Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Disapointed with Paladin

As i see it, Paladins don't need a deity, but every character should have the option to follow a deity, like you have in Pathfinder games.

I'm not disappointed with Paladin personally, i am more disappointed that there is still no plate armor in the EA, although you get teased with cool Oathbreaker armor etc.

I guess they leave the good stuff with armors and such for the final release, after they polish it as well.

Early access.

Post of the year here guys

Alpha/beta is the best time for feedback, if you wish anything changing, it got the reaction system tweaked, ao hope for other things too.

Don't forget Lathander!! Playing a paladin of Lathander is one of my favorite characters over the many years I've played D&D.

Sure. But I'd go a little further and say that unlike optionally picking a deity with other classes, with the paladin class it should work somewhat similar to the cleric class in that IF you pick a deity that deity choice will matter within your class and in how your class works.

Paladin abilities in the 5e manuals (supplements included) talks about showing your holy symbol to execute abilities for most subclasses. The holy symbol is non-optional in the starter equipment in the PHB. The class description mention using divine powers (Channel Divinity, Divine Sense, Divine Smite, Divine Health) and swearing your oath to an higher power to fulfill some holy quest. It even give a list of gods your paladin could follow.

Reading the PHB class description, I do not have the impression that WoTC wanted most Paladins to not follow a god/swear their oaths to one. Also, it pretty much says they are supposed to be good aligned and act as a tool against the force of evil (as defined by alignments). WoTC wrote Paladin as if they were still in an edition pre-5e. Oathbreaker even has "any evil" as alignment restriction in the DMG.

As a result, the lack of god selection and no alignment in BG3 is causing issues for Paladins. Larian had to go strict with the oath tenets/code of conduct (no live GM to customize to the player's wish, no gods to change the pov of them) and Oathbreaking doesn't have an evil alignment requirement, which means it is available right away after breaking once even if it was for kicking someone evil.

Yeah, I was on reddit earlier and someone posted this quote from the phb:

“a paladin’s power comes as much from a commitment to justice itself as it does from a god"

Apparently the SCAG specifically points out the connection between gods and paladins.

Lastly, Ed Greenwood mentioned how atonement works, and also mentioned the phb:

"If a paladin transgresses against their oath, the usual absolution, as the PHB states, is to seek absolution from a cleric of the same faith. "(emphasis mine)

I don't have access to the SCAG or PHB right now, so someone else would have to verify this, but it's pretty clear to me that deities and paladins still have a strong connection in 5e Forgotten Realms, and that the oft-repeated claim that 'in 5e (Forgotten Realms) you don't need a deity anymore to be a paladin is some sort of fanon/misreading that's just been repeated enough times that people just take it as factual without looking into it.

lol, so their oath is NOT to a deity, but to absolve their going against their oath, they need a deity.

5e Paladins seem really strange. It's as if they wanted to remove the religious requirement from them but realized that it was sort of at the core of being a Paladin and couldn't really take it all out.

edit: spelling

With the alignment system being so intertwined with the paladin class, it's no wonder that it suffers the most from 5e's attempt to downplay and remove it. I kind of half-remember there was speculation that the entire class would be removed at one point, I can't remember when that was.

I'd like to see deity options added, and I'd like to see the paladin oaths fleshed out a bit. I'm playing an Ancients paladin right now, and I am not really sure what my oath requires. I get that I am supposed to stand for the sanctity of life and beauty of nature. But what exactly does that require of me?

That being said... early access.

I do I have PHB, the "breaking your oath" section full quote is: "A paladin who has broken a vow typically seeks absolution from a cleric who share his or her faith or from another paladin of the same order".

I do not know if there are non-Faith based Paladin Orders in the Forgotten Realms, since the one I've seen have at least one "patron" deity. And absolution is the forgiveness of sins...

That section also give examples that cause broken oaths: "Sometimes a situation calls for the lesser of two evils, and sometimes the heat of the emotion cause a paladin to transgress his or her oath". Oath breaking should be pretty commons, but for small things you just go to the confessional to clear it up. Talking to the Oathbreaker Knight fills that role in the game, since he ask you why you did it and you can pay him to atone.

I'm not quite sure if the belief is a fanon telephone thing. I think WoTC promoted it that way officially and their words were given more weight than what they wrote in the PHB/DMG. Also, in other official supplements they released Paladin subclasses that fits their no alignment/no god idea better. But some of them don't really feel like Paladin to me, they just happen to use the class structure for abilities.

They could have named the class Warlord or just plain Knight if what they wanted to do was a non-divine support warrior class too.

edit:
I actually think Larian should go homebrew with the oaths and put gods back in:
Devotion is fine as the classical justice/honor/goody-two-shoes Paladin. Meant for good/neutral gods.
Of the Ancient should be purely nature themed instead of the weird nature abilities but good/beauty/art oath tenets it has in the PHB. Meant for nature related gods.
Vengeance should allow the player to select their sworn enemy/enemies (because "greater evil" is rather vague). Works for any gods.

Yes, completely agree, this seems to be one of the REALLY strange parts of 5e D&D.

The Paladin, along with the Ranger were the first "hybrid" classes that combined elements from two of the basic classes (Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Thief). They appeared along with the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaign settings ( 1970s ), long before Ed Greenwood was approached to collaborate on the Forgotten Realms.

The Paladin was based on the notion of religious orders ( like the Templars, Hospitallers or Teutonic Order ) mixed in with the medieval romantic fantasy stories surrounding the european dark age knights, including "The Knights of the Round Table" of Arthurian legend, and the "Counts Palatine" that were the Carolingian Emperor's equivalent of the Round Table, and from whom the Paladin name is derived.

From a mechanics viewpoint, the original Paladin was a D&D fighter, dedicated to a specific deity, from whom it received it's non-fighter powers, including Turning Undead, Cleric Spells, "Lay on Hands" healing, and receiving a magical war-horse. Neither the Cleric, nor the Paladin posessed or learned any "innate" magical powers ( unlike the Wizard ), but instead prayed to their deity to act as a conduit for that deity's power.

To the best of my recollection, the original Paladin could only be Lawful/Good in alignment, but no particular deity was specified; the L/G alignment would obviously limit the deities a Paladin could worship. I can't swear to it, but up to and including 3e my recollection is that the Paladin was little changed, and was definitely connected to a particular deity, because that was the source of their power, just as with clerics. In terms of the Forgotten Realms, Paladins usually worshipped Tyr, Torm or Helm; deities that allied with each other. It is likely that a Paladin of any of these gods would revere the others also, but their power came from a singular god they worshipped, and that power could be withdrawn if the Paladin misbehaved.

This obviously leaves a big hole where neutral, chaotic and evil deities don't have equivalent religious fighters. That was partly filled with an "anti-Paladin" class, called the Blackguard, for evil deities ( Neverwinter Nights featured Aribeth, a Paladin that fell from grace to become a Blackguard ), and I suspect there may have been other classes in 3e/3.5e, but that was after I stopped playing the TT game.

But the 5e Paladin seems to be an attempt to "rationalize" the religious warrior class by removing alignment...and possibly religion...which is definitely strange to me. The idea seems to be inspired by the oath-swearing warriors of the Celtic and Germanic dark-age tradition to de-emphasize the direct relatonship to a deity ( which is in itself odd, as these dark-age warriors typically invoked deities in their oaths).

But this then leaves the Paladin as having a "power source" that is simply the power of their conviction, which is somewhat meaningless in the context of D&D non-arcane magic, which is otherwise rooted firmly in deties ( including druidic deities ). To me. this is a particularly unsatisfying and botched class concept, but that is a WotC choice rather than Larian.

Reading through this, I wonder if some of these people have actually played D&D before. Paladins have ALWAYS been tied to a deity, where do you think they get their Paladin powers and more importantly their spells? They are clerical spells, they get them the same way a cleric does. A Paladin is a Holy Warrior of his chosen deity. Back in the day you HAD to be Lawful Good, at least these days that's not as big of a thing, as I believe if you are a holy warrior of a god that is LN, then you should be LN, not LG.. But I digress. The Paladins in this game are broken, they force you to follow some oath that you get no choice about, you attack Evil Creatures that are red/aggressive to you and you break you Oath... again what Oath? The whole system seems rushed and broken. IF I was playing a Paladin of Lathander he's not going to mind me killing evil goblins, orcs, etc, etc... Why would I break my oath by attacking and killing them. Personally I believe the whole Paladin class as done at the moment really needs to be reconsidered.

Read the description of your Paladin's armor in-game.
Devotion should be easy to understand.
Of the Ancient is going to sound vague but it is straight out of the PHB.

Both of the oath should appear somewhere else in the UI. Not everyone read in-game item descriptions.

Also, Larian didn't invent the oath system, WoTC did.

Paladins should have the option to follow a deity.

If the Oath is the source of their power, than I will be the first Paladin to serve A.O. And actually hove powers . I will unit the realm under the banner of the one true god lol.

A nun is the female version of a monk.
In the real world monks/nuns are usually followers of a specific religion too.
In my opinion, every char should be able to select a diety, including the choice none.

Back to cleric/paladin.
In DnD both clerics and paladins usually get there power directly from a god.
I think the difference is not their connection to that diety, it´s just if they focus their training more on spell casting (cleric) or more on martial combat (paladin).
Paladins have an oath, but this oath is made to someone. I guess they get trained in a temple (just like clerics) and at the end of their training they: "By ... I swear to follow these tenets" and then they become full paladins.

I say usually clerics and paladins have a diety because their power could also come from another powerful creature.
I was told that the difference to a warlock is that clerics worship this creature while warlocks have a pact with it.

side note: According to PHB paladins chose their oath at lv3.

I'm well aware, but the word "monk" can be misinterpreted in our context.
And I didn't say anything against them being followers of a religion. I said that it's wrong to put D&D Clerics below them or their Paladin-equivalent.

I'm unsure how I feel about paladins in BG3 so far.

The mechanics are cool, the class is a powerhouse, the srating armor bangs etc.

But the core of roleplaying a paladin is... meh. I get that most of the things are effects of the various EA bugs, but there are a few things that stand out. Like the deity, I know the 5ed paladins don't need a chosen deity. Even Anders (not sure I got his name right?), the oathbreaker we meet during the Karlach quest clearly was a paladin of Tyr, now sworn to a devil. During a dialogue with him we can even say something about him "betraying our god to serve a devil" or something in those lines.

What god? Did the game defult us to following Tyr?

Second thing is keeping our oaths. Now, bear in mind, that was probably a bug, but I got the "oh no, I have broken my oath" prompt when I freed Halsin and we started to have fun with the goblins. More specificially it was just after I landed a killing blow on priestess Gut, that is why I asumed it was a bug.

Otherwise where does this leave us? We can't kill a bunch of monsters that plan on and already killed refugees? That kidnapped and torured Halsin?

And the last thing, which was mentioned in this thread I believe - we need an option to start as an Oathbreaker. Because why not? Not many people (I think? or hope?) start as a tabula rasa, our journey begane before we got snatched up to the nautiloid - lots of opportunities to break our oaths before

Playing a bit more of the paladin shows me they originally planned for it to have a deity, but for some dumb reason removed it. When you have a conversation with Gale about using magic you mention how your magic comes from prayer and during another conversation you directly state that your oath was taken in service to your deity. What deity? -_-