Paladins: Why are they balanced?

[mhacdebhandia]

I disagree, for the simple reason that it's not a bad thing to "have" to adhere to the paladin's code. If you honestly considered it a problem, why would you be playing a paladin?

The reason you lose your class abilities is thematic, because of what those abilities represent, and because of literary precedence - in Three Hearts and Three Lions, the direct literary inspiration for the D&D paladin, the main character's holy aura (which keeps the monsters away as he and his companions rest) begins to fail when he has impure thoughts about the woman he travels with.

I don't consider it a true restriction because a paladin shouldn't want to commit the actions which cause a loss of abilities in the first place. It's really a plot device, like a character's loyalty to a particular king or a wizard's mission to gather new spells for his order as he comes across them. Yeah, there's a mechanical penalty attached, but so what? Does anyone really care? How many people plan to play naughty paladins anyway?

You can bring up the question of jerkoff DMs who screw paladins over with stupid interpretations of the paladin's code, but that's a straightforward red herring. It has nothing to do with the rules and it doesn't justify changing them, which is unnecessary anyway - aesthetic preference is justification enough.

If you don't like it, change it. I don't have a problem with it, though, and I won't accept that it's an objective problem.

 

[FireLance]

Suppose someone wanted to play a paladin, but said, "hey, I'm not too cool on this whole 'losing my character abilities thing.' How about we do away with it, but leave the class otherwise unchanged?" Do you have any mechanical reason for denying this request, or is is all flavor?

For me, it will be all flavor. If I'm running a RP-light, combat-oriented game, the basic plot will be some variation of "good-aligned patron sends party on mission, party encounters a variety of bad guys which they beat to a pulp, party has climatic confrontation with BBEG". Any paladin PCs will almost never be put in a position where they might be in danger of losing their powers, so it wouldn't be a big issue.

That said, in more RP-heavy games, the concept of the paladin is very closely tied to the idea of doing good and avoiding evil, to the point where it is difficult to separate the mechanics from that aspect of the flavor. Nonetheless, I'm still not too keen on the idea that a paladin should lose all his powers for a single act of evil. A few ideas I've had to "fix" this are:
1. Tying the basic paladin powers to separate oaths
2. Giving XP for encountering moral dilemmas and limiting their downside, and
3. Requiring paladins to do good instead of not do evil.

 

[Li Shenron]

If you were a deity empowering your front line in the battle against evil, would you try to keep him from overshadowing Joe Six-pack the fighter?

Shouldn't the Paladin be the most powerful of the core classes rather than merely being that guy who doesn't suck as much as the monk?

A 1st level paladin overshadows >99% of the population of the earth, who is a commoner or a NPC class. Joe Six-pack the fighter is a 1st level Warrior.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Power is meant to be defined by level, irrespective of class (or race).
If the most powerful individuals in your game world are elves who have been touched by the light of Ilúvatar, make sure to have them be high-level elves. You don't have to make the elf race any more powerful.

I agree to class, but race isn't as clear. Noone will disagree when I say that a level 10 human fighter will be annihilated by a level 5 balor fighter.

Races do influence the power level somewhat (which is why there is LA and racial HD).

I still agree that the most powerful elves shouldn't be all 1st-level commoners - unless said "Light Elves" have lots of racial HD and other benefits.

Since they can lose their class abilities if they violate the code, well, they should also get something back for it. To me it's just that simple.

The problem is that while there is a strict rule about what happens when he violates the code, there is no strict rule about when he has violated the code. Some DMs will take his powers as soon as he didn't say good day to a man on the street, others will let him kill babies if it serves the greater good (and be quite lenient with the definition of said greater good)

Now as you suggest, it may be just as simple as giving them expanded authority and respect from the populace, but it needs to be something real, since the consequences for failure are also real. Putting the idea that a mechanical disadvantage balances a mechanical advantage into the paladin makes the class balanced from, well, a mechanical standpoint.

I might accept something like "+4 on all cha based checks against every individual that recognizes the paladin's Divine Authority". He gets a mechanical benefit, but when that mechanical benefit kicks in is not clearly defined: Some will say that every LG citicen in the whole kingdom will be subject to his Divine Authority. Some will say only those with the same patron deity. Some will say that everyone who outranks him isn't subject to that authority (like rulers and the like)....

Now it may be that the design of the paladin is already supposed to be better than a normal character class, but honestly I don't see that, and I haven't seen anyone argue it yet.

All I know is that paladins aren't weak. Compared to the fighter, they give up tower shield proficiency and the bonus feats. In return, they gain a truckload of resistances (including very nice saving throws), turn undead (and divine feats to go with it) and smite evil (they can be quite impressive offensively, I've seen such a paladin in action). The spells they get can be quite useful, too.


The codex isn't really that much of a drawback (unless your DM wants to take the fun out of your game) and can in fact be the source of great roleplaying opportunities.

Not really. The Sword is only +2 in the hand of a commoner.

It's not quite the point: The paladin would get the holy avenger. The Commoner would get the vorpal dagger +3.

 

[Voadam]

As I wrote in my first post, the designers of 3x decided that balancing roleplaying disadvantages with mechanical advantages was a bad idea, and I agree. If the paladin class simply talked about the code as being something the paladin would try and follow (i.e., as a roleplaying notion) then there would be no need to balance them mechanically. Since they can lose their class abilities if they violate the code, well, they should also get something back for it. To me it's just that simple.

If you agree roleplaying disadvantages compensated by mechanical advantages are bad, then the solution to the paladin's roleplaying disadvantage backed by a mechanical penalty is to remove the mechanical penalty for roleplay, not to increase their mechanical advantages.

Taking away the paladin's possibility of falling, code, and alignment requirements, leaves them balanced mechanically with the other classes IMO.

 

[Mallus]

Why are paladins 'balanced'? Because D&D is first and foremost a game. This is also the reason black doesn't start down a rook in chess.

That was easy. Next question!

 

[hong]

A 1st level paladin overshadows >99% of the population of the earth, who is a commoner or a NPC class. Joe Six-pack the fighter is a 1st level Warrior.

What he said.

Or she said.

Or something.

 

[tzor]

What is balance? The question is, of course, rhetorical so I’ll skip the intermediate steps and come to the following statement: Characters have to “balance” within the gaming world. The common assumption that balance must always mean “in combat,” is in its core a flawed one. So the question of how balanced the paladin is must depend on the type of campaign your characters are in.

The 3rd level paladin has divine health, the immunity to disease. Now consider a typical sewer campaign that has a lot of dire rats. Suddenly the paladin has the big advantage. The same is true when the paladin reaches 6th level and can start curing disease. It’s of no use whatsoever if there is no disease in a campaign, just as it can be annoying to play a druid in a very non wilderness campaign.

 

[Endur]

I played in a campaign where it was almost impossible to get an atonement (Living Greyhawk). I know one player's character who went two to three years without his divine abilities.

You might call that a mechanical disadvantage.

P.s. the character in this case wasn't even a paladin, but a cleric of a good god. Which also raises the point that Paladins are not the only characters with a mechanical disadvantage for role-playing reasons.

 

[Endur]

bump