[RPG] How to build a knight commander

Crusader is the best option in the game for this. Warblade is also solid, since it also gets access to White Raven maneuvers, but it doesn’t get heavy armor proficiency by default and likes Intelligence more than Charisma. Both classes, along with White Raven, are from Tome of Battle.

The crusader itself is extremely tough, with d10 HD, heavy armor, and the ability to “soak” a certain amount of damage, delaying it for a turn. It also adds Charisma to Will saves (on top of Wisdom) and gets a smite opposition feature.

Because smite opposition works against anyone with an opposite alignment on either axis, crusaders aligned on both axes would have more valid targets for smite opposition than would a crusader who is neutral in one, but that’s minor. Certain Devoted Spirit maneuvers require an alignment, which means having two gives you more options there, but none of them are must-have anyway. So Lawful Neutral is somewhat “worse,” strictly speaking, than Lawful Good or Lawful Evil, for example, would be, but it’s really minor.

Anyway, the reason the crusader shines here is because it has access to the White Raven discipline. White Raven features many, many options for improving your allies, from inspiring charges that allow your allies to charge with you, to battle roars that rally your compatriots, to shrewd tactical stratagems you can use in the middle of combat. It is the best source of such abilities in the game. White Raven tactics is one of the few things in Tome of Battle that is arguably overpowered—make sure you never use it on yourself, which you arguably can by RAW but that’s definitely overpowered.

You also get access to Devoted Spirit and Stone Dragon. The former is notable because it also gives you access to healing—healing that is also described as inspirational in nature, not magical. All of the healing maneuvers are Extraordinary, not Supernatural. Stone Dragon is nice for playing up your own sturdiness, and the 2nd-level mountain hammer maneuver is a wonderful utility option since it ignores all DR and hardness (great for smashing into or out of places).

Having a single Stone Dragon maneuver also enables you to take the Stone Power feat, which lets you take a penalty to attack, à la Combat Expertise, to get twice as many temporary HP. This basically amounts to having the first 10 HP worth of damage you take each round not count, on top of the crusader’s native ability to soak damage. That’s pretty impressive at low levels.

Bard-sader, or the Harmonious Crusader

Tome of Battle also has a feat called Song of the White Raven which allows your crusader (or warblade) levels to count towards how large a bonus inspire courage offers, and allows you to start inspire courage as a swift action.

Qualifying for and using this feat, of course, means we need inspire courage. The really nice thing here is that Tome of Battle characters multiclass very well, so we have more freedom to multiclass in order to get inspire courage.

Specifically, half of your non-initiating levels count towards your initiator level (IL), and that means they count (half) towards what level maneuvers and stances you can take. So if we want to multiclass, taking 4 levels of other classes before crusader works very nicely for us, as our first level of crusader will come at Initiator Level 3rd, allowing us to choose 2nd-level maneuvers for our initial 5.

So we’re looking for a good way to spend our first four levels, so we can get inspire courage and benefit from the way initiator level works.

• Bard is, obviously enough, not a bad choice here by any means, but there are some better ones.

• The battle howler of Gruumsh prestige class in Dragon vol. 311 is literally made for orcs and half-orcs, and provides full BAB and Rage in addition to Inspire Courage. It is, however, a prestige class, so you cannot take it until 6th level, and we would much rather do our non-initiating things first.

  Its requirements are also problematic: it expects you to be “any Chaotic,” and to have the Cleave feat and 8 ranks in Perform. These are things you don’t really want. Not to mention that worshiping Gruumsh would, itself, be an odd choice for an LN character, even an LN half-orc. (The class also requires the Power Attack feat and 2 ranks in Knowledge (religion), but Stone Power can replace Power Attack and crusader gets Knowledge (religion) in-class, so those are much less painful to get.)

• The harmonious knight variant paladin in Champions of Valor allows you to swap your 1st-level at-will detect evil for Inspire Courage +1, 1/day. This means you get the d10 and full BAB of paladin, rather than the d6 and ¾ BAB of the bard (though you do miss out on the 6+Int skill points).

  It also means that you can take a second level of paladin to get divine grace—adding your Charisma to every single saving throw. It doesn’t stack with the crusader’s indomitable soul, so you don’t get Charisma to Will twice, but this is still a big upgrade. A third level of paladin gets you the aura of courage.

  Note that a LN paladin variant was printed in Dragon vol. 310. For the levels we’re interested in, evil is replaced with chaos and good replaced with law, Will saves are good instead of Fort, and lay on hands is replaced with subdue, which allows you to deal non-lethal damage with otherwise-lethal weapons at no penalty. All other class features in the first three levels remain the same. It actually gets Leadership as a 5th-level bonus feat, but I really recommend against that; the feat is good enough to justify taking on its own, and 5 is simply too many paladin levels.

Since we want to do our non-initiating things before taking that first level in crusader, that makes battle howler less than ideal even if the prerequisites weren’t so problematic. Thus, I recommend you include paladin 3rd in your first four character levels.

So if we have paladin 3rd, and want crusader 1st to come at ECL 5th, we want to stick one more class level in between. Here are some thoughts:

• Cleric 1st is the best dip in the game; there’s an entire handbook devoted to it. Cloistered cleric is basically all-win for you, and its 6+Int skill points mean that it should probably come first, before paladin levels.

  • Knowledge devotion, which you’d get as a cloistered cleric using Complete Champion, gives a guaranteed +1 to attack, +1 to damage, and you can attempt to roll Knowledge checks for more.

  • Travel Devotion is an amazing option from Complete Champion, replacing one of your domains. It gives you absolutely incredible mobility, though this is less important for a crusader than it would be for a paladin or fighter or whatever.

    • Travel domain gives 1 round of freedom of movement each day. That’s pretty sweet.

  • Pride and Luck domains both allow you reroll once per day. Pride only affects saves, while Luck is any d20 roll, but saves are usually the best thing to use this on.

    • Destiny allows you reroll someone else’s save 1/day. That could be even more fitting.

  • Animal devotion, Complete Champion again, can give Strength bonuses or flight.

  • Magic domain means that your cleric dip allows you to use any and all wands that contain spells found on the cleric, sorcerer, or wizard spell lists, with no UMD check. That’s pretty nice.

  • Time domain gives Improved Initiative, which is always nice.

• You can still take a level of bard, getting a second use of inspire courage per day, not to mention a bunch of other neat and useful things. The 6+Int skill points again means the bard level should probably come first if possible.

• A level of marshal from Miniatures Handbook for a minor aura isn’t awful, I suppose,

  • But a level of dragon shaman from Player’s Handbook II would be better, and that’s just sad because dragon shaman is pretty terrible. It does get you the dragonblood subtype, at least, though, which meets the requirements for Dragonfire Inspiration.

    • Dragonfire adept from Dragon Magic doesn’t get draconic auras unless you take a feat, but while we’re on the subject of dragons, it may be interesting. Like dragon shaman, it gives the dragonblood subtype for Dragonfire Inspiration.

      Dragonfire adepts can also take Entangling Exhalation from Races of the Dragon to turn their breath weapon into some decent crowd-control, which is very useful, though your maneuvers probably mean you won’t want to spend your standard action that way very often. Generally speaking, dragonfire adept is a far better class than dragon shaman, but neither is really a great match for you.

  • If your DM approves the variant marshal that Li-aung Yip suggested, that’s not a bad idea for a dip, either.

• Knight, also from Player’s Handbook II, is certainly fitting, and the 1st-level knight’s challenge isn’t awful. You won’t have room for enough levels in knight to get its best features (test of mettle and bulwark of defense), and the Knight’s Code is possibly even stricter than the Paladin’s (though the consequences for breaking it are less dire), but it’s an option.

• Paladin 4th gives you turn undead (or rebuke undead if we’re using Dragon vol. 310’s LN variant) and some minor spellcasting. Divine feats are powered by turn/rebuke Undead uses, and can be very good.

  • The devotion feats from Complete Champion, listed above under cleric, are also better options now that you have turn/rebuke undead.

  • On the subject of knights, paladins, and homebrew, I love this homebrew knight-paladin; 4th-level knight-paladin/16th-level crusader would be a fantastic build for this purpose. Knight-paladin does get a little spellcasting, but it’s minor, and the test of mettle, divine grace, bulwark of defense, and aura of courage features are all amazing for you. If allowed and allowed to apply the harmonious knight changes to it, this is probably my favorite suggestion.

For feats, Extra Music, Dragonfire Inspiration, and Song of the White Raven are your go-tos. Dragonfire Inspiration requires that you have the dragonblood subtype; the best ways to get that are from race or template, e.g. dragonborn from Races of the Dragon (ideally, dragonborn water orc), or silverbrow human from Dragon Magic. The Dragontouched feat, the dragon shaman or dragonfire adept classes, or the frostblood (half-)orc are alternative options, but much more painful to take.

Race

• Half-orc is, unfortunately, pretty awful. The +2 Strength comes at the price of −2 Intelligence and −2 Charisma. The only other half-orc racial feature is darkvision, which is hardly unique or impressive. You can use it, but it is painfully bad.

  • Frostblood half-orc from Dragon Magic is a poor race—the fire vulnerability is a big drawback, and the small cold resistance is a poor recompense. But it does get the dragonblood subtype, which is important for Dragonfire Inspiration.

• Full-blooded orc is actually better: Wisdom isn’t all that important to you, so the addition of the −2 Wisdom is no big deal, and you get +4 Strength instead of +2 out of the deal. Still a bad choice, though. Note that Sandstorm has 10-gp sunglasses that handle the Light Sensitivity.

  • Frostblood orc is also in Dragon Magic, and is a similar situation as frostblood half-orc. It’s better than frostblood half-orc for the same reasons as orc is better than half-orc, but it still isn’t good.

  • Water orc is significant improvement, since the +2 Constitution means you actually have net-0 ability score modifiers like a normal race. The traits of water races, which water orcs share, are minor in the extreme, and the race still lacks much in the way of useful, interesting, or unique traits.

• Dragonborn is a template from Races of the Dragon, which pairs pretty nicely with half-orc or orc, and very nicely with water orc. Dragonborn wipes out most of your racial features—which for a half-orc is just darkvision, and for a full orc includes their light sensitivity so there’s even a win there in the middle of the supposed downside. In exchange, it gives you the dragonblood subtype—a huge win since it qualifies you for Dragonfire Inspiration—as well as even more Constitution, which you want, and your choice of class features, which can include flight. Dragonborn water orc is extremely competitive for being among your best options here.

  Note that dragonborn are actually “dragonborn of Bahamut,” so it’s even less likely that you could justify worshiping Gruumsh as a dragonborn, so battle howler is even more out.

• Silverbrow human from Dragon Magic is also Dragonblood, like frostblood half-orc, and would additionally give you a bonus feat, which is awesome. This is almost-certainly the best choice for you—while dragonborn water orc gets a ton of Constitution and Strength, and flight is amazing, that bonus feat is also incredible, and you get to skip out on the −2 penalty to Charisma.

I really recommend the silverbrow human here; mechanically, it offers everything you could ever want. It eases up your feat requirements a lot, allowing you to start with both Extra Music and Dragonfire Inspiration if your first level is harmonious knight paladin. But dragonborn is strong, particularly with water orc, and those options are competitive. Non-dragonborn orcs and half-orcs are really painful to take.

Alternatively, you might check with your DM to see if you could take battle howler of Gruumsh as a base class as a non-dragonborn orc or half-orc. If you could take it first, and avoid its prerequisites, it becomes a much better option, and its power might be sufficient to justify the weak race. On the other hand, you miss out on paladin and thus Divine Grace, which is a great shame, and getting dragonblood is more painful, plus dragonborn was potentially offering flight which may be quite a pain to get otherwise.