Unearthed Arcana: Path of the Death Knight

Description

Death knights are dastards, deserters, and disgraced champions, undead warriors who march toward perdition to fulfill selfish desires and slake their bloodthirst. A death knight’s martial prowess is inextricably tied to their evil nature, but their heinous deeds extend far beyond the battlefield.

Death Knight Journeys

While each death knight is unique, every death knight’s descent into villainy begins with a significant and dishonorable act: a deliberate wrongdoing or shameful mistake that marks their disgrace. You can roll on or choose from the Death Knight Journeys table to determine why your character has chosen to walk this path.

1d6	You Fell from Grace When You …
1	Abandoned your companions in battle.
2	Betrayed a loved one.
3	Intentionally harmed an innocent.
4	Made a pact with a malevolent entity such as a demon lord.
5	Offended a benevolent god.
6	Violated a sworn oath.

While most death knights refuse to atone for the acts that made them, it’s possible for a death knight to repent and end their curse. Such was the fate of Lord Vanrak Moonstar of Waterdeep, who repented to Selune for betraying her in favor of her nemesis, Shar. For more on death knights, see the Monster Manual.

This is something that keeps coming through in all of these villainous character options. You can choose an evil path, or at least a darker one, but there is still room for the character to do something great with it. You can walk the Path of the Death Knight and still imagine a story where you repent, break the curse, or redeem yourself by the end of a campaign. That is really cool, and it creates a lot of fun roleplaying possibilities. So far I like this idea a lot. I am especially curious to see whether the mechanics really reward players for going all in on the path.

Death Knights Across the Multiverse

The death knights of D&D are dramatic figures whose tragic fates result from equally tragic sins. On many worlds, death knights’ misdeeds spell doom not just for themselves and their companions but for entire kingdoms.

Notable death knights across the multiverse include the following:

• Lord Soth. Knight of the Black Rose and ruler of Dargaard Keep on the world of Krynn.
• Olanthius. Former general of the angel Zariel who became a death knight after Zariel’s fall from grace.
• Saint Kargoth. Favored servant of the demon lord Demogorgon and Greyhawk’s first death knight.

I like that they added some lore directly into the document. If this path ever gets fully released in print, I would love to see an even bigger section like this, because the Death Knight fantasy benefits a lot from extra lore and worldbuilding. Just a few more paragraphs could do a lot to immerse players in what these figures mean across different settings. Even so, I am glad it is here in the UA at all, and I like that this is something they seem interested in bringing forward.

Path of the Death Knight Feats

The following feats represent one path a character can take to become a death knight. To complete the Path of the Death Knight, begin by taking the Death Knight Initiate feat, followed by any other Path of the Death Knight feat you choose. Finally, when you reach level 12 or higher, take the Death Knight Ascension feat.

This is where the real fun starts. I really like the idea of a feat chain that gradually turns your character into a death knight, but I do think the wording here is a little confusing. From this sentence, it sounds like you need the initiate feat first and the ascension feat at level 12 or higher, but it is less clear how tightly the middle feats are meant to work. It creates a little uncertainty about whether you are expected to take all of them on the way or whether you can skip around depending on the length of the campaign. I understand the general intent, but I think the phrasing could be cleaner.

Death Knight Initiate

Path of the Death Knight Feat (Prerequisite: Level 4+, Weapon Mastery Feature)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Strength or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Death Points. Your dedication to the path of the Death Knight gives you access to profane powers of undeath. Your ability to use such powers is represented by Death Points. You have a number of Death Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus. You regain all expended Death Points when you finish a Long Rest.

You can expend Death Points to use certain Path of the Death Knight benefits. This feat gives you one such benefit: Dread Strike.

Dread Strike. You always have the Wrathful Smite spell prepared. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. When you expend Death Points to cast Wrathful Smite, the target has Disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws to avoid or end the spell’s effect. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have.

The prerequisite is interesting. Requiring Weapon Mastery makes sense for the fantasy, but it already narrows the path more than I would like. My first thought was the Monk, which gets left out unless it multiclasses. Then the ability score increase pushes things even further toward a specific kind of build. Strength or Charisma is obviously great for Paladins, but it is much less exciting for other martial characters. If a Ranger, Rogue, or Dexterity-based character wants to become a death knight, this already feels more restrictive than it needs to be.

This becomes even more noticeable once you get into the Death Points and Dread Strike package. Tying Death Points to your Proficiency Bonus is fine. It is clean and easy to track. But once you look at how you actually spend them, some classes clearly get more out of this than others. If you are something like an Eldritch Knight or a Paladin, you get a prepared spell that also works with your normal spell slots. If you are a Barbarian, you only get to use it through Death Points, which makes the feat feel much narrower in practice.

Dread Strike itself is cool. I like Wrathful Smite, and giving the target Disadvantage on the save when you spend a Death Point makes the effect feel meaningfully upgraded rather than just copied over. That part works for me. It is a good feat, and I would take it. My issue is less with the power and more with how clearly it favors certain classes and subclasses over others. At that point it starts to feel like this path was made mostly for Paladins, with everyone else being an afterthought. If Wizards wants feat paths like this to be a big new feature, I think they should try harder to make the first wave feel broadly usable.

More than anything, I would make the ability score increases more flexible and give Dexterity as an option throughout the path. I would also look more carefully at the spell choices if Charisma is going to stay involved, because martial characters already have a hard enough time spreading their stats around. A Ranger is already trying to balance Dexterity, Wisdom, and Constitution, and asking it to care about Charisma on top of that starts to feel like too much. That is really the core issue for me. The flavor and basic mechanics are cool, but the stat pressure makes the path feel less open than it should.

Dread Authority

Path of the Death Knight Feat (Prerequisite: Death Knight Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Constitution or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Dread Command. You always have the Command spell prepared. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have. When you expend Death Points to cast Command, Undead targeted by it have Disadvantage on the saving throw against the spell.

This one is fine, but it is much more niche than I want it to be. Getting Command prepared is good, and like the first feat, it is nice that the path keeps giving you a spell and then a stronger version of that spell when you spend a Death Point. I actually like that part of the design a lot. The text is clean and easy to understand without rewriting the whole spell.

The part that loses me is the bonus only applying against Undead. I understand the flavor. As a death knight, being especially imposing toward undead creatures makes sense. But in actual play that feels too narrow for a feat in a locked progression. I would much rather see that upgrade work on everybody so the feat feels consistently useful instead of occasionally excellent and often forgettable.

Harbinger of Doom

Path of the Death Knight Feat (Prerequisite: Death Knight Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Ill Omen. You always have the Bane spell prepared. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have. When you expend Death Points to cast Bane, affected targets subtract 1d6 from attack rolls and saving throws instead of 1d4.

I think this one is cool. Upgrading Bane from 1d4 to 1d6 is simple, but it is a real improvement, and it fits the larger pattern of the path giving you familiar spells in stronger death-knight-flavored forms. I would maybe have liked something a little more original somewhere in this path, but the basic idea still works.

This is also where the ability score issue stands out even more. Here they finally allow Strength, Constitution, or Charisma, and honestly this should be the baseline for the whole path. At minimum, that broader flexibility should have shown up earlier. If they are willing to do it here, I do not really see why the earlier feats had to be tighter.

Deathly Presence

Path of the Death Knight Feat (Prerequisite: Level 8+, Death Knight Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Awful Presence. You always have the Fear spell prepared. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have. When you expend Death Points to cast Fear, you deal 7 (2d6) Psychic damage to each creature that fails its saving throw against the spell, in addition to the spell’s normal effects.

This is good. I like it. Fear is already a strong and flavorful spell for this kind of character, and adding extra Psychic damage on failed saves makes the effect feel nastier without overcomplicating it. This is exactly the kind of upgrade I want to see in a path like this. It is thematic, useful, and easy to run at the table.

At this point, though, the inconsistent ability score increases are getting a little silly. This feat allows Strength, Constitution, or Charisma, and that really feels like the standard the whole path should have followed from the start. There is no good reason for that flexibility to appear in some feats but not others.

Unholy Steed

Path of the Death Knight Feat (Prerequisite: Level 8+, Death Knight Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Strength or Constitution score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Spectral Steed. You always have the Find Steed spell prepared. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. When you expend Death Points to cast Find Steed, the summoned steed is a Fiend, and targets you choose have Disadvantage on the Wisdom saving throw against its Fell Glare.

This is very thematic. A fiendish or undead-flavored steed is exactly the sort of thing I want a death knight path to offer, and overall I think the feature is cool. It hits the fantasy well.

My main criticism at this point is not really the feature itself but the continuing inconsistency in the ability score choices. Here it goes back to Strength or Constitution, while other feats use different combinations. I think they need to settle on a better and more consistent approach across the whole path. That would make the progression feel much smoother and much less arbitrary.

Overall, I still really like the idea of paths. Even with the issues I have here, I think this could be a lot of fun to take for roleplaying alone, and I definitely want to see more of this kind of design in future Unearthed Arcana. For me, the main thing that needs reworking is not the fantasy but the execution around ability scores and Charisma dependence. If they smooth that part out, I think the Path of the Death Knight could become a very compelling option.