The Knight¶

Class document for Adventures Beyond the Mists.

You are a sworn knight, and you lead soldiers who trust you. You are not the best fighter among them, and you do not need to be, because your household fights as one body: when you tell them to hold a line, they hold it, and the enemy breaks against it instead. The thrill is the moment the charge lands together and the enemy's formation simply comes apart. Your Oaths are the heart of it, sworn promises that make you stronger where they apply and cost you something real if you break them.

At a Glance¶

Personal die: 1 at Skilled (4-6).
Signature live now: Straight, Rally, Oaths. (Set and its Charge unlock at Level 5.)
Command Capacity: 3 Retainers. Detachment Limit: 2.
Starting Pool: 4 dice (1 personal + 3 Retainers).
Hit Points: 5 base, plus armor (see Hit Points).
Starting Specialties: 3 Advancement Points on the Knight's Level 1 menu, priced by tier.

Flavor¶

The line holds because he says it holds.

You have sworn something, to someone, and you have not yet decided whether you regret it. That is the truest thing about a Knight: not the armor, not the blade, not even the household that rides at your back, but the word you gave and have not broken. Not yet.

In the Known World, a Knight is a rank, a duty, sometimes a birthright, sometimes a title bought or earned the hard way. In Hynafol, it becomes something closer to a fact of physics. When you plant your feet and tell your men-at-arms to hold, they hold, and something in the mist seems to agree with you. The line does not break because you have decided, out loud or only to yourself, that it will not.

You are rarely the strongest sword on the field. You are almost always the reason the field has a shape at all. Other heroes strike harder, move faster, work stranger wonders. You are the one who says where the battle happens, and then makes that true.

This is not a comfortable gift. Households fall as often as they hold. Oaths sworn in good faith curdle into cages. The Mists remember what you have promised even when you would rather they forgot. But when the charge comes together, when the line moves as one and the enemy's formation simply stops existing, there is no better feeling in either world.

How the Knight Plays¶

This document assumes familiarity with Core Resolution (the shared Pool, hit ranges, and the bank-and-push loop), Wounds and Fatigue (Hit Points, wound direction, death and return), and Command Capacity (company size and Bond), all in core-rules. Only what is specific to the Knight is detailed below.

Command Capacity¶

The Knight leads a household. Starting Command Capacity is 3, rising to 4 at Level 5 and 5 at Level 9. The maximum of 5 is the largest among disciplined companies and reflects the Knight's core identity: formation and numbers, not personal brilliance, win the field.

The rules term is Company, the same as every other Class. Some Knights call theirs a Lance, and a player is welcome to; others call theirs a household, a retinue, a shield, or nothing at all. That is flavor a table chooses, not a default the rules impose.

A Knight's Company is typically built from Shieldbearers and Halberdiers, reflecting a disciplined line rather than a scattered raiding party. This is a convention, not a rule, a Knight may recruit however their story demands, but it is the expected shape of a household at the table.

Designer's note

The starting value of 3 and the maximum of 5, reached by single steps at Levels 5 and 9, are finalized as the Knight's Command Capacity ladder. See the Level Table below.

Personal Dice¶

A starting Knight rolls 1 personal die at Skilled hit range (4-6). This is wider than any standard soldier's range and reflects a lifetime of training, but it is not the widest personal die in the game (that is reserved for the Errant). The Knight's strength lies in the Company around them, not in personal supremacy.

Additional dice. The Knight's second die arrives at Level 3 and the third at Level 7. Each is yours, rolled from your Pool, and each enters play Untrained, hitting only on a 6. When a die arrives you choose its Source, a Bonded Beast, a Guardian Spirit, a Bound Weapon, or the Killing Art (see Sources of the Second Die): the Source is that die's fiction and a small Trait, live only while its fiction is present, but the die itself is always yours to roll.

Each die sharpens on its own as the Knight climbs, widening one step at the Levels the Level Table marks, automatically and never bought. Earlier dice climb higher than later ones: the second die reaches Skilled (4-6), while the third caps a step below at Trained (5-6).

Combos¶

The Knight reads two patterns in the shared Pool. Both represent the same underlying idea: that a Knight's household fights as a single, coordinated body rather than as individuals swinging separately.

Straight¶

Three or more consecutive dice in a single roll. When this appears, it may be set aside as one additional banked hit, on top of whatever hits those dice already scored. A longer Straight is still worth exactly one bonus hit, length does not add more. This represents the household moving and striking in formation: the line finding an opening precisely because it holds together.

Set (Level 5)¶

Four or more matching dice in a single roll. When this appears, the Knight may declare a Charge: every hit scored this roll is dealt to a single target of the Knight's choosing, and that target's Card takes 1 additional damage beyond what the hits alone would deal. This represents the full weight of the household landing on one point of the enemy's line at once.

A Knight does not read Set before Level 5. At Level 1 the Knight's Pool is 4 dice (1 personal die plus Command Capacity 3), and Set's trigger rate there is 0.5%, down from the 2% the effect was calibrated against at the old Pool 5 baseline. That is not rare, it is non-functional. At Level 5 the Knight's Pool reaches 6 and the rate more than doubles to 5.2%, the first point at which the mechanic crosses from "practically never" into "genuinely present." Straight and Rally both work from Level 1 onward, so the class is not thin in the interim; Straight fires on 28% of rolls at Pool 4, a healthy and regularly-appearing trigger.

Rally (once per Combat)¶

Once per Combat, the wounded fight on as if they were not wounded at all.

Once per Combat, on the Knight's turn, every wounded soldier in the Knight's company ignores their wound's penalty for that round only. A disarmed soldier fights with their weapon. An immobile soldier moves freely. Nothing about their Card changes, no Hit Point is restored, no wound is healed, the wound is simply set aside for one round by will alone.

This resets automatically at the start of each new combat. There is no cost beyond having not yet used it this fight, and no way to use it a second time in the same combat under the base rules.

Oaths¶

The Oath is the Knight's signature feature and the clearest mechanical expression of the class's whole premise. An Oath is a specific, testable promise, sworn aloud and witnessed by at least one other person in the fiction. "I will not retreat from this bridge." "I will bring the traitor's head to my lord." "No harm will come to this household while I stand."

A Knight accumulates Oaths across a career and may hold several at once, but only one is Active at a time. The Active Oath grants its benefit whenever the circumstance it names is met. Changing which sworn Oath is Active costs one Action, in combat or out of it. Swearing a wholly new Oath is a fictional beat rather than an Action, and happens when the story calls for it.

An Oath's benefit is never a die. It sharpens what the Knight already does, inside the narrow circumstance the Oath names. This replaces an earlier draft in which an Oath granted one additional personal die, a benefit that went dead the moment a Knight reached the three-die cap, which for most Knights is Level 7. See retired-mechanics.

Four Oaths form the starting set. The list is meant to grow, the same way the Priest's Domains and the Mage's Aspects grow.

Oath of Protection¶

Flavor. No harm comes to the one you stand beside while you are still standing.

Effect. Name a sworn charge: an ally, a Retainer, or a person in the fiction. While you are adjacent to your charge and able to act, any Hit assigned to them is automatically redirected to your own Card, with no declaration and no limit but your own Hit Points. This is Intercept made automatic and total, for one named person, for as long as you hold the ground beside them. An attack with Inevitable ignores it, exactly as Inevitable ignores an ordinary Intercept.

Oath of Vengeance¶

Flavor. You have named the one who will answer for it, and the naming is half the work.

Effect. Name a sworn enemy. While attacking that enemy, your own personal die's Hit Range widens one tier: a Knight's Skilled (4-6) becomes Elite (3-6). This applies only to your personal die, and only against the named enemy. It caps at Elite; an Oath of Vengeance never carries a Knight's die to Renowned. This is the one place a Knight's die reaches Elite, the tier otherwise reserved for the Errant. It is allowed here because it is conditional and single-target, a sworn focus on one enemy, not a permanent widening of the Knight's baseline.

Oath of Success¶

Flavor. The discipline that holds a line holds a hand steady on a lock just as well.

Effect. Name one category of technical task, the kind attempted under fire: climbing, forcing a lock, disarming a device, a feat of balance or nerve. While in combat, a Check of that named category is resolved one competence tier above its governing Virtue. This does not stack with a Skill covering the same task; the one-tier bump is the ceiling either way.

Oath of the Vanguard¶

Flavor. You swore they would not fall while you had a life left to spend. Some nights you find out exactly what that costs.

Effect. Name a sworn charge, as with the Oath of Protection. While this Oath is Active, once per Combat, when your charge would Fall, you may Fall in their place: they are left standing at 1 Hit Point, and you Fall instead, spending a Life in Hynafol or dying in the Known World. This is not an Intercept and does not depend on your remaining Hit Points; you are trading your own standing for theirs, not soaking a Hit. It cannot be used against a blow that Felled you in the same instant. Only one Oath is Active at a time, so a Knight who wants both the everyday redirect of Protection and this last resort must choose which to hold ready.

Designer's note

[PLAYTEST] the once-per-Combat frequency and the Life cost, and note that a Guardian Tabard or a Wellspring (see core-rules, Part Twelve) waives that cost, which makes the act far cheaper exactly where the setting is most forgiving. Held as a feature, a Tabarded Knight throwing itself in front of its charge being squarely on theme, not an oversight.

Breaking an Oath¶

Switching away from an Oath is not breaking it. Breaking an Oath means acting against the terms you swore: abandoning the charge you vowed to protect, sparing the enemy you swore to strike, betraying the promise itself. That costs something real and immediate, a Life in Hynafol, or a permanent Hit Point loss the Mists do not restore on return, at the GM's discretion based on the severity of the betrayal. A Knight does not break an Oath lightly, and the game should never let them forget that they did.

Detachment Limit¶

Like every class, the Knight's company may be organized into multiple physically separate groups, but only up to the class's Detachment Limit can take a combat action, attack, roll their Pool, on a given turn. The Knight's Detachment Limit is 2, the default. Non-acting groups may still move, perform non-combat actions, and defend normally if attacked.

Hit Points¶

The Knight's personal Card is 5 Hit Points at First Level, before armor. Armor adds on top: Light +1, Medium +2, Heavy +3, so an armored Knight sits between 6 and 8. This is the class's baseline under the Level 1 Hit Point table (see character-creation, Hit Point baselines), set on the principle that a Character's personal depth runs inverse to how much a Company can soak for them. The Knight keeps a Lance but stands in front of it, so the baseline sits in the middle of the range rather than at the fragile end.

Designer's note

[PLAYTEST] The gradient is chosen, not yet confirmed in live combat.

Worked Example¶

Worked example

[DRAFT] This example predates the Source model and still shows a post-Level-5 Knight with a single personal die. Under the current ladder that Knight has two personal dice (the second sharpened to Trained or Skilled, with a chosen Source). To be rebuilt against the new Pool.

Sir Aelric leads a Company of four Trained Retainers. His Pool is 5 dice: his own personal die at Skilled (4-6), and four soldier dice at Trained (5-6). (This is a Knight past Level 5, not a starting one; a Level 1 Knight leads 3 Retainers for a Pool of 4. The example is kept at Pool 5 because that is the size every Knight probability figure in this document was calibrated against.)

He rolls 6, 5, 5, 4, 3. The 6 and both 5s hit for his soldiers. His personal die, showing the 4, hits at Skilled range. Four hits, banked. Reading the roll for combos: 6-5-4-3 is a Straight, worth one additional bonus hit. Five hits total this turn.

Later in the same fight, his Company is down to two wounded Retainers and himself. He declares Rally. Both wounded soldiers fight this round with full effect, weapons in hand and legs under them, exactly as if they had never been touched.

Starting Specialties¶

The menu a first-level Knight spends its 3 starting Advancement Points on. Costs are the standard Specialty tiers (see character-creation, Starting Specialties): universal picks are open to any Character, picks marked Knight only are this Class's own, and a requirement in parentheses must be met. Spend the 3 points however you like across the menu: one Tier 3 pick, a Tier 2 plus a Tier 1, or three Tier 1s.

Iron Constitution (2 AP): +2 Hit Points; the anchor's durability.
Immovable Object (2 AP): cannot be shoved or enemy-Slowed; holds the spot he chose.
Standard Bearer's Word (2 AP): strip a Condition off a soldier, or grant one immunity.
Create Opening (2 AP): a blow he soaks gives allies +1d6 against the enemy that struck him.
Encourage (2 AP, Presence Trained): hand an ally +1d6 on a roll.
Rider (2 AP): the mounted knight, +4 Speed and a charge (requires a mount; see universal-specialties, Mounts).

Level Table¶

This is the Knight's actual ladder, not a sample. The numbers remain subject to playtest confirmation the way every number in the game is, but they are no longer placeholders to be replaced.

XP thresholds are universal: 100 XP per Level, run as a percentage bar that fills 0 to 100 and resets each Level (see character-creation, Advancement). Odd Levels grant a fixed class benefit that cannot be bought or declined. Even Levels grant Advancement Points to spend on the general Advancement menu. Level 1 also carries the 3 Advancement Points every Character spends on their class Starting Specialty menu before play begins, which is why the cumulative column opens at 3.

Level	Fixed class grant	AP granted	Cumulative AP (incl. 3 starting)	Personal dice (Hit Range)	Cmd. Cap.	Pool
1	1 personal die at Skilled (4-6); Straight, Rally, Oaths	3 (starting)	3	4-6	3	4
2	—	2	5	4-6	3	4
3	Second personal die (choose a Source), enters Untrained (6)	—	5	4-6, 6	3	5
4	—	3	8	4-6, 6	3	5
5	Second die sharpens to Trained (5-6); +1 Command Capacity (to 4); Set unlocks (Charge)	—	8	4-6, 5-6	4	6
6	—	4	12	4-6, 5-6	4	6
7	Third personal die (choose a Source), enters Untrained (6), three-die maximum; second die sharpens to Skilled (4-6)	—	12	4-6, 4-6, 6	4	7
8	—	5	17	4-6, 4-6, 6	4	7
9	Third die sharpens to Trained (5-6); +1 Command Capacity (to 5, maximum)	—	17	4-6, 4-6, 5-6	5	8
10	—	6	23	4-6, 4-6, 5-6	5	8

A Knight who plays the full arc to Level 10 has received 23 Advancement Points in total: the 3 starting points, plus 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 at the five even Levels. The even-Level amounts rise deliberately, so later Levels feel weightier than early ones and the Level 6 grant is the first of the larger ones the framework calls for. Level 10 is the current design ceiling; progression past it is future work.

The Pool column is the maximum Pool at that Level: personal dice plus a full Company at Command Capacity. An Oath of Vengeance sharpens a die rather than adding one, and no relic adds a die (see weapons.md, Named Weapons), so nothing outside the Level ladder changes these figures.

What a Knight buys with those points is the household. Bond in named lieutenants above all, and a single Retainer carried from Bond 0 to Bond 4 costs 10 of the 23 on its own, then Guild standing, Skills, and the universal Specialties. The budget builds either one deep, storied household or Distinguished status spread across most of the Company, but not both to the hilt, which is the intended shape of the choice.

Designer's Notes¶

Rationale and open testing questions. Safe for players to read, but written for the designer.

Design decisions

Command Capacity: 5 as a maximum, 3 as a start. The figure of 5 was carried over from the earliest worked combat examples in design (Sir Aelric's and Sir Cadwyn's Companies), which used a Pool of 5 (1 personal die plus 4 Retainers) throughout testing, and it remains the number with the most mileage behind it. The 2026-07-31 Level restructure split it: 5 is now the maximum reached at Level 9, and the starting value is 3, derived from the Level 1 Pool math (Pool 4 equals 1 personal die plus 3 Retainers). Note that the original testing Pool of 5 was itself 4 Retainers, not 5, so the flat figure of 5 was never quite what the worked examples exercised. The split is now finalized as the Knight's ladder; see the Level Table.
Rally chosen as once-per-combat rather than combo-triggered. An earlier draft considered tying a company-wide wound-ignoring effect to a Straight or Pair, the same way single-target versions were considered for Warden. This was rejected because the ability represents a deliberate act of will and leadership, not a lucky roll, the Knight should choose the moment, not be handed it by the dice. A once-per-combat trigger with no resource cost was chosen specifically for its simplicity: no quantity to track, only a single used or unused state.
Oaths kept as a Knight-specific feature, not a universal mechanic. Early design discussion considered making Oaths available to any class. This was rejected in favor of keeping Oaths scarce and class-defining, the Knight is the clearest fictional fit for a sworn, testable promise with real mechanical stakes, and giving every class the same lever would dilute its weight. Other classes may gain their own analogous features (the Warden's endurance, the Witch's bargains) but should not simply reuse Oaths verbatim.
Straight and Pair rarity flagged as a live concern. Probability analysis conducted during design showed that a Straight (3+ consecutive dice) appears in roughly 45% of rolls at a 5-die pool, and a Pair in roughly 91%, both far more common than originally intended for a class's special combo trigger. The Knight's Straight effect (one flat bonus hit) was kept deliberately small specifically because it fires so often; a larger bonus at this frequency would have been overpowered. The Set-triggered Charge remains rare (0.5% to 2% at typical company sizes) and was left as the class's true rare, dramatic spike.
Personal hit range set at Skilled (4-6), not Elite. Elite (3-6) is reserved for the Errant, the one class whose entire identity is personal output with no Company to lean on. The Knight's power is meant to live in the Company, not in personal supremacy; a Knight who also outclassed every other class personally would undercut the game's core pillar that heroic agency operates at the scale of the company, not the individual. Skilled is still a real stretch above the Trained baseline most classes use, which is judged appropriate given how much of the Knight's kit (Straight, Charge) depends on the Pool as a whole rather than the personal die alone. This was corrected from an earlier draft that set the Knight at Elite; see retired-mechanics. Flagged as still possibly too strong at Level 1, and a live concern for playtest.

Testing done and pending

Testing to date has been conversational worked-example combat, not live tabletop play. The following have been exercised in that format:

2v2 combat (Sir Aelric and Brother Owain vs. Ranulf and Yseult). Exercised the Knight's basic Pool mechanics, Straight triggers, the Intercept rule, and wound-direction choices across several rounds. Confirmed the core loop produces real decisions turn to turn.
Fen Warden solo-monster test, followed by a minion-supported retest. The Knight's Company was one of three involved. This test primarily validated solo-monster Pool scaling rather than Knight-specific mechanics, but confirmed the Knight's Pool behaves as expected in a multi-PC engagement.

Not yet tested, and flagged as pending:

Rally in an actual near-death scenario. No worked example has yet forced a real choice about when to spend the once-per-combat Rally. Its value is currently theoretical.
The Charge (Set-triggered) against a deep-Card target. Sets have not yet come up in any worked example against a target tough enough to show whether the bonus damage meaningfully matters, or whether it is usually overkill.
Oaths at the table. No worked example has included a sworn Oath, its active benefit, or the cost of breaking one. This is the single least-tested piece of the class.
Detachment Limit in play with a Knight specifically. The cohesion and Detachment Limit system was designed using a Knight as the illustrative example (the bridge, the door, the rescue) but has not been run as an actual worked combat.

Growth potential

Directions for how a Knight might grow past Level 1. None are finalized; all are consistent with the class's existing design language.

Mounted and elite Retainers: how to build them. A Knight's Company riding as armored cavaliers is a natural high-tier fantasy for this class, and it must never be expressed as a second die per Retainer. That ratio is absolute (see companies-and-command, Part Three, and style-guide). Build the cavalry charge instead from higher Hit Points, Rend values above 1 on a charging strike, and Speed and reach. Six cavaliers with 4-Hit-Point Cards and Rend 2 lances read as terrifying without touching the Pool.
Command Capacity increases, now automatic. Command Capacity is no longer bought. It rises at Levels 5 and 9 and stops at 5. Note the standing concern: Command Capacity growth alone pushes Set's rate from 2% at Pool 5 to 28.4% at Pool 9, so the class's own growth path erodes Set's intended rarity well before any mounted-Retainer idea enters the picture. Logged in open-questions.
A second Active Oath. A veteran Knight might hold two Oaths Active at once rather than one, representing a life increasingly defined by competing vows, with the attendant risk that the two might someday conflict and force a broken promise.
A second use of Rally per Combat, at real cost. Rather than simply doubling the free use, a later feature could let a Knight push past the once-per-combat limit by spending a Life or a permanent Hit Point loss, mirroring the stakes already established for broken Oaths, and keeping the base ability's simplicity intact for new players while giving veteran Knights a harder, more dramatic option.
Widening the Straight or Set trigger. A veteran Knight's Charge could someday trigger on a shorter Set (3 matching dice instead of 4), at the cost of smaller bonus damage, trading rarity for reliability as an advancement choice rather than a flat power increase. Flagged for review: now that Set is accepted as a common, small effect at a large Pool, triggering Charge on a Triple adds little and may be cut or repriced.
Named Weapon and Named Mount as concrete acquisition targets. A Knight's progression path should include real, nameable items, a sword, a horse, found or won as relics rather than bought. Under the current rules these grant signature properties rather than dice (see weapons.md, Named Weapons); the earlier notion that each was worth a personal die is retired with the gear-grants-dice principle (2026-08-06).
Bond growth among named lieutenants. As Company members cross Bond 2, 3, and beyond, a veteran Knight's household should include several named, distinct soldiers whose survival and loyalty become part of the character's own story, the natural endpoint of the Bond system applied over a long campaign.

Changelog

2026-08-09: Unified the combat Hit Range and Check competence tiers into a single ladder (Untrained, Trained, Skilled, Elite, Renowned). Renamed Rabble to Untrained, Veteran to Skilled, Expert to Elite, and the combat Legendary tier to Renowned; the Legendary Difficulty rung is unchanged.
2026-08-09: Reworked personal dice onto the staggered-Source model as the live example for the system. The second die (Level 3) and third die (Level 7) now enter Untrained and sharpen automatically on the ladder (second to Skilled, third capping at Trained); each is chosen as a Source (Bonded Beast, Guardian Spirit, Bound Weapon, or the Killing Art). Pool sizes are unchanged from the prior ladder. [DRAFT: the shared Sources of the Second Die page and the other seven classes are not yet converted, and the worked example still needs rebuilding.]
2026-08-06: Removed the Named Weapon as a die source from the Pool-max note and the point-budget list, and rewrote the Named Weapon and Mount designer note. Relics grant signature properties, not dice.
2026-08-04: Added the Oath of the Vanguard, the salvaged Warden signature Life Between Them recast as an Oath.
2026-08-04: Added an Explanation-voice opening pitch above the at-a-glance block.
2026-08-04: Rebuilt to the class-page template: heading hierarchy, sections reordered, designer notes collapsed.
2026-08-03: Added to the v0.3 playtest site.