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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9538629" data-attributes="member: 6796468">I mean... Pathfinder's Hell Knights are a specific narrative structure within Golarion rather than a full character class, for one thing. Even the implementation they had in the campaign setting was as a Prestige Class.I'm not even suggesting using those, I'm suggesting that the Illrigger should've been Hellknight, no space or hyphenation. Would it cause some confusion? Possible. But I doubt it would confuse many people for a significant length of time. Especially since someone playing a 5e Golarion game could immediately take the 5e Hellknight class and slap together an Order of the Chain/Gate/Nail/Whatever archetype to work with it.Nor is it "Ripping Off" Pathfinder to have a Hellknight class 'cause Hellknights are also a cultural thing beyond Pathfinder. Like in DOOM.Eh... I disagree just as strongly. While that is certainly a narrative you can go for, I don't think an occultist working in the stacks of a library reading about the Ogdru Jahad in some blasphemous ancient tome before performing a ritual to promise their soul to the Ogdru Jahad should be unintentionally making a pact with an Archfey and not know about it and then get disappointed with sparkling fairy wings instead of tentacles.Similarly when you make a deal with a devil and sign a contract you generally know what you're doing 'cause you're the one who buried the box containing grave dirt, the bones of a black cat, and a drop of your own blood to summon the crossroads demon you're making the deal with.There's a place for either kind of fantasy, for certain. I just think it's a narrative mistake to try and always frame it as "Mysterious Patron". Especially when the class identity is almost exclusively defined by their relationship to a patron for power.They changed it for a mechanical benefit and slapped on a narrative justification for it... but I think it would've been better to go for making the patron a core identifier at level 1, and then the "Way you Serve" for higher level. But that would've made D&D24 incompatible with 5e Warlock Archetypes so they just decided to strip out a big chunk of the warlock's identity at level 1 and trade it for an invocation. And Tales of the Valiant did basically the same but gave them a pact boon instead of an invocation and then went a step further by taking away their level 1 pact magic in favor of further "Rebalancing" them into bog-standard half casters at level 2.Just bugs me. Still. Not the thrust of the thread.</blockquote>

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