ECL of paladin without paladinhood

[Ranger5]

In my campaign, the paladin was subject to a magical attack that had the side effect of shifting his AL one step to CE. Since he was LG, it changed to LN. But now he has lost his paladinhood.

I know the atonement spell can switch his AL back to LG which has already been done by his church. As part of the campaign though, he and another PC are going on a side quest to restore his paladinhood. (Essentially he and the other player could not make it last game night, so I ran a side quest for the players that were there and will run this quest for the the other 2 in a couple of days).

The problem I am having is coming up with a suitable side quest that will challenge the 2 players but not kill them. The players are both 6th level - one is a human warmage and the other is the now LG though still ex-paladin who still does not have his paladin abilities back.

One option I thought of doing was actually giving him some of his abilities back but not all until the quest (destroy an item of evil power from the last BBEG they faced - the one who caused the AL shift in the first place).

Thoughts would be appreciated? Thanks.

 

[satori01]

An ex Paladin is little better than the warrior NPC class. Character level -1 is the cr adjustment. In this case I would say assume the average character level for the dynamic duo would be 5. Rule of thumbing it, since you will have a group consisting of only 2 members, I would half the average party level again and say 3.

Thus an EL 3 encounter should be balanced for a group of 2, resulting in them expending 25% of their resources.

 

[Ferrix]

I think Satori hit it pretty much on the head, although I'd probably start by testing the waters with some slightly lower EL (1 or 2's) to a) give the two man party a feel for their current strengths and weaknesses and b) make them feel good about being handicapped as a small group with one member who is out on all of his powers basically.

Another good idea would be to spontaneously have some of the paladin's abilities kick in when needed at your discretion. Say when he's performing a heal check on some fallen commoner after fighting off orc bandits, his Lay on Hands kicks in and heals the person a couple points. This will encourage the player to perform good acts since his actions now dictate whether or not his powers work, not his own choice. Or when he's defending that commoner from the orc bandits, he needs to end the fight quickly all of a sudden his attack is empowered by positive energy (smite evil). He doesn't get to activate them, they just happen to go off when he is performing some vitally important good action.

Ideas for encounters:

Human Zombies (2, 4 or 8), EL 1, 2 or 3 respectively
Ogre or Ogre Zombie, EL 3
Orcs (2, 4 or 8), EL 1, 2 or 3 respectively
Ghoul's (1, 2 or 4), EL 1, 2 or 3 respectively

 

[Ranger5]

Hey thanks all for the help. I was thinking along the same lines for the party's ECL but just wanted to get some outside opinions. Also, I was also considering the sponteaous return of the paladin's powers as they continued on their quest.