Making Blackguards More Than Just a Dip Class

[FoxyPigeon]

I'm currently playing a Blackguard, and went for the Epic Fiend. I was really excited for this as I thought it sounded like a nice alternative to the popular Bryce-build, and gave people an actual reason to invest in the class, rather than just dipping it.

To begin, epic fiend requires at least 16 levels of BG, and in the end grants you a Balor or Pit Fiend. After talking to some others, I learned that this summon is the same as the warlock ones, however; it is not the strongest variant of the fiend, it is the one before that. I'm really confused at this for a few reasons:

1. BG's have to invest 16 levels, meaning the earliest they can even get this summon is at level 26. A warlock gets the stronger variant at level 25. That doesn't make sense to me at all.

2. A huge oversight imo; warlocks are capable of summoning as many fiends as they want, it's infinite, (there is a cool down I think, sure) but they can still summon as many times as needed. BG gets this summon only once per rest, and it's not even the strongest version? What da heck?

3. Building to get this BG summon, makes you less optimal then dip classes like Bryce-builds, and for seemingly no payoff. At level 26, this fiend is barely useful for where you will be going. Even duergar, which aren't as great xp once you hit 26, can murder this summon easily; and again, you can't summon it infinitely like warlocks, so... it's a bit depressing, honestly.

Finally. Let's look at the melee-pale master, in comparison to BG. A melee PM, can similarly invest 16 levels of the class for Dragon Knight spell, giving them a dracolich. This dracolich is undoubtedly better than the BG's epic fiend, and the melee PM build loses practically nothing by doing this. (Aside from maybe taking the feat later if they chose Epic Mage Armor first.)


So overall, I feel like BG falls into the same realm of assassins, where they don't have any initiative to actually invest in the class or make it worthwhile. I personally love blackguard which is why this bugs me so much. It's neat that they can summon and cast a couple things; but I think those should be expanded on a lot more, so that they're actually useful. The epic fiend is worthless by the time they can summon it; and you can much more easily be a warlock or a melee-pm for actual payoff on a summon, and an overall stronger build.

Here is what I'd suggest:

My main suggestion being that BGs get the first variant of the fiend once they get 11 BG levels. This requires them to be at least level 21. (Warlocks get this one at level 20.) Then, upon taking Epic Fiendish Servant (at earliest, level 26) they are granted the strongest variant of the fiend.

Some more suggestions would be to make the undead (Doom Knight) summon actually useful. It is still the nwn vanilla version, and was nearly useless once I could summon it as well. I don't even bother with it because it sucks so bad, which is sad, because Doom Knights do look cool.

Improve the BG's spells which are also useless. The only truly useful thing they get is Bulls Strength. Meanwhile an invested paladin can get strength, charisma, auras, divine favor, bless weapon, gmw, holy sword, and more.

Give BGs either fear immunity at a certain level, or some type of fear aura effective to their number of levels invested. It never made sense to me that BGs, who are an epitome of evil, still get spooked. They should either get immunity to them, or some kind of aura of fear to contrast paladins. Since they're literally considered "Anti-paladins" under the nwn description.


Thank you for reading, sorry it was a lot. Like I said, BG is a lot like assassin imo, where you're better off just taking the non-PrC for better bonuses; and that leads to more dull/overused builds, while these classes get left in the dust or just used for quick dips.

I hope you will consider my suggestions.