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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1025142" data-attributes="member: 177">Honestly, SHARK, I think your personal love of the Paladin concept leads you to want to make them into supermen.  As you well know, a good RPG is about choices - both in terms of character interpersonal interactions and in terms of tactial abilities.  As a broad generalization, if you find a single class gives you everything you could want and requires few to no hard choices along the way, that class is probably too good.  I think your strong identification of Paladins with the historical Knights Templar is seriously wide of the mark. Such knights may have been part of the inspiration for paladins, but not the whole.  Paladins were also inspired by Charlemagne's Paladins, and the Arthurian knights (and, if you'll notice the most pure and holy of Arthur's knights was not known for his martial prowess).  And then, the class went beyond it's inspiration.The Knights Templar were cool.  Committed men, great with horse and shield and weapons and armor.  But completely and thoroughly mundane warriors.  The Knights Templar could not heal each other with a touch, could not cast spells, couldnb't smell the mere presence of evil, did not have horses far beyond mortal equines, were not supernaturally resistant to attack, could not smite evil with holy power.  Use the right tool for the job, SHARK.  Rather than say, "I like Paladins, and I like Knights Templar, so I'll beat all paladins into the Templar role," try saying, "I want a character like this, what class, multiclass, or prestige Class is required to get such a character?"  If you want to model the best at mundane combat, use a mundane class - a Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral fighter will have all the martial goodness you need to be a knight.You have a singular image of what a paladin is, and that's fine if you're looking to play one.  But, in terms of designing a core class, you overspecify.  You don't design a core class around such a highly focused image - that's the realm of Prestige Classes.</blockquote>

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