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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daedrova" data-source="post: 896550" data-attributes="member: 11835">Lalato, I don't really see a problem with a chaotic character taking an oath.  Following one guidline doesn't really imply they seek to uphold the tenants of order.  However, the oath you described looks like it would belong to something like a "Holy Liberator."  Paladin has always (seemingly) implied an enforcement of order along with his quest against evil.As far as Paladins not being effective, I can see why one could make that observation... However, saying "3E Paladins can be not extremely effective against evil, when they are compared to other classes," would be more accurate than "3E Paladins can NOT be extremely effective against evil, when they are compared to other classes."  Of course, his effectiveness will depend heavily on the type of game he is in.  How many encounters a day will adventurers have to overcome, what are the starting ability scores, how prevalent is evil in the campaign.  As far as combat is concerned, reapersaurus was probably correct that detect evil is not very effective.  However, it does allow a Paladin to locate evil at any time (corrupt politician, disguised villain... use your imagination).  At the end of a long day fighting generic evil characters, ::shrug:: some other stacked melee character may come out on top, but this simply was not the case in the campaign I played in.  The paladins innate abilities give him very good defenses, and he does have spells that will "bless" weapons (great against demons), and I found the holy sword spell to be very useful.  Perhaps the campaign just happened to highlight all of his class advantages repeatedly.  Reviewing the classes, it is probably accurate to say that it would help balance the class overall to give them more (feats, smites, etc.).  Remember, there are feats available that allow them to use those many turn undead attempts into other useful abilities.It would be nice to see them get something more helpful than just "remove disease" at higher levels.  I can’t say I entirely agree that melee characters are overshadowed in power by spell casters.  If you do not feel that they should have to use magic items, then I would understand why you would say that (maybe they are just a bit too dependent on magic items at higher and higher levels)… but the fact that magic exists in the game should justify that… according to the system philosophy.  I have heard many people complain about the dependency the characters have on magic items in the game.  That is probably just a matter of preference.  When I play spell casters, I always think that they are completely underpowered, what with opponents persistently making saving throws, the limited number of spells per day, being defeated by SR, and having nothing else supporting the class (for arcane casters…clerics have no complaints in any department…).  That generally changes after the caster hits level 10, when he still has a few spells left after the first couple of encounters, and he can do good amounts of damage quickly.  But that has always been the D&D flavored tradeoff for melee characters vs. casters.</blockquote>

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