Brainstorming Class Features for Paladin Re-Write

[wayfare]

Hey All:

I'm just brewin' up some class features fir a palagin rewrite, and I was hoping that folks could give me some feedback.

First up:

Conviction (Ex): This is going to be the signature ability of the paladin in my re-write. essentially, the paladin get a pool of dice equal to her level that can be spent to enhance and attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, or trained skill checks.
At higher levels you can use conviction dice to add damage to your attacks (ala smite) or grant allies temporary hp (ala lay on hands).

Spellcasting: Not much to see here, upping spellcasting to 5th level, like the Duskblade. Fullcaster, naturally.

Mount: Considering getting rid of this in exchange for a "celestial/infernal mantle" that grants flight and angel/demon resistances plus a size boost of 1 category.

Any thoughts, guys?

[nonsi]

This one has the best Lay on Hands I've seen.
My primary issue with it is LG restriction rather than all extreme alignments.


This one has mount as one of three options (the other two are weapon & armor enhancements)
I'd scout the forum for some more Paladin variants with mount-substitutions.


This one's Honor offers several conviction-associated powers.

[toapat]

always begin with research, here is a semi-uptodate collection of links to other class fixes that would serve as a good foundation for ideas.

Conviction (Ex): This is going to be the signature ability of the paladin in my re-write. essentially, the paladin get a pool of dice equal to her level that can be spent to enhance and attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, or trained skill checks.
At higher levels you can use conviction dice to add damage to your attacks (ala smite) or grant allies temporary hp (ala lay on hands).

Spellcasting: Not much to see here, upping spellcasting to 5th level, like the Duskblade. Fullcaster, naturally.

Mount: Considering getting rid of this in exchange for a "celestial/infernal mantle" that grants flight and angel/demon resistances plus a size boost of 1 category.

1: theoretically good, realistically bad for execution. paladin has a number of resource pools as to prevent destructive or positive interference in the class's power. trying to simplify all of those into one thing just piles on work which is not worth it.

2: no. Paladins dont need 5th level slots. condense 2 spell levels into each paladin level, and you get a strong casting ability. The Duskblade is, in book, actually a terrible class on its own, requiring dedication to the acquisition of more spells known to actually fill out their abilities

3: sounds like a decent alternative to the mount, but never should you actually remove the mount option itself. options are still options options.

[ArcturusV]

Thoughts:

Conviction sounds... odd. Not "Bad" necessarily. It depends on particulars of execution. It might be more elegant than having the 5 different resources that Paladins currently have (Lay on Hands Pool, Smites, Turn Undead, Cure Disease, Mount Hours) on top of spellcasting. But I think trying to cover the corner cases and uses could actually make it more complex than just having a Smite, a Lay on Hands, etc.

Only thing that interests me is perhaps the bit about "Full caster". I presume you mean that it gets spells starting at level one? And doesn't have a progression going 0, 0, etc? I mean getting more spells per day is always nice. As is though Paladins have a decent "discount" on their spells to fit in the level 4 scheme. The only thing I ever really feel "Lacking" in Paladin spell casting is the number per day rather than the level available.

I'd consider the "Mantle" to be weaker than the mount. Yes, blasphemy, I know! But consider what you're getting out of the "Mantle". Flight... which you mount can give you (On DM ruling on Alternate Mounts, or on spending a feat on something like Celestial Mount). Immunity to Electricity (How often does someone lightning bolt you?), immune to poisons (You already practically were anyway between Divine Grace and good fort save), Telepathy 100' (Useful), Summon X SLA (Best benefit perhaps)?

What does a mount give you however? Bonuses to hit, multipliers to damage, mobility to prevent a mob from ganging up on you, can give you flight, SLAs like Teleport, etc (As you can pick up things like Dragons and Unicorns). Hell, even Command is handy in case the DM decides to try to negate your mount's mobility by sending other mounted enemies at you. "My dragon mount uses Command to make the enemy dragon breath weapon his own minions right before I lance him to death!".

I mean, yeah... I know people say Mounts are weak, and that supposedly they will snipe out your mount easy. Though I'm not quite sure how it's as "easy" as they think. AC equal to a Ride Check? Usually going to mean your mount has the best AC on the field, easily. Shares saving throws with the Paladin, and the Paladin isn't exactly known for bad saves. Evasion so if you pass the saves (likely), no damage for that guy sniping with arrow volleys or lightning bolts, etc.

In order for something to really be "Worth" replacing my mount, that's the short list of what you need to one up:

Bonuses to hit.
Triple or more damage.
Ability to control the engagement through mobility, and always fight on your own terms.
Making enemies waste actions trying to "snipe" out something they aren't going to take down typically.

I just don't really see Flight plus immunity to electricity really being the basis of cutting it.

[toapat]

Thoughts:

Conviction sounds... odd. Not "Bad" necessarily. It depends on particulars of execution. It might be more elegant than having the 5 different resources that Paladins currently have (Lay on Hands Pool, Smites, Turn Undead, Cure Disease, Mount Hours) on top of spellcasting. But I think trying to cover the corner cases and uses could actually make it more complex than just having a Smite, a Lay on Hands, etc.

1: Mount hours can just be removed, it provides nothing other then irritating math, and for over half a paladin's 1-20 during which they have the mount as a class feature it can be called forever.

2: As i said, this is interesting, but a problem with it is paladins have all those differing pools for a good reason, these abilities are not equal in strength or utility, and balancing them within is as much a hurdle for the designer, and will not really reduce the book-keeping on the end of the paladin.

[wayfare]

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

I like the conviction idea because it is one resource to manage and can be spent on multiple things. Some of the current pally stuff, like cure disease, has always felt either too weak, or like it can be folded into lay on hands.

My smite would work something like this, I think:

Add Xd6 to attack roll, increase the damage inflicted by Xd6. If you damage an opponent with at least one opposed alignment component, add a status (maybe blind or daze?).

In terms of spellcasting, I want the class to have a caster level equal to its full class level.

[Fax Celestis]

I have a paladin in my sig you might want to rob.

Also I made up the Mantle Paladin and people seemed to really like that.

[toapat]

I like the conviction idea because it is one resource to manage and can be spent on multiple things. Some of the current pally stuff, like cure disease, has always felt either too weak, or like it can be folded into lay on hands.

cure disease is typically just thrown out and replaced with something similar to if not outright the mercies from PF.

however, having Smite + LoH coming from the same pool you will make the entire class feel terrible for the reason that you are sacrificing offence for healing or healing for offense, and that only works in extremely low combat campaigns where there might be 3-5 encounters in a week as opposed to 2-4 in a day, where you wouldnt be balancing the class.

A good tip for design philosophy: If it will Always make the player feel like they are doing something wrong with their resources, its not designed properly.

[nonsi]

however, having Smite + LoH coming from the same pool you will make the entire class feel terrible for the reason that you are sacrificing offence for healing or healing for offense.

Not if it replenishes at the beginning of the paladin's turn.
Even with significant action economy boot (something that usually nonocasters should get rather than paladins and gishes), it doesn't seem to me like a paladin would routinely have the opportunity of applying Lay on Hands and full attacking.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Not if it replenishes at the beginning of the paladin's turn.
Even with significant action economy boot (something that usually nonocasters should get rather than paladins and gishes), it doesn't seem to me like a paladin would routinely have the opportunity of applying Lay on Hands and full attacking.

I like the contrast between offense and defense. What if conviction said "As a swift action, you can spend any number of your conviction dXs on adding damage to your next attack, any number of your conviction dXs on healing yourself, and any number of your conviction dXs on healing adjacent allies.

Each round, you automatically restore one conviction dX per three levels (min 1), and your total pool is equal to [2*level]dX".

That way, Conviction restores at a rate that is slow in combat (six rounds for your entire pool) but very quickly out of combat (36 seconds). You can spend your entire conviction pool on a whole lot of burst damage, or a bunch of burst healing, but then you'd be left without your most powerful resource. Alternatively, you could spend it little by little for a bit extra here and there, saving for a big heal if you need it.

[BWR]

I always suggest looking at the Pathfinder paladin.

It has plenty of variant archetypes (ACFs in 3.5 lingo).

[wayfare]

cure disease is typically just thrown out and replaced with something similar to if not outright the mercies from PF.

however, having Smite + LoH coming from the same pool you will make the entire class feel terrible for the reason that you are sacrificing offence for healing or healing for offense, and that only works in extremely low combat campaigns where there might be 3-5 encounters in a week as opposed to 2-4 in a day, where you wouldnt be balancing the class.

A good tip for design philosophy: If it will Always make the player feel like they are doing something wrong with their resources, its not designed properly.

Thats an interesting philosophy, very much reminiscent of 4e. But resource allocation is always a choice -- I mean, even if you are a full caster, you do have to rest at some point to regain cast spells. Compare a fullcaster to a Warlock, for example, and you might see a class that is waaay easier to play, much more thematic, but I am not certain we can call it better than a pure cleric or wizard.

Also keep in mind that a lot of the healing slack can be picked up by spontaneously casting from a well selected spell list. Current paladins admittedly are better off sticking with lay on hands, but adding full caster level makes healing much more potent (especially if you include the vigor line).

Re: Renewable Conviction
My concern here is that you'll have characters adding +5d6 to rolls every 2 minutes or so. I think that can be pretty problematic, particularly with diplomacy or intimidate. Do folks think it would be OP, or that it would be in line with other class abilities?

[silphael]

About Cure disease : 2 possibilities : either you take it off, giving something like PF mercies, or you keep it with more uses/same number of uses, without counting it as a real class feature in the latter case.

About mount : first thing usually done to it is allowing to choose a mount among a list allowing more interresting than a pony. Second is usually giving people a choice between a mount and another feature. Third is usually remove the time limit (because hours per level is just meh)

About conviction : if you want it to work that way, do it per encounter, basically, considering social encounter like any other encounters. Issue will be early "infinite" healing, but that shouldn't be a real issue i think : HP are more precious to mundanes than to casters, usually. In that case, main issue is number of dices at level 1 and progression among the levels. I think something like 3 + 1/level (with maybe +1/charisma mod) should be nice for per encounter system. If you want to push people into using a lot of those at later levels, maybe just 3/level.

[Carl]

Thats an interesting philosophy, very much reminiscent of 4e. But resource allocation is always a choice -- I mean, even if you are a full caster, you do have to rest at some point to regain cast spells.

The catch there is that a typical wizard/cleric/e.t.c. has so many resources to throw about that for all practical intents and purposes they're not going to run out unless the DM builds the encounters specifically to deplete them as thoroughly as possible.

At the end of the day resource management is something that has to be considered on an individual basis. Some abilities are powerful from day one. Some are weak at low levels and become powerful later on, and some are powerful at low levels and become weak later on.

To use the Paladin as an example. Lay on Hands is always powerful.

Smite is an example that's weak early on but by high levels where the damage bonus has scaled to a large number it becomes quite powerful.

And remove disease whilst handy early on when the dedicated healer needs those spell slots for healing becomes totally trivial later on.

The only way to balance all those against each other is to have varying costs not only between abilities, but also that vary across levels. That's awfully complex to do compared to individual scaling limits.

As a rule i prefer to make examples of the later type slightly weaker or later appearing "at will" capabilities. I tend to break the middle type into a weaker "at will" form, and a stronger "limited" option, (see my own paladin fix's spellcasting and smite for an example in fact).


Also as others have said, replacing the mount requires some care, and you certainly shouldn't be forcing people to take an archetype like becoming a celestial being as part of something so general in concept as the paladin.

[Epsilon Rose]

I think that the conviction mechanic could be really cool, but I agree with some of the others that it needs to be on a fairly fast refresh. It can affect a lot of things in subtle ways and I think that trying to put it on a per-day schedule will result in A) a lot of second guessing, especially because it doesn't result in a discrete effect and won't necessarily solve a problem the way a spell will and B) drowning the character in bonus dice, so they can actually use their abilities on a reasonable basis, especially if these abilities are core to the class.

I think per turn is the most interesting mechanic, and there are a number of subtle variations on it, partially because it's unusual, but also because it's effective and leads to the most reasonable dice pool. Per encounter also works, but it will probably require a much larger dice pool at higher levels and, thus, require a per turn limit to prevent nova-ing an encounter's worth of damage into a single full attack. You could also do something like incarnum's essentia, where you use an action to allocate bonuses and they stay there (and continue to apply) until you use another action to reallocate them.

Re: Renewable Conviction
My concern here is that you'll have characters adding +5d6 to rolls every 2 minutes or so. I think that can be pretty problematic, particularly with diplomacy or intimidate. Do folks think it would be OP, or that it would be in line with other class abilities?

5d6 averages out to 17.5 for one check at, I'm assuming, high levels. To put that in perspective, Glibness adds +30 to all bluff checks for 10min/level starting at level 6; Jump gives a bonus of +10-30 to all jump checks for 1min/level starting at level 1; Disguise can, among other things, give you +10 to a disguise and lasts for 10min/level starting at level 1. This is also ignoring spells like knock and invisibility that completely override certain skills.

I think there are generally two solutions to your problem. The first is to simply determine that the bonuses aren't that out of line with the rest of 3.5 and leave them as they are. The other is to limit the types of abilities they can be applied to (maybe they can't be applied to bluff or knowledge skills) and/or how much of a bonus can be added to each type of ability at a given level.

[toapat]

Thats an interesting philosophy, very much reminiscent of 4e. But resource allocation is always a choice -- I mean, even if you are a full caster, you do have to rest at some point to regain cast spells. Compare a fullcaster to a Warlock, for example, and you might see a class that is waaay easier to play, much more thematic, but I am not certain we can call it better than a pure cleric or wizard.

i realize i wasnt conveying the idea correctly:

The act of resource allocation shouldnt feel bad. A prepared caster gets to feel good because they get to plan ahead and outthink the DM, a sorcerer gets to spend limited resources the way they want as they want.

comparatively, assuming both smite and LoH run off the same pool, and both use a standard action, if i heal, i will for a majority of the time, during combat, feel like i wasted smite potential, and if i choose to smite, i feel like i am wasting potential healing.

basically, the act of Allocation of resources should never feel bad. it should be like when trying to get a paladin to fall, Deceiving a paladin into falling is less satisfying then convincing them to fall by their own actions.

[ArcturusV]

Thoughts on Conviction as it's being discussed:

I'd be a fundamental game changer for how the Paladin class is viewed, typically.

Here's what I mean. As the tradition, PHB Paladin works out, excepting very narrow builds, typically just the ones that want to put Divine Grace on a Sorcerer, etc, when someone picks up a Paladin, they're looking at it for the long haul. Paladin abilities, minus a few static boosts like Divine Grace, Immunity to Fear, etc, all stack off Paladin Levels. Lay on Hands, Smite, etc, are all useless typically unless you have a lot of Paladin Levels. Well, Lay on Hands can be useful with few levels as emergency bleeding out triage, but that only tends to really happen at low levels. You don't even necessarily want to PrC out, because even the few PrCs that are "Paladin Themed" generally don't advance Paladin abilities (Unlike Monk PrCs oddly), but at best provide a new, different pool of similar resources. So you'll end up with something like twice as many Smite Evils that are only half as effective.

With Conviction as it's working? The Paladin becomes a lot more Dip Attractive, even if you keep the "If you waiver in taking pure Paladin levels, that's it, no more Paladin levels" rule. Having the ability to say, take a two level dip for Divine Grace, still have full BaB, add useful spells for Wand/Scroll potential, and be able to throw out an extra 2d6 to any roll(s) per combat round is pretty danged attractive. Always win initiative? Make your Rogue cry as you can DPS better than him with fewer targeting restrictions and be better able to take a hit while doing it?

Nevermind it actually removes some options like offensive Lay on Hands. Why would I burn my 5d6 Conviction on a 5d6 lay on hands on the evil Vampire when I could just attack it for 1d12 + 13 + 5d6? So the flex of the points actually provides less play options as there are clear, obviously superior ways to use it. Use it to Win Initiative. Afterwards use it to add to pure damage every round as hitting targets is pretty much a given on a full BaB class for most levels. In a non-combat encounter just throw your full weight into whatever you're rolling at any given moment (Healing, intimidating, etc) as non-combat skill checks don't tend to come at more than 1 a minute at best, much less multiple per six seconds.

[wayfare]

Hows about a "every round you dont spend conviction, you regain 1 conviction" as a refresh feature.

[wayfare]

Question:

Do folks consider the paladin a viable class as written in PHB? I love me some pally's but I've always felt that the class was a ton of book keeping without a ton of benefit.

Probably better question than my initial question:

What do you think need to be changes about the paladin? What needs to be the same?

[Epsilon Rose]

Thoughts on Conviction as it's being discussed:

I'd be a fundamental game changer for how the Paladin class is viewed, typically.

Here's what I mean. As the tradition, PHB Paladin works out, excepting very narrow builds, typically just the ones that want to put Divine Grace on a Sorcerer, etc, when someone picks up a Paladin, they're looking at it for the long haul. Paladin abilities, minus a few static boosts like Divine Grace, Immunity to Fear, etc, all stack off Paladin Levels. Lay on Hands, Smite, etc, are all useless typically unless you have a lot of Paladin Levels. Well, Lay on Hands can be useful with few levels as emergency bleeding out triage, but that only tends to really happen at low levels. You don't even necessarily want to PrC out, because even the few PrCs that are "Paladin Themed" generally don't advance Paladin abilities (Unlike Monk PrCs oddly), but at best provide a new, different pool of similar resources. So you'll end up with something like twice as many Smite Evils that are only half as effective.

With Conviction as it's working? The Paladin becomes a lot more Dip Attractive, even if you keep the "If you waiver in taking pure Paladin levels, that's it, no more Paladin levels" rule. Having the ability to say, take a two level dip for Divine Grace, still have full BaB, add useful spells for Wand/Scroll potential, and be able to throw out an extra 2d6 to any roll(s) per combat round is pretty danged attractive. Always win initiative? Make your Rogue cry as you can DPS better than him with fewer targeting restrictions and be better able to take a hit while doing it?

Game changers aren't necessarily a bad thing, nor is dip friendliness. Being able to actually multi-class is nice. As for out damaging the rouge. That might be true at lower levels, but I think that falls off as you level up. A rogue also has other options open to it.

Nevermind it actually removes some options like offensive Lay on Hands. Why would I burn my 5d6 Conviction on a 5d6 lay on hands on the evil Vampire when I could just attack it for 1d12 + 13 + 5d6? So the flex of the points actually provides less play options as there are clear, obviously superior ways to use it. Use it to Win Initiative. Afterwards use it to add to pure damage every round as hitting targets is pretty much a given on a full BaB class for most levels. In a non-combat encounter just throw your full weight into whatever you're rolling at any given moment (Healing, intimidating, etc) as non-combat skill checks don't tend to come at more than 1 a minute at best, much less multiple per six seconds.

I'd actually be perfectly fine with that. The idea of a paladin stopping mid combat to reach out and lay-on-hands an undead seems silly. Channeling it through their sword just seems more sensical.

Question:

Do folks consider the paladin a viable class as written in PHB? I love me some pally's but I've always felt that the class was a ton of book keeping without a ton of benefit.

I do not, but the extremely limited smites and code are a large part of that.

[toapat]

Question:

Do folks consider the paladin a viable class as written in PHB? I love me some pally's but I've always felt that the class was a ton of book keeping without a ton of benefit.

Probably better question than my initial question:

What do you think need to be changes about the paladin? What needs to be the same?

1: No, but this is specifically because of the lack of in book support for the class. at least within third, material came out over time that allowed alot of options for paladin to use.

2: a: Smite evil, made to work within the combat system more completely, possibly rework the resource system
b: Steal PF Lay on Hands, rework mercies
c: replace the horse with a superior animal or magical beast
d: provide alternatives to the horse
e: add mechanic in place of cure disease
f: remove extraineous math, such as horse hours
g: more spell slots
h: reworked and superior spell list
i: spontaineous casters

[ArcturusV]

Depends on what you mean by "Viable"?

As it stands, PHB only? Paladins are a melee beat beast matched only by Druids, Clerics, Shapechanging shenanigans out of Wizards and Sorcerers. The barbarian gets better static bonuses with Rage, but the Paladin gets multipliers (Along with static bonuses in Smite, though they come up more rarely). And the multipliers are just a lot more valuable than the static numbers off Rage. Really it takes shapechanging and being able to put forth truly monstrous stats, multiple attacks, etc, to match a Paladin in a core only game for "melee beats". Or a Cleric rocking out a ton of buffs.

So they're viable when you put them alongside stuff like Two Weapon Rangers, Rogues, Fighters, Barbarians, etc, as hammers. But they're not viable when you put them up against things like control via Horizon Tripper, or wizards who go on with no checks against their cosmic power, etc.

The downside is that Smite doesn't really pay off until late in the game. Think about something like level 3. 1/day you get a +X (Probably 2, maybe 3) to attack and +3 damage. Hardly the awe inspiring power of divine judgment. Even at high level, when you're attacking for a hundred plus damage a pop, having something like +5 to Attack, and +15 to damage doesn't sound all that inspiring either. Until you remember that it's all multiplied in and you're probably talking more like +5 to attack, and +45 damage for the smite. Still won't be the largest chunk of your damage, but it becomes a lot more respectable.

Things I see needing a change, and have been considered:

1) More skill points. Any class that is effectively "mundane" or more or less based off Martial Skill than slinging magic really needs at least 4 skill points per level. As is the Paladin basically has to sink their entire skill load into combat skills, and have no real "utility" until their spellcasting comes online.

2) More smites per day. I don't think you need to go 4th edition on it and have it "per encounter" or something. But I do think it needs a faster progression where you'd end up with something like 7-9 smites per day when you hit level 20, instead of 4.

3) Something better than 1/week remove disease. I know there are some ACFs out there, some better, some worse, for it. I always felt the healing of disease or the breaking of enchantments however don't really fit the "Paladin" feel. They're not the healing hand of goodness (Leave that to Clerics), they're the sword of righteousness. Thus why in my Elemental Paladin project they have "Manifestations" rather than the Cure Disease. But for a stock paladin? Something like Manifestations wouldn't be bad if you wanted to homebrew. If you wanted something cheap and dirty, a simple patch I'd probably go with something like a X/day SLA of Bestow Curse. A Paladin dispensing justice via hex isn't really against their flavor (They have Mark of Justice after all).

4) End level abilities. It's important to take those later levels anyway as each one is another hour of mount time, another point of smite for the multipliers, another bit of Lay on Hands, a few more spells, a few more smites, etc. But the higher levels of the class are really kinda bland. They don't have much to offer beyond "Another use of X" or "Another point of Smite damage". Even the spell progression is slow which retards the "new toys" feel. Having more unique abilities like Divine Grace and Aura of Courage later on the class would make it feel better to take more Paladin levels.

[silphael]

Spontaneous casting, or spontaneous like casting : base it on Charisma, first, as a pally will always have some here, but allow to have all pally spells on spell known even if spontaneous. Most of those aren't that good, and i think all partial casters should be at least spontaneous.

[Carl]

ArcturusV hit a lot of things.

Like he says amongst the core T4's the Paladin is amongst the best as it is the only core class with access to non-crit damage multipliers, (via mount and the relevant feat), and it has a fair range of non-mounted combat based option that also keep it strong.

If your happy with T4 then the main issue is making skills, smite, and the remove disease more readily usable.

If you want to go upto T3 then you need to look at a broad range of factors beyond those. going from half level to full level for caster level would help tremendously, as would a few extra spells per day and as someone else said spontaneous casting, and more importantly the ability to cast spells alongside other things, (i dealt with this in my paladin fix by letting a paladin use their weapon as a focus, ignore all verbal, somatic, and material components , and letting them reduce any spell casting time of 1 round or less to a swift action).

That said the main thing the class is crying for however beyond minor utility fixes and better spellcasting integration alongside their martial aspects is actual class features beyond the first few levels.

Incidentally if your looking for a simple Lay on Hands fix feel free to copy mine from my paladin, (You get to cast cure spells basically, starts with light wounds and higher levels add the others. Each one can be cast a number of times per day equal to 1 + Ability modifier to a minimum of 1). IMO it's the lowest bookeeping fix I've seen though other may have seen better.

In case you can't find it my Paladin is here.