[3.5] "Paladin of Cursory Behavior"

[Pechvarry]

A preface: I've seen many-a-beautiful paladin remakes. But, alas, even when I'm smitten by Surrealistik's take on Paladin for example, it's pretty far from the "by-the-book" paladin. So one of my main design goals is to make a Paladin which, for a seasoned pro, takes very little additional reading. It won't magically make melee compete with mages, and it probably won't be as good as a Duskblade. But while it often feels like all a normal paladin can be is the "stick-in-the-mud" because your bubonic plague of a moral code is the only "interesting" thing about you, this will at least have some well-rounded skills and abilities.

"Paladin of Cursory Behavior" for 2 reasons:
a) This is rather uncreative and could be seen as a "can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality as it's pretty Cleric-y.
b) I built this under the concept of a Cleric who needs 30 hour days. He has a lot to do; kingdoms to save, orcs to smite, damsels to impress... and only one full round action/turn! So he cuts the extraneous bits to make the most of his abilities. Mechanically: he's a Cleric whose special abilities are weaker but done quicker and more frequently. And of course, he has an extra iterative attack to miss with.

Summary:
Upped skill points, added most cha skills and other basic and/or useful skills. Upped will saves. Reduced MAD. Added Domains and increased casting. bonus feats of doom. Smites are changed but I'm not married to the current idea.
With the exception of Remove Disease (bye!), if it's not mentioned in the text, it's unchanged.

{table]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort|Ref|Will|Special|1st|2nd|3rd|4th
1st|1|2|0|2|Aura of Good, Detect Evil, Smite Evil/5 rounds, 1st Domain|—|—|—|—
2nd|2|3|0|3|Divine Grace, Lay on Hands|—|—|—|—
3rd|3|3|1|3|Aura of Courage, Divine Health|—|—|—|—
4th|4|4|1|4|Turn Undead|0|—|—|—
5th|5|4|1|4|Smite Evil/4 rounds, Special Mount|0|—|—|—
6th|+6/+1|5|2|5|2nd Domain|1|—|—|—
7th|+7/+2|5|2|5|Bonus Feat|1|—|—|—
8th|+8/+3|6|2|6|Divine Blessing 1/day|1|0|—|—
9th|+9/+4|6|3|6|Rapid Turning|1|0|—|—
10th|+10/+5|7|3|7|Smite Evil/3 rounds, Bonus feat|1|1|—|—
11th|+11/+6/+1|7|3|7|Divine Blessing 2/day|1|1|0|—
12th|+12/+7/+2|8|4|8|3rd Domain|1|1|1|—
13th|+13/+8/+3|8|4|8|Bonus Feat|1|1|1|—
14th|+14/+9/+4|9|4|9|Divine Blessing 3/day|2|1|1|0
15th|+15/+10/+5|9|5|9|Smite evil/2 rounds|2|1|1|1
16th|+16/+11/+6/+1|10|5|10|Bonus Feat|2|2|1|1
17th|+17/+12/+7/+2|10|5|10|Divine Blessing 4/day|2|2|2|1
18th|+18/+13/+8/+3|11|6|11|4th Domain|3|2|2|1
19th|+19/+14/+9/+4|11|6|11|Bonus Feat|3|3|3|2
20th|+20/+15/+10/+5|12|6|12|Smite Evil/round, Divine Blessing 5/day|3|3|3|3[/table]
Class Skills
The paladin’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Gather Information (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (History)(Int), Knowledge (local)(Int), Knowledge (nobility and royalty) (Int), Knowledge(religion) (Int), Knowledge (The Planes)(Int), Listen (Wis), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Swim (Str).
Skill Points/Level: 4 + Int modifier

Spellcasting: A Paladin's spellcasting is based entirely off of Charisma and his caster level is full Paladin level.

Domains: At 1st level, you may choose a domain offered by your associated deity (or faith, if you have no specific deity). Additionally, regardless of what domains your deity offers, you may elect to choose domains that correspond to both of your alignment components (traditionally, Law and Good). You gain the special ability, using your Paladin as your effective Cleric level. When you learn to cast spells, the spells of this domain are considered Paladin spells and can be prepared normally.
As you advance in levels (6th, 12th, 18th), you gain additional domains. As before, you gain the domain ability and add the spells to your spell list.
If another base class grants access to domains, use only the higher number of the 2 classes. For instance, if a Paladin 1 took his next level in Cleric, he would gain only 1 additional domain. Prestige Classes and other abilities that grant additional domains continue to function as normal.

Smite Evil: At 1st level, this can be performed once every 5 rounds. As your level increases, the delay shortens.
If you want to keep this remake even simpler, just change the normal Paladin smites/day into smites/encounter.

Bonus Feats: Starting at 7th level and every 3 levels thereafter, you gain a Bonus Feat. This feat may be Extra Turning, any Divine feat, or any feat with a requirement of a Smite ability. You must meet the requirements as usual.

Divine Blessing: As of 8th level, you're a pretty cool dude. Once per day as a Spell-Like Ability, you may spontaneously cast any spell from your domains, up to the level of a cleric of an equal level could cast (up to 4th level at level 8, 6th level spells at level 11 Paladin, etc). You must supply any costly material components and pay XP costs as normal for the spell. Caster level and spell DCs are determined as normal for your Paladin spellcasting.
Every 3 levels after 8th, you gain 1 additional daily use of this ability.

Rapid Turning: When it comes to turning undead, you really can't waste your time with something of questionable reliability. Starting at 9th level, you may lower the usage time of your Turn Undead abilities, as well as that of any Divine feats you possess. If an ability has a Standard action usage time (including the Turn Undead action), you may instead perform it as a swift action. If it is a full round action, you may choose to use a standard action. Anything with a usage time longer than a full round action is unaffected by this ability.

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Thoughts/improvements?

>>>If it's not already declared public domain by virtue of being posted on Gitp (I'm not sure), then I hereby declare this public domain. Feel free to use/abuse/rip off as much as you see fit.

[DracoDei]

Don't some dieties only have 3 domains?

[Prime32]

Rapid Turning + Travel Devotion = ...wow

And according to the text you get it at 1st level. You're like an Abrupt Jaunt conjurer on crack.

[Dilb]

Spellcaster level: I'd say eliminate the confusion and just let Paladin level equal caster level. This also means divine blessing doesn't need to be worded differently.

Smiting: I like this, though for D&D it seems more appropriate to have a random delay, like breath weapons: e.g. use again in 1d6, 1d4, 1d3, 1d2, or 1 round round, for instance. Also, every 5 rounds is rather slow.

Rapid turning: I wouldn't let the swift to immediate happen. That's just going to be confusing in terms of resolving when anything actually happen, for example can movement interrupt a ranged attack? A targeted spell? An area spell that might not be visible?

Divine Blessing: As written, it seems I can choose a 4th level domain spell, and I'm stuck with that permanently, but I don't think that's what you meant. Can the spell be changed daily, at level up, spontaneously, or what?

[Pechvarry]

Upped casting to full Paladin level -- I want to emphasize that they're still weaker casters than Clerics but their crappy spell rate really is enough to satisfy that. So it's just confusion for confusion's sake.

Added the tiny bit to Divine Blessing "Whenever you use this ability, choose a spell from one of your domains." Very small change to what it used to be, but I think it conveys that you choose from your domain lists whenever you use this ability. Please tell me if it's still not clear. Or if the whole ability should go bye-bye. I originally intended this to be full cleric spell list instead of domain list, but that's pretty horrid if done spontaneously. I could take it back to that model and treat it like Factotum casting (prepared SLAs at the start of the day) and lower it to level 6 where it'd be able to duplicate Remove Disease (Cleric 3). Would it be better with these changes or is the domain casting more flavorful?

I went ahead and got rid of the immediate action stuff. As you folks said, it's gonna be more trouble than it's worth (balance-wise). For the record, as it was written, it wouldn't affect Travel Devotion (domain feat, not a divine feat), and even if it did affect domain feats, it still would have very little effect on travel devotion as it'd make it so you activate the ability as an immediate action but it still takes a swift action every turn to use the ability. For comparison, it'd be like using Quicken Spell on a spell that allows you to take a standard action every round to do something special. Quicken would make you cast it as a Swift, but using the "something special" would still be a standard as it's a spell effect, not casting of the spell.

I think after I finish this post, I'm going to edit the OP to mention that regardless of what domains are offered by their deity, they may always choose the 2 domains associated with their alignment components (typically, Law and Good). So unless there are some deities whose only domains are law, good, and X, we should be good.

Smite -- once/5 rounds is the limit on Binders, and it seems ok for them. But I feel like a Paladin may want to chain smite. Should I just use the smites/encounter method? Or go for Dilb's suggested random recast? The dice recast mechanic is kinda neat as it's very similar, flavor-wise, to a Crusader's refresh mechanic.

I originally intended Rapid Turning to be a level 6 ability, but 9 is where my dead level was. What level do you folks think it should fall?

4 Domains is a lot. Should I make this a 1st, 10th, 20th thing instead? Or is level 18 so late that no one will mind you having 4 domain abilities? Should I lower their effective Cleric level? Or is a Strength/Wrath Paladin of Tyranny cranking super STR buffs acceptable?

[jiriku]

Nice! I like the class receives a significant power upgrade (and incentive to remain in the class at higher levels) without fundamentally changing its flavor, feel, or playstyle. This is the kind of fix that will help paladin-lovers have more fun at the table without making them feel as if they've been slammed over to a different class with the same name.

I will, naturally, be stealing this from you.

[Dilb]

Added the tiny bit to Divine Blessing "Whenever you use this ability, choose a spell from one of your domains." Very small change to what it used to be, but I think it conveys that you choose from your domain lists whenever you use this ability. Please tell me if it's still not clear. Or if the whole ability should go bye-bye. I originally intended this to be full cleric spell list instead of domain list, but that's pretty horrid if done spontaneously. I could take it back to that model and treat it like Factotum casting (prepared SLAs at the start of the day) and lower it to level 6 where it'd be able to duplicate Remove Disease (Cleric 3). Would it be better with these changes or is the domain casting more flavorful?

The spontaneous domain casting is awesome thematically. Still, I'd word it like
"You may spontaneously cast any spell from your domains, up to the level that a cleric of an equal level could cast."

I wouldn't worry about stacking 4 domains. A lot of the domains are rather limited. If you're level 8 and have Law and Good, and aren't fighting something chaotic or evil (maybe you're fighting a bear or whatever, or just not fighting), you're basically limited to aid or calm emotions. It might be best to just invent a 'paladin' domain with some generally useful spells, or specifically limit what domains are allowed, or else everyone will want to be paladins of luck and travel.

[Milskidasith]

So... wait, if you're lawful good, your first two domains always have to be lawful and good? That seems rather pointless.

[Pechvarry]

Nice! I like the class receives a significant power upgrade (and incentive to remain in the class at higher levels) without fundamentally changing its flavor, feel, or playstyle. This is the kind of fix that will help paladin-lovers have more fun at the table without making them feel as if they've been slammed over to a different class with the same name.

I will, naturally, be stealing this from you.

That... is a fantastic feeling. This must be why homebrew is such an active hobby for many. Thank you much.

The spontaneous domain casting is awesome thematically. Still, I'd word it like
"You may spontaneously cast any spell from your domains, up to the level that a cleric of an equal level could cast."

I like this, though I can't stop there. Since this works outside of their normal spell list, I want to keep it as a Spell-like Ability akin to the Factotum mechanic of SLAs treated like spells. I'll see what I can do to completely re-work the wording.

I wouldn't worry about stacking 4 domains. A lot of the domains are rather limited. If you're level 8 and have Law and Good, and aren't fighting something chaotic or evil (maybe you're fighting a bear or whatever, or just not fighting), you're basically limited to aid or calm emotions. It might be best to just invent a 'paladin' domain with some generally useful spells, or specifically limit what domains are allowed, or else everyone will want to be paladins of luck and travel.

Kinda against making my own paladin domains or specializing the Divine Blessing casting list. That's a lot of complexity added to a Paladin whose supposed to simply be "Just like the PHB fella, but better in every way." Will the Travel/Luck domain Paladins be a problem? I have very little insight in this area, as we let our players take whatever domains we want and re-flavor often (we also have very little in the way of Paladin code of conduct, but that's neither here nor there).

Can anyone think of a better name for this Paladin? I want something other than "Another Paladin Fix" -- preferably one that shows that my focus is on quantity over quality (Not the words you want to hear from the devout of your religion, incidentally).

I also just realized an accidental synergy: removing Wisdom dependence on Spellcasting tanks Will saves, making strong Will growth more crucial than ever. Hurrayyy accidents!

So... wait, if you're lawful good, your first two domains always have to be lawful and good? That seems rather pointless.

Good catch! Just edited to say "you MAY elect to choose..." instead of pretty much saying "you can choose whatever you want, as long as it's law or good."

[jiriku]

Can anyone think of a better name for this Paladin? I want something other than "Another Paladin Fix" -- preferably one that shows that my focus is on quantity over quality (Not the words you want to hear from the devout of your religion, incidentally).

I guess I'm a real bland guy when it comes to naming things, but I'd probably just call it "revised paladin". It's simple, to-the-point, and lets people know what to expect.

[DragoonWraith]

Well, because I play a lot of Diablo II, Zeal makes me think of very fast attacking, so... Zealot?

Of course, the real world zealot is not exactly the same meaning; it can fit a Paladin but generally one hopes for Paladins to be a little more than zealots.

[Pechvarry]

This again!

Putting in the stipulation that Paladin domains don't "stack" with Cleric domains (or any other base class). Prestige classes and other ways of gaining additional domains should remain effective. This is to prevent cleric 1/paladin1 and such.

Also still want to see Rapid Turning moved to 6th, if possible. I considered adding something like "use X turn undead attempts to gain an extra use of a domain power" at level 9 to replace RT.

Is this a good idea, or step over the line of destroying its simplicity?

[jiriku]

I wouldn't bother. The real issue behind that is that cleric 1 is overly front-loaded, and it's beyond the scope of a paladin fix to correct problems with the cleric class.

[Pechvarry]

Okies. I'll just leave it as-is. Any campaign allowing homebrew is even more prone to Rule 0 than normal, so I feel comfortable that any DM using this class will throw out whatever aspects they don't like.

Since Extra Smiting is now useless...

Extra Smiting
You gain extra Smiting attacks.
Prerequisites: BAB +4, Smite ability
Benefit: Whenever you use your Smiting ability, decrease the amount of time to use it again by one round (to a minimum of once per round)
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.

...Unless you're going for a per-encounter mechanic.

The refresh mechanic, and moreso if you go for Dilb's dice-of-recast also opens itself up to metabreath-style feats, which could be interesting.