It's the difference between Archbishop Turpin, Friar Tuck and the likes of Lancelot and Galaad, basically.

I think I consider the essence of a Paladin how they act, and not so much their precise powers.


I have played fighters that acted more like a Paladin than some players with actual paladins

Quote from: Bill;680768I think I consider the essence of a Paladin how they act, and not so much their precise powers.


I have played fighters that acted more like a Paladin than some players with actual paladins

Totally.  My longest running character Merdock (funny enough, I just posted an old lost character sheet in this thread) was a LG fighter who didn't qualify for a paladin.  Didn't keep me from running him that way though.

the first thing I created in my earlier games was versions of the Healer and the cloistered monk.  The Cleric as originally written was not a priest, he was a warrior priest, a fighting holy man.  

The Paladin came later, and was, as some have noted, a holy fighting man...(hence the OP, this was razor thin), a lesser priest but very much a magnification of the original Cleric.  Sometimes viewed as a zealot.

 By the use of heavy armor and the High hit dice and the weapon restrictions, they kept the Cleric inferior in fighting to the Fighting man while still better than anyone else.

As many have pointed out the difference lies less in rules and more in roleplaying.

Last D&D campaign I played I was a thief that got mixed up in a group of holy rollers, which was funny after awhile b/c the group was actually a bunch of paladins, but the toughest character in the group was the cleric.  It was quite a large group, about 6 players that time, and I would say only one person was actually a paladin.

As essentially a criminal, my thief spent a tremendous amount of time lying, stealing, and trying to use the group as a band of marauders so I could steal from villages after I told the group about "the evil demon summoners that resided there".  The one actual paladin roleplayed an intelligent virtuous warrior that was devout in his belief that his god could bring justice and whatever other crap to the land.  The other "paladins" (only by class) spent all their time trying to justify killing people under the banner of "we're on a crusade"...

I would go as far as to say that another similar argument would be a shadowknight/dark knight and a necromancer - which often enough is clearly defined in rules and character creation, though roleplaying them is actually more similar than roleplaying a paladin/cleric while the character creation for them is unbalanced and vague.

So, maybe it has to do with priest+hybrid versus caster+hybrid?

So the main difference I see is a good roleplayer versus a bad one.

Paladin: a literary archetype. The saintly knight, whose faith in God is so strong they become walking miracles who can directly confront and protect others from EVIL.

Cleric: a D&Dism, a kludged together class to deal with a player who insisted on playing a vampire, resulting in the ridiculously artificial, and completely unsupported by fantasy literature, limit on MUs not being able to heal.


My solution: drop the Cleric, let MUs heal, and replace the Paladin as the ideal of the Christian knight with a more general holy warrior who can act as the chosen champion of any deity in a more typical polytheistic fantasy setting.

You already know my position from my recent blog post. I disagree with all but a couple people in this thread. A paladin isn't a holy warrior; a paladin is a righteous knight. It may be religion that prompts the paladin to be righteous; that was certainly the case for knights in Arthurian romance. But it could also be Patriotism, or Reason, or who knows what. The driving force of the paladin is based in role-playing. The only real requirement is that a paladin must put what's right ahead of their personal desires.

Clerics, on the other hand, are actual holy warriors. They serve their religion.

Quote from: Soylent Green;680676I think the Paladin should be an advanced or Prestige class, something you work towards or earn as a result of your deeds and not something start off as at level 1.

Totally.  When I heard of prestige classes, "Paladin" was the first thing that came to my mind.  I was very disappointed that they didn't do it that way.

In a couple of Old School games I played, the Paladin was basically treated as a prestige class - something you earned - as it was pretty much just additive to the Fighter, anyway.

Quote from: talysman;680854You already know my position from my recent blog post. I disagree with all but a couple people in this thread. A paladin isn't a holy warrior; a paladin is a righteous knight. It may be religion that prompts the paladin to be righteous; that was certainly the case for knights in Arthurian romance. But it could also be Patriotism, or Reason, or who knows what. The driving force of the paladin is based in role-playing. The only real requirement is that a paladin must put what's right ahead of their personal desires.

Clerics, on the other hand, are actual holy warriors. They serve their religion.

I would totally agree with you except that many of the paladin's powers come from the divine.  You simply cannot divorce the AD&D paladin from holy warrior because of this.  That's why a lot of people view paladins as a hybrid between fighter and cleric.  You are describing the cavalier class, not necessarily the paladin.

Quote from: estar;680731Paladins are warrior champions of their religion serving as an example. They will be called to deal with a challenge or threat and then move on.

Clerics are most pastoral in that they minister to a flock even if it is a adventuring party. Their jobs is to hold the fort, stick with the group, etc.

Another way of thinking about it is that cleric are franchise holders of the deity and paladins are the roving troubleshooters going where they are needed or to act as backup to the clerics already present.

Depending on the religion there could be little difference in their skill sets but always a big difference in what their duties entail.

Paladins are held to a high standard because when they are called on to act people must be able to trust them on a short notice. Which is why those with high charisma are favor over pure weapon skills. Why they are held to the highest standards of the deity's moral code.

That... makes perfect sense. That's what I wanted to hear, I think. And it applies equally well to antipaladins/blackguards/myrmidons/what have you. Thank you.

Quote from: hamstertamer;680752It depends on how you interpret them.  I see them the same way I imagined them in my old AD&D days.  

My interpretation:
Paladins are not a champion of a God, they are a magical order of knighthood, with their own private rituals and traditions.  Paladins never worship any good god, or any god whatsoever; they do respect deities that are good and lawful though.  An adult Paladin chooses his own a squire, a young person of a certain quality.  The paladin can tell who has what it takes to be a paladin.  If the person accepts, he leaves his old life behind to and dedicates himself fully to the ways of a paladin.

A Cleric is the champion of a God, and is granted his abilities directly from their patron deity.

For me, attaching a Paladin to a specific god was a mistake and it has caused confusion between concept of a cleric and a paladin, and it has  invented the different alignment paladins (3rd edition I believe).  Paladins are always Lawful Good or they are not a Paladin I say.

This is also good... it does make me wonder a little just where they're getting their magic from but I can buy it being a learned/inherent thing much like arcane magic.

Quote from: talysman;680854You already know my position from my recent blog post. I disagree with all but a couple people in this thread. A paladin isn't a holy warrior; a paladin is a righteous knight. It may be religion that prompts the paladin to be righteous; that was certainly the case for knights in Arthurian romance. But it could also be Patriotism, or Reason, or who knows what. The driving force of the paladin is based in role-playing. The only real requirement is that a paladin must put what's right ahead of their personal desires.

Clerics, on the other hand, are actual holy warriors. They serve their religion.

Yeah, that's actually what got me thinking about it. Your explanation was mostly good but it left me struggling to justify where they're getting all this smiting evil and free ponies and stuff from.

Quote from: LibraryLass;680657Let's face it, they're pretty similar archetypes. This is something I tend to get a bit of a block on, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on how they're different.

Edged weapons and number of spells per day.

Of course, most of the paladins I've seen played were of alignment Lawful Stupid instead of coming from a holy warrior mindset. That is a Player problem and not a character class problem, though.

Quote from: talysman;680854You already know my position from my recent blog post. I disagree with all but a couple people in this thread. A paladin isn't a holy warrior; a paladin is a righteous knight. It may be religion that prompts the paladin to be righteous; that was certainly the case for knights in Arthurian romance. But it could also be Patriotism, or Reason, or who knows what. The driving force of the paladin is based in role-playing. The only real requirement is that a paladin must put what's right ahead of their personal desires.

Clerics, on the other hand, are actual holy warriors. They serve their religion.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;680858I would totally agree with you except that many of the paladin's powers come from the divine.  You simply cannot divorce the AD&D paladin from holy warrior because of this.

No, they don't. They have a bunch of powers that you choose to interpret as coming from the divine. I don't.

But then, my clerics don't require the actual existence of gods for their powers, either. It's all about faith. Paladins have faith in themselves, that they know what's right. Clerics have faith in something else.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;680858You are describing the cavalier class, not necessarily the paladin.

Don't get me started on the cavalier. I considered it a pointless munchkin class until I rewrote them, took away almost all their powers, and added a couple limitations. They are now just elite horsemen with a lot of arrogance.

Quote from: talysman;680886No, they don't. They have a bunch of powers that you choose to interpret as coming from the divine. I don't.

But then, my clerics don't require the actual existence of gods for their powers, either. It's all about faith. Paladins have faith in themselves, that they know what's right. Clerics have faith in something else.

Certainly you can see how your interpretation is in the minority, and that most people viewed the paladin's special abilities as divine based on passages in the PHB like this:

If they ever
knowingly perform an act which is chaotic in nature, they must seek a high
level (7th or above) cleric of lawful good alignment, confess their sin, and
do penance as prescribed by the cleric

An immediate tithe (10%) of all income - be it treasure,
wages, or whatever - must be given to whatever charitable
religious institution (not a clerical player character) of lawful
good alignment the paladin selects.

Add to that their abilities are described as clerical, and clerics are described as

This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of
knighthood of medieval times. The cleric has an eight-sided die (d8) per
level to determine how many hit points (q.v.) he or she has. The cleric is
dedicated to a deity, or deities, and at the same time a skilled combatant
at arms. The cleric can be of any alignment (q.v.) save (true) neutral (see
Druid hereafter) alignment, depending upon that of the deity the cleric
serves. All clerics have certain holy symbols which aid them and give
power to their spells. All are likewise forbidden to use edged and/or
pointed weapons which shed blood. All clerics have their own spells,
bestowed upon them by their deity for correct and diligent prayers and
deeds.

There's really no other way to interpret it unless you houserule a different version.  So I'm afraid that yes, yes they are divine powers, as described in the PHB.

QuoteDon't get me started on the cavalier. I considered it a pointless munchkin class until I rewrote them, took away almost all their powers, and added a couple limitations. They are now just elite horsemen with a lot of arrogance.

My point was, is that the cavalier class represented everything that the paladin did in the context of a classic knight.  With the cavalier (albeit with it's wonky class progression), you really didn't need a paladin class at all.  If the cavalier class came out before the paladin, you very well might not have ever seen the paladin become a core class