So in my game, I'm building up the Order of the Crux as an antagonist. My plan is to roll up the 3 leaders who rose as Graveknights using builds to represent the 3 builds for Deathknights in World of Warcraft. I know, so original!
My preplanning has the first one representing the Blood Specialization, having him an acid based to represent his burning blood and toying with a Magus. He'll be more martial based with extra magical toys, corrosive touch for spellstrike.
For the other two, I'm thinking possibly Bloodrager with an Ice based bloodline, I haven't looked extensively into it. The other, I was leaning towards Cleric of Urgathoa. I wanted it a bit more castery than Anti-Paladin.
So I'm really here to crowdsource ideas, what best presents each, and what is going to be fun to run.
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Grace knights are a pretty fun template, I like the magus idea. I'm not sure of this will matter to you but technically the Bloodrager cannot gain the normal benefits of rage, its a moral bonus that he cannot use. Seeing as you are the GM and this is a home game you can ignore that rule.
As for the third one an anti paladin could work (if you rule that they can be any evil but that delves further into house rules) the charisma synergy helps the hit points greatly his saves will be great and a conductive weapon mixed with touch of corruption can lay down some pain.
That's a really good point on the Morale Bonus... completely overlooked that. I kinda don't want to roll them all into Magus, I may turn the Blood DK into a Swashbuckler or Bard since I want him to be a bit more dapper, give him some personality...
I have house ruled the Anti-Paladin back into a Blackguard territory and do LE, so they are still within one step of Urgathoa's NE.
If you want a truly terrifying opponent take 2 levels of anitpaladin, and then the rest as an oracle. You get CHA to save proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor, smite evil once a day. As an undead you can use your touch of corruption to heal yourself.
For mysteries flame and wind are obvious choices for what you are looking at. Battle would work for acid since you wanted a more martial build. I used a similar build with an oracle of bones for a lord of the undead I am working on.
While the sample graveknight is lawful evil, the template works with any evil.
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If you are going for Bard, keep in mind some performances are also moral. The Dirge bard could be interesting and thematically correct.
For some more fun have the anti paladin be mounted and use a lance, if the environment is in his favor he can charge forward lance someone to bits and use ride by to end near the caster/archer/buffers.
hexcrafter magus and combat oracle make decent graveknights as well.
there's a bard archetype or something that affects undead iirc that might be cool as well.
edit: ah i'm blind, ninja'd by four hours on the bard thing by the above post.
Well, I'm not just looking for decent Graveknights, I'm really looking for ways to represent a tanky regenerating Blood Deathknight, an icy, AoE capable Frost Deathknight, and then an atrophy and disease focused Unholy Deathknight.
I'm thinking with Vampiric Touch, I can do magus for blood to represent his shield and use either fire or acid for burning blood on spellstrike.
For Frost, going magus again and picking cone of cold and ice theme spells will work for most of his abilities. Maybe even go ice based Sorcerer and fighter or anti paladin into EK to be more spell focused.
For unholy... Thinking straight anti paladin now, thinking cleric for a wider amount of abilities... Or even Inquisitor... Hmmm
My group is 11, so a CR 11-13 is when they'll meet the Blood for the first time. I don't particularly have set plans for the rest of them yet, but I do plan on them being solo fights. If I had to guess, the frost may two CR higher and the Unholy two more above that.
Just know that solo fights rarely turn out as climatic as most of us hope they would be. The opponent either gets rofl'd by the combined strength of four/five PCs... or systematically birfucates each and every one of them.
It's actually a group of 3, which makes solo fights much more of a challenge for them. Also, I fully expect them to underestimate the regenerative abilities of the Graveknights.