New Paladin Feat

[togapika]

Paladin of Good Intentions:
Requirements: Paladin level 1+, DM approval
Benefit: This feat allows a paladin's alignment to shift to any good alignment and still allow them to retain their paladinic abilities.
This feat also does not cause a paladin to fall simply due to failing something (protect someone, destroy something, etc.)


The idea for this feat came when a friend of mine described me as a "paladin trapped in a nerds body" and when I told friends about it later, they corrected me and said I was a "Paladin of good intentions"
Thoughts?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Personally, I'd just houserule this. I'm not a fan of the complete alignment restriction...what's wrong with the concept of a chaotic paladin? If DM approval is required anyway, I'd rather save the feat.

That said, I see nothing wrong with it, except that the loss of a feat to accomplish something this simple definitely weakens an already weak class.

[Devils_Advocate]

A paladin's code of honor is one of the class's defining features. They're not even just restricted to Lawful Good, but a specific subset of Lawful Good. It's sort of a core concept of the archetype.

If you want to be a holy warrior without those restrictions, you could play, say... a Fighter 2 / Cleric of Pelor X.

Alternately, if you want the paladin's suite of abilities to be open to characters of a wider variety of alignments... then open them up to characters of a wider variety of alignments. Even make one generic Paladin class that doesn't have to stick to one alignment the way that variants like the Paladin of Freedom do. Whatever.

Adding this feat to a game with 3.5 RAW paladins, though, is like adding a feat that lets you do fire damage to things immune to fire.

I... don't like things like that. "Oh, remember that thing that we presented as an absolute earlier? Well, it actually isn't absolute. That was a lie. Apparently. It's retroactively non-absolute. Surprise!"

[Meek]

There are Paladin variants in Unearthed Arcana for Chaotic Good Paladins, as well as CE/LE ones. The CG Paladin is actually pretty nifty. I believe there's a True Neutral Paladin in Dragon Magazine too. Better way to handle this than to make a feat for it.

[Lert, A.]

Adding this feat to a game with 3.5 RAW paladins, though, is like adding a feat that lets you do fire damage to things immune to fire.

Searing Spell. Sandstorm, page 53.:smalltongue:

[Kroy]

I usually drop the lawful alignment requirement. You want to be a paladin with a stick up your ass? Congrats. If you want to be a Shojo "End justifies means" for the greater good type, that's fine with me.

[Devils_Advocate]

Searing Spell. Sandstorm, page 53.:smalltongue:
Yes, that is the sort of silliness I was talking about. I suspected that that example existed somewhere. The explanation of how the feat is supposed to work certainly doesn't make it any better.

Your spells are so hot that they ignore immunity to fire, do even more extra damage to fire-vulnerable creatures... and have absolutely no special effect on everyone else, somehow!

At least that's not nonsensical and blatantly unbalancing, like assay spell resistance.

Look, gang! Monsters only have Spell Resistance of roughly 10 + their CR anyway, and we pre-quickened this one for you, so it's essentially a level zero spell that effectively negates one level-appropriate creature's SR! But you don't have to spell that out when you run it by your DM, hee hee!


I usually drop the lawful alignment requirement. You want to be a paladin with a stick up your ass? Congrats. If you want to be a Shojo "End justifies means" for the greater good type, that's fine with me.
Honestly, the Paladin of Freedom variant and the regular Paladin of Honor are so similar that it would be really easy to just combine them into one Any Good Paladin class. There aren't even that many choices to be made about which aspects to keep from each version and which to discard. It's almost a total overlap already.

Hell, let me take a crack at it right now.

Paladin of Compassion
This class differs from the Paladin class presented in the Player's Handbook as follows:

Alignment
Any good.

Class Skills
Add Bluff to the class skill list.

Aura of Devotion (Su)
This functions as the standard paladin's aura of courage class feature, except that it applies against compusion effects as well as fear effects.

Spellcasting
Remove the following spells from the paladin's spell list: dispel chaos, magic circle against chaos, protection from chaos.

Add the following spell to the paladin's spell list: freedom of movement.

Code of Conduct
A paladin of compassion must be of good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act. Additionally, a paladin of compassion's code requires that she help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil ends), and oppose those who oppress, harm, or threaten innocents.

Associates
While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin of compassion will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin of compassion may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are good-aligned.

[Bavarian itP]

What, there are still people who care about alignment?

[Ethrael]

I think the Lawfully restricted paladinniness is there to differentiate between a paladin and a Crusader. I haven't seen the Crusader class fully, so I don't know the details about it but that's the impression I got from it.

[Tempest Fennac]

There are Paladin variants for every alignment except for LN on http://crystalkeep.com/d20/rules/DnD3.5Index-Classes-Base.pdf . Crusaders don't get a Mount at all, but their Maneugers can be used several times a day (which ones they can use are randomly determined, though). They can be anything apart from TN, and when Crusaders get damaged, they can delay losing HPs to a degree while using the damage to boost their own fighting abilities.