Dungeons and Dragons lore : Death knight

5:06 press repeatedly

My paladin better be careful then. She is going down the path of vengence but that's a slippery slope.

DM: "Alright, you are surrounded by multiple skeletons and two Skeletal Champions. What are you doing?" Paladin: "I Turn Evil!" DM: "Sounds good. They accept your offer. You are now a 15th level Death Knight." Paladin: "What? No I meant I use the..." But it was no use.

I don't feel like 11 minutes does this justice.

Interesting that you said it would command a Lich. I run a campaign that the Death Knight is the Darth Vader to a Lich's Emperor. So the Knight is in command of the Lich's army.

6:45 Forsaken Death Knight. Almost the worst luck in all of World of Warcraft. First, they die and become scourge, then they get their will back (debatable, some think the Banshee Queen is just the same influence as the Lich King) and then they die again but get resurrected by the Lich King (again) to serve him. He then betrays them as basic fodder to draw out Highlord Tirion Fordring.

I think a cool idea would be a death knight that rides a dracolich into battle like a necromanctic verson of eragon

Lord Soth is best death knight, so awesome even Ravenloft couldn't hold him.

That overlord thumbnail pic though! What a good game,

They kind of remind me of the Nazgul.

Also, at least in my campaigns, a paladin could very well be turned into a death knight as a test of devotion. You're now an immortal undead, will you hold to the ideals of your deity, or succumb to the darkness that you've been turned into?

sees thumbnail Ahhh the all mighty overlord.

One of my favorite campaign ideas involved a powerful death knight who was a former paladin who was resurrected by a powerful demon. The death managed to regain his former conscious, and summoned the party to hell. The party would help the death knight and lead an unholy crusade against the demon, of with the help of the death knight and his undead army. I never did it cause it was gonna be a pain in the ass to manage all of the NPC’s and undead in combat.

Weird. There was an advert for pushchairs halfway through the video starring a little cartoon baby, then back to the undead. Not sure which was more horrifying really. Now I'm going to dream of Death Knights robed in pink comfort blankets. Oh, the horror!

Weren't the first death knights created by the orcish warlock Gul'dan? ....oops! Wrong universe :P

quite enjoyed the fact that soth was cursed to still follow the law of chivaly, i.e dismount if opponent has/nomount or face them in single combat.

And once again your videos are revolutionizing my campaign world. Thank you, AJ. Hope your muscle strain is healing well

The ultimate badass bad guy

Since I was 14 (1986), I always role-played Death Knights as Paladins that fell to sophistry. They are evil narcissuses that see themselves as forces of good and justify their evil acts as being pragmatic acts for the greater good. You can chat a Death Knight to no end if you can if they let you, but you will always be the bad guy in their personal narrative if you oppose them. Some accept that they are agents of evil after a long, long time. They will still say they are a force of good but needed to sacrifice their soul, honor, and goodness for the sake of the world for a higher purpose and compromising everything is worth it now because they are close to the root of evil and will do the most good. As I said, sophistry is the bread & butter of Death Knight former Paladins. The intrigue is delicious. I almost had to force my players to have a dialog with my Death Knights because I am a role-play guy and they rarely did more than find how awesome and how virtuous a Death Knight was as a Paladin. One was Blackthorn, ruler of Brittania. I adopted the Ultima IV (maybe Ultima V?) computer game into an AD&D campaign. Blackthorn was a Death Knight that tyrannically enforced the Virtues. Don't judge. At the time, I was running an AD&D game every week... I did not have enough creativity to keep my content completely original. I kept creating hours worth of gaming every week. That was not as easy as it seemed. Another was Romance of the Soulless Overlords. It was a campaign based upon Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Lich King, Nosferatu, and Lycans (yes, they were equal). Only the Lycans didn't have a Death Knight a general that commanded Death Night lt. generals. There were multiple levels of intrigue and the island (not mainland China, a land of the dead scenario)) had a powerful resist-anything rebellion of Mountain Dwarves. They would eventually become an enemy because they were ironically led by a Dwarven Death Knight. The wild card was a "werepire", a necromancer was able to create a werewolf-vampire super hybrid. The party was my veteran players, so they found that one, handled its problems, and got its leverage. The last is one I often use. When a PC Paladin loses his Paladin status, I offer the death-guaranteed option of the Paladin quick reinstating option. He must fight and defeat a Death Knight version of himself with all the same gear he is carrying applied to that Death Knight applied to positive in how it is positive to him to negative to how it is applied negatively to him. Defeat him, you are a Paladin again. Lose to him, become a Death Knight and forfeit your soul (and player character status, become an NPC Death Knight).

My homebrew tip for death knights is make them lv 20 oathbreakers, complete with all their abilities.