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Prestige Class Spotlight 1: Hellknight Signifer

(art by Maichol Quinto on Artstation)

And once again we return to my favorite (fully warranted) punching bag, the hellknights. As always, I have to point out that the entirety of Hellknight orders are at best dangerously misguided, and in the overwhelmingly more common majority, actively a danger to all things righteous and good. Who knew modeling your entire worldview on Hell’s order would result in you ending up being a bad guy?

In any case, while Hellknights are all well and good, the question comes up of how to be a member of an oppressive tyrannical order as a mage but also getting to wear cool spikey armor?

The answer is the signifers, hellknight mages trained in effective armor use while also sporting sinister-looking variant helms that lack eyeholes, sometimes lacking any holes at all. Rather than blinding them, these helmets are magical and allow the signifier to not only see normally, but with mastery even enhance their vision beyond what mortals are capable of in various ways.

Officially, these masked helms are also meant to evoke the idea that signifers, in the wisdom granted by their studies of the magical arts or devotion to a lawful god, are unable to be swayed to chaotic thought by coercion, debate, or bribery. It’s a sort of “justice is blind” sort of thing.

In practice of course it just makes them look even more sinister and faceless than the already sinister and faceless hellknights that make up most of the order.

Still, their techniques are quite impressive, so let’s take a look at what they can bring to the table either as antagonists or as morally-dubious protagonists.

The prerequisites for this prestige class include 3rd level spellcasting, meaning that you’ll have to be either 5th or 6th level with most full caster classes, and 7th with half casters to take it (don’t bother with minor casters, they’d be better served as true hellknights anyway). In addition to this, minor training in intimidation as well as arcane and planar lore are required, as well as either arcane armor training or warrior priest as feats. Finally, they must go through the ritual combat against a devil that the orders use to weed out the weak of body or resolve.

Thankfully, for their trouble these warrior mages gain the full benefits of caster training, so they don’t miss out on any arcane or divine (or psychic!) potency.

Whether they are a priest or not, signifers radiate an aura of law as potent as the mightiest lawful priests.

Naturally, each Hellknight, including signifers, belongs to an order, which in the case of a signifier gives them training with one or two iconic weapons associated with the order. The ability even lists the signature weapons for several common orders, but feel free to do research and come up with your own for the likes of the Order of the Pike and the Order of the Torrent, among others.

Next up, they also get their signature helm mask, which magically does not obscure their vision, and even heightens their ability to read the responses of others. Additionally, the signifier mask can be used as an arcane focus by a wizard or similar caster, with all the benefits thereof.

Divine casters that choose this path may not gain other non-spell abilities while advancing their hellknight training, but their potency continues to improve, bolstering the power of whatever gifts they have already been bestowed. Additonally, those that can channel energy learn how to channel power to wound chaotic outsiders.

Conversely, those focused on arcane magic gain even further training for casting while wearing armor, and the act of doing so eventually takes even less effort.

Signifers also receive general training in armor to reduce it’s load, allowing them to be more active and agile in it as well as further decreasing the risk of arcane spell failure.

The eyeless gaze of these mages is not just unnerving, but eventually gains all sorts of uncanny magical vision they use to root out the enemies of law and order and see past deception. These include seeing and identifying magical auras at a glance, sensing moral alignment, seeing the magical potential of a target, piercing all illusions and shapeshifting, and even seeing through nonmetallic materials. However, signifers keep it a secret that these magical gazes have daily reserves of energy that can be worn down.

As the magical branch of an order devoted to tyranny, these mages gain a reserve of magical power to cast magic that allows them to immediately notice falsehoods.

Near the zenith of their power, these diabolic mystics gain a small measure of devilish power, making them resistant to harm save for those caused by chaotic sources, as well as immunity to poison.

True master signifers, however, become outright telepathic and completely immune to being blinded. Additionally, they become such paragons of order that their words find a ring of truth and respectability among all lawful creatures, even those that otherwise oppose them on moral grounds.

This prestige class offers a really neat multifaceted detection ability and the like without taking away spellcasting ability, and also offers a fast track to being able to build your armored tank mage, while also giving divine casters the benefits of their favored chosen abilities. This makes it really appealing to use for villains and sinister protagonists alike, and you can build it in a lot of ways.

While the signifer is described as being the option for all casters that desire to become hellknights, as written the class does not have an option for psychic casters, both in terms of prerequisites and abilities that mesh directly with psychic magic and class abilities. So some homebrew is required to make that work.

There is a tense atmosphere on the Whistling Fish, as the party find themselves sharing passage with a group of hellknights led by a signifer who are escorting a prisoner. Things take a turn for the complicated when a rare bishop agathion, a goodly liason between land and sea, appears and demands that the hellknights release their prisoner into their care.

Hellknights have come to the border city of Lang Shen, and the sinister mercenaries are all too happy to help round up folk of “problematic” ancestries, regardless of the city’s leadership’s actual intent or desire. One woman, however, a vishkanya named Eltiri, plans on tearing the order’s hold on the region up by the roots.

Originally choosing the path of a hellknight to catch criminals and the like, Drochada often uses her magical sight to catch smugglers that enter her port. However, when her sight discovers a mother and daughter stowing away to escape the slave trade, she finds herself questioning her path for the first time.

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