4e: Knightly Order Themes

Obviously, writing on this blog is not really fair. Some days you get 500 words about me being sad and sometimes you get 3000 words about Violet Evergarden. These things are fungible. Typically speaking, any given blog post is ‘what I could write, on that day,’ and where it fits into the schedule.

What I want you to appreciate is that this article is absolutely beastly by these standards, and I fully expect you to not read it. I would normally have split an article this big up over several days and maybe gone in depth over it, but I know the score: I know that this is going to include a giant chunk of rules and text that people are going to skim and formatting it so it looked good took several days. What’s more, it’s about a game system you don’t necessarily even play. Giving you four days of The Knights Week (even though I like this stuff a lot) would be four blank days. Instead I’m giving the small number of you into this a bumper presentation, and here are my bullet point pieces of advice:

• 4e Themes are right now are either very weak or very boring
• These themes are made to enable different kinds of characters in the same organisation
• Make your designs bold and minimise piles of clauses
• Make them so they encourage players to make situations where those abilities are useful happens

I’ve talked in the past about the four Church Knights of the Eresh Protectorates in Cobrin’Seil, which are really knightly orders connected to one set of city-states with a shared cultural ideology, and their related religious orders. They’re tied together by highways, and those highways allow the flow of a language and a trade and that’s how the continent of Bidestra even has a language of ‘common’ – it’s the language of traders on the Highway.

These knightly orders are organisations players can belong to. They also are not singular in their purpose; as with most military-social infrastructure, they do a lot of things. Lethenites might be bookish knights on horseback serving as a sort of hospitaler, but they might also just be combat-capable battle librarians roaming around trying to find a book to SCP-style contain. I want players to have options when they try to integrate into the world.

When presenting players with a player option, it’s important to make it so that theme increases options, rather than decreases them. If you present a mechanical choice that’s too good, you’ve made every alternative bad; if you present a choice that’s too weak, you’ve made it so you might as well never have presented it.

When I made the knightly orders, then, I didn’t want to tie them to a particular class, but I did want them to represent a decently large chunk of mechanical investment and improve over time. The best option I could think of here was a combination of a background (to represent just having done any work with them) and a theme. There’s a long-form article on the problems in themes in me somewhere, but for now: there are basically five decent themes and two really good ones.

My aim was to add themes to the game that gave player interesting heroic-tier advantages, didn’t clog the game with lots of specific conditionals, and enabled you to play ‘knightly’ characters with abilities that felt appropriate to the characters of their orders. To achieve this, I gave each of the four knightly orders two diferent themes, which were all meant to enable different kinds of characters.

Bear in mind, under this fold there is an enormous chunk (around seven thousand words) of game lore and rules text and it’s presented not as a popular blog article, but rather, as game rule information. This is also going to include some potentially challenging formatting as I learn tables. If you want to see it broken up into sections, or in a easy searchable databse, it should be going up on Square Fireballs at some point.

The Tzarum

The Tzarum have two common roles in their place in the cities of the Eresh Protectorate. Simultaneously a group of holy warriors regarded as high-impact shock troopers, the Tzarum are also integrated heavily into the City Watch. 

Ostensibly the Tzarum serve at the request of the Church and the Crown, but as all the knightly orders, they are fiercely independent. This can be a problem for city watches, which may have conflicts with the Knighthouse as to protocols and rules. Similarly, Church soldiers often regard Tzarum as indolent, because of their unwillingness to go where the Church demands without what they see as an acceptable reason.

Tzarum knights tend to be well equipped and well trained, and in many cases live in the same Chapterhouse for long stretches of time. 

At Their Best: Tzarum are a terrifying high-impact force who arrive in time to save people and destroy evil.
At Their Worst: Tzarum are inflexible and rigid, refusing to communicate with others because of the rules.

Tzarum Charger

“When Tzarum charge, thunder chases.” 

The elite shock troops of the Tzarum Order. While the Tzarum like to promote the idea their order simply spring into existence as perfect military units, the truth is most Chargers have to spend a lot of time learning how to become a charger. Mostly, this involves drilling, training, and getting kicked in the face and chest a lot. 

Building a Tzarum Charger

Tzarum Chargers want to be in melee. They’re people who are used to throwing themselves face-first into combat, hard. It’s best to not bother with a Charger if you intend to play at range, or if you’re interested in implement powers. Fighters, Warlords, Paladins and Wardens all make fine Chargers.

Starting Feature

The Tzarum practice charging to the point as a basic element of their regimen. 

Charge Expertise: Choose one of your level 1 At-Will melee attack powers. When charging, you can use that power in place of a basic attack.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour Expertise feats.

Level 10 Feature

When a Tzarum charger strikes, they knock foes over or back with the sheer force of arms. 

Battlefield Terror: Whenever you hit with a charge attack, you knock the target prone or push the target 1 square. 

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

Tzarum Thieftaker

“Alright, mate, what do you think’s going on here?”

The Tzarum are inextricably linked with the Watch in the Eresh Protectorate. While the classic image of a Tzarum is a black-armoured soldier on a horseback, they’re incredibly common in the day-to-day operations of the city. Thanks to being members of the nobility, Tzarum are allowed to enter certain areas in pursuit of justice, something that the common Watch officers can’t normally do. Thieftakers tend to be focused, therefore, on the capture of enemies and the prevention of escape.

Building A Tzarum Thieftaker

If you’re trying to add some stickiness to a melee character, the ability to chase foes down and keep in melee range, the Thieftaker serves you well. Thieftakers make good weapon-users, but if you can’t handle being slowed from time to time, maybe look elsewhere. 

Starting Feature

It’s not graceful, but Thieftakers need to be able to capitalise on chances to stop escaping criminals. More than once a would-be escape on the streets of the Eresh Protectorate is interrupted by a knight in armour crash-tackling them to the ground. 

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour Expertise feats.

Level 10 Feature

Thieftakers often operate with little sleep or support. The typical Thieftaker knows a variety of tricks to help keep their focus in moments of heated decision. 

Benefit: You get a +1 bonus to saving throws against effects that slow, immobilise or daze.

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

The Lethenites

The Lethenites are commonly found managing and maintaining church sites dedicated to complex magical problems, such as holy relics or bound fiends. They are also commonly involved in the work of magical and holy libraries, transporting important books and icons from one place to another with a degree of understanding how the things work. Lethenites also often serve guarding care posts for church services like poorhouses and rest homes. 

Lethenites do not have as much integration in other organisations as much as they tend to have a member of the Lethenite order whose duty is to liaise with a group. This can be a specific responsibility and tends to come with a lot of infrastructural knowledge – Knights often finish a task with detailed reports for the next knight to handle.

The Lethenite order is the most likely to have access to strange magic or research, and arcane testing facilities. If you want to have a magical accident or a curse the Order are attempting to fix, this is the place to be.

At Their Best: Lethenites are scholarly experts in many interconnected fields who protect other researchers through force of arms.
At Their Worst: Lethenites are slow to react and unlikely to take a good solution because they’re seeking a best solution.

Lethenite Archivist

“Now then, young one, we could fill a cathedral with what you don’t know.” 

The Lethenite order are the ones first called upon to deal with powerful, unstable, or dangerous magical artifacts that the Church has neither the human resources nor infrastructural knowledge to address. The Archivists are the ones who both gather things to add to the archives, seek to catalogue what’s already there, and return what’s lost.

Building A Lethenite Archivist

The Lethenite Archivist is a tinkerer’s character. They’re people who want more options, who want ways to build with options. If your class hasn’t got a lot of At-Will powers, or lacks for interesting powers that you may want sometimes there’s not necessarily that much in the Archivist for your character.

Starting Feature

Archivists are capable of putting information into proper contexts. This can be important for skills you can see or rare opportunities for tactics you may not always need.

Varied Study: Choose an additional 1st-level at-will attack power from your own class. You can use this power as an encounter power. 

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour 

Level 10 Feature

Your study has infused the skills you have and what you know. 

Skill Synthesis: Choose one of your at-will attack powers and a power source. That power gains that power source in addition to its other types.

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

Lethenite Siegecrafter

“Every wall comes down, but ours is the task of saying ‘not yet.’”

Tzarum are the people who put up their shields and walk forward into the fire, but the Lethenites are the people who erect shields that will never need to move. The Lethenite Siegecrafters are the members of the order who study most assiduously the task of engineering and designing the world around them to be 

Building A Lethenite Siegecrafter

Siegecrafters are martial, typically, since they need to be capable of installing and defending spaces to some extent by themselves. They also favour some degree of melee ability, and sometimes come from ranks of Rogues, Fighters, Warlords and Paladins.

Starting Feature

You know how to wait for an opening from your opponents – and can capitalise on their distractions, even if that means they’re distracted by your allies.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency or Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour 

Level 10 Feature

You know to be ready for anything.

Forewarned and Forearmed: You get a +1 bonus to Initiative. 

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

The Raguzan

Raguzans are the cunning, brawly, slightly drunken sibling of the other orders. They are most often found guarding highways by travelling with strangers, retaliating to threats or incursions on towns, or presenting force and strength in church locations where infrastructure is modest. They’re commonly involved in protecting pilgrims or in questing duties, when not called upon as a military force.

The Raguzan relationship with other orders is pretty simple; they’re louts. They’re wild and rarely disciplined, without much record keeping or reports, and they prefer to handle violations of knightly code in-house. Since the Raguzan justice system is largely focused on good outcomes and not protocol, this means some sketchy behaviour gets cleared, and it irritates the other orders a great deal. Nonetheless, while Raguzans can often only be relied upon to attack things, they do it very well. 

Raguzans have the most working class individuals, people who became knights from battlefield promotions or honouring for some special deeds and have the least access to money and resources. Notably, the Raguzans do have access to Royal Kennel rights, meaning that their chapterhouses often have stables, kennels, mews, and other facilities. Raguzans have some of the best animal trainers in the Protectorate, with specialised tools like dire war ferrets and messenger rats.

Raguzans are also renowned for being siegebreakers, and it’s there that a strange second side of sophisticated genius comes to bear. Raguzans don’t just throw themselves at sieges, as they have a trained corps of disciplined but practical engineers skilled in disarming and disabling traps and explosives, dismantling barricades, routing water and other liquids and all sorts of other useful skills for forcing an end to a siege.

At Their Best: Raguzan are knights of the commoners, people who stand up to and break systems that crush the weak underfoot.
At Their Worst: Raguzan fight for the sake of fighting and cause more problems than they solve.

Raguzan Siegebreaker

“The way out is through.”

Breaking a siege is a time consuming business and it brings out the strangest of Raguzan virtues – patience. Raguzans who take to siegebreaking therefore tend to be tightly wound until the time to act happens, when they spring into action. They’re specialised in dealing with extremely tight quarters, and the ways to maximise opportunities.

Building A Raguzan Siegebreaker

The Raguzan Siegebreaker is someone who cares about opportunity attacks; both provoking them and exploiting them. This means they want to position themselves in tight quarters with large groups of enemies. Some leaders and strikes like the sound of this, and there are even Raguzan druids who can take advantage of it, but it is a role well suited to melee weapon-wielding defenders.

Starting Feature

Raguzan fighters are experts in making the most of the moment. Snap decisions can lead to wildly improved results, even at the risk of life and limb.

Dangerous Expertise: Choose one of your level 1 At-Will melee attack powers. You can use it as an opportunity attack. If you do, you suffer a -2 penalty to AC until the beginning of your next turn.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour 

Level 10 Feature

When you spend as much time as Raguzan do in melee quarters, you learn how to exploit enemies in a crush together.

Close Quarters Expert: Whenever you provoke attacks of opportunity from multiple enemies with the same movement, only one enemy gets to make an attack.

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

Raguzan Wayfinder

“Long roads, new friends, and always one by my side.”

Raguzan Wayfinders are the highway travellers of the Eresh Protectorate. For most outlying areas, they are the very vision of a Church Knight – inevitably a figure, in armour, who solves problems a little recklessly, watches over travellers, and is almost always followed by one or more animal companions.

Building A Raguzan Wayfinder

Raguzan Wayfinders are much like the Fey Beast Tamer, in that they can benefit almost all roles. Defenders can benefit from having an extra area of control on the battlefield, leaders can buff their pets as another ally, Strikers can benefit from flanking opportunities, and controllers can always make use of another body to impose on the battlefield.

Starting Feature

Raguzan Wayfinders use animal companions. These are usually animals trained from Raguzan stock, with a number of small companions for specialised tasks and one larger companion for generalised tasks.

Raguzan Wayfinder Starting Feature: Choose one of the following creatures: 

• Journeyhound, strong hardworking war dogs.
• Grifkin, smaller, more agile griffons for combat scenarios.
• Carcaj, a type of wolverine bred for travel.
• Guardbadger, sturdy and stubborn badgers that heed a companion.

You gain it as your Wayfinder Beast Companion. If you wish, you can select a Beast Companion from the Wayfinder Beast Companion list.

Themes and Flavour: If you find you would rather a type of beast not included in this list, it is  definitely worth considering re-flavouring the existing beasts as options. For example:

• Journeyhounds can be used to represent wolves, dingoes, or dholes
• Grifkin can be used to represent large bats or immense hunting birds
• Carcaj can be used to represent animals like Tasmanian Devils or Dire Weasels
• Guardbadgers can be used to represent heavy animals like monitor lizards or small bears

Your Wayfinder Beast Companion is considered an ally of you and your allies. It can be affected by powers in the same way that any other creature can be. It has animal intelligence, so you can communicate with it only at a basic level (like a trained pet), and it doesn’t understand complex ideas.

Your Wayfinder Beast Companion’s level is equal to yours, and its hit points, defenses, and attack values are determined by your level, as noted in its statistics.

Your companion shares your healing surge total. Whenever an effect requires your Wayfinder Beast Companion to spend a healing surge, the surge is deducted from your total. Whenever you use your second wind, your companion also regains hit points equal to your healing surge value. At the end of a short rest, your Wayfinder Beast Companion regains all its hit points.

If you die or your companion drops below 1 hit point, it retreats from the battlefield and preserves itself safely. If that occurs, you can use one of these two ways to call it back.

Minor Action: You lose a healing surge, and your companion appears in the nearest unoccupied space, with hit points equal to your healing surge value; your companion derives strength from your resolve, and recovers, coming back to the battlefield to fight alongside you.

Short Rest or Extended Rest: At the end of the rest, you lose a healing surge, and your companion appears in the nearest unoccupied space, with full hit points.

Journeyhound Companion

Raguzans have almost as many types of hound available as they have chapterhouses, but the defining traits of a Raguzan Journeyhound are pretty consistent. They are hardworking, tough dogs, somewhere in size near a wolf, intelligent enough to take a variety of commands and take to a variety of purposes, like hunting, covering, sheltering, seeking, fetching and fighting. 

Grifkin Companion

Once an endangered species, the Grifkin are small relatives of the griffon; while a griffon has a prominent, entirely birdlike head, the Grifkin look more like large housecats, with feathered wings and antlers, and prominent birdlike hindclaws. Primarily trained by the Raguzan for anti-cavalry purposes, Grifkin are extremely mobile, often hunting around battlefields to attack enemies that present opportunities.

Carcaj Companion

Raguzans that travel often need companions that are capable of independent survival. A type of wolverine, Carcajs are hard to train to most of the needs of a knight, but when bound to a Wayfinder with love, understanding, and stubbornness, they thrive. Carcajs fight fiercely for their companion and can subsist on almost anything, making them excellent companions for Wayfinders in cold climates. 

Guardbadger Companion

Raguzans don’t always exist in harsh environments. Many Wayfinders travel along well-peopled highways and need a companion that is capable of navigating a city somewhat competently and protecting people while waiting for the knight to reach them. Guardbadgers, larger and more solid relatives of the badger, serve this purpose admirably, often blocking enemies with their bodies, and keeping a single foe from making meaningful progress.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour 

Level 10 Feature

Your animal companion has taken to its training well, and as a result is even tougher than normal.

Animal Companion Fortification: Your Wayfinder Beast Companion gets a +1 to all defenses, and has an additional 5 hit points. 

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

The Chardunists

The Chardunists are known as the secret fourth order. Originally the Church’s arm of Inquisition created to eradicate sources of Psionic power (known once as the Shandrelle Heresy), their power grew, and so too did their ability to hide from oversight until eventually, they re-emerged (then just as quickly hid themselves again) as a Knightly Order protecting psionic entities from oppression, which they refer to as The Task. Chardunists are sometimes referred to as ‘The secret police’ of the nation, which isn’t correct. They see their roles as creating safe spaces for psionic individuals to exist safely away from church oppression, and acting in the name of the Crown to oppose problems that can’t be dealt with by throwing military force at it. 

Chardunists keep their actions extremely covert, and even going so far as to use psionic powers to make people forget the locations of their chapterhouses and meeting halls. Chardunist writing includes ethical application of psionic powers, and come down extremely hard on those they see as violating these rules. This means that they seem inscrutable to other orders – the Tzarum don’t trust them for their secrecy, Lethenites don’t see why their existing containment can’t be trusted with the threats the Chardunists contain, and Raguzans have strong views against mind influencing magic in the first place. Chardunists often regard the other orders as painfully unaware of the kinds of problems they deal with.

Chardunists are however, the least obviously knightly of the orders – most Chardunists need to be able to blend into normal societies, and therefore tend to favour roles and identities that seem extremely vague or unimportant. Coopers and wagon drivers, couriers and minor officials, Chardunists are also the most likely to be an inhuman or unnatural race thanks to the order’s stance of recruitment for the Task.

At Their Best: Chardunists are the salvation of the invisible, the saviors of people who think they have nobody to turn to, never needing to be asked or thanked.
At Their Worst: Chardunists are secretive and untrustworthy agents whose inability to communicate leads to worse outcomes for others that they can’t ever explain.

Chardunist Infiltrator

“We’re not everywhere, despite what we may make you think. But we are good at lying.”

The Chardunists don’t operate like the other orders. Many Chardunists spend large amounts of time out of armour, doing completely mundane tasks in mundane jobs. This builds their reputation as a complex network of spies, which they of course deny. Infiltrators are the Chardunists who have done the most to maintain this spy network, people who can blend into enemy groups and put themselves in the right place at the right time. 

Building an Infiltrator

The Chardunist Infiltrator is the best option for Chardunists who have no interest in power points. It’s mobile and well protected. Notably, if you play a melee character who doesn’t have a great melee basic attack but wants to benefit from granted attacks, and can reliably stay close to a melee-capable ally, this lets you make the most of it.

Starting Feature

The Chardunist infiltrators are absolute experts at inducing in-fighting, including in drawing allies into the right space and time in combat.

Infiltrator’s Opportunity: Whenever you are adjacent to an ally and you can make a basic attack from an opportunity attack or granted basic attack, you can use that adjacent ally’s basic attack instead provided they can reach your target. This takes your action and not theirs.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour 

Level 10 Feature

The Chardunists are experts at being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes they blend in with others and reveal themselves as combat starts, sometimes they’re just excellent at knowing when a fight’s about to start.

Infiltrator’s Initiative: Whenever you roll initiative, you can shift up to your speed, before combat starts but after the battlefield and the enemies present on it has been determined. Enemies in the first round of combat treat you as if you are hidden, assuming you are one of them.

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility

Chardunist Mindhunter

“We who have taken to the Task do so knowing that we may never be known for our deeds.”

The Chardunists grew out of a secret church inquisition sent to commit genocide against a psychic race under the Holy City. This started the Chardunists on a path that eventually led to their rejection of church dogma about psionics, and adoption into their own ranks those who they once hunted. The Chardunist Mindhunters are Chardunists with psionic talent that specialise in dealing with either the recover of psionic individuals or dealing with hostile psionic monsters.

Building A Chardunist Mindhunter

If you’re building a character who wants power points, the Mindhunter has an extra point, which is very desirable. If you want to play a non-psionic character who gets a few psionic abilities, though, the Mindhunter is a great way to expand your options. Regardless, the Chardunist Mindhunter cares about enemies being near to them, and about opportunity attacks (as both attacker and defender).

Starting Features

Power Point: You gain 1 power point. You regain all your power points when you take a short rest or an extended rest.

Between Blinks: You gain the Between Blinks power.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature

As all Knights, you have been drilled and trained in the proper and efficient use of armour.

Knightly Armour Training: You get a bonus Armour Proficiency of Armour Expertise feat. You must fulfil the prerequisites of the feat you choose. You can retrain this feat when you level up but only into other Armour Proficiency or Armour 

Level 10 Feature

Chardunists often have to expose themselves to mental effects, which comes with a degree of hardening and practice surviving mental attacks.

Steady Mind: You gain a +1 bonus to Will.

Optional Powers

Level 2 Utility

Level 6 Utility

Level 10 Utility