An Attempt at a Paladin Fix (Because you either love it or hate it.)

[Auramis]

Hello again, everyone! A while back, I posted a spellsword fix that got a few positive responses (link in my signature), so I thought I'd share an idea I have for bringing the paladin up from its tier 4.5 status to something in line with the tier 3 classes like crusaders, bards, dread necromancers, and so on. If it doesn't exactly reach them, I hope this edit will bring the paladin up between tiers 3 and 4, rather than sitting on the line between tiers 4 and 5.

This paladin should be fully compatible with the variant paladins from Unearthed Arcana still. The paladin's abilities remain unchanged unless otherwise noted under the Class Features spoiler. Changes made to abilities will be colored in orange.


THE PALADIN

http://willsfamily.org/games/ExpeditionPlanes/paladin.png

HD: 10


Level
BAB
Fort
Ref
Will
Special
0
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th


1
+1
+2
+0
+2
Aura of good, smite
3
0
-
-
-
-


2
+2
+3
+0
+3
Divine grace, lay on hands
3
1
-
-
-
-


3
+3
+3
+1
+3
Aura of courage, divine health
4
2
-
-
-
-


4
+4
+4
+1
+4
Turn undead
4
3
-
-
-
-


5
+5
+4
+1
+4
Marked for judgment, special mount
4
3
0
-
-
-


6
+6/+1
+5
+2
+5
Remove disease 1/week
4
3
1
-
-
-


7
+7/+2
+5
+2
+5

4
4
2
-
-
-


8
+8/+3
+6
+2
+6
Mettle
4
4
3
-
-
-


9
+9/+4
+6
+3
+6
Remove disease 2/week
5
4
3
0
-
-


10
+10/+5
+7
+3
+7
Radiating smite
5
4
3
1
-
-


11
+11/+6/+1
+7
+3
+7

5
4
4
2
-
-


12
+12/+7/+2
+8
+4
+8
Remove disease 3/week
5
4
4
3
-
-


13
+13/+8/+3
+8
+4
+8

5
5
4
3
0
-


14
+14/+9/+4
+9
+4
+9

5
5
4
3
1
-


15
+15/+10/+5
+9
+5
+9
Remove disease 4/week, bonus feat
5
5
4
4
2
-


16
+16/+11/+6/+1
+10
+5
+10

5
5
4
4
3
-


17
+17/+12/+7/+2
+10
+5
+10

5
5
5
4
3
0


18
+18/+13/+8/+3
+11
+6
+11
Remove disease 5/week
5
5
5
4
3
1


19
+19/+14/+9/+4
+11
+6
+11

5
5
5
4
3
2


20
+20/+15/+10/+5
+12
+6
+12
Bonus feat
5
5
5
4
4
3


Class Skills (4 + Int modifer per level): Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Heal, Knowledge (nobility and royalty), Knowledge (religion), Profession, Ride, Sense Motive

Spells:
A paladin gains the ability to cast a small number of divine spells, which are drawn from the paladin spell list. To cast a spell, a paladin must have a Charisma score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a paladin’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the paladin’s Charisma ability score modifier.

Like other spellcasters, a paladin can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. In addition, she receives bonus spells per day if she has a high Charisma score. The paladin does not have access to any domain spells or granted powers, as a cleric does.

Like a cleric, a paladin must spend 1 hour each day in quiet contemplation or supplication to regain her daily allotment of spells. However, unlike a cleric, a paladin need not prepare her spells in advance. She can cast any spell she knows at any time, assuming she has not yet used up her spells per day for that spell level.


Level 0: Create Water, Cure Minor Wounds, Detect Poison, Guidance, Light, Purify Food and Drink, Read Magic, Resistance, Virtue

Detect evil has changed from a class feature at will to a normal 1st level spell, and Detect Chaos has been added to the first level spell list. Read Magic has also been pulled down to a level 0 spell. Otherwise, 1st level spells through 4th level spells remain unchanged.

5th Level: Cure Critial Wounds, Disrupting Weapon, Divine Power, Freedom of Movement, Righteous Might


Class Features:
Smite (Su): A number of times a day equal to her charisma modifier (to a minimum of 1), a paladin may attempt to smite with one normal melee attack. She adds her Charisma bonus (if any) to her attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damage per paladin level. Should a paladin smite an evil or undead target, the bonus damage from smite is equal to 2 extra points of damage per paladin level instead of the normal 1 extra point of damage per paladin level. The damage from a paladin's smite has the good descriptor for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Note: For the purposes of class features and feats that require Smite Evil, a (good) paladin's smite ability counts as Smite Evil.

Lay on Hands (Su): Beginning at 2nd level, a paladin with a Charisma score of 12 or higher can heal wounds (her own or those of others) by touch. Each day she can heal a total number of hit points of damage equal to her paladin level × her Charisma bonus. For example, a 7th-level paladin with a 16 Charisma (+3 bonus) can heal 21 points of damage per day. A paladin may choose to divide her healing among multiple recipients, and she doesn't have to use it all at once. Lay on hands is affected by the share spells benefit from her special mount. Using lay on hands is a standard action.

Alternatively, a paladin can use any or all of this healing power to deal damage to undead creatures. Using lay on hands in this way requires a successful melee touch attack and doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity. The paladin decides how many of her daily allotment of points to use as damage after successfully touching an undead creature.

Turn Undead (Su): At 4th level, a paladin has the power to turn undead creatures by channeling the power of her faith through her holy symbol.

A paladin can turn or destroy undead creatures as a good cleric, but she cannot rebuke or command such creatures as evil or neutral clerics can.

A paladin may attempt to turn undead a number of times per day equal to 3 + her Charisma modifier. A paladin with 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (religion) gets a +2 bonus on turning checks against undead.

Marked for Judgment (Su): At 5th level, when a paladin successfully smites a target, for a number of rounds equal to her paladin class level, her and her allies receive a bonus on attack rolls and on their spell save DCs equal against that target equal to her charisma modifier. This charisma bonus does not stack with the charisma bonus to attack rolls from her smite ability.

Special Mount (Sp): Upon reaching 5th level, a paladin may gain the service of an unusually intelligent, strong, and loyal steed to serve her in her crusade against evil. This mount is usually a heavy warhorse (for a Medium paladin) or a warpony (for Small paladin). As the paladin advances in level, her special mount increases in power.

If a paladin releases her special mount from service, she may gain a new one by performing a ceremony requiring 24 uninterrupted hours of prayer. This ceremony can also replace a special mount that has perished.

Should the paladin's mount die, the paladin may not call another mount for thirty days or until she gains a paladin level, whichever comes first, even if the mount is somehow returned from the dead. During this thirty-day period, the paladin takes a —1 penalty on attack and weapon damage rolls.

Mettle (Su): At 8th level, a paladin’s dedication to her cause allows her to shrug off magical effects that would otherwise harm her. If a paladin makes a successful Will or Fortitude saving throw that would normally reduce the spell's effect, she suffers no effect from the spell at all. Only those spells with a Saving Throw entry of "Will partial," "Fortitude half," or similar entries can be negated through this ability.

Radiating Smite (Su): At 10th level, a paladin’s smite may radiate from the target in a 5ft. radius, dealing the smite’s damage to her enemies. The damage dealt to enemies would use the smite’s value against the primary target, regardless of whether or not surrounding enemies are evil or undead.

Bonus Feats: At 15th and 20th levels, a paladin gains a bonus feat from the following list: Cleave, Combat Expertise, Dieheard, Endurance, Extra Turning, Great Fortitute, Greater Cleave, Improved Turning, Iron Will, Leadership, Mounted Combat, Negotiator, Power Attack, Ride-By Attack, Spirited Charge, Trample. You must still meet any prerequisites for the feat.



What's new?


Will saves have been made good.
More skill points.
Heavy changes were made to the paladin's spells: Charisma is now their spell's primary stat, and, while prayer is still required to regain daily spells, spells can be cast spontaneously after that. In addition to not halfing the paladin's caster level, the levels of spells available have also been expanded to include level 0 spells and 5th level spells now as well.
Detect Evil is now a level 1 paladin spell, as the cleric spell.
Smite has been changed to work again all targets while receiving increased benefit on evil and undead targets. As you level, smite marks enemies and gives benefits to your allies and can deal damage in a small radius.
Lay on hands now benefits from your mount's share spells benefit.
Turn undead has also been brought up in effectiveness to match the cleric's turn undead (though they still receive it later than the cleric).
The mount has been shifted to being similar to an animal companion rather than being a summoned creature while retaining the horrible side effects if it dies.
Mettle was added as one of the paladins new abilities.
Bonus feats.



Good Will Saves: With the change from wisdom to charisma as your spellcasting attribute, I felt it would be fair to make up for the poor wisdom saves. It also felt odd that a holy knight with immense dedication to their cause would have a poor wisdom save.

Skills: Even with the changes to spells, a paladin's versatility isn't so greatly increased that it pushes huge boundaries into a higher tier. New spells still thematically fit in the melee combat against evil troupe. Skills are a good way to increase effectiveness in other areas.

Detect Evil: According to a few Dungeon Masters I've talked to, detect evil at will is bloody obnoxious. Some paladins actively spam this at all times in order to be constantly aware of their surroundings and to be aware is evil is nearby. It felt like it made the most sense to move it to the paladin's spells instead, where it belongs. Detect chaos as joined it as well on the spell list.

Smite and Its Improvements: I think a paladin's smite ability has always been too narrow in its usage. A paladin's capable of going into Grey Guard to expand his smite targets, but, ultimately, Grey Guard still only raises a base paladin's tier by 1 (pushing it to tier 4 with the aid of a prestige class). Rather than rely on the Grey Guard to be a quick fix for the paladin, I think it's of greater benefit to the paladin to take a page from the Grey Guard and allow smite to function against all targets, though it has an improved benefit against evil opponents. This way, smite isn't limited in its availability and still maintains its identity of being superior when fighting the forces of evil. As for how this changes Grey Guard, it's easy enough to say the increased damage is still edited via the Grey Guard class features.

Concerning Marked for Judgment and Radiating Smite, these bits of utility were added in order to further justify the smite's per day mechanic. A simple straight damage ability with a per day mechanic doesn't really feel good to use. Even with a buff to damage, smite doesn't feel entirely too powerful, so a page was borrow from the Dread Necromancer's negative energy burst and the Hexblade's curse by applying similar effects to smite while trying not to copy the abilities and make them the paladin's own. This allows smite to offer more damage to a group (to make up for smite's inherit weakness in fights with several opponents) and gives its bonus utility to any allies joining the paladin in their fight. The radius for Radiating Smite may be small, but it seemed reasonable, given the dread necromancer's similar ability has the same radius and potentially less uses per day.

Spells: Spells are the biggest change by far! A lot of paladin fixes often try to load a paladin with new abilities (which I've added a couple of), but I don't see people try to edit the spells in a really big way. Rather than try to make new spells, I thought it might be best to change the spell progression and level of spells available to the paladin in order to give it a bit more to work with. New abilities, while nice, are often overshadowed by spells that can perform their functions just as well (if not sometimes better).

The progression of spells is the same as a Duskblade's, unlocking a new level of spells every four levels. At first, I had used the Mystic Ranger's (DR336 p105) spell progression, but I ran into the problem of unlocking Holy Sword at way too early of a level, which felt entirely unbalanced. Even if I moved it to a 5th level spell, it would have been unlocked at level 10. Because of the changed progression, the number of spells per day had to be changed too. I thought of using the Duskblade's spells per day, but they get WAY too many spells per day to justify. Their spells per day is based on their need to channel, which the paladin doesn't need. So, in the end, I came up with my own progression. I feel like I gave the paladin a nice amount of spells per day without overdoing it

Other substantial changes to the paladin spells and how they function are the shift to Charisma as their spellcasting attribute (probably the most often thing I've seen houseruled) and the shift to spontaneous spellcasting (probably the second most often thing I've seen houseruled). These seemed like no-brainers to me, but a couple friends said that hurt the image of a religious knight who prays for the power to accomplish their goals. Because of that, I thought of the unique fix of requiring meditation to regain spells per day while allowing them to cast spontaneously after their meditation. It felt like a nice and flavorful answer to the problem!

Final note on spells: I only gave level 0 spells and 5th level spells that were drawn from the Player's Handbook... It might come off as lazy, but there are entirely too many books for me to want to go through and edit the list as a whole. For the sake of saving space and my sanity, I'm saying that any spells you may want on your level 0 and 5th level spell list should be hashed out with your Dungeon Master and drawn from the cleric spell list (as a rule of thumb, at least). Whatever they are, they should fit the theme of the paladin (law/good aligned for paladins of honor, personal spells or buffs for allies, etc.). I suggest avoiding giving the paladin resurrection abilities and mass healing spells, as I feel those are spells that should remain in the hands of true spellcasters like clerics, archivists, and favored souls.

Lay on Hands: Lay on Hands is shared with shared spells for your mount now! Minor change here, but something I thought would be nice.

Turn Undead: Probably the third most often houseruled fix for paladin I've seen. This probably doesn't need much explaining.

Special Mount: Another big change! Instead of a supernatural/summoned creature, I've shifted the paladin's mount to being a unique animal companion of sorts. No more summoning/dismissing the mount, it's just with you/near you at all times. Not exactly great for dungeons, since you can't dismiss it, and you lose the benefit of dismissing the horse to heal it (though the change to Lay on Hands helps a bit), but I've seen the horse either abused as a mobile storage unit with the old version or never used due to its limited time with the paladin due to only being summonable once a day. Rather than change the duration of the summon or the number of summons (which wouldn't solve the mobile storage problem), I felt it being an extraordinary animal companion would be better. That said, I felt that it was important to keep the negative effects from your mount dying.

Mettle: A minor change, but I thought it would fit in with the idea of a paladin being an unstoppable knight for his cause.

Bonus Feats: With the changes to smite, a couple levels were left empty. Rather than push the augmentations to smite to higher levels, where they'd feel far less good than they would at lower levels, I let them be added sooner. As such, this made the paladin's level 15 and 20 have nothing, whereas they would have previously received the benefit of more smite evils. Rather than try to add more to smite after its buff, I decided to add bonus feats instead. I know the list is limited to what's in the PHB. That's also what I did with spells (and for the same reason). This is where a bit of it's left in the hands of anyone who plays/DMs using this paladin. Feats from books aside from the PHB can be added as needed, based on what fits. I'd suggest looking at mounted feats, turning feats, divine feats, any feats the paladin should obviously gain access to (Battle Blessing, Extra Smiting, etc.), and a handful of fighting feats (avoiding ranged attack feats, metamagic feats, roguish feats, etc.).

As for why I didn't use more martial feats, I feel like I'd be stepping on the toes of the fighter if I just threw the fighter bonus feat list at paladin and then tacked on additional feats, and that wouldn't have been my goal.


So, let me know what you all think! Is the sell change silly at all? Do you all agree with changing the paladin's smite? My main goal is to edit the class without making it surpass tier 3, so I've been hesitant to add too many things. I hope I've hit a good balance. That said, I'm open to suggestions and am more than willing to listen to any input.

[Realms of Chaos]

A pretty decent start of a fix, all things considered (though I still hate dead levels). As feats and alternate class features play such a large role in what makes the basic paladin playable, however, you may want to specify that smite counts as smite evil for the purpose of ACFs and prerequisites.

[Epsilon Rose]

Well, it's certainly an improvement on the vanilla paladin and I certainly don't think it breaks anything.

That said, one of my biggest dislikes about the paladin is it's extremely limited smites, particularly when combined with limited detect, and you've kept that and made detect limited.

Personally, I think of smite as one of the paladin's most iconic features. Unfortunately, they only get to use it for 5 attacks at level 20. What's worse, if they accidentally target the wrong thing, because they don't want to constantly spam detect or something, then they're out one of their uses for nothing. Smite gives a fairly nice boost to damage, so I can understand not making it an at-will ability, but it's not even once per encounter and a nice boost to damage against 1 target for 1 hit isn't THAT impressive. I'd rather see it get toned down a little and made more usable, rather than made a little bit more powerful and kept so heavily restricted, particularly if you're going to make it harder to check for valid targets.

[Auramis]

A pretty decent start of a fix, all things considered (though I still hate dead levels). As feats and alternate class features play such a large role in what makes the basic paladin playable, however, you may want to specify that smite counts as smite evil for the purpose of ACFs and prerequisites.

I thought it'd be implied. I'll put it into the notes section at the bottom to clarify that!


Well, it's certainly an improvement on the vanilla paladin and I certainly don't think it breaks anything.

That said, one of my biggest dislikes about the paladin is it's extremely limited smites, particularly when combined with limited detect, and you've kept that and made detect limited.

Personally, I think of smite as one of the paladin's most iconic features. Unfortunately, they only get to use it for 5 attacks at level 20. What's worse, if they accidentally target the wrong thing, because they don't want to constantly spam detect or something, then they're out one of their uses for nothing. Smite gives a fairly nice boost to damage, so I can understand not making it an at-will ability, but it's not even once per encounter and a nice boost to damage against 1 target for 1 hit isn't THAT impressive. I'd rather see it get toned down a little and made more usable, rather than made a little bit more powerful and kept so heavily restricted, particularly if you're going to make it harder to check for valid targets.

What if I made smite not be expended if the target you smite isn't affected by your smite? Would that help out at all? It takes pressure off of not having detect evil at will and doesn't really make you lose anything if it doesn't work. I know it doesn't solve the number of uses, but it's certain a start.

[Epsilon Rose]

What if I made smite not be expended if the target you smite isn't affected by your smite? Would that help out at all? It takes pressure off of not having detect evil at will and doesn't really make you lose anything if it doesn't work. I know it doesn't solve the number of uses, but it's certain a start.

That would definitely help a lot.

[Auramis]

Edit: Actually, I'm not so sure I agree with making smite per encounter. I think it feels better to keep it as being stronger but limited times per day. That said, I don't necessarily disagree with per encounter. My brother reminded me of the Hexblade (tier 3 with its unofficial official fix) and its limited daily uses of its curses (which aren't expended if they don't affect the enemy, as I've rewritten smite to do). I think I'll need more input before shifting it to per encounter.

[Valluman]

Hi, I'm the brother comparing Paladin to Hexblade. When my brother was trying to bounce ideas off of me for this character, in my head, I was comparing the paladin to the (fixed) Hexblade, since it's somewhat successful with it's changes and the Dread Necromancer, seeing that as the paladin's antithesis. I feel like per encounter smites make it more like a maneuver character than a paladin with limited smites per day; all the other smite classes have per day, and the Hexblade has per day for it's special ability.

Buffing the damage, limiting per day, and making the smite not be used up against ineffective targets (or is the paladin misses) seems like a more than fair fix. It still causes the paladin to think about when to use smites, but he's not punished as badly for messing up with them either.

[redwizard007]

Don't change a single thing. What you have right now is perfectly balanced. Still not my favorite melee class, but I'd play this guy with no complaints.

[Carl]

The problem with per day is simple. 5 minute workday. In moderately optomized parties everyone nova's as hard as possible every encounter and once a sufficient percentage are sufficiently low on resources everyone just rests to regain them. So really unless your dealing with a time sensitive situation or want to use more than the limit in a single encounter there's no difference between per day and per encounter except one require the party abuse the resting mechanic. Per encounter is far better because it lets you balance around an assumption that everyone will nova, rather than just the moderate and better optomizers.

This fix also has 2 issues imo. 1 related to smite, the other separate.

A) Smite's biggest bad point in even the core paladin is that it fails utterly to interact in any beneficial way with full attacks. As a result standard action single attacks with smite bonus look a lot more useful than full round action full attacks because the damage difference will be so small and the cost in other options so large.

B) Paladin spellcasting suffers from the same issue as mot hybrid classes, you can't cast and fight at the same time, so your only getting the benefit of one part of the class at a time. The spellcasting is nice for versatility, but it adds little raw power unless it's stronger than the martial, (not hard given how weak martial generally is), in which case there's no reason to use the martial over the spellcasting. A feature to more closely integrate the two is vital.

[Dyhmas]

First of all, your Paladin fix is straight out better than the original, in pretty much every way. There is no reason not to play your fix over the original, period.

Yet, I'm about to echo Carl here saying that the spellcasting and martial sides of the paladin don't mix well at all. In fact, that's my major problem with the class since, in order to use both, you basically have to rely on buffs. Perhaps a look at the duskblade (i.e Channel Spell) might make it worthwhile?

EDIT: In fact, what if we fix both the spellcastingXmelee interaction and Smite usage at the same time? (Random ideas ahead!)

-First, make Smite at will. (calm down, calm down...)
-Second, make you have to spend a spell slot in order to use Smite, giving +x to attack and +xd6 to damage (x= spell slot level). This mightallows you to create a feat that increaes it to d8 or something, perhaps? An increase in spell slots per day might be necessary, tho.
-Third, make a new ability (Powerfull Smite, perhaps?) with daily uses wich basically works like metamagic (maximize, empower, etc...) but for smites. Even having the different effects being unlocked with the pally's level, in order to lessen dead levels?
-...?
-Profit!

Anyway, random thoughts really...

Other than that, spot on!

-Dyhmas

[Auramis]

To Carl, I don't necessarily agree with you concerning the uses of per encounter smite. In your own description of per day vs per encounter, you bring up how a savvy party would try to abuse per encounter/resting to their benefit in order to regain the full use of their smites. I do agree there is a shortcoming in its lack of use for full attacks, and I will look into adding a full attack function into it at higher levels. Just need to decide what level to drop it in. As for the spellcasting, I don't think the spellcasting in tandem with the martial parts of a paladin really hurt it in the long run. Similar classes, such as the Duskblade, Mystic Ranger, and the Hexblade (with the unofficial official fix) are 0-5 or 1-4 spellcasters that exist at tier 3 rather comfortably. My aim is that the paladin has the option of spellcasting in addition to his normal martial prowess, which, with the edit I just made to smite*, should be more than just flat melee attacks. That said, I still do need to figure a good level to incorporate full attacks into the smite.

To Dhymas, I recognize that fix as how paladin in D&D 5.0 (aka Next) functions, though you proposed using a d6 as opposed to Next's d8 for the paladin's smite/per spell. I like that fix for Next, but, with the revision of the spell list and spells per day I've given the paladin, that could easily turn the paladin into an entirely too frightening blaster, especially once you consider the bonus spells a paladin may have in addition to their already improved spell list. When compared to an expanded spell list, I feel as if that would either A) lack versatility, since it sacrifices some of your versatility from your spells in exchange for raw damage or B) that it would be outshined by the literal libraries of spells a paladin with 5th levels spells has available to him. In Next, where the spell list has been gutted to some degree and pulled back to be more in line with everyone else, it's a good idea, but I'm worried though that, in 3.5, it simply couldn't keep up with spells.

*I edited smite to function against all targets as the base smite functions. However, I've written smite to deal double its usual damage against evil targets. With my original edit of allowing smite to simply do 2 damage per level against evil or chaos and by saying it wouldn't be spent if used on non chaotic or evil targets, it opened the door for the abuse of spamming smite on a neutral target to perpetually keep his charisma bonus on his attack role. Granted, your code of conduct might bite you in the butt later for being dishonorable in your fighting style/making light use of your granted powers, but that wouldn't stop some players from abusing it. Thus, smite is now usable against all targets, though the 2 points of damage per level has been set back to just evil targets in exchange for the reversion.

[redwizard007]

Yet, I'm about to echo Carl here saying that the spellcasting and martial sides of the paladin don't mix well at all. In fact, that's my major problem with the class since, in order to use both, you basically have to rely on buffs. Perhaps a look at the duskblade (i.e Channel Spell) might make it worthwhile?

Perhaps it is just me but I always pictured the paladin taking a knee to pray before a fight. That's when he asks his god for blessings (i.e. spells) and then doing so again post battle to ask forgiveness for the lives he has taken (i.e. more spells) with the occasional "dear lord guide by blade" (spell) in combat. The spells ARE basically buffs. If you want a spell-slinger run one.


-First, make Smite at will. (calm down, calm down...)
-Second, make you have to spend a spell slot in order to use Smite, giving +x to attack...

This possibility has some merit. Spell slots turned into to hit bonuses and used to power smite is relatively balanced


...+xd6 to damage (x= spell slot level).

Nope. What spells on the paladin list are worth +d6 per level damage? That's wizard/Sorc territiory.


An increase in spell slots per day might be necessary, tho.

No. Especially if you decide to use spell slots to fuel Smite. Why go from 5/day at lvl 20 to 21/day?

[Dyhmas]

Hmmm, that's a good point, definetely. Still haven't given Next a full read so hadn't noticed that was the way it handled Smite.

Anyway, if your goal is pretty much fixing the 3.5 Pally in order to be on par with the other core classes, in termos of power/versatility/usefullness, then there is not much else to be done, really. Good job!

-Dyhmas

[Valluman]

Personally, I'm a fan of the change to allow smite to be used on everyone while giving bonuses for the baddies it's "originally" meant to be used on. This gives some roleplay mechanics where the paladin may start abusing his power and fall. It means a paladin has to think about what he's doing.

I'd also like to see smite on full attacks at higher levels; it doesn't hurt, and at the point where I think they'd get it, the wizards and clerics and others are already flying circles around more mundane characters.

[Dyhmas]

Perhaps it is just me but I always pictured the paladin taking a knee to pray before a fight. That's when he asks his god for blessings (i.e. spells) and then doing so again post battle to ask forgiveness for the lives he has taken (i.e. more spells) with the occasional "dear lord guide by blade" (spell) in combat. The spells ARE basically buffs. If you want a spell-slinger run one.

I think you misinterpreted what I wrote. I absolutely agree with you on the whole pray-to-god-for-power before/during/after combat. Defintely.
What I echoed from Carl and meant was that, during combat, you have to either cast a spell or make an attack. There is no way to make them blend seamlessly without using semi-constant effects (buffs). Wich, IMO, is a problem with the Paladin (and pretty much any martial+casting class without such an ability).

The idea I proposed was based on the Duskblade's channel ability, wich is an acceptable precedent for such an idea. I did that because, while playing a Duskblade, I always felt like melee & magic blended during battle, more like on thing. Mixing with Smite was basically an attempt to change it into something (perhaps?) more usefull.

As Auramis pointed out, however, that might not be the best approach. Oh well...

-Dyhmas

P.S. Btw, at 20th lvl, he would get a lot of smite uses, surely, but most of those would add way less in attack and damage than a core smite at such level. If you were to actually use a smite with equal power as the core one, you'd be only able to use it 3-6 times a day...and that if you give up your 5th level spells for the day, so...yeah, you exagerated a bit, ok? :smallwink:

[Carl]

Perhaps it is just me but I always pictured the paladin taking a knee to pray before a fight. That's when he asks his god for blessings (i.e. spells) and then doing so again post battle to ask forgiveness for the lives he has taken (i.e. more spells) with the occasional "dear lord guide by blade" (spell) in combat. The spells ARE basically buffs. If you want a spell-slinger run one.

Leaving aside how variable and broad the paladin concept is, your whole thinking flies in the face of how D&D actually works, outside of maybe the big bad at the end of the quest you probably aren't going to get anywhere near enough warning of an enemy to pre-cast many if any buff, and few have a duration long enough to let you throw them up permanently. The reality is much of the time if you want to use spells as a paladin it's a choice between hack and cast.


In your own description of per day vs per encounter, you bring up how a savvy party would try to abuse per encounter/resting to their benefit in order to regain the full use of their smites.

The point is if your assuming such abuse it doesn't make any difference, and if your not it's going to be horribly broken in the hands of a huge chunk of the player base. Per encounter removes the reason to abuse whilst making the full power available to those who don't think to abuse or don't want to.


Similar classes, such as the Duskblade, Mystic Ranger, and the Hexblade (with the unofficial official fix) are 0-5 or 1-4 spellcasters that exist at tier 3 rather comfortably.

I can't speak for the fixed hexblade, (no idea what fix your talking about), and never heard of the mystic ranger before but the duskblade explicitly has the capability to mix it's spellcasting and it's martial abilities via channel spell. And the base hexblade has 2 free action usable abilities that make anything the paladin has look like a joke.

[Auramis]

The point is if your assuming such abuse it doesn't make any difference, and if your not it's going to be horribly broken in the hands of a huge chunk of the player base. Per encounter removes the reason to abuse whilst making the full power available to those who don't think to abuse or don't want to.

I don't exactly understand what you mean here. The wording is odd.



I can't speak for the fixed hexblade, (no idea what fix your talking about), and never heard of the mystic ranger before but the duskblade explicitly has the capability to mix it's spellcasting and it's martial abilities via channel spell. And the base hexblade has 2 free action usable abilities that make anything the paladin has look like a joke.

You can find the Hexblade Fix here (http://community.wizards.com/comment/13411551#comment-13411551). It solves a lot of the Hexblade's problems, including the free action curses you mentioned (they're swift actions in the fix, which means 1 per round). As for the Mystic Ranger, there's no real good link to an online version that I'm aware of, but it was a Ranger Variant in Dragon Magazine 336 that gave the Ranger 0-5th level spells in exchange for their sub-par animal companion, one of their favored enemies, and pushing combat style abilities back by one level.

I use these two (and to a minor degree, the duskblade) in trying to help me think of how I wanted to reforge paladin during my fix. The Hexblade fix was a modest fix that refined the abilities it already had without completely overhauling them, and that's the type of fix I wanted to apply to paladin. It doesn't hurt the identity of what's being fixed, and it also doesn't detract from other classes by simply copying their abilities in some way.

If I just copied the Duskblades channeling, as you seem to be suggesting, that would actively be stepping on the toes of the Duskblade and attempting to reshape the paladin's original identity.

[Dyhmas]

If I just copied the Duskblades channeling, as you seem to be suggesting, that would actively be stepping on the toes of the Duskblade and attempting to reshape the paladin's original identity.

I only mentioned the Duskblade's channeling because it is an accepted (read: official) way to make melee and casting interact.

I agree that placing that on the Paladin is not a good idea (hence why I gave the idea to mix it with Smite, anyway...), but that doesn't mean it isn't an interesting focus for your fix. I mean, as a melee class with casting, I think they should interact. Even if just a bit...

Perhaps, after casting a spell, the paladin may receive a minor bonus to his attacks on the next turn, representing his god's favor for his actions, something like that. Doesn't need to be something major, that reshapes the whole class, just something that'll make me feel not like I wasted my action if I didn't attack or if I had to buff because I didn't do it beforehand...

Oh, btw, just noticed that, since you upgraded the Turn Undead, you can use Divine Metamagics now, right? (I may be wrong, but wasn't there something that prevented the paladin from using it?)

-Dyhmas

[Auramis]

Perhaps, after casting a spell, the paladin may receive a minor bonus to his attacks on the next turn, representing his god's favor for his actions, something like that. Doesn't need to be something major, that reshapes the whole class, just something that'll make me feel not like I wasted my action if I didn't attack or if I had to buff because I didn't do it beforehand...

Oh, btw, just noticed that, since you upgraded the Turn Undead I suppose you can use Divine Metamagics now, right? (I may be wrong, but wasn't there something that prevented the paladin from using it?)

-Dyhmas

I had contemplated the idea of giving the paladin the Battle Blessing (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-champion--57/battle-blessing--182/) feat passively in order to help with its spellcasting in combat, but, considering how I changed the spell list and what it could mean, I thought it might be better to leave the decision of whether a DM will allow a now spontaneous casting paladin to pick up the feat. I ended up leaving it as a feat for that reason. If your DM is comfortable letting you have Battle Blessing with my paladin fix, it could potentially be far more powerful than it is already is. It's part of why I advise you to consult your DM heavily when pulling together spells you may consider viable for paladins.

Divine Metamagic could be used before the changes. The difference now is that, since I made the paladin a full spellcaster like the Mystic Ranger and the Duskblade, his spells are naturally more effective and, therefore, benefit more. Divine Metamagic was good for paladin before, but my change made it even more viable.

[Epsilon Rose]

My main issue with per day smites isn't the per day portion, it's how limited they are for single target HP damage.

It's power is highly dependent on the type an number of encounters your DM throws at you per day.
If your DM is fond of boss-type encounters where there's a single main enemy, then it works fairly well. You can be assured that you should be smiting the big thing and you can afford to spend a few smites to knock him down faster.
If your DM likes midsized encounters with moderately powerful enemies, then it becomes harder to gauge. If a single smite will let you drop an enemy a full turn faster, then it's still good, but if you have to spend multiple smites to shave off a turn, then you'll run out too quickly.
Finally, if your DM throws lots of little things at you, then it's not going to be very effective because 5 uses probably won't be enough to make a difference in a single encounter, let alone a day.

The midsized encounter is probably the most common and the most interesting, so I'm going to explain it a bit more. Lets say we have three PCs and a few enemies (Paladin, A, B, and Monster 1, Monster 2, Monster 3, and monster 4). A round can play out in one of four ways.

Paladin uses a smite and Monster 1 is killed by Alice or on Bob's first hit. If smite were not used, it would have taken Bob at least 2 hits to kill Monster 1.

In this scenario, Smite was useful. If Alice kills it Bob can spend his turn starting on Monster 2 or doing something else, either he's getting full use of his turn. Even if it takes Bob 1 attack to kill it, he'll still be able to reposition himself.
Paladin uses smite and Bob kills Monster 1 on his last attack. Without the smite, monster 1 would have gotten to make an attack of his own.

In this scenario, it's still useful, but less so. Since bob was able to kill it, it can't take it's turn, but since it took a full attack, Bob can't start on anything else.
Paladin uses smite and Bob is able to kill Monster 1 on his second attack. Without smite, Monster 1 would have died on his 4th attack.

In this scenario the smite is useless, unless one of the other monsters is within Bob's attack range, because either way he's committing his full round to killing Monster 1.
Paladin uses smite and Monster 1 barely survives to take his turn. Paladin will be able to kill it with his second attack on it's next turn, unless it receives healing.

In this scenario, smite was useless. Since smite only does HP damage, and hp is an all or nothing.


A lot of abilities might fit that profile, but the real problem is that Paladin can't afford to use his smite most of the time. With 4 enemies, he can only smite 1 of them twice and that's only if he isn't planning to get into another fight that day. If he follows the standard adventuring day, then he can only use his signature ability once or twice per encounter, so if there's multiple tough enemies he's going to be in trouble.

The next consideration is number of encounters. As the number in a day increases, smite becomes less useful, because you have to conserve it more. HP damage is more useful in concentration. That is, all other things being equal, it's better to use a high damage ability twice on 1 target rather then once on 2 targets (assuming once isn't enough to kill it. This is different from status effects which are more useful when spread out (blinding 2 things is better then blinding the same thing twice) and are more useful the longer a target is alive, unlike HP damage which only matters when they drop.

You brought up the Hexblade's curse and the Dread Necro's burst, but those abilities differ from smite in a very important ways. The Hexblade's curse is a debuff that lasts an hour, so you only need to hit an enemy with it once, meaning you can afford to spread it around more. Conversely, the DN's burst does HP damage, but it does it in an AoE and can heal the DN; it's also not as central to their class when you factor in their 9th level spells and other abilities.

[Carl]

If I just copied the Duskblades channeling, as you seem to be suggesting, that would actively be stepping on the toes of the Duskblade and attempting to reshape the paladin's original identity.

I wasn't suggesting you did, actually my own fix i came up with what amounted to battle blessing independently, (if you want a link let me now, i don't really have enough stuff to be worth a sig yet).


I don't exactly understand what you mean here. The wording is odd.

From a balance PoV anything a significant chunk of the playerbase will do to power something up should be considered the norm. The hyper optomizers who will abuse anything to the point of breaking it utterly through any means available aren't really a concern, D&D 3.5 is so vast you cannot stop them doing that.

In this case a decent chunk of the player base does make heavy use of the 5 minute workday. And if you assume that, weather the limit is 5 a day or 5 per encounter the end result is pretty much the same. Except for the other, probably smaller chunk that won't abuse the system. All keeping it at 5/day does is disadvantage them whilst doing nothing for what you have to assume for balance purposes.


You can find the Hexblade Fix here.

WOW, that makes the hexblade about 3 orders of magnitude more powerful.

First their curse uses vastly increase as does their ability to use it due to non-expending charges and greater total uses, and that's on top of curse being at least an order of magnitude more powerful on it's own than smite.

Second they can cast a limited number of spells as swift actions, effectively cost-less quicken. Duskblades have a whole ton of mind affecting affects (and a few other spell effects), that amount to SoS stuff. They've even got a SoD. With the way curse hit's saves, a strong save becomes a weak one, and a weak one is basically reset to level 1, (or earlier at lowish levels), so the ability of these spells to succeed is massive. A good duskblade should be focusing pretty much exclusively on chucking curses then SOS/SOD'ing the recipient. The fact that other party members can also massively benefit from this curse and that you can still whack people over the head with a blade is just icing on the cake at this point.

The only real negative in there is needed a swift action to curse, which isn't that bad on it's own TBH. It barely slows you down.

Nothing in the paladin spell list is even close to as powerful as some of the duskblades spells and nothing it has is close in uses or power, both personal and party wide, to curse.

[Dyhmas]

Ok, I don't think the /dayx/encounter discussion'll go very far, since it seems to be a design point of the OP to keep it a /day thing. Fair enough. (correct me if I'm wrong, of course)

However, what about you change the ability a little bit. As in, instead of being an effect applied on the pally's attack, making it an effect applied to the pally's foe. (I'm pretty sure I've seen something like that somewhere, can't recall where right now, tho...). To me, it makes some sense fluff wise, since it'd be like your deity saying "Yep, I don't like that guy at all, pound him!". When you use smite (swift action), you "mark" (4e had some good ideas) a foe wich attends the pre-requisites of the ability and, till the beginning of your next turn, you get the smite bonus on every single attack you make against that enemy.

Making it a swift action to use prevents PCs from abusing the Battle Blessing feat. Allowing it to last till the beginning of the next turn allows the paladin to apply some battlefield control trough reach weapons and AoO against the foe. Making it apply to all attacks makes the Smite feel more of a battle decisive ability.

In this case, however, you could keep the damage bonus equal to level or perhaps make the current damage bonus only apply to certain enemies (evil outsiders and undead only or specific foes of your deity, for example).

What you think? (I'm still pretty sure I'm ripping that from somewhere, really can't remember where tho...)

-Dyhmas

[Auramis]

Sorry for being slow on arriving back in the thread. Sleep schedule is all kinds of borked at the moment! Alright, gonna do by my best to reply to everyone.


Epsilon Rose

Your scenarios are something I had in mind when reforging the class. Of all the classes I've played in 3.5, paladin is one of the top ones that I've had the most time playing on, and, rightly so, you're right in saying it's not the best when a smite doesn't work as well as I (or any paladin, really) would like for it to.

That said, for some bloody awful reason, I'm a fan of the per day mechanic. With that in mind, what if I made it so the number of smites was based around his charisma modifier, similar to how a Hexblade's curse in the fix is 1+charisma modifier times per day. Would that be an agreeable shift? It has the potential to be weaker if your charisma is low, but, as a paladin, your charsima really shouldn't be low.


Carl

Experience has left the impression on me that, in 3.5, that spells add a LOT of utility. I'm not sure I agree in saying nothing in my paladin compares to the Duskblade, and it's mostly due to the fact I've expanded the spell list, especially since I haven't put in a full spell list of what could be considered on the paladin spell list. I've only put core spells here in this fix. With the vast libraries of spells in 3.5, there may very well be spells that bring the paladin up to a more competitive level with the Duskblade.

If you'd like, you can send me your work via message. I wouldn't mind giving it a look over. I might seem like I'm not yielding a lot in hearing everyone out, but I am thinking about what everyone saying. I've looked over smite quite a lot since I posted this, and I feel like it's improving a bit the more I look at it.


Dhymas

Your suggestion sounds similar to the Knight's Fighting Challenge ability, where they designate a target for attacks and receive bonuses on fighting that one target. It sounds like a nice ability, but, with the stipulation you added on making it only affect evil outsiders and undead, I think smite is fine as it is, since it deals double damage against all evil foes.

I could make it apply to all undead as well, since there are a limited number of undead who aren't evil. I could additionally make it so that it applies against incorporeal targets if you break their armor class (normal, non-magical weapon damage could still miss, as normal).

In fact, in the original paladin description, the extra damage in smite isn't listed as having a damage type at all, so it can be prevented with damage reduction. I could make it so that smite's damage is sacred damage with the magic descriptor, so it can overcome that damage reduction. If I'm changing smite to be usable a number of times per day based off your charisma modifier, I could give smite new effects/descriptors at every point in the class where you'd normally gain more smite uses.

[Epsilon Rose]

Your scenarios are something I had in mind when reforging the class. Of all the classes I've played in 3.5, paladin is one of the top ones that I've had the most time playing on, and, rightly so, you're right in saying it's not the best when a smite doesn't work as well as I (or any paladin, really) would like for it to.

That said, for some bloody awful reason, I'm a fan of the per day mechanic. With that in mind, what if I made it so the number of smites was based around his charisma modifier, similar to how a Hexblade's curse in the fix is 1+charisma modifier times per day. Would that be an agreeable shift? It has the potential to be weaker if your charisma is low, but, as a paladin, your charsima really shouldn't be low.
Well, +6 cha sounds reasonable for a paladin. That means you're looking at a fairly large boost in the beginning and a 2 point boost by the end. Overall, this is definitely an improvement and getting more then 1 use of your signature ability at low levels is a good design decision. That said, in spite's current form, I'm not sure if that's enough uses at upper levels (I wouldn't give lower levels any more).



If I'm changing smite to be usable a number of times per day based off your charisma modifier, I could give smite new effects/descriptors at every point in the class where you'd normally gain more smite uses.

If you want to keep a per day mechanics, that's actually a really good idea. One of smites biggest flaws is that it only does HP damage, so if it doesn't kill something it doesn't have a large effect on the battle. Being able to debuff enemies and heal or buff allies on top of an attack would make it's limited uses a lot more justifiable and meaningful.

[Auramis]

Well, +6 cha sounds reasonable for a paladin. That means you're looking at a fairly large boost in the beginning and a 2 point boost by the end. Overall, this is definitely an improvement and getting more then 1 use of your signature ability at low levels is a good design decision. That said, in spite's current form, I'm not sure if that's enough uses at upper levels (I wouldn't give lower levels any more).

If you want to keep a per day mechanics, that's actually a really good idea. One of smites biggest flaws is that it only does HP damage, so if it doesn't kill something it doesn't have a large effect on the battle. Being able to debuff enemies and heal or buff allies on top of an attack would make it's limited uses a lot more justifiable and meaningful.

If I add healing for using smite (and I feel I likely will), I might keep the healing self-centric on smite. Being able to strike and heal allies is something that a crusader is capable of doing, and it doesn't have the benefit of having heal spells or a Lay on Hands that it can dispense to allies. I'd have smite's heal be the paladin's one heal that it can use on itself only (and it's mount, because that makes too much sense).

[Epsilon Rose]

If I add healing for using smite (and I feel I likely will), I might keep the healing self-centric on smite. Being able to strike and heal allies is something that a crusader is capable of doing, and it doesn't have the benefit of having heal spells or a Lay on Hands that it can dispense to allies. I'd have smite's heal be the paladin's one heal that it can use on itself only (and it's mount, because that makes too much sense).

Self healing is nice, debuffs or buffs are probably better.

[Auramis]

Okay, I don't have a list of what I'm doing to smite at the moment, but it's not complete.



1st Level
Smite


5th Level
Incorporeal smite


10th Level
Invigorating smite


15th Level
Erupting smite


20th Level
Ability yet to be determined.



Smite: A number of times per day equal to her charisma modifier (to a minimum of 1)[/COLOR], a paladin may attempt to smite with one normal melee attack. She adds her Charisma bonus (if any) to her attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damage per paladin level. Should a paladin smite an evil or undead target, the bonus damage from smite is equal to 2 extra points of damage per paladin level instead of the normal 1 extra point of damage per paladin level. The damage from a paladin's smite is considered sacred damage with the good descriptor for the purpose of dealing damage to creatures with damage reduction.

Incorporeal Smite: Starting at 5th level, a paladin's smite damage is no longer subject to the miss chance from creatures residing in or between the material or ethereal planes, so long as she succeeds on her attack roll against her opponent's armor class. Her normal weapon's damage, however, is still subject to missing if it would normally would be.

Invigorating Smite: Starting at 10th level, when a paladin successfully smites a target, she is healed for half of the damage dealt from her smite, rounded down. This healing is not affected by her normal weapon damage. For example, if an 11th level paladin smites an evil target with her longsword and deals 29 damage. Of that damage, 22 points are from her smite and 7 are from her attack. In this instance, she would be healed for 11 points of damage. Had she smote a neutral target, she should have been healed for 5 points of damage.

If a paladin is within 5 ft. of her special mount, the healing from smite also heals her special mount for the same amount.

Erupting Smite: Starting at 15th level, when a paladin successfully slays an evil or undead target with her smite, the damage from her smite erupts in a 10 ft. radius around the target, dealing her smite's damage to all evil and undead targets within the area.


Changes include giving smite's damage a good descriptor and calling it sacred damage, incorporeal smite, invigorating smite, and erupting smite. As for a level 20 capstone ability, I can't think of anything. Perhaps an increase on the radius of erupting smite? I thought of increasing the healing of invigorating smite, but it seemed like the paladin would literally become indestructible if he had enough smite attempts for a fight.

I did think about buffing or debuffing with smite, but, at the end of the day, I think smite is best used as a means of damage instead of a means of debuffing or buffing. A paladin's spells can serve in buffing his allies. If I didn't make the paladin a 0-5th level caster, I would have allowed smite to do more than damage. Since I did expand spells (in addition to making a paladin's caster level her paladin level and made her spontaneous), though, I think spells can pick up that role.

[Epsilon Rose]

Incorporeal smite isn't actually useful. If you're relying on the smite to do damage, then you're going to have to use it for all of your attacks, and that will cause you to burn through your stock really quickly. It could work better if it made a target corporeal for the rest of the fight, but you're probably better off just using something that gives you ghost touch.

Similarly, given the number of attempts they get, invigorating smite doesn't really heal enough to be significant.

Erupting smite isn't bad, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to be a 15th level ability.

[Auramis]

Incorporeal smite isn't actually useful. If you're relying on the smite to do damage, then you're going to have to use it for all of your attacks, and that will cause you to burn through your stock really quickly. It could work better if it made a target corporeal for the rest of the fight, but you're probably better off just using something that gives you ghost touch.

Similarly, given the number of attempts they get, invigorating smite doesn't really heal enough to be significant.

Erupting smite isn't bad, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to be a 15th level ability.

I know they're not amazing features, but I feel like they're in line with what could be considered balanced when compared to other tier 3 classes when you consider the spell and turning changes.

I'd edit erupting smite to trigger on successful critical strikes that are also smites without the slaying stipulation, though, just to give it a tiny bit more. I'd also give invigorating smite the ability to give temporary hit points from any over-healing, up to the paladin's level.

[Auramis]

Another edit to the smiting progression for everyone's opinion.



1st Level
Smite


5th Level
Incorporeal smite


10th Level
Invigorating smite


15th Level
Erupting smite


20th Level
Invigorating eruption



Smite (Su): A number of times per day equal to her charisma modifier (to a minimum of 1), a paladin may attempt to smite with one normal melee attack. She adds her Charisma bonus (if any) to her attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damage per paladin level. Should a paladin smite an evil or undead target, the bonus damage from smite is equal to 2 extra points of damage per paladin level instead of the normal 1 extra point of damage per paladin level. The damage from a paladin's smite has the good descriptor for the purpose of dealing damage to creatures with damage reduction.

Incorporeal Smite (Su): Starting at 5th level, a paladin's smite damage is no longer subject to the miss chance from creatures residing in or between the material or ethereal planes, so long as she succeeds on her attack roll against her opponent's armor class. Her normal weapon's damage, however, is still subject to missing if it would normally would be.

Invigorating Smite (Su): Starting at 10th level, when a paladin successfully smites a target, she is healed for half of the damage dealt from her smite, rounded down. If the paladin is at full health when smiting or if the healing is more than is needed to heal her to full heath, the extra healing from smite grants the paladin temporary hit points up to her paladin level. This healing is not affected by her normal weapon damage. For example, if an 11th level paladin smites an evil target with her longsword and deals 29 damage. Of that damage, 22 points are from her smite and 7 are from her attack. In this instance, she would be healed for 11 points of damage. Had she smote a neutral target, she should have been healed for 5 points of damage.

If a paladin is within 5 ft. of her special mount, the healing from smite also heals her special mount for the same amount.

Erupting Smite (Su): Starting at 15th level, when a paladin successfully slays an evil or undead target with her smite attack, the damage from her smite erupts in a 10 ft. radius around the target, dealing her smite's damage as sacred damage to all evil and undead targets within the area. The damage from erupting smite has the good descriptor for the purpose of dealing damage to creatures with damage reduction.

Invigorating eruption (Su): Starting at 20th level, when erupting smite is triggered, the healing from a paladin's smite is spread as well, healing all allies within the 10 ft. radius.


As Epsilon Rose pointed out, Incorporeal Smite and Invigorating Smite aren't overwhelmingly strong, but I think they're in a good place where they're at. As a low level ability, Incorporeal Smite's nice and flavorful, and it has the potential to work on more than just ghosts as well (I'm sure there are spells that allow cheeky wizards to try and hide on the ethereal plane). The main function would be for ghosts, but it has wiggle room. As for Invigorating Smite, it's also a flavorful and helpful benefit. It's not super amazing, but it's useful.

Erupting smite is straight forward enough. If you kill an evil or undead target, your smite erupts and deals damage to evil and undead enemies around you. It won't work on neutral or good opponents, granted, but the theme of the paladin is to fight undead and evil primarily.

Finally, invigorating eruption allows the healing of smite to affect your allies if you trigger your erupting smite. It's a great ability, even if it is a bit late in levels.

It's worth nothing that, according to rules concerning critical strikes (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary&term=Glossary_dnd_criticalhit&alpha=), that smite damage is capable of critting. It's also worth noting that, with bless weapon, all threats are capable of being crits. It won't help you against undead targets, since they can't be crit (normally), but it's certainly helpful at all other times.

I considered letting erupting smite work off of critical strikes, but it then occurred to me while talking it out with my brother that a paladin could optimize for critting while dual wielding and, by blowing all of their smites in a single round at level 15, could potentially deal 180 damage by herself to all evil enemies in a 10 foot radius if she crit with every attack. That prospect terrified me a bit. I liked the idea of critting being appealing to paladins, since it improves the healing and damage from their smite and synergizes well with bless weapon, but that was just too much.

[Epsilon Rose]

As Epsilon Rose pointed out, Incorporeal Smite and Invigorating Smite aren't overwhelmingly strong, but I think they're in a good place where they're at. As a low level ability, Incorporeal Smite's nice and flavorful, and it has the potential to work on more than just ghosts as well (I'm sure there are spells that allow cheeky wizards to try and hide on the ethereal plane). The main function would be for ghosts, but it has wiggle room. As for Invigorating Smite, it's also a flavorful and helpful benefit. It's not super amazing, but it's useful.

Actually, I said it was non-functional. IS will let you hit an incorporeal target once or twice, because that's all the smites you can afford to spend on something that's not a boss. One or two hits are unlikely to kill it and HP damage does nothing until they hit zero. That means this won't do anything unless you or your allies already have the ability to hit incorporeal, at which point you don't need it.


Erupting smite is straight forward enough. If you kill an evil or undead target, your smite erupts and deals damage to evil and undead enemies around you. It won't work on neutral or good opponents, granted, but the theme of the paladin is to fight undead and evil primarily.
Last hitting, even with at-will abilities, can actually be kind of hard. I actually played a character in a legend game that had a feat that would trigger whenever he killed something, regardless of how he did it. It never actually triggered, because someone else would always get the last hit.


Finally, invigorating eruption allows the healing of smite to affect your allies if you trigger your erupting smite. It's a great ability, even if it is a bit late in levels.
Note, depending on your level, it will heal you for a single normal attack or less. It's not actually a meaningful amount of healing. To put it in perspective, a single hit, dealing mean damage, from a level 1 warrior with a great sword and +4 str will completely negate the healing in your example.


It's worth nothing that, according to rules concerning critical strikes (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary&term=Glossary_dnd_criticalhit&alpha=), that smite damage is capable of critting. It's also worth noting that, with bless weapon, all threats are capable of being crits. It won't help you against undead targets, since they can't be crit (normally), but it's certainly helpful at all other times.

Given the number of smites you get, you are not particularly likely of critting on one unless you spec into it.


I considered letting erupting smite work off of critical strikes, but it then occurred to me while talking it out with my brother that a paladin could optimize for critting while dual wielding and, by blowing all of their smites in a single round at level 15, could potentially deal 180 damage by herself to all evil enemies in a 10 foot radius if she crit with every attack. That prospect terrified me a bit. I liked the idea of critting being appealing to paladins, since it improves the healing and damage from their smite and synergizes well with bless weapon, but that was just too much.
Given the range, that's basically blowing all of your smites for a single save or die, which isn't all that impressive. Also, to put it in perspective again, a rogue with an elemental longbow and +2 damage (either from str or enchantments) and nothing else will have a mean damage of 76 and a maximum damage of 192. They will be able to keep that up every round, as long as they don't run out of arrows, and need to spend almost nothing on it, unlike your example paladin who can only do it once per day and needs a build focussed on dual wielding and crits.

If you like, you can play with these values on anydice.com (http://anydice.com/program/41b0)

[Auramis]

Actually, I said it was non-functional. IS will let you hit an incorporeal target once or twice, because that's all the smites you can afford to spend on something that's not a boss. One or two hits are unlikely to kill it and HP damage does nothing until they hit zero. That means this won't do anything unless you or your allies already have the ability to hit incorporeal, at which point you don't need it.

Last hitting, even with at-will abilities, can actually be kind of hard. I actually played a character in a legend game that had a feat that would trigger whenever he killed something, regardless of how he did it. It never actually triggered, because someone else would always get the last hit.

Note, depending on your level, it will heal you for a single normal attack or less. It's not actually a meaningful amount of healing. To put it in perspective, a single hit, dealing mean damage, from a level 1 warrior with a great sword and +4 str will completely negate the healing in your example.

Given the number of smites you get, you are not particularly likely of critting on one unless you spec into it.

Given the range, that's basically blowing all of your smites for a single save or die, which isn't all that impressive. Also, to put it in perspective again, a rogue with an elemental longbow and +2 damage (either from str or enchantments) and nothing else will have a mean damage of 76 and a maximum damage of 192. They will be able to keep that up every round, as long as they don't run out of arrows, and need to spend almost nothing on it, unlike your example paladin who can only do it once per day and needs a build focussed on dual wielding and crits.

If you like, you can play with these values on anydice.com (http://anydice.com/program/41b0)

Alright, I see your point with Incorporeal Smite. I mainly threw it in because it sounded nice and flavorful and gave SOME kind of benefit to the paladin. That said, it's already more than the base paladin had, and, even if it's minor, it's a buff.

What if Erupting Smite was shifted to felling an enemy instead? It's not a huge difference, but it shaves 10 points of damage off the requirement. Alternatively, I could shift it so that, if it dies/falls in within one round of using it, it would trigger.

No, Invigorating Smite's not a particularly meaningful amount of healing, but the paladin has Lay on Hands and healing spells in his kit. The Invigorating Smite isn't meant to be a primary source of healing, it's supplementary. It's just a little bit to reduce the healing you'll end up needing in a fight overall so other heals can be saved for your allies.

Keep in mind, with the paladin as I have it right now (these smites included), it should easily fall into the tier 3 category, I think. It won't crank out a metric butt-load of damage, but I think it's versatile enough that it should be useful in most encounters now, rather than being near useless.

[Auramis]

Thinking about it, I could just scrap Incorporeal Smite and Erupting Smite, move Erupting Invigorate down to level 15 and allow bonus feats from a list instead.

[Epsilon Rose]

Alright, I see your point with Incorporeal Smite. I mainly threw it in because it sounded nice and flavorful and gave SOME kind of benefit to the paladin. That said, it's already more than the base paladin had, and, even if it's minor, it's a buff.
True, but the paladin is T5, so saying it's more than the vanilla version doesn't actually tell you much.


What if Erupting Smite was shifted to felling an enemy instead? It's not a huge difference, but it shaves 10 points of damage off the requirement. Alternatively, I could shift it so that, if it dies/falls in within one round of using it, it would trigger.
Felled vs dead isn't a meaningful difference, but priming them for a round be reasonable-ish. That said, it could make it hard to line up a meaningful shot, since you don't really know when it's going off and your enemies might have moved. I don't see why you can't just let them use it out right. The DN's burst does more damage (1d4*lv) and can hit more creatures for full and heal certain allies and they can just trigger it without jumping through hoops.


No, Invigorating Smite's not a particularly meaningful amount of healing, but the paladin has Lay on Hands and healing spells in his kit. The Invigorating Smite isn't meant to be a primary source of healing, it's supplementary. It's just a little bit to reduce the healing you'll end up needing in a fight overall so other heals can be saved for your allies.
HP healing is really cheap in 3.5 and if a character 1/10th of your level can negate a heal with in a single attack it's not noticeable amount of healing. I don't think it's actually capable of pushing you into needing a lower category of healing unless your were borderline anyways.


Keep in mind, with the paladin as I have it right now (these smites included), it should easily fall into the tier 3 category, I think. It won't crank out a metric butt-load of damage, but I think it's versatile enough that it should be useful in most encounters now, rather than being near useless. I'm not sure that's true. The Dread Necromancer has 9th level casting and better class features and it still only counts as T3. I'd peg your paladin as t4, that is competent at one thing or decent-ish at several. That said, if it's above that, most of the change is going to be do to the improved casting with very little utility coming from the smite. At that point you're just dealing with cleric-lite, and I don't think that's the goal of this fix.

[Auramis]

Alright, then... concerning Erupting Smite, I'd say it's at will, how about the radius be put at 5ft. and it still deals smite's damage. It won't do as much as the Dread Necromancer, but you should be capable of doing it more times per a day than the Dread Necromancer. The Dread Necromancer is only capable of cranking his damage out once a turn as well, so keeping the damage flat and the range low should be reasonable, perhaps?

[Epsilon Rose]

That's definitely a lot more usable. Being able to use it multiple times in a single round is definitely an advantage over the DN's burst. That said, it 4 vs a probable 7. I'm not sure if that's enough to justify keeping it at 5ft and giving it less damage per burst, but I could see arguments either way.

At 5ft, it's mostly useful if you, personally, are getting swarmed or you can move into a group of tightly clustered enemies (which isn't a good formation to be in in D&D). 10ft gives it a bit more wiggle room, but it's still pretty tight, given that it's centered on you.

[Auramis]

That's definitely a lot more usable. Being able to use it multiple times in a single round is definitely an advantage over the DN's burst. That said, it 4 vs a probable 7. I'm not sure if that's enough to justify keeping it at 5ft and giving it less damage per burst, but I could see arguments either way.

At 5ft, it's mostly useful if you, personally, are getting swarmed or you can move into a group of tightly clustered enemies (which isn't a good formation to be in in D&D). 10ft gives it a bit more wiggle room, but it's still pretty tight, given that it's centered on you.

It would be centered on the smite target, though, so it (could) effectively have a kind of similar range to a 10 foot cone. It feels like it makes more sense to have it radiate from the point of impact instead of from the paladin.

[Epsilon Rose]

It would be centered on the smite target, though, so it (could) effectively have a kind of similar range to a 10 foot cone. It feels like it makes more sense to have it radiate from the point of impact instead of from the paladin.

That is true, though it might actually make a 5ft circle worse as a targeting profile, since it's unlikely that enemies will be standing immediately behind or adjacent to your target. They're much more likely to surround you, meaning that there are only 2 squares with a decent probability of having occupants.

[Auramis]

That is true, though it might actually make a 5ft circle worse as a targeting profile, since it's unlikely that enemies will be standing immediately behind or adjacent to your target. They're much more likely to surround you, meaning that there are only 2 squares with a decent probability of having occupants.

It would allow for better healing with Invigorating Eruption, though. I'd move Invigorating Smite down to 5th level, Erupting Smite down to 10th, and I might just bake Invigorating Eruption into Erupting Smite. Since that might be all it needs to fix it, for level 15 and 20, I'd probably just throw bonus feats at them from a select list (mounted feats, turning feats, some fighter feats that make sense, etc.). It's a lazy filler for those levels, but bonus feats never hurt anyone.

With that change, should Erupting Smite (renaming Radiating Smite, since it fits better, I think) only trigger against evil or undead targets still?

[Auramis]

Just updated the original post with changes to smite progression (Invigorating Smite and Radiating Smite) and added a bonus feats to the paladin's table. The bonus feats may be subject to change after further discussion. We'll wait and see.

[Carl]

Experience has left the impression on me that, in 3.5, that spells add a LOT of utility. I'm not sure I agree in saying nothing in my paladin compares to the Duskblade, and it's mostly due to the fact I've expanded the spell list, especially since I haven't put in a full spell list of what could be considered on the paladin spell list. I've only put core spells here in this fix. With the vast libraries of spells in 3.5, there may very well be spells that bring the paladin up to a more competitive level with the Duskblade.

If you'd like, you can send me your work via message. I wouldn't mind giving it a look over. I might seem like I'm not yielding a lot in hearing everyone out, but I am thinking about what everyone saying. I've looked over smite quite a lot since I posted this, and I feel like it's improving a bit the more I look at it.

Gah mistyped in that post, treat any references to duskblade as hexblade. Also here's a shortlist of appropriate spells. All of these are SOD or SOS stuff and with curse so mass usable and not expended on a save against it, it's a really effective way of turning these from lol worthy, (because the target has awesome saves beyond low levels), into serious threats. Nothing the paladin has comes close to what these can do against a save nerfed target, (and of course touch of idiocy can be used to makes saves even worse if melee'ing).

HEXBLADE SPELLS:
1ST LEVEL: Charm Person, Tasha's Hideous Laughter

2ND LEVEL: Blindness/Deafness, Enthrall, Glitterdust, Suggestion

3RD LEVEL: Charm Monster, Confusion, Slow, Stinking Cloud

4TH LEVEL: Baleful Polymorph, Dominate Person, Enervation, Fear, Phantasmal Killer

[Auramis]

Gah mistyped in that post, treat any references to duskblade as hexblade. Also here's a shortlist of appropriate spells. All of these are SOD or SOS stuff and with curse so mass usable and not expended on a save against it, it's a really effective way of turning these from lol worthy, (because the target has awesome saves beyond low levels), into serious threats. Nothing the paladin has comes close to what these can do against a save nerfed target, (and of course touch of idiocy can be used to makes saves even worse if melee'ing).

HEXBLADE SPELLS:
1ST LEVEL: Charm Person, Tasha's Hideous Laughter

2ND LEVEL: Blindness/Deafness, Enthrall, Glitterdust, Suggestion

3RD LEVEL: Charm Monster, Confusion, Slow, Stinking Cloud

4TH LEVEL: Baleful Polymorph, Dominate Person, Enervation, Fear, Phantasmal Killer

Those spells are all things that are kind of antithetical of the paladin's spells, I think. While the paladin doesn't have spells like those (at least for non-evil/chaotic/undead targets), he does have spells that could prevent (Resistance, Protection from Chaos/Evil, Magic Circle Against Chaos/Evil) or cure those effects (Remove Blindness/Deafness, Dispel Magic, Remove Curse, Break Enchantment). There's a whole slew of spells throughout all of the books that could be argued back and forth between which spells are more effective or not based on the situation. Additionally, unlike the Hexblade, the paladin gets all of his spells as he levels.

[Carl]

Those spells are all things that are kind of antithetical of the paladin's spells, I think.

I wasn't saying they weren't or that the Paladin should have them. I was pointing out how once curse deductions to enemy saves are taken into account there's a modest list of hexblade spells that are vastly more powerful than anything, spells or class features, that the paladin gets.


While the paladin doesn't have spells like those (at least for non-evil/chaotic/undead targets), he does have spells that could prevent (Resistance, Protection from Chaos/Evil, Magic Circle Against Chaos/Evil) or cure those effects (Remove Blindness/Deafness, Dispel Magic, Remove Curse, Break Enchantment). There's a whole slew of spells throughout all of the books that could be argued back and forth between which spells are more effective or not based on the situation.

Your literally the first person who isn't basically new to D&D that I've heard seriously suggest that SOS and SOD spells, (subject to being effective at the desired levels), are not amongst the top 3 most powerful classes of spells. In the same vein your the first person i've heard suggest who isn't new, that buff spells are in any way comparable, (as a class, specific spell exceptions exist) to SOS and SOD effects.

Where also not comparing a Paladin to a Hexblade in a vs situation. What they bring to the party is so radically different it's not remotely possible. They're pretty much chalk and cheese. What we can do is look at what they bring to the party in an encounter. A Hexblade can basically use Curse + SOS/SoD to eliminate an enemy a turn from a distance unless they're unusually high resistance, in which case he need 2 for touch of idiocy use. The Paladin doesn't even come close to providing that directly or via the help he provides to his allies, especially in situations where the hexblade has targets he doesn't need to touch of idiocy since then he can do a number of these combo's from a distance.

I admit i'm not familiar with what the paladin can get from other source than core spell wise, (i will dig), but it would have to be very impressive to compare with that, (and remember curse isn't even restricted to boosting the Hexblades own spell's, it helps the whole party out).

[Auramis]

Your literally the first person who isn't basically new to D&D that I've heard seriously suggest that SOS and SOD spells, (subject to being effective at the desired levels), are not amongst the top 3 most powerful classes of spells. In the same vein your the first person i've heard suggest who isn't new, that buff spells are in any way comparable, (as a class, specific spell exceptions exist) to SOS and SOD effects.

Where also not comparing a Paladin to a Hexblade in a vs situation. What they bring to the party is so radically different it's not remotely possible. They're pretty much chalk and cheese. What we can do is look at what they bring to the party in an encounter. A Hexblade can basically use Curse + SOS/SoD to eliminate an enemy a turn from a distance unless they're unusually high resistance, in which case he need 2 for touch of idiocy use. The Paladin doesn't even come close to providing that directly or via the help he provides to his allies, especially in situations where the hexblade has targets he doesn't need to touch of idiocy since then he can do a number of these combo's from a distance.

I admit i'm not familiar with what the paladin can get from other source than core spell wise, (i will dig), but it would have to be very impressive to compare with that, (and remember curse isn't even restricted to boosting the Hexblades own spell's, it helps the whole party out).

I understand how it is that buffs don't come close/aren't comparable to debuffs. That said, it seems straight forward enough in my head that the ability to cleanse a debuff, heal, or confer a buff could be comparable to debuffing in terms of viability.

I can see the paladin's weakness at being able only to apply his buffs/heals/cleansing from melee range (pending feats), but it doesn't seem like it'd lag that far behind.

No, I'm not new to D&D in the least, but I don't exactly know everything either. :P

[Epsilon Rose]

Defense, tends to be worth a lot less then a comparable offense, once you've gotten past a certain benchmark. Reactive is one of the absolutely last things you want to be in 3.5, and that's what most of those are.

[Auramis]

Alright, fair enough... how about allowing smite to confer the benefit paladin's charisma modifier to attack roles and increasing the spell saves of an allied spells (including her own) against a target she smites for a limited number of rounds? It's not necessarily a debuff, but it gives a party wide buff that, in a way, acts similarly to a debuff on that enemy.

Edit: I edited the main page to have just that. The heal was subpar, so I opted to replace that. I wanted to give the benefit of Marked for Judgment at lower levels where it meant more, rather than making it a higher level ability. Invigorating Smite was scrapped entirely, since it wasn't that great of utility in the first place and receiving it at higher levels would have felt weak.

[Auramis]

With the changes, the more I think about what Epsilon said about running the risk of being a cleric with some damage, the more I worry that my choice to expand the paladin's spell's may have been a mistake, and I may revert her back to 1st-4th level spells. As it is, I haven't put together a complete list of spells, so it wouldn't hurt the creative process of working on the paladin.

I'd maintain her status as a spontaneous spellcaster with charisma based magic, but I might revert the caster level back to half and give her her old progression with spells.

[Carl]

Not got time for a huge reply on this, but i'm happy to go over some basics. Also Here's (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279166-Paladin-fix-(Core-3-5)-PEACH) my Paladin, though the Table code is broken :(.

There are a few basic reasons Buff spells are so junky.

1. Most share a modifier type with magic items that affect the same, so most of them have no effect on a character with decent magic items because the items provide an often superior benefit. Some do have the nice morale bonus type, but this still results in multiple casters conflicting and Bards also conflict.

2. The Duration of many Buff spells, (particularly paladin ones), have short round per caster level or minute per caster level duration's, so they can't be kept up continuously, even if they've got 10 minuter per caster level duration's your going to need moderate casters levels and a couple of slots per buff to keep them running constantly, so classes with low spells per level and without the buffs in low spells slots they can afford to burn can't keep them running.

3. Fights in D&D are short, i'm not sure on the actual average, but a half a dozen round or more is consider loooong. So if you wait till the fight starts to hand out the buff's your going to have real issues putting up a useful number before enough of the fight goes by that most of the work is done and any further buffs will have minimal effect on the duration.

4. Most Monsters don't have a lot of immunities, so debuffs, SOS, and SOD work against nearly all of them. Conversely most Monster don't have a lot of cleanse-able effects, and what they do have often aren't worth wasting a cleanse on when killing them, (so it ends with them or you can wait for it to run out time wise if the effect persists), is often as, or more, effective.

Also in case you've never read it. I recommend reading this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0), and also the spoilered text section in the FAQ post, (2nd post).

[Auramis]

Not got time for a huge reply on this, but i'm happy to go over some basics. Also Here's (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279166-Paladin-fix-(Core-3-5)-PEACH) my Paladin, though the Table code is broken :(.

There are a few basic reasons Buff spells are so junky.

1. Most share a modifier type with magic items that affect the same, so most of them have no effect on a character with decent magic items because the items provide an often superior benefit. Some do have the nice morale bonus type, but this still results in multiple casters conflicting and Bards also conflict.

2. The Duration of many Buff spells, (particularly paladin ones), have short round per caster level or minute per caster level duration's, so they can't be kept up continuously, even if they've got 10 minuter per caster level duration's your going to need moderate casters levels and a couple of slots per buff to keep them running constantly, so classes with low spells per level and without the buffs in low spells slots they can afford to burn can't keep them running.

3. Fights in D&D are short, i'm not sure on the actual average, but a half a dozen round or more is consider loooong. So if you wait till the fight starts to hand out the buff's your going to have real issues putting up a useful number before enough of the fight goes by that most of the work is done and any further buffs will have minimal effect on the duration.

4. Most Monsters don't have a lot of immunities, so debuffs, SOS, and SOD work against nearly all of them. Conversely most Monster don't have a lot of cleanse-able effects, and what they do have often aren't worth wasting a cleanse on when killing them, (so it ends with them or you can wait for it to run out time wise if the effect persists), is often as, or more, effective.

Also in case you've never read it. I recommend reading this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0), and also the spoilered text section in the FAQ post, (2nd post).

I see the point about debuffs... still, it just feels more in line with paladin to buff her allies and bolster them in fighting and tending to them when she's needed as a back-up healer. There are plenty of spells added from other books (the Spell Compendium in particular) that help with the paladin's normally limited list and offer more utility that I think help make up for core paladin's failures, though... at least, that's how I feel. In the campaigns we've run, paladin hasn't particularly failed to perform for us. It might be because I'd fall under JaronK's description of the players who know their class in a way that makes it work better?

I have that tier list, actually! I also have the PrC one (helped me see a lot of problems with a lot of PrCs that sounded cool in theory but did poorly in practice).

I'll try to decipher the broken table and look over your stuff today... dunno what happened to tables on this site at one point, but so many are broken. O_o

I did change my table a tad (traded the subpar healing from smite for a buff for allies on smite). Hoping it'll look more appealing.

[Coidzor]

The Channel Spell proposal did remind me of how that's basically what Smite Evil already should be for a Paladin. And the Paladin's Mercies in Pathfinder provide one potential example of debuffs that Smiting could potentially add and relative timing for them. And I guess some of the ravages/positoxins(or whatever those undead targeting poisons were called) might provide some similar inspiration for potential smite-delivered debuffery.

Which then lead to the thought of why not have half-effect against neutral targets or it works on any non-good and just gives a bonus against evil targets? Probably include something about it just flat-out not working on true innocents, even if they are TN or even LN/CN. Maybe smite-debuffs only proc on evil/evil-leaning targets for Good Pallys and only procs on good/good-leaning for Evil ones & so on?

I'd say just cause the attack to auto-fail/do no damage/heal instead when performed against innocents(at least for good-aligned Pallys), but that'd probably be ripe for exploitation by certain kinds of pallys who would always try to smite little girls on the offchance they're actually monsters...

And I suppose Evil Pallys would more just have the works on everything but has a greater effect on goody-goodies.

[Epsilon Rose]

Out of curiousity, have you seen Person_Man's Niche Ranking System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System)? Unlike the tier system, it tries to break down how each class can work in each roll, so it can give you a better idea of where the paladin is lacking and what needs to be fixed. In particular, on a scale from 1 to 4 where lower is better, the paladin is only ranked as a 2 in melee and mobility; everything else is worse.

[toapat]

There arent any glaring issues, but you are making a few incorrect assumptions:

Battleblessing and Paladin Spellcasting: although later design philosophy of paladin spells brought them into equivalency with 2nd/3rd/5th/6th level spells respectively, alot of the paladin spells dont follow that. Alot of the point of Battle Blessing is to drag the slackers in the paladin spell list kicking and screaming upto par with the improved level equivalency of paladins. What you have added in 5th level spells isnt really anything i would call truly fantastic for the spell level. Paladins of freedom already get FoM at 4th, Divine Power is only worth the Temp HP and str bonus. Disrupting weapons doesnt work for the same reason turn undead doesnt, which is that undead HD scale well beyond CR

otherwise, you are assuming you got the paladin into T3, you didnt, its still low-Mid T4, because of the lack of truly unifying what the paladin can do


Not got time for a huge reply on this, but i'm happy to go over some basics. Also Here's (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279166-Paladin-fix-(Core-3-5)-PEACH) my Paladin, though the Table code is broken :(.

Its considered rude, impolite, and/or cocky to link your own work. The only reason i never get called out for it is because when im linking paladin brew, im pointing to Grod the Giant's work, to Seerow's, to TG Oskar's, and to the paladin handbook over my own work (because my work isnt perfect, and its not for everyone anyway). The op hasnt made any fundamental mistakes with paladin beyond nerfing the mount by not realizing what Druid Companion doesnt get in relation to to Paladin mount, which is why i consider it unnecessary to link other people's work at this time.

[Carl]

I see the point about debuffs... still, it just feels more in line with paladin to buff her allies and bolster them in fighting and tending to them when she's needed as a back-up healer. There are plenty of spells added from other books (the Spell Compendium in particular) that help with the paladin's normally limited list and offer more utility that I think help make up for core paladin's failures, though... at least, that's how I feel. In the campaigns we've run, paladin hasn't particularly failed to perform for us. It might be because I'd fall under JaronK's description of the players who know their class in a way that makes it work better?

I have that tier list, actually! I also have the PrC one (helped me see a lot of problems with a lot of PrCs that sounded cool in theory but did poorly in practice).

I'll try to decipher the broken table and look over your stuff today... dunno what happened to tables on this site at one point, but so many are broken. O_o

I did change my table a tad (traded the subpar healing from smite for a buff for allies on smite). Hoping it'll look more appealing.

Tables got broke with the forum software update, they where forced to move to a new table code and all old tables using the old code couldn't be auto converted to compatible.

Also i NEVER suggested you add major debuffs to a paladin, (though Holy Word and Dictum would be totally appropriate), but rather that you focus on remembering that those buff spells aren't going to be as powerful as they first appear, both because of the Paladins limited spell slots and the spell type's overall weakness.

I'll try and update the tables for you btw, though i would add if i was to resurrect that thread i'd probably make several other changes, (I can short list them if you like).

[Auramis]

Out of curiousity, have you seen Person_Man's Niche Ranking System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System)? Unlike the tier system, it tries to break down how each class can work in each roll, so it can give you a better idea of where the paladin is lacking and what needs to be fixed. In particular, on a scale from 1 to 4 where lower is better, the paladin is only ranked as a 2 in melee and mobility; everything else is worse.

I actually didn't know about this. This'll help me out a bit. Thank you, Epsilon. :)


The Channel Spell proposal did remind me of how that's basically what Smite Evil already should be for a Paladin. And the Paladin's Mercies in Pathfinder provide one potential example of debuffs that Smiting could potentially add and relative timing for them. And I guess some of the ravages/positoxins(or whatever those undead targeting poisons were called) might provide some similar inspiration for potential smite-delivered debuffery.

I'll look at the poisons. I wasn't even aware of there were poisons that affected undead. Could be help indeed!


Which then lead to the thought of why not have half-effect against neutral targets or it works on any non-good and just gives a bonus against evil targets? Probably include something about it just flat-out not working on true innocents, even if they are TN or even LN/CN. Maybe smite-debuffs only proc on evil/evil-leaning targets for Good Pallys and only procs on good/good-leaning for Evil ones & so on?

I'd say just cause the attack to auto-fail/do no damage/heal instead when performed against innocents(at least for good-aligned Pallys), but that'd probably be ripe for exploitation by certain kinds of pallys who would always try to smite little girls on the offchance they're actually monsters...

And I suppose Evil Pallys would more just have the works on everything but has a greater effect on goody-goodies.

I considered the buffs/debuffs from smite that would be added not working against non-good targets (neutral, evil, and undead still apply). It greatly incentivizes fighting evil/undead targets (though that was there already) and fits thematically with the idea that a paladin's powers aren't meant to harm those good in nature. I thought about just expanding smites target's to all undead and a few others when rewriting, but then I thought it made sense a paladin could smite any target, but they'd only receive the most benefit against evil and the undead. This also offered the opportunity for a paladin to abuse his powers and run the risk of falling... I know a LOT of players hate paladins for their code and what falling could mean, but I personally love it and the risk that comes with it. This way, a paladin has a little wiggle room to act with his smite, but he has to be careful when using it.


otherwise, you are assuming you got the paladin into T3, you didnt, its still low-Mid T4, because of the lack of truly unifying what the paladin can do

Quite right. That's why I considered scrapping the idea of raising the spell list entirely. The more I went on to think about it, the less it sounded like it helped and the more I felt that, if I took the spell list away, the paladin as a class didn't really stand out without them. I want the spells to be part of the identity, yes, but they shouldn't be expanded/increased just for the sake of band-aiding them. That said, I stand by letting them run off charisma and the one hour of prayer I gave them before being able to use spells spontaneously... it just feels more right.


I'll try and update the tables for you btw, though i would add if i was to resurrect that thread i'd probably make several other changes, (I can short list them if you like).

Don't worry about it for me. I'm just looking for feedback and inspiration, really. I do agree with toapat as well that, given how much you've been talking about your fix, it does make me feel a little negative that it's being compared. I understand you're trying to help out, but offering suggestions and input is enough.

That said, go for updating your thread. It's a shame you'd go through as much work as I might be on this and for it to not be coded right for everyone to see.

[toapat]

Quite right. That's why I considered scrapping the idea of raising the spell list entirely. The more I went on to think about it, the less it sounded like it helped and the more I felt that, if I took the spell list away, the paladin as a class didn't really stand out without them. I want the spells to be part of the identity, yes, but they shouldn't be expanded/increased just for the sake of band-aiding them. That said, I stand by letting them run off charisma and the one hour of prayer I gave them before being able to use spells spontaneously... it just feels more right.

Battle Blessing isnt really a bandaid to the spellcasting in the same way that giving paladins Cha-casting is. Battle Blessing is the identity of paladin spellcasting. The other major change (which im compiling for the final iteration of my paladin) is the 1.5 times spell level for a spell's power, which is an observable trend in paladin spells from later books

I dont agree with the 5th level casting but thats not something that is indefensible, nor is the removal of the mount having Share Saving Throws, command creatures of its kind, improved Int, or Spell resistance. One is ignoring a change in design philosophy that never truly got implemented, and the other is a logical change in relation to power as based on other changes that were made to the class

[Carl]

Don't worry about it for me. I'm just looking for feedback and inspiration, really. I do agree with toapat as well that, given how much you've been talking about your fix, it does make me feel a little negative that it's being compared. I understand you're trying to help out, but offering suggestions and input is enough.

That said, go for updating your thread. It's a shame you'd go through as much work as I might be on this and for it to not be coded right for everyone to see.

No worries, i didn't want to come off as pushing my own fix so sorry if i did, i only threw it up like this instead of PM as you suggested because i was typing my reply this morning in about a 40 minute timespan before i had to run out for work and was typing something for the focus sniper thread too in the same timespan so the PM with a breakdown of how i see my various addons and changes helping the paladin, e,.t.c. that i wanted to do would have taken too log and you sounded desperate for inspiration. If you still want the breakdown by PM though just say. I hope i've at least given you some idea's anyway.

Also whilst dropping spells could work fine, remember that Martial as a whole rarely holds a candle to spells in raw power terms, the two in combination can achieve funky things but martial has the issue that it's largely constrained to Direct Damage, Bull Rush, Trip, Disarm, and Sunder. Most of those for one reason or another scale poorly meaning by high levels without serious cheese their weak. And even when you do cheese them their typically nowhere near as capable of the same craziness for one reason or another.

[Auramis]

Battle Blessing isnt really a bandaid to the spellcasting in the same way that giving paladins Cha-casting is. Battle Blessing is the identity of paladin spellcasting. The other major change (which im compiling for the final iteration of my paladin) is the 1.5 times spell level for a spell's power, which is an observable trend in paladin spells from later books

I dont agree with the 5th level casting but thats not something that is indefensible, nor is the removal of the mount having Share Saving Throws, command creatures of its kind, improved Int, or Spell resistance. One is ignoring a change in design philosophy that never truly got implemented, and the other is a logical change in relation to power as based on other changes that were made to the class

Oh, no no no. I never took away the paladin's mount's special abilities. That was never the intent of the rework in how the mount progresses and increases in power. I simply shifted it from being a once per day mechanic into a companion that stays with you (assuming you choose to take one, there's other class features some paladins prefer over the mount).

As for Battle Blessing, I never meant to make it sound like that was the bandaid. What I was calling a bandaid was my thoughtless shift to level 5 spells. For all intents and purposes, their level 1-4 spells are completely fine.


No worries, i didn't want to come off as pushing my own fix so sorry if i did, i only threw it up like this instead of PM as you suggested because i was typing my reply this morning in about a 40 minute timespan before i had to run out for work and was typing something for the focus sniper thread too in the same timespan so the PM with a breakdown of how i see my various addons and changes helping the paladin, e,.t.c. that i wanted to do would have taken too log and you sounded desperate for inspiration. If you still want the breakdown by PM though just say. I hope i've at least given you some idea's anyway.

Also whilst dropping spells could work fine, remember that Martial as a whole rarely holds a candle to spells in raw power terms, the two in combination can achieve funky things but martial has the issue that it's largely constrained to Direct Damage, Bull Rush, Trip, Disarm, and Sunder. Most of those for one reason or another scale poorly meaning by high levels without serious cheese their weak. And even when you do cheese them their typically nowhere near as capable of the same craziness for one reason or another.

I don't think a PM will be needed. I kind of like discussing things in the thread. While this does help me out, I like when other people viewing the thread can view the conversation as it evolves. This kind of stuff is a good learning experience for anyone else if they want to edit a class or homebrew. After all, even I'm still learning.

As for martial prowess's weakness when compared to spellcasting... there's really no denying it. The only thing that compares to spellcasting when it comes to martial prowess is either optimized builds for tripping/disarming/etc. and maneuvers. That said, it's something, it's not necessarily a bad thing. A paladin's spell list is as limited as a Hexblade's (though the spell selection differs greatly). It's just a matter of making the class overall function. If I can do that without just improving the spell list (while maintaining the charisma and spontaneous casting), that'd be preferred.

[toapat]

Oh, no no no. I never took away the paladin's mount's special abilities. That was never the intent of the rework in how the mount progresses and increases in power. I simply shifted it from being a once per day mechanic into a companion that stays with you (assuming you choose to take one, there's other class features some paladins prefer over the mount).

As for Battle Blessing, I never meant to make it sound like that was the bandaid. What I was calling a bandaid was my thoughtless shift to level 5 spells. For all intents and purposes, their level 1-4 spells are completely fine.

well, at least reading the class feature you changed the Mount's level progression from paladin special mount to druid companion. not sure how to clarify that you meant the mount is permanently with the character.

The issue with you adding a 5th level isnt really that the 5th level was bad so much as you didnt know certain aspects of the design philosophy or maybe you just didnt doublecheck what those spells did. You can make 5th level spells work for paladin, but like alot of fixing paladin, its about doing alot of research.

Currently im having issues taking the World of Warcraft paladin aura class feature and rewriting it for 3.5 and to be less suck.


Edit: If you want i can dump you a list of quality paladin discussion and reading.

[Auramis]

well, at least reading the class feature you changed the Mount's level progression from paladin special mount to druid companion. not sure how to clarify that you meant the mount is permanently with the character.

The issue with you adding a 5th level isnt really that the 5th level was bad so much as you didnt know certain aspects of the design philosophy or maybe you just didnt doublecheck what those spells did. You can make 5th level spells work for paladin, but like alot of fixing paladin, its about doing alot of research.

Currently im having issues taking the World of Warcraft paladin aura class feature and rewriting it for 3.5 and to be less suck.


Edit: If you want i can dump you a list of quality paladin discussion and reading.

Feel free to unload it the link on me. I could use some inspiration. Thank you.

[toapat]

Feel free to unload it the link on me. I could use some inspiration. Thank you.

This topic is a hijacked thread where i managed to pull seerow, TO Oskar, and Grod into a discussion about paladin. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?335980-Paladin-Changes) You might find things you didnt know or ideas you might want to work with in it

Paladin Handbook (http://dictummortuum.blogspot.com/2011/08/paladins-handbook.html) As i said, you dont actually need this because you didnt commit any real fundamental design errors
Grod's paladin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12150015)
TGOskars (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193554)
Seerow (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12590485&postcount=1)
mine (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14104896&postcount=1) needs to be replaced

[nonsi]

1. Lose weekly Remove Disease as a class feature.
2. add Remove Disease to the Paladin's spell list (2nd level spell).
3. Replace with actual features that count (consider the PF Paladin's "Mercy").

[Auramis]

1. Lose weekly Remove Disease as a class feature.
2. add Remove Disease to the Paladin's spell list (2nd level spell).
3. Replace with actual features that count (consider the PF Paladin's "Mercy").

Could certainly work. Remove Disease is a pretty subpar feature, thematic as it is...

[toapat]

thematic as it is...

its not really thematic. Lay on Hands and Smite Evil are thematic.

[Zaydos]

Personally I always liked the idea of letting Lay on Hands cure diseases (and other things) after a certain level, either in place of X amount of hit points or whenever you used it for X amount of hit points.

[Auramis]

Personally I always liked the idea of letting Lay on Hands cure diseases (and other things) after a certain level, either in place of X amount of hit points or whenever you used it for X amount of hit points.

As in it either removes a disease after 3 points of damage or, at the cost of 3, it removes disease instead?

Of those two, which feels/fits better in y'all's opinions?

[Epsilon Rose]

As in it either removes a disease after 3 points of damage or, at the cost of 3, it removes disease instead?

Of those two, which feels/fits better in y'all's opinions?
Either of those work. Curing diseases isn't too powerful an neither is this class, so I'd probably go with the first option, though I'd make it more than 3 points.

[toapat]

As in it either removes a disease after 3 points of damage or, at the cost of 3, it removes disease instead?

Of those two, which feels/fits better in y'all's opinions?

basically how Pathfinder did it, its just a rider effect that is part of LoH, although i hate the specifics of how they did it. you get what? 10 mercies and most of them are just one step down the line of a debuff chain as opposed to decisions and difficult choices.

[Auramis]

basically how Pathfinder did it, its just a rider effect that is part of LoH, although i hate the specifics of how they did it. you get what? 10 mercies and most of them are just one step down the line of a debuff chain as opposed to decisions and difficult choices.

What do you mean by that? The decisions and difficult choices bit.

[toapat]

What do you mean by that? The decisions and difficult choices bit.

in pathfinder, you have to buy each step downwards to reduce fear effects, exhaustion effects, and sickened effects. you also cant mitigate down the highest tiers of those effects.

the rider effects added by mercies are always part of Lay on Hands.

In my homebrew, i added a few rider effects and consolidated the counter-debuffs. although i had never actually directly looked at what mercies you can take in PF and am as a result missing 3

[Auramis]

in pathfinder, you have to buy each step downwards to reduce fear effects, exhaustion effects, and sickened effects. you also cant mitigate down the highest tiers of those effects.

Ohh, I see: like being unable to remove fightened unless you have the mercy to remove shakened... that seems like it takes a good idea in Lay on Hands's mercy feature they made and just narrows it back down again. Rather than open a whole field of mercies like that, I'd prefer for Lay on Hands to just gain new cleansing effects as you level for each remove disease level. The first one would be remove disease, the second would be exhaustion, third would be frightened, the fourth would be poisoned, and the last would be stunned. Does that seem like a good progression, or should it instead be a choice without the prerequisite options?

[toapat]

Ohh, I see: like being unable to remove fightened unless you have the mercy to remove shakened... that seems like it takes a good idea in Lay on Hands's mercy feature they made and just narrows it back down again. Rather than open a whole field of mercies like that, I'd prefer for Lay on Hands to just gain new cleansing effects as you level for each remove disease level. The first one would be remove disease, the second would be exhaustion, third would be frightened, the fourth would be poisoned, and the last would be stunned. Does that seem like a good progression, or should it instead be a choice without the prerequisite options?

well, thats why i made it so you get 1 mercy every 4 levels, from a group of (currently 13, should be 16) which also do more exotic things, like allow you to create Mass Lay on Hands or Maximized LoH* (but not both), reverse Flesh to Stone, or energy drain. just being a Catch-all remove/mitigate these Debuffs is not a fun/interesting class feature. Having to decide which you feel is the most dangerous at any given time creates a more interesting mechanic.

*The pathfinder Paladin capstone, which is extremely counter to the paladin's intent and feel, automatically maximizes the healing rolls of LoH

[nonsi]

Ohh, I see: like being unable to remove fightened unless you have the mercy to remove shakened... that seems like it takes a good idea in Lay on Hands's mercy feature they made and just narrows it back down again. Rather than open a whole field of mercies like that, I'd prefer for Lay on Hands to just gain new cleansing effects as you level for each remove disease level. The first one would be remove disease, the second would be exhaustion, third would be frightened, the fourth would be poisoned, and the last would be stunned. Does that seem like a good progression, or should it instead be a choice without the prerequisite options?

Why only a single effect per step?

Check out what I did with my Healer (Priest variant) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17531501&postcount=13).
You probably won't take Lay on Hands from my Healer as it is, but it could give you something to work with.

[Auramis]

well, thats why i made it so you get 1 mercy every 4 levels, from a group of (currently 13, should be 16) which also do more exotic things, like allow you to create Mass Lay on Hands or Maximized LoH* (but not both), reverse Flesh to Stone, or energy drain. just being a Catch-all remove/mitigate these Debuffs is not a fun/interesting class feature. Having to decide which you feel is the most dangerous at any given time creates a more interesting mechanic.

*The pathfinder Paladin capstone, which is extremely counter to the paladin's intent and feel, automatically maximizes the healing rolls of LoH

I'll be honest and say that I'm a bit too lazy to work on that expansive of a change. I'd rather keep the progression on LoH like RD's level progression while giving it set features. That said, I feel like I'd want them to be more powerful as the paladin leveled.

That said, I'd want them to be strong, like ability score drain repairs or negative level removal. Something like: remove disease, remove exhaustion, cure ability damage, remove fear effect, cure negative level. The ability damage and negative level curing would function like lesser restoration and restoration, though the cost would be LoH point based. The amount healed for cure ability damage would be something like every 4 points also cures 1 ability score damage and the amount cured from negative level would be 10 points of healing.

At least, that's an unrefined idea of what I'd do.

[Auramis]

Why only a single effect per step?

Check out what I did with my Healer (Priest variant) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17531501&postcount=13).
You probably won't take Lay on Hands from my Healer as it is, but it could give you something to work with.

The reason I have it limited as it is probably has to do with my idea of a paladin not fitting the idea of a very expansive healer. I'd rather focus on ways to improve the paladin martially instead of expand his cleaning/healing (though his healing does need work, which is where we're at right now).

[toapat]

At least, that's an unrefined idea of what I'd do.

the fact is, alot of the work fixing LoH was done by Pathfinder. its considered wholly reasonable to just steal the feature because its an actually useful one when compared to the original which is only useful in 1st/2nd where hp was so low that a 40 point pool mattered. Adding the Mercies classfeature basically just calls for taking the PF Loh just because threshold gating the rider effects hurts the ability

[Auramis]

the fact is, alot of the work fixing LoH was done by Pathfinder. its considered wholly reasonable to just steal the feature because its an actually useful one when compared to the original which is only useful in 1st/2nd where hp was so low that a 40 point pool mattered. Adding the Mercies classfeature basically just calls for taking the PF Loh just because threshold gating the rider effects hurts the ability

It feels like we're moving closer and closer to the Pathfinder paladin the more we discuss it, which makes me feel like perhaps it'd be easier to use that as a base instead of the 3.5 paladin, which really is a bare bones class. Pathfinder did have a lot of nice things with the paladin (even if it did fall behind the main tiers still). What if I shifted focus to use the Pathfinder paladin and worked from there? That might make things easier. Would certainly be less work.

[toapat]

Would certainly be less work.

not really. Alot of what matters from PF paladin is what they did to LoH, and the change to charisma casting. the Weapon bond is the weakest free magic item class feature printed, not even competing with the magic items you get normally just by being a paladin. The aura stack is shoving an assumption about the paladin down the player's throat. The god tier spells of paladin are all gone in pathfinder barring the SRD's Shield other

[Auramis]

not really. Alot of what matters from PF paladin is what they did to LoH, and the change to charisma casting. the Weapon bond is the weakest free magic item class feature printed, not even competing with the magic items you get normally just by being a paladin. The aura stack is shoving an assumption about the paladin down the player's throat. The god tier spells of paladin are all gone in pathfinder barring the SRD's Shield other

How about just using it as a loose base in conjunction with the paladin from 3.5, drawing inspiration from them both and mingling them with my ideas. I'd want to keep my marked for judgment idea and radiating smite, along with my other smite changes. I'd leave the paladin spell list untouched from 3.5 (Aside from using the progression from Pathfinder, maybe? Just means spells one level sooner and more spells at higher levels.), and keep the charisma casting and the spontaneous casting change I applied. I also was never a fan of the Divine Bond from Pathfinder, so I'd keep the special mount (using my change for it while cleaning up the wording). Finally, I'd use the mercies and, for every level lost from gaining new smites, allow bonus feats/new smite features instead.

The only thing that would need more extensive work would be replacing the auras. I like a paladin having auras, but they went WAY overboard in adding them. By adding some of the ones they did, they also hurt chaotic themed paladins (Paladin of Freedom and Holy Liberator PrC) with Aura of Resolve too, and I don't like that.

[toapat]

The only thing that would need more extensive work would be replacing the auras. I like a paladin having auras, but they went WAY overboard in adding them. By adding some of the ones they did, they also hurt chaotic themed paladins (Paladin of Freedom and Holy Liberator PrC) with Aura of Resolve too, and I don't like that.

well, i left the links at the bottom of the last page for you to do research, and i could list out what the World of Warcraft paladin auras are.

[Auramis]

well, i left the links at the bottom of the last page for you to do research, and i could list out what the World of Warcraft paladin auras are.

I'd been playing WoW since the AB patch up until recently. x3 Paladin was my main (alongside rogue), so I know what they all do.

[toapat]

so I know what they all do.

the pnp ones work alot differently. well, not devotion or retribution

also, i kinda remember paladin auras just having been removed last time i played

[Auramis]

the pnp ones work alot differently

also, i kinda remember paladin auras just having been removed last time i played

They were removed/integrated into the class. Their seals have taken the place of the aura bar.

[Auramis]

I want to gauge how people feel about another smite change I have in mind: Disrupting Smite (level 16 feature).

It basically does what disrupting weapon (level 5 cleric spell) does, but it's a baked in feature of smite. It would also work against any undead caught in the paladin's radiating smite feature, so long as the initial target is an undead.

[toapat]

I want to gauge how people feel about another smite change I have in mind: Disrupting Smite (level 16 feature).

It basically does what disrupting weapon (level 5 cleric spell) does, but it's a baked in feature of smite. It would also work against any undead caught in the paladin's radiating smite feature, so long as the initial target is an undead.

its the turn undead problem. heres a cool looking and sounding ability, but the reality is, it doesnt matter because undead get 4 HD per CR. at low CR when undead are still getting fancy abilities this is irrelevant, but late game when you would get the ability? its not worth it. think of it moreso along the lines of like, 2/week worth of remove disease

[Auramis]

its the turn undead problem. heres a cool looking and sounding ability, but the reality is, it doesnt matter because undead get 4 HD per CR. at low CR when undead are still getting fancy abilities this is irrelevant, but late game when you would get the ability? its not worth it. think of it moreso along the lines of like, 2/week worth of remove disease

And then I was reminded about how high undead hit dice are.

Alright, then, what about making it so that any evil or undead targets struck by smite are subject to a shaken effect? Naturally, it wouldn't stack with any fears the paladin applied already through smite. Any undead in the radius of radiating smite would also be subject to being shaken. I'd also switch it so that this smite (Daunting Smite?) would be gained at a lower level than Radiating Smite.

Another question: the higher levels of the paladin I have in my word doc have pretty bare higher levels, aside from mercies and bonus feats. I don't THINK it could be a problem, given how so many base classes in 3.5 had pretty bare higher levels and how often people multiclass in 3.5, but I was wondering what everyone thinks about bare higher levels for base classes.

Concerning those dead levels, I thought of applying something similar to WotC's dead level feature (Righteous Cause) using the Discerning Insight portion. I'd rewrite it, though, letting it give bonuses to diplomacy bonuses when interacting with good aligned characters. It's not a huge feature, but it'd give the paladin a better chance in acting as a possible party face when dealing with good forces. Without detect evil being a class feature, it'd also help a paladin figure out if someone was of evil intent without wasting of his limited spells for that day.

[Carl]

I don't think a PM will be needed. I kind of like discussing things in the thread. While this does help me out, I like when other people viewing the thread can view the conversation as it evolves. This kind of stuff is a good learning experience for anyone else if they want to edit a class or homebrew. After all, even I'm still learning.

Fair enough, if you want the summary let me know.

[toapat]

Another question: the higher levels of the paladin I have in my word doc have pretty bare higher levels, aside from mercies and bonus feats. I don't THINK it could be a problem, given how so many base classes in 3.5 had pretty bare higher levels and how often people multiclass in 3.5, but I was wondering what everyone thinks about bare higher levels for base classes.

Concerning those dead levels, I thought of applying something similar to WotC's dead level feature (Righteous Cause) using the Discerning Insight portion. I'd rewrite it, though, letting it give bonuses to diplomacy bonuses when interacting with good aligned characters. It's not a huge feature, but it'd give the paladin a better chance in acting as a possible party face when dealing with good forces. Without detect evil being a class feature, it'd also help a paladin figure out if someone was of evil intent without wasting of his limited spells for that day.

at least at this point, you dont have enough late game motivation that is worthwhile to not just go and grab Fist of Raziel. you probably want at least 3 bonus feats, if not more, moving back radiating smite one level for adding a bonus feat at 10

the dead levels mechanics are terrible, and dont really add a class feature's worth of content to a class. The article is correct about monk, when you account for monk being horrifically underpowered. Monk does have alot of class features which if given at the proper levels, without arbitrary restrictions, would benefit the monk. Just filling in levels isnt good enough though.

[Auramis]

at least at this point, you dont have enough late game motivation that is worthwhile to not just go and grab Fist of Raziel. you probably want at least 3 bonus feats, if not more, moving back radiating smite one level for adding a bonus feat at 10

the dead levels mechanics are terrible, and dont really add a class feature's worth of content to a class. The article is correct about monk, when you account for monk being horrifically underpowered. Monk does have alot of class features which if given at the proper levels, without arbitrary restrictions, would benefit the monk. Just filling in levels isnt good enough though.



1st
Aura of good, paladin’s smite


2nd
Divine grace, lay on hands


3rd
Aura of courage, divine health, mercy


4th
Daunting smite (shaken targets), turn undead


5th
Special mount


6th
Mercy


7th
Bonus feat


8th
Mettle


9th
Mercy


10th
Inspiring smite (cha bonus to allied attacks/spells)


11th



12th
Mercy


13th
Bonus feat


14th



15th
Mercy


16th
Radiating smite (area of effect)


17th



18th
Mercy


19th
Bonus feat


20th




Without the dead levels feature, this is what I have at the moment. Using the smite levels from PF, I was alternating between an upgraded smite and a bonus feat. Those can be rearranged however is best, or the "every X levels" progression can be scrapped and turned into a new progression rate. Either way, this isn't set in stone. Just giving a visual for abilities each level.

[nonsi]

1st
Aura of good, paladin’s smite


2nd
Divine grace, lay on hands


3rd
Aura of courage, divine health, mercy


4th
Daunting smite (shaken targets), turn undead


5th
Special mount


6th
Mercy


7th
Bonus feat


8th
Mettle


9th
Mercy


10th
Inspiring smite (cha bonus to allied attacks/spells)


11th



12th
Mercy


13th
Bonus feat


14th



15th
Mercy


16th
Radiating smite (area of effect)


17th



18th
Mercy


19th
Bonus feat


20th




Without the dead levels feature, this is what I have at the moment. Using the smite levels from PF, I was alternating between an upgraded smite and a bonus feat. Those can be rearranged however is best, or the "every X levels" progression can be scrapped and turned into a new progression rate. Either way, this isn't set in stone. Just giving a visual for abilities each level.

To eliminate dead levels, move Radiating smit to level 14 (the Paladin gains 4th attack at level 16) and come up with a nice capstone (holyness.... avatar form... devastating smite... whatever).

[Pakis54]

Nice disccusion going on about the paladin. My 2 cents on general class gcreation (even though i am new here) and on the specific matter:

First of all, i think its more important the class you create (especially in the case of a paladin, since you know..dnd!) to be as iconical to what a "real" paladin is and it represends the whole knightwood ideals, than what tier the class is gonna end up beeing.

When i am trying to create a said class i tend to just google the class, say google "dnd paladin" and check all the pics i can find about this class. And to find similarities and differences between them. It gives me a clearer mental image of what i wish to present in the game.

2nd of all when it comes to class with a certain divine backround like the paladin and the cleric, it is my belief that those classes need not just represent the "real class" but also the god they have been chosen to serve.
In other words you cant have a paladin of Kord and a paladin of Pelor have the exact same class features (especially if those features include something like "on 2nd lvl you gain wpn focus longsword" )
i hope you understand what i mean!

In the class specifically:

I think the class given the restrictions he has, not just him actually but the whole party is going to have, should actually get rewarded a tiny bit more than your usual chaotic neutral Barbarian.I mean in the end this is a pact between the player and the DM, "hey dude i am not gonna screw up your game"! Its something i believe! :tongue:

I would suggest you to compare the rage class feature and the smite evil at 1st lvl (ya i know in later levels smite can do much more damage), in terms of damage output and of importance in the game of each character.
IMO rage is vastly superior. And if thats your opinion too, doesnt that make you wonder how come the Gods cant give their chosen a power greater than some mad guy? :tongue:

Another thing is the spellcasting provided in the class.
How many of the paladin's spells are actually iconic paladin spells in your mind?
For example protection from evil sure is...but is bull's str or undetectable AL or even dispel magic really iconic spells for the class?

Personally i can hardly find 5 spells like holy sword and mark of justice,which are in the same time iconic for the class and in the same time meaningful! Spells that i would use them almost every single time in an encounter if i could!
And if thats what you believe too...then perhaps just adding those spells in the class as class features and eliminating the whole spellcasting thing would be more meaningful?
I think the comments about either chosing to hack or to cast have some real meaning.
(i am only reffering to PH my argument can be invalid if you add all the splaterbooks, but even then i am sure only a handful of spells are really worth taking like for example Sacred Haven from Com. Divine and it will only help to add more flexibility to the class)


Also lets admit it for most groups the class is just a pain in the ass! :tongue:
but in the same time he is supposed to be the said leader in pretty much every group he is a part of. I would think about adding features that actually help and support the whole party exactly like aura of courage does, only in more meaninful ways. A good leader is a good team player too! maybe that will even make him a bit likeable in some groups :tongue:

English is not my native language and sorry for the wall of text

PS Righteous Might even though not in the paladins spell list could be in his class features...especially a paladin of Kord for example

[toapat]

*snip*

Paladins are not clerics. Their relation to clerics is only the type of magic they cast. Clerics are the Missionaries of a faith, Paladins are the concepts of chivalry taken to their absolute pinnacle. If a paladin is able to perform miracles of healing, its because they believe it should happen. They didnt pay 5 divine credits for a miracle, they believed they could perform that miracle on their own.

[Pakis54]

Paladins are not clerics. Their relation to clerics is only the type of magic they cast. Clerics are the Missionaries of a faith, Paladins are the concepts of chivalry taken to their absolute pinnacle. If a paladin is able to perform miracles of healing, its because they believe it should happen. They didnt pay 5 divine credits for a miracle, they believed they could perform that miracle on their own.

i cant find something to disagree on this. And i dont understand why you are saying this....

Maybe this:



2nd of all when it comes to class with a certain divine backround like the paladin and the cleric, it is my belief that those classes need not just represent the "real class" but also the god they have been chosen to serve.
In other words you cant have a paladin of Kord and a paladin of Pelor have the exact same class features (especially if those features include something like "on 2nd lvl you gain wpn focus longsword" )
i hope you understand what i mean!

i did not express in the right way...

What i meant is that i believe the system should try to give the player a way to differentiate their divine servant whatever that character might be, whether it is a paladin or a cleric or a favoured soul, depending on the chosen god!

The teachings if you will of Kord and Pelor or Heironeus even though they share similarities are different.
One is more about strength, the other about healing and the 3rd about chivilary (i chose one aspect)
so that should mean something for their servant...

For example a paladin of Kord could have a class feature that gives him bulls str, bears endurance, enlarge person but those same features would make no sense on a paladin of pelor who should have something like better cure features,daylight and such things and different features again for a paladin of Heironeus, giving him for example a wpn focus on his gods favorite wpn and wpn specilization later on.

All those additions would make one paladin quite different from the other one dont you think?

The same logic could work on a cleric...though on those guys we have the different domains that give some differentiation.

[Zaydos]

I think it's partially an edition thing.

3.X seemed to assume you went with the Forgotten Realms' requirement that paladins needed gods in the same way that clerics did.

2e was always kind of vague on this, but back in 1e paladins were clearly not connected to a god; a paladin could choose to serve a god, but a paladin's powers come not from a god but from Good. A paladin was a warrior of Good, not of a god.

To put another way a paladin is based on a knight you'd find in the Matter of France (tales about Charlemagne and his paladins) or in Arthurian legend, while the cleric was based off of crusaders (yes the 1e PHB does call out clerics as specifically being the clergy-militant). Therefore paladin as a class should not assume service to a specific god.

Personally I flip-flop on whether I use paladin of Good or paladin of good god and like the idea of being able to customize to one or the other, but do not believe the class inherently needs to be able to beyond that amount of me that believes every class should be thoroughly customizable (I love the concept behind Rage Powers and Rogue Talents in PF even if I found the implementation lacking in the latter). Personally I'd even like to see options for particularly faithful rogues, and barbarians.

[Pakis54]

damn there is no vote up button here,

i think you've got me in this one cause in my mind ya the class always has some deity who is just behind him, giving him his powers and all. He is like a special fighting agent/ chosen of that god! And i have implemented it in this way in my campaign too, so now i have just completely deleted it from my mind that he can just as easily be of a general idea.

[Carl]

Honestly when i think Paladin two people come to mind, one real one fictional.

The Real person would be Jeanne de arc, commonly known as Joan of Arc. True or not, Lets not get into the religious or historical debate on this please), she's perceived as the divinely inspired young woman who single handedly, through sheer force of will, inspiration, and divine intervention, turned the french from a side that had lost every battle for a century into the winning side in the war in a remarkably short space of time. That combination of Divine intervention, sheer force of will, and the sheer inspirational effect she's often claimed to have had on the french army are definitive for many of the paladin concept, and certainly me.

The Fictional example is something i've only run into in the last 6 months or so via reading Dresden Files. Whilst all the Knights of the Cross are examples in their own way, Michael Carpenter stands out head and shoulder above the rest. There's no easy way to sum the guy up, he's a complete rock of good in a series that is often involving no end of shady goings on. The only real complaint that can be leveled at him is, (to borrow a line): that no human is that... humane.

[Auramis]

Love seeing the discussion about paladins everyone! This is actually where I wanted too take the discussion about paladin, about what his/her role/identity is. Also, when I play paladin, I assume as Zaydos says and think of the paladin not exactly as a knight to a god but a knight to the concept of good. I don't differentiate between the two in functionality, though.

While I was working on the table with its class features, I had to stop and ask myself what separates a paladin from a cleric. Sure, I've refined smite a bit and made lay on hands do more, but, beyond that, it feels as if paladins were just clerics on a horse with limited spellcasting.

I don't like that being the case. I want them to resemble more of a knight (with the iconic paladin abilities) with that limited divine spellcasting. It's had me looking at the knight class and pondering gutting it in working on paladin because of it. I had been contemplating how to fix knight for another day, but I'm feeling more and more like the knight class is stealing some identity from the paladin.

[nonsi]

.

Love seeing the discussion about paladins everyone! This is actually where I wanted too take the discussion about paladin, about what his/her role/identity is. Also, when I play paladin, I assume as Zaydos says and think of the paladin not exactly as a knight to a god but a knight to the concept of good. I don't differentiate between the two in functionality, though.

While I was working on the table with its class features, I had to stop and ask myself what separates a paladin from a cleric. Sure, I've refined smite a bit and made lay on hands do more, but, beyond that, it feels as if paladins were just clerics on a horse with limited spellcasting.

I don't like that being the case. I want them to resemble more of a knight (with the iconic paladin abilities) with that limited divine spellcasting. It's had me looking at the knight class and pondering gutting it in working on paladin because of it. I had been contemplating how to fix knight for another day, but I'm feeling more and more like the knight class is stealing some identity from the paladin.

If ICONIC is where you're aiming at, then:
1. Mesh them together.
2. Throw away spellcasting.
3. Make the more Paladin-y spells into class features.

Note that this will take quite a bit of work.
.

[toapat]

I don't like that being the case. I want them to resemble more of a knight (with the iconic paladin abilities) with that limited divine spellcasting. It's had me looking at the knight class and pondering gutting it in working on paladin because of it. I had been contemplating how to fix knight for another day, but I'm feeling more and more like the knight class is stealing some identity from the paladin.

you should probably read the handbook and Seerow's homebrew first.

the knight doesnt really mesh with paladin in a way that feels natural. trying to slot knights challenge also conflicts with paladin class feature progression for balance, putting too much weight on some levels.

[Auramis]

you should probably read the handbook and Seerow's homebrew first.

the knight doesnt really mesh with paladin in a way that feels natural. trying to slot knights challenge also conflicts with paladin class feature progression for balance, putting too much weight on some levels.

I'm not particularly a fan of Seerow's changes. There's nothing necessarily wrong with them, but his changes feel strange to me. His shift from Turn Undead being usable in place of smite doesn't feel right, since it'd be the only class that has turn undead function in a way that it costs something other than straight forward turning attempts (aside from the Factotum, but that's a special case). It's also strange to me that, conversely, he allowed Smite Evil to count as Turn Undead for the purpose of feats and prerequisites for classes.

As someone else pointed out, if the Complete books aren't allowed, his paladin is kind of lacking due to the bonus feats it allows. I want to design my changes to paladin with the thought in mind that, if you want, it should be able to function in core books while additional notes are tacked on (such as allowing divine feats as bonus feats and so on).

As for DicMort's handbook, I've looked it over, and his handbook isn't really concerned with fixing the paladin as much as he is optimizing it or pointing out good/bad things one can do with a paladin when building it. He's got good stuff, but I'm not concerned with getting the most bang for my buck here, I just want the class to be fixed in a way that 1) its identity crisis gets sorted out a bit and 2) it doesn't fall into fields of such great ineffectiveness in encounters that it doesn't specialize in (evil and undead encounters in particular) appear.

Also, why doesn't the knight mesh with the paladin? I can understand that there might be trying to sort out the knight's literal mountain of features with the paladin's mountain of early level abilities, but it feels like it should be plausible.

[Carl]

All right now you've explained what you see as the basic concept for a paladin, let me give you some basic advice.

Take the BAB, Save Tables, Skill List, and Proficiencies of the Paladin and then dump everything else.

Everything the D&D Paladin gets is a result of Divine Magic, unless your functioning in a setting where simple self belief in something can mimic the effects of the blessing of a God, a Warrior who is the perfect Paragon of Good but does not serve primarily, (and to the exclusion of his Paragon of Good status), as a God's warrior will not be reciving any Divine help. That means basically the entire class list of a Paladin and their spellcasting goes poof.

No Spells, no smite, no detect evil, no lay on hands, no celestial mount, no resistances or immunity's. Basically no current Paladin Class features and nothing supernatural.

The next question is: Do you see them bothering to learn arcane magic like sorcerer's wizard's, bard's, e.t.c? If the answer to that is also no, then i have a fairly simple suggestion.

Drop the Paladin as your starting point

What your talking about sounds more like the Knight to begin with and that would make a far better leaping off point. From there you need to decide weather you want to keep the protector theme the knight has going or move to something else.

[toapat]

I'm not particularly a fan of Seerow's changes. There's nothing necessarily wrong with them, but his changes feel strange to me. His shift from Turn Undead being usable in place of smite doesn't feel right, since it'd be the only class that has turn undead function in a way that it costs something other than straight forward turning attempts (aside from the Factotum, but that's a special case). It's also strange to me that, conversely, he allowed Smite Evil to count as Turn Undead for the purpose of feats and prerequisites for classes.

As someone else pointed out, if the Complete books aren't allowed, his paladin is kind of lacking due to the bonus feats it allows. I want to design my changes to paladin with the thought in mind that, if you want, it should be able to function in core books while additional notes are tacked on (such as allowing divine feats as bonus feats and so on).

As for DicMort's handbook, I've looked it over, and his handbook isn't really concerned with fixing the paladin as much as he is optimizing it or pointing out good/bad things one can do with a paladin when building it. He's got good stuff, but I'm not concerned with getting the most bang for my buck here, I just want the class to be fixed in a way that 1) its identity crisis gets sorted out a bit and 2) it doesn't fall into fields of such great ineffectiveness in encounters that it doesn't specialize in (evil and undead encounters in particular) appear.

Also, why doesn't the knight mesh with the paladin? I can understand that there might be trying to sort out the knight's literal mountain of features with the paladin's mountain of early level abilities, but it feels like it should be plausible.

you are. objectively, looking at this in entirely the wrong way.

Seerow's does need Complete Champion/Divine to actually use but the point of it is thats how you just make paladin work.

The handbook is a guideline asto where stuff worth looking at is.

Knights' Challenge, the only classfeature which paladins and knights dont share in some manner or another, is very much in a conceptual space occupied by Smite evil.

[Auramis]

All right now you've explained what you see as the basic concept for a paladin, let me give you some basic advice.

Take the BAB, Save Tables, Skill List, and Proficiencies of the Paladin and then dump everything else.

Everything the D&D Paladin gets is a result of Divine Magic, unless your functioning in a setting where simple self belief in something can mimic the effects of the blessing of a God, a Warrior who is the perfect Paragon of Good but does not serve primarily, (and to the exclusion of his Paragon of Good status), as a God's warrior will not be reciving any Divine help. That means basically the entire class list of a Paladin and their spellcasting goes poof.

No Spells, no smite, no detect evil, no lay on hands, no celestial mount, no resistances or immunity's. Basically no current Paladin Class features and nothing supernatural.

The next question is: Do you see them bothering to learn arcane magic like sorcerer's wizard's, bard's, e.t.c? If the answer to that is also no, then i have a fairly simple suggestion.

Drop the Paladin as your starting point

What your talking about sounds more like the Knight to begin with and that would make a far better leaping off point. From there you need to decide weather you want to keep the protector theme the knight has going or move to something else.

I said I believed the knight was taking some identity from the paladin, not that the paladin is just a knight with some inspiration. The paladin, as Zaydos explained, can either be someone who believes in the concepts of good and allows that to fuel his convictions or it can be a holy knight to a divine entity. It even says in the PHB under their religion description that paladin's don't need to devote themselves to a god and that devotion to righteousness is enough. Just because I believe the knight might be detracting something thematically from the paladin doesn't mean that I should scrap my paladin.

[Pakis54]

i too, dont like that much Seerow's paladin!

I can see that his changes are placed in a way to improve the existing class features of the class, but i do not like the implementation, even though i am sure they are actually working...the class is indeed stronger, does more damage has more options etc etc

The problem is not only on how wrongly implemented the already existing features are in the base class, (which whether i like them or not in the patch, is a matter of personal taste i guess), but also in the fact that there should be other features too in order to make him a more complete choice.
For example in the fix, "I will protect those who cannot protect themselves" is the main motto of his fix, and thats actually what the class is supposed to do! the class is supposed to be a TANK,in MMO terms (which i am not very fond of), but except from his far greater healing capabilities i dont see how the class is actually working towards that goal mechanically.

But then again maybe thats not his fault but the edition's fault altogether.

[Auramis]

you are. objectively, looking at this in entirely the wrong way.

Seerow's does need Complete Champion/Divine to actually use but the point of it is thats how you just make paladin work.

The handbook is a guideline asto where stuff worth looking at is.

Knights' Challenge, the only classfeature which paladins and knights dont share in some manner or another, is very much in a conceptual space occupied by Smite evil.

I see your point regarding looking where stuff is and isn't working. Still can't say I'm a fan of Seerow's fix, though. The changes to smite and turning just feel weird to me.

After looking at the knight, I do see your point about that, though. The knight class is basically all just the challenges. Sure, it has Bulwark of Defense, Vigilant Defender, Shield Black, Armor Masteries, Bonus Feats, and Shield Ally (and imprioved), but those aren't making up the bulk of the class. I'll just keep knight aside for another day to work on.

[Coidzor]

Everything the D&D Paladin gets is a result of Divine Magic, unless your functioning in a setting where simple self belief in something can mimic the effects of the blessing of a God, a Warrior who is the perfect Paragon of Good but does not serve primarily, (and to the exclusion of his Paragon of Good status), as a God's warrior will not be reciving any Divine help. That means basically the entire class list of a Paladin and their spellcasting goes poof.

Incorrect. This is only true in Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance of the published 3.5 settings. It is not even true of the default Paladin as published in the PHB.