The New Fighter: Cavalier In Xanathar's Guide To Everything

Todd Kenreck: The Cavalier has very deep roots in D&D, dating all the way back to the original Unearthed Arcana book and, of course, the D&D cartoon series, as well. I talked to Jeremy Crawford about how they're making the Cavalier effective not only when it's on its mount, but also in any location in the D&D multiverse.

Jeremy Crawford: The Cavalier appears in Xanathar's Guide, and it is a sub-class inspired by a character class that goes all the way back to First Edition D&D. The Cavalier in First Edition D&D appeared in the original book, Unearthed Arcana. And so in a way, when we were doing our Unearthed Arcana series of sub-classes, we thought, "Well, of course in a series named after the book Unearthed Arcana, we should have the Cavalier in it." Although, we didn't end up including the Acrobat, which was another option in that book.

The Cavalier is, in many ways, the classic knight in shining armor, with the added twist of being outstanding at horseback riding. Now, many people might think, "Well, the game already has the classic knight in shining armor, and that's the Paladin." The big difference between the Cavalier and the Paladin is the Paladin is a holy warrior, usually dedicated if not to a particular god, to a cause of some kind, to a great concept like justice, whereas the Cavalier is a non-magical warrior. One who can be just as honorable as a Paladin, but who might be driven by allegiance to a particular monarch, a particular kingdom, to the Cavalier's family, a particular town. It has, in a way, a more grounded, earthy feel than the Paladin, who again, is often this figure associated with these high ideals and divine magic.

We actually showed off more than one version of the Cavalier in our Unearthed Arcana series. Both versions actually got kind of a mixed reception, to be honest, from fans. Good enough to make it into the book, but each time, the score, the satisfaction score we got was just on the line enough that we kept saying, "Okay. We've got to do more work."

And really, the dissatisfaction came down to the fact that the Cavalier relied on the use of superiority dice, which is a mechanic we borrowed from the Battle Master, one of the fighter subclasses in the Player's Handbook. Now, we thought people might be interested in seeing this mechanic propagated elsewhere. But instead, often, the feedback we got was, "No, that's the Battle Master's. We don't want to see it in other fighter subclasses. We want to see them do their own thing.

Feedback on the Cavalier also, at times, was very anxious about the role of the Cavalier's mount, because as cool as it is to be on horseback or dragonback or griffinback or whatever it is you're riding in D&D, people know that often, if you go into a tight cave or a dungeon, that mount is not a whole lot of good to you. And so it then becomes problematic if too many of your class features rely on your mount being present, because you could essentially wander into a particular environment and feel like ... poof. Half your character's abilities just got turned off.

We wanted to make sure that, in the final version of the Cavalier, the version that appears in Xanathar's Guide, we addressed those concerns. The version that's in the book is actually quite different from any version that people saw in the Unearthed Arcana series. What we ended up doing is we took the parts that people liked best about the Cavalier. Then, we looked at one of the other sub-classes we released in the Unearthed Arcana series for the fighter, and that's the Knight.

And the Knight and the Cavalier were super close to each other in terms of story. And again, story is always our starting point with design for our sub-classes. And we knew, as we were thinking about what's going to make it into this book, very unlikely that both the Cavalier and the Knight were going to make it in. And in fact, their scores were really close, and the Cavalier just edged out the Knight. And that's why the Cavalier ended up being the one that went in.

I have a feeling the Cavalier edged out the Knight partly because of the nostalgia some people have for the name. It goes all the way back to First Edition. It's also a name that appears in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon ... granted, for probably the most unlikable character in the show.

Todd Kenreck: The ... like, everyone's least favorite. Or at least, he should be.

Jeremy Crawford: The strange Cavalier who does not have any kind of weapon and also does not have a mount.

Todd Kenreck: Yeah.

Jeremy Crawford: Poor Eric.

Todd Kenreck: Yeah, that's a rough role to play.

Jeremy Crawford: What we ended up doing for the final version is we went to the Knight and looked at the features that people liked best there, took those, took the best features of the Cavalier, and wove them together into essentially a brand new sub-class. And really, the theme of this sub-class ... and this was something that came up in both the Cavalier and in the Knight in their previous designs, is that they're all about protecting others. Because again, these are knights. Even if a particular Cavalier isn't a paragon of good, the Cavalier is going to be about protecting property, people, something.

And so the Cavalier has class features that are about protecting those around him or her. And then, we also still have a few features related to the mount, but we made sure that the mount is always sort of like a little extra. For most of the features, the mount is not required, but the Cavalier will always be happy when the mount gets to shine. But in a way, the mount is kind of frosting.

And also, it was important to us that the Cavalier have an identity of its own that is not reliant on this other creature being present. Because even in history, where we had cavaliers, they were so much more than horseback riders. I mean, they were knights with many other responsibilities and martial abilities. Although, we do point out in the book ... and this was actually something we pointed out in the Unearthed Arcana, as well, that the Cavalier is not meant to be an accurate portrayal of cavaliers in history.

And that's true for anything in D&D. D&D is often filled with things that are inspired by things from real world history, myths from different human cultures. And D&D always sort of takes them and transforms them, and often turns them into an archetypal form that feels natural in high fantasy.

And that's really what we've done with the Cavalier, who is now this mighty protector, awesome at holding the line and looking people down who try to run away. Really great at charging into battle, whether on foot or on horseback, and doing mighty initial strikes. I think people are really going to enjoy what emerged from the kind of revision process that we went through over those multiple versions that appeared in Unearthed Arcana and then culminating in the version that appears in the book.

Todd Kenreck: The Cavalier is par of Xanathar's Guide to Everything. You can purchase that book on dndbeyond.com in the link provided in this video description. I'm Todd Kenreck. Thanks for watching.