PDA

View Full Version : A refurbished, re-polished Knight!



Frosty
2007-11-28, 01:54 AM
Purpose: The Knight has always been a very cool class in my opinion, but I always get the feling that it is often neglected...passed over for other classes more flashy or simply more efficient. This is a quote from another recent thread (in another forum) about Knights:


It's playable, but as people have noted it's on the weak side. Even its defenses tend to give out as enemies grow in power. It has a few abilities you can't find anywhere else, but really, there's no reason to play one.

So, I have tried to give the Knight class a bit of polish, so to speak, and make it SHINE a bit more. I kept the class as close to the original as possible in both flavor and mechanics, so the changes are not extreme. The Core Chassis needed a bit of work in the Skills department, and I got rid of some of the useless things like Mounted Combat and gave it more useful alternatives.

So, read and give me some constructive feedback on whether or not you'd bother with this class after my fix.

HD: d12



Table 1-1: The Knight
Fort Ref Will
Level BAB Save Save Save Special
1st +1 +2 +0 +2 Fighting challenge +1, knight’s challenge, knight’s code
2nd +2 +3 +0 +3 Bonus Feat, Armor Block +1
3rd +3 +3 +1 +3 Bulwark of Defense
4th +4 +4 +1 +4 Armor mastery (medium), test of mettle, Bonus Feat
5th +5 +4 +1 +4 Bonus feat, vigilant defender, Force of Will
6th +6/+1 +5 +2 +5 Shield ally, Specialization
7th +7/+2 +5 +2 +5 Fighting challenge +2
8th +8/+3 +6 +2 +6 Call to battle, Bonus Feat
9th +9/+4 +6 +3 +6 Armor mastery (heavy)
10th +10/+5 +7 +3 +7 Bonus feat, Bond of Loyalty
11th +11/+6/+1 +7 +3 +7 Armor block +2, Greater Specialization
12th +12/+7/+2 +8 +4 +8 Daunting challenge, Bonus Feat
13th +13/+8/+3 +8 +4 +8 Fighting challenge +3
14th +14/+9/+4 +9 +4 +9 Improved shield ally
15th +15/+10/+5 +9 +5 +9 Bonus feat
16th +16/+11/+6/+1 +10 +5 +10 Armor block +3
17th +17/+12/+7/+2 +10 +5 +10 Impetuous Endurance
18th +18/+13/+8/+3 +11 +6 +11 Bonus feat
19th +19/+14/+9/+4 +11 +6 +11 Fighting challenge +4
20th +20/+15/+10/+5 +12 +6 +12 Loyal beyond death, Armor block +4


Class Skills:
The Knight's class skills are as follows: Climb, Craft, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (nobility and royalty), Knowledge (history), Profession, Ride, Sense Motive, and Swim.

Skill points at 1st level: (4+int modifier) x4
Skill points at each additional level: 4+int modifier


Class Features:
All class features are identical to the ones in the Players' Handbook 2 except as noted in this section.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency:
The Knight is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and armor (light, medium and heavy) and shields (including tower shields).

Knight levels count as Fighter levels with regards to qualifying for feats, entries into prestige classes, etc. A Knight may also use her Charisma instead of Strength when considering whether she qualifies for a feat or prestige class.

Test of Mettle (Ex): This ability may affect a foe more than once per battle instead of just once per day.

Bond of Loyalty (Ex): This ability has been moved up so the Knight receives it at 10th level. Everything else remains the same.

The Knight’s Code: Everything remains the same, except that one part of the code is removed. The Knight may gain flanking bonuses as normal without violating the code of honor.

Armor Block (Ex): Armor Block replaces Shield Block, It gives extra armor or shield AC against ALL foes instead of one designated foe. The bonus is +1 at level 2. It increases to +2 at 11th level, +3 at 16th level, and +4 at 20th level. This ability only functions if the Knight has an actual armor or shield AC. Natural armor alone does not count.

Armor Mastery (Ex): Starting at 4th level, the Knight ignores the standard speed reduction for wearing medium armor. The maximum dex bonus for any medium or light armor the Knight wears increases by 2. Starting 9th level, those benefits extend to Heavy armor as well. The Knight may choose to forego one or both of these abilities in return for one or two bonus feats chosen from the Fighter bonus feats. A Knight must give up Armor Mastery (Medium) if she wishes to give up Armor Mastery (Heavy).

Force of Will: At 5th level, a Knight may choose to use her Charisma modifier in place of her strength modifier in calculating damage. She may also choose to use her Charisma modifier in place of her Strength or Dexterity modifier on attack rolls. She may also also choose to use her Charisma instead of Strength in Grapple, Trip, Bullrush, and Overrun checks.

Bonus feats: The Knight does not gain Mounted Combat at level 2. Instead, the Knight gains a bonus feat just as he does at levels 5, 10, and 15. In addition, the Knight also gets Bonus feats at levels 4, 8, 12, and 18 as well. The feats may be chosen from one of the following: Any Fighter bonus feat, Iron Will, Force of Personality, Great Fortitude, Leap Attack, Endurance, Diehard. The Knight must still meet all prerequisites for the feat.

Vigilante Defender (Ex): In addition to the normal benefits mentioned, the Knight also gains this benefit: If the Knight and an ally is flanking an enemy, and that enemy makes an attack on anyone but the Knight, he provokes an Attack of Opportunity from the Knight.

Specialization: At 6th level, a Knight may choose one of the following: 1) Gain Shield Specialization as a bonus feat, except that the Knight may also choose Tower Shield as one of the choices. 2) Gain weapon focus for one weapon.

Greater Specialization: At 11th level, a Knights may choose one of the following: 1) Gains Shield Ward as a bonus feat. 2) Gain weapon specialization for one weapon with which she has weapon focus in.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-28, 10:49 AM
First impression is pretty much... well,

"It's playable, but as people have noted it's on the weak side. Even its defenses tend to give out as enemies grow in power. It has a few abilities you can't find anywhere else, but really, there's no reason to play one."

You don't seem to have changed much that really mattered. There are a few slight improvements (hey look, more skill points!), but that's pretty much it.

ZeroNumerous
2007-11-28, 11:12 AM
Maybe if you gave it abit of ToB flavor via Devoted Spirit and White Raven? You could always try building it along the lines of this: Marshal Rebuild (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=752414).

Frosty
2007-11-28, 03:55 PM
First impression is pretty much... well,

"It's playable, but as people have noted it's on the weak side. Even its defenses tend to give out as enemies grow in power. It has a few abilities you can't find anywhere else, but really, there's no reason to play one."

You don't seem to have changed much that really mattered. There are a few slight improvements (hey look, more skill points!), but that's pretty much it.

Well, I'm mainly concerned about not making the class overpowered. I bumped up its fort save to good, and I improved the Knight's ability to wield a shield by giving it the shield feats. The armor mastery also encourages people to pump Dex more without penalty so Knights can use Combat Reflexes better. All these help defensively.

Offensively I swapped out the useless list of Knight bonus feats with the more useful Fighter bonus feats.

Renegade Paladin
2007-11-28, 04:15 PM
Trust me, you're not going to make a melee class overpowered that easily, not while contending with wizards and CoDzilla. Feel free to push up the power level; melee classes in general are underpowered as it is.

Frosty
2007-11-28, 05:18 PM
Would adding Charisma to damage dealt (maybe an ability gained at third level) help?

Illiterate Scribe
2007-11-28, 06:00 PM
Vigilant defender. I don't think knights have much truck with vigilantes. :smallbiggrin:

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-28, 07:38 PM
Trust me, you're not going to make a melee class overpowered that easily, not while contending with wizards and CoDzilla. Feel free to push up the power level; melee classes in general are underpowered as it is. I agree for the most part. And keep in mind that monsters tend to compete on a similar level as CoDzilla and wizards, to a point. That's why "Fighter" type monsters have HD three times their CR and massive strength scores and massive sizes and enormous grapple bonuses and such. And they're usually the less fearsome of the lot, with a few notable exceptions (Can you say, Crab Battle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mHKHKR8x6A)?)


Would adding Charisma to damage dealt (maybe an ability gained at third level) help?

No, not really. And your problems aren't generally at third level. At third level, a decent hit die and a martial weapon proficiency actually makes you a decent character who fills a useful role in a party (seeing as a hit or two from a greatsword will actually kill most things, and there aren't a whole lot of kickass defenses against greatswords yet). It's just that after that, the game gets exponentially more demanding.

I also personally hate knights because, not only is it easy to build the concept of a Knight with other, more effective, and more fun classes... their abilities make no sense whatsoever, be it Knight's Challenge and all its many flaws (which I've enumerated in a fair share of previous rants) or a blocking ability that is based off the idea that you jump in front of an ally and take their damage for them, but somehow expects you to buy that you somehow take half the damage for an ally and your ally takes the other half. I don't care if hp is an abstraction. That's just way too much for my suspension of disbelief, and they obviously just wanted to be lazy and crib Shield Other. Except worse, since it has no range. Oh, and just to top it off, they have a rather arbitrary code of conduct supposedly based on chivalry (which knights rarely gave anything more than lip service to anyways). Yay.

I feel you need to do a lot more than give 2 extra skill points and the option for knights with too many points in traits to spend to get their hands on some Combat Reflexes to fix the Knight.

Frosty
2007-11-29, 12:06 AM
Can you link me to the posts where you've critiqued the Knight's Challenge? That is one ability I'd really like to make better so he can really draw Aggro and still survive MMORPG style.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-30, 02:14 AM
That is one ability I'd really like to make better so he can really draw Aggro and still survive MMORPG style.

Then you won't like my critique, because it goes into detail about why doin' it MMORPG style is absolutely horrible in every way for a pen and paper RPG, even though it makes sense in the context of an MMORPG. And then I suggested other ways that a "tank" could conceivably control enemies and prevent them from harming allies without causing the myriad problems that the whole concept of "drawing aggro" causes for a pen and paper game.

You don't want to make the ability to "draw aggro MMORPG style" "better." You want to scrub it and replace it with something more sensible and fun that causes less teeth-griding on the part of both DMs and players. In fact, your abilities shouldn't cause any teeth grinding at all. They should cause smiles. Like this one -->:smallbiggrin:

Knight's Challenge doesn't cause smiles like that when you tell the player that his character, regardless of their personality, and the fact that they can't understand the enemy's language, and the fact that they have a wisdom and intelligence higher than 5, and the fact that it may stop them from making incredibly obvious decisions like, say, attacking the hypothetical eldritch machine that's going to go off in a round and destroy the world, or interrupting the hypothetical full round coup-de-gracing guy standing over the helpless body of his true love, they HAVE to attack that ogre in plate mail over there with their dagger when they don't have a sneak attack available (or whatever form of attack they might need to be effective) just because he flipped him the bird with uncanny skill.

Seriously, that's pretty much what the current Knight's Challenge is like. You're SO GOOD at flipping people the bird that regardless of language, culture, or personality, they will make tactically unsound decisions to a degree that is pretty much expressly mind control and all roleplaying be damned.

On top of all that, you can taunt to attract enemies to you without any mechanics at all. And it works just as well, except in completely unrealistic situations like the one above where no one would ever, EVER go for the taunt.

Frosty
2007-11-30, 02:22 AM
Then perhaps make it so enemies near the Knight can't really move out of the Knight's threatened area?

As long as there is SOME way the Knight can prevent his teammates from taking damage either by soaking it all up himself, or preventing enemies from reaching his teammates.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-30, 02:33 AM
Then perhaps make it so enemies near the Knight can't really move out of the Knight's threatened area?

As long as there is SOME way the Knight can prevent his teammates from taking damage either by soaking it all up himself, or preventing enemies from reaching his teammates.

There are dozens of ways you can do this without ever stepping into the bounds of the clearly supernatural or ridiculous.

For just a couple examples...

-You use an ability which, by presenting an impediment or threat to your opponent, you make yourself a more attractive target than your allies. Iron Guard's Glare is a good example of this (it gives a penalty on attack rolls against anyone except you).

-Presenting a worthy threat that can be prevented by attacking you or otherwise paying more attention to you. For example, K/Frank's knight had an attack that would do significant extra damage if an enemy didn't interrupt it.

-You can interpose yourself effectively between an ally and an enemy. This happens pretty much all the time in real life battles, but not quite so frequently in D&D.

-You can take actions that lock down or impede an enemy's offensive capabilities. Interrupts and counters and such.

-You can take actions that lock down an enemy's movement capabilities. Stand Still is a good example of this.

-You can block line of effect with your body or shield, a la Arcanum Wall in Seerow's Fighter or Argent Bastion in my Rebalanced Paladin.

___

All of these are better options than making the Knight the world's greatest trash talker to the point where he can control people's minds to make him attack him (being the masochistic guy he is).

Cuddly
2007-11-30, 03:12 AM
All of these are better options than making the Knight the world's greatest trash talker to the point where he can control people's minds to make him attack him (being the masochistic guy he is).

What he needs is bluff.

"Come on guys, this armor, it's fake. Like that Stromtrooper stuff. Your sword will go straight through it. Promise."

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-30, 03:37 AM
What he needs is bluff.

"Come on guys, this armor, it's fake. Like that Stromtrooper stuff. Your sword will go straight through it. Promise."

The problem is that they don't care if you're SQUISHY. They're going for the wizard because if they don't, they'll be reduced to ashes in a round. You have to be a threat, or force them to stop hurting others.