Conceptualize the Paladin

[Tequila Sunrise]

For you, is the paladin a unique concept in and of itself, or is it a broader concept like the cleric?

TS

 

[Mallus]

I've always preferred paladins to be broad concepts; religious warriors who are exemplars of particular value sets. That might be why I like the 4e paladin.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

For you, is the paladin a unique concept in and of itself, or is it a broader concept like the cleric?

The paladin was originally intended as a fairly unique concept. With every step taken to broaden the concept I have found the "paladin" to be less interesting. When it was theorized (and apparantly popularly approved) that paladins should be allowed to be of any alignment I found the concept of a "paladin" of no further use or interest at all.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Er, not to be difficult or anything , but I don't see the D&D Cleric as any more broad a concept than the D&D Paladin.

Actually though, the class concepts involved are all pretty vague, therefore broad. Not a whole lot of conceptualisation going on with D&D, really. That's not where it's ever been coming from.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The paladin was originally intended as a fairly unique concept. With every step taken to broaden the concept I have found the "paladin" to be less interesting. When it was theorized (and apparantly popularly approved) that paladins should be allowed to be of any alignment I found the concept of a "paladin" of no further use or interest at all.

Pretty much this.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

The paladin was originally intended as a fairly unique concept. With every step taken to broaden the concept I have found the "paladin" to be less interesting. When it was theorized (and apparantly popularly approved) that paladins should be allowed to be of any alignment I found the concept of a "paladin" of no further use or interest at all.

I agree. As I said many times, every alignment and every god already had a holy warrior or divine champion... it was called the cleric. The paladin was supposed to be a rare and special extra something that LG got, to represent the purest champions of good and order.

At various times, I thought about alternative "alignment champions" -- but rather than repackaging the paladin, go very different for each one. Mindbenders might be the exemplar champions of LE, for example, and frenzied berserkers for CN.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Eh. The game, I think, has room to accommodate both the "chivalric knight" archetype and the "holy warrior" archetype.

I just thing the cleric works best as the latter (rather than as a god-wizard) and some other class....might as well call it paladin...works best as the former.

Speaking to 4e, turn the cleric into a Defender, nix the "Leader" role (in exchange for every class having "leaderlike" powers), and have them mix up the Paladin's junk, and I think I'd be happier. A paladin's niche might not be relevant to a lot of games, so maybe it can be saved for a "exalted deeds"-style supplement, where it focuses perhaps on mounted combat or "blessed" abilities (or as a specific Paragon Path for a Fighter or Cleric).

Speaking to 3e, just give it some luv -- more abilities, more often, less suck, and it does a decent job of being that exalted warrior of chivalric pride as-is.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, I always thought of the Paladin as the "Holy Warrior" and have no problem expanding the concept to other alignments, even though the majority of holy warriors in fiction & legend tend to be on the "Good" side of things.

Where the Paladin/Cleric thing went off the rails in D&D, IMHO, was when the Cleric got to be a holy warrior as well. Historically speaking, the "fighting priests" of the Western religions tended to be warriors first, and who had taken special religious vows, usually so that they could administer sacraments to each other when no "true" priest was present. In a sense, they had much in common with the "Eastern" monk.

The real Western priest rarely ventured away from his parish or monastery, and if translated into D&D should have been more like a Wizard with a different spell list, possibly still able to wear Light (maybe Medium) Armor, use simple weapons, and have a poor BAB.

Even as we look further afield into other, non-Christian faiths- like the Sikh, for example- most religions that had a tradition of fighting holy men still had a dichotomy between the warrior types and the ones whose responsibilities were teaching the holy writ. The warriors may have had religious training, but they weren't fully priests. Likewise, the priests may have had some martial training, but they weren't real warriors by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[aurance]

I've always preferred paladins to be broad concepts; religious warriors who are exemplars of particular value sets. That might be why I like the 4e paladin.

I'm with you. Even in previous editions I treated/revised the paladins like this.

 

[The Ghost]

The paladin was originally intended as a fairly unique concept. With every step taken to broaden the concept I have found the "paladin" to be less interesting. When it was theorized (and apparantly popularly approved) that paladins should be allowed to be of any alignment I found the concept of a "paladin" of no further use or interest at all.

This.

I prefer my Paladins to be the highest example of Chivalry, Decency, Justness, etc. - the typical knight-in-shining-armor of Western literature.