A not too drastic Paladin variant (your feedback please!)

[Three_Haligonians]

Greetings,

A lot of people (myself included), believe that the Paladin class, as written in the 3.5 PHB, is a little top heavy. There is no real incentive to advance into its higher levels since additional smite evil attempts can be found other, more productive, ways and the Remove Disease ability isn't worth it alone.
So I came up with this idea: at 7th lvl, a Paladin gains an 'Exalted' status. With this status, the paladin becomes eligible to take exalted feats (like those found in the Book of Exalted Deeds). The paladin also gains a bonus feat at 7th lvl and every three levels afterward (so at 10,13,16, and 19). These feats must be bonus fighter feats, exalted feats, or divine feats.
I was also thinking, with this system, you could turn the Blackguard PrC into a 20 level core class by using this same progression only reversing the alignment axis so instead of an Exalted status and exalted feats, the Blackguard would gain the Vile equivalent.


I'd love to hear any thoughts on this if you have the time,

Thanks
J from Three Haligonians

 

[Liquidsabre]

Looks pretty good. I run a similar paladin revision, hadn't considered the use of exalted feats at all (try to stay away from anything that came out of the book of Exalted Deeds). The 7th level exalted status is a cool idea, I may have to take a look at those exalted feats.

Myslef, I ended up making the class more vs. Outsiders rather than the a Cleric's vs. Undead, to further delineate the separation between Cleric and Paladin classes:

AL: LE or LG

Censure Outsider (4th): As with turn/rebuke undead but drives back several outsiders and/or possibly banish a single outsider (more powerful effect of outsider is of an opposed alignment).

Bonus Feats (at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th): Any one Mounted Feat, Divine feat, or the Special Mount feat (a special paladin Feat as per the normal class feature mechanic), along with Extra Smite, Extra Censure, etc feats. Several of the Turn Undead use Divine Feats have been modified to use a Censure use/day instead, making these feats open to the revised Paladin as well.

Oh and took out 2 Remove Disease/week uses and 1 smite/day uses.

 

[VoiceOfReason?]

Becoming exalted seems only logical, imo.

I ran a pally variant that worked rather well, made remove disease usable at will by lvl 10, but every use beyond the normal pally's x/week cost 1 hp that could only be cured through rest. Lay on Hands also stopped increasing at lvl 10, but at lvl 11, 15, and 19 the pally could attempt a wisdom check DC 15 (1/day at lvl 11, 2 at 15, and 3 at 19) to refill his LoH capacity for 1 hour. The wisdom checks took 10 minutes.

only had 1 player take the class in the year+ I made it available, but it seemed to work just fine.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

A good point!

Thanks for the input,



Liquidsabre, you brought to my attention something so completley obvious that slipped my mind (isn't that always how it goes?). Not everybody uses the BoED, either because they don't have access or they don't like it or whatever.

In that sense, fixing the bonus feats is easy; just take the exalted feats out of the list. However, what benefit could an "Exalted" status provide a character that didn't use the BoED?
Perhaps a sacred bonus that starts low and builds over the higher levels? Perhaps it would be a bonus to Cha? Cha based skills? Another stat? AC even?


Thoughts?

J from Three Haligonians

 

[Eolin]

Perhaps adding paladin level to saves, mininium of cha bonus?

Or is that horribly overpowered?

 

[Kerrick]

I like the idea, but our group doesn't have either book (and none of us plan on buying them, either). We made the Blackguard a LE base class, and it's quite popular (not that we play evil characters all the time, but we don't balk at it).