New Fluff for the Knight Class

[CowardlyPaladin]

So….the Knight.

The Knight is one of those classes that basically exist as a replacement paladin, since WOTC has absolutely no idea how to do the Paladin concept correct, but because they weren’t able to give the Knight any unique characteristics, despite its cool mechanics it basically fell by the wayside, forgotten. So I decided to make the Knight a more interesting class storywise, and for that to work, they need to be moved thematically away from the Paladin so they can be their own entity. So this is an attempt to create a distinct class, but mechanically its basically the same.

The Paladin's theme is trying to be a good person while adhering to a very rigid moral standard, while with the Knight I drew more on the actual Authorian ideals of honor and glory. Just an important clarification, the Paladin isn't actually required to be married to the notion of honorable combat, they can't kill prisoners, torture or do anything thats an evil action and they have to be lawful, but ambushes, traps, and lying are all perfectly acceptable for Paladins. A paladin can dig a pit, fill it with holy water and then tell a Devil to come and get him, but a
Knight wouldn't want to play with such cheap tricks.

So without further ado, the Kight


“All is Fair In Love and War”

Such a sentiment is abhorrent to a Knight, in a way the Knights exists as opposition to such terms. After all, so much of our concepts of fairness come from in regards to love and war, rules of war have existed as far back humanity, and codes of proper behavior in regards to dating date from the same era. Love and War aren’t in opposition to fairness, they are the creators of it, and now Knights exist to personify and defend it. Mostly the War Part because relationships get complicated real fast.

Knights are honorable warriors and their honor makes them strong, literally. Following their code of honor allows them maintain their powers. Some of these powers include immunity to “Dishonorable techniques” provided the Knight themselves doesn’t employ them. They at higher levels become immune to flanking, poison, being flat footed, certain combat tricks, and sneak attack for people not four levels higher than they.



The Knights code

Don’t attack an unaware opponent, especially not sleeping opponents.

Don’t stab an opponent in the back

Don’t flank an opponent

Surrenders must be honored, at least in the moment.

Don’t kill unarmed opponents (Unless they insist on fighting unarmed).

Don’t slay fleeing opponents, unless they are doing some Parthian shot ****. You may of course try to harm them to keep them from running away though.

Always be the last to retreat, and do so as a fighting retreat.

Be polite as much as possible.

Always strive to be cultured (literally no knights agree on what that means)

Always be willing to accept a duel and honor the terms of said duel.

Don't use Poison.

Questing

The focus of a knights life beyond all things, is the ideal of the Quest. Knighthood is all about doing extremely dangerous things for its own sake, often with little reward, for the sake of complete adventures, some might call them the Platonic ideal of adventurers. Others might call them “The people who get it wrong”.



New Powers

Questsight: Knights connection to the ideal of questing is so great they can sometimes “Feel” a quest in the area. A certain number of times per day (varies on level) the Knight can observe the area and “feel” if certain people who have a problem and feel like they need a hero to solve the problem. Some Knights describe the experience as a sense of certainty, that they hear the person’s need almost like a song and are drawn to it. Others describe it as an exclaimation mark over a person’s head, but they are generally seen as gauche.



Questsense: More powerful Knights understand their powers so well that they realize where they must go for the sake of the quest. A certain number of times per quest, they can just “know” what item they might have to get for the sake of continuing the quest, or what location they have to go to, or what person they have to talk to. What they are supposed to do next is unclear, but it is a good hint. And no, it doesn’t look like a marking on a mini map, shut up.



The Questing Beast

Should a Knight really have no ideas of what to do next, they can summon a questing beast to give them guidance. A knight must spend a day either in prayer or meditation (if secularly inclined) alone (or with a small group of companions) in the wilderness contemplating for the answers, and then the moment the sun goes down they will see a glimpse of the questing beast, and the Knight must pursue. The path they follow is a magical one, and they will likely find themselves in completely different locations, a knight located in the middle of the desert might pass behind a dune and emerge by a lake or on top of a mountain, the only limitations are that the Questing Beast always stays on the Material Plane and they never bring Knights to locations where they wouldn’t be able to survive (so a Water Elf Knight might go underwater but a human wouldn’t unless they had a magical item). If the Knight losses his way, he will turn a corner and emerge back where he started.

Along this road, the Questing Beast will bring the Knight to random locations across the Material Plane where they might do battle with great monsters, each journey contains 1-3 combat encounters. These are almost always encounters with mindless monsters, but not always (see below). Should the Knight or their companions die, their bodies appear back where they last rested, which confuses the attackers. These encounters are always actual locations on the Material Plane, which means that band of knights might emerge at any point and attack random monsters, something that stresses people out (though the odds are astronomically small). Evil outsiders always have to plan for the possibility that knights might randomly attack them when they are on the Material Plane.

After the conflicts are resolved, the Knight will find themselves at a pool, where the Questing Beast will face them, before vanishing. It will leave behind an item or clue to help the Knight to slay the Questing Beast, who usually have a small hoard of items with them, but should the killer ever encounter another knight, they will instantly recognize them as a slayer. Questing Beasts will answer future calls, but tend to take the knight to more dangerous encounters, provide less useful information (certainly no bonus magic items) and when they do show up, tend to have buddies with them. However they will always answers summons, and a few particularly psychotic Black Knights have made a habit out of killing them, though eventually the Questing Beasts will start to lead other Knights to these killers so they could be brought down. Questing Beasts can choose not to answer a summons, but if a Knight asks for a questing beast for a year and a day, their request must be answered.

In terms of encounters, most Questing Beasts simply make it an easy combat encounter, madd cityoften against an unambiguously evil force like undead, a monster, or evil outsider (Darkspawn are also popular). Among Questing Beasts, its considered bad form to involve politics into it, but there are always Questing Beats who buck the trend, and so knights might encounter people who the Questing Beast simply doesn’t like, or even have an ideological disagreement. A knight might encounter a band of Harmonium, or possibly a Peasant revolt, and the Knight might be expected to talk them into going home, or slaughter them, entirely depending upon the disposition of the Questing Beast in question. They are required to give the Knight a hint on how they want to solve the quest, but no details. So if a knight sees an ogre war band, they might see a dove fly by as an indication that the Questing Beast wants them to make peace.



Knightly Orders

Knights like to form orders, much like guilds, where they work to get a bunch of different quests, normally based around a theme. Knights are extremely honorbound and





Terms



Hedge Knight- A knight who hasn’t yet joined an order.

A knight Errant: A knight who hasn’t earned a rank in said order.

Landed Knight: A knight who commands his own lands and lords.

Household Knight:A knight who doesn’t join an order, but instead serves a lord or other official.

Sworn Shields: Personal Bodyguards for important people.

White Knight: The champion of the Guild, expected to answer challenges. Only rank other than Purple which must be Appointed.

Purple Knight: The Leader of a Guild or Order, sometimes called a Grandmaster, they assign people on Quests and maintain the group. Often call themselves kings.

Red Knight: The Knight with the highest kill count, often go out to fight big dangerous beasts.

Blue Knight: Defender of the common folk or the helpless, often assigned as a protector.

Green Knight: Guardian of a location or region.

Yellow: Winners of Championships

Gold: Who brings back the most money

Silver: Who brings back the most magic items

Brown: Who discovers the most new locations.

Grey: Who kills the biggest and baddest monsters.

[SilverLeaf167]

There's a lot of cool ideas here that would take a while to go through in detail, but one issue stands out:

How do they work with the rest of the party?

Sneaky tactics and creative plans are,many if most players (including myself), one of the best things RPGs have to offer, and getting to pull one off is always a high point everyone will remember for ages. So will the Knight simply not participate while his allies hatch their schemes, which doesn't sound very honorable either? Or will he actively intervene, which absolutely isn't fun for anyone? In general, is the Knight supposed to impose his principles on the rest of the party, and if not, how does he justify that?

Questsight, Questsense and the Questing Beast are interesting concepts, and in practice they might even help the DM, but other than that, they're either going completely unused or being used to completely derail things. Again, a bit of a lose-lose.

Really, this isn't just "new fluff", which is always welcome, but a whole new Code of Conduct, which usually isn't very well-received.

[CowardlyPaladin]

There's a lot of cool ideas here that would take a while to go through in detail, but one issue stands out:

How do they work with the rest of the party?

Sneaky tactics and creative plans are,many if most players (including myself), one of the best things RPGs have to offer, and getting to pull one off is always a high point everyone will remember for ages. So will the Knight simply not participate while his allies hatch their schemes, which doesn't sound very honorable either? Or will he actively intervene, which absolutely isn't fun for anyone? In general, is the Knight supposed to impose his principles on the rest of the party, and if not, how does he justify that?

Questsight, Questsense and the Questing Beast are interesting concepts, and in practice they might even help the DM, but other than that, they're either going completely unused or being used to completely derail things. Again, a bit of a lose-lose.

Really, this isn't just "new fluff", which is always welcome, but a whole new Code of Conduct, which usually isn't very well-received.

The Knight doesn't do such acts themselves, they don't care if somebody else does it, the Knight isn't a Paladin. Its about personal honor, not imposing a larger code.
Also the Knight doesn't really have as much of an "Either/Or" relationship with their code, if a Knight flanks they just don't get to use their special abilities, they don't cease to be a knight, so they are a lot more flexible than paladin

[daniel_ream]

The Paladin's theme is trying to be a good person while adhering to a very rigid moral standard, while with the Knight I drew more on the actual Authorian ideals of honor and glory. Just an important clarification, the Paladin isn't actually required to be married to the notion of honorable combat, they can't kill prisoners, torture or do anything thats an evil action and they have to be lawful, but ambushes, traps, and lying are all perfectly acceptable for Paladins.

This just seems backwards to me. The original paladin character class is a knight, specifically Ogier the Dane as envisioned by Poul Anderson in Three Hearts and Three Lions. I suppose you can dicker about how similar the Knights of the Round Table and the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne are, but they're of a piece in the French medieval romances.

Certainly the Paladin class has been watered down to the point of "generic holy warrior", but having a Knight and a Paladin class seems like an overlap.

[CowardlyPaladin]

This just seems backwards to me. The original paladin character class is a knight, specifically Ogier the Dane as envisioned by Poul Anderson in Three Hearts and Three Lions. I suppose you can dicker about how similar the Knights of the Round Table and the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne are, but they're of a piece in the French medieval romances.

Certainly the Paladin class has been watered down to the point of "generic holy warrior", but having a Knight and a Paladin class seems like an overlap.

Maybe they do overlap but I didn't write PHBII, fact is there are now two classes, a Paladin and a Knight so we need to figure out where one stops and the other ends. So we need to draw a line, otherwise the Knight is just a failed attempt to supplement the Paladin and isn't worth anybody's time.......which is kinda what it is, because even though it is mechanically cool and distinct, its fluff is so generic that it just doesn't have much to it to give it an identity. And if I were in charge, I wouldn't have bothered to make a Knight class but what's done is done and I want to make the two classes different, and to do that we need to draw a line somewhere to say "This is knight' and "This is paladin." Who knows maybe I might later go "This is Crusader"

And to me, the key is Chivalry. The Paladin has no requirements about being polite or having to fight opponents honorable, their requirement is to be good from a lawful perspective. The Paladin doesn't have to go up to a bearded devil and alert it before fighting, a Paladin can be totally cool with shooting it with a crossbow in the head, cause its a souless devil. A paladin is ok with flanking and with back stabs and ambushes because it isn't actually about how you fight, its about fighting evil . The thing the paladin can't do is evil actions, but within the context of non evil actions, they can basically do what ever they want. Since poison isn't evil in my games (because that is dumb) a paladin could totally poison her blade and stab a blackguard. And Paladins don't have to be nice.

Knights meanwhile are both more flexible and less. They can't actually do "Cheap" tactics, they can't flank, they don't sneak attack, they would never use poison and don't kill sleeping opponents. But Chilvarly isn't a zero sum game the way morality is. If torture is evil (and it is...) then not only can you never do it, you can't let anybody else do it, cause its evil. But a Sneak attack isn't evil, its just dishonorable, so a Knight doesn't care if her companions do it, just as long as she doesn't do it

And this is the key bit, the Knight doesn't actually fall if she does use dishonorable tactics. She just can't access some of her powers for a bit. A knight can flank, she just gets bonuses if she doesn't, and if a knight does us poison all that means is that she losses some of her powers. Its more of an if X then Y type code, so if you do an action you lose some of your powers, but not even all of them, and only for a brief time. You can only become an ex knight if you stop being lawful, which is a much trickier process. So you don't have the thin line tightrope thing Paladins have and you don't have to step in to monitor your other party members

Most of that is in the PHB2 actually but here is the thign....almost everybody forgot the fluff of the knight in the PHB2 because it was like "This is our awkward attempt to replace the paladin class" so people just mentally thought "oh its just a mechanically different paladin" and either played as a paladin, played it as what they want the paladin to be, or just lost interest and wandered off. The difference than the notion of chivalrously vs. the notion of morality is that Chivilarly is very self focused, I am acting honorable for my own sake, to improve myself as a person and make myself better, its a task of self improvement. MOrality though is about making the world better, if the world is evil, you need to make it less so, and that is a far more absolute and inflexible system. which isn't bad, again Paladin is my favorite class, but those are very different perspectives.

I'm actually going to get an FAQ to explain the differences (by make I mean make my friend make it because I'm notoriously lazy)