Personality, Officers, Seneschals, and Paladins

[Guurzak]

The Officer skill which has the formation leadership features is based on Personality. So is the Seneschal skill which will be used for infrastructure management.

Being either an Officer or a Seneschal makes you a very high priority target- for focused fire, or for assassins, or both.

The natural fits for personality skills among the core classes are Paladins, Sorcerers, and Bards.

Sorcerers are squishy. Bards aren't frontline troops either. So an LG settlement can field very tanky paladin officers and hard-to-assassinate building managers, while everyone else is left with choosing between robes or frolicking to protect their leadership assets.

Clerics might make a decent alternative if there's enough personality-oriented stuff in their channel energy design to make developing these skills practical. I just hope that we don't end up with a scenario where anyone who wants to manage a building makes a dowsing sage animal-handling persuasive bluffing fighter.

[Cinderwell]

I'm going to vote for Paladins to be Lawful only, instead of Lawful Good, if it comes up.

Developing a role for one corner of the grid would be disappointing.

[Hardin Steele]

I think Palladins should remain LG, which will be very tough to maintain. And if a settlement full of squishies doesn't like having a squishy formation leader they can field a heavy infantry fighter, a well -trained cleric, or a paladin that resides in that settlement and trains elsewhere, or another reasonably armor type. Just because one role fits the bill best doesn't mean exceptions should be made. Quite the contrary...it causes tough decisions to be made in how to fill a particular slot within a settlement.

[Dario]

Remember that having a higher personality stat doesn't make you better at the job. It's just a gating mechanism. The relevant factor is how you've trained the skills.

[Kemedo]

Like Clerics must have one-step alignement from their god.

Why not turn Paladin role to a Warrior of the God, for each god (and their alignement)? I that way we still have the vanilla Paladin, but have others similar types of others alignements:

LG - Paladin
LN - Law's Enforcer
LE - Slaver
NG - Benevolent
TN - Balance Bringer
NE - Malevolent
CG - Liberator
CN - Usurper
CE - Antipaladin

Thinking on PF-RPG it's easy to create the powers, but the description is a bit trickier.

But them we will fall in Barbarian and Assassin balance as well.

So I guess the fairest:

Paladin - Lawful
Barbarian - Chaotic
Assassin - Evil
Something (a Healer?) - Good

[Cinderwell]

Yeah, even though I don't plan on rolling Evil, I can see balance issues from giving their settlements access to fewer roles.

The 5ed playtest had several Paladin flavors for different alignments, like Blackguard.

EDIT: I guess if Assassin is Evil only, we'd be even for roles.

[Urman]

Guurzak wrote:

Sorcerers are squishy. Bards aren't frontline troops either. So an LG settlement can field very tanky paladin officers and hard-to-assassinate building managers, while everyone else is left with choosing between robes or frolicking to protect their leadership assets.

Nothing will prevent Fighters who aim to become leaders from developing their Personality. They might do it at the expense of other traits that the ranker-types focus on (foraging, first aid, butchering some peasant's cow), but a military company will have a lot of people with specialized skills - out of 40 characters, only a few have to do the cooking. Only a few have to specialize in high Personality stuff.

[Guurzak]

Dario wrote:

Remember that having a higher personality stat doesn't make you better at the job. It's just a gating mechanism. The relevant factor is how you've trained the skills.

If you can't train the skills because your stat isn't high enough, then that's a distinction without substance. Having a higher stat is a prerequisite for training a higher skill, so while having the stat doesn't "make you" better at the job, not having the stat ensures that you *won't* be good at the job.

Maxing out any skill requires you to max out the associated attribute, so we can say with confidence that if you want to be "good at" any job at its highest levels you're going to need to invest significantly in its requirements.

[Cinderwell]

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

When they mentioned in the Cleric thread that deity rep would offer martial perks that a Fighter would want, it made me start to wonder if Paladin would exist as it's own role.

[Guurzak]

Yes, we're confident that paladin will be a role.

[DeciusBrutus]

Meaningful choices abound. Everything is going according to The Plan.

[Deianira]

Cinderwell wrote:

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

When they mentioned in the Cleric thread that deity rep would offer martial perks that a Fighter would want, it made me start to wonder if Paladin would exist as it's own role.

Yes, all of the core Pathfinder RPG classes will be represented by roles in Pathfinder Online. I think paladin's in the second group, along with sorceror, bard and barbarian, which will be added sometime after EE starts.

[Being]

Druids, Rangers, and Monks will likely form the third wave.

[Kemedo]

Cinderwell wrote:

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

It was mentioned by a Game Designer yesterday

Tork Shaw wrote:

A Cathedral (which is actually the large Cleric building, not the temple, my error) can have either additional deities added OR paladin training added (subject to alignment) Further down the line there will be other classes that may end up on the Cathedral too (its possible you may like to speculate on what those will be ;) ). So it supports 2+ classes vs. the 3 that others can.

Mine bold mark

[Hardin Steele]

Guurzak wrote:

Dario wrote:

Remember that having a higher personality stat doesn't make you better at the job. It's just a gating mechanism.

If you can't train the skills because your stat isn't high enough, then that's a distinction without substance. Having a higher stat is a prerequisite for training a higher skill, so while having the stat doesn't "make you" better at the job, not having the stat ensures that you *won't* be good at the job.

Maxing out any skill requires you to max out the associated attribute, so we can say with confidence that if you want to be "good at" any job at its highest levels you're going to need to invest significantly in its requirements.

I would agree that any role that is mechanically excluded from reaching a specific attribute number (thereby hitting a "closed gate") would be at a disadvantage for a specific function. Still that would be a choice made by the player as they choose a career path and role. But, we do need to know what is required in stats, attributes and skill/role choices so we don't begin training up a dead-end career path. Experience is too expensive to gain to waste thousands of XPs on a non-functional skill tree selection.

[Cinderwell]

Hardin Steele wrote:

I would agree that any role that is mechanically excluded from reaching a specific attribute number (thereby hitting a "closed gate") would be at a disadvantage for a specific function. Still that would be a choice made by the player as they choose a career path and role. But, we do need to know what is required in stats, attributes and skill/role choices so we don't begin training up a dead-end career path. Experience is too expensive to gain to waste thousands of XPs on a non-functional skill tree selection.

I think what he was getting at is that Evil Settlements can't produce Lawful Good Paladins, so it's not a choice for their members' career paths.

[Cinderwell]

Kemedo wrote:

Cinderwell wrote:

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

It was mentioned by a Game Designer yesterday

Tork Shaw wrote:

A Cathedral (which is actually the large Cleric building, not the temple, my error) can have either additional deities added OR paladin training added (subject to alignment) Further down the line there will be other classes that may end up on the Cathedral too (its possible you may like to speculate on what those will be ;) ). So it supports 2+ classes vs. the 3 that others can.

Mine bold mark

Nice catch, it was starting to sound like you'd be able to make something similar with Fighter/Cleric and deity reputation martial perks, that's why I was wondering.

[Kemedo]

Indeed you can cutomize the choices much more of the TT rules as far as I see.

[Traianus Decius Aureus]

Cinderwell wrote:

Hardin Steele wrote:

I would agree that any role that is mechanically excluded from reaching a specific attribute number (thereby hitting a "closed gate") would be at a disadvantage for a specific function. Still that would be a choice made by the player as they choose a career path and role. But, we do need to know what is required in stats, attributes and skill/role choices so we don't begin training up a dead-end career path. Experience is too expensive to gain to waste thousands of XPs on a non-functional skill tree selection.

I think what he was getting at is that Evil Settlements can't produce Lawful Good Paladins, so it's not a choice for their members' career paths.

I don't see that as a problem- it is a meaningful choice. You choose to make your settlement evil for whatever reasons you think it benefits you. This sounds like a repercussion of that choice. LG settlements shouldn't have assassins and removes options for member's career paths as well, which is a repercussion of that choice.

IMO, working as intended.

That said, adding in Blackguards or anti-paladins at some point makes sense, due to their long history in TT. But I hope the devs avoid a tit-for-tat mentality between Law/Good and Chaos/Evil. Things can be balanced overall without being equal in everything.

[Lam]

I suspect that Aristocrat will also be personality based and may have harder options for armor (as in military leader model).

[FMS Quietus]

Cinderwell wrote:

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

When they mentioned in the Cleric thread that deity rep would offer martial perks that a Fighter would want, it made me start to wonder if Paladin would exist as it's own role.

Yes. And only Lawful Good settlements will offer their training.

[Hardin Steele]

Cinderwell wrote:

Hardin Steele wrote:

I would agree that any role that is mechanically excluded from reaching a specific attribute number (thereby hitting a "closed gate") would be at a disadvantage for a specific function. Still that would be a choice made by the player as they choose a career path and role. But, we do need to know what is required in stats, attributes and skill/role choices so we don't begin training up a dead-end career path. Experience is too expensive to gain to waste thousands of XPs on a non-functional skill tree selection.

I think what he was getting at is that Evil Settlements can't produce Lawful Good Paladins, so it's not a choice for their members' career paths.

But it IS a choice in their career paths. they can choose to not be evil and be a paladin instead. Paladins will not get to go out and assassinate people, but they will kill with righteous power...a choice still has been made. I understand the options, but as long as they are advertised in advance, evil players can choose what they want to be, or even choose not to be evil, or use a heavily armored fighter in that role versus a paladin.

[Lee Hammock]

Guurzak wrote:

The Officer skill which has the formation leadership features is based on Personality. So is the Seneschal skill which will be used for infrastructure management.

Being either an Officer or a Seneschal makes you a very high priority target- for focused fire, or for assassins, or both.

The natural fits for personality skills among the core classes are Paladins, Sorcerers, and Bards.

Sorcerers are squishy. Bards aren't frontline troops either. So an LG settlement can field very tanky paladin officers and hard-to-assassinate building managers, while everyone else is left with choosing between robes or frolicking to protect their leadership assets.

Clerics might make a decent alternative if there's enough personality-oriented stuff in their channel energy design to make developing these skills practical. I just hope that we don't end up with a scenario where anyone who wants to manage a building makes a dowsing sage animal-handling persuasive bluffing fighter.

Actually the best class for settlement management is Aristocrat, which is a mixed buffer/social force multiplier/light combat sort of character. Sure it may not be as assassin proof as a paladin, but its role features relate directly to making settlements or formations better and will be less squishy than a sorcerer, probably a little less squishy than a bard but not a whole lot.