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

Yes. The game as is should be balanced in a way where knowing every mechanic and spell makes it possible to play on hardest difficulties while not knowing them is not required to paly on normal mode for instance.

Would most Paladins travel with Vampires or Char worshipers or even a Githyanki? I question the party makeup... too much in setting up neat storylines then lack of choice forces you to take all these emotional baggage characters with you.

Also - Would not a rouge steal at will if the urge hit them? why does this break your oath.

Oath = unknown what it means and what actions make you break it ... learn through trial and error i guess... DO not forget to save your progress.

While it’s fair to some extent to require our characters to work with others in the same predicament even if they don’t agree on all points of morality, I do agree that the existing choice of companions could be improved to be less of a clash for a lawful good character. Who might also object to travelling with someone who has made a pact with a devil!

But Larian originally said that they were giving us the evil/neutral characters for EA so hopefully we’ll get more choice in the full release. I don’t think we know exactly who additional companions will be except Minsc and Jaheira (who should suit a good character) and we assume Karlach (who seems very angry and bloodthirsty, so may or may not work for a good character depending on where Larian go with her), but fingers crossed Larian have got more options in store for us.


Sorry, I don’t understand your point here. Not all rogues would steal without compunction, but I’m not sure what this has to do with a paladin’s oath anyway. I’ve only ever seen an oath broken when the paladin themself steals, not when a rogue in the party does. Have you come across somewhere it works differently?

The oath keeping/breaking logic is poor so far, so I can easily believe there are more oddities.

The urge to steal sounds silly. In this context the Rogue will loot for himself and is not a trusted Partymember.
In this context i like the old alignment system alot. Lawful good Paladins make "problems" and the BG3 Party is absolut unthinkable. After the Ship Crash, every Paladin with brain will leave for the sake of is Oath.
Most companions are more neutral or neutral good and lawful is like evil a big hindrance for a starting party with a random "hero".

Using smite on every attack is very natural though. No need to know anything. Just click yes every time when you want to level a boss before they get a turn. 5e is not a perfect system and there is no DM in BG3 to protect the PC's from silly party wipes.

And stuff like this works both ways. Gith patrol with Extra Attacks and Action Surges can easily take down PC's before you get a turn. That is definitely not good game design, going down before you get to do anything. In fact it's not even combat, it's an execution. By level appropriate enemies.

In fairness, a paladin wouldn't know the nature of all their companions that soon. Shadowheart comes off as perfectly reasonable. Lae'zel is violent, but potentially manageable. Astarion's kind of an asshole but one who keeps in line, Wyll is a rambunctious hero, Gale is a pompous academic. All stuff a lawful good paladin would find acceptable if not ideal in an extreme situation such as this.

Also I resent the idea of Lawful good being entirely inflexible and a maker of 'problems'. They aren't automatons incapable applying their own thoughts and interpretations to situations, and making judgement calls to bend the rules but not break them. Also what lawful means can alternate from person to person. For instance with Wyll, yes he made a deal with a devil, but he regrets it and wants out. A lawful good paladin could easily look at him and think 'I should help this man get free of his pact and find true redemption.'

I agree that it’s perfectly possible to rationalise working with the current crop of companions as a lawful good character, but I think there are also lawful good characters who reasonably wouldn’t want anything to do with some or most of them once their secrets have been revealed. And while it’s okay to be forced by the story to work with people you wouldn’t want to normally, I think it would be a pity if the latter sort of lawful good character didn’t have the opportunity to build a core party of more like-minded souls. And given many Paladins are, from the nature of their oaths, going to tend to be less willing or able to compromise than other classes, I feel they’re likely to be over-represented amongst those who find it harder to create a congenial party from the current companions.

There’s a similar problem when going all out with the evil, though it seems more plausible that really nasty characters would find it difficult to work with others so that bothers me less. But I still hope that there will be further evil companions to be found in the full campaign.

Evil is not really a problem. Problem is always evil+stupid aka chaotic evil.
The most evil character with brain can "play" the nice guy.
A lawful good Paladin has no"can" option, he must be a good guy.

That is one of my main criticisms of the Owlcat Pathfinder games. They require a lot of system knowledge even just on Normal and the games don’t do a very good job teaching. It's very much a game by and for Mathfinder enthusiasts, which i have to admit i am not.

What's the saying? "Pathfinder is a game of 1000 options, where 990 are worse than a +1 to attack"?

I think higher difficultues should require good game knowledge, but i'd rather have "normal" a bit on the easier side if the alternative is accounting for system abuse.

Or, you know, have a less abusable system, but this is Larian so i doubt we'll ever get that.

It's often not that easy to bring too deep a logic into any half-baked/overcomplicated fantasy world, for sure.

Paladins seem to be a mystery, but some facts are out: they usually have some fat armor and an even fatter hammer (or so), and would probably be unbalanced if they were like clerics all else.

If paladins and clerics alike were devoted to gods the same way and would get their magic from them, why do the paladins get less (or diferent) magic, so they need armor and a hammer? Is Tyr (or any other fantasy power) calculating the amount/percentage of devotion (or what) to give the cleric this and the paladin only that? In BG 3, where wizards can learn cleric spells, it's seemingly not only the gods who need to grant (as a kind of divine wholesalers and delivery services) divine weave power?

These are not necessarily serious questions, beware.

Generally, if the gods-question is the only reason for disappointment with the paladin, the class seems to be well made?

Paladins NEED to have a deity choice. And its not like its a huge fix. At least just copy paste the Cleric deity list in. I wanted to play Paladin today, I stopped whedn I saw there was no Deity choice (and I was shocked to see that). When I play a Cleric or a paladin in 5E and 3.5 I always choose a Deity. I mean DUH! thats ultimately where they get their powers from. It could be a selection of gods true, like the Triad (Ilmater, Tyr and Torm). But for ease of implementation just add 1 choice deity. It does not need to have huge consequences, but it needs to be there, like for the Cleric. If not then whats even the point, might as well scrap Paladin at that point as they would be pointless and make no sense whatsoever. Their magical powers are DIVINE magic, Ie comes from either a deity, deities or a servant of a deity (Devas etc).

This is D&D basics Larian. Ive loved everything youve done and shown so far, but you dropped the ball bigtime on the Paladin, sry but its true.
Unless ofc you plan to implement it but just havent gotten around to it yet.
PS: Atheist here, who loves to play religious characters in tabletop d&D Why? Because they are 100% real in D&D, and most denizens of Faerun either worships or at least sends prayers to the gods (before a trip at sea, harvest, if bad weather, death in the family, gambling, business venture, etc etc). So my stance on this point is not due to any religious bias, its common sense bias based on the setting if anything.

PPS: All that being said it should actually be an option for all the classes, simply due to the setting.

I am confused.
If paladins DID HAVE deity choices in BG3 I highly doubt anyone here would even complain against them. I would think most people would be PRAISING Larian.

More Lore and options the better? Or am I missing something? Why are people trying to argue that not having deities is fine???
I'd rather have more game lore and deities than colorful hair options that's for sure.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone argue against being able to pick a deity for our paladins, only that we should not be forced to pick a deity as it is not a requirement in 5e that every paladin is sworn to a god. But given that their relationship to their god will be fundamental for some paladins, I agree it’s important that we should be able to pick a deity for them if we wish to.

My sentiment, exactly.
In "Thieve's Honour" we have Sir Anal Retentive (also a walking caricature of LG) give the lying, stealing, prison fleeing, oathbreaking MC a second chance. IMO an LN Paladin would have killed the scumbag on sight.