Echo Knight

Guys.

I think I really like a thing that 5th Edition made.

Recommended reading/psiblade music:

and click here to head straight to the Prestige Class.

What's going on?

In the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, WotC introduced a new feature of "Subclasses," sort of combining the roles of ACFs and PRCs into one. Broadly, this is a design idea I actually really like! It adds more variety without comprimising the basic ideas of a class, resulting in less class bloat than 3.5e is known for. At the cost of meaning basically no new classes are produced, as anything can be made into a subclass.

Digressions aside, in 'Explorer's Guide to Wildemount', they published the Echo Knight subclass, which I believe is one of the coolest and even most well designed subclasses in the whole game

The idea of summoning an ephemeral duplicate is intensely cool, and offers so many options for a combat class, a level of Magical Fuckery usually reserved for dedicated casters and manifesters. The only thing that could make this cooler is if it was in a Fun Game.

Which is exactly what my friend Toesucker416 did.

What can Echo Knight offer in 3.5th?

One of the first things you might notice about this port is that it is Sublime and Psionic. These are two things that broadly don't exist in 5e (Psionics existing in subclasses and unearthed arcana, and the Sublime Way not existing outright)

This works in favour of the class, not only because that makes it work with other classes and mechanics, and helps it fit into the presupposed ideas of the game, AND is just plain cool, but also because this is a Prestige Class. This class is meant to be a psychic warrior and warblade entry, building off your sublime abilities by offering maneuver progression and building on your psionic abilities by counting towards total manifester level. Had I designed it, I might have gone so far as to give manifester progression, but I think this alternate choice is more restrained and well-thought out, leaving the class uncluttered and speaking for itself.

Besides from simply adapting a sickass idea to an asssick game, another motivator for this was to make the first tier 2 Martial.

Tiering in 3.5e has been done to death due to the age of the game, and is explained in detail and documented Here, but the down-low is that classes can be placed on one of six tiers based on their strength. A class in tier 1 can do anything any time, a class in tier 2 can do anything but is limited, a class in tier 3 is amazing at its job and works outside it, a class in tier 4 is great at its job and has nothing outside of it, and a class in tier 5 or 6 is just Outright not good at its job. We only care about 1-5 as 6 is inhabited by NPC classes, and this discussion will stay 3 and above.

Now, tiers 1 and 2 are made entirely out of casters and manifesters. This is for the simple reason they have the ability to do more things. No matter how much damage a martial can tank or all the gimmicks a meldshaper can meld, they are basically mainly good at the one thing: Combat. Tome of Battle gives its martials far more utility, though, with maneuvers and stances, that give it the variety and endurance to enter tier 3 as the Gold Standard for balanced classes (it also helps they are all relatively high skill point classes), but they don't have the broader out of combat utility to enter Tier 2.

The 3.5e Echo Knight serves to resolve this with the Scrying and Corpse utility that its Echo brings, hopefully creating a dedicated melee character that can enter tier 2.

Some more ado

Some quick notes from the actual designer:

"Don't get on my dick about balance we made this shit broken on purpose as a joke."

-Toesucker_416

Further, he wants to elaborate that the flavour choices were designed with a specific friend's character in mind.

And, I would add that this has not been playtested and may be due to be reworked.

The Prestige Class

Feep Freep to download the PDF for your own use.

How I would play this is ofcourse in a combination with a Psion/Warblade, however with Ardent it could be quite fun? They are in general better for gish. I absolutely love Gestalt and believe this would be the best thing since sliced bread on such a character. There's possible flavour synergy with Eternal Blade?