Why Did They Kill The Paladin?

RPGPundit · October 15, 2018, 03:26:18 AM

To be honest, I never much liked the Paladin. It was the start of a change of the Cleric from "holy warrior-saint" to "priest", which I always found stupid.

Paladins should be Clerics. Or at least a sub-type of Cleric. Otherwise, Clerics shouldn't have bonuses to combat, they should just be religious spellcasters.

This is why in Dark Albion and Lion & Dragon, I don't have paladins, and regular priests aren't clerics. Regular priests can't perform miracles. Clerics can perform miracles and act as holy warriors/inquisitors.

Opaopajr · October 15, 2018, 10:29:14 AM

Quote from: SHARK;1059974Greetings!

Hey Opaopajr! Indeed, Padlocks!!! LOL! My god, when the guy in our AL group said he took a level of Warlock for his paladin--my friend tells me later,

"Man, that bullshit wouldn't fly in your campaign, SHARK. That guy's paladin/warlock would have been burned at the stake for heresy!" LOL.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Hah, so you know I speak sooth!

Told ya, culture shock.

Come bring your beer & inner tube, the abyss is fine. We wait for the coming of the Auto-da-Fé... it'll probably come by Twitter in this Tin Age (or are we now at Bismuth? Talcum Age?

).

Zalman · October 15, 2018, 07:26:56 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1060248To be honest, I never much liked the Paladin. It was the start of a change of the Cleric from "holy warrior-saint" to "priest", which I always found stupid.

Paladins should be Clerics. Or at least a sub-type of Cleric. Otherwise, Clerics shouldn't have bonuses to combat, they should just be religious spellcasters.

This is why in Dark Albion and Lion & Dragon, I don't have paladins, and regular priests aren't clerics. Regular priests can't perform miracles. Clerics can perform miracles and act as holy warriors/inquisitors.

Straight up.

Broken Twin · October 16, 2018, 07:12:51 PM

While I do quite enjoy the Oaths system in 5E, I do agree with Pundit that paladins shouldn't be a base class.

Having said that, a Oath of the Ancients paladin fits perfectly fluff-wise with levels of Fey Pact warlock. And an Oath of Vengeance paladin could easily make sense with levels of Fiend Pact warlock. Yeah, the concepts are more superhuman than the OSR crowd tends to prefer, but that's honestly been true of D&D since I started playing in the late cycles of 3.5.

RPGPundit · October 19, 2018, 01:48:38 AM

Obviously there might be specific settings where paladins make sense, though I'd still say that in most of those sorts of settings you'd need to have priest be much more priestly and less warrior-y.

S'mon · October 19, 2018, 02:03:45 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1060926Obviously there might be specific settings where paladins make sense, though I'd still say that in most of those sorts of settings you'd need to have priest be much more priestly and less warrior-y.

The Paladin is a heavily drifted class. They were originally the 'Parfait Gentil Knight' - Percival, Galahad, Roland (obviously). For some reason they swiftly turned into Knights Templar/Hospitaller type holy warriors, which then steps on the toes of the Cleric.

It's a bit like the Ranger; originally the defender of Humanity/Law's frontiers with monsters/Chaos, it turned into a Druid-adjacent Wilderninja.

I do think that 5e has re-broadened the archetypes such that you can play an original style Paladin or Ranger as well as the drifted sorts.

tenbones · October 19, 2018, 12:49:40 PM

Quote from: S'mon;1060935The Paladin is a heavily drifted class. They were originally the 'Parfait Gentil Knight' - Percival, Galahad, Roland (obviously). For some reason they swiftly turned into Knights Templar/Hospitaller type holy warriors, which then steps on the toes of the Cleric.

It's a bit like the Ranger; originally the defender of Humanity/Law's frontiers with monsters/Chaos, it turned into a Druid-adjacent Wilderninja.

I do think that 5e has re-broadened the archetypes such that you can play an original style Paladin or Ranger as well as the drifted sorts.

... and welcome to the Freakshow D&D has become. It's all morphing along arbitrary lines that cleave closer and closer to the fringier pop-culture references that exist as a reflection of "older" versions of "Vanilla Fantasy".

Wilderninja... hahah perfect.

Chris24601 · October 19, 2018, 01:04:40 PM

Quote from: tenbones;1061005... and welcome to the Freakshow D&D has become. It's all morphing along arbitrary lines that cleave closer and closer to the fringier pop-culture references that exist as a reflection of "older" versions of "Vanilla Fantasy".

Wilderninja... hahah perfect.

5e D&D has reached the point of being "self-referencing" and "shaped like itself." Decisions about its design were based largely on whether it "felt like D&D" rather than how well it could emulate a typical fantasy setting or whether a given rule was actually what would work best to resolve something.

It is no longer trying to emulate the broader scope of fantasy; just to emulate itself.

jhkim · October 19, 2018, 01:14:45 PM

Quote from: S'monThe Paladin is a heavily drifted class. They were originally the 'Parfait Gentil Knight' - Percival, Galahad, Roland (obviously). For some reason they swiftly turned into Knights Templar/Hospitaller type holy warriors, which then steps on the toes of the Cleric.

It's a bit like the Ranger; originally the defender of Humanity/Law's frontiers with monsters/Chaos, it turned into a Druid-adjacent Wilderninja.

I do think that 5e has re-broadened the archetypes such that you can play an original style Paladin or Ranger as well as the drifted sorts.

Quote from: tenbones;1061005... and welcome to the Freakshow D&D has become. It's all morphing along arbitrary lines that cleave closer and closer to the fringier pop-culture references that exist as a reflection of "older" versions of "Vanilla Fantasy".

Wilderninja... hahah perfect.

I suspect you're talking about very different things. From the sound of it, I thought S'mon is talking about the change from Greyhawk (1975) to the original Player's Handbook (1978) - where they changed to give the paladin cleric spells and druid spells to the ranger. tenbones - I suspect you're talking about changes from 3rd edition or later (1999+).

Armchair Gamer · October 19, 2018, 01:23:09 PM

Quote from: Chris24601;10610075e D&D has reached the point of being "self-referencing" and "shaped like itself." Decisions about its design were based largely on whether it "felt like D&D" rather than how well it could emulate a typical fantasy setting or whether a given rule was actually what would work best to resolve something.

It is no longer trying to emulate the broader scope of fantasy; just to emulate itself.

I think it hit that point around 3rd Edition, myself, but I'm a cranky old man.

Armchair Gamer · October 19, 2018, 01:26:28 PM

Quote from: S'mon;1060935The Paladin is a heavily drifted class. They were originally the 'Parfait Gentil Knight' - Percival, Galahad, Roland (obviously). For some reason they swiftly turned into Knights Templar/Hospitaller type holy warriors, which then steps on the toes of the Cleric.

I don't know about 'swiftly'--that was always the archetype I saw in the paladin, and I don't think the core game really drifted from it until 4E. Now, I think you can identify the drift in the broader community with the "Plethora of Paladins" article (the anti-paladin, I've recently discovered, does have antecedents in medieval literature), but by that point, the cleric had pretty heavily drifted into 'Symbiotic Relativistic Henotheistic priest' as well.

One of the reasons old school paladins don't mesh well with the newer vision of the game is that they come from a tradition where Good and Law are right and just, rather than the idea that moral forces must be held in some bizarre form of Balance.

S'mon · October 19, 2018, 03:27:45 PM

Quote from: jhkim;1061008I suspect you're talking about very different things. From the sound of it, I thought S'mon is talking about the change from Greyhawk (1975) to the original Player's Handbook (1978) - where they changed to give the paladin cleric spells and druid spells to the ranger. tenbones - I suspect you're talking about changes from 3rd edition or later (1999+).

Ranger was fully Wilderninja only in 3.5 but had been heading that way.

Paladin as Knight Templar - only 100% in 4e but there are antecedents earlier. I think in 3e with the abolition of the CHA 17 requirement Paladin tended to move from exceptional individual to Order of Holy Knights. But even in 1e Forgotten Realms there is stuff like every Lord of Impiltur a Paladin, and member of the same knightly order. I know I was treating them as Knights Templar in 4e FR and in my Wilderlands, based on how Necromancer Games/Rob Conley had stuff like Mitra's Shieldhall in it.

RPGPundit · October 23, 2018, 03:46:51 AM

If anything, 5e has gone from being Vanilla Fantasy to being "OMG SO RANDOM" Tumblr-fan cartoonish quasi-furryism. Take a look a the #DnD tag on twitter and it's full of genderfluid millennials doing doodles of their cutesy-poo half-tiefling half-genasi non-binary bard.

Abraxus · October 23, 2018, 08:57:30 AM

C'mon your Pundit your better than that. Yes the so called genderfluid millennials can be annoying. We do need new blood coming into the hobby to keep it going. So if 5E beings them in by the truckload it's a good thing not a bad thing imo.

If one is losing sleep and annoyed that's one hobby is popular enough thst it's bringing new members to the fold. Well I suggest one see a mental health care specialist.

Chris24601 · October 23, 2018, 09:18:42 AM

Likewise, some settings require more than just bog-standard elves and dwarves, fighters, thieves, clerics and magic-users. If you're trying to be THE fantasy rpg then you're going to need options for those stranger things.

I think the biggest mistake in that regard to all those options though is trying to dump them all into the same setting at the same time. For example, creating a campaign based on the war between the empires of Arkosia (dragonborn) and Bael-Torath (humans who turned to infernalism when the war turned against them) it would make perfect sense to include dragonborn and tieflings alongside humans as playable races while elves, dwarves, etc. would be out of place.