Paladin
What do you think about this Character Class in the Dungeon & Dragons or (AD&D) system of role-playing? Consider the following:
1. Fighting ability (attack skills, use of weapons)
2. Unique skills (thievery, bless, talk to animals, etc.)
3. Magical skills (ability to use and acquire magic)
4. Tendency to progress (easy to go up in levels)
5. Limitations (cannot carry or use certain objects)
Paladins (D&D) as good well balanced class but one with props
Fighting ability - Good warrior among the best with good BAB and large range of weapons and armour to choose from. Can get some very good class based items at high lvl. Not as good as a Fighter or barbaian though at close quaters
Unique skills - Nearly all abilities like smite evil, detect evil etc are either of limited use or can be done much better by other classes. Do have two exceptions firstly divine protection meaning they generally have the best save (Fort/ref/will) stats of any class and secondly a special mount, a real bonus for riding or mounted combat.
3. Magical skills - Restricted divine spell list, not bad for healing purposes. However need to be high lvl before any really good spells become available. Don't compare to clerics
4. Tendency to progress - In well structured groups as fast as any other, Fighter better progression though. However as long as you know your char all classes progress well
5. Limitations - Role playing experience is restricted. Must be lawful good and follow strict code of conduct, often feels quite a wooden experience
Good all round char, can fight well (though not brill) and can heal. However to be honest the are much better options available.
I like to be a Cleric with War domain. This enables you to use good weapons (which are otherwise limited) as well as the good armour you can have. It also gives you weapon focus free. So you wont be half bad in a scrap but magically you will be fair superior to a paladin. Further more if you pick as a prestige class a knight hospitaller (a serious powerhouse class), you gain a paladins +1 BAB each level, get feats every other lvl while continually increasing your spell lvl (you will end up almost as good at fighting and immeasurably better at spell casting plus have a fair large number of feats)
I hope this proves helpful. I would quickly like to mention that Knights of the Hospitalors prestige class is seen by many to be very unbalanced since it gives clerics the bonus' of a fighter with no effect on his spell casting ability and I agree that a lvl 10 cleric/lvl 10 Hospitlar will be significant harder then most other lvl 20 chars. However its there so wy not take advantage of it
Edited: Roehug on 27th Feb, 2006 - 5:40am
Tried Paladin once it was very hard. Had fun keeping the group on the strait and narrow even smote a thief in the group for stealing and demanded he give all stolen goods back and give some of his gold he had to the poor as penitence. Ended up in a vampire quest and every thing attacked me ...result I never made it to the end.
Not a class I would recommend at all.
Paladins are too good for my liking. I don't like characters that are limited by some predeterminded set of rules.
I have a Paladin that is up in levels. I have fun with him as he is a very good character to play. He lives by the code and he will go out of his way to see that good always prevails. The nice thing is he runs about with some other characters who have gotten to be a close knit group. They know that he will not stand for some things so they do not do that while he is around.
Paladins have some limited magic use at higher levels right? I can't remember. What about evil paladins, how do you get to be one?