Building a Hellknight Armiger
Any lawful character can petition to join the Hellknights. When a character seeks to join, he must either receive the patronage of a serving Hellknight or make plain his intentions by petitioning at a Hellknight order’s citadel. This begins a course of intensive reeducation and physical training that takes as long as the armiger’s trainer considers necessary, although the basic curriculum takes about 3 years. At the end of this period of training, the armiger must pass the Hellknight test - particularly brave or foolhardy armigers can always petition to take the test before their training is complete, but in most cases, this merely results in the armiger’s untimely demise. Most hellknights are human, as Chelaxian racism is still quite prevalent in the hellknight orders but some exceptions do exist. Why, one of senior members of the Order of the Nail is a centaur! Most hellknights are paladins, fighters, or warlords. Signifiers are usually clerics, invokers, warlocks, or wizards.
Class Prerequisite: None.
Race Prerequisite: None.
Alignment Prerequisite: Any lawful.
Note: The hellknight armiger is a variant of the ordained priest theme.
Starting Feature
Benefit: An armiger must select which Hellknight order he intends to join. If the armiger later enters the Hellknight or Hellknight Signifier paragon paths, they must select that same order. Choose Branding Chains or Smiting Measure. You gain that power.
Until would-be Hellknights take the trial referred to simply as the Test—in which they enter single combat with a conjured devil and either emerge victorious or die— they are known as armigers. While this is a blanket term for all Hellknights-in-training (including those training to become signifers). Despite their lack of recognized rank, armigers are skilled and deadly warriors. Most armigers live and train at their order’s citadel, working toward the day when they become full-fledged Hellknights. These armigers follow a brutally strict routine; they spend hours honing their combat skills against other trainees, obsessively studying in the citadel’s libraries, or memorizing passages of the Hellknight philosophy known as the Measure and the Chain. At regular intervals, squads of armigers emerge from their citadels to patrol nearby cities or frontier lands, working to enforce Hellknight law and their order’s edicts.
On occasion, some armigers travel farther from their citadels, searching out those who mock the law and bringing them to justice by any means necessary. While a few do so as squires to full-fledged Hellknights, others strike out on their own or join bands of adventurers. To make up for the broken routine of adventuring life and the frequent compromises necessary in the presence of such allies, such roaming armigers are expected to perform frequent reckonings. These painful acts of mortifcation, such as scourging oneself or drinking boiling water, keep the would-be Hellknight disciplined and focused on the strictures of the Measure and the Chain.
Branding Chains
Hellknight Armiger Attack
Searing chains whip around your foes, leaving the condemned branded.
Encounter ♦ Implement, Fire, Varies
Standard Action ♦ Close blast 3
Target: Each enemy in blast.
Attack: Highest ability vs. Will.
Hit: 1d8 + highest ability modifier fire damage, and the target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.
11th Level: 2d8 + highest ability modifier fire damage.
21st Level: 3d8 + highest ability modifier fire damage.
Special: When you create your character, Choose Arcane or Divine. The power gains that keyword. This choice remains throughout your character's life and does not change the power's other effects.
Smiting Measure
Hellknight Armiger Attack
You utter a passage of the measure as you smite your foes. Your allies find themselves bolstered by your convictions, even if they do not share them.
Encounter ♦ Weapon, Martial
Standard Action ♦ Melee weapon
Target: One enemy.
Attack: Highest ability vs. AC.
Hit: 1[W] + highest ability modifier damage.
Effect: Choose one ally within 3 squares of you. That ally gains a +2 bonus to all defenses until the end of your next turn. He or she also gains temporary hit points equal to 3 + one-half your level.
11th Level: 2[W] + highest ability modifier damage.
21st Level: 3[W] + highest ability modifier damage.
Additional Features
Level 5 Feature
Benefit: You gain a +2 power bonus to two skill checks. These two skills are determined by the Hellknight Order you chose at first level.
Order of the Chain: Insight and Streetwise
Order of the Gate: Arcana and Diplomacy
Order of the Godclaw: Diplomacy and Religion
Order of the Nail: Endurance and Nature
Order of the Pyre: Intimidate and Religion
Order of the Rack: Endurance and Insight
Order of the Scourge: Intimidate and Streetwise
Order of the Pike: Dungoneering and Nature
Order of the Torrent: Athletics and Perception
Order of the Wall: Endurance and Intimidate
Level 10 Feature
Benefit: You gain a +1 power bonus to saving throws.
Optional Powers
Ardent Resolve
Hellknight Armiger Utility 2
In the service of order you know no fear, no weakness, and no surrender.
Daily ♦ Martial
Immediate Reaction ♦ Personal
Trigger: You are bloodied by an attack or damaged by an attack while bloodied.
Effect: You can use your second wind. Until the end of the encounter, you gain a +5 power bonus to saving throws against charm and fear effects, and enemy attacks never treat you as being bloodied.
Banish / Call Armor
Hellknight Armiger Utility 6
You banish your heavy, cumbersome armor into a demiplane somewhere in the Nine Hells. With a fiery flash you can instantly don it when danger arises.
Daily ♦ Varies
Minor Action ♦ Personal
Effect: Choose a suit of armor you are proficient with. You banish the armor to a demiplane within the Nine Hells. Anytime during the day you can don the armor as a minor action. This power is not considered to be expended until you do but you can only have one suit of armor banished at one time. Note you cannot don the armor if you are already wearing armor greater than cloth.
Special: When you select this power, Choose Arcane or Divine. The power gains that keyword. This choice remains as long as the character has this power. If you chose Branding Chains as your power, you must select the same keyword.
Clad in Iron
Hellknight Armiger Utility 10
Your belief in the measure and the chain makes you stand tall, a bastion of order in a lawless land.
Encounter ♦ Martial, Stance
Minor Action ♦ Personal
Requirements: You must be wearing heavy armor.
Effect: You can make a saving throw. Also, until the end of your next turn, you gain a power bonus to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will equal to the enhancement bonus of your armor.