Thirding Magical Knack, if you get to a level where you can cast spells it becomes really handy really quickly.
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I apologize, I had my costs mixed up. But my point carries. In a world where arrows come in sets of twenty for 1g, your paying the same amount for one of the basic shots from your weapon. As you level up, you need better ammunition with more effects (because from my own experience testing gunslinger, thats one of the few ways to do anything other than shoot guns and dive for cover) and you get more attacks. The cost goes up again. Then you want to enchant your ammunition, more cost. The effect is nice.....but the cost does spike very fast. More so than even the archer built to hose arrows at an enemy. If your playing in the world where metal casings exist, I see no reason you couldn't. That was in fact something that many people did in the old west, when they were expected to make their own bullets.
I wouldn't say the guns are too expensive. The AMMO, on the other hand, is where the real cost is. Even making your own bullets it costs 1gp per paper cartridge and 1s per bullet/dose of black powder. In a long combat you can easily blow through 4-5 rounds, more if your duel wielding pistols. And it gets even worse at high levels as you start to add more attacks. The other side of the problem is that the gunslinger is only doing similar damage to other classes because of crits. The gunslinger can be more accurate....but with a touch attack how accurate do you need to be? In between this and the aggressively limited amounts of grit (which never increases unless you take a feat in a feat-starved class), I see most gunslingers abandoning the class after 5th or 7th level to move into rogue or fighter. At that point, there are really no other benefits to staying in the class, you avoid a lot of the MAD and grit starvation that comes with the higher level abilities, and you increase your damage. Your as proficient as your going to be with the weapon and other classes get awesome additions to your attacks. The gunslinger just needs a little extra something. If the class is based around being badass with guns, why do they get so little grit? Why are the best grit abilities feats that mimic other feats (leaping shot vs spring attack, or the dead shot class ability vs vital strike) that dont need grit? The only real benefit to being a gunslinger at the moment is the free gunslinger feat and gun training. Again, once you hit 5th level (or 7th level for startling shot if you want to get free sneak attacks) theres no reason to stay in the class. In an interesting spin, unlike other class abilities (like favored enemy) your gun training doesn't improve, it just applies to other guns. Bah, im off topic. To answer the original poster yes. Not only are they viable, but the gunslinger class doesn't offer anything good enough to keep players in the class past the point where they reach a desired level of proficiency.
Thats one way to go about it. On the other hand, I do kind of like grit. But it has some serious flaws, notably because its a point based power source that starts very low and never adds more uses as the gunslinger levels up (I dont believe any other similar system is so restricted). The only way to increase the amount of grit you have is to increase a stat with no other supported uses for the class, or to take a feat in a class thats starved for feats. And that is where I see a problem with your idea of just converting all these abilities to feats. To be an effective dual pistols gunslinger (which is what it seems like your going for here) your already looking at point blank shot, weapon focus, rapid reload, and then probably dodge and mobility to open up the existing good grit feats, precise shot, and probably extra grit as well (as things stand). If your going for a two weapon build, you also need the TWF tree and some variant of oversized weapon fighting (all pistols are 1-handed weapons). If you swap all the gunslinger abilities to feats....you would need a bonus feat progression better than the fighter just to account for the basic stuff. Then there is the problem that if you make all of these abilities feats, other classes can take them. At which point, why not just play a fighter and get better proficiencies and nice side benefits in the bargain?
This is totally correct. You need to make your players feel like they are the last people on the planet, moving from hiding place to hiding place to avoid being devoured by a massive, relentless, unbeatable enemy. Dangle their objective in front of them like bait, then just when they think they have it in their grasp and might be safe...THATS when you hit them with a nasty zombie variant or boss. An example: You have hit your players with the zombie swarm and they have escaped by the skin of their teeth. They look for a strong point to hold while they recuperate. They find one...a basement, an old fort in the woods, the top of a skyscraper (depending on the setting), something along those lines. They reach the place unmolested... only to find the remnants of another group. Maybe they find their grisly remains, or perhaps all they find is spent ammo and dried blood. Nothing like a scene of failure to give your players a big sinking feeling in their gut while you set up a "defend the point" type of encounter. If you feel like adding a little flair, you can hint at the next zombie variant your going to unveil by the way the people died or the way their defenses were circumvented. Were they overwhelmed by superior numbers or did something smash its way in through a wall? If there are bodies, how did they die? If there are not, did the bodies get up and walk away after, or were they devoured to the bones? To cap off the creepy factor, you can hint at something much much worse going on. For example, if the zombies up to that point have been basicly mindless drones, you might have their new hiding spot have a room with a lone body staked up against a wall, his guts devoured and his blood used to write mad unintelligible symbols all over the wall. If just to say... something out there is THINKING about what its doing. And it doesn't like you.
The best description I can give is this: Cutting out the fanatic balance seekers, true neutral is the average joe. They are not concerned with larger events, because they have their own life to get on with. As the 4e PHB so nicely sums up "just let me go about my business." A neutral person wont do things that harm others, even if they are slightly beneficial to themselves, because they dont like seeing their actions lead to harm and it might get them in trouble. Likewise they will usually do good acts...if there is no threat to them. Extra incentives might tip them one way or the other (such as a load of money tempting them towards evil, or helping a friend avoid a beating tempting them towards good) but left to their own devices they will just live their lives as best they can. This makes it REALLY hard to justify N characters as adventurers. They might start out N, but the very nature of adventuring pushes a choice sooner or later. By choosing to harm others to get what he wants, your player is leaning his character towards evil. Keep track, perhaps with the point system that was suggested, and flag him as evil if he moves more than 3 steps away from neutral for any length of time. Intent does matter here, just not as much as results. If he gets duped into doing an evil act when he though he was helping is one thing. If he is just doing as he pleases and doesn't show some level of empathy or compassion, then he is definitely NE, leaning towards CE. If you want to force a choice in game, I suggest confronting him with the people who were harmed by his actions. A grieving widow, an orphaned child, or a beggared noble tracking him down for the town guard are all great ways to ram home the message that what he is doing harms others.
Im not sure you need a house rule at all. Most teleportation spells specify that they are vocal or vocal/component, so all you need to do is make the concentration DCs for casting in a grapple, or succeed on a grapple check to pull out the appropriate component if you dont have a component pouch handy. Unless the spells has a somatic (read, uses hand gestures) component, its perfectly fine to teleport away. Indeed, its a favorite mage tactic and the reason that grapples dont immediately bone them.
One of the nifty ideas for smite evil that came out of the various think tanks was to make Smite Evil a kind of "debuff" that could be placed on an evil opponent, enhancing all the paladin's attacks against that target for a duration. The best part of the idea was that you could stack the bonuses you got, building momentum so long as you were willing to expend your somewhat scarce supply of smites per day. Another idea that came up was to make fewer smites, but make them /encounter rather than /day. A paladin in this system might only get 4-5 smites by level 20, but they could be used repeatedly throughout the day. Just some ideas that I thought I would pass on.
I see no reason that raising the minimum skill points should affect the high skill classes. A 5-skill point human fighter is still not going to have anywhere near the diversity of a 10+ skill point rogue, both because of the disparity in skill points and the range of class skills. Int is still a dump stat for most of the 2+ classes, so they will rarely if ever hit the highs an inteligent rogue could. Whats more, class abilities already diversify the classes greatly. A fighter isnt going to be disabling traps or sneaking around, and its not likely he will be tracking the enemy either. The rogue and ranger just do it better for a variety of reasons. And I also agree that as a class trying to fill the "expert" slot in the typical 4-man party the Monk should really have 6 skill points. The other 4+ and up classes can stay as they are.
Another one for the minimum of 4+Int for skills. There is hardly any work to make the conversion from 2+Int to 4+Int compared to choosing feats for characters. And make me another. 4 seems like it should really be the minimum, as even with a high int wizard you feel like your getting left behind. I wont even bother telling you about fighters, paladins, or sorcs. It just makes sense. I love the idea and would love to see you go that far to correct this problem.
And thats not taking into account the remarkably cheap Everburning Torch or Sunrod. Both can be strapped to a backpack and leave the hands free. But this is all beside the point. First and foremost, please dont assume anything, particularly here surrounded by people who have been playing the game for ages. Secondly, neither of you has addressed the pressing issue here: How does the barbarian do as part of a group in these challenges? Any PC, and let me be very clear about this, ANY PC who is not massively overgeared or overstated is expected to die the majority of the time if they are alone. Its a classic mistake of low level parties, to the point where it has been named the Scoobie Doo death (referring to the classic line, "lets split up gang!") Expecting any class to be even 50% successful is asking a lot. Adventurers travel in groups because each class brings unique strengths to the table. A rogue to find the water trap, a mage to AoE swarms and groups. A tank to get into melee with brutes and a healer to patch everyone up. Taken out of that context, the CR ratings mean nothing. Thats why there is a ECL rating for monsters as well as a CR rating. Some abilities become more powerful when there are no other allies, and some challenges simply cannot be overcome alone.
I've posted my analysis above. If you want to critique it, do so rather than attack me. Your post does nothing to contravene the evidence i've already presented. Very well. In your analysis you rarely ever assume that Tanya takes her reach into account, either by five foot stepping to bring her weapon back into reach or by simply withdrawing and forcing the opponent to take another attack of op. She gets an extra raging attack every turn against most creatures at similar damage outputs, yet that rarely seems to factor in to your analysis. For example, in your orc analysis an orc "Charges her and kills her." Yet she gets an attack of op against that orc that is almost guaranteed to kill it in one hit. If she wins initiative she is almost certain to kill both orcs without taking any damage whatsoever. And again with the ghoul, even if the ghoul wins initiative she simply hits it with her spiked gauntlet and withdraws. The ghoul cannot take an attack of op against her because of mobility, and it has to provoke to move into melee again. After a round or two of hit- withdraw the ghoul is going to be dead at least a round faster than against Baugh. You didn't take into account Tanya's acid against the endless sea of rats. Acid is a splash weapon, dealing damage in an AOE. Your average rat has 1 hp. Oops, 5-6 rats are going to die a in a round. which means after a few rounds of that Tanya not only has a chance to survive, but even if she dies she has slain vastly more rats that Baugh. And unlike Baugh her speed of 40 keeps her out of the reach of the rats, assuming she has somewhere to go. Why didnt tanya also flee from the centipede swarm? She is even faster Than Baugh and can actually kill it given enough time. Also unlike Baugh there is no risk for her doing so because of Mobility. And NITHER of you has taken into account that any PC that goes off alone into hostile territory is supposed to die. Tanya just has a slightly better chance of living to see daylight again. That sort of thing. As far as I can see, when you actually use the strategy, Tanya outperforms in the winnable fights, and looses less often than Baugh in the close fights. That enough to satisfy you? Lets not even take into account Combat Reflexes, wherein she can take attacks of op even while flat-footed.
I think that your assumption is remarkably arrogant and anything but inescapable. Your dwarf used a battleaxe, which is a terrible weapon for soloing. You went in with virtually no plan for being alone and lost spectacularly. You drew all your conclusions from that and when we tried to show you where you went wrong you ignore us entirely and assume you have to be correct. Now you are trying to criticize another tester without any solid evidence of mistakes. I personally find Tanya to be vastly superior to Baughdvnleob in every way. She has a plan, the right gear, and ways to offset her weaknesses. Dont make any more assumptions without something to back it up.
Im not going to say your testing is entirely wrong. Its not. You have effectively exposed many of the barbarians weaknesses. However, understand that these challenges are not meant to be faced by any one class, nor as one fight at full strength. The CR rating only really begins to work if you have a full party, and you challenge them with several fights in succession. The question you should really be asking here isn't "how does the barbarian do as a stand alone warrior" but rather "Is this class performing an important and useful role as part of a group." The best thing about fighters, barbarians, and paladins past 4th level is not their insane combat ability, its their toughness. A barbarian can take several more hits than a cleric or mage. That usually means that the mage is going to get two or three more spells off. The healer will have someone who take take several rounds worth of damage and not simply die from it, so their healing abilities are more effective. The rogue now has someone to flank with, who might actually benefit from +2 to hit. I always try to test new classes as part of a larger whole. As far as the barbarian is concerned, yes, he has some serious weaknesses. He has to chose between a good AC and his accelerated movement (although with a dwarf thats not a problem at all) and his damage (2-hander vs. Axe and Board). His low will save, even when raging, makes him vulnerable to a wide array of spells and special abilities. But he serves the role as the party roadblock very effectively, especially when you use his feats and special abilities to improve that role. I do not believe the barbarian is underpowered. Its job is simply not to do huge amounts of damage all at once. His job is to fight, and keep fighting, buying time for the rest of the party to set up the win, either by increasing his fighting strength or by locating the monster's weakness. I would also point out that the barbarian can keep on beating things into the dirt long after the spell-casters have run their magic dry and the rogue has exhausted his bag of tricks. Consider this before you declare him too underpowered.
So, lets tally the common ideas here so far. 1. Cha-Based Casting: It works thematically, helps lower the MAD, and is backwards-compatible. Spontaneous casting and/or domain powers also an option. 2. Smite more often: How this is accomplished is still somewhat up in the air, as there have been suggestions about times per combat, linking it to holy points, or having it work more like favored enemy. I personally like the suggestion to make it a stacking buff that only applies against one enemy. Gives a very crusader-esque flavor, although it might have to be bumped up to a standard action to balance it. 3. Combining Lay on Hands with Remove Disease and Other Abilities: Usually this functions in the form of LoH or Holy points, which can not only be spent to heal but also to activate other nifty abilities. This one is pretty much up to the devs, but it does make backwards compatibility difficult. 4. L/G vs Other alignments: After careful consideration, I am siding with the L/G only crowd. To me at least, other alignments dont make sense. Only the lawful alignments would really have the devotion to follow the strict code that defines the paladin. If your Lawful Neutral, your a knight, not a paladin. If your Lawful Evil, your a blackguard, not a paladin. When push comes to shove the other alignments would not hold to the code if their other alignment spectrum was threatened, so they are not even following a knightly ideal at all. To quote a famous pirate, for them "the code is more what'cha call guidelines than actual rules." And thats not what a paladin is about.
I dont know d6s for paladin just feels better and works pretty well in combat testing. Also you can still multiply it. You can? Last I checked extra dice were never modified by crits. Did that change in Pathfinder? The possibilities...... 0_0
In a sense you are right. DnD's classes were originally designed around a system of stat rolling. As a DM, I used this system for a long time because that was how the game worked. But I noticed something interesting when I was running my age of worms campaign. When I allowed them to roll stats, I had one of two choices. Either increase the range of stats they could roll, or go for the standard stat rolling and risk the party not surviving the first few adventures (2 sets of 4d6, drop low rolls was what I finally settled on I think). This led to some of the characters being massively powerful (I think our cleric wound up with the equivalent of a 52 point-buy) and others that didn't do much until the extreme late game, after I had managed to feed them items to compensate for their weaknesses. I liked the point buy system initially because it tried to balance that randomness out a bit. but as time went by I saw a weakness in it, which was that classes with MAD, particularly Paladin and Monk, were horribly weakened by it. Even using a system like the one you suggest didn't solve the problem, it only alleviated it slightly. I would just like to see some basic changes that make it so players and DMs don't have to choose between randomness and balance.
Whew, quite a lot there Mike. Lets take a look and see if I can offer some counterpoints to your arguments. A Paladin is a combatant, so he should have fair Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. He’s a charismatic and clever individual, and as such he should have a fair Intelligence, Charisma, and Wisdom. That being said, he should have at least a 14 Wisdom, 14 Charisma (if not Higher), 14 Strength, and the rest can be lower if they must, but preferably no less than 12. But honestly, a paladin should have a few exceptional scores of 16-18 as well. If this can’t be done with 28 points, it’s because the 28 point buy is flawed in my opinion. It’s designed to create semi realistic characters, average folk, not heroes. A paladin will never be and should never be average. He’s a classic hero of legend and nothing less is acceptable. I honestly think he can only be made with a die roll and good rolls. Theres not much I can say to this. Many DM's will disagree with you, and prefer the point buy system because it balances the party out between each other. When the mage has more HPs than the Tank, the rolls are probably off a bit. Some prefer lower point buys in general because its a challenge for more experianced players, but thats another issue entirely.
The problem isnt that the paladin isnt as good at fighting as a fighter. Your absolutely right, when it comes down to swinging a weapon around, a fighter should be the hands down favorite. The problem arieses from the fact that the paladin isnt even close to being as comabt capable as a fighter. And its in large part because he has to skimp on his physical stats to make his paladin abilities work. Also, he is limited by his variety of times per day abilities. A fighter can pretty much keep doing his thing all day until he runs out of HP. A paladin is typicly out of steam after 2-3 fights.
Absolutely agree. A paladin should be the "tank" of choice against the more spell and ability oriented enemies, and the fighter should be the tank of choice against more physical monsters. The touchy part comes from making the paladin still decent enough tanking physical monsters and the fighter still good enough at tanking the spell monsters that having one or the other doesnt make the party feel gimped.
Be that as it may, I do agree with your central point, and furthermore I've never felt that a paladin should be bossy, judgmental, and self-righteous. If you read Order of the stick, I'm much more a fan of Hinjo and O-Chul (particularly O-Chul) than Miko. If you DON'T read order of the stick, start. ;) For those who haven't read the 552 strips and 2 books, however, I'll sum it up this way: the role of the paladin in the party is the GLUE, not the brain. He should be the one keeping squabbling party members working together, less-than-heroic party members convinced that they should press on towards a virtuous goal, and... This is why I advocate Cha as a paladin's main mental ability. Its hard to keep a group working together, fighting for a cause, and following the path of righteousness when you have no force of personality and/or are ugly as an carion crawler with measles. Actualy that might not make the carrion crawler that much worse...anyways you see my point I hope.
An idea that came out of my thread on this was to roll smite, lay on hands, remove disease, turn undead, and potentialy paladin spellcasting into one overarching point system. As mentioned here before, getting rid of paladin spellcasting would be a pain for conversion, but the rest could potentialy be rolled into a "Holy Points" system. Spend a point to cure, or more points to channel positive energy like a cleric or remove disease. Spend a point to smite, and possibly even channel extra holy points into increasing the damage on a singular smite. If spellcasting stays, definately needs to be cha-based. I prefer streight damage to an equivalent amount of d6s because stright damage is multiplied by crits. Which makes for fun times when your a grey guard rolling with a scythe... Essentialy the probem with smite is not that its streight damage, but that it is underpowered. You could just as easily do something like +cha to attack, +(cha + paladin level) to damage. Or even just double your paladin level to damage. It would probably solve the underpoweredness of the ability just as well as giving it d6s.
Actually there is a fair bit of playtesting involved in my conclusions. Its just that its all basically damage calculations and mock battles based on common situations rather than playing with other people (Most of my play group is in college, so they hardly have time to keep our weekly campaigns going, let alone indulge my playtesting theories). To give you an example of the kind of work I did, I put together a fairly typical party of Paladin, Druid, Rogue, Wizard. The wizard was an evocation specialist, and the druid focused on healing. The rogue was melee duel wield and the paladin was his flanking buddy, focusing on tanking and some riding skills. Point buy was a 28. I challenged the party at 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th levels in various ways. At first level, there were the typical challenges against goblins, orcs, small animated objects, and zombies. At third level things became a bit more interesting, facing down Ghasts, Ogres, a Grick, and a viper pit filled with 3 large vipers. At 5th level the party faced a huge animated object, a basilisk and a zombie umber hulk. At 10th level the party faced a Clay Golem (Lame!) a Bebilith Demon, a group of harpies led by a harpy 6th level fighter, and a pair of colossal monstrous spiders. My conclusions mirrored yours in many ways. A paladin has no staying power, particularly compared to the other melee classes, fighter and barbarian, and doesn't have the raw power or diversity offered by a melee cleric (although a paladin doesn't have to spend the same amount of time buffing). Repeated combats wear down a paladin's resources very quickly and he doesnt typicly have the raw stats to keep going just with his melee abilities. A paladin has to spread his money out to cover all his jobs, making him progressively weaker as the game reaches higher levels. Even with the new abilities, the paladin doesn't scale into the higher levels very well. The paladin does have some upsides. The paladin that chooses to forgo his melee stats and focus entirely on charisma and defense is very difficult to take down by any means other than raw force. Even the standard 16 Cha pally shines whenever repeated saves become an issue, although even then you can roll low. The change from turn undead to channel positive energy is a boost, but doesn't come into play as often as one might hope. Paladin spell-casting and low number of skill points is still a problem. I am happy that you found some of our ideas helpful. I hope you will leave your conclusions about their relevancy to the designers. Hopefully I will be able to post more, but right now I am late for a class ^_^
I mistakenly presented other problems I have found with the paladin class in the general forums. Nevertheless it has generated a lot of discussion and some interesting ideas for fixes if you would like to come visit.
Here here on that!Skimp on Intelligence and your already low skill selection becomes even worse, and leads to the "Lawful Stupid" type of paladin. The lack of Intelligence combined with the holy bent of the class has made the Paladin into the Jehovah's Witnesses of DnD (No offense to any JWs out there). Please read a little before you bring up an already addressed problem. Im liking the idea of holy points. They could run like barbarian rage points (4+Cha at first, 2+Cha at 2nd and beyond) and they could be used to power paladin abilities like smite, Channel Positive Energy, and maybe even give some boosts to the paladin mount. With the Cha-Based casting it would give the paladin a lot more staying power, something it desperately lacks right now, and could open up a host of fun feat ideas.
I like the paladin as a L/G character. Its iconic and flavorful, and asks some interesting questions for players who want to walk the holy road. Paladins of other alignments just don't seem fit. Why would a chaotic person adhere to a very strict code of conduct? Why would a neutral person care? With blackguards there is at least the idea of tyranny, law taken to oppressive extremes. They also work as a foil for traditional paladins, both follow the law but for very different reasons. Then there are a rare type of paladins, the Grey Guard. Typically I would associate that prestige class with the church of St. Cuthbert, so I guess there is some foundation for a L/N paladin, or a L/G paladin leaning more towards neutral at least. Other alignments, even the extreme ones, really don't seem to work. Also, is there any way anyone here knows to get this moved to the class forums?
Its still there. Hard to see, but still there. I made a suggestion early on that it might not be the best way to go about portraying that kind of ability, and I think people took it the wrong way. Lets talk about Detect Evil for a bit. Pros: Makes it really hard for Evil to hide.
Cons: Takes a while to warm up. Not nearly as effective in combat as people might think. Sits in a strange spot in terms of at will abilities. Its not a spell, and its not a spell like ability, but it functions as both. Many paladins will just rely on the detect to choose enemies, potentially wreaking havoc with dangerous and touchy situations. I have no strong feelings one way or the other right now. I kinda like the idea of paladins not being entirely sure one way or the other, no absolutes, that kinda thing. On the other hand, that would probably mean the paladin code would have to be lightened a bit.
Ill take this opportunity to clarify a point here. Im not asking for paladins to be able to stat and gear the same as fighters, the paladin can and should have its own unique flavor, and their holy abilities, high charisma, and unique outlook on adventuring are a lot of fun to play around with. But there is a point where flavor need give way to function. As things stand, paladins are just too spread out to be effective at what they are supposed to be good at. You see a similar effect with monks. They need all 3 melee stats to stand with rogues and other melee classes in terms of damage and survivability, and THEN need to add wisdom on top of that to take advantage of their monk abilities. And those abilities, while flavorful and cool, often don't make up for the loss of the raw stats. The tricky part is balancing things so that the different classes can still be equally effective (or at least close to it) at the same job in different ways.
I don't see why it would. It would certainly let the cavaliers be not entirely lost without their mounts. And from the other direction it would allow paladins who didn't focus on their mount to still have the overland speed boost. It would set a precedent for the other abilities that function like this however. So you would have to consider the effect on druids, sorcs, and wizards.
Here's an idea: replace Detect Evil with a bonus to Sense Motive that increases with Class Level. Oooh, that goes on the list.
It could be something like the sorcerer, where it is an inborn ability. Like your example, Joan d'Arc, Paladins could carry the divine within them and call it out through force of personality rather than raw devotion. This could also lead to some interesting concepts of paladins that have unique ways of connecting with the divine spark within them, like hearing voices or having dreams that point them towards the righteous path.
The problem is not that they suffer from one or two of these, its that they tend to suffer from all of them at once. Lets do a comparison. A higher than average 26 point buy, with two humans. The fighter will obviously push his physical stats. This will land him with some fairly sweet scores: Str 16
For a fighter, thats an impressive spread, especially when you consider that he still has 2 points to put wherever he likes just for being a human. He will be very effective as a front-line fighter, even before he has access to heavier armor. Now lets look at the same point buy for a paladin, using your suggestions. Str 16
Thats a fairly standard paladin spread. Its acceptable, but you will note that the paladin will have 2 fewer hp per level and 1 fewer AC than the fighter. Thats assuming you spend your human points on the same thing. Its also before you begin to grow in level and the paladin has to start choosing between enhancing his melee prowess and his paladin abilities. The fighter will never have that problem, and will always be able to focus on melee. This is not entirely a problem, as the classes should have different flavors, but a paladin shouldn't have to spend twice the points and money to be as good as the fighter at their shared primary job. Paladin healing is balanced by feats like toughness that simply grant more HP permanently. Smite is balanced by weapon focus and specialization. The mount is a serious perc, but you don't get it until 5th level, and will often have to leave it behind or risk loosing it. So we come back to the beginning, with most abilities being roughly equal the paladin has to simply spend more effort and money to fulfill the same role. And sadly, a paladin who strives to reach that level simply wont have the resources to capitalize on any of his other abilities or skills that might be enhanced by his wider spread of ability scores. Are these problems lessened by the changes in pathfinder? Definitely. Are they gone? Definitely not. They changes don't need to be huge, but I would hate such simple fixes to go unmade when there is already so much to like about Pathfinder.
Didn't see that section until you mentioned it. Sorry! Can we get this moved somehow?
My apologies. I did not mean to slur, only to make a comparison between the way individuals paint a bad picture of the whole. Jehovah's Witness (Witnesses?) are by and large good and faithful people, but their image has been distorted by the overzealous members of that group. In the same way, the low intelligence self righteous paladins have tarnished the class for many gamers. More to come on other comments ^_^
I have to say I am very disappointed with Pathfinders Take on Paladins. You have failed to address some of the the major flaws in the class and instead have opted to add some shiny special abilities and call it good. Not that I don't like shiny new abilities, they are impressive and fun, but I had seriously expected more from you guys. Problems, in no particular order besides the first: ----------------------- MULTIPLE STAT DEPENDANCY: It is nigh impossible to play an effective paladin with anything less than an effective 28 point buy. At anything less than an effective 32 point buy your still better off playing a fighter, barbarian, or cleric. Even at those exalted heights, your probably only going to be "almost as good" as a melee cleric or barbarian. This has been a problem since (I believe) first addition. Paladins need a grand total of 4 primary stats, more than any other class. Strength and Constitution are both needed to supply the paladin's front-line agenda. Charisma is needed for all of the Paladin's special abilities EXCEPT spell-casting, which requires wisdom to the point where you must have a mod to start getting spells at the proper levels. What's more, skimping on the remaining two stats hurts the Paladin severely. Skimp on Dexterity and your AC goes down, lowering your ability to tank for the party. Skimp on Intelligence and your already low skill selection becomes even worse, and leads to the "Lawful Stupid" type of paladin. The lack of Intelligence combined with the holy bent of the class has made the Paladin into the Jehovah's Witnesses of DnD (No offense to any JWs out there). This is crippling at lower levels, where the game constantly demands that every member of the party be fulfilling a role. Assuming a 26 point buy, what is a paladin going to do? He will either have to stat himself like a fighter (giving up a large part of his paladin abilities in the process and not gaining anything in return) or spread his points out, wherein he wont be doing ANYTHING as well as the other classes potentially could. MSD is the most pressing issue facing paladins. D8 HIT DICE: Is this a typo? Why was this change made? Paladins are a good attack progression melee class. They wear heavy armor. Why are they now getting the same HD as a cleric or druid, without the major perks of a full caster progression? The paladin mount is not THAT good. Doesn't this go against the design template laid out on page 35? What is going on here?? 0-SLOT SPELL CASTING: Throw us a bone here. Paladins are already strapped for stats, and now we have to have a higher wisdom than other classes to even cast our spells? Frustrating, particularly when you are unlikely to be able to afford a Periapt of Wisdom on top of new armor, rings of protections, gauntlets of ogre power, con boosers, etc etc etc. Just give us a spell already, we don't mind waiting a while for the next one. No Detect Evil? The non-caps title indicates I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, Detect Evil is a pain to use, a pain to mediate, and can often wind up turning allies against each other. It has led to the dreaded "Detect/Smite" paladin, which may be the very hight of paladin idiocy. On the other hand its a very flavorful ability, making a paladin very hard to deceive by the forces of evil and offsetting the lack of talent points to devote to sense motive. I could swing either way on this, and if the MSD issue was solved this would likely become a non-issue. ----------------------- Thats not to say there is nothing to love about the new paladin. The change from Turn Undead to Channel Positive Energy makes that ability significant again. The new ability to enhance your weapon instead of call a mount answers another significant problem with the classic paladin: Horses cant enter dungeons. I love the new Aura powers, particularly Aura of Justice and Aura of Righteousness. The 20th level capstone ability is a solid reason to stay in the class... if you can get to that point. But these problems are band-aids on the glaring weaknesses of the paladin class. There are some easy fixes that can be made, thankfully. -----------------------
Change paladin spell casting to run on Charisma instead of Wisdom. This fixes two problems with one change, first reducing the number of stats that the paladin relies on to 3 and making the annoying 0-slot spell casting less of a problem, since any paladin worth the name is going to at least have 12 charisma. With the new range of paladin abilities, a paladin will not feel as bad loosing some Dex, Wis, or Int to push up their charisma, and this allows for flexibility and diversity amongst paladins. I would also like to see paladin skill points rise to 3 or 4. Without Detect Evil, Sense Motive becomes a much more important skill for paladins, and Int is still likely to be the dump stat of choice. Since you are still playing a hybrid caster/melee class you will likely also find yourself wanting both the caster skills (Spellcraft, Knowledge: Religion) as well as Paladin skills (Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Ride) and general skills (Perception, Climb/Jump/Swim, Heal) Thats all I have for the moment. I will add more as I look through the Alpha more, and as other good fixes are suggested. GO FORTH AND DISCUSS! |