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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8652797" data-attributes="member: 6855114">Easy. Paladins suffered from the fact that in 1ed their power was gated behind hard to reach stats. It was one of the "elite" class of 1ed (ranger, monk and druids). Rolling the stats to do one was not only lucky but an occasion to good to pass on. As long as paladin were rare, there was no problems with them at all. In fact, they were so liked that some DM would allow a paladin at -20% exp cost to level if "only" a 16 was rolled for charisma. UA, with its (9 to 3)d6 method, removed that gate completely and the fact that many did not use the 3d6 but 4d6 place as you want. At least with the later, it was still hard to achieve a paladin. Once that gate was opened, a flood of paladin entered the game field.And this is no kidding! Some tables could have up to three paladins in the group (out of 6 or 7 players)! Everyone wanted to be a paladin as it was the strongest class, strong enough to take on an archmage (level 18) at level 9 and win if that paladin was lucky enough to have a holy avenger! So people started to add an other gate to the paladin. This is what I called: The lawful Stupid. They imposed so many restrictions on the alignment and behavior and chivalric code to the paladin that at most table it became simply an almost unplayable class. All these behavioral obligations to play the paladin also became a major hindrance for the other players too. Can't do this, can't do that and yaddi yadda. All the paladin's RP restriction were literally imposed on their fellow players! This all led to a general distaste (if not outright hatred) for the class at many tables. This perception lasted well onto all editions. The paladin class was tainted by the lawful stupid to the point that to make the class attractive, the game developers had to give the class very strong abilities and to lessen the codes the paladins had to follow in 5ed. (We could argue that this tendency started way before that in 3.xed and 4ed, but 5ed got it right, finally).I hope I was of service.</blockquote>

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