Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5579751" data-attributes="member: 42582">I haven't read Three Hearts and Three Lions, and indeed only know of it as the immediate inspiration for D&D paladins and trolls.But I find it hard to believe that D&D paladins, either directly, or via Poul Anderson's mediation, aren't influenced by classic tales of saintly kings and knights. After all, the classic paladin abilities - laying on hands to heal injury and disease, and an incorruptibility of both body and mind (ie immunity to disease and saving throw bonuses) - are pretty typical attributes of those saintly figures. Similarly, it's not as if Tolkien spun the notion that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer" out of whole cloth.As to the Lancelot/Galahad/paladin question, in 4e I would cast Lancelot as a STR paladin and Galahad as a CHA paladin. And give Lancelot the striker-style alternative to Lay on Hands (from Divine Power).That idea, which I agree is very important to the conception of Christian knighthood (and the Ordeal more generally) is one that no version of D&D does a particularly good job of implementing- the closest that 4e gets is by way of "true knight" style paragon paths, or the whole idea of the CHA paladin, but these don't give the PC any distinctive benefit for pursuing truth over falsity. Maybe an Insight- or Religion-based skill power would be one way to do it.I don't know how Pendragon handles it. HeroQuest and The Riddle of Steel both have ways of somewhat giving effect to it, via relationship augments and spiritual attributes respectively.</blockquote>

Verification