Paladin Warhorse

[John Crichton]

What about oldfashioned flesh and blood palamounts like they were in 3e? Really I favor my Light Warhorse I got me at level 1 over this *poof* horselike being.

No one is taking that away from you.

 

[Felon]

Thats what makes it so great. Without magic, weird stuff happens. With magic, REALLY weird stuff happens. With magic, the villan can always find the PCs, the guys that are supposed to be miles away can be around the corner, Han Solo can make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, the guy that dies last week can come back, and you can find weird stuff in dungeons.

Please don't try to explain to me that magic can make the impossible happen. That's not the poiint. The point is that mounted combat is cool at a certain time and place, but it should not occur at any given encounter. There are times when having a horse clomping around just isn't appropriate.

The paladin's mount is now like the highlanders sword - how the hell does he have it all the time when there is no real place to put it? Its a Kind of Magic...

Yes....the lame, ill-conceived kind

 

[Thels]

Yeah, don't think it would be hard to get my DM to use the old palamount properties anyhow... Haven't discussed yet though.

 

[rounser]

I think that some of the most awkward and inflexible parts of 3E class design involve the classes with inbuilt furries. The moment you figure an animal companion into balancing a druid's combat ability, you've already made up the player's mind for them whether they're taking it into combat.

Why aren't animal companions treated with a system similar to magical items? Invest gold and XP in bonding with your critter, if you want one. It would take away the silly design assumptions for those of us who don't want a walking menagerie, and alleviate the need for even sillier "fixes" like the paladin warhorse one...

This is the second, IMO, dodgy band-aid solution that 3.5 has added to the game that we know of, the first being the Mystic Theurge. If you can't fix it at the source, draw attention to the problem further with a suspension-of-disbelief-challenging or archetype-devoid "fix".

 

[coyote6]

Ok, to anyone who thinks that a party will charge overland for greater than 10 hours (minimum called time for a 5th level paladin) let me introduce you to forced marches and real damage to mounts.

Check out the overland rules in the phb.

Also, check out the section on spells that start with words like "cure" and "heal". That's what my players have done when they absolutely positively had to be there ASAP, and weren't high enough level to cast teleport, wind walk, or the like.

As for paladin's mounts, I thought they ought to be tougher than any ordinary horse -- so they get treated just like characters, meaning the damage is subdual. (If the half-orc can carry the halfling for an overland forced march without taking real damage, why not let the paladin's class ability do the same?)

I kind of like the idea, but I don't like that it has a duration. The paladin shouldn't have to wait 'til 12th level to have his horse hang around all day. The druid & ranger's companions and the sorcerer & wizard's familiars will hang out, why not the paladin's mount?

But I do like the ability to call it to you; that is neat. It solves a bunch of logistical problems, as others have said. I gave the NPC paladin in my campaign armor that let him call his warhorse from afar, and I would've given a PC paladin the same gizmo. So I kind of have to like the idea.

 

[Henry]

...Why aren't animal companions treated with a system similar to magical items? Invest gold and XP in bonding with your critter, if you want one. It would take away the silly design assumptions for those of us who don't want a walking menagerie, and alleviate the need for even sillier "fixes" like the paladin warhorse one...

Rouser has a very good point with this. Just as many, many wizards have never wanted to take a familiar, many druids and paladins just may not want an animal companion. I'd rather have the total option to get one be separate. That said, these changes (both to paladin's horse and druid companion) look great to me so far.

 

[Olive]

A spectre is haunting the En Boards — the spectre of the palamount. All the powers of WotC have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Collins and Williams, Stark and cook, Seattle designers and Canadian librarians.

Where is the opposition that has not been decried as munchkin by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of munckinism, against the more advanced opposition degisners, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. The Palamount is already acknowledged by all WotC powers to be itself a class feature.

II. It is high time that Palamaount fans should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of the palamount with a manifesto of the palamounts themselves.

 

[John Crichton]

A spectre is haunting the En Boards — the spectre of the palamount. All the powers of WotC have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Collins and Williams, Stark and cook, Seattle designers and Canadian librarians.

Where is the opposition that has not been decried as munchkin by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of munckinism, against the more advanced opposition degisners, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. The Palamount is already acknowledged by all WotC powers to be itself a class feature.

II. It is high time that Palamaount fans should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of the palamount with a manifesto of the palamounts themselves.

We prefer to be called Poké-mount Enthusiasts © .

:: edited everything ::

 

[jester47]

There are times when having a horse clomping around just isn't appropriate.

Like when?

The way I see it unless there is a social, or serious spatial obstacle, why not have a horse clomping around?

I can think of a situation where the party is crawling through 5' high tunnels where it just is not appropriate, but what about social situations that get disrupted? Say there is a feast given by a local prince in a huge hall, some evil bastard gates a pit fiend into the party to kill some dignitary that has shown up. However the paladins of the local order are all there and they hop on thier warhorses which were there all of a sudden.

Or somthing silly like that.

I think when you start to make clear rules and things about magic, you cheapen it, and take away the mystery. Thats why I hate all the celtic magic crap that turns up in literature. Thats why I thought Metachlorians were stupid until I figured out they were not a cause but a symptom. That is why I like the gandalf of the hobbit better than the gandalf of LotR better than the full picture of the character given by the life works of tolkein. Thats why T.H. Whites merlin beats the crap out of Ursula K leguin's merlin. Its the mystery the unexplained. I just dont see why it all has to make sense.

You escape the bad guy and leave him in the dust.
The bad guy is waiting for you at the next town. (Teleport)
You kill the badguy, and leave town.
The bad guy shows up ahead of you on the road (Teleport, raise dead)
You run him through.
In the next town you find the bad guy sipping beer at the local tavern (clone)
He says he has a message in a scroll for you, but you do not care and you kill him.
This could go on forever with magic...

 

[cavesalamander]

So far we have the Poké-horse. (et. al.).
...Any others?

The analogy that springs immediately to my mind when I read this rules-change is Buecephalus from the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Remember when they're in the belly of the whale-monster and the horse comes crashing through the walls to save them?

A friend of mine also compared it to Comet, from The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.