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What DO you DO for... Paladins?
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<blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 2975230" data-attributes="member: 3051"><p>That's the point. Players were using <em>detect evil</em> as a crutch; as long as the party detected as non-evil, they just wrote this limitation off. If an NPC detected as evil, they'd automatically treat him as an enemy; refuse to deal with him, attack him, whatever. This isn't a good thing; it ruined roleplaying, and made any kind of complex evil characters infeasible.</p><p></p><p>Because of these issues, we had house-ruled <em>detect evil</em> early on. The "evil creature" line was basically removed; simply having the evil alignment wasn't enough to trigger a magical reaction. You had to either have spells with an [Evil] descriptor on you, have items created with [Evil] spells on you, be a cleric/paladin of an Evil-aligned deity, be a creature with the [Evil] descriptor (outsiders), be Undead, or be IN THE PROCESS of committing an extremely evil action/praying to an Evil deity. Point is, there's a difference between "evil" and "Evil".</p><p></p><p>So, replacing <em>detect evil</em> with <em>detect law</em> didn't drastically affect the code of conduct; in either case we were already requiring the Paladin to put some actual effort into maintaining his code. Oh, and <em>sense motive</em> and <em>bluff</em> became pretty popular.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>#2 is more than balanced by #3. Also, I should mention that we added a custom Purification domain for Paladin-heavy deities, whose granted power is, you guessed it, disease immunity, and whose low-level domain spells are <em>bless</em>, <em>lesser restoration</em>, <em>remove disease</em>, and <em>neutralize poison</em>. So, Paladins could swap for those and still get the same functionality as before.</p><p></p><p>As for #3, two points:</p><p>1> When I said "as cleric", I meant "they swap for this domain spell in the same way Clerics swap for cure/inflict spells", meaning in regards to casting time, metamagic, etc.</p><p>2> But now that you mention it, we DID alter Clerics. Instead of getting an extra spell slot per day for domain spells, they pick one domain spell for each spell level (ie, fill the domain slot with it, as normal), and THAT is the spell they swap a given spell level for. So, an Air/Travel Cleric decides whether to swap his 1st-level spells for <em>obscuring mist</em> or <em>longstrider</em> for the day, and so on.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Actually, no. In terms of raw power, the mount isn't really any stronger than before. Much more flexible, and with access to a few extra abilities, but one possible end result of this system is pretty much identical to what'd happen if you used the DotF rule that let you wait a level to take a Celestial Warhorse as a mount. We had basically made this change LONG before we made the others I've mentioned.</p><p></p><p>Part of this was to get around the fact that certain Mount items became "must-buy" items for Paladins, depleting their resources. Part of it was to give access to spell-like abilities that'd let the mount still keep up with the party at high levels. And part was just for flavor.</p><p></p><p>At one point, we had two Paladins in the group.</p><p>One was an Elven LG Guardian, basically a conversion of an existing Paladin; his horse, Misthered, had boosted STR and DR, with a <em>smite</em> ability and a 100' foot speed. He had a few of the problems you're thinking of, but really, by level 20 you're not doing too much time in cramped dungeons anyway.</p><p>The other was a Halfling CG Crusader (originally a Fighter/Ranger, I think) with a Medium-sized Dire Weasel "mount" named "Mittens", who could go anywhere the party could (and then some). Since the Paladin had taken the Feat I mentioned in the other thread, Mittens at level 20 could fly, had a 75' land speed, spell resistance 30, Darkvision 60', an AC of 31 before items/buffs, and could <em>plane shift</em> twice per day. Oh, and +18-19 for Hide, Move Silently, and Spot. All this was at the cost of other abilities, though; he had no DR, low STR, and so on.</p><p></p><p>I also left out one other change:</p><p>7> Paladins and Monks can multiclass freely with the race's Favored Class, as long as Paladin/Monk remains the highest class. (For Humans, the first other class they take levels in is the "Favored Class" for this purpose.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Spatzimaus, post: 2975230, member: 3051"] That's the point. Players were using [i]detect evil[/i] as a crutch; as long as the party detected as non-evil, they just wrote this limitation off. If an NPC detected as evil, they'd automatically treat him as an enemy; refuse to deal with him, attack him, whatever. This isn't a good thing; it ruined roleplaying, and made any kind of complex evil characters infeasible. Because of these issues, we had house-ruled [i]detect evil[/i] early on. The "evil creature" line was basically removed; simply having the evil alignment wasn't enough to trigger a magical reaction. You had to either have spells with an [Evil] descriptor on you, have items created with [Evil] spells on you, be a cleric/paladin of an Evil-aligned deity, be a creature with the [Evil] descriptor (outsiders), be Undead, or be IN THE PROCESS of committing an extremely evil action/praying to an Evil deity. Point is, there's a difference between "evil" and "Evil". So, replacing [i]detect evil[/i] with [i]detect law[/i] didn't drastically affect the code of conduct; in either case we were already requiring the Paladin to put some actual effort into maintaining his code. Oh, and [i]sense motive[/i] and [i]bluff[/i] became pretty popular. #2 is more than balanced by #3. Also, I should mention that we added a custom Purification domain for Paladin-heavy deities, whose granted power is, you guessed it, disease immunity, and whose low-level domain spells are [i]bless[/i], [i]lesser restoration[/i], [i]remove disease[/i], and [i]neutralize poison[/i]. So, Paladins could swap for those and still get the same functionality as before. As for #3, two points: 1> When I said "as cleric", I meant "they swap for this domain spell in the same way Clerics swap for cure/inflict spells", meaning in regards to casting time, metamagic, etc. 2> But now that you mention it, we DID alter Clerics. Instead of getting an extra spell slot per day for domain spells, they pick one domain spell for each spell level (ie, fill the domain slot with it, as normal), and THAT is the spell they swap a given spell level for. So, an Air/Travel Cleric decides whether to swap his 1st-level spells for [i]obscuring mist[/i] or [i]longstrider[/i] for the day, and so on. Actually, no. In terms of raw power, the mount isn't really any stronger than before. Much more flexible, and with access to a few extra abilities, but one possible end result of this system is pretty much identical to what'd happen if you used the DotF rule that let you wait a level to take a Celestial Warhorse as a mount. We had basically made this change LONG before we made the others I've mentioned. Part of this was to get around the fact that certain Mount items became "must-buy" items for Paladins, depleting their resources. Part of it was to give access to spell-like abilities that'd let the mount still keep up with the party at high levels. And part was just for flavor. At one point, we had two Paladins in the group. One was an Elven LG Guardian, basically a conversion of an existing Paladin; his horse, Misthered, had boosted STR and DR, with a [i]smite[/i] ability and a 100' foot speed. He had a few of the problems you're thinking of, but really, by level 20 you're not doing too much time in cramped dungeons anyway. The other was a Halfling CG Crusader (originally a Fighter/Ranger, I think) with a Medium-sized Dire Weasel "mount" named "Mittens", who could go anywhere the party could (and then some). Since the Paladin had taken the Feat I mentioned in the other thread, Mittens at level 20 could fly, had a 75' land speed, spell resistance 30, Darkvision 60', an AC of 31 before items/buffs, and could [i]plane shift[/i] twice per day. Oh, and +18-19 for Hide, Move Silently, and Spot. All this was at the cost of other abilities, though; he had no DR, low STR, and so on. I also left out one other change: 7> Paladins and Monks can multiclass freely with the race's Favored Class, as long as Paladin/Monk remains the highest class. (For Humans, the first other class they take levels in is the "Favored Class" for this purpose.) [/QUOTE]
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What DO you DO for... Paladins?
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