Janaxstrus
First Post
The last part, I would agree with mostly. I do think a minor ability of a paladin could be to be BETTER at mounted combat, however that is a very very minor power addition.
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The Cleric, The Paladin, and Multisysteming
- Thread starter Scribble
- Start date
The last part, I would agree with mostly. I do think a minor ability of a paladin could be to be BETTER at mounted combat, however that is a very very minor power addition.
With all respect...please stop doing that.
The space between a fighter and a cleric is a fighter/cleric.
If you're going to devote a whole class to a fantasy archetype, don't do it out of bloody-minded inertia, have a powerful hook and some kind of unique mechanics.
If you really must conceptualize the paladin as somewhere between one and the other of two other classes, I do strongly feel that you should be thinking of him as a warrior with divine flair, not as a priest with a sword.
And do try to make the three classes distinct enough so that paladin/cleric, paladin/fighter, and fighter/cleric are all meaningful class combinations, I'm begging you.
hafrogman
Adventurer
The problem I usually have with the paladin is that it's very tied to earth culture and history, and doesn't always mesh well with D&D societies. The shining knight on his fiery steed is an iconic image, but what makes them so special? Why do only LG gods (and CE if you have blackguards) bother infusing mortals with this kind of power.
For paladins to really work as a class, I think they need to have a more general niche. What if we stole a page from the favored soul and decided that the paladin is the sorcerer to the cleric's wizard. Instead of studying and meditating in order to reach the gods, paladins are directly infused avatars of their gods. Thus, a paladin of Heironeous might indeed look a lot like the classical paladin, but the same mechanics should not be used for the general class features. It should be much more tied to options/spheres/domains whatever. The paladin class should be broad enough to encompass a lot of different ideas.
For paladins to really work as a class, I think they need to have a more general niche. What if we stole a page from the favored soul and decided that the paladin is the sorcerer to the cleric's wizard. Instead of studying and meditating in order to reach the gods, paladins are directly infused avatars of their gods. Thus, a paladin of Heironeous might indeed look a lot like the classical paladin, but the same mechanics should not be used for the general class features. It should be much more tied to options/spheres/domains whatever. The paladin class should be broad enough to encompass a lot of different ideas.
Gundark
Explorer
I will be in the minority and say that I would prefer the concept of 4 "roles" if you will (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard). Because almost every class that I can think of, except for a few are just variations of the theme.
The exceptions are maybe the Warlord, Warlock, and Sorcerer?
The exceptions are maybe the Warlord, Warlock, and Sorcerer?
Andor
First Post
Exactly! Just like the Rogue and Cleric only without the skills, sneak attack and mastery of magic!
Wait, what?
If the Fighter doesn't have some kind of unique shtick I'm not sure why it should exist as a class.
The Barbarian is just like a fighter with with less armour and more meat, but he gets rage.
The Ranger is just like a fighter only he likes camping more and he gets skills and maybe spells and maybe a fluffy dire bunny friend.
The Paladin is just like a fighter only god likes him better than you and he's extra shiny with a talking pony, an aura that keeps away evil, healing hands and holy smitiness. Or lazers, depending on edition.
Look the fighter needs something or there is literally no reason in the game for one to exist. A fighter with no unique ability is the guy with no friends who didn't merit the extra training or love to learn the spells of a ranger or Paladin or blade singer, or spell sword, the discipline of the monk, the rage of the barbarian, the skill of the rogue or cavalier, the cerbral fortitude of the psy warrior, etc. etc. etc.
You know what we call that guy? We call him an NPC. In 3e he was a warrior, if he was lucky.
Every starting class from earlier editions will be in 5e. That means Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, Warlords and Monks at the very least will represent alternate froms of ass-kickery available as PC classes. With the possible exception of the ranger who tends to be subject to a lot of inter-edition morphing every one of those classes has iconic abilities to bring to the table.
What does the fighter bring to the table that make him the equal of that crowd? Why would I choose to play one? How is he balanced against rage, or spells or the quivering palm?
KidSnide
Adventurer
This seems like a good idea to me. 4e made the mistake of making everything about the paladin unique to the paladin. That's too much material and doesn't do justice to the commonalities that clerics and paladins should have in divine power or to the commonalities that fighters and paladins should have in martial techniques.
That having been said, it would an equally big mistake to reduce paladins to no more than fighter clerics. Paladins (along with rangers, druids, and any other iconic classes) should also have their own unique abilities. Just because the class design recognizes commonalities by using shared pools of abilities, doesn't mean that the unique vision of the class disappears.
My one desire in this line of class design is that multi-class access to these abilities works better than in 3e. I would hope that adding a couple levels of cleric to a higher level paladin results in a coherent character with better spellcasting abilities than the average paladin. It would be disappointing if that character is an objectively weaker mess with multiple low level casting abilities.
-KS
That having been said, it would an equally big mistake to reduce paladins to no more than fighter clerics. Paladins (along with rangers, druids, and any other iconic classes) should also have their own unique abilities. Just because the class design recognizes commonalities by using shared pools of abilities, doesn't mean that the unique vision of the class disappears.
My one desire in this line of class design is that multi-class access to these abilities works better than in 3e. I would hope that adding a couple levels of cleric to a higher level paladin results in a coherent character with better spellcasting abilities than the average paladin. It would be disappointing if that character is an objectively weaker mess with multiple low level casting abilities.
-KS
Ahnehnois
First Post
That's a false comparison. A fighter is not without skills, and the issue of what a fighter should be able to do in a sneak attack situation is being well discussed elsewhere. Comparing magical classes directly to nomagical classes is likewise inappropriate. There is no logical reason for a fighter to have spells or any abilities that are equivalent in scope or power, and in fact, the suggestion of such is completely antithetical to the concept of magic. Clerics have been made too tough and to fighter-y, it's true, but that doesn't mean the fighter needs fixing, it means the cleric does.
The 3e fighter is quite balanced until high levels without needing to invent any extraneous mechanics. Plenty of people chose to play them, certainly more than monks, barbarians, rangers, and paladins, and probably more than any other one class. I'm not sure why a unique mechanical ability is necessary to define a class. The other nonmagical classes shouldn't have completely exclusive abilities either, perhaps with a few esoteric exceptions.
There's a lot of room for improvement in the combat rules (maneuvers, stances, reactions, health, damage, crits, etc.), which the fighter should be better at using than anyone else. The mistake, however, would be to tie specific combat abilities strongly to a specific class, which makes for bloated class descriptions and an overly complex game, as well as crippling limitations when other martial characters want to do something that isn't their "shtik". It also doesn't make much sense. What exactly is preventing a non-fighter from doing one of these putative special fighter abilities? With magic you can justify that because it's magic, but for anything else that's sketchy at best.
I actually think it's much simpler than what we're imagining.
If we look at 4E... all the Martial characters each had their own set of Martial Exploits... combat maneuvers they could do during a fight. This was just like how all the Divine characters had their own set of Divine Prayers... magical effects they could do during a fight.
What was one of the complaints of this system? That each class had its own completely unique set of powers, meaning you had anywhere from 2 to 10 different classes all having a power that exactly the same thing, only with different names. How many powers over all the classes were there that did damage and Pushed the enemy 1 square (for example)? So the question was always whether it was necessary for there to be all these different powers that all did essentially the same thing, instead of having just one maneuver that multiple classes could take.
Maybe that's all they're talking about? The fighter has access to a large selection of combat exploits and maneuvers, just like the cleric has access to a large selection of prayers and spells. And rather have the paladin have his own completely different set of combat maneuvers and divine prayers (many of which do exactly the same as the fighter's and cleric's powers do)... he just has access to the same few of the ones the fighters and clerics also have. So he can also take Cleave and Bless, rather than completely invented "paladin" powers like "Sanctioned Cleaver Strike" or "Paladin's Blessing".
But just like every other class... the paladin still probably also gets 3 or so unique "class features" that no other class has. Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, and Paladin's Mount for example. And this is how the paladin maintains its place as its own class, without needing to invent an entire suite of "paladin-only" abilities.
If we look at 4E... all the Martial characters each had their own set of Martial Exploits... combat maneuvers they could do during a fight. This was just like how all the Divine characters had their own set of Divine Prayers... magical effects they could do during a fight.
What was one of the complaints of this system? That each class had its own completely unique set of powers, meaning you had anywhere from 2 to 10 different classes all having a power that exactly the same thing, only with different names. How many powers over all the classes were there that did damage and Pushed the enemy 1 square (for example)? So the question was always whether it was necessary for there to be all these different powers that all did essentially the same thing, instead of having just one maneuver that multiple classes could take.
Maybe that's all they're talking about? The fighter has access to a large selection of combat exploits and maneuvers, just like the cleric has access to a large selection of prayers and spells. And rather have the paladin have his own completely different set of combat maneuvers and divine prayers (many of which do exactly the same as the fighter's and cleric's powers do)... he just has access to the same few of the ones the fighters and clerics also have. So he can also take Cleave and Bless, rather than completely invented "paladin" powers like "Sanctioned Cleaver Strike" or "Paladin's Blessing".
But just like every other class... the paladin still probably also gets 3 or so unique "class features" that no other class has. Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, and Paladin's Mount for example. And this is how the paladin maintains its place as its own class, without needing to invent an entire suite of "paladin-only" abilities.
Andor
First Post
Because if you don't have a unique feature there is no reason to have X as a seperate class, it should just be folded into some other class. If there were no unique non-magical class features then you don't need rogues, fighters, barbarians, warlords and rangers to be seperate classes. You could just list HD, skills, and combat abilities, pick one from the good list, one from the medium and one from the poor. Plus maybe a special feature like rage or inspiring aura. *click* done, every non-spell casting character can now be described in perhaps 2 pages of the phb.
Barbarian: Good HD, medium skills, poor combat options (finesse is not his strong suit) and rage.
Fighter: Good combat options, medium HD, poor skills.
Rogue: Good skills, medium combat options, poor hd.
Ranger: medium everything.
This is a perfectly valid approach to class construction, but we already know it's not what they are doing.
So. Each class needs to have a defining feature. In 3e the fighter DID have 2 defining class features. One was more feats than anyone else, the other was access to unique feats like weapon specialization (and later mastery.)
And that was enough because feats were new to 3e and presented a brilliant way to specialize and differentiate your two-weapon fighting guy from my archer or his lancer.
In 4e feats were universal, but the power system presented class uniqueness.
We know power style class building is optional for some classes in 5e, so my fighter may not have the cranky badger strike. We know almost nothing about how or if feats will be featured.
So how does the fighter justify his existence as a PC level class when compared to barbarians, rangers and warlords?
He needs something. It could be 3e style feats, but I don't think it will be.
My reading of the current plan is that there is a maneuver system that is somewhere between 4e's page 42, 3e's Bo9s, and a generic power list. Of the iconic 4 classes only fighters can use these maneuvers. The 'sub-class' classes like ranger and paladin also have access to these pools. The fighter is just better at it. And he had damned well better be, or why would you NOT take a Paladin instead?
Hoping Def Con 1 is right. I actually DO want to see common ability pools shared between classes rather than the nutso power proliferation of 4E. I just want to see the pally get something unique and substantial, and I don't want it to get forced into feeling like a mini-cleric.
This article (in isolation) doesn't give me the confidence that they are thinking deeply about what the non "big four" classes, and that's a shame.
This article (in isolation) doesn't give me the confidence that they are thinking deeply about what the non "big four" classes, and that's a shame.
