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The war of good vs good is over, it was hard fought, but in the end neither of us will be here.
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Are Warded Touch and Hospice Knight stricken from the feat list to instead give us actual choices that go beyond making your character functional? I feel like this edition now parallels 5e too much, with your choice being made early level and the rest of it is just padding and waiting. This doesn't feel like customization, but rather more like having most of the work done for you. When I first read the description for how feats worked, I was under the impression that all the class features were gone, and you instead picked them ala cart in the vein that talents/ rage powers/ revelations worked, and there would be a large robust list of choices. Archetypes would let you mix and match at a feat tax. You still got to choose your skills and how to fight. This is not what I wanted. It's 5e, but with more paperwork and your choices after the initial really don't influence your capabilities much. Hopefully there will be some opening up of that. I presume not, Paizo seems dead set on giving you a specific package of choices that really only give you a binary or trinary of options, level gated to determine what challenges to put in their APs at those levels to ensure they can push APs out faster and with less headache. PF2 is a game for those who enjoy the Golarion setting and the Golarion stories, any home setting is going to have to play so much like Golarion that it's gonna feel pointless to try anything new or experimental. I've decided since getting defamed by the staff that I'm not giving Paizo any more of my money, but this play style also doesn't cater to mine.
I believe in sharing one's personal truth. I hold it at the highest of virtues. TELL THE TRUTH, EVEN IF YOU MUST RISK OFFENSE. The truth holds more value than a comforting lie, and forcing myself to abridge my truth is not the way to help the play test.
We continue to jump around the play test to get a feel for the game, and this time around we jumped into the 7th level adventure, which is a survival horror game where you get SWAMPED with undead. For comparison, one of my players made a battle cleric, and I made a paladin. We wanted to see who performed better and why. It was him, for the obvious reasons, if said reasons aren't so obvious, continue reading. cleric build CN Human cleric of Gorum
paladin build
For combat, my paladin focused on Feint (being high in CHA) and use a bastard sword (d12s) to get the best damage possible. However, I had no means to bypass DR on the vampire spawns. I felt like a generic character who was not very good at smiting undead. I did crit a lot, but when you're fighting a hoard of level 0-3 zombies that tends to happen. Most of the time my crits were overkill. It was not very satisfying to play, I wanted to conserve my resources so I only used 1 Weapon Surge and 1 Lay on Hands (meaning I still have my remaining for the boss that we haven't fought yet.) The cleric on the other hand had a jolly old time. He had spells to buff himself, could cast anything he wanted with his weapons (I had to build specifically to be able to do this, as there is not a feat that just lets paladins use SP with a weapon, only specific powers), and he had channels that devastated the vampire spawns. He not only bypassed their resistances, but nova'd for massive damage that rivaled my crits on a regular hit. He also could add in his Destructive Smite thing for gorum's domain just to add insult to injury. I did get Retributive Strike to trigger 4 times naturally (which means I owe HWalsh at least 4 neener neeners) so that made me happy, but I realized how bad the ability is because I only got one reaction per round and it hardly made a difference when it came to the hoard attacking us. The entire party had sufficient healing, but considering we were supposed to be the big damage bringers, I didn't feel my class contributed anything to combat that I couldn't have gotten from any other class using a d12 weapon (because I didn't). I can say now that swords are the one true weapon group, as the crit specialization effect 100% allowed me to crit on a secondary attack, not sure if this is a good or bad thing for the game at large. At the end of the day, the paladin class is just really lacking, and seeing the cleric be able to smite better than the paladin and having more damage than the paladin, and having more to do than the paladin just felt wrong. Mostly because none of my class features really mattered, compared to everyone else at the table. Most of my character's contribution came from system competence and understanding the value of trading an action for +2 to hit, whether it be in using Feint or in moving into flanking position. Also I HATE how heavy armor works now, and I feel the speed reduction is too much at 10ft. I also find it odd that the paladin has no way to bypass it. I am dissapoint.
And there began the second great battle in the war for the rights to the name paladins. Shit continued to be crazy yo, everyone talks about how great being a paladin is, until it's time to do paladin shit.
Remember week 1 of the blog era when I posted in our first paladin thread of this edition that I feared never having one again? Silly me, I'm immune to fear, wait.....
I'm not offended either, it just seemed as though you were jumping on the "you have to double slice to be competent" and from my analysis Double Slice is probably too good (I expect it will be nerfed) but also it closes off so many other Paladin avenues because you *really* need either a Shield or a Free Hand to take advantage of them. The paladin feat that removes the [manipulate] trait is apparently also supposed to include casting and/or using lay on hands with an item in hand, at least according to what some people have heard as feedback from the devs. For what that's worth.
Is Iomedae clearly the best option for Paladins just because Zeal (both the basic domain power and the fact that the advanced one gives 3 spell points)? Looks to be so, yes. I'm of the opinion that Double Slice is not too good, but exactly as good as it's supposed to be. Compared to the other options, it actually does something helpful to your builds and has multiple tactical uses and is pretty much everything you want from a feat in PF2. All other styles need to be buffed and leave Double Slice alone.
Side of what exactly? I'm pointing out mathematical differences that create great amounts of disparity and enforce system mastery. The goal here is for builds like this one to come close to, or otherwise trade off potential for better play. Villifying me and attacking me personally for identifying the issues of the system is not an attack or offense to any individual. I'm offended that either of you feel the need to go after me and call me out for your own presuppositions of me. I never meant to insult or defame anyone here, you're choosing to be offended and blaming me for it. I'm trying to help you, I'm on your side, but claiming there are sides in the first place is divisive and toxic behavior that is not productive or conducive to the cause of making the game better.
I don't think you read my post at all then if you're still attacking me personally, maybe step away from the keyboard for a while.... Optimization is one thing, competence is another. The difference here is that when we're talking about design of the game I want to make sure that a player who isn't an optimizer can make a build like yours and not fall significantly behind another player at the table who is optimized. I'm on your side here guy.
Check the math, the ability to drop either two attacks at no MAP, or the ability to drop one attack at no MAP and two at MAP -4 is superior to all other styles mathematically. Gonna need to do another distribution spread for full attacks vs only double attacks, but this is true no matter the scenario, especially given the game's intended focus on crits and the incredible lack of ways to improve your attack bonus. This statement is just plain wrong. I want it to be right, it's our job to bring the other styles up so that it is right, but as of now with the way the math of the game works this is not right.
My comments are in bold beneath each choice. Most, if not all of this is wrong and doesn't follow the rules in the book. You can also pump out some good extra damage by dropping your Weapon Surge domain power to add an extra die of damage to your normal strike, or Litany to give your opponent a weakness to your Radiant Blade Spirit. Action taxes do not help you do more damage than just making an extra attack. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Or I could just go: [A] Blade of Justice, [A] Strike (MAP 0), {A\\] Double Slice (MAP-4/-4)This has way better odds of hitting, and critting, multiple times over. Litany of Righteousness is a joke, Blade of Justice is weak, but when you combine it with Instrument of Zeal it works okay. Double Slice is in all ways superior to most other combat styles, and by most I mean all of them so far as written in PF2. Math matters, design matters, system competence matters. I want your build to be viable and playable, I really do, but as the game is written all you've proven is that you didn't read enough. It's okay though, read more, post more, and hopefully the devs will work on the other styles to bring them up to Double Slice's bar, because it is an incredible feat. In fact, it might be better than Sudden Charge, or at least equal to it.
If you use the Bastard Sword, would it be better to take Basic Maneuver to gain Power Attack? Absolutely not, Power Attack on it's own is a trap but it's awful on paladins especially when double slice is an option since your class features will add damage to both attacks. Superior style is superior.
Most of these feats are weak options, and often gaining full utility of a single ability had it's feats spread out inn such a way that you really don't get a choice in what feats to take. It's like the 5e paladin but with no real way to generate meaningful damage. When the benefits of a 12th level feat give me +1 good damage I'm skeptical.
sample build: Human (Merchant)
[1] Hospice Knight, Natural Ambition (Warded Touch)
Turns out, you can't exactly stack cavalier challenge with Blade of justice if you plan on attacking multiple times. You can do this with Double Slice by picking it up through fighter dedication and have pretty good damage, you just have to burn a feat on fighter dedication which might not be worth it (it is tho if you want double slice). As a human, you may be able to take Natural Ambition more than once, but I haven't found language that allows this. These seem like the two best viable combat builds for a paladin that doesn't focus on Retributive Strike. Actually, there really isn't much I'm finding to improve upon Retributive strike... Hopefully, your Bargain Hunter feat will open some doors to finding key important items for you like the Doubling Rings, which ensure you only need to invest into one weapon. You'll need to pick a weapon group that has an agile and a one-hander, the obvious standout to me for this is the longsword/short sword combo, but you might get more out of a rapier on crits. Full round: [A] Blade of Justice; [AA] Double Slice +33 (7d8+6 S +1d6+8 good) +33 (7d6+6 +d6+8 good) both are likely to hit since their both at full attack bonus so your damage looks like: (7d8+7d6+12 +2d6+16 good) Once you amp up your good damage with feats and Instrument of Zeal you get decent output in 2d6+16 good damage from a single action.
When it comes to combat, The best looking builds I can see involve either multiclassing into fighter to grab Double Slice, but I was also looking at Channel Smite from cleric and thinking about what feats to build into to buy myself extra spell points to get some damage funneled into it to see if I could come up with anything similar to PF1's paladin. The build generally isn't done until 14th, when Litany of Righteousness comes online, and before that you pick up a few feats to boost up your good damage and grant access to Heal. Turns out, it's worded so that this is impossible, seemingly on purpose as you must have a channel energy pool, not just a spell point pool and the ability to cast Heal with it. I just don't see how to make this build work yet, the best I got is to go Cavalier and use Challenge and Blade of Justice together, skipping Litany of Righteousness since it is really unreliable. I also don't see a way to use Vengeful Oath because you can't use it through a weapon. You'll want Aura of Faith for the 1 free damage, and probably Radiant Blade Spirit for Holy. At 16th you also get Instrument of zeal for an extra die of damage when you use Blade of Justice. This way, you can still make two attacks, after spending the action for Blade of Justice (Challenge doesn't cost an action), and those attacks both get +1d6+ (n=number of damage dice)+ 1 good +n damage. If you go through all the hoops to get the most damage dice possible, you'll have a +5 weapon that does (7dx+STR + 1d6+8 good +7 conditional) Holy doesn't work with Retributive Strike unless you have extra reactions, but if you do get that going you can do persistent CHA for damage. Spell Storing Weapons can hold a single Lay on Hands of up to 3rd level, so with Hospice Knight and Vengeful Oath you can add in an extra 5d6+CHA, but this stops working when your Lay on Hands auto-heightens past being a 3rd level spell, unless it doesn't. Can't find the rules on that exactly since I know you can spend extra spell points on some powers to heighten them, but cantrips scale automatically?
I'd prefer the base class to be a generic Knight/Sentinel class and the paladin LG stuff be an archetype that costs feats to create and lets you get all the goodies with feats, smite evil doesn't even exist anymore and the replacements for it are underwhelming... Plus, most of the class features in old editions from what I remember seemed over powered because they had the alignment baggage as a balancing factor, with the baggage coming on two axes instead of one. This meant abilities could be a little stronger without fear of the player becoming abusive of them. The current build does not perform stronger than the other classes on most scales. It's a dark day when we see good turn on good.
My player gave up on trying to make one today, turns out there is not a reliable way to actually generate damage on this class. It takes 4 feats and isn't done until level 14. The payoff? 1d6 plus (n=number of dice) +5. To do this one must spend an action to activate Blade of Justice, another to spend a spell point and activate Litany of Righteousness, then with the other two feats that improve your good damage you get to add all this amazing damage to one single attack. I'm better off just attacking twice, by a lot. This is really bad. If you timed it right, you can add your cha to damage as persistent damage, and if you time your hit right you'll get the extra 5 damage from weakness. Once. All this needs to be scrapped, give me a single action, designate target, add Cha as good damage till the end of the turn. Smite f***ing evil. That's a class feature. Retributive strike can be a feat.
Years from now, I will reference these paladin wars, where we saw good turn on good over who deserved to call themselves the true paladins. Whatever happens to whichever side gets their way in the final book, I shall never forget thee and they valiant effort to earn your rights to exist in this crazy world in the manner that best fit your honor. Shit got crazy, yo.
So are the spells listed in the blog spells, or are they spells? But which spells are these and how do I tell them apart? Would it be safe to assume that the spells for partial casters all got changed to the new spells that take points instead of slots? Lay on Hands is now one of these, is Divine Grace tied to the same pool? What does smite do?
How does the healing for Lay on Hands work/scale? By what metric does it increase the recipient's AC? Does Divine Grace have to be declared before or after you roll your saving throw? How many times can you use it? Is it linked to Spell Points? How does it boost your saves? Is it CHA based, level based, or just a number that you picked? How does Retributive Strike work? Do I have to be adjacent to the ally that got hit? Does my ally getting hit have to be in line of sight? Do I have to be threatening the enemy in order to use this reaction? Does it cost spell points? What is the enfeeble condition like in the new edition? If I use multiple retributive strikes, does the condition worsen? How does Smite work? Is it limited per day? Does my target have to be evil? Does it add dice or a flat number? What are the benefits of having legendary armor/shield proficiency over master? Does this include movement speed? Litanies are teased as spells, but are they spells proper like with slots or do they take up spell points like other things? Do you even get spell points? I remain disappoint.
Remember when we were promised an alignment free templar class in the APG? Good times.
Not to be that guy, but wouldn't a more generic "KNIGHT" class not only give you the framework to have multiple codes be elective, free of alignment, and give you a way to incorporate Hellknights and Blackguards into the core rules on the same chassis? I think the way Cavaliers did codes, edicts, and orders were much more well done. In fact, I'd rather see a better version of the cavalier with Divine Grace and Lay on Hands incorporated that made more sense to be the "armor" class. I'm okay with paladins having baggage, but not if a major gameplay niche is cut off to anyone who doesn't want that baggage. Still I criticize the blog for focusing too much on this topic, and not giving us enough crunch with respect to how the class actually plays. Smite was mentioned, but is it "Smite Evil" or a more generic ability, like the vindictive bastard or cavalier?
I remain disappoint.
If Divine Grace gets nerfed to the ground, then the alignment should be "any good."
All I see here is nerfs from PF1, way too much time spent arbitrarily hyping up a code that has changed very little, and a bunch of forum goers arguing over semantics. I remain disappoint.
While I am glad this avatar still has some miles left in it, I am not sure I feel they delivered on the notion of making playing paladins easier. The code is still pretty much the same, but now you can use poisons, which ime never happened anyway. So overall my experience will not change there, or in any such way. I'm glad I'm not the first to point out how much of this blog post is dedicated specifically to the code of conduct and that we really don't have a good picture of how the class plays or works, we just get some ability name drops because most of the blog is about dealing with code of conduct stuff. I'm not even against the paladin being really good at armor, but if it's the class that's all about it, then I really REALLY feel like it needs to be changed to be open to more alignments. I don;t want to babble on about the alignment thing, but when the blog spends so much time on it you kinda figure that's what they want us to talk about, unless the class is really dry and the alignment stuff is all it really has (I hope not). "Tanking" was never really possible in PF1 without some really niche feats or spells to draw enemies to attack you, Antagonize and Call Out come to mind. As a DM, if I see someone pumping up their AC, that person gets avoided in favor of enemies I can actually hit to reduce the numbers of my foes, so unless there's a mechanical incentive to actually go after the paladin instead of the allies, then I feel like this class will not be played the way it seems to be intended. I also hate AGGRO being a mechanic. We have no idea if this class gets actual spellcasting, so we either suspect that it doesn't because you didn't tell us (in which case we get slammed because "we just don't know yet") or we try and speculate on what the class does get, in which case we get slammed for the same reason. As far as these blogs go, I am not excited to discuss this class, because all we seem to be looking to get is alignment arguments from it, however given the alias I feel I am morally obligated to participate in this week of upcoming insanity. Do we even know how smite evil works? We know how domains work, how channeling works, how weapon proficiency works, and how sneak attack works. This blog lacks, big time. I am disappoint.
And I was almost afraid we wouldn't need these threads anymore! HA!
I would not recommend Quicken Rods of any sort, as it will cost you actions to get it out, and then to put it away again taxing you the exact actions you intended to save in combat. Most of your best in combat spells are swift actions anyway. If going rods, go for Extend or Echoing. Quick Runner's Shirt was a pretty good idea, once per day. I like the Luckstone as well. Do you have Oath of Vengeance? If so the Bracers of the Merciful Knight are the right item to carry, but if you don't, I'd say pick up the Silver Smite Bracelet, since it should net you another smite as well as higher damage, whereas the Bracers with the oath gives you two more potential smites, at your current level. Mo' smites, less problems.
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In the first thread I made hint that if they fix the paladin class then we wouldn't need another paladin thread. They ran with it.
C'mon guys, there aren't enough available characters to change my name to
Remember Divine Protection in the original ACG? Just look at us now hahahaha.
Such snark must be smitten.
Let's not forget, the warpriest was the second attempt at creating an alignment free clerical warrior type class. The cavalier was a result of the first. I think we can reasonably expect these classes combined into one super class whose variable choices define the flavor but whose mechanics are so similar there is no point to have separate classes. Future releases could see samurai, etc, included as more variable options on this chassis.
In the first thread Jason told us to cool down and that there's already an entire blog post planned to break down all the new rules and ways they've handled the paladin. Chill out people.
Umm, honestly?
We even got a dev involved, what an amazing 1E thread. Don't think I won't hold ever paladin thread we have from now on to these same standards. Assuming Jason lets us have them....
Well, gonna be a long night.
Badwrongfun you say? Humm, Yes I believe I shall. I don't remember adding you to my list of nemeses!?!? YOU BASTARD!!!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS TWO THREADS AND THE PLAYTEST ISN'T EVEN OUT YET!!!! Commence smiting of the BADWRONGFUN!!!!!
So like, if Lancelot hadn't gone and done the Lancelot sh*t and fallen then this thread wouldn't exist because I'm pretty sure he's the baseline for how the class was written. The idea is you have a class whose power comes from ideology, and the narrative device and theme of the character is that they could lose this power. I'm open to all alignments being enforced through specific codes to function as archetypes included in the core book. Solves everything and gives everyone what they want. Still a fine show for our first paladin thread.
Next up, stat generation methods :) MADness be damned, old friend.
Ahhhhh
Definitely getting to be a worthy first paladin thread.
I think we could expect to see cavalier and paladin merged into one class, and to have different orders function like different archetypes that will have different alignments attached to them/encouraged. Also, I believe this marks the very first 2.0 paladin thread. Rejoice!
This thread disappoints me.
If you are committing an evil act because of a sadistic choice, you are not doing so willingly. If you are not aware of some suberfugey bullsh*t your DM is pulling to trick you into doing something evil, then you are not doing so willingly. Do you have any more stupid questions?
I stand correct. Everyone likes to bash on paladins, until you need someone to do paladin sh*t.
It depends on the classes and how they are worded. If there is no language in one of the classes that stats that it stacks, then it does not stack and you will have two separate pools of the Lay on Hands ability, functioning at their respective class levels.
You think in extremes dude. The antipaladin code says you can do things that could be considered good, if they aid your overall cause, or something to that degree. It's more or less the sentence that grants leeway for role playing purposes. It also puts intent into hard rules for the game, that is to mean a player's intent has just as much significance as the action itself, as far as the alignment system is concerned. Also, no one mentioned Slayers or Vigilantes... or Gunslingers or Brawlers... I personally feel Cavaliers are underrated, especially considering the shades of grey comments above. Everyone wants to be a paladin, until it's time to do paladin sh*t!!!
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