Paladin with Domains

[maggot]

Okay, so I borrowed the basic idea from Monte Cook's book of hallowed might and the book of righteousnees, and then updated it to 3.5 and altered it a bit more. But is it balanced.

Basically, remove Turn Undead and Remove Disease from the paladin. The paladin chooses a clerical domain. At 4th level, she gains the domain power as a cleric of his paladin level-3. (If he chooses the Sun domain, she gains the ability to turn undead as a cleric-3 instead of the normal domain power.) Also, add the domain spells to the paladin's spell list, and add Remove Disease as a 3rd level spell.

I think if anything this is rather weak, but it is hard to tell. Removing the ability to cast a spell once per week and adding a spell to the lists are both very weak abilities. Trading turn undead for a domain ability could be strong, or it could be weak depending on the campaign and the domain. I'm just not sure.

 

[Spatzimaus]

We've done something similar IMC for the last couple years. But it's not quite the same as what you listed; for one thing, our Paladins keep the Turn Undead, but lose the Disease Immunity ability instead. Turning is just too big of a thing to sacrifice.
The Paladin chooses one domain at level 4, gaining its domain power and spells; the domain can be one of their deity's domains, OR a special domain linked to the Paladin class itself (Purification: domain power is a permanent +1/level save bonus against diseases, and the power list is full of spells that counter disease, poison, curses, etc.) The Paladin is treated as level/2 for the purposes of these powers, except for Turning domain powers which are level-3.
In general this makes the class slightly stronger, since the extra spell slot for the domain spells will be used far more than 1/week and the player can customize a bit better. But the difference isn't much; you're still only getting at most four levels of spells.

Well, IMC we did a LOT more, of course, that's just the basic change regarding Domain. Our campaign uses the "Paladin" class for all four extreme alignments (LG, CG, LE, CE) with slightly differing spell lists, rules of conduct, and class abilities for each. Instead of a standard Mount, there's a more customizable "Companion" system. Instead of +1 spell for domains, the Paladins can swap to the domain spell. And the Evil-vs-Good class abilities were shifted to the Law-Chaos axis, which substantially weakened them for players who used Detect Evil as a crutch (DE as a spell on your power list is just fine, but as an unlimited class ability it's too much).

 

[Terath Ninir]

Since paladins only get spell levels 1-4, getting the domain doesn't mean much. Turn is very powerful, especially if the paladin has a bunch of Divine feats.

Actually, if you just gave the spells, you wouldn't need to change anything at all. It's only the domain power that is worth something; and then usually not *that* much to a paladin. I'd judge it on a case-by-case basis.

 

[maggot]

Since paladins only get spell levels 1-4, getting the domain doesn't mean much. Turn is very powerful, especially if the paladin has a bunch of Divine feats.

I guess I should say this is for a nearly core game where there are no divine feats. In this case how much does turn undead matter?

 

[Nifft]

IMHO, one Domain as a Feat with a pre-req of "Paladin Level 12" would be perfectly fine. Things get silly quickly after that level anyway.

-- N

 

[robberbaron]

Hmm. I quite like the idea of paladins having a domain.
Not sure I'd take anything away, but it's definitely worth considering.

Thanks.

 

[Li Shenron]

Since paladins only get spell levels 1-4, getting the domain doesn't mean much. Turn is very powerful, especially if the paladin has a bunch of Divine feats.

Actually, if you just gave the spells, you wouldn't need to change anything at all. It's only the domain power that is worth something; and then usually not *that* much to a paladin. I'd judge it on a case-by-case basis.

I wouldn't say the spells mean little. It's true that at the level when they get them, the spell's level is pretty low. On the other hand, a Paladin has really really few spells, and if he doesn't have a high Wis (for bonus spells) he even suffers an extra delay before getting next level spells.

The domain would grant 1 more spell slot for the domain spell at the levels when a "0" appears in the spells/day. I think this is well worth the Remove Disease ability which is probably as limited (in power) as the spells you get, but have less uses than 1/day.

OTOH, I wouldn't underestimate the Turn Undead compared to a domain power. Of course it depends on the domain, but this trade-off could result in a slight loss, unless the domain power is NOT level-dependent.

 

[Terath Ninir]

If you don't allow divine feats, turn undead is a little less cool, but it's still very valuable in most settings. In the "official" module series, for one, I'd guesstimate about 1/4 - 1/3 of the enemies we fought were undead, so it was really potent, especially given the high Cha of most paladins.

If the domain comes with extra spell slots per day then, yes, the ability is significant. Non-clerics don't usually get the bonus slots, so I wasn't thinking of that. If you give those, the extra 1-4 spells per day is pretty cool, and does balance with the loss of turn undead and remove disease, more or less. If it's just a larger spell list, that's not really all that inspiring, especially given that most lists a paladin would take are already similar to their current spell list.

 

[Li Shenron]

If the domain comes with extra spell slots per day then, yes, the ability is significant. Non-clerics don't usually get the bonus slots, so I wasn't thinking of that. If you give those, the extra 1-4 spells per day is pretty cool, and does balance with the loss of turn undead and remove disease, more or less. If it's just a larger spell list, that's not really all that inspiring, especially given that most lists a paladin would take are already similar to their current spell list.

Yes, I was assuming that the poster meant tho give extra slot for those domain spells, because that's how it works for clerics, and domain spells aren't added to the list (they can't prepare domain spells in regular slots). But not I have read the first post again and noticed he meant as you say, no extra slots (at least they aren't mentioned) and domain spells simply added to the list; I agree, this way it's much less useful.