Thread 96334219

Paladins and Clerics should be merged into the same class. Domains and Oaths should be combined into one thing, with the oath and your powers dependent on the god you dedicate yourself to. This would make much more sense than the current set up for several reasons.
>Paladins and Clerics already largely have similar roles. They're both explicitly religious classes that are hybrids of martials and casters, just with different degrees of how much they're martial vs caster.
>Paladins have more interesting RP mechanics than Clerics, and Clerics have nothing to compare. Both Paladins and Clerics are religious, but Paladins also have oaths, while Clerics don't. While Clerics do have domains, these do not have any RP aspects like oaths do, they're just a set of powers chosen.
>It would be historical. The Knights Templars and other holy orders had both knights and clergy in them. Clergy were known to fight alongside knights, and when they did so they'd go into battle wearing armor and wielding weaponry alongside their faith same as knights. Since D&D is a combat game, there's no reason to differentiate the classes from each other based on how they behave outside of combat, because they're nearly identical in combat.
>90% of other solutions just involve making Clerics even less cool so Paladins can seem even cooler which is just a lame solution.

>>96334219 (OP)
No. One is a priest in armor while the other is a fighter in religious order.

>>96334219 (OP)
refreshing wtf, ngl
hello /tg/

>>96334230
Except the priest is also a fighter in a religious order.

>>96334219 (OP)
You alreadymade a couple of threads like these :)

>>96334219 (OP)
>A thing in D&D is retarded!

Yes, and so are you for not just playing a better game. Trying to "fix" D&D is like trying to fix a decapitation wound with a band-aid.

>>96334219 (OP)
>Paladins and Clerics should be merged into the same class.
Or instead of being a retarded simpleton who wants everything turned into the same simplistic slop, you could instead differentiate them better so that you can have your divine priests and holy warriors without them stepping on each others thematic niches.

Remove weapon and armor training from clerics, lower their combat prowess. Done. Easy as that. Now the cleric is a full caster with a similar caster niche to wizards. Now that clerics are no longer martial warriors on top of being full casters, paladins are now the divine martial class. Theyve been differentiated fully and now occupy separate niches, ones they were supposed to occupy.

Its really that fucking simple.
>90% of other solutions just involve making Clerics even less cool so Paladins can seem even cooler which is just a lame solution.
Just because clerics lack martial combat prowess doesn't make them less cool. Thats a retarded thing to think.

>>96334691
>Remove weapon and armor training from clerics, lower their combat prowess
See >>96334219 (OP)
>90% of other solutions just involve making Clerics even less cool so Paladins can seem even cooler which is just a lame solution.

>>96334219 (OP)
The differing degrees are a good thing so that the "classic" party can have the support-caster serve as second-line without compromising the first-line melee taking a side order of it. This paradigm is a holdover from when Paladin was a Fighter Kit, and it honestly never should have been made a base class because of the resulting awkwardness.

The "more interesting" RP mechanics are just a matter of not writing out the deity's code of conduct the way the Paladin's is, something that will not change by merging the two. Additionally, Domains are a "what's offered?" category while Oaths are a "what's demanded?" category, keeping them independent on a merged base class makes perfect sense.

Historicity has never been a major constraint and you can bet your ass the clergy had better catechism while the knights had better combat training.

Making the Cleric less cool is unnecessary to restore the deity versus alignment power source difference, something that these threads CONSTANTLY ignore because for some fucking reason 4e lore has permanently tainted the Paladin to "godly champion" instead of "champion of law and good, deity not required".

>>96335188
I'd put a lot of blame on 3.x for giving the paladins the Smite ability - that's where the Deus lo Vult shit came in.

Though having Paladins be strongly god coded is fine by me - D&D never seemed godly enough. Nobody really gives a fuck about religion, even the religious classes. Too much euphoria.

>>96334219 (OP)
The answer is still no
One is a support caster using buffs, the other is a burst-DPS martial with some expensive utility and support spells
They are completely different roles

>>96335188
>while Oaths are a "what's demanded?" category
The oaths come with their won offerings of power too though.

>Paladin
Cleric, but less spells and more combat
>Cleric
Paladin, but more spells and less combat

simple as.

>>96335655
Paladins get cool oaths though which Clerics don't get.

>>96335658
Oaths are easy to homebrew

>Evil cleric takes an Oath to raise as many skeletons as possible
>Lawful good cleric takes an oath to raise as many skeletons as possible, but only use them for manual labor so the peasant's can use their free time easily.

>>96334219 (OP)
A cleric is a priest who picks up a weapon
A paladin is a warrior who picks up faith

>>96335528
>I'd put a lot of blame on 3.x for giving the paladins the Smite ability - that's where the Deus lo Vult shit came in.
It doesn't matter how much Ilmater despises somebody, if they are not Evil a Paladin devoted to her cannot apply Smiting.

>>96335646
Sure, as-is, but as mentioned merging them won't make WotC print the Code of Conduct for every deity. And having them separate lets you take on greater or lesser restrictions for more or less power.

>>96334219 (OP)
Every current D&D class can be collapsed into just the core 4 classes:

Fighter
>Barbarian/Monk

Rogue
>Bard/Ranger

Cleric
>Druid/Paladin

Wizard
>Warlock/Sorcerer

RPGs having 20+ classes with 5+ subclasses is shit design. Most of their features could just be feats taken at level XYZ and literally nothing would change.

>>96334691
The overabundance of choice in modern RPG systems is slop. Simplicity is best design and a lost art at this point. Only dumbshits who need the illusion of muh buffet of choice want a convoluted class system.

>>96334219 (OP)
No, this is fucking stupid and there's a reason they've been separate from day 1.
A Cleric is a full spellcaster and the divine equivalent to a goddamn wizard.
A Paladin is a fighter with some minor divine spellcasting the same way a ranger is a fighter with some minor nature spellcasting.

They serve COMPLETELY different roles in both mechanics/gameplay and in-universe function. The number one Cleric in the world is the Pope, the number one Paladin in the world is King Arthur.

>>96336796
>A Cleric is a full spellcaster and the divine equivalent to a goddamn wizard.
That 'wizard' can get into the thick of the fight and smash peoples faces in with a melee weapon and heavy armor.

>should be this
>should be that
>should should should
It isn't up to one single person to determine the correctness, duty, or obligation to doing the entirety of all games one way.
For nonfiction, that's up to the facts, the truths of the world. The duty to nonfiction is making sure the events and facts therein line up with what has happened or how things are.
For fiction, it's a matter of having any falsehoods remain plausible; the duty is to be as realistic as possible, with any untrue events or qualities maintaining a large likelihood of happening.
For fantasy, the duty is to make the game entirely however they want, because that's the purpose of fantasy games: doing things that are impossible/improbable in our world, within the bounds of the games' rules.

>>96336761
>Most of their features could just be feats taken at level XYZ and literally nothing would change.
Spell access and resource paradigm difference are not solved by addition, and spending character-generation resources on such substitution is bullshit. Consequently you need a framework to swap one thing for another, with careful attention to maintaining the party roles of the baseline the exchanges are being made from.

I like the idea of identifying the absolute minimum of each major role to serve as the class guaranteeing an important area of competence around which a wide variety of crap can be filled as you progress between levels.

>>96336772
The issues are bad handlings making the choice illusory and applying in to a class system that needs convoluted to do it, not that there is a large amount of choice presented or that the complexity breeches some arbitrary break-point. The art is finding the simplest way to supply the desired results with things like unifying rules across different cases by specifying only their differences, not leaving a mostly-blank canvas to fill with fuzzy-logic and homebrew.

>>96336761
ranger and paladin are both fighter kits
monks are priests

If I stooped so low as to actually play a TSR/WOTC product, I would not combine these two classes, I would eliminate one (definitely clerics). But I would also eliminate wizrards, and probably sorcerers, but keep warlocks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Pillars of Eternity handled the Cleric/Paladin split best. Priests are religious, support-oriented casters (but beefier then wizards and with some offensive spells that usually vary depending on the god they work for). Paladins are primarily fighters with magical enhancements but the important thing, fluff-wise is that they aren't religious but philosophical. Basically, Priest's get magic by asking for it from a god (which aren't really "gods" but huge, semi-intelligent spells sustained by the collective psychic energy of all sapient life, but that's neither here or there) while Paladins basically sperg so hard about whatever abstract idea their order is built around that their souls become focused enough to give them super powers.

>>96334219 (OP)
I get the thematic overlap really seems to trip some people, but
>Domains and Oaths should be combined into one thing
No.
These are very well defined things that are pretty different.
Domains are of the gods oaths are of the character, if that makes sense.
I also disagree that
>While Clerics do have domains, these do not have any RP aspects like oaths do
domains aren't as constraining as an oath would be, but it's something coming the deity (or philosophy or whatever) that the Cleric should represent embody or reflect in some way.
To the character, in fiction, it's not just some arbitrary aesthetic choice.

>>96334219 (OP)
Fuck I kinda agree

>>96337326
But it's stupid that a priest somehow is far less constricted in their behavior than a holy knight is. Having a Cleric just be a set of powers you have instead of inherently putting the roleplay of *being* a priest as a part of the class is a mistake.

>>96337347
In-universe pre-4e, Clerics are "just" doing an important job for their deity, while Paladins are powered expressly by being uncompromising ethical extremists. Back then, the Clerics had to obey their deity's code of conduct, but this was rarely specified because it takes some serious theological consideration and a sizable chunk of page-space per deity whereas the Paladin's Alignment-based code was a single case in core and eight more covered in Dragon Magazine issues.

This made sense in the original case where Cleric was a generally-expected base class while Paladin was expressly Fighter+.

>>96337326
>>96337347
>>96337444
D&D really should take a cue from PF2e clerics and their anathemas and edicts. Clerics absolutely should be restricted in actions, spells, and behaviors. And you dont even need much space for these things, as PF2e clearly shows.

Heres the god of "good adventurers and alcohol"'s set:
Edicts: drink, aid the oppressed, seek glory and adventure
Anathema: waste alcohol, be mean or standoffish when drunk, oppress the vulnerable

These things don't need pages and pages of bullshit.

>>96337444
While I'm fine with having that be the case for Fighters+, now I'm wondering if there was a Clerics+ class too. It would be really weird for the most religiously fanatical class to be coming from Fighters while Clerics end up getting left in the dust.

>>96334219 (OP)
Paladins casting spells was a mistake. They should be fighters with a high charisma stat and little to no mechanical advantage beyond that.

Additionally returning to how Odnd did magic weapons with most of them being swords makes a huge difference. If only fighters (and other trve front line classes) being able to use swords makes things way cooler.

>>96334219 (OP)
>>The Knights Templars and other holy orders had both knights and clergy in them.

Did you wrongly think that was actually relevant to merging the two classes or did you wrongly think people wouldn't see how irrelevant it is? Either way that's an embarrassingly bad argument. Different people having different roles in an organisation is very ordinary. Modern armies have accountants in them, and veterinarians, lawyers, musicians, chaplains, etc. Just because they're in the army doesn't mean they have the same role, they're not like the US Marines where every marine is a rifleman.
You've also conveniently/ignorantly left out that those orders had people like manual labourers and servants. Your argument would require 0-level humans to to be wrapped up in one class.
Also, since you're claiming "historically" you can at least get the terminology right. The Hospitallers, Templars and Teutons and all that were military orders or religious orders that became military orders, not holy orders. Holy orders are the ministry roles of bishop, priest and deacon.

>It would be historical. Clergy were known to fight alongside knights, and when they did so they'd go into battle wearing armor and wielding weaponry alongside their faith same as knights.

Not the Templars, not the Hospitallers. The soldiers soldiered, the clerics did the pastoral care and book keeping.
Are you going to cite Bishop Odo as your example? He's not representative of a typical cleric. He was a nobleman's son with no evidence to indicate he was raised differently to any other nobleman's son, i.e., same sort of training under arms. He was ordained bishop at age 14 by his half-brother for political expedience, a common practice of noblemen often to keep secular and religious authority invested in their family so under their control.

>>96337456
Particular cases could be spelled out at length in a more generally used behavior-for-power subsystem that classes and the Alignment system can reference, thus amortizing such rules across a variety of cases making the deity entries similarly short pointers to more thoroughly defined restrictions.

>>96337464
When I say "Fighter+", what I mean is "literally the Fighter class with generally-upside changes payed for by the behavioral restrictions". Similar Cleric+ behavior would be improved rewards for matching Alignment to your deity to an extreme degree, which would eventually be best served by systematizing like the above for a sliding scale of better-behaving Clerics getting more side-benefit stuff.

>>96337579
Retard, everyone in the army fights. I don't care if you're a clerk, you'll go through basic training and if necessary, you'll fight. Now shut up and give me 20 push-ups.

>>96335188
>This paradigm is a holdover from when Paladin was a Fighter Kit, and it honestly never should have been made a base class
What? Kits are from AD&D 2e and anyway paladin is a fighter sub-class in 1e and a warrior sub-class in 2e and in 3e they got rid of sub-class and just had base classes.

Dungeons and dragons has just never been a game with a high level of mechanical and setting integration. Internet slapfights over the distinction between clerics and paladins is just a consequence of that.

>>96337659
Worked fine before Wizards and the power gamers got free reins in 2000.
>>96337615
In no version of the game do clerics get to attack as well as nor have as broad a range of weapons to choose from as the fighter. But the Pally is a subset of fighter so he does get the fighter advantages.

>>96337615
>implying infantry school is the same as basic training
Yeah, funny. Only soldiers with an infantry MOS undergo infantry training.

>>96337678
>In no version of the game do clerics get to attack as well as nor have as broad a range of weapons to choose from as the fighter
Well, BAB=Character Level spells in 3.5 and shenanigans to get Tenser's Transformation on-list aside.

>>96334230
It would be more accurate one is a divine caster.

>>96334219 (OP)
Warlocks and Clerics are closer than Paladins and Clerics. They both serve a high being for their powers. Paladins are closer to Monks as their power comes from an idea and their oath to said idea. Though yes, often Gods and the like will support said Oaths and help out cause the alignment with said ideas.

>>96337831
Not everyone lives in the USA, other countries exist.

>>96337920
Though magic spell shenanigans all things are possible and doesn't change my point.
>>96337977
>>96337831
>applying modern army standards to medieval fantasy
You are both retarded.

>>96337986
>What is conscription?
>What is self-defense?
No, the Middle Ages were more violent than modern times, so everyone had to be able to protect themselves, there were few people who could afford security, and the police as a phenomenon did not exist. How I like idiots who shout that we should not drag modernity into fantasy, but at the same time do not even notice that they are doing the same thing because they are too stupid to understand how modern life differs from the past.

>>96338008
Are you suggesting that most people in the middle ages could effectively wield a weapon and fight in formation? That's the equivalent of modern military training.

>>96338026
No, this is advanced training. Basic training is being able to hold a weapon in your hands.

>>96334219 (OP)
Go back to your containment thread, tranny.

>>96338100
1st lvl fighters are veterans not 'being able to hold a weapon in your hands'.

>>96338213
>1st lvl fighters
>can barely hold a weapon
>only saving quality is that he does not hurt itself
Everything checks out.

>>96338425
Which version of the game are you playing that Fighter isn't better than an unclassed npc? If not then what are you doing at your table that doesn't make that true.

>>96338008
I remember a Margaret Paston letter describing the family priest getting in a knife fight against 2 guys at once while a third threw rocks at him. They decided to deescalate when someone came out of the house with a spear.
Point is that frankly I think that baseline npcs are much worse at fighting than they should be in medieval style fantasy settings.

>>96338464
Real life. And this is why I think DnD fighters is a dog shit - they can barely stand up to real people, have far fewer options than in real life and only start to resemble something interesting at high levels. And if in your fantasy the fighters are worse than in real life one you can safely think that this fantasy is shit. And I'm not talking about other fantasy settings, comparing DnD fighters with new heroes is like comparing a 90 year old grandpa with an Olympic champion at the peak of his abilities.

>>96338526
Spears are the army level equipment. It's like today a shootout started with 9mm pistols and then someone showed up with an M4. Also you confirmed my words that in the Middle Ages everyone was armed and ready for a fight.

>>96337977
Really? That's fucking fascinating. Only British Army other ranks candidates intended for infantry regiments go to the Infantry Training Centre for infantry training. Same for Australian Army. Same for the Armée de terre. Same for the Bundeswehr.

>rent free

>>96338659
Are you implying that in Western countries officers know jack shit about infantry? That explains a lot.

>>96338754
>officers
Put on your reading glasses grandpa, I wrote "other ranks".

>>96338536
>Imaginary character can't win a fight against a real person
Jessie, what the fuck are you talking about?

>>96338795
I'm saying that in real life even a granny can attack faster than two attacks in 6 seconds. But, as usual, dndrons high on copium will start screeching that dnd fighters are not that slow and it's not about the number of hits that fighters can do per round.

>>96334219 (OP)
Paldins should be war domain clerics.
Warlocks should be clerics of evil gods.

>>96339197
They'd both just be clerics with a different name and that would be an improvement how?

>>96338827
>doesn't know dnd combat is and has always been abstract
You're shockingly uninformed and have made many faulty assumptions. Have a nice day.

>>96344620
Abstract for fighters, super specific for mages. Because dnd doesn't give a shit about fighters, this class only exists as secondary characters whose sole purpose is to be a backdrop for mages.

>>96344637
Somewhat agree depending on the edition. That was never an intended outcome though. Fighters are suppose to be the focus of the game which is why they got access to more magic weapons and the title Hero.

>>96344689
Magic sword +1 to hit. Hurray, how boring. Meanwhile, mages...

>>96344716
If you are playing 5e you've only got yourself to blame. 3.5 is worse for it but only after releasing countless unplaytested splat books.

>>96344729
DnD 5e is real and your ignoring it won't make it go away.

>>96344764
I'm not saying you are wrong about 5e, only that gimped fighters were the unintended side effect of brainless game design. In earlier editions spell casters spell casters had actual disadvantages compared to fighters. Never enough to not overshadow them at high level but it was more even.

>>96344822
>unintended
This is where you are wrong. Everything that happened was very intentional.

>>96334219 (OP)
Wrong, clerics should just have their vestigial martial flavor stripped away and become a divine wizard in robes. I don't think I've ever seen a cleric player enter melee anyway and the average DM's girlfriend healbot would rather be a WoW priest in a dress

>>96344936
>I don't think I've ever seen a cleric player enter melee
That's sad for you. A lot of the rest of us have. I've never seen a healbot outside of MMOs. Is that your suggestion for what a divine wizard is supposed to be? While I'm probably never going to play a system that does that, if for some reason I had to I think I'd steer clear of cleric as it sounds like a very lame role in a game.

>>96338026
Depends on where they lived, but yes, most had this rudimentary training.

>>96334691
>Remove weapon and armor training from clerics, lower their combat prowess. Done.
I did this for my OSR shitbrew. It makes fighter/clerics viable. More viable than in AD&D, anyway.

>>96334219 (OP)
The difference is the order that they arrive at their conclusion.

Clerics love Jesus, and so through Jesus's teachings they love righteousness as well.

Paladins love righteousness, and so come to love Jesus as well because he is righteous.

A Cleric seeks out the heart of God to understand him better and obey his teachings. A Paladin is sought out by God for already knowing what to do before he ever knew God.

The Cleric is the wandering soul who learns what it means to be Good through the Lord. The Paladin is the Good pagan who learns of the Lord through his goodness.

>>96348580
That's my favorite interpretation too.