As a Game Master who’s been involved in games in the Golarion setting for at least four years, I have always found the concept of Hellknights fascinating. Oppressive knights of order who meet out justice according to the letter of the law. The rules for playing a Hellknight were published in Pathfinder Adventure Path #27 “What Lies in Dust” and present the Hellknights as a prestige class.
Prestige Classes, however, are clearly against the design philosophy of the Pathfinder Roleplaying System. Instead Pathfinder presents two ways to vary core classes within the rules to better customize them to your character concept: those two customizable options are customizable options inherent in the character class itself (orders for Cavaliers, bloodlines for Sorcerers, etc) and Archetypes. Between these two rule features, one should be able to customize one of the core classes to be whatever one wants to represent- in this case, the Hellknight.
Unfortunately, none of the orders really strike me as appropriate to Hellknights. So I came up with this “Order of the Hellknight” for my own game. I am presenting it here for feedback and general consumption. I took one liberty with this and actually changed one of the features of the base class- that of the Banner. This would technically make this an Archetype. But you can simply disregard this switch and use the Order of the Hellknight as you would any other order and it still works fine.
So here’s my Archetype replacement ability for Hellknights. Protection from Chaos: when a Hellknight makes a challenge against a Chaotic target, he is under the effects of Protection from Chaos until the challenge is resolved. The ability replaces the Hellknight’s Banner ability.
ORDER OF THE HELLKNIGHT
Challenge: Whenever an Order of the Hellknight Cavalier issues a challenge his weapon is treated as being lawfully aligned by the target of his challenge.
Skills: An Order of the Hellknight Cavalier adds Knowledge (Plains) and Knowledge (Religion) to his list of Class Skills. In addition, an Order of Hellknight Cavalier adds +2 to all skill rolls (i.e. Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Knowledge, etc) involving devils.
Order Abilities:
Detect Chaos (Sp): At 2nd level an Order of the Hellknight Cavalier gains Detect Chaos as an at-will spell-like ability. At 8th level, the Order of the Hellknight Cavalier gains Detect Lies as an at-will spell-like ability.
Lawbringer (Ex): At 8th level, weapons wielded by an Order of the Hellknight Cavalier gain the Axiomic weapon quality. In addition, an Order of the Hellknight Cavalier gains immunity to all mind-affecting effects.
Summon Devil (Sp): Once per day, an Order of the Hellknight Cavalier gains Greater Planar Ally as a spell-like ability. The Hellknight pays half the usual tribute for the summoned devil’s services.