Topic: Paladin vs Champion

[rdanhenry]

Of course, not being the Living Fist of God, the fighter needs to develop a lot more social skills get get a seat at the diplomacy table, whereas the Paladin's words, however bluntly uttered, carry weight simply because of his station. Sure, the fighter can gain some status for himself, but only at the cost of accepting his own set of obligations to fulfill.

[Marc R]

I like the paladin. . .I just think the claims of their being overpowered are, um, exagerated?


You also get priests chasing you around telling you what to do all the time. . .and all these issues with people you never met trying to kill you.

(And you assume you're the fist of the popular god. . . .It's a lot of fun playing the fist of the downtrodden, hated or pariah god too. . .less fun with political authorities and the established church though. That's one of those setting/GM specific freebs, it's not like "Holy warriors of god" are going to automatically be pilliars of society, they could just as easily be hunted pariahs. In terms of this conversation, I'd assume neither, a neutral stance vis-a-vis setting and the GM fiddling around.)

[Mungo]

I also like the Paladin, its the class I play most often. And as was rightly said: all discussions are purely hypothetical, there is no real life example of an overpowered Paladin.

But there is this example of the 8th level mage with 1000 PPs who could cast spells up to level 20 without problem and higher spells with ritual magic which took a bit of time. Who could fly because he had demonic armor.I think that was overpowered.

Or perhaps not, given that we fought a level 30 demon riding on a black unicorn.

BR Juergen

[Marc R]

(I hate those black unicorns  )

[Witchking20k]

(All the same logic above applies to the warrior mage too  )

My point exactly.  I just made RM characters last night with my group for the first time in years (playing HARP & HERO regularly), at 2nd level, everyone sucks!  LOL

[Nders]

I think your example on the dev pt expendure of a semi spell user Lord M is very far from what we experience out there when we actually play. First of what if the Paladin just gives his list s single rank adds his stat total and rolls for it? This would leave him with only 4 devpts less than pure amrs but with just as low or lower costs he still has plenty of devpts to spend. Sure the fighter gets his armor slightly cheaper and sure he can develop more than one category of weapons at rapid pace. The paladin however is not likely to actually need more than two categories of weapons so it really does not make that much of a difference. This leaves us with a character who has cheaper costs in medical, meditation and magical skills while still being just a skilled with weapons as a fighter. The thing is, as you yourself mentioned, some players are great at building characters and others are more.... what was your wording? Direct Players who are direct and never really pick up on the game mechanics of the game will always build weaker characters and this holds particularly true when it comes to semi spell users. The skilled character builder will often however with ingenuity and understanding be able to field fully functional semi spell users already from level 2. One of our most powerfull holy warriors started out as a level 2 holy warrior (paladin using only the lists and options from RoCoI). True it was developed by one of my most skilled players but it was a great character. And a powerful one to 

[Nders]

Also let me note that I do not consider the paladin too powerful. I just point to the fact that his cost are cheaper than those of other semis and in many instances cheaper than even the pure arms.

[Marc R]

That's what I was referring to in terms of options.

If you 1 rank and roll. . .you have a 50% of having one list by 9th level, and 100% by 19th level. . .If using the non-random rank-level method, that's 1 spell per level, which is better than hoping to roll for it.

And your skill costs are still higher than the Fighter/Thief/Rogue so competing with them as a non magical paladin is a losing prospect.

Then you start adding options on. . .like "Add your intuition bonus to the SLA roll". . .which most certainly does boost semis power, it boosts pures also, but it benefits semis a lot more.

If both have a +20 stat bonus, that's worth 20/5=4 ranks. . .16 DP to a semi, and 4 DP to a pure. . .for each roll they make. (So it's like +16 DP per level to a semi). . .

I mentioned this up in my first post into this thread. . .if using random SLA, and options like the "Skill at Magic" BGO table in RoCo1 allowing REALLY high magic stat bonuses, that option becomes the unbalancing factor. . .example:

+50 magic stat bonus / 5 = 10 ranks of SLA. . .assuming only one SLA rolling attempt per level, that's the equivalent of 10 free ranks of SLA every level. . .which means you've given +10 DP/level to a pure casters, and +40 DP/Level to a semi.

if you lay in a combination of options that granted a benefit equivalent to +40 DP/level to any character, they would also suddenly seem over the top.

[Nders]

agreed utterly.

And your skill costs are still higher than the Fighter/Thief/Rogue so competing with them as a non magical paladin is a losing prospect.

This statement however is wrong. The whole issue with the paladin is that his costs are lower than those of the thief, rogue and fighter. The noble warrior is almost just as cheap but not quite.

[Marc R]

Not sure what you mean.

The primary skill costs for weapons, body development, perception, etc are signifigantly better.

A cost of 1/# is a lot better than 2/#. . .and 1-2 costs much better than 3-4 costs, and costs over 4 are essentially punitive.

One melee weapon
one ranged weapon
one BD rank
one perception rank
one rank of MIA chain

costs a fighter 8 DP, a Paladin 12 DP. . .
two ranking the above costs the fighter 29 DP and the paladin 39 DP.

If the Paladin strives to keep up with the fighter at being a fighter, they'll have 1 DP/level left, while the fighter has 11 DP/level left to spend on other things.

That's just trying to out brick the brick. . .Paladin has no chance competing with the thief in their chosen field, and nobody beats the rogue in all-roundness.

[Nders]

But if we look at meditation skills it's all up side down again

[Nders]

This means that with great use of med cleansing (to cleanse or educe the chane of addiction for example) or Ki (to get Chi powers or just that nice little +25 bonus) the paladin is at a destinct advantage.

[Right Wing Wacko]

Not to rudely interject into a conversation I am following, but not informed enough to add to it, but it was always my understanding that the "Companion" products interjected a great deal of "overpoweredness" to the game anyway...?

See, I usually run my games by "core", and by this I mean the rule book and very little to nothing else... no "companions", no "xx handbooks", no "complete xx"...
simply because I ain't rich, and also because, to us, core is enough and usually all the "extra" books add are overpowered and usually focus on one aspect or profession. So, I have an extra book dealing with fighters, now my fighters will have more "stuff" than my, say, Priests. Now I have to go buy the Priest book to get them up to Fighter standards. But now the Mage and Thief are lacking...

See?
It gets expensive. And it overbalances something over another...

Oh geez...
Now I forgot the whole reason for me saying this...

[Marc R]

Nders,

Paladins would beat out Fighters in being Yoga instructors, indeed.   They can't out fight a fighter on skills, or out maneuver a thief on skills. . .which was my point. . .if you didn't intend to actually pick up spells, selecting a semi would be an akward and inneficiant way to go about things. . .

RWW,

The RM2 companions added piles of rules in, which were loads of fun IMO. . .of course, you had to know what you were doing using them, and sometimes you got bit in the arse by the unexpected result you hadn't cosidered when you decided to use an option in play. . .some of those rules diminished power level, it was a kind of random grab bag, those numbered companions.

[Nders]

But the thing is that they are all skills both the meditative one and the sneaky ones and if you run a variated campaign and have many of the skills in use the paladin ends up just as cheap as the pure arms. He is the only one of the semis who have cheaper costs than pure arms, but you can actually play a paladin without any spells what so ever and he would still be fully functional. Namely because his skill costs overall are so low.

[Nders]

Agreed RWW you need to at least look through the companions they are great. Particularly the first three.

[Marc R]

Problem is that they are not actually cheaper overall than a pure arms, just close in some areas and perhaps better than some nons in a couple. . .but not better than all nons. . .I suspect for any given specific non-casting concept, one of the non-casting professions would fit the idea better and more efficiantly. . .there's a bunch of those out there also. . .Unless I had some intention of later on picking up magic, I wouldn't choose to play any of the semi professions as a non magical concept character.

Like, I might play a paladin as a warrior like non casting character, with no magic, with the intention of delving the magic end later on at higher levels and slowly becoming a magical holy warrior, but I wouldn't pick "Paladin" if I had zero intentions of ever learning magic.

[Nders]

sounds reasonable

[thrud]

Just toying with this... I guess this would be my way of doing a fairly typical paladin.
2-handed sword 2ranks 7pts (7)
dagger 1rank 3pts (10)
Body dev 2ranks 7pts (17)
Perception 1rank 3pts (20)
MIA Plate 2ranks 6pts (26)
Transcend armour 2ranks 8pts (34)
Depending on stats and options, maybe you can buy a few other skills?

Anywho, at level 4 you've got 10ranks in weapon, body dev, armor and transcend armour.
Level 5 start buying more skills and spells.

The first levels are definatly a struggle, you're mainly a tin can with pointy things sticking out. Nothing particularly powerful at that stage. He can fight but nothing else. Try running said paladin in a city adventure.
"What! I can't have my armour and 2H-sword?..."

[markc]

 What about space requirement for the 2H Sword? Also IMO at low levels you generally need a shield very badly. Depending on what you are fighting or if you have a very friendly person who can cast a protective spell on you.
MDC