Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Paladin class NEEDS Deity Choice!

Yes, cheers Niara and everyone else for insight into the murky lore behind divine magic and paladins’ sources of power in “present day” Forgotten Realms.

So suppose for the sake of argument I am a bard who perhaps acknowledges Oghma and Milil but isn’t a devotee, and whose beloved teacher is cruelly slaughtered by gnolls, leading me to swear a terrible oath of vengeance against all evil that, by violence, extinguishes art and beauty from the world. Might a story like that be used to justify a multi-class into a paladin? I guess various gods might take an interest in such an oath, ones whose folios cover art like Oghma and Milil, but also the normal evil-smiting ones and possibly even one like Tymora. In order for me to become a paladin and gain divine powers as a result, would one or more of those deities have to actively sponsor my oath, or is it potentially enough to get me access to powers that my vow aligns with one or more of these divine portfolios? And, once I do become a paladin, when I then use divine magic is that mediated by deities consciously or unconsciously shaping the Weave on my behalf, or does the nature of my oath and it’s connection to specific elements of divine portfolios somehow give me access to sort of pre-shaped bits of Weave that align with the powers and spells I have access to without any involvement from a deity at all?

I think from what has been said here that, for both questions, the answer might be that either option is possible?

Well, one doesn't just choose to be a Paladin, which is one of the most common misconceptions. A Paladin is part of an order. Before you could even call yourself a Paladin you'd have to invest time in becoming a member of that order, and part of that is indoctrinating yourself in to the faith of that order - including that faith's deity. Players who start as Paladins will have backstories that explain why they are out adventuring, very often as part of their service to the order. Multiclassing in to Paladin is a very large narrative that would require a lot of coordination with the rest of the party and more dynamic access to the game world that I am not sure a video game can accurately reflect without reducing it to "you're a paladin now!" - which might be one of the reasons they are trying to simplify it, which again I feel is to the detriment of the class overall.

Well Tyr and Paladins of Tyr tend to mostly see The world, Justice and law in black and white. They tend to be stubborn hardasses ( I went in deep in that lore, played a Half orc Paladin, oath of the Crown devoted to Tyr for 4 years). I went a bit off the course, and I had to to a redemption question in order to not be an oathbreaker).


Anyway
This being the case, a paladin masquerading as a Tyr worshipper, or a Tyr paladin breaking his oath, are pretty much fair game for Tyr and his followers. So I dont think they would mind.

But yeah its more roleplay than anything at this point Even with mods. Remains to be seen if Larian will refine oaths/oathbreaking/ Devotion to gods. I hope they do, But I dont expect them to. Giving a similar list that clerics get or an improved system is a must though.

Niara:

Most Paladins are sworn to a deity. But all Paladins recieve their powers from deities, whether or not they are aware of it or not. Thats a given. Their powers and spells use Divine magic, they use Holy symbols, they recieve powers before they swear oaths (if you want to go technical).

Their powers dont come from Thin air.

An aasimar or part god (Bhallspawn, etc) sure. But they still recieve powers from deities. They are just born with it/its in their blood.

Thank you, I wholeheartidly agree with this .

Not to be pedantic, but part of my confusion here is that post Second Sundering, it seems that the divine portfolios exist independently of the deities. So all divine casters draw their powers from portfolios, but only clerics (and most paladins) do it with the explicit consent of the deity?

The problem with taking divine power without a deity's consent is that they can shut you off if they so choose. It's the difference between asking and taking, but the deity still has final say.

Technically this goes for weave-based magic too. Mystra can snap her fingers and you can't access it anymore at any moment. She *doesn't* because she got her arm twisted by the other divine powers in the past to play nice. But theoretically other arcane weaves that didn't really get off the ground (Shadow weave, Demon Weave etc) would work in a similar manner.

As per my reply to Niara; You keep saying that it works the way you describe, that it changed in 5e, but your biggest piece of evidence is that the writing on the mechanics is written in an unclear manner And that somehow, it must mean that in absence of a firm, definitive statement, it must work the way you want it to, instead of the way it has historically been depicted as working, a way which is still not contradicted by the murky wording of 5e's sourcebooks. As has been pointed out many times by myself and other posters. Paladins still require holy symbols, still need to pray for spells, and still are expected to follow a singular deity and seek absolution from a priest or member of their order. There are exceptions, as I listed out. But those are just that-exceptions. It is a leap and a bound to jump from that to 'paladins don't need the involvement of a deity at all to receive divine power.

Anyways, my argument with Niara and my general dislike of the idea of nontheistic divine casters aside, the game really is in sore need of those deity options that were datamined back. And more paladin options in general. The idea that you can roll a Lolthsworn paladin-meaning one who worships the Spider Queen- and get stuck to the same goody-two-shoes moral code as every other paladin is really goofy. There needs to be an 'evil paladin' option besides oathbreaker.

Consider that it might be in a deities best interest to sponsor a new champion without being acknowledged until later.

This is where we get to the subject of prayers, how they go to deities, and how they can be redirected or stolen. This is where portfolios come in again, and I'm going to use Set, Sseth and Merrshaulk as an example. Merrshaulk and Sseth are both Yuan-ti deities. Merrshaulk was at one point the prime Yuan-ti deity, until the ascendancy of Sseth, and then became an aspect of Sseth. However, many Merrshaulk worshipers refused to swap over the Sseth, and kept worshiping Merrshaulk, which worked, prayers kept going to Sseth, even if people were praying to Merrshaulk. This is where Set comes in. During the Time of Troubles Set subdued Sseth and began masquerading as him, effectively stealing the prayers and followers of two deities, until he was powerful enough to take on the form of Zehir and join the Fearunian pantheon as an independent deity.

So prayers can be stolen, or redirected, and go to someone other than who the pray-ee intended them to go to. This is not uncommon, especially when you have deities that that split apart or combine (Remember Angharrradh), or who are wholly subservient to another deity. So that begs the question, what happens if someone prays for something, but out of ignorance or desperation, does not specify who they pray to? If someone in the aftermath of slaughter who swears bloody vengeance gets sponsored by Hoar (the god of revenge), do they actually know it at the time, or is it something they learn later? (realistically, part of Hoar's thing is that his name appears on the lips of those seeking vengeance, so you might know that someone was watching out for you).

I don't think you'd know unless the deity in question chose to make it so. Even so, deities often make their will or intention known through subtle signs. Could someone become a paladin this way? I think it's plausible, if the appropriate deity notices them and decides they need a push, but it wouldn't be a formal sort of paladin as we think of them (Order of the Radiant Heart, etc) and if the deity didn't make themselves and their will known, I'd suspect it would be a temporary empowerment as long as their goals aligned with behavior the deity in question approved of. (I mean, you think. I would imagine that they'd make their involvement known eventually though, perhaps after watching for a while to see if the person in question would make a worthy divine champion.

In response to the discussion above:
It sounds like non-Cleric Divine Casters can draw divine power from more than one deity at a time. Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd Edition maintains that Druids get their power from the relevant patron deities of nature. Then Faiths and Pantheons (2002) states that only deities with a direct tie to nature can provide spell power to druids. BUT, there are multiple deities with some tie to nature across a handful of alignments. There's also no place where it argues that druids, paladins, and rangers can only have one patron deity. So could it be that druids, paladins, and rangers are drawing smaller amounts of power across a larger number of deities, and if they piss one deity off, the tap isn't completely shut because other relevant deities of nature, oaths, and the like are still offering smaller amounts of power? It would explain that a druid that chooses to completely fuck over nature would lose all power by having consent to divine magic revoked by ALL relevant deities. But if a paladin denounces one god relevant to their oath, another god that dislikes that god might still offer power relevant to that oath, as long as the overall oath isn't broken.

Just a come-up-for-air reminder:

We're all functionally in the same position, more or less, when it comes to the video game itself; we all would like the option to pick a deity for our Paladins to follow. Some wish for the option of not picking one to be a part of this, while others seemingly want to deny that option to everyone, but overall, we all seem to agree that deity selection should be present in creation for Paladins.


...though, Leucrotta... I'm wondering if you've got something against me, if you conceded to the point I've been wanting to make so easily, and seemingly out of hand, because a different person suggested a situation where the flexibility, and the value of it, becomes visible... Perhaps I should have started with such an example?

What you suggested there - that an individual can, in the right circumstances, draw on these powers from a divine source, without knowledge or worship of a deity, and that this may continue as long as the mortal continues to act in a way that aligns with the sponsor's interests, even without direct worship... That's really a large part of what myself and others have been trying to illustrate. Before the second sundering, that could not happen, by the hard rules; the deity would need to make themselves known and extract/accept a personal oath of worship/following before granting powers (and if you allowed players to circumvent that, then you were homebrewing away from those hard rules... into what 5e allows now... which a lot of folks did... so the change may not be surprising). Now they don't have to. You're supposing that the deity would probably make themselves known eventually, and they might - but the point is they don't have to, and if that person dedicates themselves to a life and a crusade that upholds their sponsor's interests, they may never feel the need to. They may even determine that doing so, in this case, could be detrimental to the champion, and actively decide not to... and that's valid.

A player in a campaign I'm in would not call themselves a paladin, because that's not something that exists in their culture, but they are one, mechanically; they're dedicated to a set of principles that define their choices and life, and through their devotion to those principles, and the divine connection they've forged within themselves, they draw on divine powers to supplement their capabilities. None of us have any idea who, if anyone, actively sponsors the flow of power for them - they don't actively pray or worship any deity, at least not that any of us can see... and it allows them to play a character that a strict dm following rule in the older editions would not have been able to allow.


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Edit: Oh! To Red Queen! About your Bard question... the answer is, basically... "Maybe" ^.^ It will depend on how your DM wants to rule things, based on the character and the situation, and their own opinions at the table about how the mortal-divine interaction works. They might be silently sponsored by a deity that appreciates the oath, and who is strengthened by the actions and fervour of such an oath... or the drive, suffering, and the resonance of their mortal soul may be sufficient enough to forge a connection to a divine folio that their oath aligns with. It may, as is often the case, require that the oath be witnessed - or indeed an envoy representing a deity, folio or domain may alight in order to witness and receive the oath... or that may not be necessary; it's fluid and individual.

The shaping of the weave is fuzzier still - if you're sponsored, then it would probably work much like a cleric. If you're not, you may be pushing the weave into the shape it needs to be in by the force of your will and the strength of your soul alone, bolstered by the raw divine power you can access. You're also a bard, and not unfamiliar with shaping the weave through other means, so it could very well be that, lacking a direct sponsor, you use this new connection and different source of power, but shape the weave with it in much the same way you have previously done using your own innate magical ability to touch the weave. Lots of possibilities, and all of them valid, depending on what you and your DM feels best makes sense for your character and the situation they're in ^.^

It's personal, it's unique, and the deliberately non-absolute language allows it to be so.

A really good real world example of a paladin who attains powers by calling rather than training is Joan of Arc, but her power still comes from her faith in the Catholic god (PLEASE do not make this political by honing in on the Catholic thing, it's just what she was).

Carrying this over in to D&D as an analogy, even if a Paladin character were to be created without a deity, the power of the Paladin's skills still comes from /some/ deity, and a Paladin can't draw on power without invoking that deity, so I just don't see how a Paladin can be godless.

I don't think the discussion has anything to do with "denying the option" but trying to work out a plausible way that it fits within the setting. As it stands, in the Forgotten Realms, even post Sundering, Paladins have deities, so their absence in this game does seem jarring to some, and there are mechanical considerations to take in to effect unless you're willing to just say "because you can" which is effective, but unsatisfying as a reason.

The power of Joan of Arc actually came more from the faith/superstition of her fellow human beings plus the plan of some leading persons to use it for political purposes. As soon as she was no longer of political use, her "power" was gone. And it worked only in a certain environment. People like Joan (or Jesus) today would surely spend some time in mental asylums, or be elected as charismatic fanatics into political positions. BTW it should be quite problematic also for pious people (at least French ...) to assume that God gave Joan the power and then removed it. Why?

In the DnD universe we (even me as DnD newbie, thanks to good explanations in many threads) KNOW that there are plenty of "gods" (of a funny variety ...) and that there is an overawing source of power behind/above/besides them. I still don't get it why a Paladin could not take his power from the source directly, if his/her devotion was strong enough. Wizards and Sorcerers can do it too, or not? The color of the spell, blue or yellow, should be seen as a label made by the end user, and so not constitutive.

I think everyone acknowledges the various gods in FR. I mean it's pretty hard to say Chauntea isn't a god if their clerics do a whole lot of Plant growth spells giving a bumper harvest.

All paladins fight for righteousness and justice. It's easy to draw _Truth_ as a basis for these. Oghma is a neutral knowledge deity, truth sounds pretty central to that. In a world with duplicitous monsters and secret cults, seems very plausible for a paladin to step forth wanting to cut away lies and deceit.

I see that 5E clerics and paladins no longer have the requirement to be one step removed from their deity, but even if you play with this legacy rule, that leaves LN and NG as valid alignment choices.

Bard and Paladin have quite forgiving multiclass ability score requirements: 13 Str and 13 Cha. I can see Ancients in particular meshing well with its love of beauty. Though your story of loss and revenge is more an ugly path of the Avenger.

Pass about deity and oath. Generally, you'd swear your oath to say Oghma and draw power from them. But FR leaves open the possibility of the PHB paladin who draws direct from the divine. Even in this case, it could well be Oghma granting the power but maybe because of lack of education you're somehow unaware of them. That's the thing about not choosing a deity, you end up having to write screeds of backstory, that's why I seldom bother.

I literally said let's not make this a political thing.

Thematically, Joan of Arc is a paladin, her faith in HER GOD is where she draws the inspiration for her power.

The rest is just splitting hairs.

+1, let's not depart Meinong's Jungle when discussing the capabilities and powers of paladins.

Fascinating discussion.

@Niara, as always, I'm impressed as always by the depth your reading and the clarity of your expression. But, having said that, I'm going to be a difficult rabbit and express some differences of opinion.



While this a good interpretation of some ambiguous source material, I see it differently. We're really dealing with the nature of weave. What, exactly, is the weave? The weave is the both the source of magic power in the realms and it's Mystra herself. Mystra is a special case among the gods because she is in charge of the weave she is the weave itself; she's different - perhaps unique - in that she is simultaneously holds the portfolio and is the portfolio. [Sword Coast Adventurers Guide p. 19] Just as theologians in our world ponder how a being can be both word and flesh we can imagine that the Mystran theologians concern themselves how their god can the being keeps and cares for the weave and the thing that is kept and cared for.

When a beholder uses an eye ray or a dragon breathes fire they are drawing on their intrinsic connection to the weave to do so [SCAG, p 19]. In 2nd & 3rd edition it's pretty clear that all magic was this way - all magic is Mystra and Mystra is all magic - Mystra could even cut off the gods from the weave if she chose to do so. With 4e and the Murder of Mystra the weave was destroyed. Upon her death it was 'revealed' that there was a source of power other than Mystra.

But it's not clear what falls into that category of Mystra-independent power or if those other pools of power still exist after the refashioning of the tablets of fate. Because we can see weave as a cheese cloth - straining and purifying magic from a raw pool of power. But I think it's better to stick to the original metaphor: the weave is like a tapestry on a loom. When the tablets of fate were broken, when Mystra died, the weave was unwoven. But the weave was rewoven when the tablets were refashioned. When Mystra was dormant most 4e magic users were pulling on the raw stuff of magic while wild magic users were drawing from the tangled skein of dead Mystra's weave. But what is true now? I guess if I'm going to follow this metaphor off the cliff I should call the raw stuff of magic uncombed wool and ask: is there any raw wool left now that the weave has been rewoven? Is there a boiling pot of milk waiting to be strained through a cloth? I suspect the answer is: no, all raw magic was made into the weave once Mystra came back to life, it's curds all the way down. Sorcerers aren't tapping raw magic, they aren't dealing with uncombed wool, they are instead taking threads from Mystra's weave and braiding them how they see fit. If there is some Mystra-independent source I would suspect that it would the source that Warlocks draw upon. (of course in your own game, etc, etc.)


On Warlocks. I don't have the source at my finger tips but in one of the youtube 5e Q&A sessions it was said that Warlocks cannot fall - which surprised me. Even if your patron disowns you, even if you kill them they have opened your eyes to a source of power that you can continue to draw upon - the patron only helps warlocks to "forge their path ". So it isn't that case that the patron is weaving for the adventurer as much as they have caused the scales to fall from the eyes of the mortal. This is why your patron can be level 5 while you are level 20.

Now I do think your description of clerics is spot on. The gods do the weaving for the cleric and hand their followers pre-woven, off the rack spells. Upset your god and you are in trouble . . .

Now I absolutely agree with you @Niara that 5e really, really emphasizes the anything goes aspect of the game. If the DM thinks it sounds fun, it's consistent with the spirit of the rule - the rules are not there to restrict your fun. At the same time I think @Leucrotta has a good point - if things become too fuzzy then things lose all definition. (which I believe was your point with the changes to the DnD species) Instead of seeing the realms as a clay that can take a thousand shapes you have a formless lump of mud. And let's not forget context of 5e DnD - 4e really screwed up the realms and, even a decade on, we're still trying to repair that damage. One of the defining features of Faerun is the importance of the gods in people's ever day lives - Golorian style atheists don't exist, atheists = the faithless / Greyhawk-style clerics of abstract goodness don't exist, some god is answering your prayers even if they chose to hide their face. No one wants to limit what happens at individuals tables but, at the same time, I want the realms to retain its defining features.

Here's my suggestion for squaring the circle . We know that Paladin's power comes from their commitment to their ideals. We know that in Faerun all power - even sorcerous power - comes from the gods. So a power arising from a commitment to justice is still power granted by the gods.

Each oath should be overseen by a consortium of gods and some of the aspects of that oath should be spelled out: never attack without first issuing a challenge, always act to save innocent lives, never kill a defenseless animal. This is lore consistent - Tyr, Illmater and Torm are a lawful good consortium, allowing Paladins of devotion to choose one of the three would add something to the game. This is less clear in the lore but I always thought that Silvanus was the fatherly aspect of nature and Chantea the motherly aspect - they could be listed as the guardians of the Oath of Ancients.

Otherwise Faerun's paladins are little different than the formless mush that was the PoE paladin.

Thanks @KillerRabbit! I’m not going to have the temerity to weigh in on this debate, but it’s fascinating to read these different interpretations of FR lore, equally well and compellingly put.

For someone like myself, whose exposure to the lore has principally been via a few cRPGs and who only started learning about 5e for BG3, these sorts of posts are so useful when I’m thinking of what sorts of paladin characters I might create. I probably won’t do a full run with each of the oaths (which looks like it might be three plus oathbreaker if we get vengeance as the last PHB option in full release), but I’d at least like to design the characters I might play, and perhaps make them as custom party members if not my main character. It’d get repetitive if they all had to fit exactly the same holy knight-of-an-order archetype, and though I’m sure I’ll play at least one this way, it’s great to have this info to help me come up with (broadly) lore-friendly alternative paladins who have different sorts of histories and relationships to the gods.



I was doing a bit of research on this when I was wondering what impact Mizora’s imprisonment or death might have on Wyll, or what would become of his powers if he is freed from his oath. I wonder if the Q&A you’re recalling expressed the same sort of view as this tweet from Jeremy Crawford. I guess that is consistent with what D&D Beyond says in the Sworn and Beholden section, which is that relationships between warlocks and patrons can be like that between cleric and deity, but also might be more like master and apprentice. I think I read somewhere else from an official-ish source that what might happen if a warlock broke their pact would very much depend on the pact (and would need to be worked out with and agreed by the DM), but that if the relationship is more of the master/apprentice type then it probably wouldn’t involve loss of power though there might be far worse penalties such as one’s soul being forfeit. Unfortunately, I can’t find that source again, so may be misremembering.

And sorry, I know this thread is meant to be about paladins not warlocks!

All characters should have the option of choosing a diety, part of the PHB!

Thanks! Although I'm rereading that first paragraph and thinking "yikes that rabbit is repetitive". I guess I liked the bit of lore that says "Mystra tends to the weave and is the weave" so much I felt the need to say it 4 times! Thanks for the generous reading.


Perfect! Don't want to derail but it will be interesting to see what provisions are in the contract - is there an evil non compete clause in Wyll's contract?

Anway as @erastes110 says choosing a deity is an important part of the game - especially any game that takes place in the realms. In the realms oaths should be overseen by one of the gods. It would be fun to have a redemption quest for oathbreakers just like BG2 had one for fallen paladins.