Cormyr and the Dalelands

On review of the class and how it interacts with the available options my opinion is that it's as people say, a solid B-Tier class that suffers mainly from unfavourable comparison with a Favoured Soul/Divine Champion which pre-ascension can reach 4 APR, Level 8 Spells that are stronger than anything a Paladin will ever have, Divine Might/Shield and depending on the Deity a useful Weapon Specialization. Also Monk Omni-Saves.

This isn't meant to be a complaint about imbalance just to highlight clearly and unambiguously what is on the table when people sit down and try to decide what flavour of crusader they would like their character to be. Hospitaler is better than straight cleric but your mileage will vary on whether it's worth making it your third class, as a Cleric.

For Paladin, which gains less, Hospitaler's Bonus Feats paradoxically give less but are also far more badly needed to reach what multi-class options allow a Paladin to scale beyond 1 BAB and d10 HP/Level;with Hospitaler you can reach 10-13 levels of Weaponmaster and reap some of the benefits. But you will notice that what Hospitaler really does here is allow Paladin to qualify for this Prestige Class while picking up Divine Might and Divine Shield. This is pretty modest. With improved evasion you have something but you could definitely unlock Divine Might/Shield with 2 levels of cleric like some sort of Bard dip for evasion and use the same general feats Paladin must spend anyway.

For a very modest suggestion on how to make the class marginally less feat starved I would suggest allowing a LETO request for a focus in a 'Knightly Weapon' 

This would have 3 effects

1. More Paladins would use classical knightly weapons like straight-edged swords, maces, hammers, axes and halberds and feel rewarded for choosing to do so.
2. It provides Paladins (and only Paladins) a feat rebate on Power Attack which they otherwise require to access Divine Might and Divine Shield. Clerics are thus slight less ahead in Martial Combat as they must use a feat to specialize in melee, further defining differences between these two types of divine servant.
3. It would make it easier for Paladins to make use of their multi-classing options without being locked into Hospitaler for the majority of their Paladin levels.

While Paladin is a bit feat starved, that's not the core issue of the class. The problem is that there's no incentive for deep investment into it over multiclassing out. The last "Feature" you get is Extra Smiting at 10th and their 4th level spells are mostly crap.

Giving them a singular, highly restricted bonus feat does not solve any actual balance issues. It's a band-aid fix which, admittedly, a lot of our fixes are, hence the +AC on so many base classes that have been added to keep up with AC creep, because that's easier than a server-wide rebalance of every +AC value and absurd stacking some class combos are capable of. And really, this wouldn't band-aid it much at all. A bonus feat every 6 levels like Green Knight would be a closer fix. However, I don't think that's the path Vince would like to take with it.

There's been talk in the past of changing Lay on Hands to a cooldown every X minutes or at least allowing more than 1/day, which would be a welcome change. Their Smites/Day still need minor fixing as the intent was to give them 6 uses after Extra Smiting and I think they only get 5 right now and 3 base.

We're not interested in limiting classes to using only certain kinds of weapons outside the limits on Monk special BAB. There are plenty of deities that sponsor paladins who don't favor "knightly weapons", such as Chauntea and Jergal favoring scythes, Mystra favoring shurikens and quarterstaves, or Deneir favoring daggers.

It wasn't intended as a complete fix per say but as a way to provide an easing of feat tightness that is somewhat fitting to the class lore and isn't as generic as granting power attack would be to ensure that Divine Might and Shield can be acquired without the tax of a prerequisite feat. Giving Divine Might or Shield as a choice between the two at particular levels would disadvantage Paladins that had to take the feat to qualify for Cleave to acquire devastating critical. This just seemed the least offensive way to add a feat without duplication of Hospitaler.

Regarding the restrictions not meshing well with Edge's point about deity favoured weapons I was operating on the precedent that the Favoured Souls of certain gods who have powerful or unusual weapons has a feat tax on Cormyr and the Dale Lands in the form of automatic proficiency requests being denied. Which was slightly disappointing when I was weighing the merits of a Dark Elf or of a Favoured Soul of Kelemvor, who I really enjoyed the depiction of in Neverwinter Nights II.

While theoretically possible to grant individual weapon proficiencies, it's a lot of feat 2da work and not worth the effort.

You can only give a weapon up to 5 proficiency feats. Some of our weapons are already maxed on that, so it's not feasible to create individual weapon proficiency feats in the 2da, directly.

With some nwnx magic it is possible though.

I think giving them +AC late in progression and a couple bonus feats late in progression will help them keep up with Paladin/ X/ Hosp builds. +2 AC at 20, +4 AC at 24. Bonus feats at 23, 26, 29 Paladin. The only reason to go full paladin is for great smite. And well, you need all the feats to make it "worth it". And if you take all those feats, you give up everything else(armor skin, weapon focus, etc).

I think paladin builds otherwise are in an "ok" spot. You can splash hospitaler for bonus feats and dip into a lot of other things.

What makes paladins strong, in general, is that they are a full BAB class with spells and abilities with AB reach. They are a bit self-fulfilling.

I think Paladins as they are now are pretty okay, However I would like to see some love for those who go pure paladin, Perhaps give them a free feat at say Paladin level 18 Something like a DR against Positive and Negative energy for 5 or even something like once per day can cast haste as a spell like ability.

I'd love to see the multi-classing resctrictions loosened up, to be honest.  You can still get into Divine Might/Shield Sorc and Swordmage builds with Blackguard anyway, and, the power level of the server has spiked pretty hard since the multi-class rules were put in place for Paladin.

And yeah, there's a feat investment in Blackguard but... only slightly?  It feels pretty minimal.

I'd also love to see the alignment restriction loosened up a bit.  Blackguard is any evil and I don't see why Paladin couldn't be any good, especially seeing as we already have CG gods that allow them.  Or maybe add Turn Undead to DC or... something, it kind of stinks right now that the only Sword Mages/Sorcs that can sneak into Divine Might/Shield builds are the evil ones.

Can dip into Cleric or FS and grab DM/DS just fine on a Sorc or Swordmage regardless of alignment (other than one-step rules for whatever your patron happens to be). I know at least one Sorc/Cler/AW build, and there's probably others.

We're not currently interested in changing Paladin's alignment limitations, and the level minimum requirement is more about making some semblance of the order restrictions without having the extreme rigidness of said limitations and ensuring that paladins are primarily paladins both mechanically and in RP, than anything about balance. Ditto for Monks (though slightly less so, as Monk builds have gotten brokenly powerful on dips before, see any server with Monk dip on Shifter allowed for example).

On a PW I played, there was one Epic boss who I believe had a field which stripped a random buff from each and every character within range, every round. Also, every time a buff was stripped, the character was damaged. The only characters who could reliably tank the boss were high level warriors, monks or paladins.

It is suggest an outstanding once a day ability, gained at 20 Paladin levels, representing the prowess of the Paladin, to go where other fears to tread. RP-wise, this ability is powered their chosen god, and cannot be dispelled by any means. A defensive ability, allowing the Paladin to stand against intractable, primordial evil, would be very characterful.

I'll leave it to the DM/Builder team on the nature of the ability, and perhaps in can be tied into future epic level content.

Paladin throughout all of 3.x was a dip class, because it's features are very frontloaded and don't scale based on level.  It has the Multiple Attribute Dependency (MAD) issue common in a lot of hybrid classes made even worse by alignment and RP restrictions for very little benefit.  It's also my favorite class from an RP perspective. I've pondered a lot about ways to change paladin and make it more viable while still maintaining the theme of the class and not putting them above a dedicated warrior/WM/whatever.  These suggestions are made with ease of implementation in mind based on the current mechanics in game.  

1) Dump wisdom, give them Charisma casting.  Paladin is a front-line fighting class, which means it needs Str/Dex AND probably at least 13 Int and enough Con to not explode.  This basically means they need to dump either Cha or Wis, and most are going to dump Wis anyways because they need Cha for Divine Might/Shield.  Giving Charisma casting reduces MAD strain and helps the class synergize better with existing PRC options.

2) Give paladins access to a single deity appropriate Cleric domain to expand on their spell list.  Obviously this is going to step on the toes of clerics a little bit, but since they're only getting up to level 4 casting anyways it won't replace them.

3) Let paladins pick from a small list of thematic "Favored Enemies" like the Ranger at certain levels.  Obviously not as many as the ranger, but this would let them specialize as undead hunters, or devil hunters, or whatever.  Maybe just let them pick from one but have it scale similarly to the ranger and give them access to Bane of Enemies.

4) Give paladins free Focus/Epic Focus in their deity's weapon of choice.  They are a bit feat tight and this feels like just a tax.  

Yeesh.  I've seen such things done, but I assume they required a total rebuild of the class rather than a change to the existing class then?

Paladins are coded to use Wisdom for spellcasting. Changing that would require remaking a replacement of the class and having every existing Paladin relevel into the new version. It's not just a switch we can change.

Cleric domains in NWN only work for Clerics. Giving the feat to anyone else does nothing - they can't access any special abilities because those are only accessible through the Cleric radial, and they're only coded to add spells to Cleric spell lists. I'm not even sure we could fix the second part of this one by remaking Paladin to recognize the feat.

Likewise, Favored Enemy is coded to scale based on Ranger levels. You can give the feat to non-Rangers, but it will stay at the base bonus unless they also have Ranger levels to advance it. It's why Harper Scout's one Favored Enemy doesn't advance unless they're a Ranger multiclass. And since it's a combat feat, we can't touch it to change what classes allow it to scale - that's the hardest part of the blackbox to tinker around.

As much as I'd like to see CHA casting as Vince had thought of doing, it's as Edge said and would be a massive PITA to implement. The "easiest" changes would be:

1) More Smite Evil per day, perhaps 1/level, but this requires duplicating the smite evil feat at every level or something along those lines
2) Changing Lay on Hands to X/day or a cooldown, which was previously mentioned
3) Giving Paladins bonus feats at 6/12/18 like Green Knight to bring them more in line with the other melees. This would put them more or less at-par with feats as a Hospitaler and solidify Hospitaler as a Cleric multiclass. This pretty much covers their Divine Might/Shield/Extra Turning tax. however, I don't really like just slapping more bonus feats on things as a band-aid, even if that's how PF solved a lot of problems.

That said anyone saying that Paladin is objectively weak is patently false. The below screenshot was taken in an Epic dungeon. It is not a Great Smiting build. It's not a Dev Crit or even an Overwhelming Crit build. This wasn't done on a high ECL like Half-Dragon or Half-Celestial. The weapon doesn't even have a Bane against that type of enemy. I'm pretty sure this boss has flat % DR, too. It was a smite crit, but not even a majority of Paladin levels. Done entirely with self-buffs. Yes, the number is high due to Merc GS, but you'll put out higher DPS in 90% of scenarios with a regular GS or a Falchion because of more frequent crits.




Will you be as strong as a Cleric/Hospitaler or FS build? No, because you lack their utility kit and Cleric/FS are fundamentally broken in how good they are at buff and bash. They lack the utility of a Swordmage, but you 100% can keep up with the damage output of a Barbarian or WM, which is what you should be comparing yourself to. You're a bit better with easier UMD CCing or with a bard/rogue dip since you have a CHA investment so better utility/self-buffing and you're taking these for Tumble anyhow. Don't sleep on Extend Spell.



At some level, I'd honestly rather see BG more restricted in the way Paladin is because it's just fundamentally easier to build around for how much benefit it provides, and I say that as someone who has played both Paladin and BG builds here at the same level.

Adding few more spells on 3rd and 4th would also help and give some motivation to also take more levels on paladin. Those slots are mostly useless now. And there's definitely some spells that would be helpful and can be considered. Moon blade on 3rd would be great and it would further empathise how good paladins should be against undead. And since it does positive damage it stacks with holy. 4th can be open for some AoE party buff like battletide.

Paladins aren't mechanically weak. They are mechanically uninteresting.

We are currently reviewing options and considerations for expanding the Paladin (and Ranger, Bard, and Druid) spell lists. It's mostly going to come down to which ones we decide we want to add, which ones are actually doable in NWN mechanics, which ones Vincent feels like coding up, and whether we feel they need to be rebalanced/redesigned in any way.

1 is actually doable, easily. Casting stat is defined in a 2da.  But gear would need redoing.

I stand corrected. In which case, I'd be in favor of it, but it would need to be something the admins would need to discuss. And yeah gear would need redoing, and I imagine a lot of our Paladin PCs would want to shuffle their stats a bit.

Having played a Pa/Ro to 16, and now playing a Pa/Hos/Ro, with gratefully appreciated advice from veterans, I now have a better understanding of basic Paladin play. Paladins are similar as Clerics, in that HOS is just too good not to take. The difference is that clerics have a full spell list, versatile Domains, as well as the class serving as a prerequisite for many PrC's.

So perhaps we should embrace that Pa/Hos/x, or Pa/DC/x are reliable ways to play a Pally, and consider small incremental improvements to make the Paladin more mechanically appealing, and versatile class to play.

Updating level the spell list and some T4 equipment, as previously discussed in this thread, would be a good for a first pass, and hopefully will not be onerous on the builders.


Spell suggestions:

Spell change - Holy Sword - +5, 2d6 positive energy damage vs evil, 1 min/level. Original: www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/holySword.htm

Spell addition - Shield Other (level 3 Pally spell) - treat as the Shadow Shield spell, that can only be cast on another person (not self). Duration 1/hr level. Original: www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shieldOther.htm

Spell addition - Holy Fire Shield (level 3 Pally spell) - treat as Wounding Whispers spell, except it does divine, instead of sonic damage. Source: p.56 Champions of Valor



Equipment suggestions:
Obviously these suggestions will need to be tweaked for balance.

Description: Created by a Dwarf priest who lost his two sons when the clan hold was overrun by Goblins. This dwarf-crafted hammer even looks angry, having inherited the righteous rage of its creator. The Dwarven script reads: "For my sons Khondar and Khondos Stonebreaker, slain at the hands of the Goblins, whose spilt blood I will avenge a thousandfold before I die, so I swear before Moradin, Berronar and Gorm".  
Storm Armour: Required class: Paladin (UMD not possible), +4 Fullplate, 60% less Weight, Slashing resist 5/-, Electrical Resist 15/-, Immunity: Reverse Gravity spell, Paladin Spell 3, Paladin Spell 4. Original: p.69 Champions of Valor    

So above impossibilities aside, we try to avoid balancing classes through the use/availability of items. If a class needs an improvement, we try to do it through adjusting the class itself, not the gear that they have available to use. In Paladin's case, the primary focus right now is on expanding their spell list, possibly swapping their casting stat, and improving their class abilities.