The Soldier of Light is based on the PrC from Deities and Demigods but heavily modified to Aldhaven.
Solaron is deity of the sun and presents its Light and the life and joy that such light brings. Though Solaron and his twin brother Minrhet both fight against Darkness, Solaron prefers the use of diplomacy and blessings to convince, convert, and encourage as opposed to simply waging war.
The soldiers of light are a militant wing of the Church of Light that strays from the path of peace, bringing the Light to those who openly embrace Darkness and refuse the Light.
Establishing the Class
What is the Soldier of Light? What is it not?
A soldier of light is, quite simply, a paladin of the church of light that need not actually have the paladin class. It’s a specialized paladin focused on the tenets of the church of light that is open to any Good-aligned individual who worships Solaron as their patron deity.
To that end, the class duplicates many of the paladin class features, albeit with a slightly different spin to them.
What Assets Should a Soldier Have? What are its Limitations?
The greatest enemy of the solar deities is Darkness, both metaphorical and actual. The soldier of light gains the ability to literally bring light to the darkness.
Undead—powered by negative energy and evil—are effectively Darkness personified and among their greatest foes. So, the soldier of lights needs to gain the means to effectively handle undead.
Their alignment should be required to be Neutral Good, just as Solaron us Neutral Good. So actual paladins aren’t able to gain entry without losing their paladin abilities. It’s not that Solaron doesn’t support paladins, but he feels that a paladin should stay on that path rather than abandoning it to become a soldier of light. So, there are no benefits to a former paladin becoming a soldier.
Much like the paladin, this class has a split between Wisdom and Charisma as the important ability scores. However, Charisma will be a little less useful than it is for the usual paladin.
The soldiers of light are an organized sect within the church of light, so they should be separate from paladins and clerics of the church. The class shouldn’t be afraid to duplicate abilities of either class, but it also shouldn’t progress anything gained from those classes, with the exception of turn undead. Solaron is willing to allow that. While Solaron isn’t a huge proponent of Law or Order as a concept (Law is more Minrhet’s position), he does believe that being a cleric or paladin is a commitment that you made and should stick with.
The major limitation of the soldier of light is that most of its abilities focus on dealing with the undead. When there aren’t any undead around, it’s most powerful abilities are going to be fairly limited. It will have some useful abilities regardless of situation, but it is definitely a very specialized class.
Building the Soldier of Light
Entry Requirements
I want this class to appeal primarily to followers of Solaron that are not clerics or paladins. This is meant to be a different order within the church of light, separate from the clerics and paladins. As such, the class requires nothing that can only be gained through those classes.
As mentioned previously, the class requires Neutral Good alignment to enter it. It only requires you to stay some flavor of Good to maintain it, but initial entry is limited. On that note, the ruling in Aldhaven is that you only lose class features for PrCs if there is an “Ex-Class” section. However, you can only continue progress in a class if you still meet all the prerequisites when you attempt to gain the next level. So, while a soldier of light could become Lawful Good and still maintain his class features—due to the Ex-Soldier of Light section only requiring him to maintain Good alignment—he couldn’t progress as a soldier of light until his alignment returned to Neutral Good. Solaron is kind and forgiving enough to let you stray a bit from his preferred alignment, but he also doesn’t reward it.
To set a minimum level for entry, I use Base Attack +5 and Knowledge (religion) 4. This requires a minimum of 5 levels in a full BAB class or a higher number of levels in other classes. The Knowledge (religion) requirement is low enough that a full BAB class that doesn’t have it as a class skill can still enter by level 6. The skill requirement is to show that a soldier has dedication to the faith without strictly limiting it. This makes the class open to just about anyone who follows solaron.
The only anti-requisite is rebuking undead, as Solaron simply will not tolerate using undead among his followers.
Detect Undead
Soldier of light is focused pretty heavily on fighting undead. As such, it gets detect undead at 1st level, which functions as the spell.
Turning Undead
Soldier of light levels explicitly stack with other classes for the purposes of turning undead. At 3rd level, he also gains the Sun Domain, which allows a soldier to make a greater turning attempt. 8th level grants effectively unlimited uses of greater turning, allowing the soldier to do way more damage to undead each day.
A soldier of light also uses his channel divinity/turn undead ability to power some of his other class features, specifically luminous burst.
Spellcasting
A soldier of light casts spells as a paladin, using the paladin spell list. At 3rd level, he gains the Sun domain, adding its spells to his class spell list. The class makes one other exception for clerics who enter soldier of light here, allowing them to prepare Sun domain spells in their cleric domain slots if they don’t already possess the Sun domain.
Divine Grace
At 2nd level, a soldier gains divine grace. There’s not much to say about this. It functions exactly as the paladin ability. Since soldiers are largely intended to be a different order of paladins, this fits.
Smiting
Also at second level, a soldier gains the ability to smite undead, adding his class level to damage. Unlike a paladin’s smite evil, however, this version of smite applies the soldiers wisdom bonus to the attack roll. This makes Charisma a bit less important for the class, though it’s still needed for turning attempts and divine grace.
Companion
Fourth level grants a companion which is distinctly different from the usual paladin mount. A solider of light’s companion is, quite fittingly, a light elemental. A light elemental is somewhere between an air elemental and a fire elemental but it uses a ranged attack and has no melee attacks.
The companion is fairly strong, but it mostly serves as a highly mobile flying unit that does little to no meaningful damage on its own. Even increasing its ability scores doesn’t really increase its damage output. It’s also not suitable as a mount, further limiting its usefulness.
The primary purpose of the companion is as a conduit for certain other class features, such as smite and luminous burst, allowing the soldier to gain more use from smite or use abilities at range.
Shine the Light!
Luminous Burst, the signature ability of the soldier of light, is gained at 5th level as a sort of “soft capstone.” The remaining class levels build on what the soldier has already gained, and this ability is the main feature that individuals likely entered the class to gain, and it wouldn’t be unusual for someone to multiclass out of soldier of light after 5th level.
By burning additional turn attempts when turning undead, a soldier of light can increase the range and damage of his turn undead as well as create a burst true daylight which lasts for a few rounds. The range goes from 30 feet to 50 feet, and the damage is increased by 1d6 per class level.
Fast Healing
A 7th-level solider gains fast healing while in bright light. This is a bit limited, but you can generate bright light at any time with luminous burst. That’s not the most efficient way of doing it, but it can be done.
Share the Light!
The 10th-level capstone for soldier of light actually does nothing for the soldier. It modifies luminous burst to buff the soldier’s allies, but not the soldier himself. You can grant all of your allies a one time use of any of the following as a swift action: smite undead, a +1 Heighten Spell effect on a [light] spell, or healing.
Also at 10th-level, a soldier can channel his luminous burst through his companion light elemental, letting him drop turn undead and holy light anywhere on the battlefield rather than having it always centered on himself. Unfortunately, this ranged AoE does not also grant the capstone buff to allies. Still, being able to drop major turn undead damage anywhere within 100 feet + 50 feet is pretty darn useful.