Reasons to have paladins and rangers as classes

[Kinak]

I fully expect 5e to have paladins and rangers and druids and a bunch of other classes it doesn't technically need. They're here to build bridges and sell books, not pare the game down to its theoretical minimum components.

But you're assuming the big four are just flavorless vessels to pour backgrounds and themes into. A cleric of war, if anything, is more specific than a paladin. And they've probably chosen a god, unlike many interpretations of paladins, directly tying them to the setting. Their background and theme are just gravy.

The fighter is pretty boring, but that's on fighters. Give them a "fighting style" equivalent of schemes or domains and they'd move right up there with the rest. There's absolutely nothing preventing WotC from including Arthur, Roland, d'Artagnan, Conan, Aragorn, and Drizzt modules for the fighter (or rogue).

None of that's going to stop rangers and paladins from being in 5e, but fighters don't have to be flavorless anymore than paladins do.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[howandwhy99]

"I want to play a fighter, but he's more specific. I want to play a Samurai. A Roman Legionnaire. Drizzt."

Subclasses are really more about defining the setting for me. D&D has some subclasses built in. We don't have to use them. Just like we don't have to include every class in a campaign world (How many fictional settings don't have magic?). We use something others created or custom build our own.

"I call it the Jester class. It basically walks around and mocks people for XP."

 

[Minigiant]

Hit exactly what I've been said every time the question is ask or the point is brought up.

I want to be a ranger without draining all my character resources.

 

[Fifth Element]

Because it's more fun to choose from a menu of ~12 flavourful, evocative archetypes than to drill down through a hierarchy of building blocks. A class description in the PH tells a story about the setting, and gets players interested in filling that role. I like Champions, but I don't want D&D to get too generic.

Because we want to attract new players, and I believe that the traditional presentation of classes is more attractive than a fully modular creation system.

These I absolutely agree with, my earlier point was that what "should" and "should not" be a class is entirely subjective.

 

[Zaphling]

I think a ranger is clearly enough defined for in a more than four-classes system: A fighter/rogue with considerable attack capability and stealth and scouting skills.

However paladins much less so, as I see them. I don't like paladins, I plain out admit that, and I do not "get them". That said, what paladins appear to be to me are "clerics with worse spells and slightly better attack bonus", also limited to lawful good alignment.
But why not play a cleric? Okay, 3.5e speaking here, but a cleric is superior to a paladin in everything except BAB and hit point. And those are far more than compensated with spells.

I can not make a character who can do all the things a ranger can do with a fighter/rogue. No wild empathy, no favored enemy, no spells.
As a cleric, I can do everything a paladin can do, plus so much more! I don't have a problem with there being a paladin class that simply won't get used in my campaigns, but if it gets into the books, it needs a unique role and unique abilities. And not just fluff. You can put the fluff of paladins in fighter/clerics just fine.

Since you admitted that you are a 3.5 player, please don't judge the Paladin quickly because 4e remade it from the ground up. 4e made him into a 'Paladin', not a Fighter/Cleric.

 

[Invisible Stalker]

Tradition, money and they are both vastly more cool that your average fighter.

Hopefully, if I pick the right options, I can have a Ranger with spells once again.

I think the fighter/ cleric does infringe too much on the Paladin, but my solution is to get rid of multiclassing.

 

[Abstruse]

Tradition, money and they are both vastly more cool that your average fighter.

Hopefully, if I pick the right options, I can have a Ranger with spells once again.

I think the fighter/ cleric does infringe too much on the Paladin, but my solution is to get rid of multiclassing.

As a fan of the fighter/thief style assassin, take out multiclassing and you'll have me to answer to.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Why paladins and rangers? Because they lend class to what otherwise is a dirty brawl.

 

[Invisible Stalker]

As a fan of the fighter/thief style assassin, take out multiclassing and you'll have me to answer to.

I've never been able to get away with banning multiclassing, but I keep hope alive.

Assassins have been banned from my table for thirty years.

 

[Zaphling]

The difference between the "core" classes and the "niche" classes is how broad the definition is. A fighter can cover a large ground. The fighter class can cover the heavily-armored sword-and-shield guy, the combat archer, the finesse duelist like Inago Montoya, a bare-chested Conan-style warrior. A rogue can be an Indiana Jones/Lara Croft style treasure hunter, a socially adept conman, the strikes-from-the-shadows assassin, the brutish thug/bandit, or even a Sherlock Holmes style detective. Wizards span a research bookworm dragged from his ivory tower against his will with no combat experience at all, a blaster firebug that gleefully throws around fireballs, a detective that uses magic to solve puzzles and mysteries, and a tactician chessmaster who casts spells to change the battlefield and solve puzzles. Clerics even have vastly different feels depending on their diety and domain now compared to previous editions, as shown by the difference between the Moradin Warpriest and the Pelor laser/healic cleric in the playtest, not even counting the various priests, clerics, and cultists from fiction of all genres.

However, how much range does a paladin really have? It's a heavily armored divine fighter. There's a little room to play around, but if move away from that too much you stop being the idea of a paladin. Same with classes like assassin, avenger, barbarian, etc. I honestly can't see how an assassin class can be better than themes on a Rogue or Fighter. Put a roguish theme on a Fighter and you have a warrior that can use stealth and deception to his advantage. Put a fightery theme on a Rogue and you have a combatant that takes advantage of dirty tactics and ambushes to kill stealthily and quickly. Put a divine theme on a rogue or a rogue theme on a cleric and you have an avenger. Put a theme on a wizard to allow access to some divine spells with some performance-based buffing ability and you've got a bard.

I think they really should approach what should and shouldn't be a class by the range of character types that would fall under that class but still be defined by that class. I personally don't think that paladin and ranger have enough variation to work for that, but that's my opinion. I love the Avenger class from 4e and would love to see a sort of divine assassin class in Next, but I can also see how that would really work better as a theme. If you really think that a class would be better served by being a class with various themes, try to image what a thief paladin or a defender ranger would look like and see if it's still a "paladin" or "ranger".

EDIT: This is my argument for why I believe they should go with a class + theme build for several of the classes of previous editions. I'm not saying I'm right and I'm not trying to say you're wrong if you think paladin/ranger/assassin should be a separate class. I'm just trying to state this is where I feel the line between a class and a class + theme should be drawn, and that's what the real question is here.

You mentioned that PALADINS do not have any variations at all?

Please read Pathfinder's Advanced Player's Guide, Ultimate Combat, and Ultimate Magic splat books.

You will find Paladin's having the default archetype,
then the following new archetypes:

APG: Divine Defender, Hospitaler, Sacred Servant,
Shining Knight, Undead Scourge, and Warrior of the
Holy Light. This section also includes rules for an
alternate version of the paladin class, the antipaladin.

Ultimate Combat: DIVINE HUNTER (this is an archer paladin), EMPYREAL KNIGHT (a celestial servant), HOLY GUN (a gun paladin), HOLY TACTICIAN ( a leader based paladin), KNIGHT OF THE SEPULCHER (anti-paladin variant), SACRED SHIELD ( a shield specialist),

Ultimate Magic: Oathbound Paladin (comes with around 10 oaths)


This is why i really really like what Paizo did here. But it doesn't mean i'm a Pathfinder player, because I just started this one just to try it out. I am a hardcore 4e player.

p.s. you should really read the books