Base Class: Paladin
Upon taking up the mantle of Death Knight, you gain all the powers and prowess that comes with it, You will learn to become the Death reincarnate.
Profanities
At level 3, when you choose to take on the mantle of Death Knight, you learn a number of profanities equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier (minimum 1), chosen from the list below. When you activate a profanity, a dark colored aura surrounds you imbuing you with the specific profanities bonus. You can use a bonus action to activate or deactivate one profanity. Falling unconscious will deactivate all profanities active. Activating a profanity while you have one already active will automatically deactivate the previous one. At level three you can only benefit from one profanity at a time, two at level 5, three at level 12, and four at level 18, and the profanity effect will stay active until it is deactivated, or on the subsequent failed saving throw. At the end of each of your turns in combat, while you have more than one profanity active, you must pass a DC 15 Constitution Save, or one random profanity will deactivate.
Aura Of The Damned
Any enemy creature within 20 feet must make a constitution saving throw or be at disadvantage on attack rolls made against you
Deathly Glamour
You can add your Charisma modifier to all ability saves
Grave Armor
Gain +2 AC against enemies that are making melee attacks against you
Pale Horse
You summon a ghostly looking horse. You increase your speed by 10 feet.
Soulflay
A creature you choose within 30 feet of you have disadvantage on a single saving throw of your choice.
Soulreaver
The weapon you hold becomes bathed in the essence of your aura . The weapon must be a bound weapon(see below). On a successful melee attack add an additional 1d4 of necrotic damage. Increases to 1d6 at level 6, and 1d8 at level 10.
Terrorize
If a creature moves to within 30 feet of you, you can use your reaction and the creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you for 1 minute. The DC is equal to 8 + your Strength modifier + your proficiency bonus. Whether successful or not, a creature cannot be targeted by this ability again until you finish a long rest.
Bound Weapon
At 3rd level, you learn a ritual that creates a magical, living bond between yourself and one weapon. You perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a short rest. The weapon must be within your reach throughout the ritual, at the conclusion of which you touch the weapon and forge the bond. Once you have bonded a weapon to yourself, you can't be disarmed of that weapon unless you are incapacitated. If it is on the same plane of existence as you, you can summon that weapon as a bonus action on your turn, causing it to instantly materialize in your hand, unless it is held by a greater power. In addition, you may also absorb its physical form within your very being, which may act as an effective storage place. You can have up to two bonded weapons, but can summon only one at a time with your bonus action. If you attempt to bond with a third weapon, you must break the bond with one of the other two. You gain a +1 bonus to all attack and damage rolls with your bound weapon.
Etherfloat
You hover a few inches from the ground. You do not trigger pressure plates or the like; you can cross liquid surfaces if they are still; and you descend to the ground harmlessly as if under the effect of the 'Feather Fall' spell.
Siphoning Strikes
At 7th level, you learn to control the balance of life and death within yourself. When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier. Your current value is also affected by this. These bonus hit points expire at the end of the battle, and you return to the hit point amount, scaled at a 1 to 1 ratio, of what you had by the end of the battle. For example, if your original max HP was 20, and you gained 10 hit points, but was reduced to 15 (15 out of 30 HP total), then you would result with 10 out of 20 hit point
Shadow Meld
At 10th level, as an action you may teleport to a point you can see within 60 feet if you and that point are both in darkness. You may also take one other creature with you. If the creature is not willing, it must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw to evade you. DC being 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. Additionally, you gain resistance to necrotic damage while you have a profanity active.
Death's Embrace
At 15th level you have come to know that even to the strongest, Death is inevitable. If damage reduces you to 0 hit points and doesn't kill you out right, you may make a Constitution saving throw with a DC equal to the damage done. On a success, you drop to 1 hit point instead. You may use this ability once per long rest.
Revenant
At 18th level, you fully assume to the mantle of Death Knight; you no longer require food, water, or sleep. You may still gain the benefits of a long rest if you spend 8 hours undertaking light activities such as reading or keeping watch. Additionally Starting at level 18, when a friendly creature within 30 feet of you is knocked unconscious and not outright killed, it can choose to drop to 1 hit point instead, and gain temporary hit points equal to your Fighter level + your constitution modifier (a minimum of 1).You must finish a Long rest before this feature may be used again.
I think this is a very balanced subclass that everyone should use
Time to take a level in fighter so that I can use Revenant
Also, the profanities are basically metamagic with infinite points
This makes me bleed. This reminds me of the op race I made but never published
Etherfloat is so funny it's so badly thought out. Like what if a flying enemy grapples you, dashes up, and then lets go? You're just slooowly floating downwards, unable to do anything for the next few rounds. You also don't seem to be able to swim anymore. Seems more like a debuff to me, honestly. "Oh no it's the scary death knight who can be ignored by moving downwards or entering water! Save me!"
i love the theme, but, i didn't quit understand what is your oath. also you didn't say what spell this subclass gives and, in my eyes it seems a little to strong and not really a had a lot of abilities around the death theme. i don't mean to hate, but just wanted to point it out. any way, i can say that i ran Curse Of Strhad and one of my players was a Death Knight paladin and he enjoyed that. so, good work overall.
but, if you want. i wanted to give some tips about what abilities he can have:
My brother in christ this is a fighter subclass
First of all love the theme, but I would probably make it were it can raise anyone killed with a smile for one hour and actually try to make some original abilities. I don't mean to be but but it seems very "choppy" and unrefined.
You can’t mark a weapon as a bound weapon. Don’t know how to fix that, please do asap
i have nothing to say other than this is an amazing oath even if the saving throws become stupidly op with wisdom able to get to 22 but I love this so much and I haven't even played a game with it yet so well done
This homebrew has some good flavor in it but, unfortunately, it's pretty severely over-powered. You can't just take the best parts of a bunch of different classes and throw them together into a single class. The result lacks balance. When creating a subclass, you have to keep a comparative measure in mind with other similar classes.
i feel like i need to play this cause it was posted on my birthday
“Deathly Glamor”
So, dying to this would be a... Death by Glamor?
OH YES.
(I am aware that this isn’t actually used to deal damage, I just couldn’t resist doing this joke.)
This... is a bit of a mess but I feel with some minor tweaks it would be great for a villain, able to scare off their foes and kidnap PCs or important NPCs, able to keep important minions alive and never seeming to truly die, and able to summon an insanely powerful weapon on a whim.
This is a bit of a mess. So obviously this is just copy pasted from a fighter subclass, but Paladin and Fighter subclasses are balanced quite differently. Paladin subclasses give some utility, but the core of the Paladin's power is in its base features, whereas fighters derive a LOT of their flexibility and damage from their subclass features. When you layer those things over top of each other, they give too much power to a PC, likely leading to some feel bads at the table when the official subclasses don't stack up against this monster. These Profanities feel like they're essentially Warlock Invocations, too, so this is essentially just the best bits from three classes. There's some flavor here that can be drawn out, and probably a lot of this has to go or be re translated into mechanics that work alongside Paladin mechanics.
For Siphoning Strikes, i think what its trying to say is this:
At 7th level, when you reduce an enemy to 0 HP, you gain temp HP to both your current and base HP based on your Charisma mod. At the end of combat, your health percentage with temp HP is converted over to percentage of base HP.
For example: if you have a base hp of 20 and gain 10 temp hp through siphoning strikes, your base hp is counted as 30 for the remainder of combat. If you lose hp at all during combat, regardless of whether or not it depleted your temp hp, the remaining hp is converted into a percentage of your temp base hp (if you ended with 15 of 30, that's converted to 50%). That percentage is used to calculate your current health once combat ends (50% of base 20 HP is 10 HP, so your health is set to 10 of 20 rather than the 15 of 20 it would be when calculated normally since you lost all of the temp current HP as well as 5 from your natural base hp).
May have originally been fighter, considering there's no level 20 crux ability and it says "Fighter levels" in level 18
This is really cool, though a couple things elude me...
Level 7: Siphoning Strikes. Is it speaking in some other language? I can't understand what it means...
Level 18: Revenant. Although it is similar to a Paladin level 20 ability it's a bit low... Wait, why does it say Fighter levels? Was this originally a Fighter subclass?
No, this is homebrew, which by definition is "brewed" by people at home. You can find canon info from official D&D sourcebooks
Nope, actually you'd get all of these abilities on top of the base paladin class