Paladins Should Not Cast Spells

[Savage Wombat]

I'm used to Paladins casting spells, but it wouldn't be a game breaker for me to lose them.

In late 3.5 and PF, they wound up making a bunch of Paladin-specialty spells in order to make the Paladin's spell casting useful to them in combat, instead of an either-or with fighting. Giving them the cleric's list and then adding specialty spells is a little much.

Now, some of those spells are cool. My wife's paladin uses a "throw herself on the grenade for an ally" spell a lot, and it's saved lives multiple times. These have a wonderful paladin feel, and could easily be feats or class abilities instead of spells.

 

[Anguirus]

I totally support auras as well. I think 4E got a little aura-happy eventually, but I can't deny that they fit paladins to a tee. That's exactly the kind of constant, elemental supernatural effect that I think they should be packing.

I.e.
Level 1 aura: Allies get +1 damage
Level 20 aura: Evil enemies take X ongoing damage and -Y speed. Undead of level 10 and below melt.

 

[Minigiant]

A thought about the various monsters that challenge D&D characters made me wonder about the monstrous nature of adventurers as they gain experience.

PCs are rather monstrous.
High level monsters might give a blueprint of how certain characters would evolve. I could even say classes could be designed around the monsters the characters may face.

For example, a barbarian of an advanced level might have similar statistics of an ogre. They both would be very strong and tough. An barbarian would evolve into an intelligent miniature giant.

A high enough level ranger could be modeled after an intelligent animal or magical beast. Or even an martial fey.

And the paladin is a wingless, hallowed angel. Slashing up demons and vampires with a divine smite.

 

[CM]

Not to put too fine a point on it... but nobody in 4E cast spells except the Arcane classes. Spells were only the province of the Arcane power source. The paladin and other characters of the Divine source made prayers.

Can't XP you yet...

I think the best solution for the 5e paladin would be some sort of ability to invoke divine magical effects such as smites, auras, and combat blessings. Perhaps some of these abilities could be used on a short recharge basis, such as every 5 minutes, while others would be usable on a daily basis.

We could call them "petitions," "supplications," or perhaps "divine pleas"

 

[paladinm]

While I don't like how Pathfinder went down the power-creep road, I do wonder if some of the abilities they added to a paladin (like mercies, etc.) might be applied to a non-spell-casting paladin. Give him/her all the smites, dispels, laying-on-hands, protections, etc. that you want.. even let him/her turn undead (maybe at 1/3 level - shades of BECM!) but Don't let him/her cast spells.

By Jove, it could work!

 

[FireLance]

While I generally agree with the idea that a paladin should be distinct from a cleric, I'm not sure where to draw the line between a spell and an ability that can be used once per day (or once per encounter).

Frequency of use in itself does not seem to be a problem, since encounter and daily weapon attacks seem to be fine. Whether the ability is a weapon strike or an implement attack may be the issue. However, in 4e, clerics (in particular, Strength clerics and warpriests) also get "spells" that enhance their weapon attacks.

So, what is the key issue? Is it whether the ability uses a weapon or a holy symbol? Then the solution is to give all weapon abilities to the paladin and all implement abilities to the cleric. Is it distinctiveness? Then the solution is to give the paladin and the cleric access to different abilities (whether they are weapon or implement abilities, or called spells or not).

 

[Stormonu]

I'd prefer paladins to be able to cast spells - ones meaningful to their class at that. Too many times back in older editions the paladin's spells were simply forgettable - they came too late and were too weak to be bothered with.

I wouldn't be totally against giving paladins only special abilities, but the truth is there will be a lot of folks that will argue against a fixed list of abilities - saying their either inappropriate or wanting some other theme, and picking spells simply fixes a lot of that.

 

[Anguirus]

While I generally agree with the idea that a paladin should be distinct from a cleric, I'm not sure where to draw the line between a spell and an ability that can be used once per day (or once per encounter).

"Spells" pre-4E were gameplay abilities that were sometimes and sometimes not unique to classes. This united spellcasters with a certain mechanic. We had "full" spellcasters, "half" spellcasters, and "dabblers," as one way to put it.

When you cast a spell, you do some combination of waving your hands, rubbing your holy symbol, and barking out nonsense.

Sometimes class balance was attempted by allowing spells to be of different levels for different classes.

Oddly, this made wizards and paladins more similar, in many ways, than wizards and warlocks.

Since the legacy D&D elements of 5E appear to be fundamentally conservative (as in 3E and before) I assume that "spells, " in this sense, are in the game. Of course, the quoted article just indicated that clerics and paladins will both cast spells in some inherently similar way.

I propose to limit the mechanical similarities between paladin and cleric. There's no compelling reason other than inertia that a fighter/cleric and a paladin should play similarly at all, aside from making a lot of attacks and praying to god a lot out of
combat.

Spellcasting is a thematically formulaic style of magic, and there's no reason any longer to restrict PC magic to spellcasting. It doesn't fit the holy knight.

 

[satori01]

Given that we do not even know what "casting spells" truly means at this point, it might be a bit to soon to have an opinion either way. If spells are more like Daily Powers in terms of design, then in effect "Spells" for Paladins, means a customizable list of once a day powers... What is wrong with that?

 

[satori01]

Memorizing miracles is just so... weird.

You can skin divine spells however you like, yet I world argue that in a world where magic is not an infrequent occurrence (which is the default assumption) , most spells do not count as miracles. Technically a miracle is direct involvement by the Divine into the mundane world, causing what is not possible, to be possible.

Spells are very 'Possible', even in the Default D&D setting.