Shadowdark Alternate Shadowdark Paladin: Looking for Ideas

Bill Zebub · 2026-04-02T18:51:18+0100

The ideas are straying from most conceptions of "Paladin" but I still really like it.

Andvari · 2026-04-02T21:36:22+0100

zottel said:
An ability that came to mind (I have no idea about balancing, I am all vibes):

The paladin spends a luck token, thrusts their weapon into the ground before them, and kneels in prayer.
While praying, the paladin shakes of an amount of DMG dice/spell levels equal to his level.

Maybe have a talent on level up allowing to expand it to another PC.

I think that's a Leper ability in Darkest Dungeon.

Whizbang Dustyboots · 2026-04-02T22:06:46+0100

Andvari said:
I think that's a Leper ability in Darkest Dungeon.

Honestly, Red Hook should strongly consider either a Shadowdark or Mork Borg port.

The miniatures game was way too much of everything, which led to a lot of problems, but the videogames would work really well as the basis of a TTRPG dungeon crawler, especially if it's just a campaign for an existing game and not trying to reinvent the wheel. And the already created concept art for DD1 and 2 would be insanely great in a TTRPG book.

Dannyalcatraz · 2026-04-03T08:43:00+0100

What if, like certain classes from earlier editions, the reworked paladins had a variety of auras to choose from? Not necessarily an arsenal of them, but possibly a menu to choose from when the character is created.

Or perhaps they can learn to manipulate their auras to do different things. Imagine, for instance, being able to change this warding power into a weapon on occasion. Think…like Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) who went from purely defensive force fields to being able to use her powers offensively. (Given the nature of D&D, that probably would be a limited ability.)

Fenris-77 · 2026-04-03T09:07:24+0100

Dannyalcatraz said:
What if, like certain classes from earlier editions, the reworked paladins had a variety of auras to choose from? Not necessarily an arsenal of them, but possibly a menu to choose from when the character is created.

Or perhaps they can learn to manipulate their auras to do different things. Imagine, for instance, being able to change this warding power into a weapon on occasion. Think…like Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) who went from purely defensive force fields to being able to use her powers offensively. (Given the nature of D&D, that probably would be a limited ability.)

That's a cool idea. Indexing aura use to a HP spend would be a built-in limiter. The HP spend doesn't have to be huge to matter in SD and levelling up automatically increases options there.