Ideas for Class Powers for Chaos Knight / Duelist classes

[Soirana]

I would like to see chaos knight powers to require certain amount of corruption like priests ones require piety to be active. Further on higher level powers would require more corruptions of course.

[Deg]

I would like to see chaos knight powers to require certain amount of corruption like priests ones require piety to be active. Further on higher level powers would require more corruptions of course.

This is along the lines I was think myself. I have always envisioned chaos knights as holy knights that spent a little too much time near chaos and finally succumbed to the chaos. It makes sense the more powerful chaos knights have further slipped towards ChAoS.

[FantomFang]

I'll give Duelist my own whirl:

Duelist

A duelist emphasizes physical and mental acuity, and precision in all things. Thus, the ability to accurately perceive their surroundings, and gracefully move through it, along with an appreciation for the fine arts that help separate them from their more thuggish contemporaries. They rely on the swiftness of their strikes and their agility to keep them safe from harm. Duelists differ between races however - while a high elven duelist might elegantly skewer his opponents with a rapier while darting through his defenses, a trollish duelist's idea of precision might be the simple fact that their size, reach, and strength allows them to lunge at their opponent from an amazing range and smash them over the head before they can respond, while their mental acuity might be the simple zen of knowing nothing but the clubbing, letting nothing interfere with their "art".

Equipment - 1H weapon (based on race), gloves, gauntlet, musical instrument (racial)
Stats - +3 Dx/Ch, +2 Le/Wi/Pe, -1 St/To, +0 Ap/Ma

Skills - Alertness, Athletics, Climbing, Concentration, Dodge, Find Weakness, Literacy, Music, Stealth, Swimming

Class Powers

LVL1 - Dueling Stance - As long as they are utilizing a single 1h weapon of their choice with their off-hand free, they gain a +atk/dmg bonus equivalent to their weapon skill with the weapon used. (weapon skill / 2?)

LVL 6 - Parry - The duelist's dueling stance allows them to swiftly parry blows that would otherwise strike true. The duelist gains a DV bonus equal to their (weapon skill? lvl/x?). Additionally, this DV bonus is treated as if it the duelist is utilizing a shield, allowing the duelist to gain further DV bonuses from the shield skill (perhaps renamed the parry weapon skill?)

LVL 12 - Throw Down The Gauntlet - The Duelist may challenge an opponent to a duel. Doing so gives the duelist additional bonuses (atk/dmg/dv) against the challenged monster, while suffering -DV against other targets while the challenged opponent still lives. Ends automatically upon monster death or using the stairs.

LVL 18 - Precision Strike - The duelist gains the ability to perform a special penetrating strike, ignoring enemy PV = Duelist LVL, at an additional energy cost (number?)

LVL 25 - Is That All You've Got? - The Duelist gains the ability to enrage even the sternest of foes. This skill utilizes Find Weakness [mental] and causes the enemy to lose their calm in battle. This results in a penalty of # to their Attack and # to their DV as they angrily flail about. Only works on enemies who can hear the challenge.

LVL 32 - Swiftness of Thought - The Duelist's mental focus has begun to allow him/her to surpass the boundaries of his body. The Duelist gains a permanent bonus of # Speed and # Dexterity. In addition, he/she no longers suffers any penalties when Throwing Down the Gauntlet, as his/her focus expands to include all those in his/her presence.

LVL 50 - You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die! - The Duelist's supernatural focus allows them to ignore wounds that would otherwise bring them down, allowing them (?) number of turns to strike their foe down before they themselves would fall. (limited usage of some sort).

EDIT: I'm unsure exactly what some of the numbers should be, but the one thing I definitely would like is a very strong lvl 50 power. They don't get much time to shine in most games, so a lot of the lvl 50 powers are just plain underwhelming because they're a simple numeric increases. Ideally, I think all classes should have something at LVL 50 that's just awesome and unique, as by endgame, melee is pretty much the same as other melee, and caster the same way. In that regard, necromancers with their "Oops! Still Alive!" power are the sort of thing I like. And as much as I like monks, their lvl 50 power is the epitome of boring.

Oops, I realized that I forgot to add a lvl 40 power to this! Oh well, the concepts there represent most of my main ideas anyways. Also, I'm of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with a little power - numbers should be very tweakable, and the ultimate goal should be to create a very distinct class. I didn't include very many precise numbers for that reason - I'm not really sure what values would be best. And yeah, duelists should definitely have music.

EDIT: Also about chaos knights - maybe some would want to stop Andor Drakon for one reason - if everything is chaos then everything is uniform and thusly chaos becomes law! ChAoS=Law

[szopin]

Strange, in all of the above suggestions it seems duelists need to use a single 1h weapon. While it might work during olympics, duels in fantasy settings are probably far from fencing. I'd imagine duelists using a sword with a dagger in off-hand for tactical advantage when duelling trolls with clubs/warhammers/trees... Shields do seem out of place, but dual wielding swords, why not really?

[sqrt-1]

Strange, in all of the above suggestions it seems duelists need to use a single 1h weapon. While it might work during olympics, duels in fantasy settings are probably far from fencing. I'd imagine duelists using a sword with a dagger in off-hand for tactical advantage when duelling trolls with clubs/warhammers/trees... Shields do seem out of place, but dual wielding swords, why not really?

I believe part of the reasoning is to differentiate duelist from other fighter classes.

<historical nitpicking>
Still you are right in that off hand dagger in along with buckler is/was quite common combination with light swords (rapiers etc.) I dont't think there's real evidence of two long weapons being commonly wielded (Correct me if I'm wrong, I have some passing experience with historic fencing, but I'm by no means expert). Also the term 'duel' implies at least somewhat formal encounter, which is somewhat closer to sport fencing than one might think. I think it would have been common in duels, by some kind of common agreement, to use only one weapon (This is bit quesswork on my part. if someone has some facts about this I'd be interested). Even though your off-hand is empty, it's still not entirely useless, its quite possible to do some blocks and grabs with it, so it would certainly be within reson to leave one hand empty.
</historical nitpicking>

That being said I probably wouldn't mind too much if daggers and other light weapons, in off-hand would be allowed, but I thing wielding two heavier weapons would overlap too much with ranger.