Malefactor is right so this will be my last post on the matter. Although I will say I was never arguing they aren't good.
Barbarians save boost requires them to make saves against friendly buff spells, including heals, and if your paladin isnt at better than cha +6 by the time the barbarian gets his superstition that high you've REALLY misspent your gold.
Which is why healing is done out of combat... + heal spells target will saves, which is most Barbs worst save.
+6 headband starting stat of 14, 2 investment over level up is a fairly standard investment.
I've also seen starting of 15, 1 investment over level up.
Starting at 16 and going up 2 over level would put you one higher than Superstition without the favored class bonus, which blows the Paladin way out of the water. and is as high as I've ever seen any build go. In which case barbs still have better reflex and Fort saves.
The only things Paladins win at are will saves, they're slightly worse at fort saves, and dramatically worse at reflex saves. If the FCB is in play then they're basically the same at will saves unless they heavily invest in CHA (22 Cha + base + cloak = 23 vs superstition + base + cloak = 23) and massively worse in both other saves.
Also, other than warpriest (Which has been argued ad nauseum as not a good enough chassis to play holy warrior cause fervor is bad and no full BAB up until y'alls arguments needed to pivot) Inquisitors and Clerics fill different party and thematic roles.
A) filling different roles doesn't change the fact they're divinely empowered, as good as, if not better than Paladins, and don't need the same alignment lock to balance them. Paladins don't either.
B) Inquisitors make better archers than Paladins so ranged DPS they win at, Paladins are probably better in melee due to durability issues. But then Inquisitors have more utility both from better spells and better skills.
C) Pretty sure the argument against War priests was never, "they're too weak."
plus access to raise dead without gold cost.
Just to comment on this, since you keep throwing it around as an argument.
1) It's hardly fair to defend the alignment lock with a feat that came out two years after the alignment lock was in place
2) Considering a Paladin only ever gets 10 feats, paying one fifth of those (as well as whatever resources it takes to have 19 Charisma to take it, an opportunity cost is still a cost after all) to save 5k gold is hardly a great argument.
3) For that matter, how often are you expecting your party to die? Don't forget you are paying one fifth of your total feats for this, so if you only get, like, two deaths, then (assuming the campaign goes to around level 17 like most of Paizo's Adventure Paths do) the 2.4% of your total expected WBL per person to get the Cleric to cast it normally (or 2.6% of WBL per person if you have to hire some other Cleric to do it) is arguably far more cost efficient than the 20% of your total feats. Crunching the number you would have to pay spellcasting services for fifteen Raise Deads to get the same total cost (20% of a resource for 1 person).
What makes a paladin too powerful? They are on par with the Barbarians and Rangers who don't have those pesky restriction. Sure Barbarians can't be lawful but have no code. Compared to fighter sure you have point but you can say that about almost every other class compared to the fighter. The Paladin pales in comparison to any full casters. I'd even say the Inquisitor is more powerful.
Better saves, better armor access, more effective health via swift action self heals, better animal companions, Assorted immunities, access to a gold-costless raise dead, assorted lay hands mercies to spot remove things like curses, mind control, ability damage and penalties, a vast list of party improving things that frankly none of the other martials even come close to touching.
The fact that they're "on par" damage wise with barbs and rangers PLUS they actually support the party they're with in a significant fashion. If you have to trot out full casters to go "they're not that powerful" you need to dig a little deeper in putting together your argument.
Since we're apparently allowing archetypes, splatbook feat chains, etc here, this isn't true. The Armored Hulk barbarian gets heavy armor proficiency, as does the ACG's Steelblood bloodrager. There's also the Invulnerable Rager barbarian, who gets boosted DR and energy resistance which, together, probably prevent more damage than the extra AC from heavy armor.
Since we're apparently allowing archetypes, splatbook feat chains, etc here, this isn't true. The Armored Hulk barbarian gets heavy armor proficiency, as does the ACG's Steelblood bloodrager. There's also the Invulnerable Rager barbarian, who gets boosted DR and energy resistance which, together, probably prevent more damage than the extra AC from heavy armor.
What makes a paladin too powerful? They are on par with the Barbarians and Rangers who don't have those pesky restriction. Sure Barbarians can't be lawful but have no code. Compared to fighter sure you have point but you can say that about almost every other class compared to the fighter. The Paladin pales in comparison to any full casters. I'd even say the Inquisitor is more powerful.
Better saves, better armor access, more effective health via swift action self heals, better animal companions, Assorted immunities, access to a gold-costless raise dead, assorted lay hands mercies to spot remove things like curses, mind control, ability damage and penalties, a vast list of party improving things that frankly none of the other martials even come close to touching.
The fact that they're "on par" damage wise with barbs and rangers PLUS they actually support the party they're with in a significant fashion. If you have to trot out full casters to go "they're not that powerful" you need to dig a little deeper in putting together your argument.
I haven't argued a single archetype actually, also when raise dead ceases to cost 5000 gold, it becomes more feasable to use on NPCs, which again hammers home the "more useful outside of combat than other martials" aspect of the class.
The reality is that the goalposts of this debate have shifted, wavered and moved pretty much constantly, its like arguing against schrodingers barbarian and even then the barbarian doesn't provide the kind of party buffs a paladin does by simply existing and focusing more than in a halfassed way on a stat that affects 1/3 of their class abilities.
And really who cares if you spend 2 feats over 10 levels when your combat style requires like power attack and weapon focus with any other feats being kind of superfluous to your damage.
barbs also have the ability to deal with traps, provide food for the party while traveling thus saving rations for more dire need, can track and has more useful out of combat skills
Only a few archetypes.
A very minor issue.
No better than anyone with a good perc skill.
True. 4 is great than 2.
@Ryan Freire: I can't speak for everyone else, but I haven't shifted my goal posts(*). And you still haven't answered why Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil should be considered the only alignments worthy of having a Paladin/Antipaladin. The artument about Lawful Good being the most restrictive alignment doesn't work, because Chaotic Evil gets to have a twisted mirror of the Paladin, and Chaotic Evil is definitely not the most restrictive alignment.
(*)However, since you are emphasizing after-combat utility as out-of-combat utility, it is probably worth making an adjustment (labeled as such, up front) to distinguish these. Yes, being able to Raise Dead is very good after-combat utility, assuming that you have enough Lay On Hands left to spend 10 of them for this or can wait a day to refresh them. But it would be good to have more general out-of-combat utility to -- among other things -- reduce the probability that you will need to Raise Dead in the first place. At this, the Paladin has a hard time. Not saying the Paladin is bad, but nothing that is going to break the game by letting it free from the Lawful Good restriction. Why shouldn't Neutral Good and Chaotic Good be able to have Holy Warriors that can Raise Dead if they invest heavily to do so? You still haven't answered this.
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And you still haven't answered why Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil should be considered the only alignments worthy of having a Paladin/Antipaladin.
I can think of two immediate answers to your question. The first is simple and definitive. The second is not.
1) Because those are the only ones Paizo have published.
2) Because they, at their table, when they are GMing, want to run the game that way. And as the GM, that is their right (with the added caveat of being fair and upfront about such with their players).
Expanding on these: In 3.5 there were 'paladin' style classes for many alignments. Given 3.5 material is still mostly compatible, presenting an updated-to-Pathfinder-standard-mechanics version of those to a non-PFS GM and requesting permission to use it is pretty reasonable. But that is still within the purview of the GM to give a yay or nay, and they still have every right to go either way.
Arguing about what is published for Pathfinder is a very short argument.
Arguing about what people should or should not allow in their own games is endless, as it is largely a matter of taste and personal opinion. And those don't change easily, nor conform to any kind of rational, enlightened, "best possible option" (or our political scene would be radically different). In the end, what matters is that the people around the table, playing the game together, have a consensus on what the rules of their game are.
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And you still haven't answered why Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil should be considered the only alignments worthy of having a Paladin/Antipaladin.
It depends a bit on how you look at the paladin. As a holy warrior of his deity it is in fact questionable why this should be the case and why not every deity would be interested in haveing such an order of dedicated knights called paladins. Though in this case, it would make very much sense to me that a deity of magic (or nature, or whatever9 would have such an order consisting out of members that might fit their special domains better than the paladin (mechanic-wise) would do in most cases.
On the other hand as a holy knight of alignment, I think that a holy alignment warrior makes no sense being built after the paladin for the other alignments. This is also why I don't like the Anti-Paladin too much, though I understand why they were made this way. So if you want holy warriors for the other alignments (and I'm all for it), I would rather have something that is as exclusive to the other alignments as the paladin is for LG.
From this standpoint, no matter how you view at it, making the paladin the catch-all class for holy warriors everything would be something that would take away anything special the paladin class possesses at the moment. Which is why I wouldn't want to have this problem being handled in the Core Rulebook but rather by optional rulebooks (let's call it Ultimate Holy Warriors or Holy Warriors in Golarion)that expand on the idea of the code- or alignment-bound holy warrior.
Which is, in the end, why I would prefer things to stay like they are now. To me, the paladin like it is now is a cornerstone of the game, and like the vancian spell-casting, should not simply be changed into something else for whatever reasons. And to be honest, I find it hilarious to a degree that the same people who seem to be hellbent into diluting what the paladin stands for just to get the paladin's special abilities simultaneously keep telling us how weak the paladin is compared to other warrior classes (so they would probably never play a paladin anyways, if they are honest about it). In the end, I don't want the game to be ruled (pun intended) by the mechanics and the paladin as is is a reminder that there were times when the rules actually weren't the most important part about this game.
YMMV, of course, it's just my opinion.
2) Because they, at their table, when they are GMing, want to run the game that way. And as the GM, that is their right (with the added caveat of being fair and upfront about such with their players).
That kinda falls short of being an actual explanation for anything.
"In my game, Paladins must follow the Paladin code but have no alignment requirement."
"Why?"
Weak answer:
"Because I want to run my game that way, and it is my right to do so."
Better answer:
"Because I think you get interesting conflicts when a character isn't innately good and must struggle to follow a code he doesn't really believe in."
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2) Because they, at their table, when they are GMing, want to run the game that way. And as the GM, that is their right (with the added caveat of being fair and upfront about such with their players).That kinda falls short of being an actual explanation for anything.
"In my game, Paladins must follow the Paladin code but have no alignment requirement."
"Why?"
Weak answer:
"Because I want to run my game that way, and it is my right to do so."Better answer:
"Because I think you get interesting conflicts when a character isn't innately good and must struggle to follow a code he doesn't really believe in."
On the contrary, you just made my point perfectly. You stated your opinion, your intent and your reasoning behind it. And someone with a differing opinion can (and both has and will) argue incessantly with you about it, yet the odds of them changing your intent is basically nil. Because they're not running the game at your table - you are.
Thus: Your table. Your rules.
In all seriousness though: I don't disagree with your reasoning. For me the question is less of a matter of what is printed in the CRB and more about whether the player has created an interesting and useful character that is appropriate to the campaign. And in this regard if the player is playing a 'paladin' as righteous and Good a hero as they know how... I don't really see the point in stopping the fun to argue the finer points of Lawful vs Neutral vs Chaotic alignments.
But while being flexible and waiving certain restrictions can promote fun at one table, it can cause discord at another. Because to some it is more important that the rules of the game are objective and fair, than subjective and flexible. And that is also a perfectly legitimate choice in gaming style, and no volume of text will ever convince them that GMs should be changing the established rules on the fly because someone asked nicely.
Pepsi vs Coke.
Ford vs Holden
Universal agreement on the topic (and thus victory for any arguing faction) is theoretically possible, but unfathomably improbable, because much of the variance in opinions is based on the fundamental differences in personality between people. Hence these debates typically continue on until people give up and walk away, rather than reaching any kind of consensus.
Thus my earlier commentary on the paladin not being a problem:
Communicate with those you play with.
Respect the GM's position as arbiter.
Respect the need for all at the table to have fun.
Don't be an ass.
And things will be fine.
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No it isn't. Superstition is a eventually a +6 to all saves, which out weighs most Paladins final Charisma scoreBarbarians do not have better saves than paladins, thats just false.
Yeah, IF they take a particular build for it that comes with its own other limitations. That's what these petty genital measuring debates come down to - IF this, IF that while only looking at narrow subsets of the classes as if that's the only subset anybody wants to play. In other words, largely nonsense compared to the diversity of characters people want to play including non-superstitious barbarians and holy knight archetypes.
"Because I think you get interesting conflicts when a character isn't innately good and must struggle to follow a code he doesn't really believe in."
Sorry, I had to butt in at this point just to make a comment. Someone who does not believe in the code they are following is not a Paladin. They would never have become a Paladin. It takes extreme devotion to the ideals of Law and Good, and the absolute belief that those ideals are the right way to do things, to even become a Paladin. To even think differently on these lines is to completely ignore the class description in the Core book.
Maybe, just maybe, you could get away with this with the Chosen One archetype but commitment to the ideals of Law and Good must still be present in order to become a Paladin. You will never receive 'the calling' to be a Paladin if you lack this devotion already.
A bit of flavor text:
In pursuit of their lofty goals, they adhere to ironclad laws of morality and discipline. As reward for their righteousness, these holy champions are blessed with boons to aid them in their quests: powers to banish evil, heal the innocent, and inspire the faithful.
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This is in a hypothetical house-ruled homebrew campaign. Obviously, the GM is changing Paladins by removing both the 'Lawful' and 'Good' requirements. This creates the possibility for new stories - like one about a power-hungry mercenary who is forced to maintain the highest moral standards and suppress his base instincts, lest he be stripped of his powers.
A lot of people rewrite the standard flavor text. Rangers: "For those who relish the thrill of the hunt, there are only predators and prey." That sounds pretty evil. I wouldn't want to play one like that.
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Just one more comment, about the whole "If you want it this way, put those rules in" argument. Personally I hate seeing this argument, because generally speaking, if someone wants to play such-and-such concept, that probably means they're not the GM. And like one guy said earlier in this thread, a lot of GMs just don't care enough to really lean either way, and thus just default to official. This is especially poignant for me, because in my group I am one of maybe three people (out of about a dozen people who have GM'd with the group, it's a decently sized PbP grou) who doesn't flat forbid anything that's not Paizo-published-for-Pathfinder just on principle. They don't even bother looking at it, if it's not Paizo material intended for Pathfinder they just flat ban it. As such, yes, I would very much like to see these options published by Paizo (and as I said earlier, I don't give a flying flip what it's called, it's the type of mechanics more than a name I care about) because that is the only way I'd ever be able to actually use them. I can't just "convert 3.5 material", I can't use some 3rd-party material, and I'm trying to play so I don't make the houserules.
This is in a hypothetical house-ruled homebrew campaign. Obviously, the GM is changing Paladins by removing both the 'Lawful' and 'Good' requirements. This creates the possibility for new stories - like one about a power-hungry mercenary who is forced to maintain the highest moral standards and suppress his base instincts, lest he be stripped of his powers.
Hypothetical, house-ruled, homebrewed campaign. Ok, that's legit. Your table, your rules. Take my comment with a grain of salt then, if you aren't playing with the Core rules. It is merely meant for those that can't grasp, or separate, what they want a paladin to be versus what they are.
A lot of people rewrite the standard flavor text. Rangers: "For those who relish the thrill of the hunt, there are only predators and prey." That sounds pretty evil. I wouldn't want to play one like that.
I'm not sure I follow you. Rangers can be evil. They can be good, lawful, and/or evil as well. Remember, predator/prey relationships at their core are part of nature and effectively neutral until morality gets involved (and that requires a Intelligence scores of 3 or higher).
Just so long as we are clear, and in agreement, rewriting the flavor text is basically house-ruling. Flavor text may not be part of the mechanics of how a class works but it does its own part to heavily influence the game and setting.
***snip***
Whether or not you hate the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument. You are in a situation that doesn't appear to be fair to YOU, but the game is about the group having fun as a whole. It is something that has to be worked out in person with the group and that we really can't help you with.
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