reapersaurus said:
Dude, I literally don't know where to START.
A person with no worthwhile rebuttal usually doesn't.
There's at least 30 minutes of typing material that you've given us to blow your "theory" out of the water.
I don't have that much time, or interest in proving what anyone could find out from just re-reading what's already been typed. You keep saying that the paladin is the best MELEE class.
You are obviously not taking into account what MELEE means.
Seems you missed the part where I stated what Melee means, but I'll do so again since you are obtuse: A melee class is one whose primary form of damage derives from physical combat.
Is that a sufficent definition? The best melee does not mean the most damage, but the best in terms of overall capabilities.
But really, I can save us all a lot of typing by just pointing out why your opinions on paladins are invalid to the general D&D campaign:
1) You are coming from a campaign where "A Paladin fights evil creatures 90% of the time in a dungeon as does a fighter."
It is the rarity (IME) where people play in a 90% Evil campaign.
Hmmm. Are you telling me your DM deliberately creates adventure not populated with Evil creatures? You certainly can't be talking about modules. Modules are about 80 ot 90 percent filled with evil adversaries.
2) Your campaign uses inflated stats.
This is not the normal playing field in D&D, so it invalidates your experiences with paladins to the average player.
So equally inflated stats isn't somehow balanced? Are you somehow assuming that the PC's roll attribute so good that they they still don't use dump stats? That the fighter won't have an equally inflated Str, Dex, and Con compared to the Paladins Str, Con and Cha? Your sorely mistaken.
Let's assume 28 point buy:
Fighter
S: 16 (10) D: 14 (6) C 14 (6) I 10 (2) W 10 (2) Ch 10 (2) = 28 points
Paladin
S: 14 (6) D: 10 (2) C 14 (6) I 10 (2) W 12 (4) Ch 15 (8) = 28 points
Let's assume our campaign:
Fighter
S: 18 D: 14 C 16 I 12 W 12 Ch 12
Paladin
S: 16 D 12 C 14 I 12 W 12 Ch 18
The fighter would still have a better strength, and be relatiely equal in all other stats. There is no difference between rolling and point buy in how each class will spend their best attributes. Now, a PC may roll exceedingly lucky, but the fighter or any other class has the same chance of rolling lucky. On average, a fighter will still be able to spend their best attributes in Str, Dex, and Con, and a Paladin will focus on Str, Con, and Cha.
psst!
Immunity to Fear, Will Saves, and Downtime healing aren't examples of somthing that makes a class a better combat class.
Just so you know.
I beg to differ. Defense is as important to combat as offense as is downtime healing. A Paladin can deal with situations other than straight combat that a fighter cannot.
Also - did you know that fighters can BUY the same kind of mounts paladins can? Fighters will have more skill points for Ride, and can actually gain enough feats to afford the mounted feats too. Hell, they could use LEadership and get a more powerful cohort than a Paladin mount. Or they could simply buy something that lets them fly.
How can a fighter obtain a mount as good as a Paladin's when theres doesn't increase in power at all? What's to stop a Paladin from obtaining the leadership feat to obtain a more powerful mount?
Also - you keep ignoring the FACT that fighters will have substantially better combat attributes than a paladin. Why do you keep ignoring this?
Substantially better is substantially overestimating how much better a fighters combat attributes will be.
BTW: DEX is used for LOTS more than just DEX saves. (the Ride skill, for one. AC, for another)
Most Paladins where heavy armor, anything higher than +1 dex is wasted. Dex's primary use is Reflex saves, initiative, and ranged attacks in combats. Divine grace makes up for the lower dex for reflex saves, a paladin won't be making many ranged attacks, and the higher initiative is not a necessity.
BTW: STR is used for to hit, and damage. How does the paladin make up for these being lower than the fighter, even before the fighter's feats come in?
A fighter will only have a marginally better strength if he or she wants to have a good Con and Dex.
Also - the Paladin's spells DO suck.
This statement alone shows how deluded you are.
You mentioned 3 of them. Restoration, Resist Energy and Death Ward.
I'm sure you know that Rest and Ward are both 4th level spells, which mean they are useless to a paladin until 15th level (unless he sunk even MORE points and/or $$ into WIS). And a paladin up through 18th level only gets ONE 4th level spell a day!
A 2 point wisdom item gets your wisdom high enough to cast fourth level spells, not too hefty an investment. Scrolls and wands give much earlier access to them.
Resist Energy only protects him from a whopping 10 points of damage from one energy type through level 13.
If you happen to be fighting an enemy using a flaming or shocking weapon, a fire elemental, or a demon in a fire aura it's nice to be able to resist the damage.
Are you really relying on scrolls (used mostly out of combat) to justify saying the Paladin's spells make him better in MELEE than a fighter? (!)
If so, I can just as reasonably say that a fighter can get magic items that allow him to cast those same spells, for only twice the cost of the scroll.
In pure melee a fighter is better. As I've stated, that overall a Paladin is a better melee class. Once again you are being obtuse. I've stated multiple times that I do not look only at the ability to deal melee damage when I quantify a melee class.
So are you going to actually address the points which show your approach to be flawed (and based on a non-standard D&D campaign), or will you just bring up more easily-refuted examples?
They really haven't been refuted. You just brush them off as "well, 90% of encounters aren't against evil." I can only say that maybe 80% is closer to the mark, but definitely the majority of encounters, especially major encounters, are against evil enemies.
"Fear doesn't come up that often". I agree, it doesn't come up that often. But it does come up against many key opponents such as Dragons, undead, and evil spell casters. Very prominent villains we often fight against. I have faced fear many times, and the immunity has been very helpful.
"Will saves aren't that important". Not my experience either. Will saves cause melees alot of trouble. The paladin resists will based attacks better than any other melee class except for the monk.
You haven't refuted any of these assertions. You just disregarded them claiming they do not come up often enough to fret over. I disagree with that assertion.
Since you keep bringing up high-level dragons and the like as a backdrop for your paladin's 'power'.... I'll make the guess that you are in your mind comparing high-level (20th level) paladins to 20th level fighters (since you seem to be assuming multiple 4th level spells per day for your paladin).
If so, I'll point out the elephant in the room we've been ignoring -
not many people play straight fighters all the way thru 20th level.
They multiclass, which makes them much more flexible and powerful than a straight paladin.
This is truly one of the main weaknesses of the paladin that we haven't even bothered to point out yet:
That they are hideously dependant on staying straight class. They don't multiclass for
. There STILL is not a remotely-useful paladin PrC by the core rules.
I play in the Forgotten Realms. The multiclassing restriction is substantially more lenient. Even before FR came out, it still wasn't that big a deal to take your multiclass levels first. The most common multiclass Paladin was four levels of fighter prior to taking Paladin.
You are quite right, very few people play straight fighters all the way up. In 3rd edition, I've seen very few straight classes played all the way up. Most people like Prc's or multiclassing. That's the nature of 3rd edition.
Why even argue with you Reaper? You have blown off several relevant Paladin abilities that make a Paladin stand out.
For pure melee damage, you're right: A fighter or barbarian has more capacity for doing pure melee damage. If that is how you want to rate the melee classes, then so be it.
I rate them by overall capabilities. Overall the Paladin is the strongest. Their mix of defensive and offensive capabilities are better than any of the other classes that rely on melee damage as their primary source of damage. They don't do substantially less damage than either a Fighter or Barbarian in the majority of encounters, and they have the possibility of doing more damage in many encounters given the use of spells like
Divine Favor or
Divine Sacrifice and feats like
Divine Might.
Just because you play your Paladins in a manner that allows them to be outshone by the other melee classes, does not mean the same thing occurs in our campaigns. As far as the stat system we use, it still equally limits all characters. Fighters still generally have higher physical attributes, and Paladins still have to spend a high stat for Charisma.
