CLASS: PALADIN

PALADIN

(art by Tyler Jacobson and boota)

HIT DICE: D8

ATTACK BONUS: +1

Paladins get +2 to Fortitude saves.

Paladins can use all melee weapons and armor.

Paladins get a bonus to attack and damage rolls equal to their level against undead, demons, and their minions. (1)

Paladins can make a Faith roll to Blaze Like Heaven or Be The Hero. (2)

 

Paladins get a bonus to their Faith roll when they are hopelessly outnumbered, the last man standing, severely wounded, near death, or facing certain doom. (3)

Paladins can call down Divine Intervention. (4)

Paladins start with a random Holy Gift. (5)

Blaze Like Heaven: The Paladin glows brightly, lighting up the area like daylight. Enemies
must make a Morale check when they see the Paladin. The Paladin adds their level to attack and damage rolls and has damage reduction equal to twice their level. This form lasts for d4 plus their level turns. (6)

Be The Hero: The Paladin can perform an impossible feat of strength (lifting, pulling, pushing, jumping). (7)

1. Paladins are God's holy ass-kickers and they smite the unclean like it's their job (because it is). "Their minions" means like demonic cultists or devil-worshipers or a vampire's human servants.

2. This is just like a cleric's Faith roll and the abilities are described below. I haven't set a hard number to roll but it's usually high, 19 or 20 isn't out of the question. The paladin shouldn't be able to just use their Divine Ass-Kicking Powers over every little thing.

3. And anyway they get these sweet-ass thematic bonuses to their Faith roll. With my players these kinds of situations come up all the time. I also let paladins use Holy Relics for Faith bonuses like clerics do.

4. Same as clerics.

5. Also same as clerics, see the Clerics post for the list. I am toying with the idea that paladins get more random Holy Gifts as they level up.

6. This is heavily inspired by Solars from Exalted. The "add level to attack and damage" that the paladin gets against undead etc. now applies to every enemy, and it is a double bonus against undead etc. If the enemies fail their Morale check then they flee or cower or surrender.

7. The idea behind this is like a "Samson knocking down the temple, hurling massive boulders, bend bars / lift gates" kind of thing. I don't know how it plays out in our games because it has never come up so it's probably either too good or not good enough.

 

I don't force paladins to "act good" or anything like that. A paladin is free to be as ruthless and awful as, uh, every other PC. They're just more inclined to be self-righteous about it because when paladins do their murder-hobo thing across the countryside it's IN THE NAME OF GOD. It's not that paladins are "good guys" in our game, it's that they are champions of Law, which is usually confused with Good (in certain lights, if you squint) but is absolutely not the same thing. I haven't covered how we do alignments in our game yet because it's not a super big deal but I will in a later post.