Paladin Spellcasting

[RedLancer]

On Sundren, we did this:
Pathfinder Paladin

... everything but Divine Bond, Aura of Justice, and Smite changes because Smite is hardcoded as hell and you need the game's source code to write a plugin to enable writing on-hit effects that don't rely on workarounds that will bug the hell out of your server. We also made Divine Might and Divine Shield free actions. These changes make it a top-tier class, but I think many would be satisfied with Charisma-based casting.

[The Whistler]

Hidden: show

This is what the Paladin should be:

-Paladin-

Changes for feats they already receive:

[#] Lay on Hands: Works the same except you now finally receive an extra use of this feat every five levels the way you always should have.

[#] Smite Evil: The uses per day scrapped entirely. This is now a cool looking animated special attack with a ten second cool down. The animation is now the same as the one used for Whirlwind Attack, since that is the best and just about the only good looking combat animation in the game.

The Great Smiting Feats are scrapped as they are implemented now for the Paladin and changed so that every five levels of the class you receive a Great Smiting tick, from GS 1 at level 5 to GS 5 at level 25.

[#] HD Change: D12 Hit Dice

[#] Aura of Courage = The benefits this feat gives are automatic already but you can still click on the icon and your character does a strange dance. I propose the animation be changed to something that looks good like raising your weapon in air or kneeling in a Knightly fashion. There is a particular animation that one of the Harper Agent abilities has that would be perfect.

[#] Remove Disease = No change.

[#] Divine Health = No change.

[#] Turn Undead = No change.

[#] Divine Grace = No change.

[#] Regular feat, skill points, and save throws progression = No change.

[#] Class skills = No change aside from Tumble being made a class skill (Two handed weapons should be viable for all Warrior arch types.)

The following additions to be made to the class:

- Bonus Feat Selection: The additional bonus Fighter feat every five levels the way it is implemented for the Man at Arms.

[#] - Heavy Armour Optimization 1 and 2 as bonus feats at the same levels the Man at Arms receives them.

[#] - Tumble as a class skill.

Spellbook - Jettisoned into The Sun. May we finally be allowed to have our Paladin and move on with our lives.

-Change- Level 6 - Bless Weapon at will [Fixed to do Divine Damage and transform your weapon into a good aligned weapon for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction.]

-Change-# At level 16, change this to any weapon wielded by the Paladin becomes a Holy Avenger (has the Holy Sword properties), while it is equipped. This really would flavour wise, lore - wise, and power wise be a great thing and be especially fitting.

So much this. Only changes I'd make is have the GS feats require 11 CHA for I, 12 for II and so on and so forth, smite CD increased to at least 18 seconds with its CD halved if it misses.

Heavy armor specs aren't needed IMO. But some sort of mechanic that compensates for the loss of AC by going 2h would certainly be welcome. I'm so tired of seeing sword&board paladins just because it's the most optimal route. I always pictured paladins as the greatsword type.

Finally, their saves could use a little love. Perhaps high Fort/Will, low Reflex ?

EDIT: I would like to add that paladin is a class held to a higher standard than the rest. It also happens to be a bad guy's favorite kind of character to provoke and bait into PvP. QC are fond of parroting the fact that they don't balance for PvP - well, if there's any class for which an exception to that rule should be made, then that is the paladin.

I play bad guys almost exclusively and my god, is it hard to take a class like the paladin seriously when considering PvP.

[Steve]

Hey Atlas, don't take things so personally.

After reading your post, and seeing how you not only mischaracterized my thoughts and attributed to me some sort of history of trying to "hold back" Paladin progression, I can only wonder why you feel entitled to say I'm being a problem, here.

Yes, I also do and have said time and time again that Favored Souls, Dragon Druids and EDM Bards are OP and probably are the greatest examples that contribute to "power creep."

My point in saying the Paladin and Ranger are SUPPOSEDLY the most balanced Classes to take to level 30, is because that is what many on our esteemed QC Group say and consider. I say supposedly because to this day, I do not have a clear idea of what is considered by BGTSCC "balanced" and fair "playability."

Show me fair and due process anywhere else, mate. I'm curious as to how you see it, where you see it, and when you see it.

[thids]

Both divine shield and edm are a pain to use. I don't even bother anymore most of the time. EDM less so, but clicking divine shield is just a mind numbing exercise which takes away any and all mechanical fun out of a character. At this point I'm considering replacing it with Combat Expertise.


I do not play a paladin, the most I have reached with a pure paladin was level 25 I believe, but I agree that Paladins NEED to be kicked up in power. omitted for breaking rule #2 the paladin class, he is right in pointing out that paladins are not your fighters, nor your rogues or your rangers. They are the epitome of the righteous LG warrior. And they ARE put on a RP pedestal by most of the community, because they belong on a pedestal. Yes, a well built sword and board EDM 30 paladin is perfectly viable and playable in pve. It's even more powerful than a bunch of other builds and classes. But those other classes are not held even closely to the paladins RP standard. Is BGTSCC a RP server, or a server revolving around mechanics? If this server represented the city of Baldur's Gate, and the Sword Coast better (I.E. if both of those things were not bastions of goodness, OOCly at the very least), then you'd see A LOT MORE outcry for the paladin class. Ideally i'd want more power for paladins coupled with more DM supervision of the class.

Balancing classes to pve which is broken in and of itself is a fundamentally wrong way to design anything in the first place. We are balancing classes against an environment which demands that you have evasion. Traps, spell spams, EVERYTHING revolves around evasion and reflex saves. How many fortitude saves are there in pve on bgtscc other than the basilisks? And this is the environment towards which we balance our content? The entire circle of balancing on this server is a bad joke.

It's been 4 months now since the big update, what has been done for the fighter melee archetypes who used to depend on wands (a category in which due to their limited spellbook paladins also belong)? Nothing. The amount of dispel mobs has been lowered. Great, that means that on top of dumping hard earned skillpoints into UMD, and dumping gold into wands and scrolls, now we also depend on the spawn rate of dispel mobs. That change is not for UMD users, that change helps primarily gishes with sub-optimal CL. But we sure as hell made sure that all those RP flavor wizard spells which no one will ever use mechanically get fixed. Can't have poor wizards get the wrong message in their combat log when they sprinkle some water on someone, or when they cast the dry spell!


Favored Souls need to be touched upon, and they need to be hit by the hammer. They are a class designed for singleplayer both RPwise and mechanically, not for a persistent world where there's hundreds of active players.

[mrm3ntalist]

QC are fond of parroting the fact that they don't balance for PvP

This is not true as past changes demonstrate.

[Karond]

Well, to be fair that sentence has cropped up now and then but ideally the entire staff is taking PvP into account to a certain degree. The past has been about preventing too much power being created, rather than limiting what's there. Nerfs are rarely looked upon favorably, which is why changes are usually discussed on improving lesser things rather than nerfing powerful ones (but it sometimes happens in small doses anyway). Of course, changes vary with how much the developers can get done and what has been implemented, and a fair bit is in limbo still, so it can give the overall impression that balancing strategies are skewed. QC is however very well aware of comparable power ratings between classes and builds, even if the order of implementation can be off (as it generally relies on what developers want to create first).

As for this particular topic, I personally don't feel like changing WIS to CHA is the right course of action. I would also shy away from HD12 (why on earth would they be equal to barbarians?) or indeed smite having a timer (cancels the use of extra smite and higher levels would only add dmg which can be circumvented with great smiting, so it downplays the need to focus on the class). There have also been suggestions about improving durations, but see it's not quite meant to be a cleric with permanently high BAB.

There are also classes with higher priorities as far as balance attention goes. So a solution? If one is needed, as that can also be argued, would be to focus a bit more on rewarding investment. Right now we're looking at level 20 bonuses, which some classes get, and others don't. Classes like the paladin could definitely stand to recieve one, like what we're planning to give the barbarians and possible rogues in the near future. Either custom or pre-existing, as long as it compares well with other classes.

[mrm3ntalist]

Well, to be fair that sentence has cropped up now and then but ideally the entire staff is taking PvP into account to a certain degree.

It has but some times it was justified. A past QCer and myself have talked a lot about it. The times that term was used, was when - lets say - mrm3ntalist said that rangers are the epitome of warriors when in the wilderness and they should be able to beat anyone there. The thing is pvp is a combination of timing, lack and skill and you cant balance that. Even if we implemented everything that has been asked about paladins, still it wont balance pvp.

As far as the paladin issues are concerned, we are looking at such things as karond explained very well. The primary focus however are non spellcasting classes.

There are some initial thoughts regarding paladins that the developers are willing to work with, and those are class kits. Still initial thoughts though.

[Akroma666]

Can you guys comment if CQ would consider shifting the stat from Wis to Cha based on the topic discussion and poll results?

[mrm3ntalist]

Can you guys comment if CQ would consider shifting the stat from Wis to Cha based on the topic discussion and poll results?

It can be discussed

[Akroma666]

Can you guys comment if CQ would consider shifting the stat from Wis to Cha based on the topic discussion and poll results?

It can be discussed

Thanks, Lets let it roll a little longer.

[MopKnight]

To be blunt with you, paladins are extraordinarily tightly controlled, even on this server. A paladin on this server recently fell because they told a lie. One lie. In a war. So they could prevent said ally from disrupting hard fought plans.

You might not consider that an argument for a degree of special treatment, but I do. I am inclined to hold both paladins and blackguards to an extremely high degree of roleplay involvement and enforce as close as possible the pure paladin aesthetic - that it is a calling. The blackguard, typically is an abdication of that calling. There are a few of us on staff that are paladin nazis and I am amongst them.

There has to be something that keeps players involved in paladin roleplay - it isn't good enough that they are involved in Good roleplay because virtually any FS gish or random chaotic good sorcerer can do that and there is a lot of it.

Ideally, as a player, I want my character to feel a little stronger than she does. However, as those who know my opinion on this are well aware, I am inclined to achieve this by making deep paladin builds far, far more powerful than paladin dips and by forcing the breaking of dip builds almost in their entirety.

As for this particular topic, I personally don't feel like changing WIS to CHA is the right course of action. I would also shy away from HD12 (why on earth would they be equal to barbarians?) or indeed smite having a timer (cancels the use of extra smite and higher levels would only add dmg which can be circumvented with great smiting, so it downplays the need to focus on the class)

HD12 isn't in the class. No interest in that. WIS to CHA is, however and has been done in both Pathfinder, 4e and 5e. Further, the paladin spellbook in 5e is far more complete and competitive than even the one here.

The changes to the mechanics of 5e prevent its version of Smite being implemented here, but a more limited Pathfinder version of Smite is entirely in character, though I would keep it to a single round and reduce the effect of Great Smiting to +3-5 damage per level of the feat rather than a multiplier.

Frankly though you are never going to get melee balance unless you do something about the power that Favoured Souls have. Bring the level down a bit and you might have a chance to balance it sanely.

[mrm3ntalist]

Spellcasting wont be shifted from Wisdom to Charisma.

We are working on implementing class kits which will give more options to paladins. For example there will be a class kit that will increase durations and give extra spell slots. There will be drwabacks for selcting a class kit.

[Akroma666]

[ Maecius edit: Moderators not allowed to moderate their own threads per Moderator Code of Conduct. ]

[MopKnight]

Spellcasting wont be shifted from Wisdom to Charisma.

We are working on implementing class kits which will give more options to paladins. For example there will be a class kit that will increase durations and give extra spell slots. There will be drwabacks for selcting a class kit.

If there is an actual code based reason for this, that is entirely understandable.

If it's just a decision you made, then it is simply the wrong one, as evidenced by the following games changing said decision.

[RedLancer]

If there is an actual code based reason for this, that is entirely understandable.

There's not. It's a change to a single value in classes.2da.