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

Warlock are those magically inclined people who didn't want to or couldn't get classes from the reputed arcane teachers like Wizards do, so they went to find a creepy untrustworthy teacher and signed a servitude pact instead. Their abilities are mostly learned via studies, from the PHB: Drawing on the ancient knowledge of beings such as fey nobles, demons, devils, hags and alien entities of the Far Realms, warlocks pieces together arcane secrets to bolster their own (magical) power.

Cleric and Paladin don't study to get their abilities, they are granted.


Paladin used to have a deity selection. It was disabled in the UI for patch 9, but they haven't removed all the reference in dialogues and it default. Ethel's vicious mockery apparently refer to Lolth as the Paladin's god (it might require playing a Drow, I'm not sure).

There is another place in-game that refers to Paladin having divine power too. The sentient door in Ethel lair has a cutscene that has the narrator mention Paladins with divine powers came to visit (and that scene was added in patch 8). If all the NPCs Paladin are divine powered, but ours can't have a chosen deity to be, it's going to feel really weird while playing.

Weird is one way of putting it. Now that you mention autie Ethel I do recall the cutscene showing those paladins, was wondering if my memory started to get worse since last patch or it was a new one

Didn't get to the Gale dialogue, as his cutscenes stopped triggering at some point. I started a new playthrough after testing the paladin to level 4 (didn't get to 5, as I got annoyed at both Gale's dialogue being broken AND me breaking my oath out of the blue), let's see what else is...newly broken

What a mess

Well, let's be glad they're putting this in early to work out the kinks I guess!

Paladins of specific Deities exist, the game acknowledges that paladins of no gods also exist.

The problem is that in faerun, being godless has serious repercussions and almost all magic comes from gods.

It could ve easily homebrewed and say that your powers come from your conviction alone, and your oath.

I personally don't want to be forced to pick a deity, but I don't mind in the end.

I hope they are, and the EA is not reflective of the build they keep private

Sure, I get that. But at the end of the day the game constantly insinuates that you *do* have a chosen diety while keeping it awfully vague as to who might it be.

And as much as I believe in holding the middle ground, keeping everyone happy, this one is not one of those situations where you get to keep the cake and eat it (or how this saying goes). You either should be able to pick a diety or not and have it reflected in flavor dialogue. Or stick with just one of those options and not put in confusing dialogues all over the place

I think the paladin has a tag that adds a deity anyway like the cleric, at least in the game files. So we'll see.

Just make it so you can choose a deity or an oath or both. I don't want to have to use a mod to add something that should have been in the game to begin with. >_<

The thing is, we're not talking about the concept of paladins generically, including within D&D 5e, but rather about paladins specifically in the Forgotten Realms setting. But Larian seems hell-bent on making this game such that the specifc Forgotten Realms setting of the game doesn't matter.

If every Paladin has a deity, do Oathbreakers have a deity, or they leave the faith behind along with the oath?

And if they leave the faith behind, where does their power come from? Shouldn't evil gods impose tenets among their paladins too?

It seems to me that concept of oathbreaker is about letting go everything, and you still get powers.

As for Paladin and Gods, i think in the final release you will pick a deity just like with cleric.

This is not quite correct.... there's a bit more nuance to that, if we don't want to be misleading.

Being Faithless, such as would end up up in the Wall of the Faithless, is something more specific than just 'not being devout'. It's not something you just end up with by accident - it's deliberate; paying empty lipservice to gods deceitfully, or actively foreswearing or renouncing the gods in general are the sorts of things that will do it... but just generally not following any particular deity will not. The folks of the Forgotten Realms (Faerun is a continent, on the world of Toril) know that the gods are real and extant, in the same way that we know air and water are - they're right there, and the effects of their power are highly visible - no-one (or very few people) 'do not believe' in them. Most people do not follow a particular deity, however - they know they exist, and they often offer small prayers or offerings to various deities that match the task they're pursuing - farmers will often visit shrines to Chauntea in the hopes of a good harvest, for example, while Norland sailors might ask Valkur for good winds... of if they're feeling fearful, make an offering to Umberlee to stave off ill fortune at sea... but they are not followers of these deities, in most cases, and that's okay.

Magic comes from manipulating and drawing power from the weave, and there are a multitude of ways that mortals tap it - some use divine intermediaries, who draw from the weave and channel that to their followers in controlled ways, handling all the tricky parts of manipulating powerful magic so their clerics and paladins don't need to know how to. Others do so without an intermediary, and must perform the complex task of drawing power from the weave and forming it into something that can be actualised, without burning themselves to a cinder, on their own, through many long yeas of dedicated study. Some have this connection whether they want it or not, and have to learn to wrangle it by intuition and force of will, lest it destroy them or hurt people close to them, because when you have an always-on connection, you can't just turn it off, at least not for long.

Either way, however, magic does not come from Deities as the source; it comes from the weave (or more properly, it comes from the raw magic which is the force-like essence of everything, everywhere, which is mostly untappable, and for which the weave itself acts as the filter-cloth between it and most spellcasters - sorcerers excepted, interestingly enough), and in the case of those who do use a divine intermediary, it comes to them drawn from the weave by that intermediary, managed and then channelled down to them in pre-packaged forms. A light-domain cleric who casts fireball doesn't know how to arrange the weave to evoke a fireball, nor the method of doing so - unlike a wizard who must know both of these things with exacting precision - what the cleric knows is the proper means to request that power of their intermediary, and how to access and direct it when it is granted to them through their divine connection. However, both of these individuals are causing the same manipulation of the weave, at the end of the day. Deities have the power to use, wield and manipulate more of the weave at once than any mortal being could ever really contemplate, and they use this capacity to mediate power to their mortal followers based on how strong a divine connection that follow is able to safely handle (and how much the deity thinks they've a right to, presumably).

The forgotten realms is a perfectly acceptable realm space for glory paladins, theurgist wizards, divine soul sorcerers, zealot barbarians, and all manner of other classes and subclasses that channel varying amounts of divine energy and power without knowing much at all about any deities and certainly not being dedicated followers of them. In the cases of such, when they don't follow a particular deity, they usually draw their power from the weave, by way of a divine folio, independent of the deity or deities that happens to control that or those folios at the time.

As a magic nerd, I am eating up this info Niara. Thanks for the lowdown. I'm always interested in how a setting explains magic and how it works.

Same, thank you Niara. I enjoyed the read :p

Oathbreaker is a Paladin who was corrupted away from his/her ideals either by an "evil" power and/or personal ambitions. They don't have Oaths, but what made them fall is usually what "binds them" and dark powers will gladly act as intermediary even if they aren't actively worshipped, they love to corrupt mortals. But Larian, since they removed alignments, presented Oathbreaker as a neutral choice, but one look at their abilities and they are clearly supposed to be evil:
- aura of hate buff undead and fiends
- the capstone ability is called "Dread Lord"

In the Forgotten Realms, the greater powers (gods, devils, demons) often mettles with mortals affairs even if they don't show themselves or communicate directly. Having followers or pipping the dices to manipulate mortals is a thing. And they can interact directly too, even if you don't actively worship them. In the early access, you can get Lolth to remind you to not impersonate her for example.

Evil gods can have paladins with oaths, these are not Oathbreakers. The Oath of Conquest is tailor made for evil gods, especially lawful evil ones. Vengeance work, if you use the point of view of the god/player instead of the alignment system to apply "justice".

But @Niara, you are leaving out the part about what happens to the souls of the faithless in the D&D Multiverse. Not a good idea to be faithless.

And also, to again reiterate, the point is NOT that a paladin MUST have a patron deity. The point is that in the Forgotten Realms setting, paladins having patron deities is what is the norm, even though not having a patron deity is allowed.

So if paladins need a god, and oathbreaker doesn't need one, then you can have a paladin without following a god.

But yes, usually in Faerun both clerics and paladins follow a god.

It's just that the option is important.

Thank you Niara

One thing:
In NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer one character says something like: "The wall of the faithless must be destroyed because it is unjust. Somebody who lives a good life in the wilderness and who never learned about the gods from a priest or something like that is doomed to eternal suffering without even knowing why"
This is the opinion of a companion in MotB. She is a half celestrial who used to work for Kelemvor, but she did not like how things are and now she is a cleric of Ilmater who wants to destroy the wall to end the suffering of the souls in the wall (current ones and future ones).

Some other companions actively reject the gods because they hate the current system. They join the fight because they don´t want to end in the wall.

These are the opinions of companions in a (very good) computer game. I do not know the official lore.

Videogames are unfortunately the last tier of canon, almost everything else will supersede the canon events of a videogame if there is a conflict in story or lore.

However, as far as I am aware, there is no conflict in canon, and Kelemvor himself disliked the wall (because the way Myrkul set it up, it was deliberately punishing people who were just ignorant or isolated. Myrkul was all about promoting worship through fear), which was also mentioned in a novel, so it is canonical.

As for the actual status of the wall, it's in debate. Kelemvor could not take down the wall, but he could change it, which I believe he did in a novel, but I haven't read it. As of 5e, we have at least one sourcebook that talks about people going to the upper plains that best suit them, rather than the wall, but it was still mentioned as being a thing. BUT, the wall was actually errata-ed out of that sourcebook, so people have been questioning whether or not it still exists. Maybe we'll get an answer in the planescape release next year, I hope so.

To Kanisatha - I talked about the distinction of what counted as being Faithless in the top paragraphs of my last post. Short of paying empty lipservice or actively renouncing the gods in general, the question of being Faithless does not come into the equation for us, in this game, or in general. Simply not following any particular deity does not make you 'Faithless'; that's what I was explaining.

It's as Piff describes; when Myrkul first created the wall, shortly after his ascension, it was designed in a deliberately cruel and punishing manner, that was tailored to reap as many souls as possible, regardless of what would be fair or just - thus, in its first incarnation, those who didn't have any knowledge or of even passing interaction with deities would be bound for the wall - even in this form, however, those who just made offerings or visited relevant shrines to their interests were still safe, as long as they did so in honesty - farmers who would pray to Chauntea for their harvest were fine, despite not being active worshippers of her. This was in the time of 3rd edition (and 3.5), functionally.

Many deities openly disliked the Wall, and felt it was unjust, but while Myrkul still held his folio it wasn't within the capacity of other deities to outright destroy it. At the time of the second sundering, however, many things were reordered, and many destroyed deities were reformed by Ao (Myrkul himself returned from being dead in this time - along with the other ascended mortal deities who had perished; Ao could not show favouritism with this action, so returning the good ascended meant returning the evil ones too, apparently). An opportunity was found, in this moment, to re-write many of the rules surrounding the Wall itself - it wasn't/couldn't be removed, but its rules could be remade, and they were. What this means is that now, in the age that correlates to 5th edition, the Wall of the Faithless actually doesn't get very many new souls, because the requirements to get left in the wall are much stricter than they were (as mentioned; actively renouncing the gods, or deceitfully paying empty lipservice are the main requirements).

Given erratas in more recent publications that make increasingly less mention of it, or remove mention of it altogether, there's a good chance that (in-universe explanation at least) it will fade from existence as fewer and fewer souls are fed to it, until it no longer exists.

Actually, I wasn't necessarily referring to Kelemvor's wall. I was referring to the fact that when a soul is faithless, such that when they get to Kelemvor's realm and they don't have a deity waiting there to claim their soul, they are vulnerable to certain deities effectively stealing or highjacking their soul right from under Kelemvor's nose. Llolth was famous for doing this, and so was Shar. They would capture these souls before they came under Kelemvor's control and forcibly take them to their realms as their prize. Kelemvor would angrily denounce this practise, but he was powerless to stop it.

But you still haven't addressed why players in BG3 can be faithless paladins but not faith-based paladins?

Not if my Oathbreaker has his way. He turned from the gods and actively advocates that all humanoid beings do the same. The gods do nothing but use them as pawns in their eternal power struggles. LoL
Make the Wall Great Again!