A lot of people on the boards have been talking about the desire for a new paladin, one that follows the “A” school of class design.
I’ve had some ideas in my head for alternate ideas to the core and so I thought I would sit down and hammer some of those ideas down.
One thing I miss about the
3e paladin was the subtle shift between high strength and high charisma paladins. The higher your strength, the better your offense. The higher your charisma, the better your healing and defenses. And of course you could have every paladin build in between with a mix of strength and charisma. I think
4e’s builds have taken that away somewhat. The problem with the Paladin is not that’s its mad…it’s that it’s not mad enough! I wish every
4e class had more stats it gained abilities from, and as such widens the door as to the range of builds that are useful.
So with this class, my goal was to make Charisma the primary stat, but to make class abilities that ensured that both wisdom and strength would be of use. And most importantly, that a person getting a mix of wisdom and strength would feel alright in doing so.
So below is my alternate Paladin, the Crusader. I changed all the names to protect the GLS or whatever the
OGL has become. I have also referenced the class and power stats, but haven’t directly quoted anything from the book.
Crusader
Primary Ability Scores:
Charisma: Allows access to the Crusader’s
raw divine power, granting him powerful attacks.
Wisdom: Allows a Crusader to channel his divine energies into healing and defensive powers to guard his allies.
Strength: A Crusader’s own natural strength can be used to augment the power of some divine attacks.
Armor/Weapon/Implement Proficiencies: Same as Paladin
HP/Defenses/Surges: Same as Paladin
Channel Divinity – The Crusader is not limited to one channel divinity use per encounter.
Interdiction (used to be Divine Mettle)
Same as Divine Mettle, but uses wisdom instead of charisma.
Divine Infusion (used to be Divine Challenge)
You channel the raw divine energies granted to you to enhance your own power or to increase the fortitude of your comrades.
At-will (once per turn) – Minor Action, Close Burst 10
Target: Special, see below.
Effect (ally): The target gains temporary hit points equal to 3 + your wisdom modifier (6+wis at paragon, 9+wisdom at epic). The temporary hitpoints last until they are used, the end of the encounter, or until
Divine Infusion is placed on another target.
Effect (you): The target recharges the
Crusader’s Smite power. The target remains under the effects of
Divine Infusion until the end of the encounter, or until
Divine Infusion is placed on another target.
Divine Infusion must be reapplied for additional recharges of
Crusader’s Smite.
Crusader’s Smite (used to be Divine Strength)
Same as Divine Strength, except:
Action: Free Action
Special: Can only be applied to melee attacks.
Effect: Damage done becomes radiant damage in addition to the bonus damage.
Healing Hands (used to be Lay on Hands)
Same as Lay on Hands
Crusader’s Weapon – A Crusader can use any weapon he wields as a holy symbol for purposes of implement powers he might use. He can apply the weapon’s enhancement modifier to attack and damage with implement attacks, but cannot use the weapon’s proficiency bonus. Further, if a Crusader is using an implement power from another class, he can use his weapon as if it were the proper implement, and can use his charisma modifier for attack rolls and damage rather than the ability score normally used.
Powers: All powers use Charisma for attack and damage. If the power originally used Charisma, and had a secondary affect that is based on wisdom; that is unchanged. If the power originally used Strength, its primary now uses Charisma and its secondary effect uses Strength.
If a power required that the target be marked, change the condition to say: “If the Crusader is under the effect of Divine Infusion.”
Example:
Righteous Fury (was Holy Strike).
Attack: Charisma vs AC
Hit: 1[w]+charisma modifier radiant damage. If you are under the effect of Divine Infusion, you gain a bonus to the damage roll equal to your Strength modifier.
IFAQ (Infrequently asked Questions)
Q: Why is the Crusader’s primary Charisma and not Strength?
A: Two reasons. First one was that the fighter and warlord already provide a good basis for a fighting strength based class, and the cleric I would change to be primarily wisdom. That leaves the paladin and bards as the charismatic meleers, which is a good mix to me. Second, I found it was far less work to make implement and weapon powers worked together if everything was charisma and not strength.
Q: With the way Crusader’s Smite works, is this class a Defender or a Striker?
A: A bit of both. How a Crusader builds his stats and play style helps determine if he is more striker or more defender/leader. Note though that even with a high strength he does not get a lot of the advantages that other strikers do. He doesn’t get extra attack bonuses, he has to apply his extra damage before he hits while strikers can apply it afterwards, he has to use a minor action every round to keep his damage going, and there’s no bonus on a crit.
Q: Doesn’t Divine Infusion steal the Swordmage’s Aegis of shielding mechanic?
A: Yes and no. I still think the Aegis of Shielding is the best defending mechanic so far. Monsters have low damage and lots of hp….so negating some of that low damage is a better defense than applying a little damage to the load of hp. That said; there are big differences. The Crusader gives less temp HP than the swordmage damage negation, but the Crusader’s temp hp can also apply to more kinds of damage and from multiple sources. The Crusader doesn’t apply a -2 to attack rolls (a big difference!), but doesn’t have to use immediate reactions to activate his ability. The Crusader’s power works if he and the target are attacked. And of course, the Crusader can apply a version of his power to himself, which creates a lot of tactical thinking about how and when to use the power.
Q: Why doesn’t the Crusader use a mark like all the other defenders?
A: Because I hate marks. There I said it, wow I feel better I love some of the game design in
4e, I hate marks with a passion. They are a pain to track on the board (especially because they are reapplied every round often to different monsters), and they provide too little benefit innately, it’s always about the secondary thing the defender does that makes the mark worthwhile (doing damage, negating damage, negating movement, etc). If I happen to make alternates to the fighter, swordmage, and warden…you can be guaranteed they won’t have marks either.
Q: What’s the purpose of the Crusader’s Weapon power?
A: The reason I called the class the Crusader (besides every other alternate Paladin out there called a Crusader, thank you very much B09S) is the Crusader’s Weapon magic item that counts as a weapon and an implement. I don’t think its right that some classes need one magic item for offense and others need two. It gets even worse with multiclassing. While
WOTC fixed some of the multiclassing issues, this one is still left as a sore thumb. A cleric/wizard for example may need 3 magic items, weapon, holy symbol, and orb. The class ability was designed to fix that, something I would incorporate into nearly all classes should I ever get around to making alternatives. However, it’s an easy ability to drop if you don’t want to mess with multi classing too much.
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