Some recent posts got me thinking about Paladins... They the hardest class to qualify for, so they must be soooooo rare?
So what are your experiences of them? I'm NOT talking about Pally Assasins or anything, real true horse riding, lance wielding Goody two shoes.
Have you ever known one to fall from grace?
I've known one, and that was a long time ago...
How many Paladins have you ever known in your games?
Moderator: Stik
How many Paladins have you ever known in your games?
"Doors and corners, I told him. Doors and corners."
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greenknight
- Vagabond
- Posts: 74
The answer depends on edition, really. AD&D (both 1st & 2nd Ed) has some really tough requirements to be a Paladin, and restrict them to Humans only. I very rarely saw PC Paladins in those editions, although NPC Paladins seemed to be a bit more common.
3e removed the ability score requirements entirely, and allowed any race. That made PC Paladins a more common sight, although even then I mostly saw Paladins rolled out in games where Divine characters are favored.
4e has taken it further by allowing Paladins to be of any alignment (although they are still a champion of their faith). 4e Paladins don't "fall" either, although they can be dealt with by other members of their faith if they stray too far from their faith. That makes Paladins much more common, although they still aren't the most popular class choice with many players.
3e removed the ability score requirements entirely, and allowed any race. That made PC Paladins a more common sight, although even then I mostly saw Paladins rolled out in games where Divine characters are favored.
4e has taken it further by allowing Paladins to be of any alignment (although they are still a champion of their faith). 4e Paladins don't "fall" either, although they can be dealt with by other members of their faith if they stray too far from their faith. That makes Paladins much more common, although they still aren't the most popular class choice with many players.
We have had around two in the last 10-12 years, both played up to standard with no “fall from grace". The one now in Tomb of Abyssthor is a Paladin/Cleric and there has been a couple of close calls but other than that, the player has done really well with a class that’s tough to play. I am strict with the Paladin, as even lying (chaotic act) will cause a Paladin to loose their ability although they can atone to get it back; I have never seen someone play a Paladin that has done an evil act.
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Another reason why I dislike 3e... Those requirements were there to make them rare, an ideal to live up to... You had to be damn lucky to get one!greenknight wrote: 3e removed the ability score requirements entirely, and allowed any race.
So in 4e they are fighters, with special powers, if you break the rules badly you just do something for the church and sorted.greenknight wrote: 4e has taken it further by allowing Paladins to be of any alignment (although they are still a champion of their faith). 4e Paladins don't "fall" either, although they can be dealt with by other members of their faith if they stray too far from their faith. That makes Paladins much more common, although they still aren't the most popular class choice with many players.
What about the item restrictions? Do people use them? Do they exist in 3 & 4e?
"Doors and corners, I told him. Doors and corners."
This is the way I do it, screw up and your going to have to be real goodChaosImp wrote:We have had around two in the last 10-12 years, both played up to standard with no “fall from grace". The one now in Tomb of Abyssthor is a Paladin/Cleric and there has been a couple of close calls but other than that, the player has done really well with a class that’s tough to play. I am strict with the Paladin, as even lying (chaotic act) will cause a Paladin to loose their ability although they can atone to get it back; I have never seen someone play a Paladin that has done an evil act.
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. Even if the Pally has to lie for the greater good, saving an innocent for example, he's still going to regret breaking his code.Not sure about the Paladin/cleric.
Dual class or demihuman? just my old school view, lol! Or 3,4e?
"Doors and corners, I told him. Doors and corners."
Castles and Crusades is really an Arch-type character game but they have made rules for multi-class characters. Unlike 1st and 2nd Ed multiclass characters can be of any race as the Paladin/Cleric in this case is human. Also unlike other editions the Paladin can't cast spells, the abilities they have is similar to the 1st and 2nd ed Paladin ( holy aura, immune to disease, lay on hands etc..). 95% of my group play single class characters but the Pal/Clr has an interesting background and is Holy elite of her church.
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We have one player in our group who loves to play a paladin and has played two, in two different campaigns. And when she doesn't have the scores for it, she winds up playing a LG fighter who is acts pretty much like a paladin.
ChaosImp mentions a character who is a "paladin/cleric." Although there is nothing in TETSNBN to prevent that, it doesn't sit right with me. As I've said before, the paladin is what the cleric was supposed to be. Had clerics been played the way they were originally intended, there would be no paladins, and it was only after the cleric's role as a support character and healing machine had evolved that the founders of the game had to take another swing at creating a holy warrior class.
ChaosImp mentions a character who is a "paladin/cleric." Although there is nothing in TETSNBN to prevent that, it doesn't sit right with me. As I've said before, the paladin is what the cleric was supposed to be. Had clerics been played the way they were originally intended, there would be no paladins, and it was only after the cleric's role as a support character and healing machine had evolved that the founders of the game had to take another swing at creating a holy warrior class.
"No matter where you go, there you are."
Pretty much what I thought as well.... there is something about it.... I thought it was just that i'm so old school!Stik wrote: ChaosImp mentions a character who is a "paladin/cleric." Although there is nothing in TETSNBN to prevent that, it doesn't sit right with me. As I've said before, the paladin is what the cleric was supposed to be. Had clerics been played the way they were originally intended, there would be no paladins, and it was only after the cleric's role as a support character and healing machine had evolved that the founders of the game had to take another swing at creating a holy warrior class.
"Doors and corners, I told him. Doors and corners."
Off the top of my head I can't remember any paladins played for any length of time back in 2E, but in my defense that was over a decade ago, and I didn't pay too much attention to characters other than mine. (I will say that the stat requirements in 2e weren't that hard to make, since most of my group just made up whatever stats they wanted.)
In 4e, there's been at least one, maybe two paladins played, but they don't come off that much different than any other class, and I tend to lump them in with Avengers and Warlords, so who knows.
In 3.5, paladins were more prevalent. I played two in recent memory, one single class paladin named Marlowe who was basically a pulp noir detective in a D&D world (thus the name). The character was pretty much born in the line in Chandler's essay "The Simple Art of Murder": Down these mean streets a man must go who is himself not mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. But I only played him to about 6th level before trading him out for a half-orc Fighter/Barbarian, for reasons I will get to in a moment.
The other paladin I played was for much longer, from 0 to 16th level, and he was a multiclass trainwreck, starting out as an Aristocrat (thus the "0th" level) and taking levels in Knight and Fighter as well as the PrC's of Knight Protector, Hospitaler, and Pious Templar.
The second paladin was much more fun to play despite not being that much mechanically different from the first, because in the latter game Alignment was a big deal. What makes a paladin fun for me is the moral dilemmas, having to choose between what you want to do, and what you need to do. In the first game, it wasn't an issue. It was a Black and White game, and the moral choices were basically "Do you do the Right thing, or the Wrong thing?"
The second game was much more interesting, because the game world was run by Lawful Evil rulers, so as a paladin everything I did had to be filtered between doing the Goodly thing, or doing the Lawful thing. It was a balancing act, but my favorite memories with that character was when we were in situations where those two sides of his code were in conflict, where he had to walk the line between doing the right thing and breaking the law.
That's what interests me about playing paladins, or any other character with a particularly strong moral viewpoint.
As a side note, I wasn't entirely sure playing a paladin was going to be possible in that game, because of the possibility of my paladin code getting me into a no-win situation where I would either lose my status for taking an Chaotic action for Good, or allowing an Evil action for Law. So I took the feats that would let me go to Blackguard so if I ever lost my paladin abilities, I could go Dark Side. Which I think would have been an interesting way to go; from the character's perspective, he would have been sacrificing his immortal soul to bid powers from Demons to fight the Devils that ran the world. But the game never went there and that's probably for the better, since that would have been a dark turn.
In 4e, there's been at least one, maybe two paladins played, but they don't come off that much different than any other class, and I tend to lump them in with Avengers and Warlords, so who knows.
In 3.5, paladins were more prevalent. I played two in recent memory, one single class paladin named Marlowe who was basically a pulp noir detective in a D&D world (thus the name). The character was pretty much born in the line in Chandler's essay "The Simple Art of Murder": Down these mean streets a man must go who is himself not mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. But I only played him to about 6th level before trading him out for a half-orc Fighter/Barbarian, for reasons I will get to in a moment.
The other paladin I played was for much longer, from 0 to 16th level, and he was a multiclass trainwreck, starting out as an Aristocrat (thus the "0th" level) and taking levels in Knight and Fighter as well as the PrC's of Knight Protector, Hospitaler, and Pious Templar.
The second paladin was much more fun to play despite not being that much mechanically different from the first, because in the latter game Alignment was a big deal. What makes a paladin fun for me is the moral dilemmas, having to choose between what you want to do, and what you need to do. In the first game, it wasn't an issue. It was a Black and White game, and the moral choices were basically "Do you do the Right thing, or the Wrong thing?"
The second game was much more interesting, because the game world was run by Lawful Evil rulers, so as a paladin everything I did had to be filtered between doing the Goodly thing, or doing the Lawful thing. It was a balancing act, but my favorite memories with that character was when we were in situations where those two sides of his code were in conflict, where he had to walk the line between doing the right thing and breaking the law.
That's what interests me about playing paladins, or any other character with a particularly strong moral viewpoint.
As a side note, I wasn't entirely sure playing a paladin was going to be possible in that game, because of the possibility of my paladin code getting me into a no-win situation where I would either lose my status for taking an Chaotic action for Good, or allowing an Evil action for Law. So I took the feats that would let me go to Blackguard so if I ever lost my paladin abilities, I could go Dark Side. Which I think would have been an interesting way to go; from the character's perspective, he would have been sacrificing his immortal soul to bid powers from Demons to fight the Devils that ran the world. But the game never went there and that's probably for the better, since that would have been a dark turn.
Hey Phindar,
That actually sounds kind of cool, sounds like you had a really cool DM. I think you've proved that despite the I think the word could be "Less rigid" system for 3 or 4e there are still people sticking to the original idea.
I have never played a Pally myself, the whole idea of sticking to the code is too hard, I like to break the rules I value anyone who can achieve this!!!
And the idea of only getting 10 Magic Items was rather harsh but understandable
That actually sounds kind of cool, sounds like you had a really cool DM. I think you've proved that despite the I think the word could be "Less rigid" system for 3 or 4e there are still people sticking to the original idea.
I have never played a Pally myself, the whole idea of sticking to the code is too hard, I like to break the rules
I value anyone who can achieve this!!!And the idea of only getting 10 Magic Items was rather harsh but understandable
"Doors and corners, I told him. Doors and corners."
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greenknight
- Vagabond
- Posts: 74
I never really liked the ability score requirements for Paladins. It made for a class that people didn't play much, and the Paladin Code didn't help either since it means that you could easily end up with a Fighter after all. Mechanically, a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric has most of the same flavor and is often more powerful and doesn't have most of the issues a Paladin does. And if you are a roleplayer, you have to keep to the strict code of the Paladin rather than come up with something of your own. That's ok sometimes, but it leaves less room for variation between characters.Jenara wrote:That actually sounds kind of cool, sounds like you had a really cool DM. I think you've proved that despite the I think the word could be "Less rigid" system for 3 or 4e there are still people sticking to the original idea.
I also have an issue with the LG alignment requirement. I like that Paladins are warriors for a cause, but why does that cause have to always be LG? Even way back in 2nd Ed I saw Paladin conversions so you could have Paladins of CG, LE, CE, and sometimes even Paladins of L/any, C/any, any/G, any/E.
Part of the problem is my issue with archetypes in general. There are only a few character classes in D&D (at least, prior to 3e), and several of those are strongly tied to particular archetypes. If you want a character who uses the mechanics of one of those classes but doesn't adhere to the archetypes, you're SoL unless you can convince your DM to houserule it.
In 4e especially, I'm seeing a split between game mechanics and fluff. There are still some ties between character class and behavior (especially for Divine classes like Paladin and Cleric), but people seem more willing to use the game mechanics and come up with their own archetypes, refluffing what the game designers have provided. Since there are a lot more character archetypes out there than there are character classes, I think this is a good thing for roleplaying.
If I recall, Paladins in 3.0 were originally written without a lot of their classic restrictions, until outcry from playtesters and the preview players at GenCon made them write some of them back in. (I can't remember if Alignment was on the block, but multiclassing was for Paladins as well as Monks.)
My group plays Arcana Evolved as well as 3.5 (my game is a crossover), and the Champion class from that system fills a paladin role. There is no alignment in that game, but Champions are devoted to a particular cause. Champions of Life, for instance, come off very much like paladins and Champions of Freedom are close to the CG paladin-like PrC, whereas Champions of Death and Champions of Darkness are anti-paladins (although Death Champions would likely be Neutral in D&D terms).
My group plays Arcana Evolved as well as 3.5 (my game is a crossover), and the Champion class from that system fills a paladin role. There is no alignment in that game, but Champions are devoted to a particular cause. Champions of Life, for instance, come off very much like paladins and Champions of Freedom are close to the CG paladin-like PrC, whereas Champions of Death and Champions of Darkness are anti-paladins (although Death Champions would likely be Neutral in D&D terms).
Thats pretty much it isn't it? If you are a real hardcore Role Player (something I aspire too but sometimes fall short) and you love those moral dilemma's yeah you could play a Paladin. But.... Back in the 2e days there were so many restrictions that it made them rather a pain to run.Tempest wrote:I always liked the idea of the paladin, but wasn't fond of the mechanics of the Paladin...
Now, the later editions have fixed some of that, at the expense of the restrictions, they appear to be fighters with other abilities.
Oh a side note, I'm trying to get a handle on the later editions, I will never end up playing them but I should have an idea how they play. It seems to me that the ideas from the 2.5 Players option books have just been expanded to allow you to create virtually anything, this seems to be the sticking point for some many people.
"Doors and corners, I told him. Doors and corners."