D&D 5e FFT: Jobs 7

Job Creation 7

Welcome to Part 7 of Job Builds

Today we're going to take a look at how to do the Dark Knight

Dark Knight

Premise — The Dark Knight is a Mageknight (Gish with heavy armor and access to Knightly Weapons) who fights dirty and has a selfish, mercenary, or evil theme.

Core Gameplay Abilities — Magic, Good Melee Combat, Plate Armor, Knight Weapons, Lifedrain, Mana Drain

Premise — Much like with Dragoon, this is going to involve a lot of reviewing before I consider homebrewing something custom, as several potential options already exist.

Class/Subclass Options

Paladin — Good Proficiencies.

• Divine Sense: Detect strongly aligned beings and consecrated/desecrated objects/places. Eh. Not terribly useful in an human focused campaign, but its alright. He could detect the few undead and zombies that are in the setting.
• Lay on Hands: Healing and curing disease/poison. Bad fit, unfortunately.
• Divine Smite: Change the damage type (Probably Necrotic) and who you get extra damage against and it works out better.
• Spells The spell-list isn't perfect. It's got a lot of healing, white-mage-type-stuff. Could use an overhaul.
• Fighting Style Some of them work. Maybe changing up the list would be worthwhile.
• Divine Health Sure.
• Extra Attack Absolutely.
• Aura of Protection Sure.
• Aura of Courage Sure.
• Improved Divine Smite Sure, but change the damage type as per Divine Smite.
• Cleansing Touch The flavor doesn't fit super well. Would work better if you could end beneficial spells on enemies.

Oath of Conquest Paladin — One of the Better fits

• Oath: Not Terrible
• Oath Spells: All of these are a good fit thematically, though no Lifedrain or Manadrain.
• Conquering Strike: Awesome
• Guided Strike: Awesome
• Aura of Conquest: More Awesome
• Implacable Spirit: I like it.
• Invincible Conquerer: Sure why not

Oath of Treachery Paladin — A mediocre fit with a couple iconic abilities.

• Oath: N/A
• Oath Spells: Not great.
• Conjure Duplicate: Eh
• Poison Strike: Sure
• Aura of Treachery: Sure
• Blackguard's Escape: 100%. This happens in the cutscenes all the time.
• Icon of Deceit: Sure

Oath of Vengeance Paladin — A decent but imperfect fit.

• Oath: Eh. Too Vigilante.
• Oath Spells: These are a damn good fit, thematically. Still no Lifedrain or Manadrain though.
• Abjure Enemy: Fear + Slow
• Vow of Enmity: Sure, this fits.
• Relentless Avenger: This is neat
• Soul of Vengeance: Eh.
• Avenging Angel: Nope

Oath of the Crown Paladin — A terrible fit.

• Oath: No, Not for Dark Knight.
• Oath Spells: No, not really.
• Champion Challenge: Not really.
• Turn the Tide: No.
• Divine Allegiance: No
• Unyielding Spirit: Sure.
• Exalted Champion: Nope

Oathbreaker Paladin — A Decent Fit

• Oath: N/A.
• Oath Spells: Sure, good fit.
• Control Undead: Yeah, thats cool.
• Dreadful Aspect: Not so much.
• Aura of Hate: This is good.
• Supernatural Resistance: Sure.
• Dread Lord: This is cool.

ZenBear's Oath of Blood Paladin — Nothing we want in here.

Fighter — Good Proficiencies. Nothing that detracts from Dark Knight.

• Drackolus' Dark Knight Fighter Subclass — Looks Pretty Good.
• Stuart Logan's Dark Knight Fighter Subclass — Also Looks Pretty Good

SilentSoren's Dark Knight,2 (Images) (Direct) — Eh. It's a different flavor than we're going for.

Nordic&Nerdy's Dark Knight Class (Direct) — This is a weird blood fighter lacking a lot of the abilities we would want. Not so much.

So, we have a few options here to consider:
Eliminated:

• SilentSoren's Dark Knight: Doesn't match the FFT Dark Knight Flavor
• Nordic&Nerdy's Dark Knight Class: This is its own weird blood magic thing
• Oath of Blood Paladin: No match

Considerations:

• Paladin: There's no single Paladin Oath that's a good fit for Dark Knight. But there are several of them with parts that are good.
• Stuart Logan's Fighter Subclass: This looks good.
• Drackolus' Fighter Subclass: This looks better.

For the super quick & easy route: Drackolus' Subclass is the one to choose. It's just better than the others.

This is going to be the end for today's post, I ran way over-time on this one.

Next Post won't be until next weekend. Join me then to see me build Dark Knight from Paladin! Later!

— Hawkwinter