D&D 5E Cleric vs Paladin: Concepts and Mechanical realisation

[Blue]

I've been playing a long time, so to me Paladins were always Lawful Good, and being Good and being Lawful were just as important as the tenants of your (LG) God. And the hold holy martyr, willing to sacrifice your life thing. This differed a liot from Clerics, who could embody a much wider variety of personalities and goals.

Not saying every Paladin was alike. One of my favorites (AD&D 2nd) was an urban swashbuckler paladin of Lathander, a god a light who fought crime bosses as well. But even The Lady Nikkadaema Roaringhorn was a zealot - there were lines you DID. NOT. CROSS. Many times the she would oppose those in her group with morally ambiguous plans.

Contrast to a cleric I played at the same time in my gaming life for a more shades-of-grey (but generally goodish) party. Boasis was a shifty priest of Mask (shadows, thieves and thievery) who joined the existing group (after my previous charactter had died) masquerading as a cleric of Shaundakul, a minor god of traveling and travelers. We were using the Skills & Powers expansion and he had Glib and talked his way out of everything. He was supremely lazy, which is why he was an adventurer - nothing else could provide that much reward for that little physical work. (He was plenty brave - it wasn't risk/reward, it was reward vs. effort.) He got quickly found out as a priest of Mask, and convinced the party to let him stay. The party was afraid he'd steal from them, and he pointed out that he could either be true and make ever larger fortunes, or steal from them once and live the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. It simply wasn't worth the effort to steal from the party. They asked him to detect traps, since that was a thievely thing to do. He went back to the last room, animated a bunch of undead, and sent them ahead one at a time. Boom, flaming oil trap set off. Swish, covered pit trap set off. And so on.

I'm currently trying to break out of the mold on Paladins. Playing an easygoing CG Oath of Ancients Paladin of Hermes who respect the other pantheons and wants to learn a much as he can about them, and is about the opposite of zealot as you can get. It's refreshing to feel I have permission to step outside the box I had drawn around them.

Yes, there are big mechanical differences as well, and when I'm trying to complement a party those will come up, but paladin and cleric have had different feels in my head for decades.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Paladins were douches in Ad&d. Back then you had to be Lawful Good Stick-up-your-Ass, and you needed Cha 17, Wis 13, Str 12, and Int and Con 9 to qualify.

They were basically the captain of the school team, holier than thou, lantern-jawed goody goodies.

That image has stuck so badly I still haven't even read the paladin entry in the 5e PHB.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Paladins in previous releases had a reputation of a "Lawful stupid" alignment that tended to annoy other players. It took a talented roleplayer to play a paladin in those editions. With 5e, they've broken away from "Lawful stupid" and it's now much easier to play a paladin and to have them fit into a party that doesn't consist of complete goodie-two-shoes.

If my current character dies, I'm looking forward to trying out a paladin. Indeed, when we started 5e, I considered a paladin -- a class I hadn't played before but that I wanted to try. However, for various reasons, I went with a different class, though paladin was very, very tempting....

I've played clerics before in earlier versions and they can fun. The 5e clerics also have a broad range of possibilities for both mechanical play and for roleplaying. I see them, from a player's perspective, as being two completely different classes. From an in-game perspective, I used to see them as two arms of a church -- the liturgical/pastoral and the martial/defender/enforcer. However, with 5e, the paladin no longer has as strong a link with the church and has become more someone whose strength of character has given them special capabilities. The religious link is much weaker in 5e than it was in previous editions (in my opinion).

 

[Sacrosanct]

Paladins were douches in Ad&d. Back then you had to be Lawful Good Stick-up-your-Ass, and you needed Cha 17, Wis 13, Str 12, and Int and Con 9 to qualify.

They were basically the captain of the school team, holier than thou, lantern-jawed goody goodies.

That image has stuck so badly I still haven't even read the paladin entry in the 5e PHB.

That's a myth, about the holier than thou stick up your butt. They just had to be lawful good. That never meant awful good. If there was a problem there, that's a player issue, not a class design issue. There are plenty of non paladin lawful good PCs that are just fine. Nothing in the class description said you had to be an arrogant jerk about it. In fact, there have been numerous Dragon articles addressing that issue because too many people bought into the myth.

 

[Mouseferatu]

[MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] just said basically what I was going to. Most of the negative reactions to paladins from 1E have nothing to do with how the class was actually written, IME.

Frankly, paladins were my favorite class in 1E, and have remained one of my favorites almost ever since. (I say almost because I wasn't crazy about their implementation in 4E.) Heck, as much as I like that 5E has removed alignment requirements across the board, part of me wishes they still had to be LG. I'm all for shades of gray characters--I play a lot of them, and most of my fiction protagonists are pretty gray--but I feel like gaming and fantasy in general really need more genuine heroes.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

People disagreeing with my interpretation of clerics and paladins is a pet peeve of mine. I'm not sure what it is about those two classes that inspires this intolerance, but you can bet when I'm the DM there is One True Interpretation whether or not you like it.

First, I think there is a disconnect between how an edition presents the cleric...and how the same edition presents the cleric. They generally are self-contradicting.

2e cleric mentions that whole Knight's Templar nonsense. But then they are classified in the Priest group (with druids) while Paladins were in the Warrior group (with fighters and rangers). And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never been under the assumption that holy orders of knighthood only used bludgeoning weapons and were less effective combatants (less hp, attack bonus) than other warriors.

5e has a similar contradiction. They speak as if clerics are specially chosen "favored souls" so to speak. They say that most priests aren't clerics, but are more like politicians (the implication being no spellcasting). But then the NPC monster entries for "Priest" and "Acolyte" are essentially simplified, holy spellcasting 5th-level and 1st-level (respectively) clerics.

Weren't priest clerics even in Eberron, where they weren't required to have the appropriate alignments, and no one was sure if the gods existed?

The way I see it, I agree with what they show more than what they say. And what the game has shown since at least since AD&D is cleric = priest and priest = cleric (or druid).

Paladins are not, and never have been, shown as priests. They are holy knight-like warriors.

From that perspective--which has been shown consistently in the D&D lore--the distinction between cleric and paladin is simple.

And there is no good reason not to do it that way.

 

[Curmudjinn]

Early clerics were holy warriors. At some point, paladin's became a thing in D&D and supplanted the Cleric, creating two similar but different classes.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Deity: "Cleric, here are a bunch of powers to help you spread my gospel. Paladin, here are a bunch of powers for you to take out my enemies."

This sums it up for me.

 

[Curmudjinn]

People disagreeing with my interpretation of clerics and paladins is a pet peeve of mine.

LOL.

Mine is other people breathing about D&D near me. Yuck.


While I do love paladins and clerics as npcs in games I run, I rarely play them. I played a paladin of Zuoken in a short playbypost game recently, which was fun, but they are too specific for me as a class, I think.

 

[Mouseferatu]

5e has a similar contradiction. They speak as if clerics are specially chosen "favored souls" so to speak. They say that most priests aren't clerics, but are more like politicians (the implication being no spellcasting). But then the NPC monster entries for "Priest" and "Acolyte" are essentially simplified, holy spellcasting 5th-level and 1st-level (respectively) clerics.

Weren't priest clerics even in Eberron, where they weren't required to have the appropriate alignments, and no one was sure if the gods existed?

At the risk of suffering your wrath for disagreeing...

The priest and acolyte in the MM are spellcasters--clerics--because those are the only type that need their own stat block. A non-spellcasting priest is a commoner or noble with the Religion skill added.

And no, most priests in Eberron--like most priests in most other settings--are just people in the Church hierarchy. Actual spellcasting clerics are the minority.