Paladin vs Blackguard question of bias

[Malum]

Why a +5 BAB to qualify for blackguard? Why do you need to be a fallen Paladin in order to have abilities equal to that of a Paladin of same level? We usually house rule evil gods have lawful evil Paladins (a LE Blackguard) with equal abilites...

Malum
role playing the bad guy from time to time is a good thing I just like to do so on a even playing field.

 

[Furby076]

You can always utilize the Unearthed Arcana rules which gives you all the different alignment paladins. The nice thing about Blackguard is that it lets you convert those useless fallen paladin levels. Yes, before UA you had to house rule differing paladins. What if your DM was not willing to house rule paladins (and i know many who wouldn't). Then let us say you became evil and lost your 12 levels of paladin to the worthless Fallen paladin class. Well you had a backup - the black gaurd.

 

[gamecat]

Think of it like this - Good is trusting. You don't need to prove yourself to a good person - they believe you to be honest.

Evil, you need to prove yourself, because evil is ruthless, seeing things in black and white.

 

[Cabral]

It's because the Paladin is a prestige class that is too integral to D&D to treat as a prestige class. If the class was more broadened (as the UA variant does to a degree), it would work better as a core class.

 

[Drowbane]

Personally I prefer Blackguard *and* Paladin as PrCs. IMC, they're both Cleric/Fighter (pure Cleric can do it, but takes longer) PrCs.

 

[Nyaricus]

what i am doing IMC is having a Crusader base class whihc allows a very generic set of abilities that change depending on god worshipped (kinda like how clerics choose domains) and from there you can then try to get into one of many orders of Knights - ie PrC's, like the cavalier, templar, hospitalier, etc. some stick to the standard "holy warrior" path, and help with things both martial and divine, whereas others will have more emphasis on one or the other.

A Crusader, both in name and concept, makes perfect sense for a low-magic campaign (or any campaign where you need an Alt. "holy warrior") that takes a lot of basis for what happened in Earth's Crusades. Anyone can be a knight, but only a few go on missions and quests for their respective churches to recover artifacts, spread the word of their faiths, and do a variety of other things. Since Clerics IMC are now Priests with more emphasis on thier churches and things that concerned real priests in real life, this makes Crusaders the frontline of the church that are seen both far and wide. In a system such as mine, realsim (as far as a medieval fantasy game can go) is key and i think most factors are both balanced and realistic.

 

[Nyaricus]

P.S. Screw sacred cows. Written rules were meant to be broken.

If you can, at least use UA's varients - they are pretty good, but still a bit too pidgeon holed for my liking.

Cheers!!

 

[Aus_Snow]

Eew. Poor cows.

Anyway. I personally recommend taking a look at Dragon Magazines 310 and 312 (and 311, but not for this exact purpose) - they have (among other class variants and things) paladin variants for *every* alignment. . . other than LG, of course. #310 has the good and neutral variants, whereas 312 is one of those 'editions of evil'.

The variants in there might need a bit of tweaking (or not), but they're so much more interesting and. . . I don't know. . . convincing?. . . than the disgustingly bland ones in UA.


Other than that, UA also has PrC versions of the Ranger, Paladin and Bard, which would be another way of 'balancing' them out.

 

[Tonguez]

A Crusader, both in name and concept, makes perfect sense for a low-magic campaign (or any campaign where you need an Alt. "holy warrior") that takes a lot of basis for what happened in Earth's Crusades. Anyone can be a knight, but only a few go on missions and quests for their respective churches to recover artifacts, spread the word of their faiths, and do a variety of other things. Since Clerics IMC are now Priests with more emphasis on thier churches and things that concerned real priests in real life, this makes Crusaders the frontline of the church that are seen both far and wide. In a system such as mine, realsim (as far as a medieval fantasy game can go) is key and i think most factors are both balanced and realistic.

heh sounds similar to what I was initially considering - a base holy warrior, except that I used the name Templar (being a Knight of the Temple) as Crusader seemed to specific to me (ie someone who Crusades). Anyway I then realised that Cleric was the base Holy Warrior so simply changed the name and introduced a Priest class instead (so now Cleric covers Templars, Priests and Magisters*)

Anyway I then went on and made Paladin into a Prestige Class which Templars and Fighters can access but so far noone wants to be a paladin anyway...

 

[Aus_Snow]

a base holy warrior, except that I used the name Templar (being a Knight of the Temple) as Crusader seemed to specific to me (ie someone who Crusades). Anyway I then realised that Cleric was the base Holy Warrior so simply changed the name and introduced a Priest class instead

Ha. Same here! (in the house-ruled D&D campaign, that is)

I've been using the class name Templar for the Cleric for quite a while now. And Priest for the um, priest.

'Paladins' and their various counterparts are completely independent of any temple, and in fact they're not tied to religion in general, in that same campaign. Each one is a rare 'force of nature', so to speak. . . whatever that nature might be. . .