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any class that's feature list is tied to one feature is generally a bad idea.

If the feature is broad or universal enough, it can work. But Ret. Strike is not universally useful to all builds like how, say, Rage is useful for any Barbarian, Sneak Attack and Finesse Striker are useful for any Rogue, Attack of Opportunity plus a feat for your desired fighting style (dual-wield, 2-handed, archery) is for any Fighter, etc.

1: stay in teh back baby sitting the party wizard.... really, how does anyone think baby sitting is fun? I dont care if its the wizard or not. or even an injured party member. Ret strike, isnt a great thing there as you have to wait for your ally to get hit first before it can be used and then the bad guy or girl or it can still kill off the party member and then the strike is worthless.... and the shield thing could be just as bad if your shield is umm... dented at that point. a good offense is a good defense. too me though, the paladin as it stands focuses too much on Defense. a good offense does not equal Great defense( if one would even want to call the paladin's defenses great for that matter)

Agreed. I've seen it argued that "Ret. Strike is supposed to be a deterrent so it's not actually even supposed to trigger," but how un-fun is that? This is just exacerbated by the fact that Smite is tied to Ret. Strike, so if those people are right, then Smite is also not even supposed to trigger.

2: offensive protection. the ability to smite evil or have your weapon infused with the ability to do radiant/ holy damage like the dnd 5e paladin does would do this. this is also imo and ONLY imo where a constant active CHA based divine grace would come in handy even if it was capped at +3 or 4 to throws would shine.

I'm not sure how Divine Grace is also "offensive protection," but it is at least universally useful like the first point I made (like Rage, etc.), but the fact that Clerics get Channel Smite at level 4 makes it hard for me to swallow that Paladin's Smite is way weaker than the Cleric version due to being tied to Retributive Strike, never mind that it comes 5 levels later.

the PF1 paladin's auras that made the paladin immune to certain things at certain levels and granted +4 bonuses were great and helped with offense and party defenses alike. Though I will be first in line to tell you that outside aura of courage making the paladin immune to fear and the bonus for the party was great. The others though, making the paladin immune to charm and compulsion and bonus against for party was ... well, should have just been a bonus to the paladin and party.

Yeah, the Auras are a much better defender/protector feature than Ret. Strike, because they are always helping your party members survive, unlike Ret. Strike, which does not do that.

to me, the PF1 paladin had a balance for both.

pf2 has waaaay too much invested with ret strike to be effective in combat other than a glorified baby sitter hogging party resources invested enchanted paladiny weapons to try to counter this weak offense as much as possible....
if being a baby sitter is your shtick than more power to you.
like others though, I think it needs revamped too.

if nothing...

Agreed. It's fine to build a bodyguard archetype if it fits your party, but Paladins need to be able to accommodate more flexible builds than just that.

Also were those videos of people wearing some 'plate armor' or people in an actual full suit of gothic era plate armour. Because the latter can barely be stood up in if one fell over, and required a crane to mount their warhorse.

Absolute nonsense, and as mentioned the "crane to mount a warhorse" originated with a joke. IF it was so terrible, how did it dominate late-medieval battlefields? Check out these videos:

Quality and Material reduce ACPs by 3-4 by the time any lightly armored character is capping out their Dexterity.

So you end up having the same AC as the Dex guy, while still having to deal with the -2 or so ACP and movement penalty (which does NOT get reduced by the time the light armored character is capping their Dex)? Sounds like a pretty terrible deal for the heavy armor character, since they've had to deal with a worse ACP their whole career. I mean, -4 ACP basically puts you at 10 Str (on par with the light armor character) and 2 to 6 Dex (obviously worse than the light armor character) as far as skills go. +1 AC to start, and +0 AC at the end of your career, hardly balances that.

Subtracting 5% from a check (or 1 foot off your already superhuman long-jump) isn't that bad a penalty for being covered head-to-toe in rigid protection.

Yeah but the thing is, that "head-to-toe rigid protection" does not offer any better protection, mechanically speaking, than light armor, and even with Legendary proficiency, still has more penalties than light armor (which would not even give you that -5%, and no move penalties).

Also Grey Maiden Plate (the only kind a 'Maiden is proficient with, and thus the only kind of heavy armor non-paladins will ever wear during the playtest) is just like Full-Plate, except provides TAC +3, and has a Dex Cap of +0.

The fact that Grey Maiden Plate is "the only kind of heavy armor non-paladins will ever wear" illustrates how bad heavy armor is in general, don't you think? And again, the Grey Maiden Archetype comes pre-packaged with a bunch of lore and backstory you might not want for your character. You shouldn't have to tie yourself to a specific backstory (and shouldn't have to identify as female, either, since that's in the lore of the Grey Maiden archetype) just to have a decent heavy armor character. And even then you have to deal with the -10ft movement penalty (which, as illustrated in the videos above, especially the obstacle course, is excessive and unrealistic. You would hardly call a modern-day soldier "barely able to move," or excessively encumbered).

I think ACP makes sense. You are wearing pounds of metal on your body for hours at a time. It is heavy, no matter how you distribute the weight, and it limits mobility. However I do think that as your training in armor improves, it should reduce your ACP.

It doesn't make sense, armor was quite easy to move around in if you were trained in it, which proficiency represents. That video even explicitly states that "armored soldiers had to be able to move fast enough to catch unarmored opponents," so there goes the idea of only being able to move 2/3 as fast.

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I agree with you on what the benefits and issues of the AC7 system are, but I don't think they are balanced at all when you account for movement penalties and ACP. The only real downside of taking Dex over Str is that you lose +Str to damage, but that matters less as you get more weapon dice, whereas Dex gives you the same +to-hit, ranged options, Reflex saves, and AC without movement penalties, ACP, and for less cost, and for less Bulk (so you still don't need to worry about Str as much if you go for light armor).

Armor already comes with a speed penalty, that's penalty enough.

I think even that is too much, unless you can mitigate it with your Str score. As it stands, basically any character that wants to use heavy armor wants to be an Elf or Half-Elf and take Fleet just to keep up with the rest of the party, while they only get the same AC as the light-armor folks.

It's the exact same thing with Attack of opportunity guys! If the DM doesn't want it to trigger it won't.

Attack of Opportunity is much more likely to trigger than Retributive Strike, not to mention that it's also a better defensive feature than Retributive Strike, because it makes you "stickier" and better able to keep enemies away from your squishier allies in the first place.

Paladins have other class features that are more reliable, it is fine if one of the features is less reliable. The same way that fighters can't use attack of opportunity reliably.

Honestly it is fine. I do agree with the fact that it needs some buff or new feats to allow additional playstyle, and I proposed a few fixes previously in this post, but Retributive strike shouldn't be replaced with another ability.

The problem is that other core features, like Smite, are tied to this unreliable class feature - so no, it's not just "one of the features" that is unreliable. It's an unreliable feature that makes other features also unreliable.

My personal interpretation of a Paladin is a good guy who helps people as his first priority, not a murder-focused psychopath who just happens to target creatures his magic tells him are Evil.

Those are both RP choices, I agree with you that the paladin is generally a good guy who helps people. Michael Carpenter and Sparhawk are usually my go-to guys for paladins. But that's reinforced by the paladin code of conduct in the class entry, not by any mechanics.

Classes in any class-based system do certain things, divided into silos. If those silos don't match your interpretation, you're out of luck. If you want more freedom to match your exact interpretations, a classless system is pretty much always going to work better for you.

The paladin is more narrowly focused than other classes in this edition because it's being pushed into this "defender" role with Retributive Strike. Compare it to Wizards with their specialist schools, the diversity of Fighters or Rogues that you can make work, or Clerics (who get the Paladin's former class ability of Smiting, 5 levels earlier than the Paladin, and are a whole lot better at it).

They still fight on the front line and they still vanquish evil. They're just no longer vastly better at the latter than every other martial class. Considering this is a game and genre defined by fighting evil creatures, it seems like making them no longer far and away the best at fighting most opponents is a reasonable concession.
They never were "far and away" the best martial, but if you're worried about them being OP, make their offensive abilities more in-line with other characters, don't just rip them out of the class or tie them to Retributive Strike so that they never get a chance to get used.

Pandora's wrote:

Considering Paladins have both kinds of abilities, I'd say you're getting exactly what a less selective reading of the class tells you you're getting.

Please elaborate on what you think Paladins get for a good offensive ability. Blade Ally is OK, but otherwise even their old offensive signature (smiting) is now a defensive ability by virtue of being tied to Retributive Strike.

I mean, I've played in parties where I was the only melee character, and plenty of others where there was only one other melee character. In any of those games, Retributive Strike would've been almost entirely useless - but I was absolutely defending my party members because I had abilities that were actually useful. Again, I think Retributive Strike should get moved to one of the "optional" feats and something like Divine Grace or a reworked Smite should replace it, because those are something any paladin would want, whereas Ret. Strike is something that may or may not be useful based on your character and your party.
Also, I'd say your reading is equally selective, since you also just focused on one line, just like you criticised marshmallow for.

master_marshmallow wrote:

So literally by choosing to play this class it's my own fault that I'm not having fun?

When you pick a class that has a playstyle you don't like? Yeah, it's obviously your fault. Same as if you don't like characters with fiddly details and you play a prepared Vancian spellcaster, or you like to be really good at skills and pick a Fighter. When you're making choices against your own tastes, I can't help you. I'm not sure what you're expecting me to concede here.

Because a babysitter class is not what you expect when you're picking a Paladin. There are expectations that come with a class - a rogue will be good at skills, a wizard will be fiddly, weak at low levels and strong later, a fighter will be the best at attacking, a barbarian will be unskilled but hit hard due to their rage. A paladin is a knight that seeks out and destroys evil, and protects the innocent. Only the second half of that is represented by Retributive Strike, and it's less "protect the innocent" than "impotently watch as the enemy moves 5 feet away to attack, first." And it's baked in to the class - you can't be a paladin who doesn't do that, and a bunch of other class features are tied to Retributive Strike. It's a passive and unsatisfying playstyle if you like the classic paladin concept.

Unicore wrote:

A wizard with a good INT can cover most of the basic knowledge skills easily enough. With an 18 Int the wizard has 6 skills? Craft, Arcana, Occultism, Religion, Nature leave one slot open for either society or some other specific character concept skill. That is a plenty of skill support for the caster with the best spell list and widest access to that spell list in the game.

The point is that with the new system every class gets way more ability stats then in PF1, including int. In the previous edition other classes didn't invest in int later on. Now they do. That's why there is an imbalance between the wizard and other classes right now the higher the level progresses when it comes to skills which just makes no sense.

There's no reason that the Wizard should be great at skills in general, though. They should be the best at Int-based skills, sure, but they're not a Rogue or Bard, for whom skills are their whole gimmick.

It's a starting ability that evolves over time and you can make it great.

It only "evolves over time" by tying other abilities to it, like Smite, not by letting you use it more often, so effectively it just nerfs the abilities tied to it. You can only make it useable by investing a ton of your class feats into it, so again you are pushed toward one build paradigm. Despite your assertion that Paladin builds are still flexible, they're not.

I have a paladin with Shield Ally, Shield Warden and Shield of Reckoning.

An enemy attacks an adjacent friend of mine, I can thus with one reaction do a Shield Block and reduce the enemy damages to my ally, but even before that happens, I do a Retributive strike against the enemy. With a single reaction that acts on a single trigger. IT IS GOOD, and I will feel like a chivalrous knight protecting my allies!

You were talking about 5-stepping away? Well... I can get Holy Wall and prevent you from acting this way! This means that if you're next to me you must choose between attacking me, attacking my ally or taking an AO. That seems like the enemy will have a real hard time!

Again, you're giving up a ton of opportunity cost just to make Retributive Strike hard to avoid, and it doesn't make it much more likely to actually trigger. The opportunity cost is especially high if you want to take Shield Warden AND Attack of Opportunity, since they're competing 6th level feats. On top of that, Reach weapons are better than S&B anyway for Ret. Strike, since it expands your threat range.

Everyone starts at first level with only one power and must take feats to learn others. Asking for the paladin to have more is honestly just greedy.

That doesn't change the fact that their first-level features aren't better than what other classes get like you said, either thematically or mechanically. Rogues get Sneak Attack and +Dex to weapons, like you'd expect. Barbarians get Rage, like you'd expect. Paladins get Lay on Hands which is incredibly weak unless you take extra feats for it, and Retributive Strike which is also not good unless you take extra feats for it.

And retributive strike can become quite great if you want it to become.

It can become DECENT if you sink most of your class feats into improving it, but it doesn't change the fact that the point of it is basically just to be a deterrent that doesn't get used, which means that the other features tied to it (like Smite) are incredibly weak now because you'll basically never get to use them.

The current paladin has multiple way to evolve, but you must now choose one when the previous paladin could do all. You can make him great with divine power, making him protect his ally, or make an attacker (the weakest of the three options right now).

But honestly, the "classic" paladin that protects? The current class is great for that, shield ally being really awesome in my opinion.

The "classic" paladin isn't just a babysitter for other characters, any more than the "classic" fighter was. I'm also still not clear where you get this idea that a Paladin was OP and great at everything before, they had good saving throws and situationally good damage, that's it.

In PF1 Paladins were also one of the most overpowered class that could do everything by themselves.

That's not true, they were a pretty good martial but certainly not OP like a Cleric or Wizard.

PF2 seeks to give a clearer role to the paladin with the ability to open your paladin to some different playstyle by giving you the choices of what kind of paladin you want to play.

No, it pushes you towards one build paradigm of a bodyguard/healer in heavy armor with either a Reach weapon or S&B. It's got nothing like the build diversity in 1e, nor does it feel like the old Paladin identity, which leads me to my next point.

When evaluating a new edition, you shouldn't compare part of it to the previous one, it is a whole and a lot of things in the system changed. The current question is: Is the PF2 Paladin good/fun to play.

The Paladin has a core identity of a chivalrous knight dedicated to rooting out evil and protecting the innocent. Its features don't support this, and your Retributive Strike ability being primarily "I didn't get to do anything but I made you move 5 feet away/I made you attack me" is not really strong support for that identity, nor is it very fun to play.

Honestly just take a look at the number of class features that paladin are getting at first level and then take a look at other martial classes.

They get three features: Champion Powers, Deific Weapon AND Retributive Strike. I think it's enough.

At first level you get ONE Champion Power, Lay on Hands. Deific Weapon doesn't do much since you already have martial weapon proficiency, it's mostly a fluff feature. Retributive Strike, as discussed, hardly ever gets used since it is primarily a deterrent.

I think that allowing a full stride to be taken with retributive strike might be too much, and I also agree that having a feat at some point allowing for a 10 feet movement when activating retributive strike might be enough.

If you still want to make sure it feels tanky and not mobile you could have the following :

Trigger: an enemy not within reach attacks an adjacent ally
Effect: you reposition yourself with a 10 feet stride that must end adjacent to your ally and within reach of the enemy, and you take a retributive strike action.

That would fit the role of the protector really well. I think that giving a 10 feet stride at every retributive strike might be too good, and the plain will always reposition himself with retributive strike, which shouldn't be the case.

I see it more like a "Move aside Friend, I shall take care of that fiend!".

The feat should enable to attack enemies that have reach or try to move out of the Paladin's reach that are trying to attack allies protected by the Paladin.

This is a decent solution, although it still gives Reach wew weapons a big advantage and does nothing for ranged builds.

Yeah I don't think that fatigue rule is gonna do very well in the polls. You should be able to recover after 10 minutes of just relaxing.

But the biggest issue here is that you indeed get tired from riding a horse...

You don't get cripplingly exhausted after riding a horse for 10 minutes. I'm a genuinely terrible rider and I'm fine after an hour-long trail ride.

Mirror Image is not a core ability of the class, though, and you can build a perfectly fine caster without it.
Retributive Strike is put forward as a core Paladin ability that is tied to a ton of other mechanics, optional or not - including Smite, which is an iconic Paladin ability that you can now only use with Retributive Strike (which is a massive nerf).
It's not that there aren't tactical uses for RS, but I disagree that there is really agency in how it's used, since you can't choose NOT to say "I dare you" as you put it. You can choose not to take the reaction, but you can't not take Retributive Strike, and it's also out of your hands what the enemy does, given that "dare."
It just isn't fun to go "ha! I made you walk out of my range or attack me, so now I can't do anything!" as a main gimmick of the class.

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The Paladin should have defensive options, sure, but it shouldn't be pigeonholed into being THE defender (especially when Clerics get to do the classic Paladin thing of smiting, and the Paladin gets a supremely nerfed version at mid levels).

Having Reactive abilities are not a bad thing.

No, your allies can deal with them with you. This is a group game, not solo player. You all work together.

I think their point was if you set up your reactive ability and then the enemy just ignores you or avoids you by repositioning, then you are bad at working together with your team and not pulling your own weight. This is a concern with a primarily reaction-based feature like Retributive Strike, which is basically in the hands of the monsters if you get to use it or not.