Death Knights are iconic villains in D&D, but as it turns out, the path to becoming one isn’t necessarily one the typical Fighter would walk.
In the latest Villainous Options Unearthed Arcana, there are two different “Paths to Villainy.” If you’re unfamiliar, the Paths to Villainy are an exploration of using a chain of Feats to express things about your character. Typically, you get your Class and your Subclass to say things like ‘I’m a Fighter that uses Maneuvers’ or whatever.
But for the things that fall outside of the neat and tidy Subclass categories that D&D 5E and 5.5E run on, we’ve seen WotC experiment with using Feats as a way of adding a pseudo-subclass to characters. In Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, there were the Knights of Solamnia and the Mages of the White/Red/Black Robe feat chains. In Strixhaven Curriculum of Chaos you could take smaller feat chains to represent the school your character belonged to.
Now, in the Villainous Options Unearthed Arcana, WotC has two chains of feats to help you play as iconic villains from D&D. The lich, which we talked about yesterday. And today: the Path of the Death Knight. IN a nutshell, it’s a chain of at least three feats that culminates at level 12. Each one represents a step down a dark path – at least that’s the theory. How does it play out? Let’s take a look.
The Path of the Death Knight – Doom, Death, And Death Points
First and foremost, Death Knights are powerful undead knights that command lesser undead, can bring ruin upon their enemies in the form of unholy fire, and are skilled warriors. They are also marked by villainy, stained by dishonor, and follow a dark path that will ultimately doom them as well as the others.
It all starts with the Death Knight Initiate feat, which you can take at level 4. And, like the Lich Initiate feat, you can only play if you have certain class features – in this case, you have to have access to the Weapon Mastery feature. This means you have to have a level somewhere of Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, or Rogue to become a Death Knight.
For your trouble, the Death Knight Initiate Feat gets you an ability score increase to Strength or Charisma – which is a little weirdly limiting, more on this in a second – but you also gain a pool of Death Points. You get a total of [your proficiency bonus] in your pool, and you can use them to do Death Knight feat stuff. Starting off, you’ll only be able to do a Dread Strike, which is just you casting Wrathful Smite spell without spending a spell slot. Your target has Disadvantage, and again, your spell save is Charisma.
After your initial qualification, you’ll need one other Path of the Death Knight feat to qualify for the ultimate feat in the chain. Fortunately, you have four different ones to pick from, starting with Dread Authority. This feat increases your Constitution or Charisma by 1, and also gives you the Command spell, always prepared. And you guessed it, you can cast it by spending one of your Death Points. Or you can use your own spell slots.
If that’s not to your liking, Harbinger of Doom gives you an increase to Strength, Constitution, or Charisma, as well as the ability to cast Bane by spending a Death Point or a spell slot. If you use your Death Points, it’s an amplified Bane, subtracting 1d6 from enemy rolls instead of 1d4.
Deathly Presence gives you another increase to your Strength, Constitution, or Charisma as well as the Fear spell always prepared. If you use a Death Point to cast it, you also deal 2d6 psychic damage to any creature that fails its saving throw on top of making them Frightened.
The last of the regular Death Knight feats is the Unholy Steed. This boosts your Strength or your Constitution and gives you the Find Steed spell always prepared. When you use one of your Death Points on this spell, the summoned steed is a Fiend, and creatures have Disadvantage against its Fell Glare ability.
Death Knight Ascension – Becoming A Death Knight Is Like Becoming 1/16th Of An Evil Paladin, Apparently
Finally, you become a full-on Death Knight with the Death Knight Ascension feat. This feat mandates that you be level 12, have two other Path of the Death Knight feats (including Death Knight Initiate), and increases your Strength or your Charisma score by 1. It also means you are an Undead creature (no longer humanoid), and that you have resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage, and immunity to exhaustion from not eating, drinking, or breathing.
More importantly, you can spend up to five of your Death Points to create a Hellfire Orb. This is a blast of pure hellfire that explodes in a 20-foot radius sphere, dealing 2d6 fire damage and 2d6 necrotic damage per Death Point spent – meaning you can potentially deal a total of 20d6 damage by spending all of your Death Points.
It’s not bad, but it’s also literally the only Death Knight thing you’d get to do in a day if you don’t have spell slots. Your Proficiency Bonus caps out at +6 (at level 17) so if your campaign goes that high, you can maybe get one other use of a spell.
And that’s the thing, right? This feels like it should be a Paladin subclass. Because that’s clearly who the feat chains are aimed at. Unlike the Lich feats, which let you pick your spellcasting ability (so Bards and Warlocks and Clerics, even Druids can become liches) and the ability score increased with each feat you take. The Death Knight feats are all about Strength, Charisma, and Consitution.
Even more, they lock your spellcasting ability to Charisma (at least for your Death Knight features). Which, of the various classes that have both Weapon Mastery and spell slots, leaves only Paladin. Or a Warlock, Sorcerer, or Bard that takes a single level of Fighter or whatever. It’s kind of sad that an Eldritch Knight Fighter, who has spell slots, loses out on some utility and focus because they don’t get to boost their Intelligence or whatever.
It feels much more prescriptive than the other Path to Villainy. These feats feel they’re made for Paladins who fall from their Oaths, but again, why not just make a new subclass? At any rate, that’s just my opinion. Yours is the one WotC really wants to know, and you can tell them what you think by taking the survey at the link below!
Death Knight would be an awesome subclass, because then they could go all in on features and aura instead of giving you some low level spells and calling it a day!
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