Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Problem with Paladins in D&D

I just came across a video by Pointy Hat on youtube with the same title. It also sums up the problems with Paladin in BG3 surprisingly well.

TLDW:
The alignment lock to LG for paladins makes all roleplay predictable and tedious. A lot of TT veterans don't play Paladin because of this. But 5e removed this restriction on purpose. What remains is just the Oath, so in essence if you believe in something hard enough, the belief itself grants you powers.


The way Paladin is implemented in BG3, we are going back in dnd-editions to the goody-two-shoes with no creative freedom on what the player might want for the Paladin to matter. So while the oath breaking after doing something "evil" is a creative, surprising way to discover that subclass, it takes the fun away from any non-Oathbreaker Paladin. On a side note here, I hope the 2000g to regain your powers is a placeholder for some minor quest. Otherwise that's a complete joke.

Someone even wrote on this forum they found it impossible to complete the EA without breaking their oath at least once. If you are in multiplayer and one of the players wants to roleplay a bit of evil or chaos into his character, the Paladin loses any chance he had to retain his oath because the party as a whole committed the act. Admittedly I have no immediate solution to this without oath breaker either becoming a regular subclass or an Easter egg most players will not find. But I am really hoping for some changes here, because I do not want every single Paladin me or my friends play to be an oath breaker.

The belief itself does not grant you powers. If I understood it correctly, an oath needs to be sworn in a special place, or near specific entities.

Paladins then get their powers the same roundabout way druids do -- in theory! In practice, people have argued here that a paladin not worshipping a specific deity is a white raven. They /exist/, but who thinks of a white raven before black?

I completely disagree with your stance on the implementation. I've played paladin to test the boundaries of oath breaking. Unless you do literally the opposite of what you've sworn to do (ancients raising the dead, devotion killing random civilians for the hell of it), you're fine.

Also, once you understand how oath breaking works, avoiding it is a non issue. it's ridiculously easy to not break your oath. It's not easy when you don't know what you're doing.

In combat oath breaking is counterintuitive and not based on logic. It's bugs, gaps in coding and limitations of the game making our paladin's life hard. Hence, you REALLY need to know what you're doing. If you don't have the theory of oathbreaking down, bothering with the class in early access is a bad experience.

Outside of combat oathbreaking, you are free too take any alignment from chaotic neutral to lawful good. I'm not kidding. I've made a scharlatan paladin and a rather default devotion for playtesting. I've deceived, stolen and killed somewhat needlessly -- with both!

Adhere to the rules of roleplay and the game just lets you. For example, if you trick and isolate priestess gut with devotion, you get the line "die for asking me to abandon my god/oath(?)!". (Not verbatim). You get the same line with the fake paladin. "Die for abandoning my god"! (verbatim)

Unfortunately, THIS is proof the in-game customization is a mess currently as, a devotion paladin... Seems to be a default paladin of Tyr, but no one told you!

Maybe, we can weasel out of it by having the option to kill multiple people for this and that god later. However, Paladin dialogue was seemingly written with religion in mind.

Another incident... I think, in the crypt, we get another snippet -- our devotion paladin must remember the teachings of their order and make a WISDOM throw (another coding error). This is not a lone warrior who made an oath.

It's been a bit, but I felt like the game kept hitting me in the face with a crusader/holy warrior stereotype. When you're not "the bullwark of nature", anyway. Ancients paladin gets a free pass from the mind reading mushrooms.

Result: if you're trying to play your paladin as a loner at the moment, you must skip class dialogue options. It's probably convincing with Ancients (need no more than say, a unicorn to make an oath before). It'd feel weird to skip certain class dialogue with devotion.

Like you're not really more than a glorified, random warrior who emerged one day from the earth. I guess you CAN be, but the game isn't helping.

I really doubt that they're going to include a minor quest simply because of the way the game is structured. It would have to be available in some form at every point in an act, and each act would have to have a different one. I don't see them devoting those kinds of resources to it.

As far as ways to fix it, I think one way to at least improve it would be to make the oath and the things that would break it clearer. I'm pretty certain that every player who doesn't know about oathbreaker ahead of time will break their oath the first time they play a paladin, for one specific reason above any other - they don't even know what the oath is ahead of time. The fact the game doesn't lay out the oath when you pick paladin and you only find it if you read the description on the paladin armor set immediately tells players that the oath isn't important. So they won't take keeping it as seriously as they're meant to.

As a related aside, in Pathfinder 2e they rework paladins quite a bit. Paladins become a subclass of what's called a Champion. Champions are just that, champions of their god, and they're broken down into different subclasses for each alignment besides true neutral. Paladins are the lawful good variety, redeemers are neutral good, liberators for chaotic good, and you can pick any alignment that your god allows in their worshippers, and the advanced players guide introduces the Champions for evil deities. Each variety has some unique abilities, as well as different tenets they have to keep to.

This is another topic that keeps cropping up that I might collate into a megathread.

I’d echo what Silver/ says, and that my experience with my Oath of Devotion paladin was actually a lack of meaningful oath breaking opportunities and I think I already listed in another thread a variety of stuff my paladin did that I felt should have affected his oath but didn’t. True, there are some cases where specific actions (such as executing murderous goblins or opening a prison cage door to inspect the body of a goblin raider) break the oath incorrectly in my view. I hope Larian will have more sophisticated treatment of killing “neutrals” and “thieving” in the full release that will manage this better. In the meantime, oathbreaking can easily be avoided by having a party member do anything vaguely dodgy, and this will not affect the paladin’s oath.

Regarding other subclasses, I confess I did wonder whether Larian didn’t implement the PHB Oath of Vengeance paladin for players in EA partly in order to test player demand for it when the Oathbreaker is already available (as well as, no doubt, to get more folk testing oathbreaking). My view is that we do need that option for more morally grey, or downright evil, paladins as well, and I hope it will be there in full release.

I also hope that the full release will be more explicit about the nature of the oaths our paladins swear, and at least set out the basic tenets of each in game, even if they also say (as I think the rules do) that the actual oaths paladins swear may vary.

And with respect to mending a broken oath, I agree that high expectations for custom content are probably not reasonable. According to the rules, I think atoning for a broken oath might include something like a vigil so I generally just headcanon that this is what my paladin is doing. Though that might actually be a nice and relatively easy addition to the game: we hand over our gold but nothing happens until the next long rest, when rather than seeing our paladin sleeping we see them kneeling with head bowed in contemplation then surrounded by light to signify the mended oath, or something like that.

A slightly more complicated version that still seems doable, might have the Oathbreaker Knight come to our camp the first time we break our oath, but for subsequent occasions (once world map travel is available) tell us of a specific location we need to go to in order to find him and become an oathbreaker proper, or redeem our oath. And perhaps also give us the option of approaching priests at some temples and handing over our gold to them rather than the Oathbreaker Knight. I also think each broken oath should become more expensive.

The Oathbreaker System needs fine tuning, that's true.

-The EA is more of a Frankenstein monster composed of different parts of the actual game stitched together. The fact that it works as well as it does, and in fact runs better than some fully released games from other AAA studios is a testament to the QC and skill of the devs at Larian.

The Oathbreaker system is ambitious and risky - not everyone will like it and that is fine.

I am very interested in how Larian implements Oath of Vengeance. I am thinking it may be like Ranger where they get to dictate a "sworn enemy" monster type which allows them to attack that type without risk of breaking their oath. Also additional sworn enemies can be added through RP dialogue - which would clear certain tags for not requiring dialogue before engaging - provided they are not already hostile.

BUT - that still means if a non-sworn enemy asks for mercy then you have to grant it.

I have not seen something like this since Ultima IV and frankly I am very excited about it.

Finally, everyone acts like Oathbreaker is this terrible thing but it's an awesome class to play because you can be as morally grey as you want and you are still wicked powerful. I think because the way it's presented feels like a type of failure. Also because there are some glitchy bits with certain encounters - although switching to non-lethal damage negates all that. It's an easy work-around.

Also, If we were going back to "old editions" of how paladin is played you would have just become a Fighter until you atoned.

I think the reason they left out oath of vengeance is that they wanted to go with the two oaths that feel thematically similar so that iftheir wires got crossed due to oathbreaking, it wouldn't be too incongrous. Otherwise if they'd included vengeance paladins, you might get a situation where you can break an oath for being merciful as a devotion paladin, or break an oath for being rutheless as a vengeance paladin.

As for people being upset about Oathbreaker, I think the problem comes down to the oathbreaking mechanics kind of disconnecting them from their character. They do things that they, with their understanding, feel should be well within the boundaries of their oath, but suddenly it's not and they have to deal with it. I think that in a tabletop setting, that would be equally unsatisfying. It feels like losing control of the fate of your character. Whether that's accurate or not, that's the feeling and it's something beyond how mechanically good Oathbreaker is. I think the people complaining want to be morally upstanding paladins, but their idea of what that means clashes with the game, and now they have to interpret what the game will want from them. I ran a paladin after patch 9 but I stopped because it was genuinely stressful wondering what might or might not break my oath. And I never even became an oathbreaker. I sincerely advocate that things, especially choices that would break your oath should be marked as such because I think that outside of extraordinary circumstances, our character would know most things that would be against our oath, and that's knowledge we as players should also be privvy to.

In my opinion, oathbreaking mechanics at the moment are half unfinished. If this doesn't get fixed in the full release...

Well. Seriously. How hard is it to add a warning symbol in dialogue? Or, to fix the nonsensical combat function? Just ditch the yellow dot/red dot converting system and flag some enemy types as killable, others not. Still got issues, but better by miles.

For example: take quest to slay the goblin leaders in the grove -- all goblins are flagged as true enemies.

Example issue: without fine-tuning, this means you can kill inherent non combatants (children).

However, I think players would be happier not getting their oath broken when they should (false negative), than getting oathbroken for in character solutions (false positive). Fine tuning rounds it off.

I also believe, the groundwork for this system may exist because of entities like the owlbear. I could be wrong, though.

Personally, I don’t see becoming an Oathbreaker as a terrible thing, and like you I’m really excited by it. With a reasonable investment of time and effort from Larian (and some reasonable expectations on the part of players), I think this mechanic has the ability to add some fantastic depth to the experience of playing a paladin.

For me, it’s definitely the glitchiness that’s the problem rather than oath-breaking feeling like a failure. I actually think it feels quite cool, and the Oathbreaker Knight has a decently compelling presentation of its possible philosophical underpinning, making the Oathbreaker sound potentially like a principled independent thinker rather than an oblivious lackey of the status quo. In fact, as I might now be alluding to too much, my biggest problem with its implementation is not the times when we break our oaths when I think we shouldn’t (which I agree can be worked around relatively easily once you know what’s what) but the fact that the game either doesn’t give, or misses, opportunities to roleplay engaging oath-breaking stories like his.

So from what I read here it seems much less of an issue if you already did sufficient research on the oaths, what they stand for, and what they stand against. Possibly even to an extend where breaking oath via dialogue can be completely avoided and even shifting to the opposite. So you have situations you could break your oath in an interesting way in but the game does not give you the option to. The only question you are asking here is why an inexperienced player isn't given clues on this, since the paladin would obviously know about their oath. Although the power comes still from the oath itself, which in my opinion can still take almost any form since it's almost literally just a pretty word for commitment. After all reasons for taking an oath can vary as much as ones for breaking it.

What really remains is weird ruling for combat, especially in multiplayer when others roleplay conflicting alignments. Let me give you an example some of you might have experienced already:
The Warlock runs ahead into the Blighted Village. The ambush triggers - but he successfully intimidates the goblin and avoids combat. So far the paladin player had no influence on any of this. Now another player or even the paladin themselves might decide it would still be best to kill the goblins. After all from what you gathered so far, they destroyed a village and now lay ambush on every traveler to visit the place. What an honorable deed it would be to prevent this from happening ever again. Wouldn't it be?

The game rules no: Your oath is now broken. That is frustrating if you were planning on staying on the right path, even more so when you had no influence on either the dialogue or the initiation of combat. The EA puts you in more, very similar situations and almost every time the game rules villains into the same category as innocent civilians if the party chose the non-violent option on first contact.

If you just don't bring a paladin, you can murderhobo your way through most places without being shunned by other factions with moral codes, which makes this circumstance even more artificial for me. And if you choose violence right away, it might be more conform with your oath than reasoning first. But you never know that for sure until you try.

Unfortunately it’s not anywhere near that sophisticated. Basically, as long as your paladin doesn’t personally interact with a red object (ie one tagged as belonging to someone else) or strike the killing blow against an enemy that didn’t attack them first, you should be okay.

Other party members can be as criminal and murderous as you like, and your paladin can even join in with murderhoboing as long as they don’t strike a lethal blow with a physical attack. You can toggle on non-lethal blows for your paladin if you’re in any doubt, and have other party members deliver the coup de grace. There are some additional niggles and complexities, but that’s pretty much it as far as I can tell when it comes to potentially unexpected oathbreaking.

I agree with your point that it shouldn’t be like this. It feels like what we got in patch 9 was an initial proof of concept, one that, as far as I’m concerned, is a fantastic idea but needs more investment to actually work acceptably and live up to its potential.

Echoing others' thoughts:

- It'd be really useful to know why the oath was broken. I've broken it 3-4 times in three play throughs, however I'm not sure about 2 of them, I think one was a bug, other indiscriminate AoE? Paladins should clearly know why.

- Other party members can ambush, steal and deceive (in some dialogues, other dialogues seem to hold MC accountable), and paladin oath is fine. Paladin can't land killing blows however, need to toggle nonlethal.

- Related note, playing a paladin I've learnt to use companions more in dialogues revealing some interesting lines and making the game feel different. Was this intended outcome, have Tav speak less and pertinent companions speak more?

- Paladin and Oath dialogue tags don't always seem appropriate for MC I'm playing. This is not a complaint, the archetypical FR paladin has strong viewpoint and carries certain authority. What this highlighted for me is that I don't always need to pick those lines, they're simply an extra dialogue option. Also, I recall one dialogue allowing pick between either tag, so had to choose.

- In an honourable non-completionist play through, 2k gold is about 1/3 of total wealth found. That's a lot. If I buy scale+1 or similar, I'll feel it. It harkens back to 1E & 2E where paladins tithe treasure, so it scratches my grognard itch.

- Removal of LG alignment? Kind of, not really. D&D paladins share a baseline code of conduct of chivaly. Sure there's nuance between Avenger, Ancients and Devotion, but they're variants of the same. Before figuring out I could use companions to lead, I took oath-breaking as opportunity to steal like crazy or do naughty things like invite Minthara to attack the grove (love gate battle).

Being an Oath Breaker does not necessarily mean evil alignment. It basically means you have turned away from your oath as you understood it. It also can mean you have turned evil. The 3rd(?) edition Blackguard would only fit here if you took some levels of rogue; however, an oath breaker can fit the role of the traditional “anti-Paladin”. Originally those two classes were pegged for use outside of the LG restrictions. In fact Queen Vlackath(sp) had many of her knights as Anti-Paladins.

But back to my original comment. Not all OBs are traditionally evil. My oath breaker (that started out as an old fallen paladin to Blackguard (talk about OP), broke his “oath” at the time by an alignment change to TN. He became dissatisfied with how the gods use ppl as pawns in their eternal wars and, risking being forced into the blood wars or the wall, he decided to fight the overwhelming influence of these gods in the lives of men. He knew the powers he received were from corrupted sources, but he didn’t worship this source. He would do all he could to break the powers of the Druids/clerics and set the ppl free to grow and prosper.

In this game he will not joine the goblins, will resist the Absolute, save the tieflings by feeding the grove idol to Gale. In his mind the tieflings are innocent and the followers of the Absolute and the Druids are doing exactly what he despises about the gods. In his mind, he is a hero to the ppl, yet those that represent big religious movements hate him… And since most government organizations are theocratic in nature, the bounties on his head are many. His preferred form of governance are republic or democracy. A just secular king is also fine in his eyes.

Blackguards, Anti-paladins, etc. 'evil paladins' have had a place a long time in D&D and the Forgotten Realms. Heck, you could even fight some gith anti-paladins in BG II. That really doesn't bother me. However, as I see it, Paladins are a very RP-heavy class, and like with the Druid IMO, BG III just doesn't quite deliver there. For one, removing the datamined paladin deities in favor of ill-defined oaths is a pretty major letdown. It's removing so much of what you define your character with by just boiling down 'paladin' to 'this guy just swore an oath with so much conviction that it manifests as divine power'

And then you can just pay some cash and get off consequence-free. Revolving door paladin powers-just pay a small fee afterward and you can murder as many tiefling children as you want! Just pay off your local hellknight and he'll flip the switch to your paladin juice back on!

And then the oathbreaker class itself. Which goes out of its way to explain that it's even less of a commitment than a normal paladin oath, that you can be good or evil or whatever and it doesn't matter.

BG III desperately needs better player-facing information when you are going to break an oath. It needs the cut paladin religions back in. It needs 'evil' paladin oaths and not just 'noncommittal edgy paladin' that is the Oathbreaker, and it needs some proper questlines and lasting consequences around paladin's falling and redemption. The npc appearing immediately and giving you the option to reverse your power loss right then and there should go, redemption should be a quest, not a monetary transaction, ditto for the oathbreaker class. That should be something you earn.

I agree with many here that they need to bring back the link to divinity. In our modern world, morality has become very subjective because everyone disagrees with how to define "good". Good has become subjective. But in the BG world, deities actually exist and have their own views of what is "good". They give the paladin power as long as the paladin adheres to that definition. So there is nothing logic breaking having an "evil" paladin following the teachings of an "evil" god - they are just following the god's wishes. There is no logical or moral ambiguity.

However, I think the game should warn the player when they are about to make a oathbreaking act. The paladin should know when an action is against their god, so the game should inform the player and let them take it back. In other words, the paladin would be a greater authority on the topic than the player, so the player should be given the information.

In summary, two small changes make paladins work: align them to the teachings of a deity; and provide in game warnings of oathbreaking.

Agreed

Well, Euthyphro’s dilemma appeared in the Platonic dialogues, long predating any modern moral relativism, and was originally raised in the context of a polytheistic pantheon somewhat like FR’s, so I think there are some definite question marks over your moral philosophy there, but I’ll not take us further off topic into that arena!

I do agree with the key point I think you’re getting at, though, ie that the existing oaths we have (Devotion and Ancients) both have tenets that align closely with good (in the FR sense), so the only way to play an evil paladin is to be an oathbreaker, whereas it should be possible to play a paladin who makes, and keeps, their oaths to an evil god.

Given I don’t believe it’s the place of BG3 to overhaul the 5e approach to paladins, for me that means introducing an oath or oaths whose tenets are more compatible with an evil god, and I assume we’re going to get Oath of Vengeance (as it’s PHB and I think Minthara already has some of its abilities) which would at least give us one option there.

I actually don’t want the game to warn me if I’m about to break my oath, though, as I’d feel that would cheapen and gamify my paladin’s decision making. But I would like (a) the basic tenets of each oath to be clear in the game, (b) oathbreaking to make sense in light of those tenets, (c) the ability somehow to argue after the event if I don’t agree that the action broke my oath.

With respect to deities, I definitely agree that we should (optionally) be able to specify a deity for paladins, and it would be great if the game could respond to that on top of responding to the basic tenets of the oaths we select. But I do recognise that there will be practical limitations on how far that could be done, given the number of deities.

No matter how clearly laid out you think your tenets are, there will always be ambiguity and oathbreaking will always seem arbitrary. In the "old days" of D&D there wouldn't have been any question as to whether or not killing goblins was "good". No paladin would lose his god's favour for killing them, irrespective of who attacked first. I am very sure that you couldn't come up with a list for any of the gods that wasn't plagued by subjective interpretation. And I bet that interpretation even changes depending on the age, background and political orientation of the player. If you wanted some post-hoc justification system, Larian would have to anticipate every one of these interpretations and make a judgement on them, which will then just piss off players more. The only clear system is one that tells you of each oathbreaking action in advance.

Oh yes, I agree there are going to be limitations. Not so much because I think oathbreaking is subjective, but because intention matters, as do all sorts of other factors that it’s unreasonable to expect the game to accommodate.

I’m glad Larian have attempted the oathbreaking system, but without a human DM (or, as per that other active thread, a very good AI!) it’s never going to be close to perfect.

But I do think there are some obvious candidates for reassessment, eg killing slavers and goblins who are clearly preying on travellers for oath of devotion, that if changed would reduce frustration. And for the grey areas, when I said I want the option to argue whether I agree the oath was broken, I don’t expect the game to let me explain my reasoning let alone have the sophistication to assess whether my rationale is good. (So perhaps I should have said “indicate” rather than “argue”.)

It could just give me a pop-up after the “oathbreaking” action that lets me say whether or not I agree the action is against my oath, or an additional dialogue option with the oathbreaker knight. And I don’t care that some players might abuse that system and say they have a justification for their action when they don’t. Though I’d be okay with still having to pay the fine and be told to reflect carefully on my actions, even if I disagreed I’d broken my oath, to discourage too much of that. Or even to need to pass a persuasion check with the oathbreaker knight to avoid a fine. The important thing for me is to be able to register my view. (I do think it would be feasible to do more than that, eg to generate some standard defences for different action types, and to distinguish actions that are always going to break an oath vs ones about which there could be some argument), but for me that would be a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

I feel forewarning of oathbreaking would undermine my roleplay, and steamroller over ambiguity in a way I think I’d find frustrating. Eg, say I’m playing a devotion paladin who would execute a murderous goblin to protect innocent travellers, but get some sort of message that says “this action breaks your oath, are you sure you want to proceed?”. I’d still disagree it actually broke my oath, but now I either need to decide not to kill the goblin after all (which would be contra the roleplaying decision I’d made for my character) or would need to go ahead anyway and do what I think is in line with the oath. Doing the former would be really unsatisfying for me, whereas the latter leaves me no better off than now, and possibly worse as I don’t even now have the “excuse” that I didn’t think the action broke my oath.

I suppose an acceptable middle ground would be to prompt before the “oathbreaking” but give the option at that point to say that I disagreed the action broke my oath and would go on and do it anyway. Given whether the game thinks an action is against my oath is irrelevant to my decision-making, personally I’d find that needlessly intrusive and flow-breaking, but if other folk would act differently if they knew how the game was programmed to view the action then I’d see it as a fair compromise.

(And of course none of this addresses actions that are against oaths but the game doesn’t recognise as such, which was a bigger problem for me in my playthrough than accidental oathbreaking!)

@Red Queen - a simple persuasion check when speaking to the fallen knight “convincingly explaining your reason for your actions and categorically insisting that your oath is still strong” should be enough. It’s at an appropriate time (at camp) and will not break the flow of the game. Depending on what you did could determine the save you would need. IE stealing the Idol or killing a Tiefling 25. Letting Astrrion live maybe a 5 depending on sub class…

@The Red Queen

That's really interesting because I see your point, but my opinion is the opposite. I wouldn't want a pop up after picking the choice, but I'd want it as a tag on a choice like for racial or class choices, telling you even before you make a choice what choice would be oathbreaking. I want this because to me I think that better facilitates roleplay. The game can't account for the reasons why a character might do something that would break their oath and telling us the player ahead of time what actions would break an oath is simply the game accounting for the fact that our character knows their oath far better than we the player would. They've studied and meditated on it for years. It's the same way other crpgs in the past five or 10 years have taken to letting you mouse over certain in-universe terminology in order to communicate things that would be common knowledge within the world, or important context. Our character would know when something would break their oath even though we the player might not.

Okay, interesting. I guess I can see your point, too . I don’t think, though, that I can make myself believe that the game knows better than I do when something breaks my character’s oath, given I know full well it doesn’t have all the relevant facts about my character’s background, oaths and intentions, even if it knows more about the world than I do.

I guess I could see that way of thinking working in a different kind of game, or even for an origin character, where we’re exploring a character who to some extent is defined by the game, and so it does know stuff about them (such as what they’ve spent their time meditating on) that the player doesn’t. But that’s not what I want from a BG3 custom character, who can be pretty much whoever I want them to be and I don’t want the game to tell me how to roleplay them. And saying that, I wonder if our different perspectives on this point might have their roots in a similar place as the different opinions on custom characters that I seem to recall us having discussed in another thread?

I don't recall our discussion of custom characters or your particular opinion of them, sadly, so I can't say on that point. I think part of our diverging opinion is that I already don't really think the BG3 custom character is actually all that free or flexible as it stands. They're blank, but not really flexible, and really only allow us to play moderate variations on a couple kinds of character. So might as well be more honst about the limitations in this area, given that paladins are already explicitly more hemmed in in their choices anyway, because of the oaths. I absolutely WANT the character to be more flexible, but I think actually achieving that would require more work across the board than Larian is interested in doing.

I think the kinds of character I've been able to play in BG3 have been less varied than who I've been able to make in say, the Pillars of Eternity games. There I played a firebrand monk who went into self-imposed exile out of guilt for the atrocities she had to commit during the rebellion to free her city state, and who had an arc centered around regaining her will to fight for a worthy cause and set aside her guilt in order to find passion and be of service. And then I played a haughty, entitled noblewoman who started out trying to pick her life back up after her family fortunes were squandered, and who started off entirely self-interested, but who eventually grew to still be haughty, but to take on a sense of nobless oblige responsibility that led to her essentially supplanting the main villain at the very end and agreeing with his ultimate goal, which only continued into the second game. The characters I've made in BG3 have yet to feel like they can really support that range of diversity at all.

Yep, that was kind of what I’d remembered . I’ll not send us further off topic, though, by repeating my opinion of BG3 custom characters and how I’d like to see them improved. Sorry, that tangent was my fault!

I will just say, though, that I played PoE 1.5 times and can’t even remember what my characters’ backgrounds were, whereas I could probably list every custom character I’ve played BG3 with since the start of early access. That might just be because it’s been a while since I played PoE and my brain is getting old, but may also be because different things grab my imagination than yours!

Tangents happen, no worries. And I'd say you're right that our imagination is grabbed by different things. To this day PoE I consider 1 and 2 are some of the best games I've ever played and BG3 pretty average, so it's a matter of taste.

Regarding paladins specifically, something it needs is an occurrence early on to get the players on the same page regarding oaths and what's expected. The game can't offer broad freedom of interpretation so in lieu of that, it should do better about setting expectations for what will and won't break our oaths. As well as fine tuning the system.

As for oathbreaker as a concept, it may be mechanically good, but mechanics don't matter if the player doesn't think the breaking should have counted as breaking.

Well, Pointy Hat is flat-out wrong.

The problem is not that the Paladin is limited. The problem is that you want to play a limited class in an unlimited way. So the problem is the player wanting the Paladin to be something that the Paladin isn't. The whole point of playing a paladin is to adhere to moral/spiritual principles no matter the cost. Yes that makes the Paladin predictable. It absolutely does NOT make it tedious, because adhering to your principles is pretty damn hard (both IRL and sometimes even in video games).
If you want to play a morally flexible character, literally play anything else, it's fine.
Some people think that a Paladin is a Paladin because he has a weapon but also has divine powers, but that is also a perfect description of the Cleric, the Ranger and the Druid as well.

So what I came to think about is this: What sets the Paladin apart from all other classes? And you must NOT think in terms of game mechanics, you have to go deeper, you must understand what a Paladin is as a concept. And a Paladin is a knight or warrior who serves a deity or a cause, and is proactively looking to enforce the principles of his deity or cause upon reality.
Now this presents game developers with a challange: There are hundreds of gods in D&D, and they all have different principles and outlooks. So the "solution" to that is the Oath system that allows broader categories of Paladins to exist without having to take all those deities into account. The problem with that is that in BG3 it totally kills the class for some people (me included).

I simply am not going to play an atheist Paladin or a Paladin that can't even select a deity at character creation. Nor am I going to be satisfied with a Paladin that has no dialogue options reflecting his choice of deity.
I think the solution would be to limit paladins to a select few deities and give them a lot of detail in terms of roleplay.
Of course this will NOT happen, because the Oath System is an integral part of 5E, but it totally kills the roleplay aspect of the class, UNLESS you are into atheistic paladins.

Yeah, athiest paladin for me is just a no-go. Addressing the elephant in the room firstly- atheist paladin is such an antithetical bizarre concept to wrap your head around- all their abilities revolve around divine power, but simultaneously somehow are not connected to the divine. What. Does the idea of playing a character concept so fundamentally antithetical to itself carry so much novelty that it justifies its existence and the gutting of a classic D&D class over just playing IDK, an Eldritch Knight or some other variation of 'magical fighting man'? Paladins to me, much like clerics are a roleplay-heavy class because of their religious faith. Perhaps even moreso because they are expected to be a living paragon of their religion. Stripping that away basically removes the biggest draw of the class. All that you are left with is a magical fighter that has to abide some arbitrary 'good guy' code to keep their fightin magic...or not, since you can just become an oathreaker for no consequences and just keep your powers with no drawbacks, except they are edgy now for some reason.

Athiest Paladins make as much sense as a Zealous Nihilist.

Atheist paladin sounds like it could work if morality in itself had some kind of magic properties. By sticking closely to a vow, you would slowly be able to tap into that energy, kinda like weave. However in D&D, gods are the interface between morality and you so you have to be a paladin for one of those. Kinda like a democratic election when you think about it, your can elect a candidate that share your ideas and he will then grant you powers through the legislation.

It works better in a setting like Ebberon, that was designed with it in mind. The Realms are a place where fickle (sometimes literal) Olympian gods walk the earth and meddle in mortal affairs. Divine magic is a sign of their not-unconditional favor that they may bestow upon their magically-receptive followers. They giveth, taketh away etc.

Which is exactly why it makes sense that the more lawful-aligned gods would have paladins, given that they are less fickle and thus provide divine powers based on adherence to principles. The idea of a chaotic deity having paladins makes perfectly zero sense.

You are describing Cleric ...

I allways thought that Paladins draw their power from themselves ... like a Sorcerer ... but there isnt nearly as much of it, and they only can reach it as long as they believe they can reach it ... therefore there is Oath.
After all, if they break it, they can still reach Magical Powers ... just different one.

Shouldnt they loose all magical power completely, if it would be provided by some deity?

Well no, a Paladin does not draw power at all. A paladin merely adheres to the will of his deity and is granted aid and powers. Seeking power and control over divine magic is probably fundamentally antithetical to being a paladin.
Honestly, the very concept of the Oathbreaker makes no sense to me Honestly the old and much maligned Blackguard makes a lot more sense.

In the traditional sense, a Paladin in Dungeons & Dragons is usually a devout believer in a specific deity or philosophy. However, ultimately it is up to the DM (Dungeon Master) and the player to decide if a Paladin can be an atheist in their specific game setting.

From a rules perspective, the Player's Handbook states that "a paladin swears to uphold justice and righteousness, to stand with the good things of the world against the encroaching darkness, and to hunt the forces of evil wherever they lurk" (page 82). It also mentions that "a paladin's power comes as much from a commitment to justice itself as it does from a god" (page 82).

With this in mind, it's possible to imagine a Paladin who is committed to upholding justice and fighting evil, but who does not believe in a specific deity. This Paladin could see their powers as stemming from their dedication to a cause rather than a divine being.

However, it's worth noting that many of the Paladin's abilities, such as their divine magic, are tied to their faith in a higher power. In order to use these abilities, a Paladin must be able to tap into their connection with their deity or philosophy, which would be difficult for an atheist Paladin to do. The DM and player may need to work together to come up with alternate explanations for these abilities if they want to allow an atheist Paladin in their game.

Here are some possible logical explanations for a Paladin's abilities that could work for an atheist character:

• Divine magic: Rather than drawing power from a deity, an atheist Paladin could draw power from their own strong sense of conviction and belief in their cause. They might see their spells as manifesting their willpower, or as tapping into the fundamental forces of the universe to achieve their goals.
• Divine smite: Similar to the above, an atheist Paladin could channel their own inner strength to deal extra radiant damage. They might see this ability as focusing their own energy to strike a powerful blow, or as manifesting their own righteous fury in battle.
• Oath: Instead of swearing allegiance to a specific deity, an atheist Paladin could swear an oath to a particular cause or philosophy that they believe in strongly. This oath might reflect their commitment to justice, righteousness, or protecting the innocent. The Paladin's abilities could be seen as a manifestation of their dedication to this cause, rather than as a gift from a higher power.
• Aura: The Paladin's aura ability could be seen as a natural extension of their own strong presence and leadership ability. They might inspire their allies through their words and deeds, rather than through any sort of divine magic.

Ultimately, the exact explanations for an atheist Paladin's abilities will depend on the specific character and game setting. However, by thinking creatively and reimagining the Paladin's powers in a way that aligns with an atheist worldview, it's possible to create a compelling and unique character that still fits within the rules of Dungeons & Dragons.

There was a fair bit of discussion on the connection between paladins and deities in https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=844271&page=1, which thread also demonstrated that this can be a topic folk get worked up about. Hopefully that can be avoided here, and we can keep things light and friendly!

Personally, my opinion is still that we should be able to specify a deity as well as an oath for a paladin, and have the game display some reactivity to the former. And that most if not all paladins I’d play in a Faerun-set game would likely be connected to a deity (at least for any of the three PHB oaths plus Oathbreaker that we’re likely to get), but that I’m all in favour of respecting 5e rules and keeping a link to a deity optional, to retain flexibility for players who do have a character concept for a paladin who does not swear to a god. I agree with Omkara that’s within the D&D rules, and I’d see it as unwarranted of Larian to refuse to support it.

Though of course this topic talks about a problem with paladins in D&D not just BG3. Personally, I don’t have a strong opinion on what the underlying rules should be, though as long as it remains possible to play the paladin as a traditional holy knight I don’t have any problems with other kinds of paladin being available. Particularly in a ruleset that is not specific to any one setting.

Any character should have the choice to have a god or not. WoTC has been moving away from alignments.
Good old LG paladin is long gone.

Player choice and agency is the way.

But making it clear when a pally will break their path would be great. I did a test, if I killed some enemies oath broken. Knock them out then my party kills them- oath not broken.

I have nothing against being friendly, however what we call paladins today is not really a paladin anymore. I just roll a battle cleric and have a good time, it's more authentically a paladin then 5th edition paladins could ever hope to be.
Now, I don't mind if somebody enjoys the new paladin system, let them have at it, its just that to me its more like a sorcerer knight then anyting.

I agree on the last sentence, definitely. And I certainly have no objection to any character being able to select a deity, but for me it’s not a necessity for characters whose class doesn’t have a (potentially) divine link and I don’t mind the game not reflecting the deity for most of my characters, whereas I want to be able to specify a deity and have the game respond to it for clerics, paladins, monks, druids and rangers, probably in that priority order.

I also don’t feel that the LG paladin is long gone, even if other paladin types are now available. And while, excepting certain races with necessary alignments, characters have free will and aren’t constrained by their alignment, I’m not aware that the alignment matrix is on its way out. Or at least I know is still very much part of 5e, with paladins still cited as a typical example of LG, though I confess I haven’t paid attention to plans for it in One D&D. But, eg, the paladin overview on DNDBeyond still feels very recognisable to me from earlier editions, and in fact I think leans more towards justice and fighting evil as the paradigm than I think is strictly required by the 5e rules.

That all said, I’m not a TT player and am new to 5e with BG3 so it’s possible I’m just seeing what I expect to see. But so far I’ve appreciated what I’ve read it as saying that I can still play a paladin as a lawful good devout champion if and when I wish, but I now have other choices too. I hope BG3 will capture this same flexibility, at least insofar as that’s possible in a computer game.

What I think would really help is if the Acolyte background allowed you to pick a deity and that would sometimes be reflected in conversation.

Interesting idea! Yes, though for me ideally that would be in addition to the classes I mentioned being able to pick deities. It would certainly help for playing a religious character of a non-divine class. And it could go some way to plugging the gap for non-cleric divine classes, too, as it is a background I tend to pick for druids and rangers when I’ve wanted to play them as devoted to a divinity rather than nature generally, and also picked it for one of my paladins. It would certainly be better than nothing, but I’d still prefer the ability to pick other backgrounds and a deity for all divine classes.

I live in hope that this is intended for paladin, at least, as I think some deity content has been data-mined or even appears in the game. I wonder if there just wasn’t time to get it working properly, or think through how it should work alongside the oathbreaker subclass, before the pre-Xmas deadline Larian were working towards for patch 9. That’s my wishful thinking, anyway.

As I mentioned in the past (like here, but that's only one among others —this is a very recurrent topic), I hope that we can select a deity regardless of our Class or Background.

For instance, I might want to be :

• a Druid, with the Sage Background, who is an adept of Eldath.
  
  
• a Drow Ranger, with the Noble Background, who follows Mielikki.
  
  
• an Uthgard Barbarian, with the Outlander Background naturally, who is very big about following the ways of Tempus (much like Lae'zel is big about Vlaakith).
  
  
• a Monk, with the Urchin Background, who is a follower of Shar and a member of the Order Of The Dark Moon.

What is needed is the option to select a Deity for everyone, in the same way that Clerics choose their deity. (Ideally, this would go in the "Origin" tab.)


———

EDIT.

I've just realised this Deity discussion is somewhat off-topic.

Going back to the initial post, I share the same sentiment.

Wizards Of The Coast decided to make Paladin Class less binding, less restrictive, roleplay-wise. Much in the way that they've been working on making the whole game more and more inclusive, and about playing who you want to play, rather than playing who the designers have in mind with each class.

For instance, a Druid's arc is no longer required to involve challenging the Archdruid at level 14.

Likewise, Paladins players are no longer encouraged to play Lawful Stupid and argue with their DM about whether or not their choices for their character are in agreement with what the book/the DM says.

So it's disappointing to see Larian do a full 180° on WOTC's direction, and reinstate the bad old GM who says "your Paladin didn't act how I think they should act, I'm taking away your (Sub-)Class powers. You're now Oathbreaker".


———

Also, +1 for Pointy Hat. I like his videos. Cleric Corner is also good, for the folks who are not allergic to reflavoring.

I dunno, seems weird ...
What would make them different from cleric then?

Even if you strike deity out of that equation?

It makes sense to me ...
Paladin believed that he is worthy of power ... therefore he had power ... then he did something that made him feel like being unworthy of that power ... so he lost the power ... except he didnt in fact the power was still there, just malformed, twisted.

Or siplified version:
As long as Paladin believes to be pure (oath here works as set of rules that define purity) ... his power is pure ... once he lost that believe (aka break his oath) ... his power bevome twisted, bcs he is no longer pure.

If Deity would be source of his power ... besides being Cleric in fact ... he would lost his power by breaking his Oath, wich isnt happening.

Well back in 3.5 Paladin had High BAB, while a cleric had medium BAB. The difference between the classes was that a Paladin was more focused on physical combat, while a cleric was more focused on magical combat. Now this is no longer a valid differentiation, because BAB is gone (afaik), which is why I basically just play a cleric now, the Paladin lost it's salt in 4th and 5th Edition. In essence, the differences between cleric and Paladin were watered down enough to the point where one of them had to change in order to differentiate them. The problem witht his is that the Paladin was changed in a way that intrudes on the ranger's domain and thus the ranger lost it's identity and is still one the classes that is not exactly well handled by 5th Edition.

As for the Oathbreaker, I think it's not really a paladin. A paladin is a divine knight, an Oathbreaker however is more like a witch-knight. More like a sith lord in a medieval setting really.
I think the difference between a paldin and an oathbreaker is the source of their power. That is enough of a reason to handle them as separate classes, if it was not we could just call all caster-fighters paladin (including spellblades, rangers, bards, eldritch knights, etc). Basically, if you break your oath you do lose your power, it's just that game-mechanically you are de-facto relegated into the Oathbreaker class, so you don't experience a loss of power, like you would back in BG2, where losing your powers meant that you were basically a sub-par fighter.

The root of identity is not in game mechanics, but in the lore of the class. A Paladin is and always has been a servant of divine forces. You can try to twist the class into something else and still call it a paladin, but people will naturally notice this and move on to other classes that fir the archetype (namely, the cleric).

You should have that choice for sure, however your choice should not be grounds for rewriting entire classes and their lore and the way they work.
I don't mind if some people want to play an atheist cleric or paladin, that's actually fine, but that shouldn't fundamentally affect the way the class as a concept.
A paladin that is an atheist could for example, still be devoted to Justice, and he would still be granted divine powers through the divine portfolio of Justice with the approval of the God of Justice, Tyr. The difference between an atheist and a believer Paladin in this case would just come down to having to deal with Kelemvor in the afterlife.
However, the powers of an atheist Paladin would still be granted by divine forces and it wouldn't be an internal power within the atheist Paladin. If you want internal power that comes through the force of personality, the self, that's pretty much what a sorcerer is, which is a perfectly fine class btw, but it's not what a paladin is.

I do think the difference between an Oathbreaker paladin as a sort of anti-paladin class with powers of its own and just any old lapsed paladin who has broken their oath is a potentially interesting one. This is partially engaged with through game mechanics in BG3, insofar as merely breaking their oath just leads to an inability to channel divinity (though admittedly they can still cast other divine spells), whereas getting Oathbreaker powers requires explicit commitment to a new course to the Oathbreaker knight. The details of this are left hazy, which is probably necessary given the variety of motivations an Oathbreaker might have, but for me it should at least mean explicitly rejecting the previous oath and now seeing elements of it as something that it is righteous to actively fight against, with a degree of zeal that could attract divine favour.

I do get some of this feeling from the spiel of the Oathbreaker knight as well as the game mechanics, though admittedly I think it could come across more strongly.

Agreed ...
Im just with WotC in that Paladin dont really need to get his power from deity in order to be this way.

Well I disagree with WoTC on that, but we both know how much that matters lol

I'm gonna point out that there are certain paladin lines that do seem to imply worship of a god, it's even almost stated to be Tyr during the whole Anders quest. So that just makes me think there's more there that we haven't seen, one way or another.

Another thing that's just occurred to me. People are throwing out the term atheist paladin and I don't think that automatically reflects the state of our character. I think something that gets lost in these games is that the assumption is every character believes in the gods, and has one god they revere in particular above the others. So it only goes that any paladins we make would be the same. It's not that they don't believe in any gods, it's just that the gods aren't the chief guiding compass they serve, that would be their oath. And I think if we keep that in mind then it makes the idea of paladins who don't take their oath directly to a god make a bit more sense. Since any paladin will probably still have a patron god who is in line with their oath. So I can see it as a situation where the paladin makes the oath in a way that's not tied to a specific deity, but they still have their deity they pray to and revere, and that deity notices them because of this oath they took, an oath which exemplifies their divine virtues even if they don't directly act in service to the god. So the god grants them power in acknowledgement of their devotion.

My Oathbreaker (old anti-Paladin) isn’t an atheist per say. He knows the gods exist, it’s just they are just exceptionally powerful long lived beings that can die. The only “god” he knows of is AO and even then sees him as disconnected and unconcerned with the suffering of normal mortals. Cobalt (my Oathbreaker) broke his oath(“fell”) when he realized this. He isn’t “evil” per say, but will not blink an eye when a cleric, paladin, zealot, etc stands in his way. He feels the less the realms depend on “gods” the less suffering and pain the “mortals” will experience…

It’s funny the way the Oathbreaker Knight in the game is it sets up my Oathbreaker perfectly. It obviously needs work, but I like it the way it works now. The power comes from his conviction “oath”; however, he is aware of how the weave works and assumes a darker force maybe allowing him access to magic to fight the gods. He expects this power to be taken away one day but for him it’s currently a tool. He will fight against the absolute and bring the grove to ruin.

Apparently this is leftover dialogue from the datamined stuff when Paladins had Tags for all of the same gods clerics did. Supposedly you can get references to paladin's serving a 'goddess' under certain circumstances-Lolth IIRC-I think it's if you choose Lolthsworn since they have a default religious option? IDK. It's pretty clear from its current implementation that at the very least *player* paladins are divorced from the concept of religion, and that this is an about face from the initial plans.

Anyways, all of this stuff about 'making an oath without being religious but a god notices anyways and chooses to be your patron without revealing themselves in any way' seems incredibly niche and unlikely. Certainly more appropriately an outlier rather than the norm?

First of all, what even is a non-religious 'oath of devotion' or 'oath of ancients' paladin if there is no religious doctrine guiding them, yet they very clearly have a specific code of ethics governing their actions-who is defining all this? It certainly isn't the paladin's themselves, because one 'oath of the ancients' paladin has the same creed as every other. 'Paladin' isn't some a'-la-carte 'pick your grabbag of oath stuff' it's a package deal. Several different-themed packages, but distinct packages nonetheless. This indicates organization, a creed passed down and taught from one paladin to another. And at that point, I ask myself why religiously neutral paladins instead of utilizing the existing religious structure of paladins in Faerun. Why cowboys and superheroes but not the Order of the Radiant Heart?

And what even is an 'oathbreaker' if breaking an oath doesn't indicate a betrayal of an organization or even identify you in any way and the only distinguishing feature is that you get your divine powers no-strings attached? Makes sense if you are a member of a paladin order. Who is holding you accountable for 'falling' and shanked a goblin that one time if anyone can become a paladin and falling is a moral failure and a personally-defined one at that which doesn't indicate a betrayal of an organization, heresy, or crime, etc. Falling/turning oathbreaker just doesn't mean a whole lot there.

IMO there should have been religious paladins, and the oathbreaker should have been a quest to either regain your paladinhood after falling or proving yourself worthy to join as a paladin of a different relgion. There should have been evil paladins as an option to start as. Falling should not have been a matter of choosing to pay a small fine or keep all of your powers anyways.

Yes, an outlier, kinda like being a paladin and an atheist at the same time

It seems as likely to me that the evidence of religion tags for paladins means that this is a planned feature that wasn’t ready for release with patch 9, as that it was initially planned then abandoned. I’m going to continue to believe my preferred interpretation until definitively proved wrong .

I’m also not aware of anyone arguing that a paladin without a relationship to a specific deity is the norm rather than an outlier, particularly in the FR settings. Is that an extrapolation from the fact that we can’t (yet?) specify in-game the particular deity to whom our paladins are sworn to the conclusion that most of them aren’t actually sworn to deities at all? That’s not a leap I’d make, and given that it wouldn’t fit well with the setting - as you’ve argued - I don’t think we have reason to believe that’s what Larian intended anyone to infer from that lack of functionality either.

I do very much agree that it would be great to meet paladin orders in the game, and have the opportunity to roleplay our paladins as a member of, eg, the Order of the Radiant Heart. Hopefully that’s something we’ll see once we, presumably, encounter more paladins as the adventure proceeds.

And I certainly wouldn’t see it as a bad thing if the game included more context on paladins in Faerun to help newcomers generate a lore-friendly background for their paladins that will be fulfilling to play in BG3, though this doesn’t seem to be a gap specific to this class. For any custom Tav, it feels as though Larian expect us to do our offline homework on the setting rather than holding our hands through the process of developing our character. Perhaps they figure that people not already familiar with the setting will choose origin characters, but still …

With my background I'd be satisfied with a Paladin (or Cleric) worshiping a "Higher Power However We Understand It".
:P
IMO such an expression of spiritual belief could be latched upon by a minor deity desperate for Followers.

Back to thread with a question.
All other Classes seem to follow the PHB in the level where their flavor (subclass) is selected. Paladins have it moved forward from 3rd to 1st.
Is it because they were added last?
Is it because - as mentioned - the Vows should be said at a Holy Place which is not available in-game?
BTW - to me the Paladin Vows pretty much make them LG, the LN Oath of Vengence being left out - here the theory that this flavour was left out to make the Scottish accent guy's spiel a better fit with what the PC did sounds legit.

Am having fun playing my Lollthsworn Oathbreaker - I'm keeping the Mother of Spiders, the Unbent, the Unbowed, the Unbroken, She of Well Shaped Ankles, the Breaker of Chains of Slavery to Correlon Larethian, the Stickler to Diet Plans, the All-Mother happy with my Strife-In-Surface fomenting ways

I've given my theory why I think Oath of Vengeance was left out, though I'd say that Oath of the ancients fits for a chaotic good character more than lawful good. As for why we pick oaths at first level now, I think it's becase there's nowhere to say the oaths now. Plus the specific oaths are tied to dialogue options so I think Larian wanted to provide more of those as soon as possible. Which I don'tthink is a bad choice necessarily. Also, if we don't have oaths from lvl one, then that's a decent stretch of time when we're not technically bound by anything and can act as we wish.

I don't mind the change, I don't think it alters the roleplaying or flavour of the class significantly.

My son, up to EA BG3 completely ignorant of DnD, was absolutely baffled, bewildered and bemused by the character creation process.
In spite of all the tips and tutorials The Oaths - and other sub-class choices at Tavgenesis - were yet another complicated and confusing matter.

Hence IMO moving the choice of Oath to later would "lessen the pain" for newbies.
But I understand the point of "no oath" = "Fighters with fancy spells" before taking the Oath.

There are two things here : 5E's fundamental complexity and BG3's onboarding process.

Regarding D&D 5E's fundamental complexity, and by complexity here I mostly mean number of options, one thing that 5E was doing fairly well, was to postpone some choices to level 2 or 3 (this was, essentially, 5E's way of making onboarding easier for players who prefer a lighter introduction). In particular some Subclass choices. For some Classes (namely, Cleric, Sorcerer, Warlock), given the canonical lore/flavour, it made more sense to choose the Subclass at level 1, but otherwise, Subclasses were chosen at level 3, except for two that happened at level 2.

Now, given 5E overall simplicity, for gamers used to learning rules or players who've learned D&D 5E and have become familiar with it, the early-game ultra simplicity may have been a bit too much. To the point that many games/campaigns would start at level 3, because that's where your character really started to become what you wanted. My vague understanding of D&D 5.5 (or rather One D&D, as its currently named), is that there might be a bit more complexity at character creation (I think that more Subclasses will be chosen at level 3 but you'll get feats from level 1, and thus access to a menu of options).


Regarding BG3's onboarding process, BG3 is rather bad at teaching players the rules. Tooltips have become a bit better in general. But the character creation screen is still horrible.

Notably, it fails to show how your character will evolve, and what the future implications of your current choices are.

It also don't present the choices to make in a simple order. You often have to go back and forth between tabs (skills is a particular bad example, since you choose 2 in the Origin tab, and some more in the Skills tab, and the presentation in that latter tab really isn't great).

+1
Oh yes, it took us quite a lot of head scratching and swearing to figure out which skills/profficiencies came from race, class, background, or state of the tide at Ghent ... :P

In character creation my knowledge of 2nd and 3/3,5 editions sometimes helped, sometimes led us down false paths ...

But we are drifting outside the topic.
So, it was a choice between newbie players either facing bewildering choices at Tavgenesis, or to play their Paladins in non-Paladin, not Oathbound manner, and then face a bewildering choice at lvl 3?

I don't think the choice would be nearly so bewildering if they actually told us what the oaths were for each paladin. Ironically, even though you choose your oath at level 1, Pathfinder 2e has a perfect solution to this with their champion class. Good or evil aligned champions have tenets specific to them, and then based on whether you're lawful, neutral or chaotic you choose your subclass and a longer, more defining set of tenets and abilities.

And regarding onboarding, I'm willing to give BG3 q lite grace here because typically in games the tutorial is the last thing to get worked on and finished so it doesn't surprise me that it's rough in early access. Doesn't excuse the interface issues in the character creation screen though.

So now it's confirmed that we're getting oath of vengeance paladins, I think it's worth discussing in more specificity what that means for paladins. The oath of vengeance is really intended for Lawful Neutral characters, or more harsh iterations of lawful good. Their tenets are as follows:
Fight the Greater Evil. Faced with a choice of fighting
my sworn foes or combating a Iesser evil, I choose the
greater evil.
No Mercy for the Wicked. Ordinary foes might win
my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.
By Any Means Necessary. My qualms can't get in the
way of exterminating my foes.
Restitution. If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is
becacuse I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed
by their misdeeds.

Those are very firm tenets with a clear idea. They are meant to be rutheless, but only to a point. They aren't forbidden from give mercy at all, only to their "sworn foes" whatever that means. Clearly there's an idea that they swear their vengeance against a particular sort of enemy and outside that, there's wiggle room. And importantly, their final tenet makes it explicit that these paladins have a duty to help those harmed by their foes in particular. They take on a real sense of responsibility.

How do we think Larian will handle this oath? Assuming they're able to iron out the kinks in the oath system, how well can they pull off this oath in the best of circumstances? I think it's worryingly possible, even likely that Larian will lean too far into the edginess of the class (which in their defence, that edginess is absolutely present in the subclass by design) and miss out on the nuance of it. I think that if we're just blanket not allowed to show mercy, that would do a disservice to the class and force it into a villanous role it's not meant for. It's a class that accepts some enemies as deserving mercy. Not even just some people, but some enemies against you. How Larian interprets that will really make or break the class.

Good points, Gray Ghost.

IMO it is easier to play a Paladin in tabletop than CRPG, as you can hash things out with the DM.

Very well put. ++

I haven't read the thread, but I've been looking into the DnD Paladin in general a bit myself lately. In my opinion, he's a bit immersion-breaking to begin with. The ambivalence and ambiguity is simply due to the fact that in the video game world, the Paladin has always been a warrior of an holy order. Attempts have been made to tone this down or do away with it altogether with the DnD Pala, but IMHO they have failed to rename the paraphrases of his skills and abilities accordingly.

Terms like Divine Sense / Smite / Health , Sacred Oath, Blessed Warrior always inevitably bring to mind gods and religion. Opposing or at least more neutral terms are hardly present. Of course, this dissolves a bit as soon as, for example, a righteous Paladin Oath of Devotion becomes an Oathbreaker. Nevertheless, ambivalences and ambiguities remain, e.g. the Blessed Warrior fighting style. A blessing comes from a deity and usually has a positive connotation. Now, however, the description reads: "An Oathbreaker is a Paladin who breaks his sacred oaths to pursue a dark goal or to serve an evil power. The light that burned in the Paladin's heart is extinguished. Only the darkness remains." But what if he was already in the service of an evil deity like Auril and then breaks his oath. Except for other abilities, there is no real gain, I think.

For example, when redesigning the DnD Paladin, it would have been better to stick to the old Japanese Bushidô code around honor, pride, etc. or any other "Lifestyle", to free the Paladin from the tight corset of the divine and religious. For example, "Divine Sense" could have been renamed to "Focus." The term "Pride Warrior" instead of "Blessed Warrior" can be both positive (fatherhood) and negative (arrogance), which fits all other alignments (Devotion, Vengeance, Crown, etc.), except perhaps the Oath of Redemption. Of course, these were only first basic considerations...

By "freeing" the paladin from the tight corset of the divine and the religious, you kill the Paladin.
A paladin is defined by his limitations.

It doesn't help that the name Paladin is inherently Religious to begin with, even before it's use in DnD, at least of it that was used for inspiration (Going REALLY early with it's origin and root name is basically means Palace Guard.......which doesn't fit this at all and thus isn't relevant.).

It's kinda goofy to try and change that, I think it's too little too late to try and change that, it's already what people think of in fantasy when you use the name.

Just that we do not misunderstand. I have made observations, not demands.... I assume that you are also an advocate who wants to be able to choose a deity for the Pala? If so, I can understand that very well. Exactly that is my statement with 5e one said goodbye to it, but left other class-specific attributions so. It does not kill the Paladin. My point here was just about framing certain terminology, which in the end fits the individual subclasses better. By the way, the fact that the Paladin is defined by his limitations does not exclude this at all, nor did I in any way imply to change this to his disadvantage. As I said, I was only interested in reducing or eliminating certain attributive ambivalences and ambiguities.

Short example: We surely agree that the term "holy war" is an absolute contradiction in terms, since nothing about a war is holy, as it only results in suffering, cruelty, etc.

I feel the same way about "Blessed Warrior Oathbreaker" etc., only that there are a few more of these contradictory attributions...


That it is too late for that was also clear to me. Yes, the mini-adjustment from 4 to 5e Pala failed in its implementation in terms of selectivity. As far as I can see, the only elemental change was that you can no longer select a deity. This was an attempt to free the Paladin as a predefined god warrior (you can still become one if you want to), at least that's how I understand it. I hope a future DnD version can define this better. But indeed for the current version, that ship has already sailed....

You absolutely can choose a deity though, it just isn't required mechanically. That is a very big difference. The assumption in D&D character creation is that every character will choose a patron deity, I believe. The same still goes for paladins, so naturally that deity will be who you made your oath to. My guess is that the lack of requirement to choose a deity is part of the effort to make D&D a "generic" ruleset. If you want to create your own setting, which is low key what they seem to want by default, then maybe you don't want paladins to work the same. Plus I think having paladins differ by oath helps make them distinct flavor-wise from clerics.

On another note something occurred to me which has me worried. Minthara is apparently a vengeance paladin, or at least she used a vengeance paladin ability. I really hope Larian don't just make that oath the "evil" oath.

It already is a LN oath, if not LE.

I disliked detaching Paladins from Gods a lot until I realized it allows for religious strife within a church or amongst believers in the same god. An oath of vengeance paladin of Tyr would have quite a different view on things compared to a oath of devotion paladin of Tyr. And it might clash with the clergy of Tyr as well. However, the Paladin undoubtedly has divine power, presumably granted by Tyr. Finally I have a way as DM to portray a more complex religious belief within a single church.

However, not being able to select a deity for all characters and Paladins especially is grating on me. There are very few faithless in Forgotten Realms, and I imagince close to zero faithless Paladins. A vengeance paladin of Asmodeus or Jergal is quite different from a Ancient Paladin of Eldath. If the game can't account for the variety of the gods and faiths, it also should mechanically enforce breaking an oath it doesn't even attempt at understanding or portraying.

You make a very good observation about paladins. However with regard to not being able to choose a deity for everyone, I see I not as the characters being faithless and just as the characters not really being especially religious. Like a lot of Christians won't bring it up because they don't really think it matters day to day, but they still express faith in various small ways. But those ways can't really be shown well when we're in constant control of the character and skip over most small moments. Picking a deity for paladins makes sense as an option though, but I feel like there are certain options that really seem to imply worship of a deity without stating it outright.

IMO Paladin's piety is above the average ... otherwise no spells. Unless these happen Because Science!

Since she doesn't have a tadpole Minthara seems to voluntarily serve the Absolute, maybe she is an outcast Drow and wants to get revenge on Lolth that way? Hence Paladin Oath of Vengeance?

On the other hand, I rediscovered another older thread https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=835054#Post835054 with a reply of mine that I had already forgotten about:


Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters... Are Warlock Patrons automatically all evil? The Raven Queen is rather neutral. Even Jahreira is neutral, but is often classified as a force for good especially in connection with the Harpers, if I look at the classification of the companions in other threads. This paladin deity & alignment story is quite complicated.

I am not very familiar with 5th rules, but a paladin normally could not form party with evils, nor thief. That made the paladin you created hardly survive in bg3 because most npcs were E or N. For example, shadowheart worship Shar a which is evil, so she is likely LN or NE. A paladin must not party with such npc but game go on...

This dilemma is spoken of by the Hound in GoT and ASIF and is one of the reasons he refuses to be a knight. It's also involved in Jaime Lannister getting the 'king slayer' epithet.

The Greeks had something similar. Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon. Orestes is duty-bound to avenge his father yet also duty-bound to never harm his mother.

I'll be honest, Pointy Hat lost me by saying the old-school LG Paladins made role-playing predictable and tedious. As someone who started playing paladins forty years ago, I can say that they have never been necessarily predictable or tedious. They're like the role-playing equivalent of a sonnet; they're a chance to express creativity through the focus of limitations.

It will be interesting to see how they implement 5E paladins in the full game as the tabletop version turned me almost completely off what had been my favorite class. I think part of the problem for me is that while more player choice is a great thing, the increased freedom changes the nature of the game. Some of the changes work really well, others remove some of my favorite aspects of a character type.

I dunno, in 2e, it felt like cheating at cards would get you kicked out of your order.

I like the idea that you can bind yourself to different oaths with different restrictions. e.g. An oath of vengeance pally may be willing to burn down a small forest to flush out a group of bugbears, while and oath of the ancients pally would see that same act as an atrocity.

To be honest, I never really played much of 2e, I was much more a 1e player so my experience may be different.

Divorcing the Paladins from their respective deities in DnD seems to be an interesting case insofar as it presents us with a situation where the loosening of rules with the explicit goal of creating more player freedom to explore niche character concepts (white ravens as you called it) paradoxically creates a ripple effect where we now have fewer roleplay choices and the exception effectively becomes the new rule. There's a lesson to be learned here, I guess.

A lesson that will NOT be learned.