Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Slapstick87 11-02-07, 02:02 PM	In my group, I've never had anyone even remotely interested in playing a paladin. They take one look at the class and say "Meh, I'd rather be a cleric". My experience is also that the cleric is the single most usefull class, with the possible exception of druids. So I want to nerf the clerics a bit and buff the paladins. My first thoughts where: Cleric Remove armor proficiences. Low BAB progression. This would make the cleric more of a "Holy Man" than a holy warrior, which I feel should be the Paladins turf. Paladin Increase spellcasting abilites. I would like to make the spellcasting abilities more like the bard. Governed by charisma, spells up to level 6. I would of course have to create a modified spellbook. This would make the druid more overwpowered compared to the cleric, and the bard less powerfull compared to the paladin. I'm not sure how to go about fixing that without throwing the entire party balance off course. What do you guys feel about this change? Am I nerfing the cleric too much? Is the Paladin good enough as it is? Any other ideas?
CryoSilver 11-02-07, 02:04 PM	Dropping the BAB is going to have little effect, due to the Divine Power spell. Reducing the power of the cleric requires considering exactly what makes him powerful. Consider truncating his spell list.
WyrdWolf 11-02-07, 02:29 PM	Definitely need to truncate the spell list, I go with something closer to 2nd edition for clerics, their choice of deity decides which spells are available. No reason for all clerics to have access to all the spells except lazy game designers. In my games I have limited clerics to 5 to 12 spells per spell level, depending on what other abilities the cleric has, the clerics more combat able have the shorter spell lists.
Slapstick87 11-02-07, 02:29 PM	Divine Power only last 1 round, and it's a 4th level spell. He won't get it before level 7. Even with Divine Power he won't have any armor proficiencies, making him a very squishy target. Pretty much like a mage, just with divine spells instead.
Slimgauge 11-02-07, 03:05 PM	I'll let others handle the cleric nerfing. Instead, I'll suggest Paladin buffs, since I'm currently playing one. 0) Shift the Paladin's spell progression down, so they actually get spells at low levels, and/or 1) Give Paladins 0 level spells, as they currently have none. 2) Paladins are often considered "featless fighters". Create a list of "Paladin feats" (rather like the list of "Fighter Feats"). Grant then feats from this list as class features on levels where they get nothing, or let them exchange class features they get for them. For example: If your list of "Paladin Feats" includes say "Battle Blessing" from Complete Champion, let the Paladin give up one use/week of Cure Disease (on any level where it increases) to get this feat. The Planar Handbook currently lets you give up one use / week of cure disease for the specific feat "Celestial Mount", but this can only be done at sixth level and has some prerequisites, I'm proposing a generalisation of this.
CryoSilver 11-02-07, 07:13 PM	Divine Power only last 1 round, and it's a 4th level spell. He won't get it before level 7. Even with Divine Power he won't have any armor proficiencies, making him a very squishy target. Pretty much like a mage, just with divine spells instead. One round per caster level, which is a minimum of 7 rounds. Most fights don't last more than 5 rounds, in my experience. As for armor proficiencies, it's a penalty the cleric can swallow, unless you add in spell failure chance.
StruckingFuggle 11-02-07, 10:42 PM	Definitely need to truncate the spell list, I go with something closer to 2nd edition for clerics, their choice of deity decides which spells are available. No reason for all clerics to have access to all the spells except lazy game designers. Another reason is that it's friendly to people who don't want to rework clerics to use different / no deities.
runestar 11-03-07, 08:40 AM	No armour prof simply means the cleric leans towards using monk's belt + bracers of armour. He might be weaker at lower lvs, but would be little different at higher lvs (when your gear more than makes up for your deficiencies). This will also work around ASF, if you ever think of giving clerics that. Poor bab is nullified by divine power. And war domain makes lack of weapon proficiencies moot. You might want to look at the cloistered cleric variant in the UA/hypertext for inspirations.
Slapstick87 11-03-07, 02:54 PM	I don't intend to use ASF for clerics. With monk's belt and bracers of armor, he'll certainly have protection. But if he had armor proficiency, he would have used those two slots for something else. And divine power only lasts that one combat. When my players are dungeon-crawling they often have more than just a few fights that day. And if they go somewhere to sleep before finishing off the enemy, they're in trouble. If the cleric can fight one fight, I frankly find that to be ok. So can wizards (polymorph and tenser's transformation springs to mind). Comparison to the cloistered monk: UA: Light armor proficiency Me: No armor proficiecy UA: Low BAB Me: Low BAB UA: Hit die d6 Me: I think I might do that as well. d6 or d4. I don't want to lessen the clerics spellcasting, I want to lessen his ability to be a holy fighter. IMO that should be the Paladin. Sure there are ways around that, just as it's possible to make a gish character. But removing armor, attack bonus and weapon proficiency should at least be a good start, yes? - Slapstick
CryoSilver 11-03-07, 03:06 PM	Lowering the HD is going to be a big hit. As for armor proficiencies, I look at it this way: there are 2 decent armors in the game (chain shirt and full plate). If the cleric wears the first (masterwork), even non-proficient, the only real penalty is a -1 to hit. If he wears the second, he will probably attempt to acquire mithral and thusly, take only a -2 to hit. If you really want to reduce his fighting power, drop the following spells from his list: Divine Favor Divine Power Righteous Might And disallow Divine Metamagic combined with Nightsticks. Removing those makes the lower BAB significant.
DM-Scott 11-06-07, 01:35 PM	Or *gasp* you could leave the cleric and just make the paladin better. Seriously, I find this a problem with the paladin class, not the cleric. Essentially, you're just swapping their shticks around, and turning the cleric into a poor (almost useless) character class. The reason people don't like the paladin is because the paladin class sucks. The best of its abilities come at the 1st 1-4 levels of the class, and they get nothing after that (yay, lay on hands...woopty-doo). Their spells are pretty meaningless (though there are a few really nice paladin-only spells). That's why no one in our group plays paladins either; short of multi-classing. You get a lot of vague limitations, along with a class that just isn't very interesting. You can create the same character archtype with clerics, or fighter/clerics, or ranger/clerics (those are fun) as you can with paladin; and you'll be more interesting in play to boot. I'd suggest giving the paladin more skill points (4+int), spell progression from 1st level, along with 0-level spells. Change smite evil from x/day to x/encounter so they can lay it down more often; or just change it to plain ol' Smite (as per the destruction domain) x/encounter. Divine Favor / Righteous Might, and similar spells would go well as paladin spells as well. Where the bard is kinda like a multiclass rogue/wizard/fighter, the paladin becomes the multiclass fighter/cleric. You could keep their lay on hands ability. It's a minor perk at best, I think. Most parties won't rely on it for healing anyway; but it's nice to have. Finally, give them some bonus feats every few levels which they can use to take Divine feats to burn some of that turn-undead on to do shweet holy-warrior things. --- All in all, it's a problem with the paladin class. I've looked at the paladin class many times over, and always I'm hit with the same problems when deciding to play a holy-warrior type. 1: Low skill points, 2: Lack of fun features, 3: Poor restrictions (multi-classing problems, vague moral code and alignment issues), 4: There special abilities (other than immunity to disease, aura of curage, and divine grace) that signify them as paladins (smite evil / lay on hands / mount) are pretty useless, and the mount can actually be troublesome. Instead of nerfing another class, it'd probably be better to just lift the paladin to meet the rest. Because some people like playing clerics, and if you know what you're doing then clerics and druids aren't that bad - but paladin and fighter suck either way. My group retuned the fighter because we felt it was worth it. Haven't bothered much with the paladin 'cause we can do that with a fighter/cleric and have the same role-playing flavor. Just some thoughts. Peace out, Game on.
Slapstick87 11-06-07, 03:29 PM	I'd suggest giving the paladin more skill points (4+int), spell progression from 1st level, along with 0-level spells. Change smite evil from x/day to x/encounter so they can lay it down more often; or just change it to plain ol' Smite (as per the destruction domain) x/encounter. Spell progression to 6th level like the bard then? Or 5th like the Duskblade? Drawn from both paladin and cleric spell list I presume. How about making smite available 1 time per day per 2 levels + wis modifier. Does that seem right? I'm not a fan of the "per encounter" rule. If the concensus is that clerics are ok, I'll probably keep them like they are. Maybe remove heavy armor proficiency. I've seen it mentioned a couple of times as a house-rule. Thank you for the feedback. I feel the same way, except I'd like to tone down the clerics fighting ability a bit as well. Maybe I'll just skip that part and see how it works out. :) - Slapstick
ff6shadow 11-06-07, 05:05 PM	As mentioned above, Divine Power, Righteous Might, and Divine POwer are the biggest things that make a cleric so powerful in combat. Remove them and he's far less potent.
runestar 11-06-07, 08:34 PM	Or *gasp* you could leave the cleric and just make the paladin better. Seriously, I find this a problem with the paladin class, not the cleric. Essentially, you're just swapping their shticks around, and turning the cleric into a poor (almost useless) character class. It is with *all* melee classes, not just the paladin...;)
DM-Scott 11-07-07, 12:39 AM	Well I did say my group uses a modified version of the fighter (keeps the class simple, but it makes it a lot better in a variety of situations - primarily with skill packages and some feats designed to scale with levels) as well. :P As for... Spell progression to 6th level like the bard then? Or 5th like the Duskblade? Drawn from both paladin and cleric spell list I presume. How about making smite available 1 time per day per 2 levels + wis modifier. Does that seem right? I'm not a fan of the "per encounter" rule. That depends on exactly how much you want to retune them. The basic idea I can garner is that a paladin is like a warrior-cleric-champion kinda guy, with spell-casting being a secondary shtick. Unfortunately, the paladin class kinda has spell-casting as more of a 4th shtick (a "kinda" ability) as is. Using a bard's spell progression wouldn't be bad if you upped the paladin's abilities in other areas. It would make him a casting class (the bard is generally considered a caster primarily), but he'd still be a warrior 1st, divine caster 2nd. 0-6th level spells should do it just fine, especially if you edit their spell list a bit to throw in flavorful stuff. I'd say... HD: 1d10 BAB: Best Good Saves: Fortitude (or Fortitude & Will) Skill Points: 4 + Int Mod (I personally think this should be the minimum for most all classes, but meh :P) Keep -Divine Aura -Divine Grace -Divine Health -Aura of Courage -Detect Evil -Turn Undead (for divine feats, mostly) Dump -Remove Disease Retool -Smite Evil -Lay on Hands -Paladin's Mount Add -Bard spell progression -Change primary casting stat to charisma -Slightly adjust the paladin's spell list to include up to 6th level spells. --Include most every combat buff a cleric has on his spell list, and anything specifically used to combat evil. Include remove disease as a spell the paladin can cast (which is why we removed it as a 1/week thing) as a 3rd level spell. Retooling - Smite Evil On my first impulse, I'd say replace this with the destruction domain "Smite" and make it usable x/encounter against evil enemies only. The main reason is it tones down the power of it a little (since the destruction domain gives +4 to attack, + level to damage) but makes it more useful throughout an adventure, and allows the paladin to smite evil more often (which is always fun). If you don't like x/encounter abilities, try 3 + paladin level per day, would be a pretty good amount, I think. You could also leave smite evil alone if you like it as-is (and there are some reasons to like it). Retooling - Lay on Hands I'd say give the paladin the ability to spontaneously cast cure spells, or perhaps give them the healing domain (granting an extra healing spell from level 1-6 spell levels), or both. Include Heal on the paladin's spell list. The main issue with lay on hands is it's a bit clunky. It doesn't really fit in the system on most issues, and offers no save against its damage against undead, and the amount of healing fluctuates very quickly and broadly. Since it's based on cha bonus X level, gaining bonus charisma or loosing charisma messes with your total, and doesn't specify how this is handled if your cha is buffed and you use lay on hands, and then unbuffed, and so forth. Retooling - Paladin's Mount Not all paladins are the "cavalier" type of paladin, or at least I wouldn't think so. In fact, while this is a cool ability, it's often times outright ignored by paladins in a lot of games where mounts just aren't that effective, needed, or they don't want to dump a lot of skill points into Ride when they get the skill points of an infantile chimp. I'd say offer options to the paladin, like different sets of abilities to choose instead. Some ideas might be the ability to use magic items as a cleric 1/2 your paladin level (allowing more spells through staves and wondrous items), or spells and abilities that improve their abilities against certain enemies (for example, anti-magic paladins who can dispel magic and cause trouble for casters, fiend hunters who can cast dimensional anchor, or something, y'know, just fluff it out :P). Perhaps replace their summon mount with the ability to summon a special divine weapon which increases in strength with their paladin level, which gives them a built-in intelligent item of awesomeness. Of course, said options would also include the paladins mount as an option. :) Just some ideas.
Fireclave 11-07-07, 02:32 AM	I haven't had the chance to look at it closely yet, OneWinged4ngel's Rebalanced Paladin (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=761045) is very popular. And if you want to knock the cleric down a peg, besides removing the big three spells (Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might),you might want to look at the Cloistered Cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#clericVarian tCloisteredCleric) variant, which has a scholarly spin over the default cleric. Hope that helps.
Vaeliorin 11-07-07, 04:07 AM	This is probably something obvious, but since no one has mentioned it...you'll want to get rid of the 1/2 caster level as well, I would think. That's part of what makes paladin's spells so useless, in my experience, since until you get to high levels the caster level makes their duration so short they're hardly worthwhile.
Slapstick87 11-07-07, 01:49 PM	After giving it a lot of thought, OneWinged4Angel's Rebalanced Paladin seems really cool. I'm going to go with that. And I'll remove Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might from the clerics spell list, and probably move them into the strength domain somehow. Now if I could only find some ways to force my players to actually read... Thanks for the help guys.
Legdiwena 11-07-07, 05:31 PM	Force them to read what?
Werral 11-08-07, 06:30 PM	Some ideas from earlier editions: Paladins emanate a permanent Protection from Evil 10ft radius Spell (1E) A Paladin with a Holy Avenger sword dispels hostile magic within his protection from Evil aura at a level equal to his Paladin level. This could be changed so that it becomes a high level, item independent power (maybe 10th or 15th level?) and treat it as an aura of SR at 10+Paladin level. For Clerics what if you made ALL spells tied to domains? It would require some work but it would make the choice of domains REALLY important. Make Turning Domain specific too, so not all clerics can turn undead. Workable?
CryoSilver 11-08-07, 09:47 PM	For Clerics what if you made ALL spells tied to domains? It would require some work but it would make the choice of domains REALLY important. Make Turning Domain specific too, so not all clerics can turn undead. Workable? No. There's some spells that EVERY cleric needs, and that would mean every cleric would have to take the domains with those spells. That said, MANY spells can be tied to domains, while leaving the "must haves" available to all. Take a look at THIS (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=718080). It's still a work in progress, but I think it handles a lot of the problems clerics have.