Unhappy Pally - Righteous Rage + Vicious Weapon

[Pbartender]

n his defense:
- He hasn't seemed to be terribly combat effective at times (misses alot, does not do heavy damage overall), and he sees the rogues (we have 2) always flanking and doing crazy damage, and the warlock hits more often since he's against reflex not AC.
- He got a magic holy symbol at one point, but all the powers it is used with are wis/cha based and he takes mostly str based powers since he feels he would miss all the time with them

Are we exposing real flaws about the paladin? Am I beiong unreasonable? Is there a better way to handle/houserule this? How powerful a fighter should a Paladin be allowed to get? Is he fundamentally unbalanced (I mean as a class, not the player himself, LOL)?

That's the crux of the matter right there. It's not a flaw, it's a disconnect between how the paladin was designed to work and your player's expectations of how they should work.

The 4E classes can be very different from their 3E counterparts. My wife played a 4E paladin for the last several months, and she discovered the same thing... Paladins aren't really meant so much to be dealing that much damage. They're mainly designed to attract the attention of enemies, and take lots of hits. A player who realizes this will be much happier with a paladin, and will in turn move to tactics that greatly benefit the group as a whole.

His paladin, used the right way as a defender, will make those two rogues in the party ten times as effective as he pins down enemies so they can't escape the rogues' flanking and then uses his powers and marking abilities to defend the rogues from retaliation.

Otherwise... I'd recommend an Avenger (PHB II, if you're allowing it), the divine striker, which would seem to better suit the play style your player is looking for in a paladin.

 

[Nail]

So, apropos of nothing, is anyone else sold on Crusader's Weapons for Paladins? (And avengers, and battle clerics?)

As a default "house rule" I plan on giving PCs weapons-that-are-also-implements as a matter of course. It's just cooler, and there's no balance problems.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If you were up for a big re-tooling of the Paladin class to bring them into line with the PHB2 class design, you could do the following:

a) make ALL powers use Str for attack
b) those powers which are currently Cha for attack use Cha for secondary effects (rather than Wis or anything else)

This would make paladins be Str-attacking, Wis/Cha for secondary effects (looking at PHB1/2 it seems as though the designers have realised that this is a better design for classes, ensuring that all builds have similar 'choices' available to them)

Cheers

 

[bobthehappyzombie]

There is a thread on the character op board which can help
The Paladin's Handbook: Facestabbing in the name of thy God - Wizards Community

Paladins are easy to play but tricky to build in 4e, I know I'm playing one.

CHA build seems more rewarding, but if damage is his thing then the Strength based Pally is the best way (for a paladin)

Thing is if he's not happy then I would get him to play something else, whatever you do to spruce up his present character is likely to have a marginal effect, especially if his interest in the character is waning.
Try him on a Battlerager/warlord - lots of survivability and plenty of oomph, but still with a soupçon of leadery goodness.

 

[cmbarona]

So, apropos of nothing, is anyone else sold on Crusader's Weapons for Paladins? (And avengers, and battle clerics?)

I mean, it has to be a mace or hammer, but seriously. It's like a Bard's songblades - an all-in-one weapon+implement combo. What's more, the properties are pretty amazing... Free radiant damage whenever I'd like? Yes, please.

-O

This is a discussion which might warrant forking to a new thread, but I'll say that I wish there were more weapon-as-Holy Symbol enhancements out there. As a Fullblade-wielding Avenger, I'm not a big fan of the limitation of this enhancement. I've considered some workarounds for my own campaign, including a feat allowing the use of a selected weapon as a selected implement. Maybe (hopefully) we'll see more of these options in AV2.

 

[Nail]

If you were up for a big re-tooling of the Paladin class to bring them into line with the PHB2 class design, you could do the following:

a) make ALL powers use Str for attack
b) those powers which are currently Cha for attack use Cha for secondary effects (rather than Wis or anything else)

This would make paladins be Str-attacking, Wis/Cha for secondary effects (looking at PHB1/2 it seems as though the designers have realised that this is a better design for classes, ensuring that all builds have similar 'choices' available to them)

Excellent idea.

..but you'd still have to do something with Divine Challenge and Lay On Hands.

DC is a core ability of the Paladin, as it's the central thing making them a "Defender". So...do you move that to their new "base stat" of Strength? Doesn't fit. Instead, allow the player to chose either Charisma or Wisdom to use with DC.

Lay-on-Hands is not as key, so I suppose you could make it the base of one of the two builds: Protecting Paladin would get Lay On Hands, and then Avenging Paladin would get something else, to make him more Striker-like.

 

[Stalker0]

So...do you move that to their new "base stat" of Strength? Doesn't fit. Instead, allow the player to chose either Charisma or Wisdom to use with DC.

I don't know, sorcerors can use strength for damage on magic attacks, and bards can use charisma on bow attacks. It seems like anything is fair game nowadays

 

[keterys]

You could also do it another route - drop Wisdom, and make paladins Charisma-based for all attacks and use Str or Con for secondaries, say.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

So, apropos of nothing, is anyone else sold on Crusader's Weapons for Paladins? (And avengers, and battle clerics?)

I mean, it has to be a mace or hammer, but seriously. It's like a Bard's songblades - an all-in-one weapon+implement combo. What's more, the properties are pretty amazing... Free radiant damage whenever I'd like? Yes, please.

I basically make holy avengers at all levels. Low level holy avengers don't have lots of neat benefits - they're just weapons that can be used as implements, kinda like songblades.

If you were up for a big re-tooling of the Paladin class to bring them into line with the PHB2 class design, you could do the following:

a) make ALL powers use Str for attack
b) those powers which are currently Cha for attack use Cha for secondary effects (rather than Wis or anything else)

This is one way to do it. They way I did it was make paladins Cha primary with Str secondary for "striker" pallies, Con secondary for "leader" pallies, and Wis secondary for "controller" pallies. I could live with paladins being Str primary, but I feel Cha-primary gives them more flavor.

 

[Kishin]

Encourage him to take STR-based powers and let him retrain any of his CHA-based powers to WIS-based ones. Then give him a magic sword instead of a magic holy symbol. He may want to take a superior weapon proficiency like bastard sword or waraxe (he'll hit more with the sword but do more damage with the axe) if he has a feat available. Remember that you don't get your deity's channel divinity feat for free, so if he's unhappy with the Pelor feat he should retrain it for the weapon proficiency. A Str-based paladin is a little harder to play than a CHA-based one, and at some levels there are just no good choices (they're all CHA-based) but divine power should help, and that's out in a few months.

A little harder is something of an understatement. The Strength based Paladin powers are generally a) nonexistent at some levels or b) Just plain bad.

If I had put a 14 in CHA as a Paladin, not knowing, I'd be pissed and want to reroll a character too. I'm annoyed enough at having 19 STR and 17 Cha and no good STR powers that seem to do anything other than knock people prone with some extra [W] on the side.

If he's unhappy now, imagine how the next 3 months are gonna go.