Wield dark powers to become a more resilient and melee-focused magi.
The Knights Stygian are a subclass of the Magus class from 3rd party creator, Sterling Vermin. They use any means necessary to eradicate evil, even taking on dark, necromantic magic to accomplish their goals.
The Knights Stygian use their necrotic powers to drain their enemies of their life force, reinforcing their own. This process can be used regularly and makes the Knights Stygian the most resilient Magus subclass around. They also specialise more heavily in weapon attacks and striking fear into their enemies.
The magus will be releasing on D&D Beyond on the 29th September 2026 and is already available as a PDF from Sterling Vermin’s website. It includes the full class, 6 subclasses and 31 spells. This article focuses on the Knights Stygian subclass for which I’ve evaluated every feature, given some advice on using them and reviewed the subclass.
At a glance
- Half caster with more spellcasting acumen than rangers and paladins
- Though this subclass is able to trade some amount of spellcasting for healing and weapon damage
- Great at causing enemies to be frightened for many small debuffs
5/5 – The Knights Stygian give unique ways to trade off the magus’ typical spellcasting capabilities for greater resilience and weapon damage. This makes them a more resilient and melee-focused subclass than most magi and they do this really well while still having the option of substantial spellcasting ability.
Knights Stygian features
Doombringer (Lv3) – 5/5
Seeing invisible creatures when bloodied is situational but sometimes useful. The more important part of this feature is you have a once per turn self heal and damage boost. This means an extra d8 healing and damage. It does cost a hit die, but not only does it make your hit die twice as effective, it also allows you to heal without using an action, in combat.
You could quickly run out of hit dice like this, but you can trade spell slots for hit dice. The bonus action required is not too hefty, but where possible, I’d look to replenish these outside of combat as you still have a bonus action under demand from your core magi features.
If we compare the effects of a level 1 spell slot to what you can do with 2 hit dice, that’s basically 2d8 damage and 2d8 healing with no additional action economy required to activate the boost. A level 1 spell slot will get you magic missile which averages 10.5 guaranteed damage. The 9 average damage and 9 average healing from 2 hit dice will considerably outperform this. I’m not sure I’d want to expend level 3+ spell slots this way, but the trade off for level 1-2 spell slots stacks up favourably.
The only drawback is you will need to hit with your single attack. You could go for a dual wielder using the nick mastery for an offhand attack to increase your odds of landing weapon attacks.
Knights Stygian magic (Lv3) – 3/5
| Magus Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3 | Bitter wind, hateful haunting, grave bolt, grave grasp |
| 5 | Carrionette, web |
| 9 | Animate dead, mortal terror |
| 13 | Black tentacles, Stygian blast |
| 17 | Contagion, insect plague |
The spells at level 3 are among the worst available in the magus pack unfortunately. Only bitter wind is worth using, and even then, it likely won’t be your go to cantrip. Fortunately, things get much better after this with the very interesting carrionette spell and the excellent web. You can see more of my opinions on these spells in my Magus spell guide.
I can’t find reference to mortal terror or Stygian blast in the Magus pack so have no idea what these spells do or how good they are. I have to assume that somehow they were missed or the wrong spells were included, but this is a frustrating omission.
Obsidian Mark (Lv3) – 4/5
Of these options, I imagine aegis will be the higher damage version. The only drawback is it will cost a reaction to activate and is perhaps slightly less reliable. The reliability though, might depend on how much you’ve built for swordsmanship over spellcasting.
Face of fear (Lv7) – 4/5
Necromancy spells aren’t always the greatest, but this list of fear inducing spells includes your Knights Stygian spells. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but this also means that you can use the cantrips in this list and cause the frightened condition at the same time.
You have enough decent spells that fit this criteria that you should be able to cause the frightened condition a fair bit.
Immunity to frightened is solid as it’s a common condition and changing necrotic damage can be useful against undead, but is situational.
Open the iron gates (Lv14) – 5/5
This emanation really pushes you towards more of a melee build. This was sort of already the case with all the self healing the Knights Stygian can do making them more of a tank at the expense of some spellcasting.
You’ll want to get plenty of creatures caught up in this emanation and can also manage the crowd a little with the frightened condition, which you can also apply with your spells. This is just a once per long rest thing though, so save it for a tough encounter.
Darkest knight (Lv20) – 5/5
Circle of death is a strong fireball alternative with more damage and a much larger radius. Create undead however, feels a little weak at this level with the calibre of creatures it creates. Just be aware that using your spell surge this way will mean you don’t regenerate a spell slot as you normally would.
Another use of open the iron gates is really good as this is a strong feature and one you’ll likely want to use more than once per long rest.
How good is the Knights Stygian?
The Knights Stygian weave necromancy and Abyssal themes without forcing evil alignment on players which I like for character options like this (unlike MCDM’s illrigger class). I also like that this gives the more spell-leaning magus, a more melee and weapon approach by trading spell slots for weapon damage and healing and using that healing to make you more durable. The level 14 emanation also pushes the subclass towards a melee build.
I think it does all of this quite well making for a higher damage, higher resilience subclass that likes to cause the frightened condition, but has the trade off of being worse with spells.
One issue with the currently as written options is that 2 of the spells referenced don’t exist in this pack. I’m not sure why this is, but one of the spells is named the same as a later sub-feature (mortal terror) so assume this is a typo. If I was the DM, I’d probably just give them 2 alternative and thematic spells instead that the player can choose. Otherwise, this subclass just about justifies my top score for power levels.
5/5
Optimising a Knights Stygian magus build
While the Knights Stygian subclass makes for a much more melee-focused magus, it doesn’t fundamentally change how you’d approach building one. You might consider favouring strength/dexterity over intelligence a little as you’ll be more attack-oriented than spell-oriented. You might also want to consider some higher resilience options like the tough feat, but that’s about it. If you want some advice on building a Knights Stygian magi, you can use the same advice I give for the core magus class by checking out my magus guide below.
