#graveknight

[dailycharacteroption]

Pactbound Intitiate (Pathfinder Second Edition Archetype)

(art by Kalfy on DeviantArt)

Yesterday we looked at those who swear oaths in order to gain power, but sometimes accepting a pact means taking on a great burden first and foremost. If you’re lucky the vow comes with some neat powers or privileges, but for the most part, it’s all about the duty that one accepts.

Such is the case with today’s entry, one that’s gonna take some setup to understand.

In the real world, the saumen kar, or Tornit or Tuniit, are sometimes compared to the legends of sasquatch as seen through the lens of Inuit culture, though online resources are admittedly rather limited, so that may be entirely wrong.

In Pathfinder, however, the saumen kar are a horned, yeti-like people with glowing blue runic brands covering their bodies, shining through their fur, who typically live in isolation but occasionally interact with the peoples of the Crown of the World.

Not much is known about the Saumen Kar, even to themselves, for it seems that most of their own history has been lost, with not even the purpose of the runes on their bodies being remembered beyond the passive and active elemental benefits.

It wasn’t until the Monsters of Myth book in Second Edition did we get the reveal of what little these people of the snow remember. I recommend reading the full version in the book, but the cliffnotes version is that the saumen kar discovered the source of the black blood of Orv deep belowground, and in a bid to seal this great evil away, they made a deal with their god, erasing nearly all knowledge of their culture and identity (including their worship of said deity) in order to bind a seal around the great evil and the blood-corrupted undead and whisper-corrupted mortals (including several of their own) beneath the earth.

The runes and spells of the binding are spread about on the skin of every living saumen kar. The exact amount of writing on each on fluctuates with the deaths and births of their people.

There’s just one problem: The saumen kar are dying out. Not only do they lack a stable population for reproduction (many haven’t seen another of their king in ages), but over time the nature of the magical burden they carry has worn down the life expectancy of their species. What once stood for several millenia now reach elderly age after only a few centuries.

Nobody knows exactly what will happen when the last saumen kar dies. Maybe that final sacrifice will complete the seal and lock the evil away for eternity, or maybe they’ll break free. Either way, some saumen kar are not willing to let the world find out. To those among other ancestries they trust, they sometimes offer a chance to share their burden, adding willing beings from outside their species to the binding to help keep the world safe.

Which is where today’s archetype comes into play, representing those that have chosen to accept the responsibility, gaining some of the secrets of saumen kar magic in the exchange. So without further ado, let’s begin!

The base dedication of the archetype requires initiation by a saumen kar. After which, other saumen kar can sense the bond and what it means. Meanwhile, as a base benefit, the initiate gains the ability to blend in with falling snow, hiding their presence.

The saumen kar once could infuse magic into ice to make weapons and items that never melt. What’s more, they are infused with a primal power similar to cold iron, making them quite effective against certain foes.

The pact sworn by their ancestors was meant of the saumen kar alone, and as such, many who accept it find their bodies changing. One such transformation grants a strong sense of smell, stealthy instincts, and mighty horns of the icy primates.

Eventually, many find the icy runes of their patron appearing on their skin. These ward the initiate against evil, let them sense the presence of undead. Meanwhile, they also chill ice-crafted weapons and their horns, dealing additional harm to foes.

Just as many saumen kar trap their foes in icy domes, so can some of these initiates, entrapping foes to be dealt with later.

Finally, there is a point of no return where mortals become truly bound to the pact, becoming very saumen kar-like as their bodies grow. With it, their bodies become even more resistant to cold, and their runes finally provide protection from fire as well. Finally, they gain the ability to reflexively discorporate into icy wind and snow, avoiding attacks and punishing those they engulf with chilling frost before returning to their corporeal form.

This archetype is extremely thematic, so much so that it’s not going to see use outside of a campaign that takes place at least partially in the arctic. That being said, it grants some fun utility such as crafting magic items from ice, as well as melee options for passive extra damage and attacks, as well as escaping harm at the zenith of their power. Pretty much any class can make use of this power, but it seems to do best with natural attack builds.

Now, like yesterday’s entry, this archetype is begging for homebrew. After all, there are a lot of mystical forces and the like that one could take a binding oath to serve and protect, even at great personal cost, so this archetype is a handy template for just that!

Though massive for a shoony and always cold to the touch, Billbram has been a loyal caretaker of his people’s lore for ages. He was not always so, however, but returned from adventuring to the far north with the blessings of the “wise one” that he speaks little of. Even so, the process blessed him with a very long life as a fixture of the community, but even one such as he cannot live forever.

Rimed by frost and bearing a legacy of curses and duty, two foes are set on a collision course. One a disgraced warrior turned graveknight seeking purpose in a power hidden in the farthest north, while the other is blessed by the icy-blue runes that mark his role in guarding that power. When they finally meet, the ice will tremble with their battle, and many forces watch the outcome.

They say that in the center of the ruins of Pelgana lies an ancient weapon that spelled the city’s doom. Greedy nations, blind to the danger, have tried to claim it, but they have all been thwarted by those who guard it, ordinary men and women mostly descended from the citizens of fallen Pelgana, who bear on their brow the rune of the bleeding eye which is emblazoned on the side of the weapon’s outer casing.

[geist19]

I decided to do a bit of a redesign on my Graveknight from my undead comics. Some sleeker armor, and some better skills at making things look undead.

[belabras]

Starfinder - Of Graveknights and Void Champions

Rise from your Grave! This week we update the Graveknight from PF1E to Starfinder with the Void Champion.

[aurelion-solar]

Ashen Knight Loading Screen Borders

Ashen Guardian Shen

Ashen Knight Pyke

Ashen Conqueror Pantheon

Ashen Graveknight Mordekaiser

Ashen Slayer Sylas

[madcat-world]

League of Legends: Ashen Graveknight Mordekaiser - Kevin-Glint

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Pathfinder: Lost Omens - Impossible Lands - Graveknight Commander by Indah Alditha Putri Siregar

[geist19]

My lich would probably start walking, sure he could teleport but he's got time

Your OC has woken up in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road, no phone, only 50 dollars in their pocket. What do they do?

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

The graveknight! A person bound by a cursed suit of armor that simply refuses to let them die, to the point that if they're destroyed it will simply build them a new body. It's a curse they basically made themselves as powerful warrior who was betrayed and killed. They're icy cold, can let out blasts of cold, and can summon a fantastical creature for a mount at will! They're no basic skeleton either, they're fully in control and even capable of changing heart, this is basically the warrior version of a lich.

[monstersdownthepath]

Something that just occured to me: All souls get Judged by Pharasma and her courts, right? Maybe not by the big woman herself, but it's a fairly orderly process. Does that include the likes of sapient undead and great wyrm dragons and other really powerful entities? The idea of there being a queue for judgement that has Doom-monger the Level 20 Antipaladin Graveknight, Galathorn the Great Wyrm Gold Dragon, and Jim the fishmonger from some random coastal village at the same time amuses me greatly

Indeed! Most of the judgments are actually handled by Pharasma's agents; the majority, in fact, are processed by the Yamaraj Psychopomps, pictured here:

Rarely, a Psychopomp Usher--the demigods of the Boneyard--will directly judge a soul, though most of the Ushers have... other duties in the Courts of Purgatory. Pharasma tends to only ever personally see souls whose deeds are especially dramatic and world-shaking.

As for the second half of this ask: Yep, that's more or less how it works. From the greatest demigod to the smallest goblin, from king to peasant, from dragon to awakened rabbit, all beings are equal in death (literally; souls in the Boneyard can't use any of the powers they had in life!) and the Courts of Purgatory. When you're processed depends entirely on your position in queue, not your personal power and influence in life. The best you can hope for is that your case is going to take so damn long and be so damn complicated that they call you aside into a special, separate queue filled with similar cases so you don't clog up the works for everyone who'd take only a few hours.

So yes, there is potential comedy in Jim the fisherman being sandwiched between Doom-monger and Galathorn on a cramped bench, the three of them waiting their turn to be seen by the cosmic DMV, waiting with varying levels of patience as the "NOW SERVING" slowly ticks upwards. I bet Jim gets to go first, just to make the other two wait a while longer.

[enddaysengine]

Zombies (Paths Beyond)

The walking dead. Brain eater. Shambling corpses. You all know what the classic reanimated slowpoke (not that one) is all about and Pathfinder supplies them in spades. Today, I'm going to handle the four in 2e's first Bestiary since they all get super short entries.

The brute, hulk, plague, and shambler variations all follow the same basic zombie pattern - slow, plodding motions without anything in the way of thought or tactics. They make up for this with customization, the entry comes with multiple additional abilities to make zombies even grosser and tougher. Notably, while d20 games don't usually roll with the infectious dead idea like pop culture does (at least for zombies), the plague zombie does and the plague-ridden ability allows other walking dead to as well. If you want a swarm of walking dead to attack, Bestiary 3 also has the Shambler Troop, which also covers you military necromancy needs.

While the shambling dead make great canon fodder for a villain, think about using them as metaphors in planar adventures.  Obviously, they can be symbols of illness or disease, but given their decaying state, they can also be signs of societal rot or corruption. If you want to pull on Planescape, they can be signs of callousness and cynicism when treated as things rather than human remains. If you've played Torment, think about the Post having flyers nailed to its skull.

Zombies aren't intelligent enough to sing, but in the Furrows entire choruses sing the same songs in Necril. While many are rightly afraid that this is some new scheme of the Whispering Tyrant, the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye is not convinced. They hire adventures to investigate key junctures between the mortal world and the Negative Energy Plane in Ustalav, Osirion, Geb, and Mzali in order to find the origin of the mysterious undead language.

The Order of the Eternal is a hellknight order convinced that in order to bring perfect law to the planes, mortals must become immortals. Without immortality, they will be subject to the whims of fiends, celestials, gods, and monitors alike. Erkas is a signifer who seeks immortality through undeath, but has chosen a quicker path than a lich or graveknight. He aims to become a zombie lord, but first must refine his reanimation techniques, resulting in an overflow of zombies near his citadel in the Hanging Marches.

The One-In-Many started off as an ordinary Gebbite plague shambler, but exposure to the Nexian war machine granted it intelligence and flung it into the Great Beyond. Now, whenever the One animates a new corpse, its hive mind spreads to infect the new body. One-In-Many is careful about using this power, preferring to act as a covert information broker across the planes. After all, who watches what they say around zombies?

[silversiren1101]

Time for some Pathfinder Lore, because Hellknights have a very interesting and not-entirely unique relationship with 'necromancy' and the undead!

So, Hellknights just in general are more familiar with necromancy because they're just a bit more likely to turn into undead themselves entirely naturally. With knights that are so duty and mission driven above all else, very very likely to die in death pursuing such a thing, Hellknights rising from the dead to continue their mission (or in attempt to) is seen as a strength of spirit thing for them. This isn't entirely unique to them, though! Consider a Gorumite who refuses to die, or who rises from death to keep on fighting just for the sake of fighting! Such strength in belief and conviction and purpose, of course that's going to be looked upon with respect/admiration. Or, the siabrae! Upholding your duty/beliefs even past death, of course they (and many other groups in Golarion) are going to look upon that with favor.

The key part is the conviction and purpose bit: commitment to what they stood for in life. For a Gorumite, that's just fighting - a mindless or just completely evil battlefield spirit of a Gorumite still tracks... not so much for a risen Hellknight of any kind.

This leads me to the only unique Hellknight undead type we know of: there's a rather interesting creature in a Pathfinder 2e AP you find in a Hellknight citadel crypt called the Hellcrown. It reanimates around the helmet of an evil Hellknight that was decapitated (usually but not always). Very specific I know, lol.

The life of a Hellknight is bloody, brutal, and often short. Many who perish in service to a Hellknight order are glad to rest after having served their masters so faithfully, but others seek to continue their work even in death. When a Hellknight is decapitated, the ghostly undead known as a hellcrown is an occasional result. Consumed by the desire to bring about order by inflicting cruelty, hellcrowns haunt battlefields and abandoned castles, slaying all they encounter. A strange fusion of spirit and steel, a hellcrown has no corporeal form by itself, but instead inhabits the helmet it so proudly wore in life. Dangling from the helmet like a shroud is a shadow of the former Hellknight’s spine, adding to the creature’s terrifyingly gruesome appearance. Hellknights regard hellcrowns with a mixture of disgust and respect, considering the individuals who transform into these floating undead to have been resolute in purpose but weak in body.

A hellcrown usually manifests hours or longer after its body’s death, and only when its body is unattended; this might even take days if the Hellknight perished in a major battle. Typically, no recognizable fragment of the Hellknight’s former personality survives the grisly transformation into a hellcrown, but in rare and particularly tragic cases a hellcrown might remember its life and hold grudges against those it views as the cause of its death. Regardless of whether they retain memories of their lives or have lost all former sense of self, hellcrowns linger around the site of their death, reminding all they encounter of the merciless principles of their order.

The main takeaway from this is that Hellknights don't see them as perversions are things of disgust because they're undead, but because they are weak. These are level 1 undead creatures that can't even maintain a corporeal form, but their strength in conviction and purpose at least makes them be seen with a "he's got the right spirit" mentality.

A sufficiently powerful Hellknight would rise as a Graveknight, and they kind of... not exactly often, but actually do kind of often (lol) do in the grand scheme of things. Hellknights have a storied history with graveknights and liches among their ranks because. So long as the undead maintains their beliefs and drive and abilities, it's the ultimate example of duty at all costs, and even transcending what should be 'the final barrier'. It's not like it's a widespread accepted thing, and I would say it's a contentious thing even among their own ranks where most undead would be met with disgust for being, well, undead, but respect for their undying resolve. Others would be fully approving, especially depending on the Order (looking at you Order of the Gate with your secret lich). Others would be completely disapproving; consider an Iomedaen Hellknight or just Order of the Pyre in general.

I also want to address in the same location the Hellcrowns are encountered, the previous Hellknight generation that occupied the citadel also warded the crypts with a rune that would animate the corpses in there to attack anyone not wearing Hellknight armor or regalia. You can identify the nature of the rune with the following text:

the ward caused several bodies in the crypt to animate as undead guardians in response to an attempt by someone to use necromancy to despoil the dead--a sort of necromantic "fight fire with fire" tactic. A successful Society check confirms some Hellknight orders used this practice in the early days but most have long since abandoned it.

So, it's fallen out of favor. The Hellknight NPC that also comes with you is hesitant to fight the undead since they won't fight him (he's wearing HK armor), and he does not want to despoil the remains of his fallen brothers in arms who have been brought back up against their will! (So NOT a compulsion of spirit by strength of duty situation!)

Regardless, the Orders have a long history with the undead but particularly graveknights. You can find out more about by reading Hellknight by Liane Merciel, featuring the Order of the Crux where the worst possible case of a strength in conviction meets strength in body in Hellknight graveknights: [TLDR imagine being SO evil and heinous in your beliefs and prejudice that the Order of the Scourge teams up with paladins of Iomedae AND House Thrune to purge your entire order from history and existence, but you are SO EVIL and SO CONVINCED in what you believe in you just come right back anyway as a forever Graveknight to keep being awful].

...

So, is Regill that unusual in his statements here? Honestly, not entirely. More good-aligned HKs would think him a bit on the extreme side but also understand the sentiment, especially in the Worldwound situation where you're bleeding soldiers and bodies. Having 'recyclable' soldiers who will keep fighting the good fight even after their life gives out? That's fantastic from an entirely utilitarian standpoint. Morally? Well if you care about that sort of thing... it's icky... but can we really care about ickiness when if we fail demons will overrun the world?

There would be many hot debates on this and philosophical discussions, and you wouldn't get entirely the same answer from any HK but you would get the shared understanding of why, especially when Hellknights just have an understanding that they're a bit more likely to reanimate entirely of their own volition should they go down than others. If Hellknights could consistently create graveknights from their strongest, they would.

Any other type of undead? That depends, are they still loyal?

Hence why he dislikes ghouls and bodaks and their ilk. If other undead come back and are still unified in their purpose (like graveknights and siabrae), then ghouls are doubly guilty of treason because they retain their memories and STILL turn to the other side! In his mind, at least. It's a bit easier to see the train of thought when you consider the Hellknight <--> Undeath relationship at large.

And, are they still useful?

There's a difference between a meatshield of living soldiers and dead ones: the dead ones are already dead. I think a lot of people forget that Regill does consider the life of his men quite often, and is constantly balancing that victory/sacrifice threshold as a leader himself. It appears in several of his companion/party camp banter and his general opinion towards the machine in Blackwater (he dislikes it for the utter mindlessness it imposes on the victims). Dead soldiers though? Are already lost, you don't have to worry about preserving their lives or minds. To him, that's a net gain. You're not purposefully turning alive soldiers into the undead for this, you're gaining resources from something already lost, so of course it's a great idea to him. It's a net gain from what would otherwise be a complete debilitating net loss.

regill you're insane and i love you

[dailycharacteroption]

Prestige Class Spotlight 11: Agent of the Grave

(art by Lulolana on DeviantArt)

 It’s time for another specials on Prestige Classes, but this one is a bit different this time, because this is a rare prestige class that only has 5 levels of progression. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes there are less than 10 levels in a prestige class.

In any case, this time we’re focusing on a necromantic class with ties to the infamous organization, the Whispering Way!

For those who don’t know, the Whispering Way is a cultish secret society devoted to a philosophy of rejecting mortality and viewing undeath as the true state of existence. As such, they seek to spread the secrets of how to turn oneself into an undead horror, all other living things being fodder for that apotheosis.

Given his role in the creation of the philosophy, one of the primary goals of the organization as a whole was to find a way to free the Whispering Tyrant from his prison, which, unfortunately, they succeeded late into first edition, kicking of the second with him being sulking threat steadily regaining his strength after being humiliated by heroes that stymied his initial resurgence and destroyed his superweapon.

While the Whispering Way now walks more openly and brazenly, they still find value in secrecy, so today’s subject, these Agents of the Grave, have value regardless of the era that you play in.

Having served in the cult faithfully for a year, many members are finally allowed access to greater secrets, and can begin working on their apotheosis. While all have some mastery over necromancy, they spend comparatively little time building up a multitude of undead servitors and instead focus on their final apotheosis.

Additionally, as their name suggests, they also act on the organization’s behalf, particularly in regards to recruitment. Such agents infiltrate various learned institutions for years, even decades, subtly using their influence to twist the beliefs of those around them and find receptive souls to twist and mold into potential recruits themselves.

The result with this archetype is a spellcaster that has greater insights into how to control their own undead minions and being a bit tougher than normal, while still leaving room for the character to grow along their normal class progression. All they have to do is be evil, be steeped in mystical and sacred lore, and being able to cast a basic undead animation spell, which admittedly limits you to classes and archetypes that gain access to those spells.

 Much like other spellcasting prestige classes, these agents continue to master the spells, but not the other mystical abilities, of their previous class, though there is a brief lull in them in the earliest stage.

Their mastery of the secrets of necromancy gives them greater control over the undead they create, allowing them to hold a greater number of skeletons and zombies they have created under their sway.

Many aspire to become liches, and even those that do not learn how to channel negative energy with a touch to sap the live away from their foes and bolster the undead.

As their bodies become more and more deathlike, they can choose to have some of their vitality be based on their force of personality rather than the healthiness of their bodies.

Normally the undead ignore mind-affecting spells that would have targeted them in life, such magic only working on a living mind. However, these agents learn secrets similar to the arcana of many undead-blooded sorcerers, but refined, letting them use spells on the undead based on what they were in life, modifying them to affect them as if they still breathed.

Their power eventually grows so that they can project an unholy aura, bolstering nearby undead as well as guaranteeing that any dead they raise will be bolstered.

Of course, as infiltrators, they must also learn how to use magic to mask their aura, as well as showing up as a blank to divination spells. However, they can only do one or the other once a day.

Eventually their transition reaches the edge and they become sustained by negative energy, healing from it while being harmed by the positive.

At the zenith of this path, they learn the secrets of necromancy spells that are normally outside of their discipline, adding them to their arsenal.

Additionally, they finally have all the materials and knowledge they need to go through with their own personal apotheosis into undeath, making the process much easier, and even protecting their minds and souls from losing themselves if that path involves becoming an undead spawn of some contagious form of undeath, though beings that rise again without class knowledge still do not retain those secrets upon reanimating. Thus, lichdom, graveknight-hood, vampirism, and other similar paths are obviously preferred over becoming a lowly ghoul or wight.

Playing an evil necromancer seeking undeath, or need a villain with some nasty necromancy secrets? This prestige class has you covered, including having a built-in angle for protecting them from magical scruitiny as well. You only lose out on one level’s worth of spellcasting too, so you don’t end up too far behind. Naturally, the exact nature of your previous class will determine what your build will be, be it a wizardy necromancer laying down supporting fire behind your undead minions, a grave walker witch laying down curse after curse, a cleric or oracle bolstering their undead army, an occultist pursuing undead through relics and secrets, and so on. But don’t forget this is also an infiltrator class, meaning that illusions and enchantment are also very useful.

 While this prestige class is firmly set in the “undeath good, manipulate people from the shadows” evil camp, you could modify it to be less sinister for those who seek undead apotheosis without being evil if your setting and campaign allow for it.

  Poppy the vine leshy has been on edge for weeks. She knows that something evil has crept into the wildnerness that she watches over, but she has not found any trace of it or it’s whereabouts. What she doesn’t realize is that her dearest friend has been swayed by the way of the skull, and is seeking transformation into a dread siabrae undead, the only way to protect nature, or so he believes.

 Though she is a warpriest of the Eternal Soldier, Vlan has always had a fascination for how acid eats at the body, and when she was corrupted into the Burden Takers, a heretical cult that seeks undeath to fight forever, she knew she wished to become an eternal warrior what wielded not just a sword, but acid as well. As such, she has begun crafting a magic suit of armor from the acid-spitting black spitter beetles, and ready a sacrifice to transform herself into a graveknight.

 There is a change in the demeanor of many new students of the academy, a cold contempt that they seem to have trouble concealing. The headmaster suspects some awful new clique has grown among the student body, but the truth is far more insidious: One of the faculty, who has feigned loyalty for years, is finally ready to twist the curriculum to one glorifying the worst necromantic arts, and secure her own transformation into an undead horror.

[geist19]

My mostly undead family, Stace stays family despite still being alive.

[theaggressivewriter]

The Grave and the Terrible (Boss Fight #002, 02/05/2024)

Welcome to Boss Fight, where every Monday I take a monster and make a unique boss fight out of official material. Today, we'll be making an official encounter for a L10-L12 party. We've been focusing a lot on lower level bosses, today we'll be taking a spin on higher level threats. In addition to the boss fight itself, we'll be discussing where to use the fight in your narrative as well as how to modify the fight to your liking.

Tired of running Liches as your undead leader? Want a warlord to lead a militant army of undead?

(Art by Tomas Duchek)

Graveknights are perfect for this. Rather than hiding in a cave somewhere, Graveknights would rather fortify a position and lead armies into battle, as they once did in life. They're knights who died in their armor, typically doing something nefarious, and rise by clanging on to their armor before leaving to the other side. Able to wield any weapon, they storm fights with ruinous weapons, unleashing elemental fury from their spirits through the weapon they wield. In addition, they also are innately capable of summoning a spiritual mount, likely the spirit of their mount in life. For our high level party, we'll need to pull out a Graveknight Warmaster.

There are quite a few ways you could spice this encounter up. Our target party level is L11, giving us a fair +3 monster, leaving us 40xp for an extreme encounter. What do we fill this with? Well, our imagination could run wild with what we have as source material. We could use some sort of elemental focused creature that aligns with whatever ruinous element we choose for our Graveknight, perhaps use a spellcaster to make them more of a Gish. But let's get real, we want something that makes this boss really stand out. We know that Graveknight's have the innate ability to summon a Phantom Mount, right? Well, what if we included this Phantom Mount as part of the encounter? We have the budget for at most an 11th level creature, and what comes to my mind when thinking of an awesome creature to mount and ride into battle?

(Art by Thek560)

Who said the mount had to be conventional? You may be wondering: is there an official ghost-like T-Rex in the game? No, there is not. This is the point where we're going to make something new out of older material. The problem with making the T-Rex a phantom is that phantoms normally have no Strength, and the T-rex relies on its ability to use athletics to grapple, which is also the requirement to use Fling, so we can take one of two directions: ignore this normal design limit and allow the spirit to have a strength score, symbolizing its ability to effect the physical realm as well as its innate physical strength, OR edit the T-rex by making dexterity be switched with its strength, make ref their highest save, switching it with its fort save. From here, we replace the plus grab and fling abilities and add spells to the T-rex that resemble spiritual powers rather than actual spells being cast, and keeping the damage of the strike it deals around the moderate range. I'll have a sheet written up for this in the reposts.

Combining these two requires knowledge of how mounting creatures work. RAW, both creatures would only have 2 actions during both of their turns as neither of them have any specific riding abilities that allows them to circumvent this restriction. It is an honest way of doing it, as both of them having effectively two actions if you made the T-rex count as the Graveknight's minion and giving them the command action, however I would run this as if the Gravemaster treated whatever it mounts as a mature companion so that the T-rex will take 1 action even if the Graveknight doesn't take the command action. You also are free to ignore all the mounting rules and just let each take their individual turns with three actions for both of them.

So why would a Graveknight be riding a ghostly T-rex? How the hell did that happen? You can just pop this in to your setting and pretend this sort of thing is normal, creating the classic 80s metal vibes for your Pathfinder campaign (I love this style of campaign and wish this kind of game existed, dungeon crawl classics is making me feel ttrpg envy), but a good reason for why this happened is that the Gravekeeper wasn't a Fighter, they were a Ranger. Slightly different skill set, but a Ranger can be just about as equipped as any Fighter, we can easily just say that they're wearing medium armor and the whole reason the Graveknight mounts the T-rex is because they tamed it in life as a Ranger who likely either turned against society or betrayed a druidic circle it was betraying or what else have you. Let your imagination go wild, the options are endless.

What if you don't want a T-rex? Well there's plenty of cool options to name here that fit the level range: Greater Nightmare, Thunderbird (honestly might be cooler than the T-rex if accompanied by a electricity based Graveknight), one of a couple of Dragons, a Deadly Mantis. The options are quite plentiful.

If you liked this discussion, please consider following my blog for more. I am in the planning stages for writing my own supplement for boss fights for Pf2e, and you can find updates on that on my blog as work is done on it.

[aurelion-solar]

Ashen Graveknight Mordekaiser Concept Art - Chaoyi Wang

[dartagnantt]

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! My Kickstarter is live! Support it and get rad new lycanthropes!

Welcome to the new year! The first theme of the year is undeath, and I had a WIP lich template in the works from back when I did the ascent to lichdom wizard school so I felt like expanding on that. So I did a bunch of stuff that I thought would keep some part of themselves when they came back, even if it's only their body.

Also featuring the pathfinder graveknight, because it's cooler than the death knight

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Bone-Eaters

School of White Necromancy

Calls of the Grave

Otherworldly Patron: The Absolute

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!