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Every once in awhile you find a character that is awesome for a specific task. Well, the Knight falls into one of those categories. The local shop in Tampa, Florida (see our Links section for the web site) held a D&D tournament. The rules were relatively simple: bring five 20th level characters to fight to the death, last man standing wins. Well you can imagine the amount of time that was spent making these characters. Most people made one character that they used five times. I had made five completely original characters, one of which was the Knight. It was supposed to be a dungeon-like experience, but we found out after only two rounds that it had turned into a player vs. player game.
So I thought, cool, everyone is going to be running a Knight. The event was large enough that it was held outside in the fresh and open air. I got there early to survey the land that blood was sure to be shed on. There was a relatively small group that had shown up before me. They were getting their characters looked over for an inspection of gear, abilities, and whatnot by the DM. I turned my character in; the DM had several questions which I explained and that seemed to satisfy his curiosity. Now, I should mention that we were allowed any 3 books that we could make our characters from information from, all of which had to be at least 3.5 rules. My books were the Players Handbook 2, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the new Complete Arcane. I asked the DM, any other Knights here? He responded with some indifference in his usual tone “no”. I thought to myself, perfect. They have no idea what is going to hit them… After mingling for awhile finding out as much as I could about the competition, I settled into my spot and waited. After about one hour we had a nice size group sitting in the parking lot. We rushed right into what became the longest rounds of my life. I started off using a Beguiler, which is also out of the Players Handbook 2. I had designed him to be a counterspeller. He worked out a lot better than I had originally anticipated he would. After about an hour we decided that we were going to use only one character and just do a free for all, last man standing wins. Right off the bat a player character uses time stop with other spells that were delayed and empowered. So the first round of action involved a lot damage and more than a few dead characters. I was at the center of this chaos. Everyone was happy to see me leave as I had wreaked havoc with my other character... but wait : a knight can spend a Knight's Challenge to use the ability "loyal beyond death”. This allows me to stay up even if I’m -10 or lower on my HP, at a cost of one Knight's challenge per round. The reaction still rings out in my ears even now. "What? He can’t do that!" So I got rule monkeyed (Rule monkeyed is where someone complains that someone is doing something against the rules and they have the DM double check). This was fine with me. I knew I was in the right. The DM had well known what I was going to do so he said its OK. I think that first hit I took somewhere around 800 points of damage which left me at -634 hp. I was truly invincible, a god among men. I had 17 more Knight's challenges, which means that I had just become public enemy number one. This is where I found out that 8 of our fellow players were teamed up together to win the prizes. There was only a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place, so why more than 8 teamed up I’m not sure. Regardless to say the rest of us were taken somewhat by surprise. So, I saw the “team” now with their noses in the PHB2, looking for a way to kill me. They found it: a knight can still be disintegrated. So then someone on their team sacrificed themselves to disintegrate me. They all laughed and paraded around at their accomplishment at taking down their adversary. Well, they were happy until I showed them why I picked the Complete Arcane book as one of my choices. There is a +5 enchantment that can be added to armor that makes you immune to all transmutation spells. Then the terror of their loss struck them across the face like a ton of bricks. Those smiles that they wore before had now vanished and hatred had formed in its absence. I was simply in my glory, although now I wasn’t the main target on the board. I cared not, because the only thing that could harm me no one had taken, a vorpal weapon, or someone rolling 3 20’s in a row (a house rule causing instant death on an attack roll). I was pounded on for about 3 rounds until a mistake by the DM cost me everything. They had been frantic to find a way around my seemliest character. They had found a spell that could untie buckles, which they used on me and which there was no save against. You now have to understand that the DM was being rule monkeyed every 5 seconds, so he was exhausted after 6-8 hours of this. He ruled in their favor, my armor was stripped from me and I was petrified. The spell really states that it will only undo traps, so there was reason for me to be angry later. I had a lot of problems with this. Later the store owner made it up to me. Regardless of what happened or was discovered after the fact, I was out of the game. I was still considered such a threat that they attacked my statue (that couldn’t move!) before they would attack any other threat. They feared that someone would bring me back. After 4 rounds of more abuses my character crumbled to the ground. It took 3 people to break my statue, dealing several hundred points of damage to it. I think in the end I took over 1200 points of damage and only used 3-4 of my knights challenges. I had a lot of fight left in me, but I was unable to finish. I know that everyone there will remember the Knight. | 
