Paladins 4E - goodbye, knight in shining armour?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)

Any alignment. Teleport. No falling. The rest sounds like a heavily modded house rules variant.

The rest is auras (Diablo, anyone?) and a defensive role. Sigh.

 

Thats 4ed for you.

 

What they wanted to do was to draw up a "holy warrior" for any diety--including evil ones to provide a more versatile RP experience and more challenging and memorable foes for the players. You can still draw up the Knight in shining armour with the same behavioural restrictions if that's what you want to play.

In all, I like what they did with the Paladin, but with the release of Martial Power in November, the Paladin may take a back seat to Fighter until the players get a feel for the new options there.

The Paladin is supposed to be at the front line and draw the attention of the enemy combatants. They get the best armour, more hitpoints, and more healing surges to compensate for that. Many of the powers are set to show the paladin taking hits for other characters and protecting more vulnerable characters, which is what Paladins did in well built parties before...

 

The end of an era.

 

Actually, clerics can have a very hard time falling as well. IIRC there is a divine ceremony, an anointing of sorts, and afterwards there is very little the deity can do. So goodbye omnipotent powers beyond our ken, hello batteries for my smiting.

 

D&d is dead now. its that simple. Whats left of it is a hybrid between world of warcraft, and diablo.

 

Unfortunately yes, but it has been pointing this way for some time I'm afraid.

 

They even killed the star wars rpg as well. Last two books they gave out wat a Kotor book, and a Force Unleashed one. Pretty much filled with stats to characters from the computer games.

 

I wouldn't go that far. It's grown to keep up with WoW and Diablo, but it hasn't become a hybrid of them. It's a more balanced system that will grace us with 35 to 40 or more classes over the run, and will try to make them all useful and fun.

 

The usefullness of a class, and the fun of it, is allways up to the player though. And its not "grown" when trying to keep up with diablo and wow. It has shrinked, considerably too. Its damage per second in d&d too now, not roleplaying.

 

I personally think this is a good change. Especially the alignment bit. This makes SO much more sense. Why would a Paladin of Cyric be Lawful Good? Or even Helm, for that matter? Why would a fiercely Neutral god employ exclusively Lawful Good warriors to be his earthly champions? Doesn't make any sense. I always thought a Paladin should follow his god's example as closely as possible.

As for the falling - I happen to think that change rocks. The idea of falling is still in place, it's just evolved. Now there are serious consequences for straying from your tenets; you'll be hunted down and purged by your fellows. That rules! It makes more sense when you think of a hardcore order who takes its vows so seriously. When you "fall," the consequences go beyond just a personal loss (a loss of powers). Then think of the paladins of one order being arch-enemies of another because their Gods are opposed and fight as an earthly extension of the feud...oh, the possibilities.

Yeah it's not the classical idea of a paladin, but whoopdeedoo. It was always flawed anyway.

 

The idea behind the paladin, as it was at the begining (if I remember correctly), was that only a person of pure good, could become one. And only good gods could have paladins. The key word was goodness. One had to be pure good to achive the powers granted by the class. Thats why neutral gods and such didn`t have any. Evil gods had the old anti-paladin, I remember. Wich was later changed to Blackguard. Why the Blackguard ended up being a prestigue class is beyond me. Should have been a pure class, really.

Ohh and alignments should have been permanently removed I think. Only d&d uses them. and there is a reason for it. It restricts too much in terms of roleplaying.Better to just have your actions have consequences instead. For good or evil.

 

Actually, I think LN gods had paladins for a while. Weren't there paladins of Helm in 2nd edition? Of course, if there are now paladins of every deity, they should be of every alignment, and vice versa. That is pretty obvious. I would call them different names, however - paladins have been LG for many years, so it would have been good if WotC had named the class "Champion" or some such. Then LGs champions could be paladins, G ones would be defenders, E ones blackguards, and so on. This actually existed in 3.x splatbooks - Unearthed Arcana had CG, LE and CE paladins, and Dragon 311/312 had variants for all alignments. Speaking of alignments, I think the way 4E alignments were done simply eliminates the partial neutral ones. Good is pretty much the old Chaotic Good, Evil sounds a lot like Lawful Evil. Which is a pity, since some of the nixed alignments were among my favourites.

And btw, D&D isn't dead. As long as WotC/Hasbro does not go on a worldwide auto de fe, there is nothing preventing any of us from playing ADnD, 2nd edition or 3.x.

 

I think some of the neutral gods got to have paladins because of what they stood for. Helm stood for justice and such didn`t he?

The removal of some of the alignments is just there to remove more roleplaying options, and make room for more hack and slash. 9 alignments didn`t hamper the previous editions one bit, so there is no real reason for them to be reduced. Ohh and check out the cyclop minions. they have 1 hitpoint. Means you can kill one with a spoon. Stack up a bunch of spoons and go cyclops hunting

 

I know all minions have 1 hp, so a successful attack kills them. Anyway, 3.x already had some strange deities having paladins - such as Sune (ok, also Selune, but Selune having paladins makes some sense with her being one part of the original good-evil fight). I thought about making a paladin of Jergal one of these days.

Anyway, I prefer naming non-LG paladins something else. Besides, for everyone other than clerics, paladins etc there is no problem if your alignment varies all over the place.

 

But when a Wizard spends his first few levels hiding in the fighter's back pack when he runs out of spells, and by 10th level, the only purpose the Fighter serves is to carry the Mage's stuff, something needs to change. The way I see it, WoW and Diablo solved a problem that has plagues D&D from the begining--giving the Fighter more to do than just play with his sword while the Wizard is reigned in a bit...

That's all well and good, but eventually players wanted to see the same thing available to neutral and evil gods. That's why we have the change to Paladins...

Protection, actually.

I guess there was a lot of hatred for the alignment system, and calls for a change. Now that it has changed, they don't like the new system. Personally, I like having more of a philosophical outlook of the various faiths and the like, but it has to make sense but not be too restrictive. I like the 9 alignment system as a better way of describing things...

But the higher level the minion, the higher the defensive scores. The Higher defensive scores mean it's harder to actually hit with the spoon. I have misgivings about minions in 4e. I'm not sure how much fun they would be, and I feat that they may be a source of free XP...

 

Yes, Gnarff, that's what paladins did, but they weren't created as half-clerics nor as protective combatants. They got divine spells from somewhere and I always thought it was dumb to have them cast divine magic without having a divine patron or patrons. They had spells designed for protection of others and plenty of those. For the same reason, they got the Heal skill. And yet, they weren't meant as what they seem to be becoming. I'm fully aware I could probably pull off something of the more orthodox kind and probably with more variety and more exacting than possible in 3 or 3.5E, nor do I even actually mourn the passing of the LG alignment restriction. I just don't like paladins as defensive teleporting base class divine champions.

For the record, the old system was seriously flawed. I understand why NG, LN and even certain CG deities would sponsor paladins, but I don't understand why an NG deity would make you fall for not being Lawful enough (discipline is a stretch) or especially why an LN deity would punish you for not being Good enough. Never really believed there should be no NG paladins at all. Generally often had a problem with how the Lawful part was interpreted. Still, a paladin means a paragon, a noble champion of a cause, and that's clearly not an evil person and not really a Robin Hood personage either, let alone the CN. Nalia de'Arnise was the closest a CG could get to being a paladin and while if I were a DM I would probably allow one like that, I would not like to see it as the general model. I can't think of any LN character that would make a fine paladin (Elhan, the Suldanesselar commander didn't have the thing, Anomen as LN didn't have it either). TN or CN is not it, and evil paladins are a joke.

 

The Paladin, as I see it now, is the guy that puts themselves in harm's way in favour of those they seek to protect. THey gain special combat skill and divine manifestations to enable them to do this. They have some healing abililities to keep their friends and charges alive in tough situations, but they are mostly a line of defence against the horde of evil before them.

 

And why would an evil paladin train himself to protect others?