Musing: Paladins

I had made an offhand mention in my first D/D Dwarf entry about paladins being a human only class. As I thought about it, I actually came up with a fairly descent idea as to why that is within the context of the setting.

Paladins are part of the Militant Order of one particular god of good, law, and all that upstanding stuff (as to which god, we'll figure that out when we start hammering out the religion in the game). Paladins are a lot like special forces or the U.S. Marine Corps; highly trained, first in/last out, off doing things that regular armed forces can't handle. The paladins are trained in Ashford Bay, but maintain outposts throughout the Isles. The Order also has a strict "humans only" policy, stemming from their belief that the god they worship only grants divine protection, blessing, and ability to humans (whether or not that is true hasn't been tested, it also means clerics to this god are only human as well due to the same "ideal")

Much like the above mention Marine Corps, while many paladins are out there doing the right things for the right reasons, some think they're much better then everyone else. They have an air of haughtiness to them, they are the best of the best, and many take their oaths of routing out evil to the extreme, making them zealots along the lines of the Inquisition. This makes many paladins assholes, but assholes that fight the good fight, which can make for good characterization.

Design and Development: Paladins, Part 1

The Paladin was always an interesting class for me. On one hand, I understand what they were going with, as the Wiki entry for Paladin shows. They are the holiest and most chivalrous of knights and because of that, certain powers are bestowed upon them.

Now, in the real world, these knights mostly came from Christianity, and, because of that, they represented a relatively Good and Lawful god, because Christianity is monotheistic and they have no Chaotic or Evil gods.

However, in most D&D worlds, those gods exist, and worshipers of them are generally tolerated throughout the land. Worshiping or paying homage to a Chaotic god doesn't mean you're instantly evil and ostracized. So, the question is, why do the Lawful Good gods have Paladins, but the neutral and chaotic (and also evil if said alignment is used) do not?

Now, in our earlier Deminar project we turned Paladins into "Holy Knights," bestowing a variety of powers that were offshoots of the classic paladins based on what god the Holy Knight followed.

The question is, do we want to do that in this LL/AEC version of Deminar? If we do, the idea is to keep things as simple as possible, classes should be easy to follow, as they are in all AEC, so we can't make so many options based on each individual god or something like that. Someone who wants to play a Thief and someone who wants to play a "revised" version of a Paladin (or Holy Knight if we stick to that name) should be able to make it through character creation at roughly the same time.

So, if we do make the class more mutable to allow for the worship of different gods (or, to boil it down, different alignments) then we may need to tweak some abilities. For this post, I'm just going to list them, and after reading some discussion and making my own ideals, I'll post a follow up a few days later.

The abilities/features of a Paladin:

Should a paladin knowingly act in a chaotic way, only confession and paying penance to a cleric of 7th level or higher will remove the mark of the sin. However, committing an evil act is unforgivable, and a paladin immediately loses all special class abilities and becomes an ordinary fighter of equal level, with the lowest possible experience points.

Paladins may only have (1) magical suit of armor, (1) magical shield, (4) magical weapons (not counting magical arrows or quarrels), and (4) miscellaneous magical items. Paladins may only keep small amounts of money, and pay 10% of all earnings to a church. Any excess items or money found must be donated to the paladin's church or another worthy church of similar alignment and moral code.

Note that paladins may only ever hire lawful henchman.

Paladins will adventure with chaotic characters, but they will cease to do so with characters who commit evil acts.

They may "Lay on Hands" once per day to heal 2 hp per level to a wounded being.

They may cure disease 1 time per day, per every 5 levels.

Paladins are immune to disease.

They may detect evil to 60', as the spell, when concentrating.

They radiate protection from evil in a 10' radius at all times.

Paladins receive +2 to all saving throws.

At 3rd level paladins are able to turn undead as a cleric 2 levels lower.

A paladin may summon a special war horse, but only one time each 10 years. The horse has AC 5, HD 5+5, and movement of 180' (60').

Paladins gain the ability to cast clerical spells. However, they may not use cleric spell scrolls. Paladins do not attract followers.