Knight Hospitaller

Knight Hospitaller — D&D 3.5e

Requirements

• Base Attack Bonus: +4
• Skills: Heal 8 ranks; Ride 3 ranks; Diplomacy 4 ranks or Sense Motive 4 ranks
• Proficiencies: Medium armour and shields
• Healing: Ability to cast at least one 1st-level divine spell that restores hit points, or possession of lay on hands or a comparable touch-based healing class feature
• Service: Meaningful service in a healing house, refuge, field hospital or comparable institution, plus personally saving a life under serious danger

There is no alignment, race, language, marriage or church-membership requirement.

Class Skills

Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (history) (Int), Knowledge (local) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (nobility and royalty) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), Survival (Wis) and Swim (Str).

Skill Points at Each Level: 4 + Intelligence modifier.

Weapon and Armour Proficiency

A Knight Hospitaller gains proficiency with heavy armour if they do not already possess it. The class grants no new weapon proficiency and imposes no ban on edged weapons. A healing house may maintain local traditions regarding preferred arms, but those customs are not class mechanics.

Class Progression

Oath of Refuge

A Hospitaller is expected to protect patients placed under their care, avoid exploiting the desperate, respect a declared refuge while it functions as a place of treatment, and give urgent care according to need rather than wealth or faction.

The oath does not require suicidal behaviour, obedience to a corrupt superior, unlimited free supplies or healing an active attacker while combat is still underway. Breaking the oath may cost institutional privileges or membership, but learned class abilities are not erased.

Healing Calling

At 1st level choose one Calling. The choice is permanent.

Divine Calling

At 2nd level and every Hospitaller level thereafter, gain new spells per day and increased caster level as if you had also gained a level in one divine spellcasting class you belonged to before entering this prestige class. You gain no other class features from that class.

Hand of Mercy

You gain no spellcasting progression from Hospitaller levels. Instead, Hospitaller levels stack with one class that granted lay on hands, or a directly comparable hit-point-restoring touch feature approved by the GM, for determining that feature’s normal amount healed, uses and scaling. No unrelated class features advance.

Healing Mastery (Ex)

At 1st level, the Knight Hospitaller may take 10 on Heal checks even when stress, distraction or immediate danger would normally prevent doing so.

Sure Hands (Ex)

At 2nd level, whenever the Hospitaller restores hit points with a spell, lay on hands or the feature selected for Hand of Mercy, any healing die that shows a natural 1 may be rerolled once. The second result must be accepted.

Battlefield Medicine (Ex)

At 3rd level, the Hospitaller may provide first aid with Heal as a move action rather than a standard action. When providing long-term care, the Hospitaller may care for up to eight patients rather than six. Patients under that care recover hit points and ability damage at three times the normal natural recovery rate rather than the usual twice-normal rate provided by long-term care.

Guard the Wounded (Ex)

At 4th level, whenever the Hospitaller restores hit points to an adjacent ally with a spell, lay on hands or the feature selected for Hand of Mercy, that ally gains a +2 dodge bonus to AC until the start of the Hospitaller’s next turn. A creature can benefit from only one Guard the Wounded bonus at a time.

Mercy Without Delay (Su)

At 5th level, once per day, when an adjacent living ally is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by hit-point damage, the Hospitaller may use an immediate action to use lay on hands or cast a hit-point-restoring spell with a normal casting time of 1 standard action or less on that ally.

The normal spell slot, prepared spell or class-feature use is expended. This use does not provoke attacks of opportunity and does not provide free healing.

Master of the House (Ex)

At 5th level, after 10 uninterrupted minutes with a healer’s kit or equivalent supplies, the Hospitaller may make one Heal check and apply the result to up to six willing patients who remained at the treatment station for the full period.

On a result of 20 or higher, each patient regains hit points equal to the Hospitaller’s class level + Wisdom modifier, minimum 5. On a result of 30 or higher, each instead regains twice that amount. A creature can benefit from Master of the House only once per day. This is extraordinary nonmagical recovery.

Knight Hospitaller — Pathfinder 1e

Requirements

• Base Attack Bonus: +4
• Skills: Heal 5 ranks; Ride 3 ranks; Diplomacy 3 ranks or Sense Motive 3 ranks
• Proficiencies: Medium armour and shields
• Healing: Ability to cast at least one 1st-level divine spell that restores hit points, or possession of lay on hands or a comparable touch-based healing class feature
• Service: Meaningful service in a healing house, refuge or field hospital, plus personally saving a life under serious danger

Class Skills

Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (history) (Int), Knowledge (local) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (nobility) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Perception (Wis), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), Survival (Wis) and Swim (Str).

Skill Ranks at Each Level: 4 + Intelligence modifier.

Class Progression

Favored Class: Prestige-class levels do not receive favored-class bonuses.

Pathfinder Class Features

The Pathfinder version uses the same Oath of Refuge, Healing Calling, Sure Hands, Guard the Wounded and Mercy Without Delay rules as the 3.5e version above, with these edition-specific adjustments:

• Healing Mastery: You may take 10 on Heal checks while threatened or distracted.
• Battlefield Medicine: First aid is a move action. Treat deadly wounds takes 10 minutes instead of 1 hour; normal healer’s-kit costs and the once-per-day-per-patient limit still apply.
• Hand of Mercy: Hospitaller levels stack with the qualifying lay-on-hands-style class for that feature’s normal healing dice, uses and scaling only.
• Master of the House: This is separate from treat deadly wounds and cannot be combined with it during the same 10-minute treatment period.

The Healing Houses

There is no single universal Hospitaller church or crusading order. A healing house is any recognised institution that combines treatment, refuge and the ability to defend patients when local authority fails.

Some are civic hospitals inside walled towns. Some belong to temples of healing gods. Some stand on dangerous roads and maintain stables, kitchens and guarded dormitories. Others are royal foundations, guild hospitals, plague refuges or frontier stations.

They may disagree about gods, law, politics and medicine while still recognising another trained Hospitaller as someone who understands the obligations of refuge.

What Hospitallers Do

• Escort wounded travellers through unsafe country.
• Defend healers during outbreaks and sieges.
• Establish temporary treatment stations after battles.
• Recover casualties from monster attacks.
• Protect plague stores and medical supplies.
• Negotiate passage for wounded prisoners.
• Investigate unnatural diseases.
• Keep order around crowded refuges.

Adventure Hooks

The Closed Gate

A town refuses to admit a wagon of fever patients. The local healing house insists the sick can be quarantined safely while frightened citizens threaten violence.

The Missing Surgeon

A healer disappears while travelling between two houses. The abandoned cart contains blood, broken restraints and no bodies.

Sanctuary Broken

Armed men enter a treatment hall to finish off a wounded enemy commander. The Hospitallers refuse to surrender a patient under care.

The Counterfeit Salve

A cheap remedy is spreading through market towns and killing the badly wounded. Someone is using the seal of a reputable healing house.

The Last Wagon

A retreating army has one cart left for wounded soldiers while monsters close on the road. The characters must decide who can be moved, who can fight and what route remains open.

The House That Will Not Answer

A fortified roadside refuge has stopped signalling travellers after dusk. Its doors are barred from inside.

Related Classes

Knight Hospitaller suits a competent warrior-healer who wants battlefield rescue, dependable healing and responsibility for protected patients.

Cleric is the stronger choice when broad divine spellcasting, domains and service to a deity or divine principle are central.

Paladin centres supernatural oath, smites, aura and personal sacred mission.

Knight centres professional knighthood, mounted warfare and martial status rather than healing.

Explore More

• Prestige Classes
• Knight
• Cleric
• Paladin
• Plague, Labour and Broken Authority
• Strasbourg

Sources and Rules Provenance

The former version of this page credited its material to the Terra Viejo website. This rebuilt Knight Hospitaller is original campaign material and does not reproduce that inherited prose or its distinctive class mechanics.

The broad idea of the hospitaller as a protector of travellers, patients and the wounded has historical roots, but this campaign class is not the medieval Christian Hospitaller order. It has no Holy Church, crusade, Latin, Rhodes, black-cross heraldry, celibacy, male-only rule or human-only rule.

D&D 3.5e and Pathfinder 1e terminology is used for rules compatibility.