Bone Knight Concept (3.5)

[Noedig]

So a few weeks ago I posted asking about Bone Knights. Well a new campaign has come up, and guess what, I'm going to be a Bone Knight.

Here is the concept I'd like to work with, and the picture fits what I want to do perfectly. The image is sizable so be warned.

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For those of you not familiar with 40k, the big dude in black armor is Grimaldus, a super bad ass warrior priest from the Black Templars, a super bad ass chapter of crusading super soldiers. Basically replace Grimaldus with a Bone Knight, and the servitors with skeletons, and some of the iconography with an appropriate holy symbol or something.

Now heres the tricky part, I'd like to balance my divine power melee whupassery with some blasty clerical goodness. And so I've come here for advice.

[kestrel404]

I made a truly awesome bone-knight villain for a one-shot I ran who was equal parts clerical caster and martial maniac. His primary trick is not something you want to use as a PC because it will require the GM to throttle you (no, really, it would be necessary. I gave him troll regen, made him immune to acid and fire damage, and thanks to bone knight's huge list of immunities, he effectively became immune to DAMAGE (including attribute damage!))

However, the OTHER tricks he used are all fairly playable despite being ridiculously powerful.

First, his highest attribute was charisma. That's because by the time you get into the Bone Knight PRC (or possibly at the same time), you should have picked up the, Persist spell, DMM Persist and the Undead Leadership feat.

Ask your GM if Cleric turning and Paladin turning give you seperate pools of turn attempts - Whether Cleric 1/Paladin 4 will get you 2*(3+Cha) turn attempts at level 1, or 3+cha attempts at level 2. If you get twice as many turn attempts, it is worth going
Cloistered Cleric 1/Paladin of Tyranny 4/Bone Knight N
otherwise, it's
Cleric 1/Fighter 1/Cleric +3/Bone Knight N

Either way, pick up Persist spell at level 1 (with planning domain for cleric, you can do this for any race), and DMM Persist at level 3. Level 6 feat is obviously undead leadership.

Your spells are used to buff yourself and your minions. The Recitation spell is especially nice for this (+2 or 3 LUCK bonus to attack, init & saves, to everyone in a specific area WHEN YOU CAST IT! Spell explicitly still works if they leave that area later!). Lots of other nice persistable spells.

If you're looking more at Blasty magic instead of buff spells, you should considder going druid into Bone Knight. You'll need to pick up Know(religion) from somewhere (knowledge devotion!). But thanks to the fact that Bone Armor is not Metal (it's bone!), you've got no problems wearing the stuff! Try getting Heavy Armor proficiency from something, since this allows the Druid to wear Full Plate. The only problem might be your link to nature and the natural world not jiving with the whole Undeath scene. Well, if that's a problem, pick up a couple levels in the Blighter prestige class (complete divine), which basically makes you an anti-druid!

Hope that helps.

[Noedig]

Sounds good so far.

I'd like to have a skeleton carry around a big ancient book I can quote litanies from that do good/bad things to people I like/hate. Don't know if thats possible, but it'd be great. What should stat priority be? Cha>Wis>Str>Whatever?

[kestrel404]

RE: Big book of quotes
Seriously, look up Recitation (it's a spell from the various WOTC web enhancements, so just google for it). That's actually the fluff of the spell!

Stats:
Yeah, that's about right. Although, you'll want at least a 10 int to get the skills you need by level 6. I'd say 16 cha, 16 wis unless you've got more than 32 point buy.

[Noedig]

Wow you weren't kidding. Well that certainly meets my requirements for a book of litanies.

Normally we do a 4d6 drop lowest, reroll 1s when we generate stats for characters, and we get three sets of that. Im imagining that having 2 16s won't be terribly difficult. What weapon should I be toting around? Greatsword?

[Tokuhara]

Wow you weren't kidding. Well that certainly meets my requirements for a book of litanies.

Normally we do a 4d6 drop lowest, reroll 1s when we generate stats for characters, and we get three sets of that. Im imagining that having 2 16s won't be terribly difficult. What weapon should I be toting around? Greatsword?

Scythe for 3 reasons:

1. Damage is more than admirable
2. Great crit range
3. Thematically, a guy in platemail (?) toting a scythe and having a small army of Undead makes many players shiver in fear

[Noedig]

I like it. An interesting ability that Bone Knights have is called Fill the Ranks iirc. For all intents and purposes, this looks like it creates intelligent skeletons. Am I reading this wrong, or am I getting Awaken Undead for nothing?

[Coidzor]

It creates Karrnathi Skellies/Zomblebees, right?

If so it's somewhere in between a normal animated dead and an awakened undead.

You'll want to talk to your DM about making it into a template if you want to use it on non-medium undead that are functionally no different from those made of humans.

[Noedig]

Im AFB right now, but I'll look into it further. Now then, what type of undead should I have running around with me? I'd like to keep it primarily human(oid) and maybe some animals (like bears for SKELETON BEAR CAVALRY). From an RP standpoint humans and common animals like wardogs, horses, and the like, make the most sense. From a power standpoint, well...

[kestrel404]

Interesting tidbit about Karrnathi skellies/zombies - since they're sentient, you can keep control of them with Undead Leadership - and 3HD skeletons and zombies count as Level 2 followers for purposes of Leadership - so you can fill all of your 2nd level leadership slots with relatively well-built undead. And you can do this with other Bone Knight's excess! Because of the 'when you animate too many, some of them go free' rule for animate dead, you can just ask other 5th level bone knights to use Fill the Ranks for you. This only really works if you're LE, the same alignment as the Karrnathi undead.

Oh, and you should look into the Libris Mortis corpsecrafting feats. Getting +4 Str and +2HP/HD plus other goodies (like +1d6 cold damage per attack) is sweet.

[Coidzor]

Im AFB right now, but I'll look into it further. Now then, what type of undead should I have running around with me? I'd like to keep it primarily human(oid) and maybe some animals (like bears for SKELETON BEAR CAVALRY). From an RP standpoint humans and common animals like wardogs, horses, and the like, make the most sense. From a power standpoint, well...

Generally, what you've been killing is a good source of bodies for this sort of thing.

Forms that have good physical stats are your primary draw here, so things like lizardfolk and orcs are good. Wood elves and regular elves also aren't too bad considering their constitution penalty is irrelevant. That, and movement modes for zomblebees.

For animals, if you can take the time, the Warbeast template from MM2 both lets you buy animals and increases their strength and movement speeds and allows you to have a price guide for buying animals and vermin as well, the main downside is it adds a HD to them and the wait to add the template or having to swallow the extra cost.

Also, the Magebred template from the Eberron Campaign Setting is good for adding a bit of speed or natural armor(useful for zomblebees only) and increasing the physical stats of creatures doubles their price if you acquire them legitimately though.

[JaronK]

Just as a build thought, anything that goes Ur Priest/Bone Knight is going to be REALLY potent and still leave you with levels to fill in the melee abilities. One build that's really nasty that a friend of mine played for a while was Paladin of Factotum 1/Tyranny 4/Hexblade 4/Ur Priest 1/Bone Knight 10. Factotum is mostly to help get the skills you need to enter those PrCs. And man, it was a potent build... but it takes a while to really get up there.

JaronK

[kestrel404]

Youch. Yeah, dipping Ur-priest before going into Bone Knight is serious nasty.

So here's how to do it faster:
Rogue 1/Hexblade 1/Paladin of Tyranny 3/Ur-priest 2/Bone Knight 10/X 3
OR
Paladin of Tyranny 3/Hexblade 2/Ur-priest 2/Bone Knight 10/X 3

The second one is very nice, but you'll need to be a Human with 18+ int to pull off the skill requirements. Either way, you need the Able Learner and Knowledge devotion (the planes) feats and a decent int.

[Coidzor]

Just as a build thought, anything that goes Ur Priest/Bone Knight is going to be REALLY potent and still leave you with levels to fill in the melee abilities. One build that's really nasty that a friend of mine played for a while was Paladin of Factotum 1/Tyranny 4/Hexblade 4/Ur Priest 1/Bone Knight 10. Factotum is mostly to help get the skills you need to enter those PrCs. And man, it was a potent build... but it takes a while to really get up there.

JaronK

why Paladin of Tyranny 4 though?

[Noedig]

Delicious Ur-Priest cheese...

Ill bring that build up with my dm

[JaronK]

why Paladin of Tyranny 4 though?

At 3 you get -2 to enemy saves next to you (Hexblade 4 gives the same thing with the Dark Companion subsitution) and at 4 you get Rebuke Undead. RU is required for Bone Knight anyway, so it's your choice of PoT 4 or UP 2. But UP 2 doesn't give as much due to lower BAB and smaller HD.

You've also got the double dip Cha to saves (one is only vs spells) which helps a lot too.

End result: your saves are amazing, but everyone next to you has greatly lowered saves. If you want to be truly a cheese ball, take the Unseelie Fey template from Dragon Compendium so you can subtract your charisma mod from the saves of everyone near you for 0LA. Youch. Heck, it's worth landing AoE spells right on top of you once you wade in there, as you'll save but your enemies won't.

JaronK