That's it. I'm sick of all this "1d10 hit die" bullshit that's going on in 5e right now. Paladins deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that. I should know what I'm talking about. I myself played a genuine paladin in Curse of Strahd for 2,400,000 years (that's about 200,000 dozen years) and have been making practice paladins for almost another 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid steel with my paladin. Players spend years working on a single paladin and respec it up to a million times to produce the finest characters known to mankind. Paladins are thrice as powerful as fighters and thrice as durablefor that matter too. Anything a fighter can cut through, a paladin can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a paladin could easily bisect a fighter wearing full plate with a simple divine smite.
Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered conquering post-Strahd Barovia? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined paladins and their smites of destruction. Even in I-6 Ravenloft, vampires targeted the men with paladin levels first because their killing power was feared and respected.
So what am I saying? Paladins are simply the best class that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in 5e. Here is the stat block I propose for paladins: 1d20 hit die Full casting progression Three fighting styles Double proficiency bonus on weapon attacks Add Charisma score to all saves and armor class
Now that seems a lot more representative of the combat power of paladins in real life, don't you think? tl;dr = paladins need to have more defense in 5e, see my new stat block.
Copy pasta by Rick Kittenhugs.
Oh and also share some stories of your heroic gallantry. I myself once saved my party's rogue from a Nighthag pincer attack by commanding them to defenestrate him through a window to safety.
On my current campaign we started as 1st level players in Eberron. My paladin, Artair, is a simple countryman who quit his quiet life as a lumberjack to the calling to Balinor.
And then our group was sucked into Barovia. It was like Christmas morning to me. Playing a paladin in Curse of Strahd is just AWESOME. From roleplaying to combat, everything was perfect and I felt really, really good. Until our barbarian, a mountain dwarf from Eberron, unknowingly used a wish spell from a sentient item and wished for our group to be back home.
Back to Eberron. Balinor Dammit, that wretched barbarian took away my toys!!!
P.S.: 1d10 feels good to me. The amount of sheer damage I'm used to dealing in combat makes my DM eyes' almost pop out of the sockets, so a little balance is welcome.
Van Coltimar Vendeta, Paladin of Torm, son of Dark Helm, hero of Arabel, member of the Stars of Evenings Night, was a Zentish born human orphan. He served as an acolyte in the temple of Torm until he discovered that his father was alive and, apparently, possessed of some demonic spirit. He joined Briana Silverman, Doli Edileg, Jabers Knuckleshuffle, and the archer Shadowviper, to find and destroy the denizen of the Abyss that had claimed his father, and ravaged Faerun. However, his party was sudden struck down by an unseen evil....high school graduation. Hundreds of years, a Spellplague, some sort of cataclysm, and various other environmental hazards later and we still don't know how it all ended :(
I recently ran the new Curse of Strahd for my players, we actually made full back stories and characters that were custom built to run the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Once they got sucked into Barovia on the third play session they went nuts and loved it! I have been thinking that the game would be much more fun for a proper face stomping paladin but these players just didn't happen to have one, seeing somebody talk about how fun it was to play just that means I now want to let me second group make characters who are geared towards something more undead/evil slaying than the last group was. They kept having trouble relating their characters to the game since they were drawn in unawares which was more fun for me than it was for them at times and I don't like to run my games that way but I now feel that having characters that can easily shift from one game to another (since I'm sneakily changing it on them in the first place) would be more fun all around.
I recently ran the new Curse of Strahd for my players, we actually made full back stories and characters that were custom built to run the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Once they got sucked into Barovia on the third play session they went nuts and loved it! I have been thinking that the game would be much more fun for a proper face stomping paladin but these players just didn't happen to have one, seeing somebody talk about how fun it was to play just that means I now want to let me second group make characters who are geared towards something more undead/evil slaying than the last group was. They kept having trouble relating their characters to the game since they were drawn in unawares which was more fun for me than it was for them at times and I don't like to run my games that way but I now feel that having characters that can easily shift from one game to another (since I'm sneakily changing it on them in the first place) would be more fun all around.
That's really interesting. My group played Curse of Strahd with a paladin (LG), druid (NG), sorcerer (N), barbarian (NG) and ranger (CN). Me and the druid's player were really thrilled, mostly due to the roleplaying options presented. But the other players didn't feel like enjoying Barovia so much. They actually spent most of their time immersed in the atmosphere of dread and hopelessness (thanks to the DM's great roleplaying skills too), which it fell upon us to keep up the morale. It felt like a genuine Ravenloft experience. :)
The real story behind the characters is that they were TRUE cult of the dragon followers (all evil) that were trying to thwart and destroy the false believers that were trying to raise the dragon queen! It was a cool story but ended up being already evil characters with a set goal in mind being forced to escape barovia to follow up with their original plan. It was the conflict of Strahd and the perceived "disrespect" of one of the players that drove most of the story but it was fun!
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Isn't the pile of corpses enough of a signature? I think they get the point.
My paladin has taken on oath of vengeance based on the slaughtering of his family and the evil he has seen man fall into. Once I multiclassed into warlock I too a vow to the old one to follow out his bidding of punishing everyone he sees fit. Which is everyone. So fits together. Plus it helps that I have an orc barbarian as a minion to do my bidding for me. Great times punishing all that cross me.
Could a devotion paladin torture some goblins (who attacked and ransacked a town) to find out who they serve? I mean, torture is a normal thing under some circumstances?
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He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Could a devotion paladin torture some goblins (who attacked and ransacked a town) to find out who they serve? I mean, torture is a normal thing under some circumstances?
I think torture breaks the tenant of honour:
Honour. Treat others with fairness, and let your honourable deeds be an example to them. Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm.
You could easily argue that torturing some goblins would result in the least amount of harm occurring....not to the goblin of course, but to everyone else, like the slaves the goblin won't tell you where is.
The problem your addressing has alredy been covered by WotC in the UA with samurai and knights, they werent aiming for a literal, real world adaptation they wanted balance. Yeah you can say all that about real medieval paladins maybe but when you throw in an arcane casting rat, the berzerk halfling and the dragonborn that's shifted into a rhino where does it all fit to have one "realistic" class?
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For my attack I will throw my spear...two handed...for 1d8...
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That's it. I'm sick of all this "1d10 hit die" bullshit that's going on in 5e right now. Paladins deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that. I should know what I'm talking about. I myself played a genuine paladin in Curse of Strahd for 2,400,000 years (that's about 200,000 dozen years) and have been making practice paladins for almost another 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid steel with my paladin. Players spend years working on a single paladin and respec it up to a million times to produce the finest characters known to mankind. Paladins are thrice as powerful as fighters and thrice as durablefor that matter too. Anything a fighter can cut through, a paladin can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a paladin could easily bisect a fighter wearing full plate with a simple divine smite.
Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered conquering post-Strahd Barovia? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined paladins and their smites of destruction. Even in I-6 Ravenloft, vampires targeted the men with paladin levels first because their killing power was feared and respected.
So what am I saying? Paladins are simply the best class that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in 5e. Here is the stat block I propose for paladins: 1d20 hit die Full casting progression Three fighting styles Double proficiency bonus on weapon attacks Add Charisma score to all saves and armor class
Now that seems a lot more representative of the combat power of paladins in real life, don't you think? tl;dr = paladins need to have more defense in 5e, see my new stat block.
Copy pasta by Rick Kittenhugs.
Oh and also share some stories of your heroic gallantry. I myself once saved my party's rogue from a Nighthag pincer attack by commanding them to defenestrate him through a window to safety.
On my current campaign we started as 1st level players in Eberron. My paladin, Artair, is a simple countryman who quit his quiet life as a lumberjack to the calling to Balinor.
And then our group was sucked into Barovia. It was like Christmas morning to me. Playing a paladin in Curse of Strahd is just AWESOME. From roleplaying to combat, everything was perfect and I felt really, really good. Until our barbarian, a mountain dwarf from Eberron, unknowingly used a wish spell from a sentient item and wished for our group to be back home.
Back to Eberron. Balinor Dammit, that wretched barbarian took away my toys!!!
P.S.: 1d10 feels good to me. The amount of sheer damage I'm used to dealing in combat makes my DM eyes' almost pop out of the sockets, so a little balance is welcome.
Van Coltimar Vendeta, Paladin of Torm, son of Dark Helm, hero of Arabel, member of the Stars of Evenings Night, was a Zentish born human orphan. He served as an acolyte in the temple of Torm until he discovered that his father was alive and, apparently, possessed of some demonic spirit. He joined Briana Silverman, Doli Edileg, Jabers Knuckleshuffle, and the archer Shadowviper, to find and destroy the denizen of the Abyss that had claimed his father, and ravaged Faerun. However, his party was sudden struck down by an unseen evil....high school graduation. Hundreds of years, a Spellplague, some sort of cataclysm, and various other environmental hazards later and we still don't know how it all ended :(
You got the upvote for sheer insanity and hilarious posting on day one :)
Isn't the pile of corpses enough of a signature? I think they get the point.
I recently ran the new Curse of Strahd for my players, we actually made full back stories and characters that were custom built to run the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Once they got sucked into Barovia on the third play session they went nuts and loved it! I have been thinking that the game would be much more fun for a proper face stomping paladin but these players just didn't happen to have one, seeing somebody talk about how fun it was to play just that means I now want to let me second group make characters who are geared towards something more undead/evil slaying than the last group was. They kept having trouble relating their characters to the game since they were drawn in unawares which was more fun for me than it was for them at times and I don't like to run my games that way but I now feel that having characters that can easily shift from one game to another (since I'm sneakily changing it on them in the first place) would be more fun all around.
Isn't the pile of corpses enough of a signature? I think they get the point.
That's really interesting.
The real story behind the characters is that they were TRUE cult of the dragon followers (all evil) that were trying to thwart and destroy the false believers that were trying to raise the dragon queen! It was a cool story but ended up being already evil characters with a set goal in mind being forced to escape barovia to follow up with their original plan. It was the conflict of Strahd and the perceived "disrespect" of one of the players that drove most of the story but it was fun!
Isn't the pile of corpses enough of a signature? I think they get the point.
My paladin has taken on oath of vengeance based on the slaughtering of his family and the evil he has seen man fall into. Once I multiclassed into warlock I too a vow to the old one to follow out his bidding of punishing everyone he sees fit. Which is everyone. So fits together. Plus it helps that I have an orc barbarian as a minion to do my bidding for me. Great times punishing all that cross me.
Could a devotion paladin torture some goblins (who attacked and ransacked a town) to find out who they serve? I mean, torture is a normal thing under some circumstances?
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
You could easily argue that torturing some goblins would result in the least amount of harm occurring....not to the goblin of course, but to everyone else, like the slaves the goblin won't tell you where is.
The problem your addressing has alredy been covered by WotC in the UA with samurai and knights, they werent aiming for a literal, real world adaptation they wanted balance. Yeah you can say all that about real medieval paladins maybe but when you throw in an arcane casting rat, the berzerk halfling and the dragonborn that's shifted into a rhino where does it all fit to have one "realistic" class?
For my attack I will throw my spear...two handed...for 1d8...