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damage per class level. If a blackguard accidentally smites a creature that is not good, the smite has no effect but it is still used up for that day.

At 5th level, every 5th level thereafter, a blackguard may smite good one additional time per day.

Aura of Despair (Su)
Beginning at 3rd level, the blackguard radiates a malign aura that causes enemies within 10 feet of him to take a -2 penalty on all saving throws.

Command Undead (Su)
When a blackguard reaches 3rd level, he gains the supernatural ability to command and rebuke undead. He commands undead as would a cleric of two levels lower.

Sneak Attack
This ability, gained at 4th level, is like the rogue ability of the same name. The extra damage increases by +1d6 every third level beyond 4th (7th, 10th and so on). If a blackguard gets a sneak attack bonus from another source the bonuses on damage stack.

Contagion (Sp)
At 6th level, a blackguard can produce a contagion effect, as the spell, once per week. He can use this ability one additional time per week for every three levels after 6th (twice per week at 9th, three times at 12th, and so forth).

Dark Purpose (Su)
From 8th level, the Blackguard gains +1 to the save DC of any [Evil], [Fear] or Necromancy spell he casts. At every third level thereafter, this bonus increases by a further +1.

Fiendish Servant
Upon or after reaching 8th level, a blackguard can call a fiendish bat, cat, dire rat, horse, pony, raven, or toad to serve him. The blackguard’s servant further gains HD and special abilities based on the blackguard’s class level (Not character level). Use the table in the prestige blackguard's class entry.

Undead Companion
In addition to the fiendish servant, the blackguard gains, at 11th level, a Medium-size skeleton or zombie as a companion. This companion cannot be turned or rebuked and gains all special bonuses as a fiendish servant when the blackguard gains levels. Unlike others of its kind, the undead companion has an intelligence score and can use intelligence-based skills, but is still considered mindless and is thus immune to mind-affecting abilities.

Fiendish Apotheosis
At twentieth level, the Blackguard takes on the Fiendish template. When calculating a Blackguard's effective character level, ignore the level adjustment thereby granted. If the Blackguard already had the fiendish template, he regains either the two hit dice, any experience he used to reduce the level adjustment of the template, or a combination of the above, as appropriate such that he has the correct number of experience points and subsequent level as though he had never taken such a template in the first place.

Blackguard Spell List
Blackguards choose their spells from the following list:

1st Level
bane, bless, cause fear, corrupt weapon, cure light wounds, doom, inflict light wounds, magic weapon, ray of enfeeblement summon monster I*.

2nd Level
bull’s strength, cure moderate wounds, darkness, death knell, delay poison desecrate, eagle’s splendor, inflict moderate wounds, shatter, summon monster II*.

3rd Level
animate dead, bestow curse, cure serious wounds, deeper darkness, inflict serious wounds, prayer, protection from energy, summon monster III*.

4th Level
cure critical wounds, fear freedom of movement, inflict critical wounds, neutralise poison poison, summon monster IV*.

5th Level
cure light wounds, mass, inflict light Wounds, mass, summon monster V*

6th Level
bull's strength, mass, eagle's splendour, mass, harm, heal, summon monster VI*


* Evil creatures only.

Corrupt Weapon
Blackguards have access to a special spell, corrupt weapon, which is the opposing counterpart of the paladin spell bless weapon. Instead of improving a weapon’s effectiveness against evil foes corrupt weapon makes a weapon more effective against good foes.

Erberor
2014-03-09, 06:05 PM
I like it. It offers neat stuff at every level and has a solid spell list, though I feel it could be a bit larger. Probably just me though.

One thing though: I would advocate for an interesting capstone. Of course, I think every class ought to have a cool capstone.

Blue_C.
2014-03-10, 03:30 AM
I like Dark Purpose.

Since this version presumably won't have dead Paladin levels to mess with, have you considered working Undead companion somewhere in there? Or is too much with Fiendish servant already available?

Jormengand
2014-03-10, 11:43 AM
I like it. It offers neat stuff at every level and has a solid spell list, though I feel it could be a bit larger. Probably just me though.

One thing though: I would advocate for an interesting capstone. Of course, I think every class ought to have a cool capstone.


I like Dark Purpose.

Since this version presumably won't have dead Paladin levels to mess with, have you considered working Undead companion somewhere in there? Or is too much with Fiendish servant already available?
Both good ideas. I'll stick'em in.

EDIT: Bumped the fiendish servant to eighth, but added undead companion at 11th.

Should I... feel bad for stealing the DD capstone? Speaking of which, next class shall happen soon.

Ziegander
2014-03-10, 01:15 PM
Dark Purpose is simultaneously overpowered and absolutely worthless. The bonus seems to apply to Inflict spells and Harm, the Inflict line is terrible, Harm is merely okay, and, maybe I'm missing something, but he doesn't even seem to have any other [Evil] tagged spells on his spell list. Of course, there's ways to make ALL of his spells [Evil] tagged, but then he's getting +10 to the save DC of, what, Poison? Now, if he had quality spells on his spell list to apply this bonus to, and more of them, it would be way overpowered. But as it stands, it basically doesn't even do anything.

TheFamilarRaven
2014-03-10, 02:31 PM
So, I'm finally PEACHing your class, since you were kind enough to do so for my Centurion.

I'll just save myself the time of quoting everything and saying "seems fine" and just focus on a few points.

-Dark Purpose- I'm with Ziegander on this one, Doesn't seem to come into play very often. For instance, the Blackguard can probably do more damage by using poisons (assuming CON damage) and sneak attack along with Smite Good, than he could using Inflict Critical Wounds. It's nice for harm (Practically guarantees instant 150 damage), but for everything else it's lackluster. If it could increase Caster level (beyond normal limits perhaps), then it could be interesting, but again, with the restriction to only Evil, Inflict, and Harm, Dark Purpose has limited uses.

Speaking of spells, the Blackguard's list seems ... lite. It doens't include the spells one would expect. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few spells that would fit perfectly for the blackguard, (Particularly since it emulates part of the Cleric's Spell list). The Spells are:

-Bane
-Bless
-Desecrate
-Animate Dead
-Summon Undead
-Fear
-Prayer
-Ray of Enfeeblement (Not a Divine spell but hey, whatever)
-Delay Poison
-Neutralize Poison (You include healing spells, so these shouldn't be too outlandish)
-Curse
-Blindness/Deafness

And all of those of from the PhB1 (with the exception of Summon Undead), plus I could go look through the PhB1 and DMG (to cross reference with the original class' Spell list) and find a few more to add to the above list.

Now I don't know if you were intending to add more spells later or not, but the way it's written now, I feel like the Blackguard could use a little variety, especially since they'll need more spells with the [evil] descriptor, so that Dark Purpose can come into play more often.

Jormengand
2014-03-10, 02:59 PM
Dammit FamiliarRaven, I could have used that on Dragon Disciple and you had to waste it on Blackguard. :smalltongue:

Made Dark Purpose affect more things but have less of an effect. Added your spell suggestions.

TheFamilarRaven
2014-03-10, 03:29 PM
Dammit FamiliarRaven, I could have used that on Dragon Disciple and you had to waste it on Blackguard. :smalltongue:

heh, sorry, haven't been on in a few days and this was the first thing I saw by you. I'll check out your Dragon Disciple if you'll look over my revised Centurion, ... and yes I kept the name Centurion.

Edit: also, your spell list now reads "desecrate eagle's splendor". now i'm not sure HOW one does that, but I'm pretty sure there should be a comma there :smalltongue:

Jormengand
2014-03-10, 03:36 PM
heh, sorry, haven't been on in a few days and this was the first thing I saw by you. I'll check out your Dragon Disciple if you'll look over my revised Centurion, ... and yes I kept the name Centurion.

Edit: also, your spell list now reads "desecrate eagle's splendor". now i'm not sure HOW one does that, but I'm pretty sure there should be a comma there :smalltongue:

All right, sounds reasonable.

I don't know, but I doubt the eagle'd be very happy.

Ziegander
2014-03-10, 09:39 PM
Let me just say that I do think that the concept behind your "Base Prestige Classes" is a very cool one.