The purifier of Minrhet is a completely original class, unique to the Aldhaven setting.
One of the twin solar deities, Minrhet represents the burning heat and cleansing fire of the sun, leaving his brother to handle the domains of light and joy and other such things. Though both fight against Darkness, Solaron uses diplomacy and blessings to convince, convert, and encourage while Minrhet greatly prefers to simply wage war. The purifiers of Minrhet embraces these aspects of their god, seeking to bring his cleansing flame into the darkest places to drive it out wherever it can be found.
Establishing the Class
What is the Purifier of Minrhet? What is it not?
The purifier seeks to drive out Darkness, anywhere it’s found. At it’s heart, the purifier is a paladin who smites the things that need smiting. With extreme prejudice, when necessary. It does not embrace the gentler aspects of a paladin, such as healing or supporting allies, not even the paladin’s fancy magic horse. Though spells are powerful and useful, it is not a spellcaster. It has one thing it wants to do: make the bad things dead with righteousness and good steel.
What Assets Should a Purifier Have? What are its Limitations?
The greatest enemy of the solar deities is Darkness, both metaphorical and actual. They only have power where the Light shines, so we want to be inspired by that. Solaron is the deity of the sun’s light. Minrhet is the deity of its heat. So, inspiration without actually tossing light everywhere.
Undead—powered by negative energy and evil—are effectively Darkness personified and among their greatest foes. So, the purifier needs to have ways of effectively handling undead. The main limitation here is that Solaron has the Sun domain, while Minrhet does not. Deities here, even twins, do not share domains. We’ll need to address that.
Their alignment tends towards Lawful Good, with Solaron being Neutral Good and Minrhet being Lawful Neutral. We also want to support and strongly encourage paladin entry without requiring it. However, we also don’t want to restrict the class to only LG characters, as many of Minrhet’s staunchest followers will not have that alignment.
With alignment in mind, Minrhet also sees oustiders with the Evil or Chaotic subtypes as lesser incarnations of Darkness. So, he’d have an ability to address them directly as well.
It needs to be a short class, because Minrhet is a proponent of getting things done. Even though he takes the long view and lays plans for it, he gives his followers the power to act immediately. A 10 level prestige class seems vaguely out of character for him. A character should get in, get his blessings, and get to smiting as quickly as possible. Setting it to 5 levels also means that a cleric can take it through to the end and still have access to 8th-level spells by level 20.
Finally, I want it to be a Charisma focused class. It’s going to have a number of abilities keyed to Charisma, including save DCs and uses per day. That skews entry somewhat to favor paladin, especially one that eschews spellcasting, but it doesn’t eliminate cleric entry. The lack of spellcasting progression does more to discourage that.
Building the Purifier of Minrhet
Entry Requirements
I want this class to encourage clerics and paladins. While I don’t want to limit it exclusively to them, I’m including turn undead as a requirement anyway. Turn undead powers much of the class, and I prefer it as a prerequisite rather than as something granted. There are other sources of this, so there are other valid paths to entry. Cleric and paladin are just the most obvious. I also want to limit it to devout followers of Minrhet, so that’s an explicit requirement. Rebuking and controlling undead are abhorrent to him, so rebuking is an anti-requisite, making one unable to enter this class if they possess that ability. That also serves to limit daily abilities powered by turning, since he’ll have one fewer pools of daily uses to spend—though that isn’t as much of an issue with the Channel Divinity revision to turning in Aldhaven.
Alignment will require being Lawful, and it will have a required race to exclude those that Minrhet sees as inherently irredeemable. Another DM may allow some leeway on that for certain characters, but it’s not normally within Minrhet’s character to be forgiving.
We also want to set a minimum level for entry. Base Attack +4, Knowledge (religion) 8, Knowledge (the planes) 2 seems good. For the most obvious two classes, that will require either Cleric 6 or Paladin 5 or some combination, possibly Paladin 2/Cleric 3. The important part is that it requires a minimum of 5 levels invested elsewhere first.
Turning Undead
Purifier of Minrhet levels explicitly stack with other classes for the purposes of turning undead. It also gains a small pool of Greater Turning, the ability of the Sun domain. It doesn’t have language about it stacking with that domain, because a purifier dedicated to Minrhet should not normally have access to the domain. Assuming he somehow does (Knight of the Raven levels, perhaps), the domain would have a greater turning use separate from the purifier’s daily uses.
Turning undead is a useful ability, but only when there are undead around. Otherwise, it’s just sitting there doing nothing. Our expectation of a high Charisma gives us extra uses per day, and there are plenty of options out there that are powered by turning uses. So, I’ll do something with that.
Smiting
At first level, a purifier gains the ability to smite darkness. It deals a maximum of 5 points of additional damage, because it’s based on class level. That may not seem like much. Still, it’s a thing that exists. It’s going to be more useful later in the class though.
Because of how broad the category “Creatures of Darkness” is and how useful this is to other class features, the damage is limited to maintain some balance.
The most important part here is that purifier levels explicitly stack with any existing smite abilities to determine the other smites’ damage. So, if you’re coming in as a paladin, you’ll still get full damage progression on your smite evil. The reverse is not also true. Paladin levels do not increase your smite darkness damage. That’s stuck at your purifier level.
The Refiner’s Fire
Second level grants Purifying Flame, the purifier’s signature ability. At this level, spend a turn attempt to add 1d6 damage to your weapon for a few rounds. Not great, not bad. Nice though. Oh, it’s also sacred damage, which is quite good. Damage increases to 2d6 at 5th level, which is better.
There’s nothing too special about purifying flame on its own though. So, at 3rd level, a purifier gains Smiting Flame. Successfully smite someone while the flame is active, and they’ll catch fire, burning for sacred damage for several rounds. They take weapon damage, plus smite damage, plus sacred damage, plus ongoing sacred damage. The numbers are low, but nothing (that I know of) resists sacred energy. It’s potent stuff.
Concerning Outsiders
I want something to handle outsiders, but most of the ideas I had for them just weren’t that great. Favored enemy? No. Additional smite ability? Eh, that’s somewhat redundant. Also, just getting more of the same with a different creature type is pretty boring. What about the ability to turn outsiders like you can turn undead? That has potential. It is technically more of the same, but it’s an AoE and possibly more interesting than a 1/day smite outsiders.
Censure Outsider allows a purifier to attempt to “turn” outsiders with the Evil or Shadow subtypes as though they were undead. Instead of damage, those that would be turned are dazed on a failed save or sickened on a successful one. Those that would be destroyed are banished to their home plane on a failed save or dazed on a successful save.
It’s thematically appropriate and gives a way to quickly clear out trash monsters to get at the bigger threat. It fits thematically. Not the greatest ability, but I like it well enough.
The Capstone: Burn Everything
I wanted a memorable and unique capstone. I also wanted it to be potent but limited. Most of all, I wanted it to reflect the character of Minrhet.
Sacred Conflagration achieves all of that. It’s expensive to activate, requiring a full-round action and the spending of both a smite attempt and a turn attempt. It’s pretty potent, dealing 10d6 sacred energy damage to enemies around you.
It’s also limited, because it only affects targets that would be affected by your smite. If all you have is purifier levels, then that means it only affects creatures of darkness. If you have smite evil from paladin, then you can use it to affect all evil characters. It adapts to any form of smite you use to power it. If you have a smite that can affect anyone, such as the Destruction domain’s power or the Ordained Champion’s smite ability, then it affects everyone. That’s just how it works.
But it also reflects Minrhet’s character perfectly. Sacred conflagration is centered on the purifier and includes him in the area of effect. If a purifier uses a smite that could potentially affect himself, he gets hit by the conflagration too. So, using something that can affect anyone damages all nearby enemies, and any unlucky allies, and also deals full damage to the purifier himself.
Minrhet allows you to some leeway in determining what constitutes Darkness and then gives you the power to purge it. If you, in your hubris, dare to call upon his power with Darkness in your own heart, then you too suffer his wrath as his flames purify that Darkness from within you. He is not one to spare his followers from their folly.
Of course, if you’re found pure of heart and don’t foolishly smite yourself, you’re healed instead. So there’s that.