Prestige Paladin

[Maat Mons]

Prestige Paladin



Prerequisites
Spellcasting: Able to cast divine spells.
Skills: Knowledge (religion) 7 ranks.
Special: Must be a total goody-goody. Just, a real stick in the mud. If your party doesn't hate you, you can't take this class.




LevelAttackFortRefWillSpecialDivine Spellcasting
11202Aura of Good, Turn Undead+1 level
22303Detect Evil, Smite Evil+1 level
33313Divine Grace+1 level
44414Aura of Courage, Divine Health+1 level
55414Divine Martialist+1 level




Proficiencies:

Simple and Martial weapons. All armor, and shields (except tower shields).



Aura of Good:

Prestige Paladin levels stack with Cleric levels (or whatever else) for Aura of Good. If you didn't have Aura of Good before, you get it now.



Turn Undead:

Prestige Paladin levels stack with Cleric levels (or whatever else) for Turn Undead. If you didn't have Turn Undead before, you get it now.



Detect Evil (Su):

Maybe make this a passive ability that doesn't take an action?



Smite Evil (Ex):

Expend a divine spell slot for bonuses to attack and damage? Even bigger bonuses against Evil foes?

Or maybe expend a use of Turn Undead instead?



Divine Health:

Maybe also give ability to spontaneously convert spells to Remove Disease?



Divine Martialist (Ex):

Forever more, your base attack bonus equals your divine caster level (up to a maximum of your hit dice), unless it would normally be higher.

[Maat Mons]

There's a thread over on the 3.5 boards about fixing Prestige Paladin. I've already given my general thoughts over there. But I'm going to post my take on the class over here, because any extensive discussion of my specific homebrew would constitute derailing that thread.

[Elves]

Presumably the idea behind removing paladin as a class would be that cleric can already do just fine as a divine warrior so I would do a more thorough rehaul that makes it the ideal "cleric as divine warrior" class. Several PRCs already do that so maybe look at those as the basis.

Divine grace certainly doesn't need to be present since it doesn't contribute to that theme.

Special mount is iconic, keep.

[Maat Mons]

Which prestige classes, specifically, would you recommend looking at? I've generally been disappointed in melee-oriented Cleric PrCs, other than Ordained Champion, and Ruby Knight Vindicator. And I'm sort of disappointed by those too, in that they're very thematically constrained (two deity choices for OC, one deity choice for RKV), and they make you give up too much casting for ... not even being that much better at melee.

[NigelWalmsley]

You should support the option to be the various non-Lawful Good variant Paladins. Or just ditch the alignment component wholesale. There's no reason you can't be a devoted warrior of Nature, or the Sea, or whatever other abstract concept, and no reason those concepts should need separate classes.

[aimlessPolymath]

From another perspective, though, the cleric also handles the concept of a 'champion of X concept', and the idea that someone might be a Paladin of the Ocean feels distinctly different from the idea that someone might be a Paladin of Good, in a way that I can't put in a single phrase.

In a sense, what do people take this prestige class to do? The original paladin and its variants (antipaladin, paladin of freedom, etc.) were all distinguished by championing a particular moral alignment, and the paladin subclasses of 5e all related to a particular set of oaths relating to promoting a particular set of beliefs.

Here's my first proposal:
Detect Evil is converted into Detect Sins. When the paladin takes the class, they are asked to design a code of conduct that they maintain (such as 'try to give others a chance to surrender before killing them', 'don't disobey orders from an authority over you', 'maintain a non-evil alignment' or even 'don't be X race'), and their Detect Sins ability detects only those who have violated the code of conduct within some period- maybe a year? Maybe the aura strength varies based on how recently it happened? It wouldn't tell the paladin which rule, or in what circumstances, but it would fulfill a similar 'detect enemy' role to Detect Evil, depending on what the paladin thinks is important.

[Gavinfoxx]

Can't use, the main reason I'm looking for Prestige Paladin fixes is to get an intelligent flying mount by level ~7-8ish.

[noob]

Maybe specify that your bab can not go above 20 unless you have rhd (because RHD is the only thing that breaks the epic bab cap by continuing to increase bab beyond ecl 20).