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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5436898" data-attributes="member: 4937">So before I present the class, a little bit of its history.  When I picked up the 3.0 Player's Handbook, I was most disappointed in the Paladin implementation.  First, it seemed to me on first impression that the 3.0 designers had overcompenstated.  In earlier editions the Rogue and Cleric were the weakest classes, but they seemed to me on first blush to now be among the most powerful.  The Paladin in earlier editions was an overpowered class, almost what we'd now call a prestige class, that was sorta the reward you'd have for rolling the 17 charisma needed to enter the class.  Adding the Unearthed Arcana rules that made it a Cavalier as well only made it a lot worse.  But the 3.0 Paladin seemed to me to be one of the weakest classes.  Worse yet, the 3.0 designers had not taken the opportunity to update the class in the same (to me) brilliant manner that they had updated the cleric.  The class remained 'good only' and regardless of the alignment or philosophy it represented it had basically the same schtick.Enter the single best RPG supplement ever written - Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous' by Aaron Loeb and it's 'Holy Warrior' class (and latter the much less well done 'Unholy Warrior' class by a different author).  For the longest time, that was my 'Champion' class.  But I quickly became disatisfied with this.  The 'Holy Warrior' implementation was hamstrung by several things.  First, it felt it had to stay true to the 3.0 Paladin - meaning that the 3.0 Paladin could be implemented in every detail using the class.  This meant that the class remained too weak.  Secondly, as I got familiar with more and more of the different possibilities of the class, I found the builds lacked balance and in some cases clarity.  Too much was left up to DM arbitration.  Thirdly, the Unholy/Holy warrior division was difficult to breach.  They didn't naturally fit together as the same class even if they had identical mechanics.  There wasn't for example a lot of options for being a neutral champion, and the two classes didn't share options when it seemed in some cases they could.  Finally, the implementation was highly specific to the campaign world Aaron had described.  You couldn't as a player or DM easily build 'do it yourself' Champions to fit dieties not found in the BotR.  My attempt to address these short comings in the otherwise excellent Holy Warrior class is the 'Champion'.</blockquote>

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