Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Bye bye Paladin Deities

Same here, when i defeated Boooal and the Kuo-toa ask me to adore my deity, as a Paladin I cant say any. v_v

Yeah this and the really regrettable change they did with Racial ability score bonuses, are my two biggest gripes with the game at the moment.

If they reimplemented Racial ability score bonuses (raw form PHB), atleast as an option
and they added deity choice for Paladins. I would be on cloud nine for this game.

As it is, they have soured my expectations/curbed my enthusiasm on the finish line .

Wont go more into Paladin deity choice as I made a long thread about it a few months back.

But it simply makes sense. Paladins get their powers ultimately from Deities or Divine Beings wether you like it or not. Their magic is divine magic.
Furthermore, in SCAG, it clearly states that "most paladins are dedicated to a deity".

Even in the minority of cases, where a paladin is not dedicated to a deity, their powers are still sponsored by a deity or several of them, through the Paladins Oath, they dont materialize out of thin air....

All Larian needs to do to please both parties, is to add a choose deity option i character creation, exact same as Cleric, but with the added option of none. Heck you can have none as default. But the option to choose a deity as a Paladin, NEEDS to be there.

I would have liked this option too. For three out of four of my paladin concepts, I think it'll actually work okay in practice to have the game acknowledge their morals and values (in the form of their oaths) and for me to head-canon their deity. But for one, whom I'd envisaged as a paladin of Elistraee, their relationship to their specific goddess is so important that I don't think I could roleplay them without that showing up in game. I'm now thinking that I might give them at least one level of cleric to reflect that. And as I was planning to make them a dex-based paladin, the relaxation of the multi-classing rules will actually help me there, even though I find it hard to approve of that change more generally

Hell, I might give them one or more bard levels as well while I'm at it. I haven't worked it out yet! I'm sure they'll end up a min-maxer's nightmare but could be really fun to roleplay.

What's especially strange, at least to me, is this:

Paladin abilities:

> Divine (!) Sense (Detct Evil in previous editions)
> Divine (!) Smite
> Divine (!) Health

Also from the PHB (Oath of Devotion description):

Many who swear this oath are devoted to gods of law and good and use the gods' tenets as the measure of their devotion.

So, while they're technically not required to have a deity, it is definitely extremely common for them and we should have the option in game.
I'll wait for a mod that allows me to select a deity before playing a paladin unless by some miracle this feature actually gets into the game.

Indeed, also this line from SCAG pretty much says it all: "...most paladins are dedicated to a deity".

By the rules Paladins don't need a God, but every... single... person... playing D&D picks a god for their Paladin. Being a Paladin joining the wall of the faithless is just headachingly stupid and no one plays that way.

* I know someone will come and say "I do!" Well a great big bears hug to you!

Kinda weird as a Paladin I can refer to my service in the name of the Gods and call people heretics for deceiving through using the name of Tyr, but I can't say WHICH gods I follow, just "The Gods." All Gods? Ever Shar? Lolth? Cyric?

I am doing the same thing. Grabbing one level of Cleric to pick my deity so yeah this is one example why not having to have ability scores to multi class can be a good thing. I want to recreate one of my fav Dnd characters I played as. A drow paladin of Elistraee that has a very childlike notion of heroics while having an intense hatred of anything to do with Lolth. Plus one nice thing about having an easy mode. We can make an unoptimized multiclass build and use that as the difficulty setting

Pretty sure they modeled Paladins off of the concept of Knights and Codes (of Chivalry) rather than as a Knight Templar (which was 3.5e and before). I personally like that Paladins are bound by codes now, it distinguishes them over just being a half Cleric with a sword. That said, even in the lore, some Paladins are known to be religious, so I don't understand why a deity isn't selectable.

My opinion on this subject is somewhat contradictory.

On the one hand, I am not against the idea of knightly orders.
After all, in BG2 there was a famous order of the Radiant Heart (I miss you Keldorn), and all its members did not worship the same god.
Therefore, the idea of grouping multiple gods together into a limited number of orders makes sense.

After all, there are dozens of gods in the world of the Forgotten Realms, and it is not realistic to create a special paladin for each of them.

But then again, the paladin's power comes from a divine source.
Every paladin just has to believe in something or they won't be able to use any special tricks.

Perhaps, after choosing the paladin order, we could choose a god who would be divided into good, neutral and evil, according to the paladin orders.
It do not have to have any gameplay effect at all (just like choosing a god in Neverwinter Night) but it would have a great roleplay effect for many players.

The spells are still named like that because at the end of the day it's just a half-assed deconstruction of a genre trope that only exists to cater to a very specific type of player who wants to have their cake and eat it too. That being said, if you read the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide it will outright tell you that Paladins are warriors that are basically ennobled by the grace of a deity in most cases. So in the lore it's still the norm for Paladins to be connected to the divine and Larian chose to design them around the exception for some reason. Very weird for a game that places such a large emphasis on roleplaying. It's not like they didn't diverge from the "pure" rules in other places.

Still most, not some.

D&D 5E SCAG (Sword coast adventurers guide:
«Most Paladins are devoted to a deity»

Says it right there on The page.

Yeah, but at least in pnp, your paladin and other characters get to choose if they worship a god or not. Why not have that option? FR is a world where gods exist and the vast majority of people worship them or even multiple dieties. A true non beleiver is rare for many reasons - for one, once again, the gods are real.

Maybe oaths should have associated pantheons then

Actually Paladins in pretty much all media are not just Knightly Orders but religious nightly orders dedicated to gods and until 5e were tired to gods. While they separated it mechanically it is rare to see people play paladins without them


Its actually quite common to create paladins for specific deities. They are often defenders of the faith though traditionally there are some deities that are more likely to have large numbers of Paladins like Tyr, but that doesn't exclude others if they feel the call of that deity and the path of being a paladin

Not really useful because the game already happen in a place of evil. You will being threat by evil enemies and looks like your only way is to hack through by evil ways. Worship good gods may not helpful when doing missions.

I'm afraid you misunderstood me.
My point was that it's unrealistic to ask the devs to make us different paladin classes for each of the gods.

It's almost as if 90% appeal of a Paladin is roleplaying a religious zealot in basically every setting that has Paladins.

They wouldn't need to... all that people asked for is the option to select a deity like we can in D&D. They could even have used the same list they use for clerics.

All you'd need to do to accomodate paladins of specific gods is to allow them access to certain dialogue choices and reactions based on their god. It's not demanding much more than would be demanded from a cleric.

Speaking about 5e as a whole, my opinion has long been that they decoupled paladins from explicit religions because they felt it went without saying. They understood that 90% of players would still give their paladin a religion because they understood that it's just how it goes that players give all their characters patron gods as part of character creation. They simply changed this up to allow for a bit more openness for those who wanted to play edge cases and provide some inspiration to stoke those more unique ideas. the problem with BG3 is that they don't allow anyone other than clerics to choose gods. (which by the way is something that Wrath of the Righteous managed to do without issue, including bits of reactivity all through the game depending on what god or religion you chose)