Blackguard
“Death is expecting you; allow me to bring you together.”
Class Traits
Role: Defender. You are able to endure the most punishing attacks because of your high hit points and heavy armor. Your powers enable you to pull your enemies towards you and strike them down with Death’s Powers. You lean towards the striker as a secondary role.
Power Source: Shadow. You receive you power by serving the dark hunger of Death itself.
Key Abilities: Strength, Constitution, Charisma
Armor Proficiency: Cloth, leather, hide, chainmail, scale, plate; light shield, heavy shield
Weapon Proficiency: Simple melee, military melee, simple ranged
Implements: Ki Focuses, Weapons in which you are proficient.
Bonus to Defense: +1 Fortitude, +1 Will, +1 Reflex
Hit Points at First Level: 15 + Constitution score
Hit Points per Level Gained: 6
Healing Surges per Day: 9 + Constitution Modifier
Trained Skills: From the class skills list below, choose four trained skills at first level.
Class Skills: Athletics (Str), Diplomacy (Cha), Endurance (Con), History (Int), Insight (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Religion (Int), Stealth (Dex)
Build Options: Reaper Blackguard, Shade Blackguard
Class Features: Death Count, Death’s Blessing, Reaper’s Foe
Blackguards are the imposing knights of Death. Unlike the Paladin, you don’t serve a God or Goddess, but the power that affects all things, Death. The Assassin bargains with Death for its power, but is ultimately as fleeting to it as those who Death consumes, while the Blackguard is Death’s chosen warrior.
Death grants his chosen with powerful hexes that enable its servants to utilize debilitating strikes and spells. With each enemy that a Blackguard kills, Death grants even more power to his black knight which increases your powers and allows you to shape you hexes in different ways.
However, Blackguards are not ravenous killers. A Blackguard’s primary job is to make sure no one escapes Death’s grasp. Blackguards ease the passage of the dying, and hunt down those who try to escape. Those who oppose a Blackguard only bring themselves closer to Death. Exceptions are those released back by the Raven Queen, be it by a resurrection spell or a Remnant she has sent back, for she is Death’s mistress, deciding those whose time has come.
No one knows why Death chooses those he does. While many may be Remnants sent back by the Raven Queen, most seem to be just random individuals. While some individuals may see Blackguards as anti-Paladins and forces of evil, they couldn’t be more wrong. While Blackguards may lack the more honorable ways of the Paladin, they are not strictly good or evil, as Death is accepting of all. In fact most are unaligned, as they see Death as a natural process of the world. There are temples in some secluded places of the world where some Blackguards gather to train initiates and as a point of operation to seek out Death’s enemies.
All blackguards share these class features.
Death Count: All Blackguards have a list of those they have sent to the Shadowfell as well as those whose time has come. For each creature you kill in combat you gain a Death Point that you add to your Death Count which can then be used to enhance your blackguard powers. The number of points you can store are dependent on your level (explained in the following table).
Level Death Count Capacity Points you start with after an Extended Rest
1-5 1 0
6-10 2 1
11-15 3 1
16-20 4 2
21-25 5 2
26-30 6 3
Death’s Blessing
You may choose one of the class features listed below:
Blessing of Darkness: You are blessed with defense. While not wearing heavy armor you can use your charisma modifier instead of your Intelligence or Dexterity modifier to determine your AC.
In addition, you can add the number of points from your Death Count class feature to your Stealth checks.
Blessing of Despair: You have an Aura of Despair; enemies adjacent to you take a -1 penalty to all saves.
In addition, whenever you have at least one point in your Death Count, whenever you drop of foe to 0 hit points with an attack, you gain a +1 bonus to your next attack roll to an adjacent enemy.
Reaper’s Foe
You gain the Reaper’s Foe At-Will Power to keep your enemies attacking only you.
Death’s Mark Blackguard Feature
Death hungers for your foe, your weapon his powerful maw. Ignoring him only makes him hunger more.
At-Will* Shadow
Free Action
Trigger: You hit an enemy with an attack
Target: The triggering enemy
Effect: You mark the target. The mark lasts until your current target is killed. While a target is marked it takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls for any attack that does not include you as a target. A creature can only be subject to one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place. You must be within a number of squares equal to your Charisma or Constitution modifier of your target by the end of each of your turns or the mark will fade. You can only mark another target if someone supersedes your mark, your target dies, or your mark fades.
In addition, if the marked enemy makes an attack that doesn’t include you as a target, you can slide the target a number of squares equal to your Constitution or Charisma modifier adjacent to you and make a melee basic attack against the target as an immediate reaction. If the target can’t be pulled in an adjacent space, then the marked target does not move and all enemies adjacent to you takes necrotic damage equal to the number of points you have in your Death Count.
Special: Choose Constitution or Charisma to apply to all of this feature’s effects at first level.
In 3.X edition, (and probably earlier) a blackgaurd was the "Anti-paladin" class. Specifically, it was a evil version of the paladin. It was a divine servant of evil dieties.
By naming your class "blackgaurd", you are going to get a lot of preconcieved notions about what it is and isn't by people who haven't read it, or didn't read it in depth.
A name like "Shadowgaurd" "Veilgaurd" "Deathwarden" "Deathkeeper", ect might suit it just as good, and it will keep out the preconcieved notions a good bit of people will have.
Paragon Paths
[sblock= "Grim Reaper"]
“Your time has come, there is no escape.”
Prerequisite: Blackguard Class, Reaper’s Foe class feature
You become the symbol of Death itself. You are the intermediary between the land of the living and the land of the dead, assisting the transition of those who accept their fate; however, you are the nightmare of those who attempt to avoid it. Death grants you the power to hunt them down, as well as preventing their escape. Those who attempt to oppose you only shorten their own lives.
Grim Reaper Path Features:
Reaper’s Hunting Action (11th level): When you spend an action point to take an extra action, you also gain a +4 bonus to attack roll against targets marked by you until the start of your next turn.
Sealed Fate (11th level): You gain a +2 bonus on damage rolls against targets marked by you.
Death’s Strike (16th level): You can score a critical hit on a marked target on a roll of
Balancing isn't my strong point, so I'll just have to comment on what little I can determine needs work heh.
Reaper's foe doesn't work. A PC can only make one immediate action per round, and this ability uses one immediate action to pull, and another to attack. I recommend making the attack just a part of the immediate action used to pull the enemy, it's simpler and it works as intended.
I love the idea of the death count, I really do, but I think the way you're implementing it is a little too unbalanced. +1 to attack rolls and damage rolls with every enemy you kill? Even if it's just with implements, this is an insane bonus considering, say, the Fighter has entire class feature that gives a +1 to attack rolls which is balanced with a lot of their more exotic styles like tempest and battleraging. What's more, making it stack is even worse, as a +1 to hit is just as powerful in epic as it is at heroic. So getting a total of +6 to hit with a quick minion sweep is nuts. I can't think of a good alternative off the top of my head though... maybe just a +2 to damage rolls for each death point? Makes the Blackguard seem a bit like a striker, but I think that's a secondary role you were going for anyway.
Poisonous strike could probably be 2W and still be okay, and a Blackguard using radiant seems odd, but you've managed to justify it quite well fluff wise.
Despite all those little nitpicks, I really like the way the class is shaping up mechanically and fluff wise, so good work 
Thanks. I guess my description was a bit off on the Reaper's foe, it's intended to be the same action, and if you can't take that action the other action is taken instead. I had trouble wording it, so I'll take a look.
As for the Death Count, it's to replace the implements that other spell casters have. Blackguards don't have any other implement so Death Count is used to make up for that. Maybe my wording was wierd. There is also a level limit (that is the same as the magic item enhancment bonus table in PH 1). So that was the idea, but I'll look into that wording too.
And lastly, as for Poisonous Strike I was unsure if it was unbalanced as 2[W], but you have reassured me so I'll move it up.
Thanks again.
Any ideas on how to make it equal to the other implement users? Maybe I'll add a feat...
Thanks Again, by the way.
No problem, the class concept interests me, so only natural I'd want to contribute
Hm... well, the easiest way would be to allow Death Count to be enchanted as any other implement, maybe only with the basic magic weapon/implement enchantment? Then with each enemy you kill, you can bestow a greater magical effect to it, like +2 damage, keen... although that would be horribly complicated and remove a fair bit of the fluff...
And the temp hp doesn't really help the issue, which is that when in epic, there's a good chance you won't even get half way to the maximum mark, let alone surpass it
I see what you mean by the enhancing the Death Count/weapon, and it's something to think about. Maybe at higher level you could get ways to adapt it (similar effects to properties or something) though I don't want to make players sacrifice feats for that. Maybe make it so you can use them to enhance powers (sort of like psionics) giving you added effects, but you lose a point, or something. Though I don't want to steal the Psionics fire either or totally ruin the basic idea.
Death Count points also can enhance Daily/Utility powers, but I don't think that totally repairs it either.
Thanks for the advice Krusk. I do know about the Blackguard in the previous editions, I just liked the idea of having it back, (and totally refluffed so it can be good). However, (after I post everything) I may change the name, though mostly because they already have some Blackguard monster encounters.
Notice any problems? Then please send me a PM or post it hear and I will gladly respond and edit it.
I will be thankful to any advice given. Thanks.
Edited Death's Blessing to include bonuses for the Death Count Class feature in an attempt to allow it to equal other implements. Probably not a total fix, but I think it works for now.
Changed Ghostly Action to Haunting Action becuase the remnant's paragon path's feature already had that name.
Changed Poison Expert to Poisonous advantage becuase a feat already had that name.
Death count: I don't think this is a very good idea, honestly. I see what you're going for, but this just doesn't work from a mechanical stand-point. As was mentioned before, unless the battle is flooded by lower level minions, you're never going to be able to get your Implement enhancement bonus up to a level where it could actually HIT anything, thus making Implement attacks practically useless unless the enemy is six or more levels below you.
The way I would fix this is to let the Blackguard use other implements (probably a weapliment), and just have the death count apply a bonus to that which scales by tier. For example;
Level 1-10: +1 atk, +1 damage per kill (max = +3 atk, +5 damage)
Level 11-20: +1 atk, +2 damage per kill (max = +3 atk, +10 damage)
Level 21-30: +1 atk, +3 damage per kill (max = +3 atk, +15 damage)
If you're really intent on having it use its death count as its sole implement (even though it doesn't really make sense, unless this is literally a list of people he's killed... which would be kind of cool, I guess. Sort of like DeathNote), then I would just let them enchant it to give it a base enhancement bonus, and then apply the above.
Dark Blessing: First of all, it seems strange that you'd offer a heavy armor class an incentive to use light armor, but that in itself is fine. Using CHA for defense is also okay, and the bonus to stealth checks is also fine. With the crit damage boost, I'd suggest using the attack bonus instead of the damage one (if you use my advice above); +3d6 on a crit is good, +6d6 on a crit is broken.
Despair Blessing: Well, first of all, from a grammatical standpoint, it should probably be "Blessing of Despair". The penalty to saves and the bonus to attack is fine, but the same advice I gave about extra crit damage above applies here as well.
Reaper's Foe: This is good, and I like that you give the enemy a choice between "stay within X squares of me, or your buddies take damage from my mark". It also presents a good strategy for getting your death count up and running; mark a dude just within reach and then park next to a group of minions. >=D "Go ahead, run! I dare ya!"
-Powers-
Black Flame: You should swap the hit damage and conditional damage, I think. Using a standard action to deal 3-10 damage for an effect the enemy can easily avoid seems like a wasted attack to me. =/
Reaper's Cull: Broken. There are no at-will attacks that daze a target, and for good reason. I would have this knock them prone or grant combat advantage, or something instead.
Life Leech: I notice that all of these have Charisma riders, and no Con. You should give Con Blackguards at least one at-will that gives them a bonus for high Con, I think. Life Leech seems like a good candidate to me.
Remnant Strike: It doesn't really make sense for the secondary attack to deal [W] damage... maybe have it be 1d6 thunder damage instead, and give the secondary attack the Implement keyword.
Poisonous Strike: Instead of a special line, why don't you just put in the target line, "One creature granting you combat advantage.
Spectral Scythe: First off, you could just add an effect line after each hit line that says "make a ___ attack" instead of repeating it in the hit and miss lines. Second, I would reverse the order of the damage progression so that the more likely you are to hit, the less damage it does. That would make it slightly more balanced, and also less annoying for people who miss with the last attack.
Silent Armor: Instead of a special line, you could add "Sustain Minor: Spend a point from your death count. The effect persists."
Banishing Strike: Again, this doesn't need a special line, its effect against undead can be folded into the hit line (since it seems to only take effect on a hit anyway).
Soul Chains: You can fold the special line into the hit line. Really, a special line is only for things tha go beyond the normal rules of the game, like, "This power can be used as a melee basic attack" or "If you're a Dragonborn, the attack deals the same type of damage as your dragon breath", etc.
Guillotine: This is an interesting attack. The only thing I can see that might be wrong is that I don't know if "melee 1" would be the way to represent this, since technically "melee 1" means adjacent to you, so maybe "melee 1 (centered on 1 square of the wall)" would be better.
Deathly Reactions: I think a better way to format this would be to add a trigger line: "You would be surprised" and then have the effect line say, "you are not surprised.". Unless you wanted him to be able to act, but still grant CA from being surprised... that could be added into the effect line though; "you grant combat advantage until the end of the first round of combat".
Graveyard Spires: This should have the Conjuration Keyword, not Summoning. Summoning only refers to creatures you can give commands to, whereas this is obviously not that. Also, if you change it to conjuration, the special line becomes unnecessary.
Black Faze: You might want to take out the "+ constitution modifier" part, since this is already a weapon attack vs a NAD, and deals Radiant damage (AKA "the best damage type in the game"), so it may be a bit much.
Headhunter: Special line should be changed to an effect line.
Dark Net: Damage is a little low. Also, you can fold the special line into the hit line; "2[W] + Strength modifier damage. If you spend a point from your death count, you may add you Charisma modifier to the damage roll."
Death's Focus: This is broken. What this does is basically open up the possibility of getting an automatic crit on every attack until the enemy saves (which could easily be made very unlikely with the right equipment). I would strongly recommend either making this simply an expanded crit range (18-20 sounds fine for a daily), or making it last until you score a critical hit against the enemy. That said, you could up the damage a little bit.
Kill the Toxin: Special line can be folded into effect line.
Skeletal Armor: +4 is a little much for a plate-wearing class. That could make him essentially unhittable by level 30, not to mention that with mark of warding this becomes a +5 (making your possible AC somewhere around 55 by level 30... that means that a monster literally has to crit you in order to hit). I'd drop it to +2.
I'll look at the paragon ones later...
I'm still fixing Death Count, though adding another implement has been tempting I have sort of been avoiding it. I see what you mean by the bonuses per point, though I was a bit wary of implementing such a thing. I may reduce Call for Power to a lower level, or perhaps a feature, but make it a differnt cost.
Agreed on the grammatical standpoint of Despair Blessing, though I thought most features had the name then set thing going, though I probably will change it. Unsure on the damage bonus thing, it's for a crit only and other implements of that level have similar pluses. May just be confused though on how that whole scheme works. If you'd explain it more in depth, thanks. I'll also look into it.
Dark Flame: I see what you mean, I just wanted to make the effect happen a lot. So 1d10 damage and then Charisma modifier damage if they ignore you?
Reaper's Cull: Yeah, I'll drop it.
Life Leech: Was going to make it Con, but when I looked through the books, most were just the two primary scores for at-wills which is why I didn't. Maybe I'll switch it though.
Remnant Strike: See what you mean about a wierd situation. I'll probably take your advice and make it deal around 1d6 force damage. Thunder would work too.
Poisonous Strike: Yup, sorry for all the specials.
Spectral Scythe: I'll fix the language. The reason I made the last hit deal the most damage is becuase that way you have a higher chance to deal the good damage which I thought fit with a daily use (since it's essentially a +4 to hit.) I didn't want people to think it was a waste of a daily It also fit the description. I was using total damage as a final calc, though didn't know DPR math then.
Silent Armor: I'll make the change, horrible wording on my part. Was thinking the same thing, just never got to it.
Banishing Strike & Soul Chains & Headhunter & Kill the Toxin: Yup
Guillotine: I did Melee one becuase I was unsure of what the range would be correctly on the square. Thanks for the advice.
Deathly Reactions: Yeah, want him to be able to react. Your wording is probably better so I'll make the shift.
Graveyard Spires: Made it summoning becuase you can attack summoned creatures, though I'll switch it to conjuration and put a line in saying that they can be attacked.
Black Faze: I had no idea radiant was the best damage type (don't play fourth often). I'll drop the Con, I put it cause I was afraid it may be bad without, but just over-thinking again.
Dark Net: Made the damage low becuase I thought I may be entering too far into the fighter's domain and didn't want it too good. I'll power it up.
Death's Focus: I was thinking of the rogue's power that makes the foe unconcious, but making it so only the Blackguard (who needs the kills) gets the advantage and making it differn't. The class was originally built differnt which is why the power lost some punch, so I'll increase it up. I was actually worried that save ends was too powerful, silly me.
Skeletal Armor: Worried it was a bit much also. Which is why I made it a daily. I'll agree on it being too much, especially with someone now backing me, and reduce it.
Thanks again! (^_^)
As for death count, what I'm proposing is basically that you either have them use a normal implement, or let them enchant their death count to give them an enhancement bonus. So that would be a +1 to a +6 to attacks and damage from the enhancement bonus alone.
Then, for death count, I would have each kill add +1 to attack, and +1 to damage, maxing out at +3 and +5/10/15, respectively, giving them a total of +4 to + 9 to attack, and a +6 to + 21 to damage. Note that at each tier, you would have to kill five creatures to get the maximum bonus (which is the standard encounter size for five players).
Anyway, I was using hyperbole when I said radiant is the best type, by the same logic that makes necrotic the second worst type in the game, and poison next to useless. The reason is that about 40% of the monsters in the game are undead, which resist necrotic and are vulnerable to radiant, whereas there's only a small handfull of monsters that actually resist radiant (angels, deva, and coatls are the only ones I can think of off-hand), making it second only to Force damage in being almost entirely unresisted (while being somewhat better because NOTHING is vulnerable to force damage). Poison, on the opposite end, is almost useless because the afformentioned undead (as well as constructs, elementals, and a host of other creatures) are flat-out IMMUNE to posion.
Granted, if you never fight undead, radiant isn't as useful, and poison isn't as useless, but meh.
To that end, multiclass Blackguards are also the best Blackguards, because the bonus stacks with enhancements from magic implements. MC into something else and gain huge bonuses.
My suggestion? Give them an implement. It doesn't really matter which (Holy Symbols are preferred because they don't occupy a hand). Turn Death Count into something like the Barbarian's Feral Might or the Warlock's pact boon, which reward them when something dies.
Also, in general, attacks off a secondary stat = a bit of a no-no.
I'll post more comments later.
Anyways, for those who care, edited Death's Blessing class features so that the wording made implement critical bonuses only when using the Death Count Feature.
Additionally, I added a new feat that makes scythes a much more appealing choice for use. It makes them Brutal 1 and increases their proficiency bonus.
Sorry for the missing Paragon paths and feats. Don't know why they dissappeared. I guess they needed editing anyways. I'll try to have them up soon.