The Paladin

 


When I think of the paladin in 1E AD&D, I think of the Knights Templar.  Paladins are holy warriors.  It is difficult to be a paladin, difficult to play one properly, difficult to DM one in a campaign, but they have some interesting potential!

First, it's difficult to become a paladin.  Player characters must be human.  There are also a lot of minimum ability scores; strength of at least 12, intelligence of at least 9, wisdom of at least 13, constitution of at least 9, and a charisma of at least 17.  They also have to be of lawful good alignment.  In fact, if they perform an act that is chaotic they have to find a lawful good priest, confess, and perform penance!

So why is the paladin difficult to play?  First, paladin's only have lawful good henchmen and will only associate with players of good alignment.    Paladins will only join a party of non-evil neutrals on a single adventure basis and then only if it furthers the cause of lawful good.  This means, for example, they won't regularly adventure with a druid!  Paladins must tithe 10% of their income to a lawful good religious institution (not a player character).  Paladins can only retain enough wealth to maintain themselves modestly, pay henchmen/retainers/servants, and build/maintain a fortress.  The rest has to be given away.  Finally, they are limited in how many magic items they can have: 1 suit of armor, 1 shield, 4 weapons, and up to 4 other magic items.

Why is the paladin difficult to DM?  First, the DM has to enforce the things listed above.  It would make sense for a paladin to have a religious code to follow and this would need to be developed, spelled out, and enforced.  There would need to be consequences for not living up to the restrictions or code and the DM will need to develop these.  For example, your consequence for performing a chaotic act is to be restricted to wooden weapons, you must wear a hair shirt and no armor, etc.  Have fun with it!  If the paladin is part of a religious order then there should be duties and quests on behalf of that order and this could create conflict with the rest of the party.  Finally, this class always strikes me as kind of an annoying "holier than thou" kind of class, but it would be fun to have an NPC like that...

With all this in mind, why would anyone want to be a paladin?  First, it's a fighter subclass.  This means it fights and saves on the fighter table.  There are no weapon restrictions.  It gets a 10-sided hit die.  It has several special abilities including detecting evil at 60', +2 on all saves, immunity to disease, can lay hands (i.e. heal) 2hp/level once a day, cure disease once per week for every five levels of experience, continual emanation of protection from evil at 1" radius.  If all that isn't enough, at third level paladins can turn undead as if they were a cleric two levels lower, at fourth level a paladin can call for a special horse, a paladin can use a holy sword to dispel magic, and from 9th through 20th level they gain clerical spells (up to 4th level spells).

There are cautions about playing a paladin and using it in a campaign, but it is a pretty powerful class if the restrictions are observed!

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