[Class Surgery]: Paladin

[Endur]

Option 1: Remove Disease is useless. My Paladin has used it maybe once or twice in his career. The Special Mount is useful if your character has the mounted feats and plays in an environment where you can actually use the mount.

I think you could safely drop both abilities and give the Paladin zero compensation, since some Paladin characters never use either ability.

Or you could give compensation in the form of a bonus feat.

Up to you.

Okay, for various reasons (character concept and world issues) I'm wanting to do the following....

Option One
Have a characters who takes the Paladin Class, and is for all intents and purposes a Paladin but she does not take the following abilities:

Remove Disease
Special Mount

She still gets everything else as the Paladin Class. What would abilities, feats, etc would be adequate compensation for dropping these abilities?

 

[Ian O'Rourke]

Were using version 3.0. I agree to some extent on the Remove Disease and Special Mount being pretty crap.

The more I think about the more crap I think the Paladin class is - it holds a certain appeal though

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I'd replace the Mount with Leadership, as others have suggested.

As for Remove Disease, I'd replace it with another bonus feat at every level that grants an extra use of Remove Disease. Use a stripped-down version of the Fighter feat list that emphasizes your image of Paladins. I would definitely include Divine Might, however.

In order to fit the prerequisites, I'd swap the levels that Leadership and the first bonus feat is granted.

 

[youspoonybard]

I vote for nothing, or some minor feat at best.

 

[Li Shenron]

We've been through the common multiclass options and have dropped them for a number of reasons (low magic world, wanting a more down and dirty campaign, concept issues, etc.).

I'd explain but I don't want to turn the thread into the reasons why so much...you know what it's like

Sorry Ian but I really can't understand why... you want to have a Paladin but don't care for Special Mount and Remove Disease OR a Fighter who in addition has Detect Evil, Divine Grace, Lay on Hands, Divine Health, and Aura of Courage.

In 3.0 your option 2 requires exactly to play a Fighter X/Paladin 2. No special mount, no remove disease, no turn undead, no paladin spells. The abilities from 2 levels of Paladin don't need more Paladin levels to improve, except Lay on Hands. Since multiclassing in between 2 combat-oriented classes everything you need stacks.

I have no idea why you don't want to multiclass in your game. If the XP penalties are what you can't live with, rule with your DM that ONLY IN THIS SPECIFIC CASE of FtrX/Pal2 there's no penalties. Just like it was a different core class whose first 2 levels were the same as Paladin and the next 18 levels were like Fighter (either Ftr1-18 ot Ftr3-20).

 

[dreaded_beast]

why not play a variant cleric or paladin that appeared in the recent dragon magazines?

it is a full-fledged class, akin to the new classes found in the Complete Warrior. in fact, i believe some of those classes, the fighter ones, that appeared in the dragon magazines were put in the Complete Warrior.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'd not replace the remove disease since it is such a minor ability.

I'd replace the special mount with either leadership or possibly an animal companion or possibly with a favoured enemy (+2) if appropriate.

People shouldn't underestimate the power of a mount just because it doesn't see use in some campaigns (which is more a fault of the DM than anything else). The mount is a class feature of the paladin and a very powerful one. As a DM I threw an inquisition of four mounted paladins at my players and they were fearsome adversaries.

Really, any DM who allows paladins but doesn't run any adventures where the warhorse can come along is deliberately shortchanging the class (along the lines of only facing rogues against undead and constructs). They should either plan to allow the warhorse to come in occasionally or give the paladins a replacement class feature which they can use. IMO.