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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3815678" data-attributes="member: 2268">What strikes me as funny is the fact that, in its conception, the Death Knight looks like it was meant to be the undead evil fallen paladin. 9d10 hit points, AC 0 with light armor, Strength 18(00), fights with a sword, and has a lot of spells and spell-like abilities at his beck and call that kinda oppose the paladin's. Aura of Fear, Detect Magic and Invisibility, the various Power Words instead of healing and curing, Fireball as nasty variant of unholy fire, riding a Nightmare instead of a Warhorse, and able to call in demonic men-at-arms with a75% chance of the gate opening.That's what bothers me a bit about the whole "monster roles" concept, when applied to pretty unique monsters like the Death Knight. Standardizing is a nice method of getting a grip on stuff like orcs, zombies and kobolds...but monsters that have their own flavour from the start get a bit short-changed by stuffing them in a category, in my opinion. There should always be some room for "exceptions to the rule" for special stuff...that's where the Sense of Wonder for monsters comes from, not from discovering a good monster type/monster role combo for each and every thing in all the monster handbooks out there. Otherwise, that grid will just become the "new" CR, complete with warts, problems and incompatibilities.</blockquote>