How about a new character class? The Blackguard

[Malak Darkhunter]

I've always loved the character of the blacknight, Dark and powerful, the exact opposite of the paladin. Able to wear the heaviest armors, and wield powerful spells of destruction to destroy his foes. He would be a necromancer type fighter-class. Summoning undead monsters to aid him. I believe it could be balanced sort of like the paladin. Probably have high melee skills, poor at stealth and disarming, yet have a high magic device skill, since they are spellcasters. Kind of a warrior/dark spellcaster sort. I think the necromancer set of spells like in oangband and sangband would probably work good. This would be a great class to play for people who don't always want to be on the good side for a change. What do does everybody think?

[Cyrlous]

Actually, I know that at least a couple of variants already basically have this as a sort of sub-set of Paladin. In Zangband and Hengband you can choose to give your Paladin the Death school instead of life, thus making him effectively a death knight or anti-paladin.

[Malak Darkhunter]

That sounds cool, never played those two variants. I was sort of thinking I could do this in sangband as well, take the school of necromancy, and make him high in melee skills.

[Psi]

...which is similar to the assassin class in Oangband and FAangband.

[Seany C]

As Cyrious said, Zang Priests/Paladins with Death magic match the description quite well. O/FAa Necromancers do, to a point - they've got plenty of nice attack spells but while their melee is a lot better than an O/FAa mage, they're definitely not a Knight-type class for melee strength.

Alternatively, there's ToME - you can build this type of character a couple of ways: take a warrior and worship Melkor with a bit of Necromancy /Summoning / Thaumaturgy (attack spells) on the side, or alternatively, take a Dark Priest and pump skillpoints into Combat. Pick a RohanKnight for your race and you've even got a horsey to ride around on whilst smiting all and sundry...

[Seany C]

I was thinking of Assassins, Psi, but Malak seems to be thinking more of a Longbeard "CHAAARGE!" type character.Still, an Assassin played Dark-Knight style would be a great challenge character (sounds like a Hallucination Mushroom special to me)...

[Malak Darkhunter]

That's the fun with these sort of games, a lot of the fun is creating the character, too come up with something different. What I like in sangband is I'm not limited to what skills I can put into the character, there are restrictions of course, but I can continously put skill points into what I want up to 100%. And at the same time be a full-fledged spellcaster. This character is about pure destruction, with the armored might of the warrior. I'm going to enjoy scattering the prey in pure terror!

[konijn_]

Hellband has both Death Knights ( black magic with undeads/poison/raw damage ) and Hell Knights ( demonic magic with summoning of demons/charming/scaring/ raw damage ) and Warlocks ( chaos magic of Zangband )

All three classes have paladin combat skills and their one realm.

Cheers,
T.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Hey thanks for the info, I might give hellband a try. That sounds presicely what I was looking for.