Death Knight

To master combat is to master death. That is the way of the death knight. The self must be honed, sharpened as a weapon, the body stripped of its natural life and transformed into a machine for war. As a death knight, you have abandoned the comforting heat of your mortal body and become something else, something sinister. The death knight is unnaturally tough and can take serious punishment without slowing down. It is death incarnate, relentlessly riding into battle, stilling creatures, and pulling them into their graves.

Art credit: Daniel Jose Machin

Icebound Fortitude

Starting at 3rd level, you can use your second wind feature twice in-between rests. At this point, your body is not only animated by your life force but also the necrotic energies you command. You are cold to the touch and your heart is obsolete and still. You have resistance to cold damage and are unaffected by cold climates and weather. Because of your partially undead nature, you are indistinguishable from a corpse when holding your breath, as long as you don't move.

Runic Weapon

Over the course of a short rest, you can inscribe a weapon with a magical rune. While wielding a runic weapon, you cannot be disarmed unless you are incapacitated, and the damage dealt by the weapon counts as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity. If your runic weapon is on the same plane of existence as you, you can summon it to your hand as a bonus action. You can have up to two weapons inscribed with runes at once.

Death Grip

Starting at 7th level, you can extend the cold tendrils of death to beckon others to their grave. As an action, you can choose a creature within 10m of you that you can see. Shadowy tendrils extend and grasp it, forcing it to make a Strength saving throw (DC = 8 + your Strength modifier + your proficiency bonus). On a failed save, it is pulled to a point you choose within 1,5m of you; on a successful save, it remains in place. Whether it succeeds on its saving throw or not, it has disadvantage on attack rolls against all creatures except you until the end of your next turn.

On a Pale Horse

At 10th level, you gain the ability to summon and control an undead mount. Using this feature, you can cast find steed without a spell slot. Starting at 18th level when you use this feature, you can cast find greater steed instead. The mount you summon takes on a skeletal appearance and counts as undead instead of its normal type. The mount has immunity to poison damage. It is immune to the poisoned conditioned as well as the charmed condition. The mount has vulnerability to radiant damage and it has resistance to cold damage; necrotic damage; and bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from non-magical weapons. Additionally, magic can not put the mount to sleep.

Vampiric Blood

At 15th level, you learn to channel necrotic energies through your blood to bolster against damage. As an action, you turn cold, making your flesh hardy and forcing your wounds to close. You gain 10d10 temporary hit points. Until your temporary hit points reach 0, you have advantage on all saving throws. Additionally, after you use this feature, whenever you regain hit points before the start of your next turn, the amount you regain is doubled. Once you use this feature, you can not do so again until you finish a long rest.

Asphyxiate

At 18th level, you can focus your dark powers to telekinetically strangle a creature and lift it off the ground. As an action, make a grapple check against a creature within 10m of you. If you succeed, the creature is restrained and lifted 0,3m off the ground, and unable to complete verbal components for spells due to its limited breathing. A creature that is restrained in this way can attempt to break free as if breaking free from a grapple. This effect lasts on a creature until it manages to break free or it is more than 10m away from you. As part of your move, you can make creatures restrained in this way move along with you as if you were dragging them. You choose which creatures are moved, if any.