Paladins who don't wear heavy armor

[Tamago]

I was making a character for Doomsday Dawn Part 3 tonight, and decided to roll up an Elven Paladin. My concept was that she'd be an agile woodland warrior, focused on speed and dexterity, so that demons would have no chance to escape!

Unfortunately, it seems like the Paladin class kind of shoehorns characters into wearing heavy armor:

Pathfinder Playtest wrote:

Armored Fortitude 7th

Your proficiency rank for heavy armor and shields increases to expert, and your proficiency rank for Fortitude saves increases to master. While wearing heavy armor, when you succeed at a Fortitude save, treat your result as a critical success instead.

Why is this ability restricted to heavy armor? It seems to me that the AC bonus from choosing heavy armor should be its own reward; if I want to build a dex-based paladin, it seems strange to me that I would be expert in heavy armor but not in light or medium. Is there a particular reason why this ability doesn't just apply to all armors?

[Tamago]

Ordinarily, I would not be too terribly worried about this, since in a year or two there would probably be an Archetype for a lightly-armored paladin character. But with the new way archetypes work in PF2, the "core" abilities of the class can't be changed. That means there's no design space for a paladin who doesn't focus on heavy armor, which seems unnecessarily limiting.

[Bardarok]

Part of the problem is with the way heavy armor works and how easy it is to boost ability scores in PF2. By the second ability boost even characters with dex as fourth most important stat might consider just switching to medium armor since the penalties for heavy armor are large and the benefits small. Definitely by lvl 10 where a 16 dex easy to have even for a paladin focusing on Str, Con, and Cha. Without heavy armor specific boosts like this and the fighters ability most characters, and most paladins and fighters, would switch to medium armor and heavy armor would get very little use.

[Lyricanna]

Bardarok wrote:

Part of the problem is with the way heavy armor works and how easy it is to boost ability scores in PF2. By the second ability boost even characters with dex as fourth most important stat might consider just switching to medium armor since the penalties for heavy armor are large and the benefits small. Definitely by lvl 10 where a 16 dex easy to have even for a paladin focusing on Str, Con, and Cha. Without heavy armor specific boosts like this and the fighters ability most characters, and most paladins and fighters, would switch to medium armor and heavy armor would get very little use.

Isn't that a better indication that Heavy Armor should be reworked to not suck?

If Medium armor is better in every way at higher levels, the way to fix that isn't to five bonuses out to certain classes to force them to use heavy armor. You should, I don't know, drop the movement speed and armor check penalties?

[Bardarok]

For the record I agree with you Lyricanna. If heavy armor was worth using on it's own merits then this sort of pigeonholeing of proficiency wouldn't be necessary. Either reduce penalties or add damage resistance of some kind would be my proposed fixes.

[GreatGraySkwid]

Tamago wrote:

But with the new way archetypes work in PF2, the "core" abilities of the class can't be changed. That means there's no design space for a paladin who doesn't focus on heavy armor, which seems unnecessarily limiting.

This is flatly wrong.

[Zman0]

It is just that with the speed penalty and the easy access to ASI for dex boosts Heavy Armor isn't the be all end all. Heavy Armor wearers have a lower TAC even when they have the same AC. Combined with ARCs and a speed penalty it makes heavy armor a detriment by mid levels.

Essentially, the classes that boost heavy armor proficiency are doing so to keep heavy armor wearers on equal footing. Essentially you trade an armor check penalty and speed penalty for an equal TAC and greater AC.

[duje]

heavy armour on paladin lets you focus more on str, con, cha and wis(for will saves), and you get legendary prof which completely trumps medium armour, yeah you are clumsy, but you are not sneak thief but self healing tank