Opinion on 5e Paladins

[Karam]

This discussion is both about BG3 and DnD 5e, I just want to hear some opinions.

I used to play dnd since I was a child and not long ago I started my first 5e campaign after not playing for about 5 years or so, and I discovered via the PHB (and Baldur's gate) that a Paladin does not require a patron deity, and now paladins get their divine power through their strong conviction in the oath itself, Which sounds like a lame excuse to me, but that's just my opinion.

So I want to hear some opinions on the matter, when you play a paladin in your table do you prefer keeping him godless or roleplay as a servant to a Deity?

And in BG3, do you think they made the right decision removing the option to choose a Deity as a Paladin and keeping it a cleric exclusive thing? Because honestly I'd be happy to play as a Paladin of Bahamut without taking a dip into a cleric for that.

[Dusk_Army]

As a player of 3.5e, I do prefer still picking a patron deity in 5e even when it isn't required to be a Paladin. I feel it gives the character additional depth, plus some better guidance for the DM as to what constitutes breaking my oath. As far as BG3 goes, I think Larian could have handled deities a little better. Essentially boiling everyone down to being either a Cleric or non-religous is weird, especially when there are prominent NPCs and organizations that do have known deities and aren't Clerics.

[Isengrym]

@ Raz: That makes sense. I hadn't thought through the interplay of deity and oath; I can see how that could be a massive programming headache.

@ Mike Garrison: Thanks for the recommendation! I've read and enjoyed a few of T. Kingfisher's books, but I haven't read the Paladin series.

I really like the 5e take on paladins generally. I'm fine with the oath itself being a source of power, and I feel it leaves room for different settings and campaigns to spin it different ways. That said--I may be a bit out date here--it used to be that in the Forgotten Realms specifically, *everyone* needed a patron deity or else they'd end up in the Wall of the Faithless. Given that, I kind of wish every player character in BG3 could choose a deity, as it seems fitting. By all means, include the option of "none" as well, but it would have been nice to have the choice. It would have been more work, though, and there is so much detail in the game already, I can't blame Larian too much for not taking that on.

Re: people not wanting to play paladins: I'm an atheist myself, and paladin is among my favorite D&D classes. I did get the feeling sometimes when playing one in tabletop that I was making things harder for other party members, which is uncomfortable. I suspect sometimes people don't want to play them because they figure others don't want to play *with* a paladin. Even in a generally heroic party, the traditional inflexibility of a paladin could create problems. 5e's loosening of the paladin's strictures strikes me as an appealing balance between the class's intended fettered status and the practical reality faced by adventurers. There are still rules, but paladins aren't required to be lawful stupid now.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by Isengrym:

@ Mike Garrison: Thanks for the recommendation! I've read and enjoyed a few of T. Kingfisher's books, but I haven't read the Paladin series.

The whole set of those books is fantastic.

Swordheart

Clockwork Boys, The Wonder Engine

Paladin's Grace, Paladin's Strength, Paladin's Hope, Paladin's Faith

They share characters across all the books, but especially the Paladin books do so. Each one for the four focuses on a different Paladin.

[Raz]

Originally posted by Isengrym:

That said--I may be a bit out date here--it used to be that in the Forgotten Realms specifically, *everyone* needed a patron deity or else they'd end up in the Wall of the Faithless. Given that, I kind of wish every player character in BG3 could choose a deity, as it seems fitting. By all means, include the option of "none" as well, but it would have been nice to have the choice. It would have been more work, though, and there is so much detail in the game already, I can't blame Larian too much for not taking that on.

This is correct. This is even touched upon within the game itself with Gale. Because Mystra is pissed at him, Gale's Soul is not claimed by her upon his death and he is sent to the Fugue plane. When she forgives him, his Soul is then claimed by Mystra when he dies. Gale complains that the Fugue plan is quite depressing, and oppressive to the Soul and did was only there fore a few minutes at most if you revive him outside of combat.

[Karam]

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

As a player of 3.5e, I do prefer still picking a patron deity in 5e even when it isn't required to be a Paladin. I feel it gives the character additional depth, plus some better guidance for the DM as to what constitutes breaking my oath. As far as BG3 goes, I think Larian could have handled deities a little better. Essentially boiling everyone down to being either a Cleric or non-religous is weird, especially when there are prominent NPCs and organizations that do have known deities and aren't Clerics.

I agree, it leads to a lot of great roleplay scenarios. For example in my current campaign I play as a Gold Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut (very original I know) and my friend plays as an elf wizard who is basically a pyromancer, who's so obsessed with fire he decided to follow my religion just to hope to see what a Dragon god's breath weapon is like one day. At one point we were praying at a grave when we were ambushed, the DM rolled for an attack roll on both of us, and got two natural ones in a row. We claim it was because of the presence of Bahamut.

[fulf]

I got no problem with 5e paladin oaths but they're really cringe in BG3
because the whole point is that it requires close collaboration with the DM which you obviously can't have in a video game. Similar problem to Warlocks, the roleplay and class fantasy just isn't there
Deity selection should just be an option for every character regardless of class.

[seeker1]

You can have all characters choose a deity with mods; easy to restore as Larian originally set up things that way, then took it out on release.

That said, you'll only see reactivity to your choice if your character is a cleric OR paladin (not druid) -- they coded reactivity for paladins, so thought about it, but again took it out before release. (And even then, it's limited reactivity, for certain deities, in certain situations. A lot more reactions for Selune than Bahamut.) For the most part, it's mostly flavor.

As for warlocks and their patrons, well, sure, Wyll has plenty of interaction with Mizora (probably more than he would like), but Tav/player warlocks pretty much have none; Larian didn't do much with that.

The one interesting aspect of Oath of the Crown is, unlike other paladin mods, I suspect Larian will code in oathbreaking for it, like the other vanilla subclasses. (Most paladin mods either base oathbreaking on a vanilla oath, or simply ignore that aspect of the game.)

On a final point, Larian didn't use alignment in the game, and some people erroneously claim 5E doesn't use alignment anymore. This isn't true. But, it stopped making paladins alignment restricted. Like Minthara, they do not have to be LG (or good at all), nor serve good deities (if they have one). In previous D & D iterations, paladins could lose their powers for going against their alignment and wishes of their deity, instead of now oathbreaking being the offense.

But back then, the Oathbreaker didn't exist. If you lost your paladin powers, you didn't even get any "dark side" powers for doing so. You simply became an ordinary Fighter with no powers at all. And yes, there was a process for Atonement with your deity and alignment, (which back then was always LG), and only doing that could get your paladin powers back.

[BigJ]

The latest update for 5e limits smite to once per turn...which is kind of dumb way to "fix" paladins bursting down things, since instead the casters will just haste the barb or rogue.

WotC keep trying to balance things as if they are in esports, which results in horrible things like what they did to wildshape.

And people wonder why Pathfinder ruleset is getting more popular. Thankfully Larian didn't follow current 5e.

[GM Alexandria]

Originally posted by BigJ:

The latest update for 5e limits smite to once per turn...which is kind of dumb way to "fix" paladins bursting down things, since instead the casters will just haste the barb or rogue.

WotC keep trying to balance things as if they are in esports, which results in horrible things like what they did to wildshape.

And people wonder why Pathfinder ruleset is getting more popular.

PF2E is great, love it.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by BigJ:

WotC keep trying to balance things as if they are in esports

What they are trying to prevent is the thing where you have a paladin in your party and every combat is simply "the paladin kills the monster". That may be fun for the paladin, but isn't fun for the rest of the party.

Sure, they could try to put it all on the DMs to come up with ways to keep everyone else engaged, or they could just try to nerf to smites a little.

[BigJ]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Originally posted by BigJ:

WotC keep trying to balance things as if they are in esports

What they are trying to prevent is the thing where you have a paladin in your party and every combat is simply "the paladin kills the monster". That may be fun for the paladin, but isn't fun for the rest of the party.

Sure, they could try to put it all on the DMs to come up with ways to keep everyone else engaged, or they could just try to nerf to smites a little.

So it's instead replaced with rogue kills monster? Or Druid wild shape is just druid but temp hp and no uniqueness to it.

[[TG] zac]

Originally posted by BigJ:

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

What they are trying to prevent is the thing where you have a paladin in your party and every combat is simply "the paladin kills the monster". That may be fun for the paladin, but isn't fun for the rest of the party.

Sure, they could try to put it all on the DMs to come up with ways to keep everyone else engaged, or they could just try to nerf to smites a little.

So it's instead replaced with rogue kills monster? Or Druid wild shape is just druid but temp hp and no uniqueness to it.

That is something I have always found weird about 5e vs pathfinder 2e.

5e the druid wild shape gives temp HP and the forms have an natural attack & that animal's move speed but that is about it.

PF2e you don't get temp HP but defenses scale with your level and training in unarmored skill, the forms give you a number of natural attacks, you can still do the push, shove, trip, restrain stuff like all martials do and on top of that they all have a number of other abilities like dark vision, blind sense, scent etc....

If you are changing into the animal it is nice to know you definitely get all those abilities and its nice to know precisely what they do.
Not having it all laid out clearly can lead to all kinds of rules arguments.

[GM Alexandria]

Originally posted by TG zac:

That is something I have always found weird about 5e vs pathfinder 2e.

5e the druid wild shape gives temp HP and the forms have an natural attack & that animal's move speed but that is about it.

PF2e you don't get temp HP but defenses scale with your level and training in unarmored skill, the forms give you a number of natural attacks, you can still do the push, shove, trip, restrain stuff like all martials do and on top of that they all have a number of other abilities like dark vision, blind sense, scent etc....

If you are changing into the animal it is nice to know you definitely get all those abilities and its nice to know precisely what they do.
Not having it all laid out clearly can lead to all kinds of rules arguments.

That's just normal PF2E compared to 5e, tbh. PF2E gives way more options to martials and monsters/creatures, which wild shape druids basically are both of.

[Chaosolous]

I made Karlach a paladin on my first run.

She smited everything. It was a bit OP.

Playing a pally though, is super boring.

[Talbot]

Originally posted by Minnzy:

I honestly thought the change was just so people would play them. In my 2e and 3e lifetime the amount of times people would refuse to play them, I kid you not because "I'm an atheist" was more than the 0 it should have been. The few others that weren't that dumb seemed to always believe Paladins were lawful stupid so not much better honestly.

Eh, IDK, I get not wanting to be forced to play a religious character if that's not appealing to you. Like if someone likes the idea of Paladin because they think a heavy knight with a code and minor spellcasting is cool but their character concept doesn't jive with being a zealot, that's valid, whether or not they're an IRL atheist.

I actually think the oaths are good workaround for that, though IMO may as well let Paladins do oaths and/or deities, just for more options.