The 4th edition Death Knight can be found in the Monster Manual (2008) and this incarnation of our skeletal warrior moves even farther away from the Death Knight of old, relying on new martial abilities, which is in line with the early Dragon Magazine about the changes to the Death Knight and how they should be distinct from a lich. Before we get too into it, we would like to point out that the artwork for 4e, which is the same as in 3e, is just… ugly. A green skinned armored warrior? Really? It doesn’t look very imposing, and we can’t find it in our heart to be scared of what looks like a scrawny zombie in spray-painted black armor.

The biggest change to the Death Knight is the introduction of the soulsword. Upon finishing the ritual to become a Death Knight, their soul binds into the weapon. The sword is granted its magical powers from the fact that the knight’s soul is contained within it, and looking at the stat block, these abilities are quite impressive. While a lich uses a phylactery to protect its soul from being discovered and destroyed, a Death Knight has no fear since its soul provides the knight with their power. The sword can only able to be used by the Death Knight, and the evil of the soul contained within causes any other wielder to feel such despair and hopelessness, that they cannot hold it for very long. If the Death Knight loses its sword, they become weakened, but, and this is just conjecture on our part, also enraged by the fact that someone has stolen its soul and sword. It will hunt down the offender with the unending terror of undeath, overcome by the need to get the sword and therefore its soul back.

The Death Knight has little in the way of special, magical abilities, but rather focuses on using tactics and special martial abilities to win the day. They can strike out at their enemies when they try to move away, they can mark their opponents so that they have a penalty when attacking someone else, they can knock creatures back, and other martial abilities. But that isn’t all for our Death Knight as they also have a few more magically inclined abilities granted to them by their undeath, because their soul is currently in their sword when they strike out with it, it is crackling with necrotic energy. The Death Knight can also burst in unholy energy dealing fire and necrotic damage to its enemies while all undead creatures can deal additional fire damage on their attacks.

The Death Knight is a creature designed to be around minions and uses its abilities to help out its minions. Death Knights, due to their undeath, prefer undead creatures to lead but they dislike the unintelligent undead like zombies. Instead, Death Knights prefer leading armies of wights, sword wraiths, ghouls, and other undead that have some intelligent thoughts. Though, that doesn’t mean that a Death Knight won’t lead an army of skeletons as they go about destroying the countryside.

5e - Death Knight