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

[DEFCON 1]

As someone who thinks class story is more important to creating a character than class mechanics... I wholeheartedly support any class design that includes its own narrative and reason for being. Which basically means I think multiclassing is lame. Multiclassing to me is usually just caring about combining a bunch of game mechanics together, with little to no concern of the character's narrative, background or story that would illustrate the reason for that combination of multiple classes.

The Paladin class has a story. A reason why it exists and what the character wants and needs and hopes to achieve by being a Paladin. So a player who takes that class has a design for their character along the path of that story. Whereas a Fighter/Cleric does not have that kind of narrative more often than not (unless the player chooses to create one.) I believe that usually a player makes that multiclassing choice not because they have a story for their character they want to play out (since if they merely cared about playing a warrior with a religious bent they could be just as happy playing a single-classed Fighter with the Acolyte background)... but because they want to use some Fighter mechanics alongside some Cleric mechanics.

In my opinion this is especially true with regards to the four Charisma classes-- people have been multiclassing Bards, Paladins, Sorcerers, and Warlocks with each other for the past 10 years usually not because they care about the story and background of someone who combines the very specific narrative details of those classes together... but because their mechanics all just synergize really well. Few people make a Bard/Warlock multiclass because they have this narrative idea for a character who was a bardic college graduate that found some dusty tome in some strange library and who read it and ended up making a deal with some extradimensional entity and seeing how that dichotomy played out in the character over the lifetime of the campaign (for example)... but rather because the player said "Hey! I can play a Bard who can fight using my Charisma stat for attack and damage if I multiclass Hexblade!" And that was the entire reason for multiclassing. They just wanted the mechanic to make their bard fight better.

And that's fine if that's what some players want-- I'm good with the game including multiclassing rules so that those players can have that at their fingertips. But I'm also incredibly glad the game doesn't have just that, but instead gives the rest of us additional classes as well that presents us with narrative design in the class's core. Some people might love the idea of just having the Core Four and then relying on multiclassing to create all the other archetypes... but I'm not one of those people and I'm happy to know the WotC designers do not appear to be that either.

 

[Minigiant]

The paladin is closer to a Warhammer Grail Knight or Chaos Champion.

A trained warrior boosted with magic with superpowers.

 

[SteveC]

I think that if you are in a game with a moderate amount of encounters, a paladin is going to be your chief damage spiking and nova character. They are also amazingly durable and helpful in keeping a party running. They're one of the classes that really deliver what you expect them to do: protect the party and bring the hurt to the bad guys.

I'm running in three games at the moment between different DMs with my play groups and there is a paladin in each of them that really serves as party MVP in a ton of cases. These groups also have a cleric in it, and that character is absolutely useful, but they're not a "front of house" character. As I think about it, the fact that the characters have strong Charisma and are active in the social parts of the game is a huge part of why they are so successful.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And that's fine if that's what some players want-- I'm good with the game including multiclassing rules so that those players can have that at their fingertips. But I'm also incredibly glad the game doesn't have just that, but instead gives the rest of us additional classes as well that presents us with narrative design in the class's core. Some people might love the idea of just having the Core Four and then relying on multiclassing to create all the other archetypes... but I'm not one of those people and I'm happy to know the WotC designers do not appear to be that either.

This is why I really like the subclass structure; you get most of the thematic benefits of a class from many of the subclasses at a much much lower overhead. As for "Just the core four" I'm in favour of deprecating the wizard and the cleric; the book caster is basically a sorcerer subclass, while the cleric is trying to cover too much ground and can be split largely between paladin for holy warrior and divine soul sorcerer for holy caster. Fundamentally when your class schtick is spell variety I find that the "specialist school wizard" or even "domain cleric" clashes with the class schtick, diluting both.

 

[CreamCloud0]

This is why I really like the subclass structure; you get most of the thematic benefits of a class from many of the subclasses at a much much lower overhead. As for "Just the core four" I'm in favour of deprecating the wizard and the cleric; the book caster is basically a sorcerer subclass, while the cleric is trying to cover too much ground and can be split largely between paladin for holy warrior and divine soul sorcerer for holy caster. Fundamentally when your class schtick is spell variety I find that the "specialist school wizard" or even "domain cleric" clashes with the class schtick, diluting both.

i think wizard's M.O. could be better utilised if it was reoriented as more of a researcher rather than 'the guy with all the spells', so that not all of it's features/subclasses primarily focus on 'look at how many/what kinds of spells i get' as their unique defining traits, move the wizard closer to the current bard and the bard to a halfcaster and emphasise bardic inspiration as the core of it's class and actual bardic roles for it's subclasses, do something similar to the cleric as the bard but remaining as a fullcaster, the baseclass provides a solid versatile resource skeleton for 'godly emmisary' archetype with subclasses defining how those resources can get used and extra features

 

[hgjertsen]

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.

Thanks for the insight, that does make a lot of sense. I'm sure it would have been more disappointing to have a weak smite or a confusing smite which combines dice from multiple different class and subclass features than it is to have slightly less mechanicaly impactful subclass abilities.

 

[The Sigil]

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.

I will admit I wasn't really gaming during 4E so I don't have a lot of experience with it. I did play quite a bit of 5E and found that not there was a lot of mixing of archetypes, especially involving the holy warrior (as you point out) and frankly, that was not something that really struck me as well-designed. Then again, my experience with someone else playing a paladin may have been a function of the player (reserved) and chance (he frequently rolled poorly when attempting damage spikes) so it could have been the result of my particular play experience.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No. Fighter/clerics are totally different from paladins.

Paladin's are charisma based knights in shiny armor with an oath to protect (or destroy) something. They are good at convincing people for their cause by persuading them.

Fighter/clerics are warrior priests. They fight and cast real spells. Usually they are not half/half, but either leaning towards fighter, but usually towards cleric.
Maybe aiming for fighter 5 to 7/cleric 13 to 15. Right now, a level 2 fighter dip is enough to cast 2 spells in a round, but that will change. But I guess casting a spell and still attacking seems great.

A fighter 2/war priest 1 right now can attack 3 times with a two handed sword. 2 Fighter levels gives them con saving throw proficiency long before the paladin gets theor charisma to support their concentration checks.

No, both characters have their strengths and a few stand out levels. But they play very different at the table.

 

[The Sigil]

This is why I really like the subclass structure; you get most of the thematic benefits of a class from many of the subclasses at a much much lower overhead. As for "Just the core four" I'm in favour of deprecating the wizard and the cleric; the book caster is basically a sorcerer subclass, while the cleric is trying to cover too much ground and can be split largely between paladin for holy warrior and divine soul sorcerer for holy caster. Fundamentally when your class schtick is spell variety I find that the "specialist school wizard" or even "domain cleric" clashes with the class schtick, diluting both.

Here I have to admit I'm the opposite. I thought the idea of a Charisma-based caster was interesting when it was brought into the core or 3E; however, I have soured on Charisma-based casters a bit since they're pushing Intelligence- and Wisdom-based casters out of the game (and frankly, the saving throw and combat system and to a lesser degree the skills system has been trending to making Wisdom and especially Intelligence into dump stats - not a great thing when your core audience is nerds IMO).

I think with the expansion of spell lists over the years, we've also seen a lot of blurring of lines among spellcasting traditions. I would really love to see:
1. Arcane Magic - This is always intelligence-based. Arcane magic does offensive AoE well and "transcend reality" effects like teleport, planar gates, etc.
2. Divine Magic - This is always wisdom-based. Divine magic does defense and buffs well, as well as "(re)shape the land for generations to come" type stuff (as Gods would be interested in creating lasting "natural" features to benefit their followers like bending rivers, controlling the weather, raising reefs to protect a coast for their chosen people to settle, etc.).
3. Occult Magic - This is always charisma-based. This has very little direct offensive capability, but is excellent at controlling minds and creating dramatically unnatural effects that manipulate reality (polymorph) rather than simply transcending it (teleport).

Primal Magic is in kind of a weird space for me, though I think it probably should fall under Wisdom-based as it seems like Primal Magic is more about being more in tune with the world and knowing how to subtly persuade it to do what you want based on that deep understanding than Charisma-based where you are simply projecting your will onto the world.

This of course would result in different classes having different spell lists rather than offering the choice of "which ability score do you want to use to access the same sets of spells (see: sorcerer, wizard)?"

 

[Lidgar]

These two memes explain a paladin's unique role at our table.