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Kittenwolf
2015-06-22, 10:39 PM
Take two! What do people think? :)

I plan to alter some of the available Blade Skills and Enhancements as well.


Holy Blade

Most Paladins channel their inner holy fire into divine magics, spells and empowering their arms and armour. Some few Paladins instead learn how to channel their inner fire into directly creating Holy armaments.
While this gives the Paladin great power in combat, even above that of most Paladins, the kind of focus required hampers the Paladin's abilities to cast spells and empower others.

The Holy Blade adds the following skills to their Skill List
Acrobatics (Dex), Climb (Str) and Perception (Wis) but loses Ride (Dex), and Spellcraft (Int).

Summon Holy Blade (Su)
At 1st level the Paladin gains the ability to conjure a powerful weapon from their raw Divine fury.
This ability works as per the Soulknife's Mind Blade, including Enhancement Mind Blade & Shape Mind Blade, with the following restrictions:

* Only One handed and two handed blades may be formed, never Light. The Paladin may also never take the Mind Daggers blade skill.

* The Holy blade glows with an inner light, shedding normal light a number of squares equal to half the Paladin's level, and increasing the light level by one step the same distance beyond.
The colour of this light is chosen by the Paladin at first level, and can be suppressed as a free action

* The blade does full damage to Neutral and Evil creatures but only half damage to Good creatures. Repeatedly striking a good aligned creature may have repercussions on the Paladin's Alignment or Code.

* If the Paladin has the Quick Draw feat they can summon their Holy Blade and Holy Armaments as a free action.

* Within an Antimagic field the Paladin may summon (or maintain) her weapon by making a DC20 Will save once per round as a free action, which causes it to remain for one round per Paladin level. Within an antimagic field the weapon becomes nonmagical but counts as Masterwork if it had an enhancement bonus of at least +1.

Blade Skill
At Second level and every two levels thereafter the Holy Blade gains access to a Blade Skill from the Soulknife list.
Any Blade Skill that requires expending your Psychic Strike instead uses up one use of Lay on Hands.

This ability replaces the Paladin's Mercy class feature

Holy Armaments (Su)
From Fourth level the Holy Blade learns to take material armaments into herself and forge them from her Holy Light.
The Paladin may perform a ritual on a Magical weapon, shield or suit of armour taking one hour plus one hour per point of enhancement bonus. At the end of this time the armament is bonded to the Paladin and vanishes, however as a Move action the Paladin may summon the armament(s) from the same energy as her Holy Blade, causing them to appear on her person or in her hand.

The Holy Armaments are treated in all ways as their Mundane version, however they are formed from the same glowing holy fire as the Holy Blade, and have glowing symbols representative of the Paladin's patron deity displayed prominently.

If the Paladin has more than one armament of a particular type Bonded with them (eg, two different Shields) then they choose which one to summon. Similarly, if they have a weapon bonded they may choose to summon their bonded weapon or their Holy Blade (or both if they are both one handed).

The Paladin may bond a number of items equal to their Charisma bonus, and may un-bond a summoned item as a full round action, causing it to revert to a mundane item.

Holy Armaments work the same way as the Holy Blade in an Antimagic field

This replaces the Paladin's Divine Bond class feature

Holy Champion (Su)
In addition to the standard benefits the Holy Champion's Holy Blade and Holy Armaments retain their magical properties within an Antimagic field if she succeeds at a DC30 Will save (no save required for the nonmagical version) and she may reconfigure her Holy Blade once per round as a free action.



Hi all.
Sorry that this post will look a little rough and has basically no fluff. I'm posting from work so I'll clean it up as I go later on :)

The idea behind this class is a Paladin that, rather than gaining spells and a mount and such, forms a blade out of holy energy like a Soulknife does from Psionic energy.
At present it's looking a little bloated and grants almost all of the Soulknife class features so I need to make some adjustments (for starters I'm thinking halve the Blade Skill progression and either remove Mercies or make using LoH a full round or longer action when used on someone else, but I'm interested in people's thoughts on the first draft..

Also, I loathe tables on this forum, so I've screenshot an Excel document that I'm working on ;)

Holy Blade

Alignment: Lawful good

Hit Die: d10

Starting Wealth: 5d6 × 10 gp (average 175 gp.) In addition, each character begins play with an outfit worth 10 gp or less.

Class Skills

The Holy Blade's class skills are Acrobatics (Dex), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Perception (Wis), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), and Swim (Str).

Skill Ranks per Level: 4 + Int modifier.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b279/LeviathanZero/Holy%20Blade_zpsfwkaxe5d.png (http://s21.photobucket.com/user/LeviathanZero/media/Holy%20Blade_zpsfwkaxe5d.png.html)


Class Abilities

Aura of Good (Ex): As Paladin

Detect Evil (Sp): As Paladin

Form Holy Blade (Su): As Soulknife but the weapon is formed out of Holy energy. Deals full damage to Neutral and Evil creatures but only half to Good aligned creatures and knowingly striking a Good creature breaks the blade and it cannot be reformed for one minute per Holy Blade level.
Can only form one and two handed versions, not light, daggers or ranged.
It also glows like a torch (colour chosen at first level) though this can be suppressed.

Smite Evil (Su): As Paladin

Divine Grace (Su): As Paladin

Lay On Hands (Su): As Paladin

Strength of Courage (Su): As Paladin but without the 'affects nearby allies' part

Blade Skill (Varies): As per Soulknife class feature. Any skill that requires you to expend your Psionic Strike instead requires to you expend one use of your Lay on Hands.

Enhanced Holy Blade (Su): As Soulknife. The Enhancements will probably be altered slightly at a later date to be more thematic.

Holy Armaments (Su): The Holy Blade can form a bond with a single suit of armour and a shield, allowing them to form the armour from holy light.
This requires a ritual prayer taking one hour, plus one hour per point of Enhancement bonus of the armour/shield (which must be at least Masterwork quality and have the Holy Blade's patron deity's symbol displayed prominently).
After that time the armour vanishes and forms around the Paladin, appearing to be formed out of the same holy energy as their weapon (glow included).
At any time the Holy Blade may summon their Holy Armaments as a move action (their blade can be summoned as the same action).
The armour/shield functions in all ways as the item it was before and gives no additional bonuses or penalties, however if it is broken it can be reformed as a move action.
If they decide to bond another suit/shield instead, the existing one falls off the Holy Blade as a mundane item again.

Divine Health (Ex): As Paladin

Enhanced Holy Blade (Su): As per Soulknife Enhanced Mind Blade

Mercy (Su): As Paladin

Strength of Resolve (Su): As Paladin but without the 'affects nearby allies' part

Strength of Faith (Su): As Paladin but without the 'affects nearby allies' part

Strength of Righteousness (Su): As Paladin but without the 'affects nearby allies' part

Holy Champion (Su): As Paladin, and they may change the form and abilities of their Holy Blade at will as a free action.

Kittenwolf
2015-06-27, 12:07 AM
... Any thoughts at all?

Ethereal Gears
2015-06-27, 05:21 AM
I really feel like, at the very least, the mercies need to go to deal with the bloat. Otherwise I think you're good. A full mind blade and blade skills is good, but it does replace spellcasting which, even at only 4 levels, is nothing to sneeze at considering the paladin's spell list.

I don't have any immediate notes further than that. If you just wanted a quick graft of soulknife onto the paladin chassis I think this is workable as long as mercies are replaced by blade skills, rather than existing alongside them. I will say though this could almost work better as just a paladin archetype, replacing spellcasting with the holy blade and replacing mercies with blade skills.

I hope that was at all helpful.
Cheers,
- Gears

Kittenwolf
2015-06-30, 09:52 PM
I will say though this could almost work better as just a paladin archetype, replacing spellcasting with the holy blade and replacing mercies with blade skills.

I hope that was at all helpful.
Cheers,
- Gears

Hm. Actually, you're probably right there.
Let me do some reworking...