Paladins - likes and dislikes?

[Lord Pendragon]

I like the flavor of the paladin class.
I like the pokemount. It allows me to have a trusted companion and useful combat aid both.
I like most of the supernatural abilities of the class.


I dislike the lack of high-end abilities. An extra few points of lay-on-hands is not worth as much as 9th-level spells. Or even another feat.

I dislike the fact that due to its size, the paladin's mount is often unable to journey with its master into dungeons, meaning the paladin fights understrength in a lot of situations. Unless he's a halfling or gnome.

I dislike that paladins have 1/2HD caster level. It makes even the decent low-level spells they get fairly worthless at the levels they become available. Being limited to 4th-level spells is already limitation enough, without the double-whammy of a halved caster level.

I dislike that paladin spells are high-level abilities that do not have high-level effects, in order to prevent clerics from emulating them (i.e. the 3.5 nerf to Holy Sword.)

I dislike that paladin spellcasting is based on Wisdom, instead of Charisma.

 

[Choranzanus]

The problem with detect evil is that you can discover traitors and people who want to trick you too easily.

As for mounted combat, I never tried it and it doesn't look too powerful considering the number of feats. That you cannot use it underground is not such a big problem. In real life mounted combat was very powerful. If you charge a group of footmen with normal weapons such as swords they will not just stand there and get impaled, they will scatter immediately. I like those images where a knight charges a dragon with a lance, it looks a lot more realistic and unlike sword it could actually be effective.

Paladin is a frontliner with usually few range capacities, so spells simply don't fit. As I already said I would like to see those imunnities and auras bolstered. Perhaps he could be immune to curse or level drain (or get a save). Aura of evil protection is perhaps to powerful, but I am sure we can think of something. In my homebrews incorporeal undead usually cause fear on succesful attack, so fear immunity is very powerful.

As a sidenote: Back in the days we had protection from evil. Now we have also protection from good/law/chaos. Back in the days we had paladin. Now we also have blackguard (what a stupid name). What comes next? Good undead? The political correctnes is reaching absurd levels. Please conserve the flavor, it is all too easy to paint white black and vice versa. But
there is no evil equivalent of paladin. That should be obvious from the flavor.

And corrupted paladins are a cliche, because they are, of course the most difficult to corrupt. A paladin losing his abilities because of his deeds is as unlikely as any cleric.

 

[blargney the second]

What comes next? Good undead?

Already flew past you. They're called Deathless.
-blarg

 

[Choranzanus]

Already flew past you. They're called Deathless.
-blarg

Uh.....yes ......Anyway, it used to be "you vs demons", I don't remember any celestials either. At least paladin as a core class is doing a heroic last stand. I hope those guys at Necromancer games are taking notes.

I want to restate that good and evil are antagonistic, but not symetric. I liked the previous flavor more.

 

[pawsplay]

But you could always cast a reversed protection from good, and "anti-paladins" appeared in the original Greyhawk.

 

[Mercule]

Likes:

-Holy warrior and "knight in shining armor" archetype. Yeah, there are other ways to play it, but I like the fact that the class oozes that image.

-Alignment restriction. Paladins are lawful good. Period. The Unearthed Arcana (or other) variants aren't Paladins in any real sense.

Dislikes:
-Pokemount. Yup, it's a silly word, but it's a silly ability. Not every ability needs to be optimized for the dungeon. This is exactly the thought process that is annoying me with the WotC design dept.

-Paladin should be a prestige class. I actually can't see any good argument for making it a base class ("it's always been that way" doesn't qualify as "good").

Everything is is minor tweaks. I'm not particularly invested in the mechanics behind smiting, laying on of hands, or detect evil (though I'd hate to see x/day, that's because I dislike that mechanic for any ability).

 

[Allegro]

I was thinking about the cure dieses ability of the paladin. I would prefer it to be an option of lay of hands. 10 hp = 1 cure disease. That way the paladin would still have the ability and wouldn’t need to track a once a week ability. If you treat the entire lay of hands as a pseudo mana point system and remove all spell casting progression for the class, I think you would have something interesting. 5 points to embue your sword with good energy, 20 points to make it disrupting, ect. A certain number of these abilities could be picked every level.

In addition, I am underwhelmed by level 10-20 advancement. It seams that the paladin has very little to look forwards to compared to other classes by advancing in paladin. I would have stuck with my last paladin character if I had the ability have a cleric like prestige class that started me off casting 3rd level cleric spells. As an 11th level paladin he was already casting 3rd level divine spells, it seemed ludicrous to have to start with 1st level spells. In addition the lay of hands need to speed up after 10th level maybe 2 hp per level from 10-14 and 3 from 15-19 to 4 at level 20. Considering the type of healing and combat abilities a 20th level cleric can dish out I doubt the paladin will be outshining the cleric at those later levels.

 

[Quartz]

I generally like the paladin for the first few levels. Then it's time to multiclass into something else. I particularly like the Knight / Fighter / Paladin mix: a good Cha and 2 - 4 levels in each, followed by a level of Divine Crusader (Healing or Instinct), then switching to another prestige class offering advancement in divine spellcasting. Or staying in Divine Crusader if that offers more domains (I suggest about levels 4 and 8).

I dislike the mount ability unless monitored: it's too much of an advantage for small characters, who can have their mounts anywhere; and wholly inappropriate for others - what use does a centaur paladin have for a mount? The pokemount thing gets me too.

The roleplaying side doesn't bother me too much: the availability of the class should depend upon the type of campaign you're running. If it's a grim and gritty campaign, then the paladin class should simply not be available to PCs. Equally, if you're running an Arthurian setting, then the class should be encouraged.

 

[Jack of Shadows]

In addition, I am underwhelmed by level 10-20 advancement. It seams that the paladin has very little to look forwards to compared to other classes by advancing in paladin. I would have stuck with my last paladin character if I had the ability have a cleric like prestige class that started me off casting 3rd level cleric spells. As an 11th level paladin he was already casting 3rd level divine spells, it seemed ludicrous to have to start with 1st level spells. In addition the lay of hands need to speed up after 10th level maybe 2 hp per level from 10-14 and 3 from 15-19 to 4 at level 20. Considering the type of healing and combat abilities a 20th level cleric can dish out I doubt the paladin will be outshining the cleric at those later levels.

I'm playing a Paladin currently and I've hit that same sort of point. Admittedly all the earlier abilities continue to upgrade as you go. I've been toying with the idea of switching to Knight at 11th level but I'm not certain if the synergy would work at that level.

Jack

 

[TheLe]

Man, there is alot of hate for the paladin mount..

lol

`Le