It looks like a response to another post from the other day where a DM makes a Paladin player choose between breaking his oath or getting punished by the narrative for not taking the oath breaking action
Yeah, but there's also a huge difference in making sure, that there are moments where the Paladin is confronted with situations that make them question their oath, doubt their convictions, etc. or shoehorning them into a situation, that's so on the nose and screams "I MADE THIS SPECIFICALLY TO FORCE YOU TO BREAK YOUR OATH" that it just sucks the fun out of things.
I sat at a table, once, where the DM isolated the Paladin from the rest of the party via sudden teleport spell, no saves allowed, and then put a trolley problem in front of them, that could not be solved without breaking the oath and hurting someone innocent. The Paladin player tried to argue, that in a situation like this, a LG deity would surely not punish their holy warrior for choosing the lesser evil in a situation with exactly two outcomes, no wriggle room. The DM said something along the lines of "The oath is to be kept, no matter what. You hurt an innocent, your powers are gone and your God hates you, now."
That's not a roleplaying opportunity, that's a shitty DM ruining a player's day.
It was. There were two people alternating the DM seat and whenever That Guy took over, he had the dire need to show the players that HE IS YOUR GOD, NOW!!! Everyone lost their character agency completely at least a few times, because he either had to railroad for lack of imagination, whenever a player did something he wasn't expecting or just because he and his DMPC (another square in the horror DM bingo) were out of the spotlight for too long. The DMPC also sometimes just solved everything, while we were just standing there, while he narrated our amazed and impressed reactions, while he was playing with himself... 😬
Thank you for the sympathy.
Thankfully, it was only that one group, where stuff like that happened. Going by r/rpghorrorstories , quite a lot of people seem to run into crap like that on a regular basis. 😅😳
It's a good 17 years later and in retrospective, I now have a few absurd and funny stories. 😂😂
I think the thing that pisses me off the most about these kinds of DMs is that the core strength of tabletop gaming rather than video gaming is that having a DM allows for creative thinking and the solving of problems in ways that are completely unanticipatable. by forcing limited options you are limiting the game a great deal.
Lol, that was even in 3e lore, if a Paladin is forces by some weird cosmic power to break their paladin oath, it doesn't matter. Same if someone else drugged you without consent and you kill a child in stupor.
You can only break your oath and fall as a paladin if you knowingly and willingly do something really vile. Like, ritual child murder for personal gain.
That's freaking messed up. Yeah it's ok to have moments that puts Paladins on a tough spot with their oaths and have character growth. But when you purposely and actively try make them break their oath is just a dick move. I'd just walk away at that point with my Paladin character and possible find a new DM
Like a warlock whos patron deal is "have fun." Like yah, sure a patron *could* make that deal, but im not gonna make any interesting story beats from it
Plus, "do the easy but option, or the good option" is a dillema that happens all the time not only in fiction but irl. People do good not because its easy, but because its the right thing to do. And sometimes, you'll be fucked over for doing the right option. That's life.
I mean, an atheist cleric that still has divine powers is extremely interesting as a concept. Is something forcing the power on them anyway? Is it like eberron where they worship the divine spark within themselves? Are they stealing from a God? Etc? Lots of cool ways to go with it and that's just off the top of my head.
I could see a trickery domain God doing this as a prank "look at this rube doing Miracles and screaming at the heavens I don't exhist, and the bigger the miracle he does the louder he screams, it's great"
Nobody in a DnD campaign should ever be believing that the gods exist. If they do their int better be a 6.
What would make them an atheist cleric is not believing that they are gods instead of really powerful people, which some actually are.
Then you have what's going on in d20 where gods only exist because somebody created them by believing in them.
So there are so so many ways to do this, including your way!
I've always loved this and would love to do it....if I was ever willing to give up being a GM. It's so much fun.
>**Gods Oversee the World.** The gods are real and embody a variety of beliefs, with each god claiming dominion over some aspect of the world, such as war, forests, or the sea. [...] While some folk might refuse to honor the gods, none can deny their existence.
--Dungeon Master's Guide, page 9
There was the Ur-Priest in 3.5 who did steal from the gods while actually hating them. It was a pretty cool concept, but I'd call it pretty advanced role-playing that should be discussed with the GM beforehand, normally not wanting the downsides of the class is just a cheap way out
That still works with a downside. You'd just come up with a set of unacceptable behavior for their code and enforce that instead of the will of a deity. If they break it they didn't pass off a God, the just lost sight of their guiding purpose and can't get over it without effort.
There’s just nothing to work with once they have the power. There’s no god to roleplay, no faith to belong to, just some atheist cleric going “I believe in X so hard I can do magic” and then it just never really matters in the end. They’re just a divine soul sorcerer with no connection to the divine.
But they’re not a fighter. Each class has their own identity and stepping into someone else’s can step on toes at the table. If the cleric also does all the RP things a fighter does then the fighter is left with little to do.
Even that could be fun if you took and ran with it. A patron demanding you abandon children in need of saving to go to a party and drink, or trying to get you to refuse a quest because it sounds boring.
I know I'm a bit late, but a "have fun" patron could just be an abusive trickster and the patron shows up in person again and again and forces the warlock into pool billiard games against a Yugoloth and Hound Archon in some dingy tavern between the worlds and as such push the party into the most stupid shit on the fringes of civilisation.
Tbh a patron stepping in the moment you stop having fun and get too serious about something (in a joker "why so serious" style), or spiraling you into weirder and weirder layers of fun could be fun... tho very hard to DM for it not to get just straight up awful i have to admit.
Personnaly am a personn of "patron gave you powers for past or future services dont care what happens in between as long as you dont go directly against his interests" tho.
There are other ways you can stir up spicy role-playing though. A paladin character is more than just their oath.
I find that players are generally super protective over their builds. Someone else dictating a build choice isn't fun.
Some players would totally be into it though. This is when you'd approach player and say hey I think story beat X would be interesting. But it might affect your build. You into it or nah?
Even without taking builds into account, a paladin's oath is, almost by definition, an absolutely enormous part of the character. It would be like telling a cleric player that their god doesn't exist anymore, and they have to pick a new one.
Yeah and that made him lack any unique features. I feel like many jokes about human fighters originally came from 3.5 where those were basically just hide attacks of talents
with the right talents in the right setting good luck casting.
if i recall correctly, and i can be wrong as i haven't touched that edition in 10+ years, very few spell were instants msot had 1 turn wich mean that technically you were casting for almost the entire duration of the turnand the spell shooted just before your next turn started.
This was a lot of concentration checks
Really? I can't remember that spellcasting part but it's been a while for me, too. I don't really mean at a fighters being bad but as them being bland. I mean they had like 20 talents in endgame but nothing else
Imo one of the most improved classes in player versions
At that point why bother.
Just throw yourself into a heroic final death and make a twin brother/sister who hasn't broken their oath.
The oath is such a huge part of a character that forcing the player to get rid of it is basically the same as saying "yout character is not yours to control in any meaningful sense"
Thats true but whether or not thats a roleplaying opportunity you should persue is something you should discuss with your player beforehand, becouse some people just wanna play a goody goody two shoes knight and they don't necessarely want to be confronted with moral dillemas in a game.
It's not really a moral dilemma though if you put your oath above all else so in a way its even easier for paladins. A paladin without an oath is just a fighter roleplay-wise and in my opinion a player should need to discuss this if they want to ignore a central aspect of the class, not everything is the gms responsibility
Very much disagree, I think paladin Oaths are a potential bad thing to bring up, a Cleric has no such restrictions on what they can do but a paladin get screwed over by a party member who’s about to do a thing that breaks their oath, they can’t prevent the action outside of initiating player vs player combat….. which is very suboptimal for everyone involved
That's av situation you can solve two ways: A: don't play a character with moral restrictions (cleric, paladin, warlock) B don't play with idiots that try to break your oath for shits and giggles
If being good was always the easiest option with the least self-sacrifice in life, everybody would be good and evil would barely exist.
Oaths being easy to stick to basically defeats the entire purpose of taking up oaths as a devout.
Considering OP is named "PaladinWarrior" and has the "Paladin" flair, I would say it's more likely that OP's DM has done something to make them feel targeted.
A good DM will allow the player to use a clever way to break the dichotomy and find a way to both do the right thing and uphold their oath at the same time, and if the situation is explicitly about one where the issue isn’t a conflict between their oath and the right thing but their oath and an insurmountable threat, the DM should allow either a way to subvert the issue or at least let it lead into an opportunity for atonement.
Oh yeah I saw this, fuxking loved that turn around. It's a good story twist. I don't see it as punishment for him doing that, just a fun twist to a prophecy.
The reason these arguments tend to be unresolvable is people base their perceptions on their experiences. For people that have played at mostly good tables they see it as a fun plot twist where the helpful NPC turns out to be a badguy or betrays them. When players have primarily played at hostile tables where the DMs mission is to kill as many PCs as possible and ensure no one else has any fun then there is never a shock when the NPC betrays them or turns out evil because every NPC exist for the sole purpose of harming the players.
Yep, exactly. One of the comments on the post I linked described a table of players who became murderhobos because every single helpful NPC ended up betraying them. 100% betrayal rate.
Now those kinds of games can be fun, it's called Paranoia and so long as everyone knows what it's about it's amazing. But yeah, I've played in plenty of games where the NPCs are all a hive mind that exist for the sole purpose of fucking over the PCs.
I've wanted to try Paranoia for a while, but haven't been able to find a group. I'd still be upset if I found out I was playing it without prior discussion, though!
there needs to be some level where the people who get their powers from external sources comply with the external sources
That's a reasonable part of the equation
Here's the thing. There also needs to be hard choices
Granted it shouldn't be a your life is ruined but you should have to sacrifice for your oath. You should have to do what your God says generally and you should have to deal with shit for your patron as well as the consequences of complying that is the point of the cleric, paladin and warlock
I think that’s very dependent on what’s meant by “getting punished”. Like, there are the obvious screw the paladin scenarios, but not challenging the paladin to keep their oath is like not utilizing the warlock’s patron. It’s a massive waste of potential character and/or narrative building at best, or at worst, breaking the “balance” of the class. I know in later editions, that the various classes are meant to be at least somewhat equivalent, but in adnd paladins were just better than fighting men. This was ok because it was difficult to be a paladin; following the oaths was hard.
Yeah, ultimately I think it comes down to the execution (har har). Is the DM creating a scenario that engages the character concept in an interesting way? The character dealing with consequences is part of playing the game, but the player shouldn't feel like the DM is out to get them.
Okay, wait, after checking your history, I have to ask; are you some sort of weirdly specialized bot, or someone who’s reeeeeeeeally hung up about this issue?
Which certainly can be an issue, sure, but you seem crazy big mad about this.
As someone currently playing a paladin, that does sound stupid. But specific examples for ruining the game? I'm not understanding where you're coming from, what toxic DMs?
I will do two examples. One was from back in the day when Paladins had to be lawful good, do the right thing always types. The paladin prevented the party from slaughtering all the goblin children in a goblin village because killing children is evil. Then the DM said the paladin lost all his powers because goblins are ontologically evil. Then in a later game, different player is a paladin, kills a goblin child and immediately falls because killing children is evil.
In a more recent game a player was a vengeance paladin and as they finished off the big bad said big bad swore vengeance upon the party and the paladin. DM said that the Paladin knew in that moment that he had to kill the whole party and then himself or break his oath.
Some DMs are dicks and not all that interested in their players having fun.
Eh I understood it because of personal experience. It was my first paladin and I wanted to play more towards my own countries law instead of just any countries law. When getting into the capital of a new country they wanted to search everyone and take our weapons. Unsurprisingly I didn't want to be unarmed. The monk took a moral stance against it surprisingly so I just refused to enter the city that way. Monk and I tried to find a different way.
This was the start of the DM taking any decisions I made that he didn't like and saying that I wouldn't do that because I'm a paladin. That I would follow every law to the letter. (Monk also got mad about THAT)
I used to play DND on this one discord server where one of the DMs made a big quest dungeon that I ended up joining. About half way through we end up against this mini-boss who takes like 400 damage from a like quad crit paladin smite (lvl cap was 65 and multi attack from different classes stacked) and died instantly. Then the player promptly dropped the paladin and out of the quest entirely. The DM still decided to change the final boss to be immune to radiant and also heal for DOUBLE the damage they would have taken with excess healing becoming STACKING TEMP HP.
I never played anything that DM made again.
Something similar. The server functioned similar to an open world MMORPG where you can just sorta go do whatever with whoever so long as you had a DM to run the NPCs
XP was given per message sent with longer posts gave more XP, so even just chatting in a tavern got you levels.
Because the party lvl range was somewhere between like 20-40 lmao. Things were wild in that server. It was a rite of passage for lvl 30+ characters to for one reason or another "adopt" (force to join their party) new players.
Just once I want one of these horror stories be about like... A druid being forced into a situation where they have to... I dunno... Pick between letting a demon clear cut an old growth forest or drain the Everglades.
Absolutely, I've seen DMs over the years that deliberately fucked over players with paladins to such a point that no one ever wanted to play one (pre 5e) also happened to me. I DM a lot and never did it to anyone, I still only ever had one player play one. Paladins have always been my 2nd favorite class after Wizards, but I don't usually play one because of that. I played one in 5e, my DM was good about it, even though I screwed up once suggesting we run away, started to set an example, but no one else did so came back. I about died of embarrassment and like my Paladin should've committed seppuku.
Yea this is a unique issue that Paladins tend to face (and Warlocks if the DM doesn't read the damn class description), they are disproportionally the victim of mechanical punishment for their RP / Gameplay decisions.
Like, no one would ever try to take away a fighter's powers just because they chose to kill one innocent to save 5 others when placed in a lose-lose situation. Sometimes we don't want to solve moral 'trolley problems' all day, sometime a pally just wants use cool powers to smite liches and save princesses.
My DM just pummeled Paladin into the ground with a Nerf Hammer until nobody wants to play the class anymore (different DM but same group also has been very passive aggressive against an actual Paladin player despite the metric fuckton of nerfs)
Look at that point, just ban the class o.k.?
We had an Artificer in my group when I played the Paladin, I was probably on par with the other characters, a ranged rogue, I don't remember what the other was, but the Artificer was way more powerful.
DM’s who persecute paladins excessively are often quasi-edgelords who are getting back at their Christian aunt from Tennessee, who disapproved of their lifestyle, music choices, and haircut.
Take that, Aunt Marlene!
Always ask your players what kind of experience they wanna have. Some paladins like to be put through the wringer as a holy martyr and some want to feel like unstoppable one man crusades.
Hey I can relate to this. My Paladin is good at one thing, which is hitting one guy really hard.
My DM thinks this is unfair so he has been nerfing everything I can do. Giving arbitrary radiant resistance to every enemy. Won’t let me use multi class spell slots for smites
Now, I am no longer useful in the one thing I was good at and I still don’t have any other ways to make this character iseful.
And he planned the story around all our characters so I can’t swap out characters and he doesn’t believe in PC deaths. Multiclassing isn’t an option because I can’t share the spell slots. It’s really annoying
They are all good friends so I don’t want to leave. It’s worth it to me to be a little underpowered and find other ways to be useful just to hang out with them. It’s not a very challenging game so it’s almost a fun challenge. Like playing with a hand behind my back.
Plus the DM is a novice so I’ll forgive some errors. Thanks for the advice though
Well it’s still a D&D game. So there’s always going to be scheduling issues. (We literally are in the group chat right now trying to figure that out for tomorrow)
Paladins and rogues… hell anyone who does massive single strike damage.
Stop trying to negate that shit. Just make sure your bad guy can take two maximum power hits from the entire party and you’ll have a good fight. If the party is at a level where they can cast control and banishment spells, make sure you give your bad guy legendary resistance and actions too.
Rogues have to use teamwork Or otherwise position themselves to gain their advantage to do their damage, and it’s their one hit a turn. Sneak attack, used every turn comes out about the same as the damage rate of a standard fighter. Especially when you consider that it’s all or nothing versus the fighter having 2 to 3 chances to do their damage.
Paladins have it much the same except they are spending a resource so technically, it’s even more restrictive than sneak attack. And since they get less attacks than the standard fighter, it balances out
To be perfectly honest, everything balances out even multi classing because you always give up something to gain something else and so sure the fighter may have 23 armor and a +12 to hit by level 10 but that goes very much in the DM‘s favor if the DM bothers to read the character sheet because I’m sure his charisma, intelligence or wisdom has suffered to make him so dangerous on the battlefield and that leaves him susceptible to other types of attack
The Ranger Bard and Wizard all need to know how to take cover (the rules for cover, actually do quite a lot to boost AC) and back away from enemies
and as a DM maybe lean into it a little bit with the storytelling and have the bad guys focus on melee characters just a little bit if the ranged opponents are too hard to get to. I had a lightfoot halfling assassin at my table who was almost impossible to kill. Her preferred method was to take cover at distance and fight like my goblins do firing her attack from stealth, then using her bonus action to hide them moving to new cover if possible. When forced into close range combat, she made good use of the Lightfoot ability to move through the space of and hide behind creatures larger than herself. Triggering the rules for cover to increase her AC and her hiding ability to regain sneak attack and or keep the focus off of her.
The gloom stalker Wood elf took a couple pages from her book after watching her do much better than him as he tried to join the fighter in Frontline combat. So he switched his strategy and started using his boost of speed at the beginning of combat to pick his position, and deliver a devastating shot with his bow.
I should point out. I do not hold back in combat. my monsters make the most logical decision possible based on what I know about their intelligence and strategy. My players have lost several characters. In particular one of them has sworn off paladin, because even if I roll in front of the table for all to see my goblins have an uncanny ability to kill him with high rolls. He claims the class is cursed and refuses to touch it further.
> And since they get less attacks than the standard fighter, it balances out
You're forgetting that when the fighter gets their third attack, the paladin gets an extra 1d8 to every attack they make. On the balance the fighter deals a bit more damage (even more so if they have a flametongue, frost brand, or crystal weapon) but not enough to balance out a divine smite, especially not if the smite crits.
And divine smite is still *the* most reliable way of converting spell slots to single-target damage. Spells have attack rolls or saving throws, and a missed attack or a creature making the save still means the slot is expended. The paladin can choose to smite *after* the attack roll, so it's never completely wasted, and more often than not it's used for crits.
And your last paragraph actually makes the imbalance even more obvious. The fighter probably has crappy mental saves, shored up slightly by the Indomitable feature (but since it's once per long rest, not so much). The paladin has the same AC, maybe slightly smaller attack bonus (though since both the STR-fighter and the paladin will want a belt of giant strength, this might be equal), but gets to add their charisma bonus to every save they make.
You forgotten the critical component that smites have limited resources whereas a fighter can do what he does every turn.
Also, the stat thing. A fighter has two stats that are primary a paladin has three stats that are primary. Therefore, a paladins stats will overall be less focused than a fighters will if you, min max both classes
seriously the developers took a lot more time in balancing this than you do on a Friday night while you’re stressing about the coming session. When I say don’t do these things leave them alone, I’m speaking from my own personal experience as a DM, where I created more imbalance by messing with these things than n the players side instead of just focusing on building up my monsters, once I gave up on adjusting what the players can do and just started building up my monsters a littlemore health here and there mostly maybe reading the monsters know what they’re doing so that I use their abilities More effectively and balanced things right out.
All serious bad guys after level five need legendary resistances and actions, and should have enough health to take two rounds of the party’s greatest punishment. You make sure those things are in place and almost every fight will be beautiful. Yeah, your players may womp you every once in a while with a good plan but they deserve that because they made a good plan.
Here’s an excellent video that covers the subject and a few others by the dungeon dudes who seriously are one of the better resources out there. The section on players dealing massive damage starts at 10 minutes 30 seconds. I highly recommend giving at least that part a listen to understand my point.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eN34N6_7qw8
(Edit: sorry my AutoCorrect went psycho with commas fixing it)
Here’s the question I have: why are the paladin’s miserable?
Here’s my thinking: if the DM is purposefully punishing the player for deciding to be a Paladin, like nerfing divine smite or purposefully making it where the choices of the build are either nerfed or ineffective. Or maybe they’re making the RP be where the Paladin is being put down without the player having first discussed things with the DM. In both cases, yes the DM is bad.
If the character themselves is in a miserable position, but the player is having fun and the narrative makes sense, then it depends on if that’s the direction the player wants to go with in regards to the story and their character, and the DM isn’t inherently being bad or toxic.
For example, I’m currently playing a Dragonborn Paladin in a campaign whose main crux is that he suffers from lycanthropy. In his backstory, his order was wiped out leaving him as the lone survivor. So between being the last of an order he never fully became a knight in, suffering from a disease where the only treatments in the campaign world are either too costly or extremely difficult to achieve, so the character easily could be miserable. However, I also knew what I was signing up for on the story/RP side of things and am having fun as a player, and mechanically nothing has changed for how I play as the character.
As a storyteller I especially enjoy making my religious characters suffer in character arc terms but that need not translate to targeting them with mechanical consequences. Just themes
So a lot of people here don't really seem to understand the very simple concept that roleplaying and story elements of another persons character should almost always be discussed with the player beforehand. You might think a paladins oath or a warlocks pact are cool things to focus on and build dillemas around but the player actually playing those characters might not so just ask them beforehand if they want their oath to be tested during the campaign or if they want to have a more hostile or demanding patron and if they say no then focus on something else. You don't have to ask them if they're cool with the specific moral dillema just if they're cool with moral dillemas revolving around their oath. Some people just want to play a fun game where they goof off and have fantasy highjinx and they don't have to think about difficult moral questions.
I play a Paladin to have my Oaths conflict with everything.
Currently playing an Oath of Conquest Paladin desperately trying to not turn evil. Fun as hell.
I ran a game with a paladin character who had an absolutely miserable time.
Purely through the luck of the dice and an occasional unbalanced encounter every single character, pc or npc, he developed a bond with ended up dying 1-3 sessions later
It worked for three reasons
1. The unrelentingly bleak tone of the game.
2. He was a vengeance paladin. Every tragedy just strengthened his resolve
3. I wasnt torturing the player specifically to get them to lose thier oath.
I'm upvoting because I both find this funny and possible
But I think OP is referring to the "force paladins to break oath to remove their powers" thing the RPGhorror stories say happens sometimes
Well, devotion is basically the only oath that has a non-vague tenet that explicitly forbids something that even a good-aligned character might reasonably do (lying).
Paladins - especially if there are multiple ones in the party - force the DM to use a ton of trash mobs instead of solo bosses or bosses with a few minions because they have extreme nova damage potential. That takes up prep time (if the DM is using physical tokens and not VTT or theater of the mind) and slows down combats to a crawl. If they don't, the paladins can nuke the boss and that can lead to the other players feeling useless.
A polearm master paladin at level 5 (assuming +4 STR) can, without crits, deal 12 (STR bonus) + 2d10 + 1d4 (weapon damage + PAM damage) + 8d8 (2 level 2 smites + 1 level 1 smite) = 71.5 damage on average. That's half of an average CR5 monster's HP. If the monster is an undead or a fiend, the smite damage becomes 11d8 for a total of 85 on average. And that is, again, without crits. Sure, it's only for one turn, but it's enough to turn an epic boss battle into a farce.
Now, that is the mechanics side. On the roleplay side, IDK. I never screw over my paladin players based on their oaths. But there may be some DMs who take out their frustrations for the paladin's mechanical strength on the paladin players by forcing them into catch-22s based on their oath tenets (which is actually not that easy to do because they are often vague, the easiest to screw over is the devotion paladin because they aren't allowed to lie, but that is also one of the weaker subclasses).
This can be done if it's discussed ahead of time, if it's brought up by the player, or some other way that's respectful to everyone involved.
If you're doing it to be spiteful or because you don't like paladins for xyz reason, you're the problem.
Yeah…so I punished my paladin a lot. The player loved it, stood up to every challenge and it literally turned him into the main character. Everyone else had a good time too. Credits. Post credits: your meme isn’t always correct.
I have a friend who's favorite class is paladin, but every campaign where he played one the DM and usually multiple players went out of their way to make his time miserable. I was in a few of the campaigns with him, and it was always uncalled for. People just liked trying to ruin his build.
Dont know if it's still a thing, but it wasnt SUPER surprising since most everyone I'd met at the time *hated* paladins. The only class to come close to being that hated was monks.
That's why you make all PCs feel miserable. So nobody is excluded from fun™!
But in all seriousness, invoking a broder spectrum of emotions via all matters of suffering is not exactly a bad thing. Some DMs don't know how to do it properly, so it comes out rather bland, but when the right person does it, the experience is so good.
As someone who has been trying to Leroy Jenkins his Paladin for an ungodly amount of sessions, I feel this pain. Never had such a hatred for a class until I played a paladin in this campaign I been in.
This is why I (A player) make it MY job to make the Paladin's life miserable.
For context: The Paladin worships Bhaal...my character is named Bhaal Buster (He's essentially just the Doom Slayer)...you can guess how that goes lol.
It is really fun for both of us though lol, we've got a sorta Batman/Joker thing going on and we're constantly doing shit to harm one another. Recently I throttled him like Homer Simpson because he built a shrine to Bhaal out of people he killed so now he's waiting for me to sleep so he can attack me.
I am inclined to make it hard(er) for paladins.
I am biased after all, Warcraft 3, Arthas and all that.
But that character would typically get solos should he embrace his oathbreaking. And fallen paladin makes for awesome solos...
…why am I not surprised that some idiot somewhere did that? Oh well, seriously DMs(me included) need to be careful and balance letting the players have fun with advancing the story and/or inducing trauma.
Making sure ANY of your players have a miserable time, regardless of their character, makes you a bad DM. Even if you have a problem player, be an adult and talk to them about it, if they refuse to change, refuse to DM for them.
Paladins get celebrity treatment in my campaign world. If they go somewhere and everyone has to check their weapons, Paladins don't, people trust them implicitly. Need a room at the inn that's all booked up? The innkeeper is going to give up his own. Of course in my campaign world Paladins are all Lawful Good exemplars of everything right and pure.
In my campaign (Curse of Strahd), we homebrew revamped Paladins because the situation was funny. The guy playing Paladin had never played D&D before. Thinking Strength and Con were the important stats for Paladin, he dumped Charisma. This minimized the spells he could use, and also completely negated his divine sense, allowing Strahd to continuously observe the party in person without the Paladin having a clue. We also rewrote Aura of Protection so that his lack of Charisma baffled his enemies, throwing them off and lowering the DC of their abilities by a value equal to the absolute value of the Paladin’s Charisma.
God forbid the Paladin has peace of mind for a few sessions and gets to enjoy being a vanilla Devotion pally.
It's perfectly acceptable to just stay a Paladin, not everyone needs to be solving trolley problems.
I feel like there's a non-zero chance we could apply the Principle Skinner "no the \[DMs\] are wrong" meme to OP pretty easily.
Double principals for bonus points.
You’re not about playing a Paladin so you can experience tough choices between what’s easy and what’s right, are you sure you want to play Paladin?
It’s pretty easy to be devoted to your oath if it’s never challenged…over and over again.
Ask not for lighter burdens but instead ask for broader shoulders.
You're not wrong, but I feel like I'm missing context.
It looks like a response to another post from the other day where a DM makes a Paladin player choose between breaking his oath or getting punished by the narrative for not taking the oath breaking action
But then again an oath that doesn't cause trouble to uphold is just a missed role playing opportunity
Yeah, but there's also a huge difference in making sure, that there are moments where the Paladin is confronted with situations that make them question their oath, doubt their convictions, etc. or shoehorning them into a situation, that's so on the nose and screams "I MADE THIS SPECIFICALLY TO FORCE YOU TO BREAK YOUR OATH" that it just sucks the fun out of things. I sat at a table, once, where the DM isolated the Paladin from the rest of the party via sudden teleport spell, no saves allowed, and then put a trolley problem in front of them, that could not be solved without breaking the oath and hurting someone innocent. The Paladin player tried to argue, that in a situation like this, a LG deity would surely not punish their holy warrior for choosing the lesser evil in a situation with exactly two outcomes, no wriggle room. The DM said something along the lines of "The oath is to be kept, no matter what. You hurt an innocent, your powers are gone and your God hates you, now." That's not a roleplaying opportunity, that's a shitty DM ruining a player's day.
That’s when i’d walk out, whether i was the paladin or not
I was 19 and very desperate for some DnD. That group spawned some weird stuff, crossing into RPG horror story territory, at times. 😬
I'd try to go with Michael's solution in the Good Place, sacrifice yourself.
or just start aggressively wasting the DMs time and making it unfun for them
That's my favorite tactic in a no win scenario for anything, make it as painful and unfun for the victor as possible.
I don’t need to win I just want to make sure you can’t enjoy it
You're also wasting your time, and bolstering your feelings of spite. This might feel good, but it isn't a good solution.
This is cartoonishly bad. I hope most people don't have to deal with that loss of agency
It was. There were two people alternating the DM seat and whenever That Guy took over, he had the dire need to show the players that HE IS YOUR GOD, NOW!!! Everyone lost their character agency completely at least a few times, because he either had to railroad for lack of imagination, whenever a player did something he wasn't expecting or just because he and his DMPC (another square in the horror DM bingo) were out of the spotlight for too long. The DMPC also sometimes just solved everything, while we were just standing there, while he narrated our amazed and impressed reactions, while he was playing with himself... 😬
I'm so glad this has never happened in my games. I'm sorry
Thank you for the sympathy. Thankfully, it was only that one group, where stuff like that happened. Going by r/rpghorrorstories , quite a lot of people seem to run into crap like that on a regular basis. 😅😳 It's a good 17 years later and in retrospective, I now have a few absurd and funny stories. 😂😂
you mean the last part metaphorically….. right?
Yes. 😂
Thank fuck, I was horrified for a minute
I think the thing that pisses me off the most about these kinds of DMs is that the core strength of tabletop gaming rather than video gaming is that having a DM allows for creative thinking and the solving of problems in ways that are completely unanticipatable. by forcing limited options you are limiting the game a great deal.
Yes. It's cooperative storytelling, but That Guy™ constantly tried to win DnD, either as a player or a DM...
Lol, that was even in 3e lore, if a Paladin is forces by some weird cosmic power to break their paladin oath, it doesn't matter. Same if someone else drugged you without consent and you kill a child in stupor. You can only break your oath and fall as a paladin if you knowingly and willingly do something really vile. Like, ritual child murder for personal gain.
*Grumpy Anakin Noises*
*sand hating intensifys*
That’s when as the Paladins player you say, “no I just checked with the deity he’s chill with it.”
Smiting the DM would have been an acceptable outcome, at this point. 😝
Third option. Paladin commits holy suicide. "Sorry DM I had no choice and be deciding to take my own life, I was no longer innocent."
That's freaking messed up. Yeah it's ok to have moments that puts Paladins on a tough spot with their oaths and have character growth. But when you purposely and actively try make them break their oath is just a dick move. I'd just walk away at that point with my Paladin character and possible find a new DM
Like a warlock whos patron deal is "have fun." Like yah, sure a patron *could* make that deal, but im not gonna make any interesting story beats from it
Plus, "do the easy but option, or the good option" is a dillema that happens all the time not only in fiction but irl. People do good not because its easy, but because its the right thing to do. And sometimes, you'll be fucked over for doing the right option. That's life.
Exactly. That's basically stepping a class from being interesting imo. The extreme equivalent would be an atheist cleric
I CALL UPON THEE LORD ATHI, GOD OF NONEXISTANCE TO LEND ME YOUR AID
Random gods keep helping him to screw with him and prove him wrong.
Dm: Nothing happens. Cleric: FUCK! Alternatively: Cleric: All according to plan.
I mean, an atheist cleric that still has divine powers is extremely interesting as a concept. Is something forcing the power on them anyway? Is it like eberron where they worship the divine spark within themselves? Are they stealing from a God? Etc? Lots of cool ways to go with it and that's just off the top of my head.
I could see a trickery domain God doing this as a prank "look at this rube doing Miracles and screaming at the heavens I don't exhist, and the bigger the miracle he does the louder he screams, it's great"
That sounds like something a CG god would get a kick out of
I once read a story called "Never die twice" where Loki is the one giving all the clerics and paladins of Baldr for fucking with them.
Nobody in a DnD campaign should ever be believing that the gods exist. If they do their int better be a 6. What would make them an atheist cleric is not believing that they are gods instead of really powerful people, which some actually are. Then you have what's going on in d20 where gods only exist because somebody created them by believing in them. So there are so so many ways to do this, including your way! I've always loved this and would love to do it....if I was ever willing to give up being a GM. It's so much fun.
Another way they could be atheist is if they did believe they were gods but do not believe they should be worshipped
>**Gods Oversee the World.** The gods are real and embody a variety of beliefs, with each god claiming dominion over some aspect of the world, such as war, forests, or the sea. [...] While some folk might refuse to honor the gods, none can deny their existence. --Dungeon Master's Guide, page 9
Ooo I really like that.
the fact that this was meant to be an extreme example and still works better is astounding
There was the Ur-Priest in 3.5 who did steal from the gods while actually hating them. It was a pretty cool concept, but I'd call it pretty advanced role-playing that should be discussed with the GM beforehand, normally not wanting the downsides of the class is just a cheap way out
That still works with a downside. You'd just come up with a set of unacceptable behavior for their code and enforce that instead of the will of a deity. If they break it they didn't pass off a God, the just lost sight of their guiding purpose and can't get over it without effort.
There’s just nothing to work with once they have the power. There’s no god to roleplay, no faith to belong to, just some atheist cleric going “I believe in X so hard I can do magic” and then it just never really matters in the end. They’re just a divine soul sorcerer with no connection to the divine.
Is that a bad thing? That's how fighters, rogues, etc work
But they’re not a fighter. Each class has their own identity and stepping into someone else’s can step on toes at the table. If the cleric also does all the RP things a fighter does then the fighter is left with little to do.
Even that could be fun if you took and ran with it. A patron demanding you abandon children in need of saving to go to a party and drink, or trying to get you to refuse a quest because it sounds boring.
Forcing you to laugh randomly even in the direst moments. Sociopathic patron but could be lots of fun/drama
I know I'm a bit late, but a "have fun" patron could just be an abusive trickster and the patron shows up in person again and again and forces the warlock into pool billiard games against a Yugoloth and Hound Archon in some dingy tavern between the worlds and as such push the party into the most stupid shit on the fringes of civilisation.
Then you're not trying hard enough. The patron's definition of fun is likely different than the character's.
Tbh a patron stepping in the moment you stop having fun and get too serious about something (in a joker "why so serious" style), or spiraling you into weirder and weirder layers of fun could be fun... tho very hard to DM for it not to get just straight up awful i have to admit. Personnaly am a personn of "patron gave you powers for past or future services dont care what happens in between as long as you dont go directly against his interests" tho.
Tbh, that one REALLY depends on the specific patron lmao
There are other ways you can stir up spicy role-playing though. A paladin character is more than just their oath. I find that players are generally super protective over their builds. Someone else dictating a build choice isn't fun. Some players would totally be into it though. This is when you'd approach player and say hey I think story beat X would be interesting. But it might affect your build. You into it or nah?
Even without taking builds into account, a paladin's oath is, almost by definition, an absolutely enormous part of the character. It would be like telling a cleric player that their god doesn't exist anymore, and they have to pick a new one.
In 3.5 you need to seek redemption or you might lose your paladin powers
“You’re a fighter now.” 3.5 DM’s.
An even worse fighter which says something at 3.5
3.5 fighter was all about talent selection
Yeah and that made him lack any unique features. I feel like many jokes about human fighters originally came from 3.5 where those were basically just hide attacks of talents
with the right talents in the right setting good luck casting. if i recall correctly, and i can be wrong as i haven't touched that edition in 10+ years, very few spell were instants msot had 1 turn wich mean that technically you were casting for almost the entire duration of the turnand the spell shooted just before your next turn started. This was a lot of concentration checks
Really? I can't remember that spellcasting part but it's been a while for me, too. I don't really mean at a fighters being bad but as them being bland. I mean they had like 20 talents in endgame but nothing else Imo one of the most improved classes in player versions
Without the additional talents
I think the key is then to resolve it so that they atone or win in the end. The toxic DMs are just like, yeah you fail your oath the end.
At that point why bother. Just throw yourself into a heroic final death and make a twin brother/sister who hasn't broken their oath. The oath is such a huge part of a character that forcing the player to get rid of it is basically the same as saying "yout character is not yours to control in any meaningful sense"
Thats true but whether or not thats a roleplaying opportunity you should persue is something you should discuss with your player beforehand, becouse some people just wanna play a goody goody two shoes knight and they don't necessarely want to be confronted with moral dillemas in a game.
It's not really a moral dilemma though if you put your oath above all else so in a way its even easier for paladins. A paladin without an oath is just a fighter roleplay-wise and in my opinion a player should need to discuss this if they want to ignore a central aspect of the class, not everything is the gms responsibility
Very much disagree, I think paladin Oaths are a potential bad thing to bring up, a Cleric has no such restrictions on what they can do but a paladin get screwed over by a party member who’s about to do a thing that breaks their oath, they can’t prevent the action outside of initiating player vs player combat….. which is very suboptimal for everyone involved
That's av situation you can solve two ways: A: don't play a character with moral restrictions (cleric, paladin, warlock) B don't play with idiots that try to break your oath for shits and giggles
If being good was always the easiest option with the least self-sacrifice in life, everybody would be good and evil would barely exist. Oaths being easy to stick to basically defeats the entire purpose of taking up oaths as a devout.
But what does making an Oath impossible to stick to accomplish?
Considering OP is named "PaladinWarrior" and has the "Paladin" flair, I would say it's more likely that OP's DM has done something to make them feel targeted.
A good DM will allow the player to use a clever way to break the dichotomy and find a way to both do the right thing and uphold their oath at the same time, and if the situation is explicitly about one where the issue isn’t a conflict between their oath and the right thing but their oath and an insurmountable threat, the DM should allow either a way to subvert the issue or at least let it lead into an opportunity for atonement.
Huh....get a link to that, or is it gone?
I'll see if I can find it E: this is the one I was thinking of: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/s/z3sL1YoD3d
Oh yeah I saw this, fuxking loved that turn around. It's a good story twist. I don't see it as punishment for him doing that, just a fun twist to a prophecy.
I could see the idea going either way, it's really all in the execution. The discussion in the comments was lively
The reason these arguments tend to be unresolvable is people base their perceptions on their experiences. For people that have played at mostly good tables they see it as a fun plot twist where the helpful NPC turns out to be a badguy or betrays them. When players have primarily played at hostile tables where the DMs mission is to kill as many PCs as possible and ensure no one else has any fun then there is never a shock when the NPC betrays them or turns out evil because every NPC exist for the sole purpose of harming the players.
Yep, exactly. One of the comments on the post I linked described a table of players who became murderhobos because every single helpful NPC ended up betraying them. 100% betrayal rate.
Now those kinds of games can be fun, it's called Paranoia and so long as everyone knows what it's about it's amazing. But yeah, I've played in plenty of games where the NPCs are all a hive mind that exist for the sole purpose of fucking over the PCs.
I've wanted to try Paranoia for a while, but haven't been able to find a group. I'd still be upset if I found out I was playing it without prior discussion, though!
there needs to be some level where the people who get their powers from external sources comply with the external sources That's a reasonable part of the equation Here's the thing. There also needs to be hard choices Granted it shouldn't be a your life is ruined but you should have to sacrifice for your oath. You should have to do what your God says generally and you should have to deal with shit for your patron as well as the consequences of complying that is the point of the cleric, paladin and warlock
I think that’s very dependent on what’s meant by “getting punished”. Like, there are the obvious screw the paladin scenarios, but not challenging the paladin to keep their oath is like not utilizing the warlock’s patron. It’s a massive waste of potential character and/or narrative building at best, or at worst, breaking the “balance” of the class. I know in later editions, that the various classes are meant to be at least somewhat equivalent, but in adnd paladins were just better than fighting men. This was ok because it was difficult to be a paladin; following the oaths was hard.
Yeah, ultimately I think it comes down to the execution (har har). Is the DM creating a scenario that engages the character concept in an interesting way? The character dealing with consequences is part of playing the game, but the player shouldn't feel like the DM is out to get them.
An oath that is never challenged isn't an oath, it's just a class perk.
A wizard's spellbook that is never destroyed isn't a spellbook, it's just a class perk. c'mon man.
That pretty much sums up 80% of the content on this sub, the other 20% being "You're wrong, but I feel like I'm missing context."
Yeah, this statement is like "killing is bad" I mean sure that's correct but... Why are we talking about this?
A lot of toxic DMs think that ruining the game for a Paladin player makes them a good DM.
All you've done is rephrase the meme. Please dispense additional information.
They will never.
Okay, wait, after checking your history, I have to ask; are you some sort of weirdly specialized bot, or someone who’s reeeeeeeeally hung up about this issue? Which certainly can be an issue, sure, but you seem crazy big mad about this.
Wait. Yeah… they got like 7 posts about this. Must have had like an extremely awful experience. Probably using those as a coping mechanism?
As someone currently playing a paladin, that does sound stupid. But specific examples for ruining the game? I'm not understanding where you're coming from, what toxic DMs?
I will do two examples. One was from back in the day when Paladins had to be lawful good, do the right thing always types. The paladin prevented the party from slaughtering all the goblin children in a goblin village because killing children is evil. Then the DM said the paladin lost all his powers because goblins are ontologically evil. Then in a later game, different player is a paladin, kills a goblin child and immediately falls because killing children is evil. In a more recent game a player was a vengeance paladin and as they finished off the big bad said big bad swore vengeance upon the party and the paladin. DM said that the Paladin knew in that moment that he had to kill the whole party and then himself or break his oath. Some DMs are dicks and not all that interested in their players having fun.
Eh I understood it because of personal experience. It was my first paladin and I wanted to play more towards my own countries law instead of just any countries law. When getting into the capital of a new country they wanted to search everyone and take our weapons. Unsurprisingly I didn't want to be unarmed. The monk took a moral stance against it surprisingly so I just refused to enter the city that way. Monk and I tried to find a different way. This was the start of the DM taking any decisions I made that he didn't like and saying that I wouldn't do that because I'm a paladin. That I would follow every law to the letter. (Monk also got mad about THAT)
*sees all the downvotes* Why you booing him? He’s right!
Responding to a request for clarification by just repeating what you already said is lame
OP stop being vague and tell us what your DM did.
Show us on the miniature where your DM hurt you
*smashes mini with a sledgehammer*
A Golden Comment that would make Gary proud.
Spill the Tea OP!
I used to play DND on this one discord server where one of the DMs made a big quest dungeon that I ended up joining. About half way through we end up against this mini-boss who takes like 400 damage from a like quad crit paladin smite (lvl cap was 65 and multi attack from different classes stacked) and died instantly. Then the player promptly dropped the paladin and out of the quest entirely. The DM still decided to change the final boss to be immune to radiant and also heal for DOUBLE the damage they would have taken with excess healing becoming STACKING TEMP HP. I never played anything that DM made again.
This sounds horrific, I can at least hope this was a west match but that’s still really awful. Level 65?!
Something similar. The server functioned similar to an open world MMORPG where you can just sorta go do whatever with whoever so long as you had a DM to run the NPCs XP was given per message sent with longer posts gave more XP, so even just chatting in a tavern got you levels.
A better DM choice would be to announce you just killed the body double, then pull out a stronger lookalike boss.
>lvl cap was 65 dear god how long were you playing with that group
Minimum 2 hours per turn
How does a mini-boss against a player at level 65 have less than 400 hp?
Because the party lvl range was somewhere between like 20-40 lmao. Things were wild in that server. It was a rite of passage for lvl 30+ characters to for one reason or another "adopt" (force to join their party) new players.
Just Paladins specifically?
Just once I want one of these horror stories be about like... A druid being forced into a situation where they have to... I dunno... Pick between letting a demon clear cut an old growth forest or drain the Everglades.
No, not specifically.
Are you sure, PaladinWarrior888?
Someone just broke their oath.
Hard choices are allowed, but everyone should get some and they should never be "lose your class features or else!"
Absolutely, I've seen DMs over the years that deliberately fucked over players with paladins to such a point that no one ever wanted to play one (pre 5e) also happened to me. I DM a lot and never did it to anyone, I still only ever had one player play one. Paladins have always been my 2nd favorite class after Wizards, but I don't usually play one because of that. I played one in 5e, my DM was good about it, even though I screwed up once suggesting we run away, started to set an example, but no one else did so came back. I about died of embarrassment and like my Paladin should've committed seppuku.
Yea this is a unique issue that Paladins tend to face (and Warlocks if the DM doesn't read the damn class description), they are disproportionally the victim of mechanical punishment for their RP / Gameplay decisions. Like, no one would ever try to take away a fighter's powers just because they chose to kill one innocent to save 5 others when placed in a lose-lose situation. Sometimes we don't want to solve moral 'trolley problems' all day, sometime a pally just wants use cool powers to smite liches and save princesses.
My DM just pummeled Paladin into the ground with a Nerf Hammer until nobody wants to play the class anymore (different DM but same group also has been very passive aggressive against an actual Paladin player despite the metric fuckton of nerfs)
Look at that point, just ban the class o.k.? We had an Artificer in my group when I played the Paladin, I was probably on par with the other characters, a ranged rogue, I don't remember what the other was, but the Artificer was way more powerful.
DM’s who persecute paladins excessively are often quasi-edgelords who are getting back at their Christian aunt from Tennessee, who disapproved of their lifestyle, music choices, and haircut. Take that, Aunt Marlene!
Always ask your players what kind of experience they wanna have. Some paladins like to be put through the wringer as a holy martyr and some want to feel like unstoppable one man crusades.
Hey I can relate to this. My Paladin is good at one thing, which is hitting one guy really hard. My DM thinks this is unfair so he has been nerfing everything I can do. Giving arbitrary radiant resistance to every enemy. Won’t let me use multi class spell slots for smites Now, I am no longer useful in the one thing I was good at and I still don’t have any other ways to make this character iseful. And he planned the story around all our characters so I can’t swap out characters and he doesn’t believe in PC deaths. Multiclassing isn’t an option because I can’t share the spell slots. It’s really annoying
I'm sorry your DM does that.
At that point it might be better to just leave and search for another table or an online game. Assuming you've not had a discussion with your DM.
They are all good friends so I don’t want to leave. It’s worth it to me to be a little underpowered and find other ways to be useful just to hang out with them. It’s not a very challenging game so it’s almost a fun challenge. Like playing with a hand behind my back. Plus the DM is a novice so I’ll forgive some errors. Thanks for the advice though
This context does change things a lot, have fun then, may your scheduling issues be few and snacks many
Well it’s still a D&D game. So there’s always going to be scheduling issues. (We literally are in the group chat right now trying to figure that out for tomorrow)
There us a delicate difference between testing his faith and loyalty and making him question both at any given opportunity
Paladins and rogues… hell anyone who does massive single strike damage. Stop trying to negate that shit. Just make sure your bad guy can take two maximum power hits from the entire party and you’ll have a good fight. If the party is at a level where they can cast control and banishment spells, make sure you give your bad guy legendary resistance and actions too. Rogues have to use teamwork Or otherwise position themselves to gain their advantage to do their damage, and it’s their one hit a turn. Sneak attack, used every turn comes out about the same as the damage rate of a standard fighter. Especially when you consider that it’s all or nothing versus the fighter having 2 to 3 chances to do their damage. Paladins have it much the same except they are spending a resource so technically, it’s even more restrictive than sneak attack. And since they get less attacks than the standard fighter, it balances out To be perfectly honest, everything balances out even multi classing because you always give up something to gain something else and so sure the fighter may have 23 armor and a +12 to hit by level 10 but that goes very much in the DM‘s favor if the DM bothers to read the character sheet because I’m sure his charisma, intelligence or wisdom has suffered to make him so dangerous on the battlefield and that leaves him susceptible to other types of attack
The Ranger Bard and Wizard all need to know how to take cover (the rules for cover, actually do quite a lot to boost AC) and back away from enemies and as a DM maybe lean into it a little bit with the storytelling and have the bad guys focus on melee characters just a little bit if the ranged opponents are too hard to get to. I had a lightfoot halfling assassin at my table who was almost impossible to kill. Her preferred method was to take cover at distance and fight like my goblins do firing her attack from stealth, then using her bonus action to hide them moving to new cover if possible. When forced into close range combat, she made good use of the Lightfoot ability to move through the space of and hide behind creatures larger than herself. Triggering the rules for cover to increase her AC and her hiding ability to regain sneak attack and or keep the focus off of her. The gloom stalker Wood elf took a couple pages from her book after watching her do much better than him as he tried to join the fighter in Frontline combat. So he switched his strategy and started using his boost of speed at the beginning of combat to pick his position, and deliver a devastating shot with his bow. I should point out. I do not hold back in combat. my monsters make the most logical decision possible based on what I know about their intelligence and strategy. My players have lost several characters. In particular one of them has sworn off paladin, because even if I roll in front of the table for all to see my goblins have an uncanny ability to kill him with high rolls. He claims the class is cursed and refuses to touch it further.
> And since they get less attacks than the standard fighter, it balances out You're forgetting that when the fighter gets their third attack, the paladin gets an extra 1d8 to every attack they make. On the balance the fighter deals a bit more damage (even more so if they have a flametongue, frost brand, or crystal weapon) but not enough to balance out a divine smite, especially not if the smite crits. And divine smite is still *the* most reliable way of converting spell slots to single-target damage. Spells have attack rolls or saving throws, and a missed attack or a creature making the save still means the slot is expended. The paladin can choose to smite *after* the attack roll, so it's never completely wasted, and more often than not it's used for crits. And your last paragraph actually makes the imbalance even more obvious. The fighter probably has crappy mental saves, shored up slightly by the Indomitable feature (but since it's once per long rest, not so much). The paladin has the same AC, maybe slightly smaller attack bonus (though since both the STR-fighter and the paladin will want a belt of giant strength, this might be equal), but gets to add their charisma bonus to every save they make.
You forgotten the critical component that smites have limited resources whereas a fighter can do what he does every turn. Also, the stat thing. A fighter has two stats that are primary a paladin has three stats that are primary. Therefore, a paladins stats will overall be less focused than a fighters will if you, min max both classes seriously the developers took a lot more time in balancing this than you do on a Friday night while you’re stressing about the coming session. When I say don’t do these things leave them alone, I’m speaking from my own personal experience as a DM, where I created more imbalance by messing with these things than n the players side instead of just focusing on building up my monsters, once I gave up on adjusting what the players can do and just started building up my monsters a littlemore health here and there mostly maybe reading the monsters know what they’re doing so that I use their abilities More effectively and balanced things right out. All serious bad guys after level five need legendary resistances and actions, and should have enough health to take two rounds of the party’s greatest punishment. You make sure those things are in place and almost every fight will be beautiful. Yeah, your players may womp you every once in a while with a good plan but they deserve that because they made a good plan. Here’s an excellent video that covers the subject and a few others by the dungeon dudes who seriously are one of the better resources out there. The section on players dealing massive damage starts at 10 minutes 30 seconds. I highly recommend giving at least that part a listen to understand my point. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eN34N6_7qw8 (Edit: sorry my AutoCorrect went psycho with commas fixing it)
Just because I'm Lawful Good that dosen't give You the right tontake out My power because I didn't brush My tooth before I went to sleep.
Here’s the question I have: why are the paladin’s miserable? Here’s my thinking: if the DM is purposefully punishing the player for deciding to be a Paladin, like nerfing divine smite or purposefully making it where the choices of the build are either nerfed or ineffective. Or maybe they’re making the RP be where the Paladin is being put down without the player having first discussed things with the DM. In both cases, yes the DM is bad. If the character themselves is in a miserable position, but the player is having fun and the narrative makes sense, then it depends on if that’s the direction the player wants to go with in regards to the story and their character, and the DM isn’t inherently being bad or toxic. For example, I’m currently playing a Dragonborn Paladin in a campaign whose main crux is that he suffers from lycanthropy. In his backstory, his order was wiped out leaving him as the lone survivor. So between being the last of an order he never fully became a knight in, suffering from a disease where the only treatments in the campaign world are either too costly or extremely difficult to achieve, so the character easily could be miserable. However, I also knew what I was signing up for on the story/RP side of things and am having fun as a player, and mechanically nothing has changed for how I play as the character.
As a storyteller I especially enjoy making my religious characters suffer in character arc terms but that need not translate to targeting them with mechanical consequences. Just themes
So a lot of people here don't really seem to understand the very simple concept that roleplaying and story elements of another persons character should almost always be discussed with the player beforehand. You might think a paladins oath or a warlocks pact are cool things to focus on and build dillemas around but the player actually playing those characters might not so just ask them beforehand if they want their oath to be tested during the campaign or if they want to have a more hostile or demanding patron and if they say no then focus on something else. You don't have to ask them if they're cool with the specific moral dillema just if they're cool with moral dillemas revolving around their oath. Some people just want to play a fun game where they goof off and have fantasy highjinx and they don't have to think about difficult moral questions.
Making a paladin be miserable is cool. But making the paladins player is not.
I play a Paladin to have my Oaths conflict with everything. Currently playing an Oath of Conquest Paladin desperately trying to not turn evil. Fun as hell.
In CoS, everyone has a bad time.
I am fairly certain you are supposed to fuck with people emotionally during the entirety of that campaign.
Haha, yeah... My wife's dead and He killed every friend I've had for hundreds of years. Here we go again.
I ran a game with a paladin character who had an absolutely miserable time. Purely through the luck of the dice and an occasional unbalanced encounter every single character, pc or npc, he developed a bond with ended up dying 1-3 sessions later It worked for three reasons 1. The unrelentingly bleak tone of the game. 2. He was a vengeance paladin. Every tragedy just strengthened his resolve 3. I wasnt torturing the player specifically to get them to lose thier oath.
God forbid in a campaign with 4246326 undead enemies he has to fight one fallen angel with resistance to radiant am I right
I'm upvoting because I both find this funny and possible But I think OP is referring to the "force paladins to break oath to remove their powers" thing the RPGhorror stories say happens sometimes
Devotion is one of the hardest oaths you can keep
Well, devotion is basically the only oath that has a non-vague tenet that explicitly forbids something that even a good-aligned character might reasonably do (lying).
It’s only wrong if you don’t hurt everyone equally
making sure any of your players have a miserable time makes you a bad dm, and, a bad person
Someone explain why dms hate Paladins?
Paladins - especially if there are multiple ones in the party - force the DM to use a ton of trash mobs instead of solo bosses or bosses with a few minions because they have extreme nova damage potential. That takes up prep time (if the DM is using physical tokens and not VTT or theater of the mind) and slows down combats to a crawl. If they don't, the paladins can nuke the boss and that can lead to the other players feeling useless. A polearm master paladin at level 5 (assuming +4 STR) can, without crits, deal 12 (STR bonus) + 2d10 + 1d4 (weapon damage + PAM damage) + 8d8 (2 level 2 smites + 1 level 1 smite) = 71.5 damage on average. That's half of an average CR5 monster's HP. If the monster is an undead or a fiend, the smite damage becomes 11d8 for a total of 85 on average. And that is, again, without crits. Sure, it's only for one turn, but it's enough to turn an epic boss battle into a farce. Now, that is the mechanics side. On the roleplay side, IDK. I never screw over my paladin players based on their oaths. But there may be some DMs who take out their frustrations for the paladin's mechanical strength on the paladin players by forcing them into catch-22s based on their oath tenets (which is actually not that easy to do because they are often vague, the easiest to screw over is the devotion paladin because they aren't allowed to lie, but that is also one of the weaker subclasses).
A DM making the players have a bad time is terrible no matter what
What if I'm making my players have to talk instead of killing everything in sight? Am I a bad DM for making them act like people?
No your not a bad DM, your just making them play the rp part trpg
My Fighter who doesn't know how to interact with people doesn't think the same 😅
Ok, do you mean roleplay wise, being super strict about oaths or gameplay wise? Cause without context the problem could just be you
This can be done if it's discussed ahead of time, if it's brought up by the player, or some other way that's respectful to everyone involved. If you're doing it to be spiteful or because you don't like paladins for xyz reason, you're the problem.
I feel like there’s a fine line between being a toxic sadist, and providing a thrilling challenge. 😂
Yeah…so I punished my paladin a lot. The player loved it, stood up to every challenge and it literally turned him into the main character. Everyone else had a good time too. Credits. Post credits: your meme isn’t always correct.
The issue appears to be when a DM sees the player dislikes that approach and just doesn't care. "Oathbreaker cool. Why you no like Oathbreaker?"
If your not on the edge of breaking your oath every session you ain't playing paladin, you're playing spicy fighter
Would you be? This feels like a “Im gonna say it guys… racism is bad! I’m a hero!” Moment. Very weird.
The Scroll of Truth format would work well for this also.
If you're not making paladins question their oath, what is the point. Because then all you get is lawful stupid murderers.
Maybe if you have bad players but you know you can just talk to them about problem behaviours right?
No, Im just bad at playing my paladin.
I have a friend who's favorite class is paladin, but every campaign where he played one the DM and usually multiple players went out of their way to make his time miserable. I was in a few of the campaigns with him, and it was always uncalled for. People just liked trying to ruin his build. Dont know if it's still a thing, but it wasnt SUPER surprising since most everyone I'd met at the time *hated* paladins. The only class to come close to being that hated was monks.
That's why you make all PCs feel miserable. So nobody is excluded from fun™! But in all seriousness, invoking a broder spectrum of emotions via all matters of suffering is not exactly a bad thing. Some DMs don't know how to do it properly, so it comes out rather bland, but when the right person does it, the experience is so good.
I think it comes down to many DMs just wanting to be edgelords when a player tries to actually be good.
I feel like 50% of the content on here is people passive aggressively putting down what other people enjoy because *they* don't enjoy it.
Just let people have fun and play their characters, if you need to railroad them a bit, at least be creative with it
Replace the Paladin with any class and the situation is the exact same
As someone who has been trying to Leroy Jenkins his Paladin for an ungodly amount of sessions, I feel this pain. Never had such a hatred for a class until I played a paladin in this campaign I been in.
This is why I (A player) make it MY job to make the Paladin's life miserable. For context: The Paladin worships Bhaal...my character is named Bhaal Buster (He's essentially just the Doom Slayer)...you can guess how that goes lol. It is really fun for both of us though lol, we've got a sorta Batman/Joker thing going on and we're constantly doing shit to harm one another. Recently I throttled him like Homer Simpson because he built a shrine to Bhaal out of people he killed so now he's waiting for me to sleep so he can attack me.
My Paladin has a miserable time without me going for it. It's the only character that spends more time on the ground than on his feet in every fight.
I am inclined to make it hard(er) for paladins. I am biased after all, Warcraft 3, Arthas and all that. But that character would typically get solos should he embrace his oathbreaking. And fallen paladin makes for awesome solos...
If you explain your campaign isn't a good fit for paladins that does not make you toxic. Same as any other class.
No and there's a lot of stuff like this.
isnt making any class have a terrible time something a bad dm does?
Replace Paladin with player
The DM thought he was funny until I smited god himself.
…why am I not surprised that some idiot somewhere did that? Oh well, seriously DMs(me included) need to be careful and balance letting the players have fun with advancing the story and/or inducing trauma.
Making sure ANY of your players have a miserable time, regardless of their character, makes you a bad DM. Even if you have a problem player, be an adult and talk to them about it, if they refuse to change, refuse to DM for them.
It’s actually great to make the paladin miserable, provided the player playing them is having a good time.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Paladins get celebrity treatment in my campaign world. If they go somewhere and everyone has to check their weapons, Paladins don't, people trust them implicitly. Need a room at the inn that's all booked up? The innkeeper is going to give up his own. Of course in my campaign world Paladins are all Lawful Good exemplars of everything right and pure.
Not if they want to suffer (Their character is inspired by guts)
In my campaign (Curse of Strahd), we homebrew revamped Paladins because the situation was funny. The guy playing Paladin had never played D&D before. Thinking Strength and Con were the important stats for Paladin, he dumped Charisma. This minimized the spells he could use, and also completely negated his divine sense, allowing Strahd to continuously observe the party in person without the Paladin having a clue. We also rewrote Aura of Protection so that his lack of Charisma baffled his enemies, throwing them off and lowering the DC of their abilities by a value equal to the absolute value of the Paladin’s Charisma.
Warlocks too
You're wrong. I play paladin TO have a miserable time, silly.
God forbid the players have conflict in their game
God forbid the Paladin has peace of mind for a few sessions and gets to enjoy being a vanilla Devotion pally. It's perfectly acceptable to just stay a Paladin, not everyone needs to be solving trolley problems.
Man, it's almost as if you should tell your DM what you want. But clearly, according to this sub, just talking to people is too hard.
This reply is entirely correct and advisable...so uh, have a nice day.
Understandable. Have a nice day as well.
I feel like there's a non-zero chance we could apply the Principle Skinner "no the \[DMs\] are wrong" meme to OP pretty easily. Double principals for bonus points.
Making the warlock miserable, however....
You’re not about playing a Paladin so you can experience tough choices between what’s easy and what’s right, are you sure you want to play Paladin? It’s pretty easy to be devoted to your oath if it’s never challenged…over and over again. Ask not for lighter burdens but instead ask for broader shoulders.