The roving arbiter specializes exclusively on smiting his enemies. It’s all about roving across the world bringing divine judgement on those who oppose the arbiter’s mission.
Designing the Roving Arbiter
As with all specialist classes, I want this to typically be available after taking 3 levels in the related class. So, its entry requirements are any smite ability and +3 BAB. We also want it to cost a bit extra rather than having automatic qualification for paladins, so it also has a Sense Motive rank requirement. Destruction domain clerics and those with the Champion ACF or the Initiate of Minrhet feat can also enter pretty easily, albeit a level later than a paladin.
Roving arbiter is not alignment locked, because it’s available to any character with a smite ability. Paladins, clerics, blackguards, celestial/fiendish creatures, etc. can all benefit from this class. Indeed, a multiclass character with multiple sources of smite can benefit even more.
The Basics of Stacking Smite Attacks
Under standard 3.5 Aldhaven rules, I only allow players to add an ability modifier to any given roll once, with very few exceptions (such as the Marshal’s motivate charisma aura), unless it’s a specifically named bonus type not already applied. On the other hand, the added damage from different smite sources is permitted to stack and is considered an untyped bonus.
In short, when a smite attack adds Charisma bonus to attack rolls, a character can only benefit from that bonus once but still gets to add up all of the extra damage.
So, when a paladin 5/knight of the raven 2 with 16 Charisma uses both Smite Evil and Smite Undead against an evil undead, he gets a +3 to attack and a +7 to damage (+5 from smite evil, +2 from smite undead).
None of that is directly relevant to the abilities of the roving arbiter, but it’s necessary background for explain why the class features are the way that they are.
Making Smite Potent
First off, a roving arbiter adds his class level to the attack roll whenever he makes a smite attack of any kind. He only gets this once per attack, not once per smite ability used.
He also adds his class level to all sources of smite damage used on an attack. Looking back to our paladin 5/knight of the raven 2 from above, if he used smite evil and smite undead on a single attack, he would add +6 total damage. For some classes, such as the platinum knight, this is even better, since that class gets a smite which deals +2 damage per level.
Obviously this is more potent with more sources of smite, but that also requires more multiclassing, which almost always lowers the damage totals from smite for those classes.
Smiting More Often
Second level brings the zeal ability, which is used by most classes to power smite attacks. This version of zeal adds full class level to zeal points rather than 1/2 level. This makes his trick useable more often, which is always good. This also unlocks the ability to take zealous feats, if he can’t already.
Additionally, the roving arbiter gains the ability to use smite attacks limited by uses per day by burning points of zeal.
Removing Limitations
Sometimes you just really want to smite something but can’t. Third level lets you remove the limitations on smiting 3/day. Now you can use smite evil on that obnoxiously chaotic neutral enemy. Believe me. He deserves it.