New Archetype: Infected Paladin

Friends begin to make requests for things they would want to see in my blog, and it's my pleasure to accede their requests. So you have to thank Kryzbyn, from the Paizo boards, for today's post- a new conversion from a manga & anime we both like. I took something from the Oath Against Corruption, something from the Urban Bloodrager, something from the Tortured Crusader, and much from my own crazy head.

Infected Paladin

Sometimes you have to risk not only your life, but your very body and soul to protect the innocents. Born and educated in lands where inhuman monsters have taken over and menace everyday the people’s lives, infected paladins voluntarily take into themselves these monsters’ corruption in order to better hunt and defeat them- even if this could eventually lead to their fall.

An infected paladin doesn’t usually serve a deity; in her experience, gods either don’t exist or don’t interfere in mortals’ lives anyway. She learns to count only on herself in her gloomy crusade for humanity, good, and often, revenge.

Infected paladins are mostly loners, but nevertheless, they are organized into orders. Each order has a signature weapon, mainly greatswords, bastard swords, or polearms. Members of an order meet regularly to exchange information about their enemies’ locations, new combat techniques, and to form occasional hunt bands against exceptionally powerful monsters- or fallen comrades to put to rest.

Alignment: Any good.

Skills: An infected paladin adds all Knowledge skills, Intimidate, Perception, and Survival to her list of class skills, instead of Handle Animal and Ride.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: An infected paladin is proficient with her order’s signature weapon.

Aura of Power (Ex): An infected paladin emanates an aura of power corresponding to the creature whose corruption she bears (see Detect Enemy, below). The power of this aura is equal to her hit dice.

This replaces aura of good.

Detect Enemy (Su): The infected paladin is able to detect her enemy’s aura in the same way other paladins detect evil. At 1st level, she chooses a creature type from the ranger’s favored enemy table (the paladin cannot select humanoids for this ability). The infected paladin’s ability works as detect evil, with these modifications:

Creature/Object	Aura Power
	None	Faint	Moderate	Strong	Overwhelming
Creature of the enemy type (HD)	--	1 or lower	2-4	5-10	11 or higher
Creature related by blood to the enemy (half-celestial, tiefling, sylph…) (HD)	--	2 or lower	3-8	9-20	21 or higher
Creature drawing power from the enemy (sorcerer, bloodrager, witch…) (HD)	4 or lower	5-10	11-25	25-50	51 or higher
Magic item or spell related to the enemy (caster level)	5th or lower	6th-10th	11th-15th	16th-20th	21st or higher

This replaces detect evil.

Smite Enemy (Su): This ability works like the standard paladin ability to smite evil, except the paladin gains bonuses against targets she can detect with her detect enemy ability and deals additional damage against creatures of her enemy type/subtype, instead of against evil outsiders, evil dragons, and undead. This ability replaces smite evil.

Solitary Warrior: Even if occasionally an infected paladin can team up with other companions of her same order, the unnatural taint affecting her tends to keep people away, and she doesn’t ask no one else to share her fight. She can’t use her lay on hands ability to heal others or to channel energy, though starting at 4th level, she can convert two uses of lay on hands into an additional use of smite enemy. Her mercies, aura of courage, aura of resolve, and aura of righteousness affect only her, not her allies.

Unnatural Taint: At 1st level, an infected paladin chooses a corruption to be infected with. This always leaves some visible sign on her body that people may recognize at first sight. The paladin’s corruption is related to her chosen enemy (like hellbound or demonic for evil outsiders).

The infected paladin only gains her manifestations’ gifts and normally uses them at 1st level of ability, as per the useful corruption variant rules. She gains anyway a new manifestation at 1st level and every 2 levels after that as if her manifestation level were ½ her paladin level (minimum 1). The infected paladin can accept some or all of her manifestations’ stains and thus increase her manifestation level at any time.

As the infected paladin increases in level, she gains some means to keep at bay her corruption’s progress. At 3rd level, if she accepted or was forced to take a manifestation’s stain, the paladin can expend one use of her lay on hands ability to attempt a Will save. If the save is successful, she can use that manifestation with the useful corruption rules again; a fail means she cannot try again to use the ability with that manifestation for 24 hours. At 9th level, this ability also dispels the effects of a ban corruption spell.

At 6th level, an infected paladin can expend one use of lay on hands to add her Charisma bonus to a saving throw against the advancement of her corruption, as described in the catalyst section of each corruption. At 12th level, she gains the following new mercy (available to all paladins) as a bonus mercy:

Corrupted: The paladin’s lay on hands also acts as the combat corruption application of the alleviate corruption spell.

If the infected paladin’s alignment shifts towards evil as a result of her corruption’s progress, she doesn’t lose her class features until the transformation is complete- and at that point, hopefully a merciful comrade will end her sufferings. (An infected paladin whose alignment becomes non-good for any other reasons still loses her paladin class features until she atones, but doesn’t lose her corruption abilities).

This replaces divine bond.

Contaminated Magic: At 7th level, an infected paladin can select from the bloodrager or ranger spell list any spell of a level she can cast, and add it to her paladin spell list. At 10th level and every 3 levels thereafter, the infected paladin can add another such spell to her spell list. If she chooses to learn a new spell in place of an old one, she can exchange a bloodrager or ranger spell for another.

Enemy Bane (Su): At 11th level, an infected paladin can give her signature weapon the bane weapon special ability against her chosen enemy creature type/subtype as a swift action, as the inquisitor’s bane ability. This replaces aura of justice.

Greater Enemy Bane (Su): At 14th level, the infected paladin gains the greater bane inquisitor ability against her chosen enemy. This replaces aura of faith.

Avenging Champion (Su): At 20th level, an infected paladin’s DR increases to 10/evil. Whenever she uses smite enemy and successfully strikes an enemy creature, the creature must make a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 the paladin's level + the paladin's Charisma modifier) or be banished to oblivion. This ability does not kill the creature, but it is sent to a remote place, such as deep underground or far into space (if it is a creature native to space), and cannot return under its own power for at least 100 years. This modifies holy champion.

By the way, to best capture the spirit of a Claymore, I'd suggest the Psychometabolic corruption from Psychic Anthology, or the Void corruption from Everyman Gaming's Corruption Codex.