Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General I HATE the Oath Breaker Paladin

I have been someone that has enjoyed playing Paladins since ADnD 1E. I love the idea of the noble warrior fighting for a greater cause. While the 5th edition rules opened up what a Paladin could be, those rules are guidelines, as are all rules in DnD. The primary rule creator is the lore and the GM. So when Larian summarily decided to drop Deity selection in creation of a Paladin I was very disappointed. This is lore for the Forgotten Realms. The whole system however, in my opinion gets WORSE with the Oath Breaker.

The idea of a Paladin had always been that a Paladin is a "Holy" warrior. His power comes from his ties to a higher power. However when a Paladin broke those ties, knowingly did something against the nature of his calling, he lost those extra powers and became just another fighter. He could not buy his way back, he had to undertake a great quest to establish his worthiness and this often require a great personal sacrifice. Larian really missed an opportunity with this to have some great spin off adventures. However for simplicity stake I understood this.

It got worse however as they gave us the Oath Breaker. Understand I am not opposed to an "evil" Paladin but even they had rules they had to abide or lost their powers. The implementation of the Oath breaker however in BG3 is screwed up in my opinion. Instead of a Paladin losing his way and falling from grace, he pivots. This very concept by the understanding of a Paladin makes ZERO sense in lore. If he is so weak willed one act can pivot his oath to another then his oath was weak from the start and would have never been worthy of being a Paladin.

Knowing that they threw out the lore, we quickly see they why. You see there is no penalty for becoming an Oath Breaker, in fact it is something of a reward. An Oath Breaker is still a Paladin but now has no oath to follow. Be good or bad, no one cares. Be purely chaotic, no one cares. The Oath Breaker as implemented is a cheap way to break the game and let a Paladin just be a spell casting fighter. It removes all that made a Paladin an interesting class to play.

While people are talking about various romances and sex scenes, focused on who sex's who. I look at the game and am sad, because an ICONIC class in DnD has been neutered and not only do we not get an explanation into why, we get no one crying out about it.

I think it's more of a Roleplaying options than it is a mechanic.

There are people who complains that their oath broke easily, meaning that some/many people think it is not a reward becoming an Oath Breaker.

I personally think the fix is simple: once you broke your oath you are barred from picking "good dialogue options". You're forced to be evil. That's your "penalty". And you'll given hard, potion consuming, item breaking quest to get back to proper Paladin Path.

The legacy of Baldur's Gate 3. Sex and memes.

I am sorry my friend but they never ever will do something to fix issues balance the game.
They will just add barbershop ripper doc to give genderswapping option. Give Halsing a horse form to better fit the sex scene. Dye Gortash hair to pink. Shave the squirrel at the grove. And so on and so on. No wonder the game arrived to Southpark.

Joke aside split screen is completely broken since patch 3. High tier rtx 4080 needs now 6min to load the textures in the city. If you change settings the game crashes. The game have the most easy difficulty that I have seen in years in any cRPG.

Yes it's bull s what they have done with paladin but this is the smallest problem of BG3.

I hate the whole idea of Oaths giving Paladins power. I much prefer the holy warrior who received strength from a deity in earlier editions.

I think the "oath" thing was just put in for people who wanted to play a paladin but didn't want to be religious. I suspect the same thing would happen to the cleric also if WotC could figure out how.

And I agree, being a fallen paladin should mean something. It should hurt, as opposed to being a character build goal.

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I always preferred the anti-paladin from the old Dragon magazine for evil paladins.

Even BG1+2 already had evil Paladins, though not originally. They became an official [prestige] class (Blackguard) with D&D3.

I have conflict feelings about it. On one side I like the concept of oathbreaker itself, on the other side i don't like it implementation. Oathbreaker should feel like a punishment, not like an alternative. It either should feel weaker or change completely it playstile.

A think about oathbreaker that people seens to mistake is that oathbreaker isn't an evil paladin. An evil paladin is just like a good one, just with a different oath (and can oathbreak all the same)

But what bothers me much more than oathbreaker is the fine to recover your oath mechanic. This one not only feels like a cheat, it's an extreme dissonance with other narrative options in the game. If a choose to kill astarion when he tries to bite me, I can't resurrect him. Despite having a character just there that does exactly that! This is logic, as withers resurrection is just for resolve gameplay issues (combat) not to let you cheese the narrative of the game.

What I mean is that narrative decisions in the game usually have consecuences, except for paladins apparently. Break oath should be forever, I suposse that it's there for people that accidentally break their oaths but it would be easy to just add a warning about it ( a bracket text in the choices saying break oath or something like that. It should be easy to add, as the information is already in the game files, there's a mod that do it). Some people will see that as kind of spoiler, but it isn't becasue not knowing when something break a oath is just knowlewdge difference between what the player knows and what our character knows. Our character should always know when a decision is going to break their oaths

I know nothing about dnd paladins. Does it make sense that a paladin Durge has their oath in the beginning of the game?

Speaking about how paladins currently work in 5e, I don't think dropping deity selection is really all that big a deal. I think that focusing the class on its oath, the specific cause the character is devoted to is a good way to simplify the character while still giving it plenty of flavor, because I genuinely think that wotc is assuming people are still going to pick deities for their paladins, because why wouldn't you? It just means that the flavor of the paladin isn't directly dependant on the god themselves, which isn't a bad thing in my books. To use Pathfinder 2e as an example, I think that system is great, and paladins (the actual class is called the Champion, of which paladins are actually a subclass) are more directly tied to their deities in that system and I think it works, but it did have one particular issue to it. which is that each subclass was tied to a an alignment: paladins are lawful good, Redeemers, paladins who are all about forgiveness and redeeming even the wicked are neutral good, and liberators are chaotic good and all about freeing those in bondage (there are evil champions for evil alignments but I don't need to go into them right now). Well, that system works overall but it could get into strange territory at times. THe most notable and easiest to explain being the issue with Champions of Pharasma, the goddess of the dead. SHh's a classic neutral arbiter of the dead type god, all about fairly, imppartially judging souls and sending them to their proper plane. Makes sense that most of her champions would be Paladins, right? devoted to the idea of fairness and order and all that jazz while slaying the undead, etc. But because Pharasma is a neutral deity she can only have Redeemer paladins, which don't fit her flavor-wise. I see 5e's approach as more being aimed at preventing that situation rather than being aimed at making godless paladins the default status quo.

Regarding the BG3 imnplementation specifically, I think that the issue is that with the way oathbrkeaing works, creating a questline for it is just unfeasible. Because they decided that you could accidentally break your oath, they couldn't have the solution be a narrative one. As someone else said, this is a mechanical solution to what they percieved asd a mechanical problem. Larian simply did not view oathbreaking as a major, character-defining moment, and their implementation of this reflects that. Which I agree is the inferior approach.

Agree with everything you say except one thing - why do you blame Larian for this? It's WotC invention. You know, in line with "no players ever should feel punished for their choices, no matter what they do". JandK is right, once they WotC find out how to do the same thing with clerics, we will get a "broken cleric" or something (hell, we already have attempts of "atheist-cleric").

The blame for Larian is the implementation within the game. There was no reason to remove deity selection for Paladins, this was an arbitrary decision that actual goes against Forgotten Realms lore.

As for the Oathbreaker, there are other ways it could have been implemented. I said I think the idea of choice is good so having an "evil" Paladin for character creation is fine with me. However the falling of a Paladin as many have noted should be a punishment, not a side step. I get the limitations of a quest. Especially since that mechanic would be abused with people just repeatedly running the side quest. (More on that in a moment) There is also the fact that the game mechanics for determining if you have "fallen" is complex.

The solution within game mechanics and "reasonable" design choices is not overly complex. First a Fallen Paladin becomes a fighter at the same level. I would say either a Battlemaster or Champion. Both by description fit a traditional Paladin. Second if you fall and want redemption there is a steep penalty. Instead of 1000 GP make that number jump to 3000 and then if you do it again it doubles, and again it doubles. The doubling means that it will not be worth it to just pay the goal and act any way you like without consequence.

Clerics, as you are all noting end up posing a whole new set of issues. But we can save that for another thread

I like the idea of a fallen paladin reverting to a fighter - and I'm sure this is more or less what happened in 3e? Your lost your divine powers. An anti-paladin/blackguard was something quite different - either by origin (choice) or as a consequence of some terribly evil act when a paladin.

I think if you 'fall' as a paladin you shouldn't just pay a GP amount to get back on track. There should be some sort of short quest to recover your status - and a flag set so that if you do it again, you can't atone a second time. That said oathbreaker is way to easy to trigger in BG3 (often unknowingly) ...

I played a paladin on my initial run and was always worried about smacking the wrong thing lest I break my oath. In tabletop, I played the same paladin and that was never an issue...bad guys were bad guys, end of story. All these moral quandries about smiting a goblin (because they didn't attack you first - even though it was clear they were about to etc).

This is something we have seen in gaming for a while now, the removal of defined right and wrong lines for game protagonists and the hazing into pure ranges of grey.

I agree that the Oathbreaker as implemented is stupid.
Good - usualy, or Evil, Paladins always have been LAWFUL.
Something which the Oathbreaker is not, as the class is about being Chaotic with Evil tendencies.
With Allignment gone, the Oaths were to represent the Lawful aspect of the Paladin.
Holy Warrior? A Fighter with Divine spells? - as things stand in BG3 IMO Ranger - with " Ranger Knight" favourite enemy - is closest to the concept.

I'd be hapy to have Paladn "as is" axed, instead at lvl 3 of Fighter there being be a 4th subclass called Paladin (Crusader?), a mirror image of Eldritch Knight but wth Clerical spells.


BTW - would it kill Larian to limit choice of Domains to 2-3 favoured by the selected Deity? E.g. I do not quite see Gruumsh approving of his Priesthood selecting Knowledge or Life Domain, for instance ...
I loved how in WFRPG the entry for War Priest - open to all Cults, even e.g. Goddes of Geeky Nerd's 'R' Us Verena, as "the priesthood takes in all kinds nowdays, while in my time ...", nevertheless flately stated - Profession cannot be entered by Clerics of Shallya (Goddes of Life, Compassion and Healing).

Well Zentu the only thing that I love about Oath Breaker is it let me play BG3 w/o respec my character for my feedback video series . Out of that i whould like to start as OB pally from the begging.

Well i always saw the Oathbreaker in this Game much More like a DeathKeena..
becouse he kinda feels pretty chaotic evil.. but thats actually nothing new in this game..
they just took some heavy liberties in the classes..
like the Warlock the coolest lock there are its the Pact of the Blade in table Top..
but hear they just make the Pact of the Chain something a lot inferior to the real deal.
(if yu want to Replicate a True Pact of the Blade yu will have to Mix with Fighter..)

but indeed the oathbreaker idea its Weird..haha
(it would have been a lot better if yu was able to choose your deity, then yu just go with a evil god if yu want..)

I made the Anti-Paladin class from 2nd Ed for this game (as closely as possible) as a mod. You can find it on the Nexus by searching for 'Anti-Paladin'.

Oath Breaker Paladin is my favourite class. My only complaint is having to go through the process of breaking it. We should be able to start oath broken .

*shrug*

In principle, I agree.

But its in the D&D5 rules.

In fact even D&D3 already had the Blackguard prestige class.

And thanks to the EEs, we already have Blackguards in BG1+2, and as a (rule violating and useless and poorly written) party companion.

the only down side of the oathbreaker, for me, is you can't respec .. Because with the actual game mechanics it means you would/might go back to paladin restoring your oath .. for 100 box ..

Instead, if you could respec, say you would like to pick Bard for 6 level then 2 paladin (force it to oathbreaker if you still have that condition), and then continue with Bards, "that" would be awesome.