Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The Larian way to handle paladins?

Hi,

of course its a nice mechanic that there are consequences when you dont stick to your oath, but seriously does it has to be a dark glowing death knight waiting for you in your camp? Again something that's screams for me "omg that's so Larian" in a bad way.
Why not some paladins chasing you? Something that is not over the top? Of course the evil undead first oathbreaker has to teleport to every paladin who behaved badly. Larian sometimes is less more..

Hello, have you played through this yet? From the PfH I didn't get a clue of whats happening with the oathbreakers. Can you literally become one as soon as saving Laezel?
As for the Knight - I think Larian wanted to impersonate the oathbreaker paladins source of power, thats why it is so deity-like.

For example you kill the owlbear cub and then a glowing undead evil edge lord is waiting in your camp.
Why they always have to to such over the top approaches? It's not world of Warcraft and also not divinity. So disappointing Larian still doesn't get it.

Well, I did not feel like this, as it's a mysterious figure that we might learn more about later and maybe it's not what you feared it is
Actually it's a bit of a Dark Side temptation that : hey, come here, we have some black powers for you if you know where you stand

http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/paladin:oathbreaker

The Paladin serves a superior power and as an oathbreaker, the character should have one and he gives guidance about that. I found it pretty cool and relatively cohesive. Maybe the black knight offer is too direct and personal for you?

Anyway, this is a kind of anti paladin class, so this mysterious character is looking alike.

Why not more Down-to-earth? Why has to start directly with that? Why no quest chain with a cleric where you have to beg for forgiveness or someone from a cult but no, directly glowing undead demon knight of course..

It's basically FFXIV Fray from the Dark Knight job quests, which I find absolutely hilarious.

I wouldn't even be too surprised if the oathbreaker Paladin guy worked the same way too. Which would explain why you can't loot him even if you kill him, from what others are reporting.

Yes, it is very strange with the Oathbreaker. It feels like an armored Warlock. Or in other words, if there is a mulitclassed Oathbreaker / Warlock later on, he feels like he has two Pact creatures he is bonded with. I don't know what to make of it.

I was also very much not a fan of what they showcased in this regard - as others have said, signature Larian in all the worst ways, without showing any understanding of nuance or moderation.

If a paladin makes a poor choice, or goes against their oath, that becomes a matter that is between them and the source of their divine power - and even if they aren't serving a deity, they are still tapping divine power and it still has a source with which they can commune, even if that's a divine intermediary for a concept or a given divine folio sans deity. Immediate forsaken retribution is not at all okay, and is the hallmark of an incredibly sweaty, overbearing DM.

From what I've seen, we have 3 Paladin subclasses: Ancients, Devotion, and Oathbreaker. Ancients and Devotion are very traditionally goodly-hero themed, but there's a third subclass in the PHB that doesn't seem to have made it in, and that's the Vengeance Paladin. The reaosn I'm pointing this out is because I think larian may have got the wrong idea of Paladins by creating conditions that your oath can be broken that apply to all Paladins, regardless of oath.

This is important because of the tenets that each oath follows. these tenets are part of your oath that you follow as a Paladin, but they aren't all goodly-hero stuff. The thing that makes an Oathbreaker an oathbreaker is that they literally have no oath, and no tenets, you make your own rules and set your own boundaries.

But whether or not you go against your oath shouldn't be some kind of universal metric, not all Paladins have tenets against deception, stealing, or even murder. Conquest Paladin arguably had tenets in favour of murdering, Glory Paladin is all about being the most glorious version of yourself that you can be, and Watchers Paladin only has tenets against being influenced by extra-planars (so accepting tadpole powers would immediately violate a Watchers Paladin's oath).

So lets look at the tenets:



And finally:


We can see that a Devotion or Ancients Paladin is definitely more on the goodly-hero side of things, lying, cheating, and stealing are forbidden by the tenets of Devotion, and while these acts are not specifically mentioned by the tenets of the Ancients, such things are probably not acts of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness (though that might be open to interpretation in some circumstances).

But even here, the lines are blurred. In the PfH we saw the cut scene with Lae'zel having been captured by the Tiefling hunters, and I noticed that they have put in a new Deception (Paladin) check to get the Tieflings to leave so you can free Lae'zel. That's a lie. You're still lying to them. But somehow this doesn't break your oath, but normal non-Paladin lies will? I don't like that. You wouldn't have to put in that allowance if you didn't universally punish Paladins for lying in the first place.

The Oathbreaker Knight does look like a Final Fantasy character.

You can ask him who he is and he says he was the first Paladin to break his Oath. He got quite a bit of dialogue for someone just there to switch your subclass. He might be involved in other stuff in the full game.

I was getting a Lord Soth / Skull-Knight vibe from him. Both are equally awesome.

That said, my devotion dude never wants to meet him, and so far so good.

... However, I've never liked paying full price on gear to grove traders who need me to do a super-dangerous mission to save them. Let's see what happens when Astarion gets the idea to go get me a discount.

Their introduction was very jarring. You can break your oath pretty much right out of the tutorial and have this guy pop up in your camp, which-lets be honest-is already becoming something of a pit stop for high level npcs who waltz in to join you whenever they feel like.

Is that how Oathbreakers are made in the Realms? break your oath and you'll be visited by some demon knight in a few hours who will ask you to join their club?

Also kinda weird to me that the Sith lord guy will offer you all this power out of the blue and very clearly underlines that you can continue to be a good paladin afterwards, just with edgier themed powers and without having to follow an oath. No strings attached.

My preference would be to allow Oathbreaker to be selected at character creation for people who are interested in playing an evil paladin from the get go. On top of that, put in a complex quest chain that can result in either oathbreaker or redemption if a player consistently breaks their chosen oath (assuming one of the other oaths is chosen).

Or... disallow progressing as paladin if oath breaking reaches some threshold (would need multiclassing in game first). Allow player to use paladin abilities they have already, and give them a pair of quest hooks. One quest hook that leads to redemption and reinstatement in their oath, and another quest hook that leads to intentionally summoning the goth armor dude and switching to oathbreaker.

Would have to be fairly quick quests in order to prevent problems with leveling, but it would at least be more fluid than dark helmet showing up in camp all of a sudden.

I don't think they really could put in a quest chain like that due to the way the game seems like it will be structured. What if we don't start oathbreaking until act 2? Or act 3?

I'm also torn about including oatbbreaker right from character creation, since there's something cool about someone in future discovering it by chance. Plus the oath of vengeance is still coming for those who want something more hard core.

Agreed ...
Our characters dont start to live on Nautiloid ... we should have ben able to break our Oaths in the past.

//Edit:
But i would certainly not remove option to break it anytime afterwards!
That is cool as hell! ... Or hot as hell? ... Whatever, i just like it.

I actually liked this approach to the Oathbreaker. I thought it was a nice little touch. Let's be real here, this is DnD, it's kind of known for being a big over the top, no?

It can be. It doesn't need to be. Honestly I find the camp follower Oathbreaker Hellknight guy to be really jarring. Now we have to have two very noticeable exotic npcs just chilling around camp whose main function is just to serve gameplay conveniences. Falling, becoming an Oathbreaker or redeeming yourself with casual ease in regards to this fellow, it all comes off as something of a contrivance of convenience. Honestly would have been better if Oathbreaker or redeeming a fallen paladin was something you had to actually work for. 'Over the top' is less what I'd use to describe it and more 'out of place' and 'premature'.

Breaking your oath isn't just 'I did this thing one time that went against it, oops' - it's a major thing, and it's a deliberate and intentional rejection of the principles you swore to. Similarly, redemption is a major, major thing, and a pivotal, important turning point in a character's story and development.

The flippant and cavalier treatment of this is worse, by far, than not having it show up as a concept at all.

What we should have is a clear delineation of the tenets we take on when we choose a particular oath - when we take that oath. The oath and its tenets are different things. when you swear to an Oath, that is not the same as binding yourself to always uphold and pursue all of its tenets all the time or else - it is an honest and heart-felt dedication to do your best to uphold those tenets to the best of your ability, and it allows that there may be times where you slip, or stray, or have to choose one tenet over another, and that the world is messy and it can't be perfect all the time. Your Oath is that you will be a stalwart for these tenets to the best of your mortal capability, and that you believe in them with your true and honest heart.

We make mistakes; we're mortal. Scratch that - divinities make mistakes as well. Everyone does. When we stray, the source of our divine power can and should remind us of our oath, and coax us to do better, and even potentially, divest us of or weaken our access to the powers our Oath grants for a time, or until we correct our behaviour, or express in earnest communication our understanding of where we went wrong, and our continuing belief in the tenets we swore to uphold. The game Is Capable of doing this; it absolutely is!

Breaking your Oath is a much bigger, more dramatic thing, and it's a deliberate choice that an entity makes - it's not just 'failing to follow'; it's active renunciation. This should be something that we as players can do in game, as major, pivotal points in the story where it can come up - set pieces, if you will, where a choice point may lead a character to renounce their oaths and side with a situation that serves them personally better. This is where the dramatic flaming hellknights might show up; after the player has made an active, deliberate, and impactful renunciation of their oath in favour of selfish means.... not because we shoved a peasant off a bridge when he tried to stop us crossing. The same goes for redemption; it's major action, and a character changing moment -it's what can happen at the crux of a crisis at the moments in our story that really define us and set our path.... not because we said sorry to some armoured sod that hangs out at our camp.

This is another situation where our actions, and our motivations for those actions, aren't dealt with very well.

When I first saw the Oathbreaker show up in the panel demo, I was curious how it would differ for paladin's of evil deities. I guess that was foolish on my part.

Can anyone test/confirm that Divine Smite affects all creatures hit by a 2-handed weapons Cleave special attack? I think I saw that in a stream.