Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 103 - Class Series - Paladin and Ranger

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

This week we talk about two specialized martial characters:  the Paladin and Ranger.  These are not dumb fighters or mindless barbarians.  These characters have options when it comes to fighting and can really give you lots of options when it comes to running a character...with some caveats of course.

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. In previous editions, Paladins were forced to be lawful good with very strict tenets they had to live by. It balanced out their powers a little bit. 5e has done a better job of balancing Paladins, but they're still kind of overpowered. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 103 of the Taking20 podcast. This week, continuing the class series all about paladins and rangers. This week's sponsor, this episode is being brought to you by Miracle Podcasts. Remember, if this is a good episode, it's a miracle.

Paladins and rangers. Rangers and paladins. Prangers? Rapalitans? Oh god no, that's worse. Today we'll be talking about two martial classes that give players much more flexibility when it comes to combat. Fighters? Bah! Flashy fancy pants with their myriad of combat styles and weapons and armor choices. Who needs them? Barbarians? Duh! styles and weapons and armor choices, who needs them? Barbarians? Duh. They think the axe is the solution to every problem, from a dragon to a locked door to being questioned by a guard to athlete's foot. Today, we're going to be talking about the thinking person's combatants, the holy paladin and the survivalist ranger class. Just like one day per week, let's start in church. I love the Pathfinder description of paladins. Through a select, worthy few shines the power of the divine.

Called paladins, these noble souls dedicate their swords and lives to the battle against evil. Knights, crusaders, and lawbringers, paladins seek not just to spread divine justice, but to embody the teachings of the virtuous deities they serve. To quote one of my favorite characters of the last 20 years, Shepard Book from Serenity and Firefly, It doesn't matter what you believe, just believe. And paladins are all about belief. They believe hard. Viagra wishes it could make you believe this hard. Paladins are holy warriors that carry

the light of their deity in the midst of the chaos of battle. They can serve as rallying points for the entire party, steal the party's resolve and lead the way, pushing devils and demons and undead back through the strength of their arms and the resilience of their beliefs. In Dungeons & Dragons all the way up through 5th edition, paladins had to be lawful good. Now that restriction has been lifted, but you still have to have a code that you live up to. This is all subject to DM permission, but your code could be more chaotic good, freedom above all, laws are stupid, and so are devils. And if you take a sacred quest to kill the entire Duke Blue Devil basketball team,

so be it. Which as a University of Kentucky fan, I'm fine with that. No, bad Jeremy, bad. The current players have nothing to do with Christian Leitner, who can eat a giant bag of dicks. Look, I'm not saying I hate Duke,

but I've told my son that if he goes there, he's disowned. Which would be a damn shame, because I love him, but hey, my hatred of Duke was here first. Where the hell did I leave off? Oh yeah, in previous editions, Paladins were forced to be lawful good, with very strict tenets they had to live by. It balanced out their powers a little bit. 5e has done a better job of balancing Paladins, but they're still kind of overpowered. More on that in a moment. Paladins, formerly champions of all that is good and right in the world, are now champions of something they believe in. Just, it doesn't have the same punch as it once did. So there's

three really good party roles that paladins can fill. They can be a tank, and they may be the best tank in RPGs, period. They can heal themselves, they have great hit points, they have great attack bonuses, they have the best saving throws in the game, they can wear heavy armor, and they're generally extremely durable. They're at home in the vanguard of the party, drawing all the baddies to them to take all of their attacks. Should a few hits actually get through, no problem. Lay on hands and bam, we're back up to full hit points. Paladins also make great strikers or damage per round. Paladins can wield big, heavy, damaging weapons. So they can go sword and board,

which means wielding a sword and a shield. They can go gigantic two-handed weapons to do more damage, so they have a ton of weapon and kit options, if you will. Paladins can also be the social encounter leader or the face of the party. Paladins tend to have a high charisma, and they can be the negotiators, diplomacizers, intimidators, and they're great at interacting with those pesky NPCs who want to be all talky-talky, not all stabby-stabby. So what are some role-playing hooks for your paladin? So there's why does your paladin paladin? Some believe that the best way to prove the strength of their god is with the strength of your arm.

Every fight you survive just proves how you worship the A number one bestest god in the pantheon. If they weren't the best, you'd be dead by now, right? Some become paladins because they want to protect the weak. This would fit very, very well with the most paladin belief systems. You fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, and doing so shows the benefit of worshiping your god. You could be a formerly elite soldier who found religion. You could be royalty who's looking to prove themselves. In general, you could be trying to prove yourself to a loved one, a family member, someone who

doubted you in the past. Now, when you're role-playing paladins, I want you to be very careful about how you role-play them. Even if they don't have to be lawful good anymore, paladins still have somewhat of a rigid moral code. More than one player has used this rigid moral code to try to enforce their version of fun on the rest of the party. You can't take that money to look the other way. That would be wrong. She surrendered. Killing her would be wrong. The bandit had a family. We shouldn't steal from the body. We should return his stuff to the widow. Stealing is wrong. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is all, go fornicate yourself, you holy pain in the butt.

This is how we make money. My brother-in-law, to give credit where credit is due, calls paladins that roleplay this way being lawful stupid or stupid annoying alignment. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about good role-playing, but make sure that your fun meshes with all the other players' fun as well. It's not your job to be the party's moral police, paladin or no. So what backgrounds could you pick that follow the traditional tropes of being a paladin? Where did you come from and where are you willing to fight and possibly die for your god?

Were you born and raised in the church? Were you trained in the military and became saved and found religion in some way? Were you chosen by the gods in some secret ceremony or maybe in the quiet dark still of the night to wield their power for them? Any one of these fits perfectly with the paladin. But you can always go against trope. You can be the reluctant warrior. You don't want to fight. You may even despise fighting, but it's just unfortunate that you're so damned, pardon

the term, good at it. You could be conflicted about your ability to kill others and you're constantly praying for absolution. Maybe you're a noble. You could be the fourth daughter and you stand to inherit nothing from your parents, so you dedicate your life to the church. A freed slave. You've seen what slavery does to people and you've made it your life's mission

to make sure no one else has to go through what you did. You could be a former gladiator who has found religion as a comfort. You could be a pissed off former pacifist. You didn't see the church doing enough, so you took up a sword and you began crusading for your faith. So now let's get system-specific. In 5th edition, paladins are a very strong class. Good saves and extra attack, good customization options, divine smite healing. One of the best and most versatile fighting classes in the game.

There's a reason if you go out and search on the internet, you'll find a bunch of articles that ask something like, are 5th edition paladins overpowered? You don't see articles like that for druids or rangers, more on that in a moment. Paladins aren't as punished for breaking their oaths as they were in previous versions. Remember, that was one of the ways they kept paladins in check in earlier versions. All the way through 3.5 ways they kept paladins in check in earlier versions. All the way through 3.5e, if you broke your oath as a paladin, you had to atone per the spell, or you became a much weaker ex-paladin of some sort. You had to tithe.

You had to help the downtrodden. You could never commit a lie, or back down from a fight, or whatever your god or goddess would demand, or you'd lose a lot of your abilities, at least for a time. But now? Accidental vow break? No biggie. Mistakes happen. Seek absolution, try to make it right, maybe go on a quest, all is forgiven. Intentional vow break? Now it's up to the DM. Previously, this was an automatic loss of all of your powers, and life really started to suck under the old rules. But now the DM can decide how dramatically this affects you. I'm not in a 5e campaign right now,

but the next one I'm in, I want to play a fucking paladin. Characters that can kick ass and then be nice and keep you from dying so you can face man and divine justice. That sounds like it'd be fun to play. The extra attack is huge and it really lets you pile on attacks against foes. Oh, almost forgot, the Aura of Protection effect. 5th edition paladins starting at 6th level grant their Charisma bonus to saving throws to every ally within 30 feet. Holy crap. As far as races go, Mountain Dwarf would be great, Goliath would be too, Eladrin Elf, Half Elf, Half Orc, Tabaxi if you want to build around finesse fighting, Warforged, all great choices for a paladin. For my money though, if I'm going to run the strongest paladin I can build,

I'd love to run a 1T Pureblood. Magic Resistance gives you advantage on saving throws. When you combine that with your good saving throws anyway, and you're a spellcaster's nightmare. The Dark Vision and Poison Immunity? Just icing on the cake. Second place would probably be an Azimar Paladin. Dark Vision, Damage Resistance, all around tough to kill,

maybe Flight for a short time. Somebody's gonna die, and my goddess will smile at me while it happens. If you're building a 5e paladin, talk about ability scores. You can run your paladin as a dex-based or strength-based, and either one's viable. You'll want one of those stats to be pretty high. Also, you'll want a pretty good constitution and charisma as well. Your ability scores may not be as high as others, but you'll have to dump stat something like Intelligence or Wisdom, or you'll have to take something that's just pretty good across the board. 5e paladins

have to select an oath, and there's a bunch of different choices. The Oath of Conquest is a great min-max option. It gives you fear effects in an area when you channel Divinity. Yes, please. The Oath of Redemption looks amazing if you're playing a low-combat paladin like someone who's the face of a party. You can rebuke the violent and damage creatures that damage your friends. Plus five to persuasion checks. That sounds fantastic. An Oath of the Crown with the Champion Challenge would be great for tanks. It keeps the attackers on you and off of your squishy little friends. Finally, the Oath of Vengeance with a Reach weapon would be lethal.

Advantage on attacks, move up to half speed on an attack of opportunity. It sounds like a fun combination with Reach. As far as backgrounds go, Faction Agent really looks like the strongest choice here. It's interesting because your charisma is already good. This gives you Deception or Intimidation on top of your existing skills. Now, when it comes to 1st edition Pathfinder Paladins, they still have to be Lawful Good with the exception of the Grey Paladin archetype. That allows you to also

either be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good alignment. Grey Paladins gain some moral flexibility at the cost of some of their powers, but they're just as strong as a 5th edition Paladin all in all. It's harder to build around Dexterity as a Pathfinder Paladin and Finesse-type attacks, so you can drop those scores relative to 5e. But you get full base attack bonus, heavy armor, the best saving throws in the game, Lay on Hands to heal, Divine Grace, and an all-time favorite, Smite Evil. Smite Evil makes you more effective against evil foes. Add your Charisma bonus to attack rolls against evil foes that you designate, and add your class level to damage against those same foes.

Oh, and you double that damage bonus on the first attack against evil outsiders like demons, devils, evil dragons, and undead every freaking round. You get divine bond with either a weapon or a mount. Come freaking get some, you undead bitches. I'm a paladin and holier than Swiss cheese. What? No, wait, hang on. That sounds bad. You're gonna be holier than Swiss cheese. There we go. That's how you talk shit. Let's talk races. Lots of good options here. Humans, half-orcs, half-elves, all great. But if you want to play something interesting, a gnome paladin wouldn't be bad. Get yourself a divine mount and lance those demons like boils on the world that they are. For ability scores, strength, constitution, and charisma are your friends. Dump wisdom and possibly intelligence as well. When picking traits in first edition,

grab magical knack. Paladins are half-level casters, and plus 2 to your caster level is huge. The Seeker trait is good, plus 1 to Perception checks is amazing. And then the Omen trait gives you Intimidate as a class skill. For feats, do you want to be a special attack paladin that's great at trip, overrun, reposition, or some other similar attack? Grab Adept Champion feat and pick up a Guise Arm to fight with. You'll be putting more people on their back than the Bard does in his most charismatic knights. Other than that, grab some feats that make you better at combat, like Power Attack, Tree of Feats, Weapon Focus, that kind of thing. Finally, as a first edition paladin,

you'll have to select a Mercy. Pathfinder Paladins can heal conditions that normally require a Cleric. Shaken, scared, diseased, blind, sickened. There's a ton of options here, and it's hard to go wrong. When it comes to Pathfinder 2nd Edition, Paladins are a subset of the Champion class, and obviously we don't have time to go over all the aspects of the Champion class. But the same recommendations as 1st Edition Pathfinder apply to 2nd edition, but dexterity builds are much more viable in 2e. You also have a lot more ancestries available to you, like catfolk, goblin, and orc, which would all make really good paladins. I would recommend paladins for players who, well, let's face it, a lot of us play Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons to be the big

damn hero. We enjoy the power fantasy of being able to help those who need it, being the knight charging over the hill to slay the evil attacking creatures. Being a paladin is the ultimate representation of that fantasy. If you want to play a character who believes so hard that they can manifest justice and divine power on the battlefield, play a paladin. Also, Duke sucks. And yes, that's a cause I would become a paladin for. Now, on to the ranger. Rangers are trackers, bounty hunters, rugged survivalists who specialize in certain weapons and are at home in the forest, or desert, or tundra, or swamp, or taiga,

or whatever other terrain they spend lots of time in. They're a mix of fighter, Druid, and Rogue, and they can be a powerful class to play at low levels. At some point, though, they will be overpowered by other classes, especially if those other classes are adept at min-maxing for success. I'm going to be perfectly honest. I'm not a huge fan of the Ranger class. It just comes with a number of built-in problems. One problem you can expect when playing a Ranger is that they are very specialized. This is true going all the way back to the introduction of the class back in Advanced

Dungeons & Dragons as a subclass of a fighter. You pick a terrain and you get a bonus to skills and attacks in that terrain. Great. You pick a favored enemy and you get a bonus to skills and attacks in that terrain. Great. You pick a favored enemy, and you get a bonus to attacks and damage when fighting that enemy. Great. But what if you're not in that terrain, and not fighting that enemy? You're picking something at level 1 that may never pay off well. Ranger skills are fantastic in the right situations, certain locations,

and fighting against certain monsters. But outside of that, they're just weaker versions of fighters. Effectively, unless you're playing a campaign called, oh, I don't know, Giant Slayer, or a campaign called Let's Kick the Shit Out of Vampires, I'm sorry, I misread that, Curse of Strahd, you have to make an educated guess as to what kinds of enemies you'll be fighting and where. And if you pick wrong, your character is going to struggle.

To combat this, every time one of my players has told me they want to play a ranger, I've given them a nudge in the right direction for favorite enemy and terrain to pick. For example, in a recent campaign that I just finished up, it was mostly going to take place in snowy areas against certain types of enemies. So I clued the ranger player in, this is what you're going to want to pick. That made them more viable throughout the adventure or campaign and they never felt underpowered. As far as party roles go, rangers are great strikers. This is a ranger's natural role within a party. They excel at two-weapon fighting or archery and could put a lot of

attacks on a target. But they can also be built around being scouts. Especially in their favored terrain, if they're built around stealth, they are great trackers, great scouts, great hunters. If you carefully build them, they can also be the charismatic face of the party, but they are second tier of that at best. So let's get into role playing hooks. Why are you a ranger? Did you grow up in the wilderness and you feel more at home there than you do in the city? Were you a tracker helping hunters find game to bring back food for your group, family, city, what have you? Did you turn your back on your responsibilities of family or job and strike out on your own? You could be a

guide and escort people through the wilderness to distant cities. Or maybe you can hunt rare creatures and bring their carcasses back to sell for coin. There are lots of backgrounds that can follow these tropes. You're a former criminal or an escape criminal. You're a hermit. You're a former soldier or scout or special forces member and you're at home by yourself in the wilderness.

Maybe you're an urchin or wild child. Your parents were slain or ran away or were kidnapped and you were forced to raise yourself in the wild. But you can always go against trope. You could be the folk hero. She shows up when we need her to save the village from some threat and then she fades into the wilderness once again. You could be a noble like you're a trophy hunter who's always looking for the next prey to display in your lodge. Or maybe you came from a religious background. You feel closer to the divine hearing the wind blow through the trees than you ever did in any abbey or monastery. So let's get system-specific. The 5th edition Ranger has introduced more archetypes to make

them more viable and more fun, but it's still a weak class overall. Swarm Keeper from Tasha's looks interesting, as does Gloomstalker from Xanathar's. You can build your Ranger around strength, dexterity, or wisdom, take your pick. Rangers get to pick a fighting style as a class feature. It's not as versatile as the choices given to the fighter, but there are some good choices in there. The new druidic warrior fighting style looks interesting being built around wisdom, and it lets you play like an underpowered druid, but with more weapon choices. Archery and two-weapon fighting are probably the two best choices that you could make, but defense and dueling are also good. The one that I think it would be interesting,

if not powerful to play, would be the thrown weapon fighting style. Load up on hand axes and gradually disarm yourself as the fight goes. Let's jump over to races. Bugbear would be a powerful race choice when it comes to playing a ranger. You gain stealth proficiency and a bonus to dexterity. Kobold also would be really good. Personally, I love halfling rangers. Bonus to dexterity and stealth checks make them a great choice. They are small, so you lose some damage output and some speed, but they're still a pretty good choice. And as usual, humans, half-elves, and half-orcs are great choices as well. Surprisingly though, dwarves could make a

good ranger, especially with underground as your favorite terrain. The only one I would avoid like the plague would be gnomes. They just don't synergize well with a ranger at all. And when it comes to ability scores, strength or dex, one of those two should be pretty high, and then wisdom being next, depending on how you're building your character. Constitution should probably be your next highest score. And depending on your build, obviously you can dump stat the one that you're not needing. If you need strength, you can dump dexterity, and if you need dexterity, you can dump strength. Grab you a longbow or a couple of short swords and go to work against your chosen enemy type. When it comes to Pathfinder First Edition, whereas 5e's rangers are built around archetypes,

Pathfinder builds the ranger around combat styles. Rangers gain Evasion and Improved Evasion, which is a slice of fried gold for any character. For abilities, keep your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution high. If you're an Archer Ranger, Dexterity is more important. If you're a Melee Ranger, bump up your Strength. Consider dumping Charisma if you dump anything. Similar to the Paladin though, take the Magical Knack trait. It bumps your effective caster level by two when later on you start gaining spells. For 2nd edition Pathfinder, they changed a lot about the Ranger from 1st edition. Spell casting is gone.

Favored enemies and favored terrain are now both optional. You don't have to take those, and you can specialize your Ranger differently. You're generally a good martial character, definitely still good with a bow or two-weapon fighting, but you don't have the heavy armor proficiency and that's going to hurt your survivability. Your third attack penalty, by the way, is a minuscule minus four against your hunted prey, which is much better than the minus eight or minus ten that other characters take on that attack. It means you can really go hog on the attacks each round and take foes down quicker. When it comes to ancestries, it's hard to go wrong.

I love Humans and Dwarves as Rangers, but half anything, Catfolk, Gnomes, they're all very viable. I'd recommend Rangers for players who can't decide whether you want to play a Fighter or Rogue, if you want to be the master of a certain type of terrain like Forest or Cold or Underground or Desert, or if you want to be a ranged weapon or two-weapon fighter extraordinaire, especially at lower levels, ranger's your choice. However, if you're in a higher level campaign, I still recommend looking at another class. Holy shit, did I go long. Today we talked about two good martial classes that let you do more than stand toe-to-toe and swing your weapon. The Paladin is maybe the most durable of classes

with good attacks, great saves, and the ability to heal themselves, smite, oaths, that type of thing. Rangers are situationally good, allowing your character to be a real thorn in the side of certain creatures and in certain areas. Choose them if you know there isn't going to be a huge variety in terrain or monsters.

Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please consider donating at ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast. Every dollar donated goes back to the podcast in some way and helps me keep it running. It does cost money to host and pay for my own domain and that kind of thing.

So I would appreciate any money that you could give. Tune in next week when we'll talk about a user-submitted topic, the three-bulleted NPC and backstory. Once again, I want to thank our sponsor, Miracle Podcasts. When you visit our office, please feel free to use our guest Wi-Fi. Just look for The Promised Land on your mobile device. This has been Episode 103, The Class Series.

This time I'm with the Paladin and Ranger. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2021. References to game system content are copyright of their respective publishers.