New DM and need help - Knights [3.5]

[Adderkleet]

I've managed to scrape through as DM for our group, getting a party of 6 up to level 3, but am starting to hit a problem with the Knight in the group.

The biggest issues are:

1. How "difficult" is a knight's generated difficult terrain? (Became relevant when a fleeing enemy had to tumble out of danger, +2 to DC? +6?)

2. If a Knight that is required to be LG robs things from a grave (which I see as CG since they -can- justify it and it -is- for good), what's the penalty?

3. After homebrewing some alternative feats (since knight has no set ACF and nobody wants to be mounted when underground, etc) this knight is now shield-bashing 2d6 damage and not losing any AC from it at level 3. Is this horribly overpowered, or does it just look like it is?


The real big issue is that I have a knight who is forced to be LG but really appears to be CG. And it annoys me that this player will ask a mob to stop attacking, interogate them with Intimidate if need be, and then ask them to pick up their weapon and continue killing them. A knight that wants to take any loot they can, even if it's obviously been burried with the dead.

[onemorelurker]

I've managed to scrape through as DM for our group, getting a party of 6 up to level 3, but am starting to hit a problem with the Knight in the group.

The biggest issues are:

1. How "difficult" is a knight's generated difficult terrain? (Became relevant when a fleeing enemy had to tumble out of danger, +2 to DC? +6?)

I'm cobbling rules together a bit here, so this may be inaccurate, but the PHB's examples of difficult terrain are "rubble, an uneven cave floor, thick undergrowth, and the like" (p. 148). Looking back at Tumble (p. 84), that seems to match up best with "severely obstructed (natural cavern floor, dense rubble, dense undergrowth)," which increases the DC of a Tumble check by 5.

2. If a Knight that is required to be LG robs things from a grave (which I see as CG since they -can- justify it and it -is- for good), what's the penalty?

The penalty for violating the Knight's Code (according to PHB2 p. 27) is losing one use of Knight's Challenge for the day, or taking a -2 penalty on attack roles and saves if out of KC uses.

3. After homebrewing some alternative feats (since knight has no set ACF and nobody wants to be mounted when underground, etc) this knight is now shield-bashing 2d6 damage and not losing any AC from it at level 3. Is this horribly overpowered, or does it just look like it is?

I don't even see how it looks overpowered, honestly. A greatsword does the same damage--more, actually, because it's a 2H weapon and a shield bash is not.

The real big issue is that I have a knight who is forced to be LG but really appears to be CG. And it annoys me that this player will ask a mob to stop attacking, interogate them with Intimidate if need be, and then ask them to pick up their weapon and continue killing them. A knight that wants to take any loot they can, even if it's obviously been burried with the dead.

If this player doesn't want to play their character as "knightly," either work out an alternate code for a CG knight or figure out what specific aspects of the Knight class appeal to the player, and suggest a different class.

[Zombimode]

The real big issue is that I have a knight who is forced to be LG but really appears to be CG. And it annoys me that this player will ask a mob to stop attacking, interogate them with Intimidate if need be, and then ask them to pick up their weapon and continue killing them. A knight that wants to take any loot they can, even if it's obviously been burried with the dead.

It this point (at least) you have to ask yourself: is the Knight Code actually adding anything positive to the game? If not, then there is no loss in ignoring it. Its one of the stupidest things writen by WotC anyway.
The player can roleplay his characters to whatever ideals he sees as "knightly" just fine. I bet this works actually better without abitrary mechanical constrains of a Code.