Honestly secular Paladins were the right choice. There's nothing stopping a Paladin from still worshipping gods and being religious and in all likelihood the vast majority of Paladins do worship Lawful Good gods. But that's not the core center of their identity and power, the Oath is. Since you can have an Oath without being explicitly committed to the gods there's no reason to tack on a religious commitment as a requirement.

It's the same logic with Clerics, the reason Clerics don't have oaths is because the entire core of their power is centered around serving a god, they don't need oaths because their behavior will already naturally be restricted to being aligned with whatever their god wants of them. Like the Paladin, there's nothing that stops a Cleric from also having a code of conduct, it's just not the central axis of their identity.

if they don't worship a higher power where do they get their magic from and why does it go away the moment they break their oath? It can't be a self-inflicted punishment because plenty of folks would come up with an excuse as to why they broke their oath and go "ok I won't do that again". A god or similarly powerful being always monitoring them and their oath is the only logical solution.

>Honestly, carnivorous vegetarians were the right choice.

If I was gonna have "secular paladins" anywhere I'd make their powers secretly come from the demons in charge of self-righteousness, and in exchange for greater power they give their senses over to the demons who make them start imagining violations to their personal oath everywhere, or start making the interpretations of their code more farcical.

>>96316369
>if they don't worship a higher power where do they get their magic from
Usually the 'plane' of Lawful Goodness itself, which is more of a celestial power unto itself and an immutable law of the universe much like how the Force works in Star Wars.

>>96316381
In specifically 3.5, the fact that divine casters can get spells without worshipping a specific deity was revealed by an Obryth (Ancient demon) lord, though outside of the forgotten realms the gods largely got over it.
The REAL mistake was removing the alignment restriction from paladins. Oh, and letting warlocks derive their power from celestials, both of them are fucking stupid ideas that run completely counter to the core concept of the class.

>>96316404
Honestly I'm fine with them getting rid of the alignment restrictions so long as they keep the oath restrictions. The reason being that oaths are a lot more stricter than alignment anyways and a lot more clear-cut. People will argue foro days about whether an action is Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good or Chaotic Good or whatever bullshit, and none of that matters so long as you're acting within your oath anyways.

>>96316391
That is not how the plane works, and has never worked. Also, Paladins in recent editions lack alignment, and so Heaven, the LG plane in older editions, cannot be invoked for this.

>>96316362 (OP)
>Honestly secular Paladins were the right choice.
Secular paladins are shit, and will always be shit. They should be bound to divine powers, aka gods, much like clerics are. Their Oaths are sworn to the gods and so this is why they can fall from their Oath by breaking it, the contract sworn to be upheld to the divine is broken and so their power is stripped from them.

The idiotic idea that an oath could be sworn to nobody and have great cosmic magical power is asinine and stupid. An oath is sworn to a god, its literally part of the definition. A sacred oath requires a divinity.
>The word comes from Anglo-Saxon āþ: "judicial swearing, solemn appeal to deity in witness of truth or a promise"

5e paladins are shit, and a stupid deevolution of the 4e paladin and its divine oath.

>>96316369
>A god or similarly powerful being always monitoring them and their oath is the only logical solution.
This. It just makes sense and comports with how sacred oaths have been done for ages.

>>96316426
>They should be bound to divine powers, aka gods, much like clerics are
If they're bound to gods what's the point of the oaths then? Just do it like Clerics and have them do what the gods want them to do.

>>96316429
Pathfinder 2es Champion is an Oath-bound "paladin", and does it well.
Quite simply, an Oath is a specific aspect of a gods portfolio. The cleric is the caster generalist of the god, while the "paladin" is sworn to a specific cause in the name of their god.
>You are an emissary of a deity, a devoted servant who has taken up a weighty mantle, and you devoutly pursue a cause that holds you apart from those around you. You have powerful defenses that you share freely with your allies and innocent bystanders, as well as divine power you use to end the threats your deity opposes.
>Cause
>You devote yourself to a specific cause in your deity’s name. Your cause adds to your edicts and anathema and grants you a special action

It also helps that PF2e was smart and removed the idiotic martial aspects from clerics. Clerics should not be martially inclined, they are priests not knights.

>>96316362 (OP)
>Honestly secular Paladins were the right choice.
That's a horrible, sacrilegious and retarded choice and basically kills what a Paladin is in the first place.

Too bad all of /tg/ is anime obssessed coomer degenerates larping as tradcaths.

>>96316444
Okay that's better. At least it justifies Paladins having oaths tacked on without just making them out to be Clerics+.

That said I'm fine with some Clerics having martial abilities, it just depends on the god. A war god? Yeah, give 'em armor and a weapon. A light god? Nah, let 'em stay in the back and scour the enemy with fire.

That said at the end of the day D&D and its offshoots are fundamentally combat games so any attempt to define Clerics by their civilian vocation of preaching rather than their military function of summoning angels, using AoE holy spells to burn the enemy, and casting buffs on their teammates is fundamentally missing the point.

>>96316448
So then just combine the Paladin and the Cleric into one class.

>>96316464
>A war god? Yeah, give 'em armor and a weapon.
Which is why PF2e still has the warpriest "subclass", where you trade some casting power for martial armor and weapon training.
Paizo basically said that full casters shouldn't get martial prowess, and so standard cleric, druid, and others don't get martial weapon stuff, unlike D&D and its sacred cows.

>fundamentally combat games so any attempt to define Clerics by their civilian vocation of preaching
And yet class protection and limiting thematic overlap are good considerations to have. Clerics in D&D have too much overlap with paladins and fighters, druids have too much power in general. They step on other classes thematic niches. Turn clerics into a strict full caster like wizards are and you establish a perfectly fine thematic niche of the divine caster. Now the paladin covers the knightly aspects as it should instead of weirdly sharing it with clerics. Now people wont get confused by a character decked out in armor with big weapons and divine power.

It also reinforces the clerics role of being the backline blaster, supporter, and healer, the guy behind the paladin's shield and sword.

>>96316362 (OP)
Ceehaz art detected let's fucking go

Paladins are like... the hand of their god while clerics are the mouthpiece. They may gain power through faith but wheras the cleric can do as he will with the power as long as in his eyes it's for his god, the paladin has no choice but to act as his god wills. They are the direct connection between the mortal and the divine and by breaking their oath they sever the connection.

>>96316404
>The REAL mistake was removing the alignment restriction from paladins.
the realler mistake was allowing non-humans to be paladins

>>96316362 (OP)
Actually, I floated an idea to one of my old DMs once and they let me play it out. I was playing a Chaotic Good Cleric with a focus on freedom as a core tenet for life (and as a Domain). They had no singular deity they worshipped, but went around helping people and fighting oppression. We basically fluffed it as "you ask whatever gods will hear you when you pray for their aid, and the ones whose ideals align with yours grant you your spells."

>>96316576

That at least makes some good sense in the setting.

>>96316369
/thread

>>96316362 (OP)
In the original material Paladins weren't tied to specific gods, they were just super-ultra good. 4e stupidly made Paladins non-alignment tied and just let every god get one.

The based way to do Paladins is to make them the personal justice dispensers of a specific God, like a LG Sun God or a God of Justice, etc. If other gods have similar figures, give them a cool name that isn't Paladin.

The idea of a snake-god of trickery calling its divine assassins "Paladins" is just so retarded and gamey.

>>96316369
>if no magic skydaddy, where magic?

>>96316362 (OP)
Paladins in Forgotten Realms aren't secular.

There was always a conceptual mismatch between paladins and gods because paladins were Christian inspired and the gods in D&D are basically pagan. The original paladin concept assumes a dualist cosmic struggle between good and evil. In D&D that's tied to the good-evil axis of the alignment spectrum, which is also where Christian inspired content goes in general (heaven and hell, angels and demons, and paladins). Some gods participate in the conflict between good and evil but they are superfluous to it. Fundamentally the D&D gods are just powerful spirits with no special moral authority, they don't suit the heroic archetype of the paladin which is based on directly serving moral good in the cosmic conflict with evil, not the god of fishmongering and prostitutes or whatever.

This is why paladins going back to OD&D were always more alignment focused than god focused. It's also why you can find the same fundamental "paladin" concept in other settings that are dualistic but non-theistic, like Jedi vs Sith in Star Wars, or any generic fantasy setting with a conflict between "the Light" and "the Dark" or whatever.

Here’s what should happen:
>Merge Paladins and Clerics into one class
>This new class takes on oaths, but they have to worship specific gods for their oath
>Which god they worship and which oaths they take determines how far along the martial-caster spectrum they are
There, I fixed it.

>>96316426
>Heaven, the LG plane in older editions
That's not a plane.
>They should be bound to divine powers, aka gods, much like clerics are
That's not how Paladins ever worked. They are embodiments of good. Not oathbound to good. The Paladins are patterend after... Paladins. The twelve peers of Charlemagne. Their chivalric code, not their religious code, is what they're known for.

>>96317158
So just take 3.5e cleric domains and have them affect the class harder?

>>96317307
Basically blend Domains and Oaths into a single thing, yeah.

>>96316381
>I'd make their powers secretly come from the demons in charge of self-righteousness
Ah, the "Oath of Woke".
Only way to break your oath is to admit you were ever wrong. Otherwise, it's not real "X" if you do it!

>>96316362 (OP)
It's a step in the right direction, but still not far enough, because I still think character classes are ghey. But also too far, because I know WotC will use this as an excuse to bash religion and older authors/editions or just simply not talk about it ever again, and they will never add any optional rules or new content of actual value to replace what they cut out. Whatever WotC does, it will always forever be ghey.

This is actually more or less how Paladins work in Pillars of Eternity. Instead of being devoted to a God like clerics are, they're devoted to a philosophy. The different paladin orders train and condition their members in a particular mode of thinking until they're so focused that they can focus the raw energy of their souls into various magical powers. For example there's "Gold Pact" Paladins who are mercenaries devoted to the concept of professionalism and "Bleak War" Paladins who are basically the setting's version of nukes because they're devoted to deterrence, game theory and mutually assured destruction, meaning they're magically compelled to destroy everything in their path once they've been ordered into combat, no matter what.

>>96316362 (OP)
>the reason Clerics don't have oaths is because the entire core of their power is centered around serving a god
Except that isn't true, either. The same edition that brought the "oath" as the center of the Paladin also made clerics secular. People just ignored it because it's stupid

>>96317226
>Their chivalric code, not their religious code, is what they're known for.
Which is why if they ever did something that stripped them of their power, they had to go to their liege lord and ask forgiveness instead of a cleric for atonement. Oh wait.