Paladin - Oath of Restlessness
Tergrid, God of Fright, by Yongjae Choi
The Oath of Restlessness is for champions of death, twisted paladins whose oath leads them to explore necromantic powers instead of seeking divine favor.
Restlessness "paladins" are champions of undeath, warriors who deploy necromancy against their foes and believe a corpse is a terrible thing to waste. They are often imperious, absolutist, convinced that their more righteous allies are hypocrites, cowards, or fools. Most are evil-aligned, for obvious reasons; even more goodly Restlessness paladins will be morally gray at best, with their commitment to the necromantic arts and no compunctions about desecrating the dead.
Design-wise: I've had a request to do an antipaladin in my queue for awhile! Oathbreaker's pretty much unusable - it stuffs all the evil tropes into a single subclass, and winds up thematically incoherent as a result. So this is likely to be the first of a few antipaladin subclasses! The spell list is entirely necromancy, with a mix of buffs, light control, and damage, and a strong slant towards summoning spells at higher levels. Gravecalled Grasp provides light control over a pretty big radius, while Unhallowed Ground is more situational, providing a major protective effect against undead enemies. Aura of Undeath provides light benefits to allies and a mild dose of making enemies miserable, with a major boost to any summoned undead. Armor of Bones gives your allies retaliation damage, and if you've got a mob of zombies or skeletons, grants them a much-needed AC boost. And Avatar of Undeath is the classic transformation, dealing brutal necromantic damage and constantly adding towards your undead horde.
The big money here comes from the optional class features. I don't think antipaladins need a full-class chassis to work; I opted to make the bare minimum of optional features to enable the antipaladin concept. So you get Profane Touch, granting temps instead of full healing, and Deathly Smite deals necrotic instead of radiant. Profane Touch's balance is tricky to get right; I have waffled back and forth intensely on whether the per-target cap is needed. Deathly Smite got a nerf to d6's to compensate for the fact that smiting humanoids is incredibly high-value.
As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback on Discord!
