Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Paladin Class Implementation: Discussion & Feedback

Exactly this. I love playing oathbreaker, but I just want to adjust my ability scores, feats, etc. I absolutely do not want to reclaim my oath, but basic game functions are being blocked behind a huge gold sink. Even with that, I took the gold sink and reclaimed and respecced...but now there does not appear to be a way to break my oath again...without potentially breaking end game quest lines and companions potentially. I went back and killed all the remaining goblins from now neutral blighted village. I fnished off all the npcs at the creche. I'm looking hard at killing off any remaining druids at emerald, but afraid it will break something end game if I do. It shouldn't be this problematic to just want to respec ability scores/feats. No other class has this much of an over the top struggle for a basic game function. Just let withers respec everything except the oath already.

I do not know how Paladin is handled with official D&D rules. However, my understanding from presented Paladin Oaths in game is this:
Stand between the victim/protectant and their tormentor. One oath has the focus of first bringing the victim/protectant to safety. The other oath immediately strikes at the bad guy. In both cases, the paladin is basically following his function in the game.
Plus of course general things like not stealing anything that is obviously in someone else's possession. Not entering houses when there is no reason to do so.
I would not put every dialogue option on the scale of the paladin, because do the oaths in the game always oblige to be honest?
In any case, there should be a more clear instructions in the inventory for each paladin about what the current oath requires and obliges and what endangers this oath. Then maybe include some kind of strike system, like the masquerade breaks in VtM Bloodlines.

Not really a missing class feature, per se, but where's the Holy Avenger? Baldur's Gate 2 did have one as I recall. Cormsyr. Also a Purifier I think.

In fact, a lot of the standard DMG magic items didn't make it in the game.

I'm personally envisoning a Sword in the Stone sort of thing where only a Pal 12 can draw it. Hell, even name it Excalibur if you want, it's public domain.

The issue with the Holy Avenger is that your kind of pushing the Paladin back to being a "Holy" warrior and 5E has removed that concept. Okay that is not really fair. 5E is designed to work with any game world but the concept of the Paladin can be adapted within the confine of it's rules to fit different options. For the Forgotten Realms, by lore the Paladin was aligned with a specific God or church. Under the 5E rules this is easy to implement however Larian decided to ignore this part of the lore.

Holy Avengers were in the previous two games and remain in the DMG.

If I wasn't on PS5 I'd just pay someone to mod it in, compete with the DMG graphic

My main problem with paladin right now is Control undead:

I didn't play pre patch, so l just kinda expected that the spell worked differently from summons, but l read from someone else that it used to work like a summon with its own controllable portrait like summons. I have been getting more and more annoyed by how differently it works now.
I want to control my undead, use its abilities and not just have it follow me around, do its own thing and then get occasionally stuck permanently causing me to have to get a new one and/or rest the charge back.
I had a problem by controlling a from it getting stuck from having a bigger hitbox to fit in some of the doorways, which causes the permanent freeze bug to happen, which waypoint teleporting does not fix.


I agree with the problem of withers and respeccing. I chose both str and dex and abandoned charisma until respec so l could use all weapon types. Broke my oath on purpose and went to respec at some point to see that l would have to use all of the saved up gold to fix the problem just to break my oath again on purpose.

Something I keep seeing come up in discussions of Paladins is that fact that 5e did away with using a God with the Paladin. That is not actually true. The Players Handbook is a general guide for the game mechanics and NOT a guide to game lore within specific worlds. For the Forgotten Realms and 5e we can reference The Sword Coast Adventurers Guide.

This is directly from page 132 of that book.

Quote

Most paladins in the Forgotten Realms, like clerics, are devoted to a particular deity. The most common paladin deities are those that embody action, decision, watchfulness, and wisdom. Torm and Tyr are both popular deities for paladins, as is Ilmater, who stresses self-sacrifice and the alleviation of suffering. Although less common, there are paladins of the following deities: Helm, Hoar, Lathander, Sune, Corellon Larethian, the Red Knight, Clangeddin Silverbeard, Arvoreen, and Mystra.

Their devotion to a higher ideal makes paladins popular folk heroes in the Realms. Many tales are woven about noble knights and oath-sworn champions, although pragmatists note that the tales often end with a tremendous sacrifice on the part of said champions.

The most common patrons of paladins of the Oath of Devotion and the Oath of the Crown (which is described below) are Helm, Torm, and Tyr—protection, courage, and justice—although Ilmater has his share of devoted champions. Those green knights sworn to the Oath of the Ancients might honor Arvoreen or Corellon, while avengers of the Oath of Vengeance follow patrons like Hoar, although there are also avengers of Helm and Tyr, meting out harsh justice.

Reading further we see the exception to the devotion to Deity appears to be the Oath of the Crown;


So when people bring up that the removal of the choice of Deity for a Paladin is because I of the game rules, I would point out that it's removal has in effect used game rules to break lore. In a GREAT RPG Lore is always king and supersedes rules require them to adjust to lore.

I found this thread because I would love to experiment with being an Oathbreaker. This is my first playthrough and I am doing it with three friends who are all very new to D&D and its lore, its rules, and roleplaying as a whole. We very much went into this blind, so we have used Withers quite a bit to experiment with our characters. I would love to dive into Oathbreaker, as I feel it would fit the roleplaying style of my group and how I want to play my character, but the concern of either being dead weight or a money sink to my group makes me hesitant to really pursue it.

Like everyone here has said, it makes sense to have a steep cost for reclaiming your oath if you choose to do so, and we should not be able to simply reclass/respec out of our broken oath. I don't think anyone is asking for that to change. I want to be able to keep my access to experiment with multiclasses and AS changes so I can have a build I am happy with as we finally progress past Act 1 (hopefully this weekend), while also actively playing as an Oathbreaker. I also don't want to have to preplan my character's entire build upfront because that breaks our fun of experimenting and filling in gaps for the party. Playing Paladin has been a blast so far, but I think it's unfortunate that we lose the ability to respec anything and can get it back only if we reclaim the oath.

If anyone has any news if Larian ever plans to change this, I would greatly appreciate them sharing it. The interview response makes sense, but it's not like I want to get out of breaking the oath. I just want to play the game and learn the system with my friends without having to fall back on saves from before I knew something didn't work.

Fancy Falcon can't you just save then re-spec see if you like it and then re-load thus saving the cost of the oath breaking?

An alternative might be Withers respecs Oathbreaker for 1000 gp, the same as if you were taking your Oath back

I would rather see, since we are stuck due to mechanics with the "rebuying" your Oath, that we actually see the cost go UP, this should be a HUGE DEAL.

You mean 1000 for the first break, 2000 for the second break...

No I mean like 3K to 5K when you first break and a second break no salvation.

this is funny when you break oath from the ancients when you kill paladins in act 1 from quest before you talk to them

same for quest saving gnomes in underdark

in both cases my ancient oath has been broken for making this quest

also there is bug that you cant change class if you break oath

also i like paladin class but oath breaking is annoying that just mean you will have steal more gold from npc to recover it

I agree with whats been said. Gaining back your oath should be a whole quest line as it feels cheap just to be able to buy it back or at least cost much more. Deities would be a great addition to add some flavor to our character, they're already in the game for clerics and monks so it shouldn't be too hard to let paladin select theirs.

The idea to add a quest to regain your oath is fantastic! Perhaps the quest could be different for each of the oaths.

On Withers breaking, it should be easy enough to just restrict Paladin as a class once the oath has been broken. This would prevent a player from using this feature to restore the oath, and allow them to select a completely different class from level 1 now that they are a fallen Paladin. Perhaps the oath restoration quest could still be there for the player to complete and restore the ability to respec as a Paladin (or available as a multiclass option).

I've given this (too) much thought and I'd simply kill the Paladin class as it is today/in BG3.
It started off as a CLERIC then drifted into a Chivalric KNIGHT - thus both Lawfull and Good. Then it started drifting even more, into Divine Enforcer territory ... and into the mess it is in 5ed, with Oath, no Divine angle, yet with legacy mumbo-jumbo about Good even though Allignments for Paladins were ditched.
Hence in BG3 I'd axe the Class as such, instead adding it as Subclass of Fighter at 3rd lvl. The Oathbound Knight. A warrior abiding by a CODE.
Channel Oath charges are used for Smiting (not called Divine anymore, but Righteous or something like that), Lay On Hands becomes Help as Extra Action (they are skilled in battlefield first aid :P), and no Divine Magic Spells.
This eliminates the messy religious angle. They are OATHBOUND KNIGHTS. And lose their Smites if they do not abide to their bushido
Devotion - for the classic feel, LG
Ancients - LN, I'd guess
Vengeance (can use mechanics of Larian's Oathbreaker) - LE

On the other hand I'd like to see implementation of Oath Breaking for Clerics - e.g. if a Priest of Melikki kills the Owlbear Cub, Priestess of Lollth kissy-kissy with Astarion ewww, a SURFACE ELF?!? wot u thinking gurl?!?, Shaman(ess) of Gruumsh aiding weaking Tieflings against the go-getter upwardly mobile Absolutist Gobbos - then bye-bye Spells until Atonement.

First with the Oathbreaker, YES PLEASE put some choices in colors or a warning!! IN my first play through I broke my Oath THREE times with the last one dealing with last portion of Astarion's quest which I thought I was making the right moral choice. That time it cost me 10,000.....just damn. I didnt even come close to having that amount so I had to do Shadowhearts personal quest with no powers bc I still wanted my Oath. And I know this is a little of topic but I think your characters powers should also shift or break with choices, Like Shadowheart. You chose option A/B in Nightsong quest your powers should reflect on those two choices. In my opinion they missed the mark big time with certain characters making these story changing choices.