D&D 5E Are Paladins Merely Mediocre Multiclass Fighter/Clerics?

[Greg K]

I was not aware of that, do you happen to have an archive of where Mearls or Crawford said something to the effect of that on class design philosophy?

I don't know. However, since Mearls is back on the forums, perhaps he can come by and answer the question if someone casts Summon @mearls.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Honestly I think the Paladin is a better warrior than the fighter (and a much better magical warrior than the eldritch knight) while being a better representation of "holy adventurer" than the cleric.

So change "mediocre" to "overpowered" and you're a lot closer, IMO.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Here's a question: With the Paladin existing: Does anyone ever play a Fighter-Cleric? I'd think if you want to play someone like that, you'd just play a Paladin, wouldn't you?

So the answer to the question in the Thread Title is really, "No. It's a Really Good Multiclass Fighter Cleric".

You might even say that it's Multiclassing Done Right. YMMV.

If your goal with multiclassing is a hybrid of two existing classes - a brand-new class is always going to be the best bang for your buck; it's the only way to really balance the features while keeping progressions in line with what the game expects.

So yeah, a paladin as a full class was basically always going to do a better job at being a full blended fighter/cleric than any multiclassing rules could provide.

The only reason I could see to play a fighter/cleric is you don't want healing abilities and can't/would rather not use a bunch of homebrew on a paladin when a fighter/trickster cleric does what you want just fine.

(if you're multiclassing to represent a career change or as a dip for a specific feature, making a whole new class is overkill.)

 

[mearls]

I don't know. However, since Mearls is back on the forums, perhaps he can come by and answer the question if someone casts Summon @mearls.

So, if I have the question right it is this:
"Why do some classes have highly impactful subclasses, and others have ones that provide a lower impact?"

It mostly comes down to power budget. As you build a class, you have total power N at level X. That power comes from the total of the class features gained by level X.

Within a class as designed for the PHB, you then have to determine how much of N comes from features that every members of the class can access, and how much comes from a subclass.

Most classes get the bulk of their power from the core progression spine, but it does vary a bit. Core paladin abilities like smite and the auras are so powerful that they don't leave a lot of room for much else to be powerful if you want to design them to match player expectations.

In some ways, the paladin and ranger are perfect mirrors. Over the years, the paladin picked up lots of iconic features that felt core the kit. The ranger's stuff, like tracking, fighting with two weapons, or being an archer, moved into the core of the game and became accessible to all characters.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'd say that just because something is talked about doesn't make it not a flaw.

But on the other hand the key asset of a class based system is that different classes can work very differently and provide very different experiences and different levels of focus. I think it's an actual strength of 5e that different classes have different levels of weight between the class and the subclass.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I wanted to address the narratives of the classes because some of the conversation has touched on that. To me, the cleric is a holy warrior of a particular deity, whereas the paladin is the champion of an alignment. The character Holger Carlsen from Three Hearts and Three Lions is the prime example.

I’m going to disagree.

To me, the Paladin is the holy warrior who is directly chosen by their deity. In most stories that inspired the creation of the class, paladins are called by their God, sometimes relentlessly and personally by name. Their job is to be a warrior of the faith. They can be part of the faith’s hierarchy, but usually are not.

The cleric can be a warrior for the faith, but that’s not their primary role. Their duty is more tied into the day-to-day ministry to the flock and to evangelize others to join.

 

[The Sigil]

I'm probably going to get grief for this, but IMO the reason the paladin might feel like the poor cousin to the cleric is because the cleric has been buffed to heaven (pardon the phrase).

In earlier editions of the game, the paladin was a fighter subclass that got some access to clerical abilities before multiclassing was really a thing. It gave you a little bit of turning, smiting, and healing on your fighter in exchange for having to live up to a moral code. The cleric, by contrast, had turning, smiting, and healing, but was very restricted in weapons (impact - or, at the time, bludgeoning only) since the clerical code was "couldn't draw blood" with weapons. In earlier editions, swords were the weapon of choice as they could be extremely magical, have intelligence, special abilities, etc. - and the paladin of course could take full advantage of the +5 Holy Avenger whilst the cleric could not.

I believe it was 2nd edition AD&D that started introducing "specialty priests" that could run around with all the same weapons as fighters (especially swords). We've also seen a lot of abilities go to more and more classes (for example, things like "martial weapon proficiency" have become common). Clerical spells at low levels were also mostly defensive/buff (at high levels, they did get powerful offensive tools like Flame Strike and Holy Word), but as time has gone on, they have stolen more and more offensive spells from the arcane list.

The reason the paladin feels like a poor cousin of the cleric is that clerics have been steadily agglomerating everything that every other class does and have now agglomerated enough fighting toys that they're more or less on par with the paladin.

And this is probably going to be an unpopular sentiment (and probably come across as grognard) but I really think class design benefits a LOT from saying, "no, you absolutely can never do X" - while I know players have chafed at restrictions from the beginning (witness early articles about anti-paladins, and other off-LG paladins in Dragon magazine and the recent cheering of moving away from alignments altogether - this is a whole other subject), to me, the paladin was always defined by what it COULD NOT do (anything not lawful good) as much as by what it could do. But for game/class design in general, carving out a niche for a class to fill usually means by definition you have to give it "your class can do X" but also make sure you pair that with every other class being told "your class CANNOT do X."

You know, the whole, "when everyone is special, nobody is." When a character has access to everything, they no longer need an adventuring party. The whole idea of giving everyone something they CAN'T do is to allow someone else that CAN do that thing to have a turn in the spotlight. Players love multi-classing for this reason, and I think multi-classing in its current form is a big part of the problem here with being able to accumulate lots of diverse abilities.

So to get this back on topic, if the question is whether or not the paladin is obsolete because of the cleric, the problem is not that the paladin has gotten worse (though I would argue the move away from alignment - and thus away from requiring LG - has taken away some of what made the class special to me, because it required a player to offset mechanical advantages with roleplaying decisions) but rather that clerics have gotten too much better.

Apologies to whomever mentioned it upthread, but I think "a paladin is a servant of alignment/virtue" while "a cleric is a servant of a particular deity" is probably the right answer on how you differentiate them. And because a paladin's devotion to ideals is more pure than a cleric's (whose ideals have to be mixed with the dogma of a particular deity), the paladin class should be able to be more focused in what it does than the cleric class. Of course, multi-classing in the way 3e introduced it also did a lot to kill the specialness of the paladin because now you literally CAN be a fighter with a smattering of clerical abilities or a warpriest with a smattering of fighting skills.

 

[Ancalagon]

I will say, other questions aside, having read that article, those really aren't the 10 best paladin spells.

There a lot of D&D articles being published these days that are of very poor quality. Top 10 x, you read it and you realize that the writer barely understand the topic...

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I really don't agree, there, but I suppose YMMV.

Absolutely. And I misspoke. Not story-wise. What I mean is they fulfill most of what the archetypes niche would be. The difference between a multiclass Fighter/Cleric and a Paladin is acjetypically very little. The difference between two different Paladins (and certainly two different Fighter/Clerics could actually be greater. But yeah, YMMV.

Fireball isn't an identity either.

No, of course not.

No single mechanic is an identity, especially a character identity.

Exactly.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm probably going to get grief for this, but IMO the reason the paladin might feel like the poor cousin to the cleric is because the cleric has been buffed to heaven (pardon the phrase).

The grief you're going to get is for being 15 years out of date. What you write is 100% true for the Caster Supremacy 3.X editions but not for either 4e or 5e where the pendulum has swung the other way as the paladin has received a glow-up of its own.

Indeed I've suggested in semi-seriousness that the cleric ought to be the one retired for lacking an identity as the paladin does the holy warrior better, the divine soul sorcerer does the white mage/channel of the power of the gods better, and the celestial warlock does agent of the gods better, leaving just about nothing in the gap.