Paladin Mount Question

[FireLance]

If you have the Book of Nine Swords, here's something that might work as a mount replacement. A paladin without a special mount has an initiator level of paladin level - 2 for maneuvers from the Devoted Spirit discipline, and may select one Devoted Spirit maneuver or stance (as if he had taken the Martial Study or Martial Stance feat) at 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th level. He must meet all prerequisites for the maneuver or stance normally.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Um. Well, they could just buy a horse. Or make a boat.

But that kinda defeats the purpose. What are the two things a knight ALWAYS had with him? His horse, his armor, and his sword. So, what if those things were automatic? No matter what happens, you always have access to these three things?

You could do it with spells; phantom steed covers the horse. The psionic power call weaponry covers the weapon, and in the Mind's Eye (WotC website), they added 3.0 PsiHB-level powers called call armor and call item.

In the book The War God's Own and its sequels, by David Weber, the defining ability of the Paladin main character, the one he used to prove his status, was that he could summon his sword to his hand from anywhere on a moment's notice. Seems like a good ability for a Paladin to have, in general; while the Fighter types might maintain the Golf Bag O' Doom full of all kinds of weapons, Paladins seem like the type to devote themselves more to a single weapon type.

 

[Aus_Snow]

But that kinda defeats the purpose. What are the two things a knight ALWAYS had with him? His horse, his armor, and his sword. So, what if those things were automatic? No matter what happens, you always have access to these three things?

Two? Three? j/k

A Paladin is not a Knight, nor even a knight necessarily.

As I said in another post in this thread, the PHBII has a variant for Paladins that replaces the Special Mount class feature, and does nothing to make up the difference in that precise area. So I guess WotC also disagrees with you. Or at least, some of the designers and editors etc. Not that that is everything (it really isn't) but I find it interesting how many different interpretations of 'Paladin' there are, let alone interpretations of 'Good' or 'honour', and so forth. Heh, or 'knight' for that matter.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Two? Three?

Horse, Armor, Weapon. That's three. The previous poster only mentioned two, but IMO the heavy armor is also a critical part of the classic Paladin archetype.

A Paladin is not a Knight, nor even a knight necessarily.

I'm not saying that it is. I'm saying that the "Paladin" class is inspired by certain historical examples, and that the classic image of the Paladin is the virtuous, armored knight-errant. This is somewhat culture-specific; you could easily point out the Samurai as an example or a similar persona that sacrifices the armor and/or mount but emphasizes the weapon advantage even further.

However, if you want to keep that classic Western "holy knight" feel without the inherent limitations of the Mount rules, there are ways to alter the class such that it always has access to these three things. I was pointing out two different ways of accomplishing this without unbalancing the class. Personally, I'd still lean more towards an earlier suggestion and increase the class' spellcasting ability a bit if you wanted to sacrifice the Mount.

And really, the fact that WotC does something one way is hardly a ringing endorsement, but that's an entirely separate debate.

 

[Aus_Snow]

The previous poster only mentioned two

And so did you. Two and three, in fact. But I was only kidding; nothing serious.

IMO the heavy armor is also a critical part of the classic Paladin archetype

To me it's not. But therefore I am surely at odds both with the class's origins - or at least the origins of its title - and with its current interpretation in Dungeons and Dragons. Which brings me to another point:

the fact that WotC does something one way is hardly a ringing endorsement

Quite so. On the other hand, I think most people playing D&D are more concerned with how the Paladin fits in with the other classes or party members, and how well it suits various types of adventure, than how closely it cleaves to its classical heritage. Hence, the PHBII style of variant: it makes the Paladin inherently better suited to clearing out dungeons, crimefighting or what have you in urban or court environments, and so on.

 

[Exen Trik]

I like the idea of paladins having a divine item of some sort, something that represents their paladinhood. Just some basic ideas on it:

-Can be a weapon, shield, armor, holy symbol, or anything else.
-Can act as a divine focus for any paladin spell
-Gives a bonus to one skill, around +1/4 paladin levels or so. Skill is usually sense motive, diplomacy, or the like
-Item benefits from increased hardness, hitpoints, saves etc, similar to the paladin mount
-Paladin gains the approriate craft feat according to the item type, but only for that item
-The caster level for the craft feat is equal to the paladins class level
-Some stronger things with level... perhaps empathic level intelligence? Some lesser iintelligent item powers?

No sure how to balance exactly, but if someone wants use it and/or run with it that'd be cool.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I figured I'd represent the mount as a connection to the Cestial realms and thus allow for other connections. The one I made up was simply to turn the Paladin into an avatar of sorts:

Celestial Influence: At 5th level, the paladin realizes a connection to the Celestial planes. The default is to grant a special mount, but the Paladin may forgo this and instead be imbued with Celestial power. He then gains the following:

5th level - Shield Caster (Ex): The Paladin may channel divine energy through his shield and treat his spells as if they have no somatic components, but only while wielding a shield.
11th level – Repulse Damnation (Sp): Once per day, as a free action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, the Paladin may invoke a protective aura that grants him SR of 12 + Paladin level. This only protects him against any spell or spell-like ability cast by an evil creature or that has the evil or negative energy descriptors, such as Harm. The aura persists for a number of minutes equal to the Paladin’s Charisma bonus, and may be extended for an extra minute for each use of Turn Undead the Paladin wishes to expend. The choice to expend a use of Turn Undead need not be made until the round the aura is to dismiss and each expenditure is chosen individually each time the (new) duration is set to expire.
17th level – Heaven’s Wrath (Ex): Each time the Paladin successfully uses a Smite Evil attempt, there is a 1% chance per Paladin level, maximum 20%, that the use of Smite Evil is retained. Smite Evil still can only be used once per round.


I made a lot of changes to Paladin besides this. One that directly affects those abilities is that they use their class level for caster level, rather than 1/2, and thus making Shield Caster a little more potent than it may seem.