The idealized protector is a leader of the people, a defender who focuses primarily on enhancing his cohorts, sharing with them the idealized state of his weapon as he triggers his anima flare, briefly enhancing their weapons. Their dedication enables them to take a severe beating and keep going and focused on protecting those around them their mantra is “Empowerment is Protection” by which they mean that by empowering those they protect, they can protect themselves better. Many of the idealized protectors focus on the Knight aspect of the halo knight, believing themselves to be the proud and honorable knights of legend and myth, seeing in themselves the salvation of those who are too weak to defend themselves.
The idealized protector can be as much a leader as the halo knight, but instead of focusing on his avatars he shares his weapon enhancements, turning his allies and those protected into fearsome warriors by themselves, especially when coupled with the powers of the anima flare also enhancing his allies. Idealized protectors are tough as nails, hard to dislodge once they have activated their defensive stance, and quite like the halo knight, they are assets to the entire group.
Adaptation:
The idealized protector can be less of a protector and more of a group-support character, which can be achieved by removing the prerequisite for the Leadership feat and the leader of the people class feature, but then this makes the class somewhat bland and uninteresting, simply focusing on another area.
Entry Requirements:
To qualify to become an idealized protector, a character must fulfill the following criteria.
Base Attack: +5
Skills: Concentration 8 ranks, Diplomacy 8 ranks
Feats: Leadership
Special: Anima Flare class ability, Idealized Weapon class ability
Class Skills:
The anima bearer’s class skills are Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, and Intimidate. Skill Points at Each Level: (2 + INT)
Class Features:
All of the following are class features of the idealized protector class.
Psionics: The idealized protector levels stack with halo knight levels for the purpose of power points.
Idealized Weapon: The idealized protector levels stack with halo knight levels for the purpose of the idealized weapon class feature.
Weapon Flare (Su): When performing an anima flare, the idealized protector can also “flare” some of the properties of his idealized weapon, sharing it with any allies within range of his anima flare. Although powerful, this ability doesn’t always transfer all of the power contained within the idealized weapon. The number listed in the table above is the maximum total bonus (enhancement and special abilities) which are transferred via the Weapon Flare. The idealized protector chooses exactly what bonuses are transferred.
Defensive Stance (Ex): At 2nd level, the idealized protector has learned how to defend his allies above all else and when he takes a defensive stance he becomes even more adept at defending himself and his allies. Whenever an ally is adjacent to the idealized protector he can spend 3 power points to initiate a defensive stance and give himself and all allies adjacent to him an circumstance bonus to AC and all saves for one round. At 2nd level this bonus is +1 and it increases by 1 for every 2 levels. For every additional power point spent this bonus lasts for another round as long as there is at least one ally adjacent to the idealized protector.
Leader of the People (Ex): For the purpose of followers, you count your levels of idealized protector twice when determining your leadership rating.
Avatar Advancement: At every level indicated on the table, the character increases his avatar levels and gains access to new tiers of avatars as if he had also gained a level in whatever class with the avatar class feature he belonged to before he added the prestige class. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (bonus feats, idealized weapon or anima flare). This essentially means that he adds the level of idealized protector to the level of whatever class with the avatar class feature the character has, then determines avatar level, avatars known and effective class levels for the purpose of the avatars accordingly. If a character had more than one class with the avatar class feature before he became an idealized protector, he must decide to which class he adds the new level of idealized protector for the purpose of determining avatar levels, avatars known, and effective class level. If the character did not belong to a class with the avatar class feature before taking this prestige class, he does not gain any benefit from this.
Anima Flare: At 3rd level, the idealized protector increases the range of his anima flare class ability by 10 feet. At 8th level, it increases by another 10 feet.
Extended Defensive Stance (Ex): Starting at 9th level, by spending 6 power points instead of 3 when activating his defensive stance, the idealized protector doesn’t need to be adjacent to an ally. All allies within 15 feet of the idealized protector gain the benefits of the extended defensive stance.
