Class Features
What are some of the reasons to play a knight? It’s always attractive to be the big, strong guy, equally at home among the socal elite and on the battlefield. Being the mobile wall is always entertaining, especially when your enemies have no choice but to suffer the consequences of your wrath.
So, what do knights have going for them?
• D12 HD. The best in the game.
• Full BAB. Melee. It’s what you do.
• Good Will Save. It’s interesting, and useful against mind-affecting spells. Save-or-suck spells are bad for PCs. Made less useful by (very expensive)
mind blank items, but still.
• Flavor. Until now, if you wanted to be a knight in shining armor, you had to play as either a paladin. No more!
And, now the bad.
• Knight’s Code. Congratulations. You are now Lawful Stupid personified. Basically, because of your extreme honor, you refuse to attack anyone that isn’t absolutely ready for your attack. So surprise rounds? Gone. Flanking bonus? Gone, though your allies still get the bonus. Poison use? None. (Though to tell the truth, I don’t find poison very useful in the first place.) Helpless foes? No coup de grace for you. If you find yourself in a really tight spot, you
can break your code. It will cost you uses of your knight’s challenge, which are sparse enough as is.
• MAD: Knights are a bit like Paladins, in that they need strength, constitution, and charisma in order to be successful. Dexterity is also critical in Attack of Opportunity based builds.
• The great majority of your class features are mind-affecting abilities. Did you know that most high level monsters are immune to mind-affecting abilities?
Class Features:Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: All simple and martial weapons and all shield pretty much guarantees that you’re set for life.
Fighting Challenge: Basically, against a single foe that meets stringent requirements, you get a weak bonus to attack and damage that doesn’t grow very well. Basically, it’s just like the Inspire Courage bardic music, except that it only affects yourself and you can’t use it as often. Pass.
Mounted Combat: I won’t say no to free feats.
Shield Block: If you use a shield, you get a small bonus to AC against a single foe. Useful, but not in large combats. It would be more useful if it were just a constant bonus to AC. As is, it scales poorly, so it’s of practical but limited use.
Bulwark of Defense: This is the reason you want to play a knight. Any monster that starts its turn in your threatened area treats all the squares you threaten as difficult terrain. What that means is no charging, and no five-foot steps. Combine with Stand Still and a reach weapon for maximum effectiveness. If you have some way to snag Unnatural Reach, go ahead and do so to become a living death trap.
This is the first break point, and the most natural. (It's also probably the best class features, which says something.)
Armor Mastery: At 4th level, you ignore movement penalties for medium armor. This is despite the fact that you haven’t been wearing medium armor for a level or two. It gets better at 9th level, when it applies to heavy armor as well. It’s a very small upgrade, but an upgrade nonetheless. Now, if only it applied when you were mounted…
Test of Mettle: This is the defining Knight ability: shout at the enemies, and if they fail a will save, they’re forced to attack you, or at least include you in area attacks. As such, I kind of wish they’d made it better. It affects pretty much any enemy close by (100 feet), but the condition ends if anyone but you attacks the enemy. So you can either face the enemy by yourself, or at best delay him for the rest of the party. Mind-affecting.
You'll have to really minmax this to even have a chance of affecting your enemies, especially at high levels. I find that it's really not worth it to sacrifice attack, damage, and HP in order to get more people to attack you. If you're doing your job they'll do it anyway.
Bonus Feats: The selection is kind of crappy, to be completely honest. You might as well pick up some mounted combat feats, since the class tends that way.
Vigilant Defender: Okay, I love this. One flaw of AoO based builds is the Tumble skill. If someone tumbles past normally, you just don’t get an attack. No more!
Shield Ally: Okay, basically if you’re standing next to an ally and your ally is hit, you can shift part of the damage to yourself. If the enemy is close enough to your allies to hit them, you’re not doing your job in the first place. It’s occasionally useful.
Call to Battle: The ability to grant an ally a second saving throw against a fear affect is nice, but unless you find yourself fighting dragons a lot, 8th is pretty much a dead level.
Daunting Challenge: This is good for sorting out mooks, and the shaken condition is nothing to sneeze at. However, unless you spend a lot of time fighting armies of peasants, this won’t be very useful.
Improved Shield Ally: As with the basic Shield Ally, if the enemies are able to hit your allies, you’re not doing your job. Now you can repent suffer their pain by taking their HP loss.
Bond of Loyalty: Expend use of knight’s challenge. Make another save against a mind-affecting affect. Simple, but effectively useless. It comes too late in your career to be any good, especially you ought to have found a way to be immune to mind-affecting spells by 16th level.
Impetuous Endurance: So, at 17th level, wizards get the ability to turn time on its head, clerics get to summon swarms of angels via interplanar
gates, martial adepts are dealing hundreds of damage on an attack, and druids are calling on the forces of nature to summon entire storms. You? You get the ability to not auto-fail on a natural 1. So, when you
do roll that 1, you don’t automatically die. You probably will, but not automatically.
Loyal Beyond Death: This is a very good defense against stuff that doesn’t totally destroy you. If you didn’t have to wade through 20 levels of Knight in order to get it, this would be even better.