The Nine Hells are evocative, but I also sometimes feel like they get overexposed when we talk about the outer planes. Modeled on Dante's Inferno, we're sort of queued up already to recognize its structure, its nine circles. In Asmodeus, we have a Lucifer without an official Abrahamic God in D&D's polytheistic cosmos.
So I get it, it's compelling.
I might be a little more annoyed by this focus if not for the fact that this UA does give us a corresponding subclass to the chaotic evil plane of the Abyss.
I could very much imagine an evil paladin of the Nine Hells, but giving Fighters some infernal power kind of reflects the more conviction-agnostic characterization of the Fighter class. There are various suggestions on why you might have become a Hell Knight, and while the subclass is very villain-coded (you will be sending souls to the Nine Hells when you kill) there are some scenarios where you might not have taken up this role willingly.
Let's get into mechanics:
Level 3:
Diabolical Gift:
You get two benefits:
Devil's Sight: You can see normally in Dim Light and Darkness, both magical and nonmagical, within 120 feet.
This is worded just like the Warlock invocation of the same name, and notably is not Darkvision, which means that you should be able to see in color, and I think you could argue that "seeing normally" would be as if it were all bright light. While you might still consider the Blind Fighting style at level 1, this is going to cover a lot of what it covers, and better.
Devil's Tongue: You know the Infernal language, or another of your choice if you already speak Infernal.
A "ribbon" that could be very useful in a devil-themed campaign (and if you're a DM with one of these in your party, you'll want to have some devils pop up - though their immunity to fire damage might hinder this character a little if they're fighting them).
Hellfire Weapon:
When you take the attack action, you can imbue a weapon you are holding with hellfire, turning it into a Hellfire Weapon. It remains transformed this way for 10 minutes or until you use the feature again, die, or the weapon gets more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. You can also end it early, no action requried.
While transformed, the weapon emits dim light out to 5 feet and you can choose to deal fire damage with it instead of its normal damage.
The light isn't terribly useful given our Devil's Sight, and might actually be a hindrance, but it's certainly cool conceptually and can be useful if we need fire damage to take advantage of vulnerabilities or stop regeneration.
Infernal Wound:
We're not done with level 3!
You have one Infernal Wound die, which is a d6.
Once per turn when you hit a creature with your Hellfire Weapon, you can deal extra fire damage equal to one roll of your Infernal Wound die and give the target an Infernal Wound.
While wounded in this way, the creature takes fire damage equal to one roll of your Infernal Wound die at the start of each of its turns. The effect lasts for 1 minute, until the target regains hit points, or until the target or a creature within 5 feet of it takes an action to stanch the wound. A target can be affected by only one instance of this feature at a time.
You can use this feature Con times per short or long rest (minimum 1).
This is pretty great, actually. A d6 isn't huge, and weirdly the die never gets upgraded, but it's a no-save DoT that requires someone's action to end. Put this on a troll and you're in fantastic shape. It also has the crit-smite advantage of being able to wait for a critical hit to use (though it's probably worth it on any hit just to get the wound ticking on the target).
Level 7:
Advanced Wounds:
When you roll a 6 on the Infernal Wound die (presumably either on the initial hit or the ticking damage) you can apply one of the following effects:
Purulence of Minauros: Caustic pus (gross) erupts from the wound. Each creature in a 5-foot emanation originating from the target takes acid damage equal to your Con modifier, and the target has the poisoned condition until the start of its next turn.
Two problems: first, if you're in melee, that damage is going to hit you (unless you have a reach weapon - not a bad idea for this subclass). Also, if you get this on the initial hit, they might not do anything until the start of their next turn. Granted, for the ticking damage, this could poison them right at the start of their turn. (I also assume they don't take the acid damage given that an emanation goes out from them. Maybe I'm wrong?)
Rupture of Cania: the wound explodes with arcane energy, dealing Force damage to the target equal to your Con modifier.
This adds insult to injury - they're already taking 6 damage from the wound, and now they're taking maybe three more. Good in a strictly single-target situation.
Stygian Gangrene: Infernal rime spreads out from the wound, dealing Cold damage equal to your con modifier to the target and preventing it from taking reactions.
Oh, actually, this is better than Rupture of Cania unless the target is resistant or immune to cold damage. I feel like Rupture of Cania needs something more.
The overall feature here will only come around about 16.7% of the time (for now) but luckily we have more at level 7:
Hell-Forged Equipment:
While wearing armor or wielding a shield (likely for a Fighter) you have resistance to Fire damage.
Also, damage from your weapons and fighter features ignores resistance to fire damage.
Unlike resistance to poison or necrotic damage, as we saw with the Pestilence Cleric, fire resistance is actually quite common, including nearly all non-Devil fiends (devils tend to be fully immune). That's really helpful. And fire damage happens all the time, so having resistance to it is great (it even helps you when traveling through hot climates).
Level 10:
Hellfire Surge:
When you use your Action Surge while wearing armor or wielding a Shield (again, likely, unless you're like a Fighter/Barbarian multiclass) you can superheat your equipment, erupting in a 10-foot emanation. Each creature of your choice must make a Dex save (DC based on your Con modifier). On a failure, they take fire damage equal to your Infernal Wound Die (again, this is always a d6) and are burning (which is now a Hazard that deals 1d4 fire damage at the start of a creature's turn). On a success, they take half damage and are not burning.
While certainly limited in use, this is an AoE DoT you get as a Fighter. Get in the thick of a bunch of enemies and light them up.
Level 15:
Blister of Avernus:
Your hellfire deals painful, boiling blisters (gross). When you roll a 6 on your Infernal Wound DIe, you can roll another d6 and add it to the damage. The maximum number of d6s you can add to the Infernal Wound's damage is 3.
So, we might be hitting a point where the lack of a die upgrade is actually better for us, as we have a higher chance of rolling the max. The chance of getting a third die is 1/36, but this will get more likely with our level 18 feature. Between this and the Advanced Wounds, we get sometimes get a really lucky burst of damage, but I think you could argue this is a bit of a double-dip.
Level 18:
Hellfire Condemnation:
Whenever damage from your Hellfire Weapon or Infernal Wound reduces a creature to 0 hit points, the creature dies and its soul rises from the River Styx as a Lemure in a layer of the Nine Hells of your choice in 1d4 hours. If not revived before then, they can only be returned to life with a Wish spell.
Theoretically, this could be useful against a foe that can escape death. Would this kill an Arch-Hag without needing to find their anathema? Does this prevent a Lich from coming back via its Soul Jar? That might be far too powerful for monsters that have built-in ways to come back.
On the other hand, does this also prevent us from subduing targets non-lethally? I guess we can discharge our Hellfire Weapon, but while the flavor of this feature is cool, I think we need to revisit its implementation.
Infernal Bargain:
When you roll your Infernal Wound Die, you can treat a roll of a 1 as a 6.
This is actually enormous for our earlier features: doubling the chance that we activate both Advanced Wounds and Blister of Avernus. The d6 now has an average damage roll of 4 1/3 (up from 3.5) and we now have a 1/3 chance to activate Advanced Wounds. The chance of getting three dice on a Blister of Avernus is now 1/9.
Overall Thoughts:
This subclass is really interesting and different. Fighter subclasses come in varying levels of complexity, and while this will seem complex at first, I suspect that it will wind up being fairly simple after any significant experience playing it.
I don't think we're looking at the same power level as an Eldritch Knight or Battle Master, but it's still pretty cool. Letting us set our DCs via Con also lets us pour all of our ability score stuff into just two stats (Battle Masters have the advantage of being truly SAD, but this is better, I'd say, than needing Intelligence on top of Strength/Dex and Con).
It's kind of flavorful that these mortal knights empowered by the Hells are actually far less effective against Devils, who are almost all immune to fire, while they're quite capable against Demons, Yugoloths, and other fiends who are merely resistant.
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