Sunday, September 13, 2015

Sacred Oath: Oath of Knavery [Second Draft]



And the second half of the Pacts & Pickpockets update: The updated Oath of Knavery!

Unlike the pact boons, this option needed a great deal of changing. People seemed overall dissatisfied with the tenets and the complexity of Skulker's Blessing and so, with thanks to reddit users /u/vastlyapparent, /u/timdragga, and /u/maxwellbegun, I revamped and fixed up these particular features.

Now, we've got a thief-y paladin I'm pretty proud of, with solid mechanics and flavor to spare.

If you've got opinions, don't keep them to yourselves! Let me know, and I'll give credit where it's due if there's another round of updates.

What I Changed:

  • The tenets are almost entirely all-new. Along the same lines as the previous, but more cohesive, restrictive, and generally common-sense.
  • Skulker's Blessing has been broken into two separate Channel Divinities, the second of which (Tricks of the Trade) has replaced Turn the Righteous.
  • Skulker's Blessing now does damage that scales with level, rather than as a function of the Charisma modifier. This damage is 1d6 more than previous, but is now poison damage and is thus more easily resisted by a wider range of creature types. 
  • Tricks of the Trade is built from the fluff portion of the previous Skulker's Blessing, and now also grants its bonus potentially to Strength (Athletics) and Wisdom (Insight). TotT now also has its own fluff power, which looks like a really cool thing for a thief-focused individual to have. 
  • Aura of Deception has been reworked, now giving an additional d6 to Dexterity ability checks and saves to you and those nearby you. This ability also reduces the armor penalty to stealth, and even gives you advantage if you choose to wear lighter armor instead of stock-standard paladin plate.
Concerns:
  • People seemed to like Mask of Legends, but I didn't get too many eyes on Ruse. My intuition tells me that Ruse is alright, but I'd really like confirmation. 
  • Any additional insights I can get towards multiclassing this with rogue I'd appreciate. Multiclass knowledge is, as said before, one of my weak points. 

4 comments:

  1. I really like this Oath, although I'd make the suggestion that Skulker's Blessing should probably be one minute per short or long rest. It looks like you could pretty much use it forever and that's kinda broken. Tricks of the Trade may also need the same treatment, but that one might be fine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As a Channel Divinity, Skulker's Blessing can only be used once per short or long rest anyway. Rather, you can only use a Channel Divinity once per short or long rest, and Skulker's is an option for that.

    Tricks of the Trade, being another CD, is in direct competition with Skulker's. You can only use one or the other per short rest, and never both at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah, whoops, yep, that was my fault for not reading paladin close enough.

      Delete
  3. For some reason, when I saw this oath I immediately tried to sort out the differences between it and the Oath of the Common Man, and how these differences could turn to conflict.
    Obviously, their most important tenants are shared, but not all are. The big differences I see are that the Knave is much more selective in their deeds, while the Commons* believes that there is no labor or good deed too petty; and that the Paladin of the Common Man focuses more on serious (likely systemic) change, and the Paladin of Knavery focuses on wealth distribution under the current system.

    The two are obvious allies, but obvious allies IRL often end up at each others' throats for relatively minor disagreements, and it's not hard to see how these small differences could cause major rifts. If the PoK sees the PoCM as wasting his time on meaningless efforts (whether common labor anyone could do or efforts at long-term reform unlikely to pay off soon) instead of meaningful change to help people today, and the PoCM sees the PoK as merely changing peoples' positions in an unjust hierarchy, it would be easy for them to disagree on praxis.
    More extreme conflict would require either mixing in other incompatibilities, or negative understandings of each others' beliefs, such as believing the other's actions will merely change who is on top rather than making a more equitable world (which works well both ways, for different reasons).

    I don't know why I found the idea of conflict between such similar paladin oaths so fascinating, but I did and now you've read it, so I guess you found it interesting too.

    *Wait, this is a terrible contraction.

    ReplyDelete