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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurker37" data-source="post: 951260" data-attributes="member: 9522">Can you imagine the minmaxing that would occur if they put a Paladin PrC and a Paladin base class into the core rules?Player: "I'm a fifth level Paladin now, so for my sixth level, I'm taking a prestige class."Inexperienced GM: "What class?"Player: "The Paladin Prestige Class. That way, I get all my abilities again!"Inexperienced GM: "Er, I'm not sure..."Player: "C'mon, why else would it be in the core rules?"Inexperienced GM: "... OK" (Six months later, on the psychiatrist's couch)GM: "And that's when everything started going horribly, horribly wrong..."(Close curtain)I think you're trying to make the whole thing needlessly complicated. Just because a player has managed to get a character to 5th level (The standard requirement for most PrC's) does not guarantee that they would do any better at playing a paladin's restrictions than they did when they started.You see, the restrictions on playing a paladin have nothing to do with the character's stats. They're all about the player's ability to roleplay those restrictions. Just look at the running argument about the code here, and it is very clear that not everyone agrees on how that should be done. That's a clear indication that putting a code of behaviour into the prerequisites for qualifying for a prestige class is an open invitation for long, bitter arguments. Do you really want to have an argument like this every time someone with their heart set on playing a paladin reaches a new level with their current character?Is the paladin harder to roleplay properly than most other base classes? Probably. A wizard is also harder to use effectively than a vanilla fighter for a starting player - you have to learn the spell system as well as the combat system. You don't hear anyone suggesting that wizards should be a PrC, just because they're a little harder for inexperienced players to play. Likewise, the restrictions on the behaviour of a Paladin do not, in and of themselves, relegate it to a PrC.If you truly feel the need to do such a thing, adapt one of the paladin-like PrC's out of 'Defenders of the Faith'. They come close enough, and can do the job exactly with just a little tweaking, such as changing the spell list to the default paladin spell list.And here's my take on the argument: In the final analysis, deciding whether a paladin has broken their code is an issue dependant on world setting and GM more than anything else.</blockquote>

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