Tree? Assuming you mean trainee tree, it'd probably come from mage trainee as a magically focused class, unless another set of trainees is being introduced (which is worth discussing, really, since mage trainee may need to be split up into anima and dark cats, alongside an additional potential split for priest trainee.)
Promotes and such would need to be determined, but there's a lot of space in what we could do with them. Ssme for class skill; Runic Armor could be used, though it'd be best to come up with something slightly more reliable imo.
(Off the top of my head, it could promote to the current version, and the additional promote could be General (inheriting their extant tome prof and gaining axes), an armored healer class (call it Hospitalier or something,) or whatever else we cam come up with.)
I really don't want this hypothetical class promoting to general. That's the Knight's thing and it ought to stay that way, and futzing with their weapon availability further is weird. If we were to do that, would Knights be able to take magic on promo? Even if the answer is yes, I'm not on board.
And since we'll be implementing either my suggested first classes or other ones to diversify the mage classes, we probably should separate mage trainee into anima mage trainee, light mage trainee, and dark mage trainee or something similar. That is a good point.
Runic Armor in the current form would need to be a promoted class skill, as building up to +6 Damage is strong as hell at first class. If you made the current version of Baron into a promotion for mini-baron, that could be an option, but I'm not really sold.
Hospitalier is an alright idea that I miiiiiight steal for Lightworker's second promotion if we don't otherwise use it. Though I'm not sure what class skill it would have.
My mistake, I thought you meant the three mount types as a collective. It’s still not a lot.
Well, the Baron is a magic class, which is pretty different from being a Knight almost by default.
Giving them a different weapon isn't enough to differentiate them. Sword Knights, Lance Knights, and Axe Knights are all still knights. Magic Knights wouldn't be significantly different.