Paladins - likes and dislikes?

[Nightfall]

Part,

Well if you'd like they could instead maybe a) cast heal once per day (Gold Knight), b) Cast greater magic weapon once per day (Iron Knight), c) Cast Aura of Courage (Mithril Knight) or d) Cast Magic Circle against Evil (Silver Knight).

Howse that for starters?

 

[Agback]

It´s probably because the standard answer that some paladins use when they detect an evil person is a good traditional smite.

Not enough smites in the day. Even if only 10% of the population is of evil alignment….

 

[Nightfall]

They're rarely are enough smites per day. But then that's why there's extra smiting!

 

[Geoff Watson]

I like the Paladin, unfortunately there are some problems associated with it.

One-True-Way: Many people think there is only one way to play a Paladin, and if you don't play it that way you aren't playing a Paladin 'properly'. Unfortunately, there are many different "one-true-way"s.

Evil Alignment: Many people disagree about alignment, such as how evil someone has to be to be Evil; up to 50% of the general population in some cases, though by the RAW they'd have to be extremely bad to be evil.

Things I dislike about the Paladin:
Remove disease: nearly useless, give it to them as a 1st level spell, and give them a few more spells per day.

Geoff.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There were some nice articles on the concept of "one true way" and paladins over the years in Dragon.

One I remember in particular talked about a Paladin based upon Christian Knights and another one based on Islamic Knights facing one another in battle during the Crusades.

Both are paladins, both follow the same God, share holy texts...and yet they could hate each other with deep and abiding passion and religious fervor as they meet in battle...

Or they could both be gentlemen and gentle men of God, avoiding conflict with each other whenever possible.

The point? That there really was no "one true way" to be a Paladin.

Unfortunately, that concept has yet to be widely disseminated.

 

[blargney the second]

Suppose a paladin in your campaign ran into a farmer (commoner 1) and for some reason detected evil and noticed the farmer was evil. So what?

It requires no interaction with the NPC, which is uninteresting to me. Pretty straightforward, really.

-blarg

 

[TheLe]

Ah, the Pally. I'm going to have to award +5 courage points to the OP for having the guts to start a Paladin thread.

LOL. Thanks. Honestly, I didn't there would be much hooplah over it. I thought most people were happy with the Paladin. Imagine my surprise.

Oddly, I started a "Barbarians - Likes and Dislikes" thread too. I expected people to rip it up pretty badly, but to my surprise people are generally happy with the Barbarian.

The irony does not elude me.

~Le

 

[doghead]

I like the idea of the paladin; god's holy warrior. Some described them as grim crusaders waging a never ending war, or something like that. I liked that description.

I don't really have much of a problem with the mechanics. I do like the idea of having a little more customabilty in the class.

I don't like the whole LG, one code fits all. I think that the paladin's code and alignment should be based on the deity they serve and the dogma and articles of faith of that deity. Skills should also reflect their deity's area of influence as well; paladins of nature a deity should have knowledge nature, for example.

I'm not a fan of classes. In my own games, I use a jerry built classless system. But if you are going to have classes, I tend to think that the paladin makes a better PrC class than a base class. Generally, I think most of the culturally specific types make better PrC than base classes.

thotd

 

[sckeener]

Not enough smites in the day. Even if only 10% of the population is of evil alignment….

that is why you attack first and if the peasant is still alive, smite the second attack. Or you have one paladin in a group of guardsmen do a sweep through town arresting/killing anyone that is evil. Or setup choke points and weed out the evil out of countries and towns...their detect evil is unlimited.

If you can't tell I hate paladins as written.

Mechanics wise:
I think their detect evil should be an obscene bonus to sense motive.
Their immunity to fear should bonus to save.

Theme wise:
Alignment should be based off god (open it to all the alignments)
Change Smite Evil to Smite Infidel (basically smack anyone not of the same religion) [after all the players are most likely smiting only evil things anyway]
Code of conduct should be written for every god for the clerics and the paladins to follow.

 

[green slime]

There are only two things I really dislike about paladins:

The remove disease ability is far, far too weak. IMC I've replaced it with remove afliction, which basically covers all the lower level remove x spells, and lesser restoration. What the blue blazes, its only a few times a week, for godness sake!!

The spell list or their caster level in general really needs boosting. They are crippled by the low caster level in what would otherwise be a semi-interesting spell list. What is the point of a 16th level paladin casting greater magic weapon as a 8th level cleric? Either create special spells for the paladin, or increase their caster level so they actually can gain some use of these spells.