A New Paladin

[SHARK]

Greetings!

I have drawn up some notes and stuff on making a new paladin. I think to begin with, the paladin actually seems pretty lame after 5th or 6th level. The paladin is *supposedly* a skilled warrior, mounted champion, chivalrous knight--as well as being a smooth operator. I've already fixed some of the skill-point problems by simply upgrading the total skill points across the board. However, I think the feat and ability progression sucks. It's pretty...*underwhelming*. It's like the paladin has enough feats to do one thing half-way decently, and that's it. Paladins are like one-trick ponies. (For example, seeking to be a mounted champion badass, sucks up all the available feats, with little left over to do much else). I'm considering giving the paladin an entire overall of special abilities, and a feat every level, so that paladins don't feel so...*mediocre*. It seems to me that the paladin has many fairly weak abilities, and far too many "dead" levels, where nothing is gained at all. So, what do you all think of my project? What are your thoughts and suggestions?

I'm already in the process of reinvigorating the wizard, sorcerer, fighter, barbarian, cleric, and rogue, as well as the bard and ranger. I think they all have weaknesses, and could use some help. I suppose some of my motivation comes from not liking most prestige classes; I design most of my own; but I also like the whole flavour thing and compelling motivation to stay as one class throughout, and only picking up a prestige class for some very good campaign/Roleplaying reasons, but also some good crunch and abilities as well. It often seems like in the cascade of prestige classes, all of the base classes seem pretty underpowered and "vanilla". In many ways, I think it was a big mistake when WOTC dropped the ball on the base classes.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Simm]

To quote a friend of mine:
"I'm trying to convince the paladin in my part to rebuild his character as a crusader.
They're like a paladin that doesn't suck."

You might also want to look at knight from PHBII, no divine power but they get some nice sticky traits and a d12 hit dice, mounted combat for free at second level, and I think 4+ int skills.

 

[Baumi]

There are some great powerups in the later WOTC books!

The feat "Battle Blessing" from the Complete Champion is a must for every paladin, it reduces the spellcasting one step so instead of a standard action you only need a swift action to cast most spells! So a Paladin can fight and call for blessings at the same time.

There were also other options like summoning combat angels and other class-feature substituteds, but I don't remember in which books they were.

PS.: In Dungeonscape there is the option to summon angels instead of mounted combat and in the PHB II they could get a charging smite also instead of the mount.

 

[joethelawyer]

are you doing it for 4e or 3.x?

 

[Oni]

A feat every level?

Who'd play a fighter anymore? (Assuming you haven't similarly upgraded them.)

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I spread out the early bonuses a little to make dipping less profitable, made remove disease into a much more varied and useful ability "remove affliction," and made some of the benefits to allies greater if they were good aligned, to make for a "soft encouragement" of a paladin player to other PCs to be good (to accompany a much softer and less restrictive code of conduct that even allows knowingly associating with evil creatures if you think it has the potential to lead them away from their path). I suppose it's still kind of bland and weak in the end, I'm not sure what else to give. I made up a variant class feature for the mount before such things were in great quantity. Now that there's several kick ass alternatives to the mount in splat books, I suppose I could just roll the variant benefits into the class itself.

[sblock]• 1st level: Aura of good, detect evil, smite evil 1/day (and follows the same progression), and Turn Undead (uses equal to Charisma bonus + Paladin level / 4)
• 2nd level: Divine Grace, lay on hands
• 3rd level: Fearless (Ex), divine health (Su)
• 4th level: Paladin becomes a spellcaster, with a caster level equal to his Paladin level*.
• 5th level: Celestial Influence (see below)
• 6th level: Remove Affliction (Su) 1/week (and follows same progression as Remove Disease). Remove Affliction can be used to cure diseases, poisons, curses, paralysis, blindness, deafness, mind-affecting abilities (fear, compulsions, etc…), or to create the effect of a Lesser Restoration spell. If used to reverse a spell or spell-like ability, this ability only cures effects of spells 4th level or lower. If used on a non-good creature, the Paladin must make a level check ( d20 + Paladin level) against a DC equal to 10 + HD of the target. This automatically fails when used on an evil creature. Remove Affliction is a standard action.
• 7th level: Heroic Aura – The Paladin and all good allies within 10 feet gain a +4 morale bonus to all saves against mind-affecting abilities. The bonus is +2 for non-evil allies.
• 11th level: Improved Remove Affliction – Remove Affliction can cure effects of spells up to 7th level and can create the effect of a Restoration spell.
• 16th level: Greater Remove Affliction – Remove Affliction can cure effects of any non-epic spell, and can create the effect of a Greater Restoration spell. Use of this ability remains a standard action, and requires no XP component in any of its uses.
• Humans and half-elves may multiclass freely with Paladin levels

Code of Conduct: The exact details of what an individual Paladin’s code entails needs to be discussed between the player and DM and should be influenced by deity and background. The only general rule is that the Paladin is stripped of his class abilities only by ceasing to be either lawful or good in alignment, similarly to how many other classes with alignment restrictions cease to advance in their class for losing their alignment. Also in general, the Paladin is usually expected to act as an example of goodness for others to follow rather than to actively convert people or shun association with evil people. In fact, many great paladins seek out “weak-willed” (evil) people to demonstrate the immaterial rewards of living a virtuous life. To bring a willing subject into the light, casting away his dark past, is considered a greater achievement than slaying a hundred evil beings.

Celestial Influence: At 5th level, the paladin realizes a connection to the Celestial planes. The default is to grant a special mount, but the Paladin may forgo this and instead be imbued with Celestial power. He then gains the following:

5th level - Shield Caster (Ex): The Paladin may channel divine energy through his shield and treat his spells as if they have no somatic components, but only while wielding a shield.
11th level – Repulse Damnation (Sp): Once per day, as a free action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, the Paladin may invoke a protective aura that grants him SR of 12 + Paladin level. This only protects him against any spell or spell-like ability cast by an evil creature or that has the evil or negative energy descriptors, such as Harm. The aura persists for a number of minutes equal to the Paladin’s Charisma bonus, and may be extended for an extra minute for each use of Turn Undead the Paladin wishes to expend. The choice to expend a use of Turn Undead need not be made until the round the aura is to end and each expenditure is chosen individually each time the (new) duration is set to expire.
17th level – Heaven’s Wrath (Ex): Each time the Paladin successfully uses a Smite Evil attempt, there is a 1% chance per Paladin level, maximum 20%^, that the use of Smite Evil is retained. Smite Evil still can only be used once per round.
*I also allow this for Rangers, Hexblades, etc...
^I capped it at level 20, but is kinda lame to cap so fast. I suppose it'd be balanced to never stop improving. Not like 50% recovery rate on Smite Evil will be a major concern at level 50...[/sblock]

I'm already in the process of reinvigorating the wizard, sorcerer, ...cleric... I think they all have weaknesses, and could use some help.

REALLY?

 

[Aus_Snow]

REALLY?

Which is, of course, to say that conventional wisdom dictates that the Wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer (to some extent) [and also Druid] are already the most powerful classes in core 3e, with a large margin to spare.

are you doing it for 4e or 3.x?

It'd be 3e. 4e doesn't even have Sorcerers, as far as I'm aware, for starters.*


SHARK - It's true, there are some later developments that are worth looking into. Personally, I also quite liked a few of the Dragon magazine articles dealing with the class. For instance, Dragon #349 contains about half a dozen Paladin class feature variants, just as part of one of its standard regular sections, and some of those are really nice, IMO. Hm, I think #310 had wholesale Paladin variants for alignments other than LG. And yeah, a number of other things here and there. As well, you might want to check out the free Beta of the Pathfinder system, for its Paladin if nothing else. And EN World has a whole bunch of variations scattered around the house rules forum. Somewhere. . .

* Or Bards.

 

[Remathilis]

SHARK

Check out Pathfinder. The PDF beta is Free, and it powers up all the core rules (races & classes). If you don't find things to you're liking, its at least an inspiration for new ideas.

check it out at http://www.paizo.com/pathfinder

 

[Runestar]

Check out Pathfinder. The PDF beta is Free, and it powers up all the core rules (races & classes).

In all the wrong ways. I would advise that you avoid it for now.

 

[SHARK]

Which is, of course, to say that conventional wisdom dictates that the Wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer (to some extent) [and also Druid] are already the most powerful classes in core 3e, with a large margin to spare.

It'd be 3e. 4e doesn't even have Sorcerers, as far as I'm aware, for starters.*


SHARK - It's true, there are some later developments that are worth looking into. Personally, I also quite liked a few of the Dragon magazine articles dealing with the class. For instance, Dragon #349 contains about half a dozen Paladin class feature variants, just as part of one of its standard regular sections, and some of those are really nice, IMO. Hm, I think #310 had wholesale Paladin variants for alignments other than LG. And yeah, a number of other things here and there. As well, you might want to check out the free Beta of the Pathfinder system, for its Paladin if nothing else. And EN World has a whole bunch of variations scattered around the house rules forum. Somewhere. . .

* Or Bards.

Greetings!

*LOL* Yeah, well, true, my friend--wizard, sorcerer, cleric, don't need anything really in power. I should say properly, that:

(1) The paladin, barbarian, fighter, ranger and bard need both power, and flavour boosts. Not necessarily because I am some kind of "power gamer"--nor are most of my players, (well...what *Old Schooler* isn't a little, heh?)--but largely because after 20 levels, say, or even from the level 1 perspective, when looking forward...there's lots of ideas and visions of what a *X* character is supposed to look like and do, or should be able to--that seems to be lacking, and rather disappointing. If that makes any sense? I guess I am somewhat annoyed, or disappointed that it often seems to take a character being level 25 or 30 with three-five wierder and wierder prestige classes tacked on before the character seems to finally embody what the base class character should be expected to be and do halfway sooner.

(2) The wizard, cleric, sorcerer, and druid I think really only need some better background/non-uber spell/combat feats to make them less like fantastic walking autocannons and more like the figures of history and mythology. Oh, and perhaps some class abilities, powers, etc, that are roleplaying/theme/culture/mood oriented that actually add some dimensions of flavour to the class, as opposed to merely just more powers that stack up more ways to fry the hapless targets with some crazy spell that does fire/acid/frost/mystery uber damage.

(3) The Rogue. Aside from increasing all classes' skill points as I have done--which is a big improvement roleplaying wise/believability wise, I think the Rogue works pretty good as is. The Rogue actually has appropriate powers to fight with and evade, use stealth, and all the interesting abilities that a Rogue can choose to develop, and actually *excel* in, actually makes a person's vision of a rogue workable with the base Rogue. With NPC Rogues, I can't say I've ever had any complaints or frustrations really. Furthermore, only a few prestige classes have been really tempting, because oftentimes for the *vision* the base Rogue seems to do a very good and flexible job.

(4) Monk. Hmmm. Well, honestly, I haven't thought a whole lot about the Monk. I suppose *Martial Arts Only/no weapon/few weapon* kinda characters haven't been terribly popular to play or be seen much (even as NPC's) in the campaigns, so I'd have to think about them more.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK