Gammadoodler
Hero
So you are not the user to whom I was responding who asserted that paladins are primarily knights who follow a code. It seems perhaps that you and this person may disagree. I'd urge you to sort it out with them.The paladin's central class fantasy involves being a holy knight, and all variations thereof, following their own codes of chivalry, or holy commandments, etc. Fey knight, dark knight, chosen hero, royal knight... all variations of the same concept. Smites, auras, spells all related to that fantasy. The oath itself is related to that class fantasy.
Well, there's the access to Divine magic, which implies a connection to deities, who generally have moral codes. Smites and auras are usually related to deities as well.
Depends on what you mean by good. Like, knights are a fun archetype to play. Which doesn't have as much to do with mechanics. If, by good, you mean "mechanically good" then you're basically saying:
Paladins are mechanically good because their mechancis are good. Like... that doesn't tell anyone anything.
That's a very good way to piss off a player base. People generally want the monk to live up to its class fantasy. As I've said elsewhere, the most important thing when it comes to mechanics is VIBES. If its not vibing, its not a good mechanic.
Remember. When it comes to most players, they'll pick a story-based concept to play first, and then pick a class and other mechanics to represent that story-based concept. They will want those mechanics to be relatively balanced - too strong or too weak isn't fun for most people.
In the meantime I'd note that it seems that different people may disagree on the critical aspects of the fiction underlying a class. And that's ok. It doesn't change how the class functions.
And let's look at what you did. You started with the mechanics and then justified them in the fiction. Try going the other direction. Even if we go with 'holy warrior' instead of 'knight with a code'. What part of holy warrior implies spellcasting, implies smites, implies auras? No part. They're abilities we've grown to expect because they are the mechanics provided them in past versions of D&D.
Edit: and note, I could justify all those same paladin mechanics for the monk. Smite = mystical power punch, spells = mystical connection to divine power, Auras = mystical control of their bodies/environment, connections to their friends or whatever. It's really really easy to provide fictional justification for mechanics in D&D.
At the end of the day the paladin is a good class to play (by which I mean fun), because it's mechanics are fun to use, relevant to play, and don't get in the way.
If the monk class mechanics were designed with the same philosophy it'd be a better class.
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