My boyfriend's gaming group is planning on a campaign with a form of gestalting, and I'm very interested in possibly going paladin/summoner or antipaladin/summoner.
However, paladin/antipaladin are at the extreme ends of the alignment spectrum, and got me thinking of Grey Jedi, which made me go...are there any neutral paladin classes or archtypes in Pathfinder, 3.5e, or even 3rd party?
I'd simply like to know all potential options for paladin related hyjinks before locking my character concept down to good or evil.
If anyone is wondering, I'm considering Holy Guide Paladin/Master Summoner or Dread Vanguard Antipaladin/Master Summoner. To be honest, Dread Vanguard seems like a REALLY powerful combo with Summoner.
Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated!
If your boyfriend's group is open to third party stuff, these are similar classes to the paladin but have Alignment: Any.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warder
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/aegis
They may not be exactly what you're looking for, but I'd give them a read just in case.
The Champion of the Faith Warpriest is pretty close to an any-alignment Paladin.
Besides that, no - Paladins still are stuck in the realm of Lawful Good Only. Paladins typically are so tied to their Alignments with things like Smite Evil that there isn't much leeway to have Archetypes of Paladins exist without completely rewriting the class.
It'd be nice to see Alternate Classes for the Paladin for each Alignment, though.
It'd take a pretty substantial amount of time, though; just look how much it takes for the Antipaladin to exist, and then multiply that by 7.
I'd also add that even though it is based on cleric, envoy of balance prestige clas sometimes satisfies the players desires.
There where the Chaotic Good Paladin of Freedom, the LE Paladin of Tyranny, and the CE Paladin of Slaughter from 3.5 Unearthed Arcana.
Thanks everyone for your posts!
I've done a little digging, and there are other threads floating about to look into, and some books claiming some neutral types here and there, but it seems to be just tooo out there for most people.
Which is odd. I would think a true neutral paladin wouldn't be very far-fetched....THE embodiment of the desire to preserve the balance. The arguement that druids are the neutral version of paladin's boggles me...all the druids care about are the natural world, not the whole of existance.
The desire to use paladin is mainly because the focus on CHA for saves and spellcasing (as well as buffing BAB and HP) for the summoner are reallly nice! >.<
Not to mention a Paladin who uses the Synthesis Summoner archetype.
"I may be weak, but my faith makes me strong" *Summons Eidolon turning into a hulking warrior of faith*
LOL yeah, but I do love the idea of "constant buddies" Master Summoner, with the threat of "FLOOD THE BOARD" available if need be.
If you are playing Mythic, you can take the Beyond Morality ability.
That pretty much removes every single alignment based limitation from your character. Your paladin will never fall. You can multiclass a paladin and a barbarian. Alignment effects don't bother you at all. The whole alignment system becomes null and void.
Its pretty awesome.
If only Synthesis didn't alter Shield Ally, theny I could have my cake and eat it too.
prismaticsoul wrote: The arguement that druids are the neutral version of paladin's boggles me...all the druids care about are the natural world, not the whole of existance. Not necessarily just this. A perfectly logical argument can be made that urban druids (which do exist) are protectors of the cities as well as protecting the greenlands from themselves. Furthermore, most druids, regardless of alignment, abhor undead for breaking the balance between life and death. Hell, I remember playing with a druid who was so in tune with balance, he would ensure that the forces of good would never become to powerful to avoid something like what happened in the Dragonlance universe where Good sort of nuked the everloving s**t out of Evil, throwing the world into complete chaos and disarray.
Needless to say, balance certainly is a druid's thing.
Most DMs will not allow Master Summoner due to that aspect of summoning dozens of creatures a round, which bogs down combat time and makes any straight up combat pointless, as well as makes any martial character feel worthless. Of course if youa re all buffing styled characters it makes it awesome.
There was some interesting discussion in THIS THREAD from last year.
Doomed Hero wrote: If you are playing Mythic, you can take the Beyond Morality ability.
That pretty much removes every single alignment based limitation from your character. Your paladin will never fall. You can multiclass a paladin and a barbarian. Alignment effects don't bother you at all. The whole alignment system becomes null and void.
Its pretty awesome.
Doomed, that sounds very cool, but I don't think they would go mythic. I'm not even afraid of RPing alignment to the hilt (I ran a Vow of Poverty Lawful Good Monk once that REFUSED to resort to violence unless it was the only option left, and even then she would only strike for non-lethal).
If anything, I'm just worried about not being in a group of do gooders as a paladin, or not in a group of EVIL a**es as an antipaladin. Neutral is always a safe bet generally speaking.
prismaticsoul wrote: Thanks everyone for your posts!
I've done a little digging, and there are other threads floating about to look into, and some books claiming some neutral types here and there, but it seems to be just tooo out there for most people.
Which is odd. I would think a true neutral paladin wouldn't be very far-fetched....THE embodiment of the desire to preserve the balance. The arguement that druids are the neutral version of paladin's boggles me...all the druids care about are the natural world, not the whole of existance.
The desire to use paladin is mainly because the focus on CHA for saves and spellcasing (as well as buffing BAB and HP) for the summoner are reallly nice! >.<
what you describe is the envoy of balance but its not a paladin in mechanic :( I can say that if the charisma to saves and charisma to casting can be done with an oracle and divine protection feat. Its no the best that it could be but maybe its something to inspire something that fits better.
PS: an envoy has decent synergy with master summoner because of augment summoning for free.
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Zova Lex wrote: prismaticsoul wrote: The arguement that druids are the neutral version of paladin's boggles me...all the druids care about are the natural world, not the whole of existance. Not necessarily just this. A perfectly logical argument can be made that urban druids (which do exist) are protectors of the cities as well as protecting the greenlands from themselves. Furthermore, most druids, regardless of alignment, abhor undead for breaking the balance between life and death. Hell, I remember playing with a druid who was so in tune with balance, he would ensure that the forces of good would never become to powerful to avoid something like what happened in the Dragonlance universe where Good sort of nuked the everloving s**t out of Evil, throwing the world into complete chaos and disarray.
Needless to say, balance certainly is a druid's thing. True to a degree, but most of the "Urban" druid style stuff came way later...growing up, D&D druids either protected nature (and were begrudging of civilization) or eventually dark corruptors of nature.
Yeah Dragonlance was awesome in that it had the stones to show that a overwhelmingly good world is no more useful to existance than an all evil world...its still my most favorite campagin. Even got Weis and Hickman to sign my old ratty looking night blue with silver lettering copy of the Chronicles last year at GenCon. :-)
The White Paladin wrote: Most DMs will not allow Master Summoner due to that aspect of summoning dozens of creatures a round, which bogs down combat time and makes any straight up combat pointless, as well as makes any martial character feel worthless. Of course if youa re all buffing styled characters it makes it awesome. Master Summoner is only REALLY broken if the person playing the summoner has no respect for his teammates or DM imo; just because you have 3+CHA+whatever uses of a strong SLA doesn't mean you need to flood the board every combat, or use it for EVERY SINGLE COMBAT for that matter.
To me, MS is best served by being restrained on its use of its powerful SLA...to only REALLY break it out when the odds are clearly stacked against the party, or they have run into a problem the party as a whole are not equiped to handle. These are the opertunities for the SLA to shine, and make everyone at the table happy.
As for slowing down combat, its all in the skill and preparedness of the person running the character. I'd have stat blocks ready to go, and generalized plans of action ready for when I decided the SLA must be tapped. >.<
Besides...who wouldn't want to see a paladin Maze a foe with a lv 6 spell slot!
Renegadeshepherd wrote: prismaticsoul wrote: Thanks everyone for your posts!
I've done a little digging, and there are other threads floating about to look into, and some books claiming some neutral types here and there, but it seems to be just tooo out there for most people.
Which is odd. I would think a true neutral paladin wouldn't be very far-fetched....THE embodiment of the desire to preserve the balance. The arguement that druids are the neutral version of paladin's boggles me...all the druids care about are the natural world, not the whole of existance.
The desire to use paladin is mainly because the focus on CHA for saves and spellcasing (as well as buffing BAB and HP) for the summoner are reallly nice! >.<
what you describe is the envoy of balance but its not a paladin in mechanic :( I can say that if the charisma to saves and charisma to casting can be done with an oracle and divine protection feat. Its no the best that it could be but maybe its something to inspire something that fits better.
PS: an envoy has decent synergy with master summoner because of augment summoning for free. Of course there are other CHA based classes to look at, and by no means am I currently ruling out any others...I just really love the idea of a paladin wandering around, perhaps getting ambushed, mocked for being alone and going "Alone? No...I am never truly alone." as he summons a pack of whatevers and goes to town. >.<
Yeah I have Champions of Balance, and the envoy is very cool...taking enough dips for the summons aren't hedged out by protections would be very slick.
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