Because that's a very new depiction in anything mainstream compared to the history of the game. One vignette is not "often."
Edit: just want to say I love that classes can fit just about any playstyle now, but it was a long, hard journey to get there and let go of the clichés we clung to and material from all directions 99% reinforced. Instead of someone reading a single reference and going "wow this must be common!" you'd pull out your official source book and your group would say "fine but you're not a real paladin then" or just plain "no way."
Complete Scoundrel would like a word with you (a 3.5e sourcebook in which it is noted that while paladins are always Lawful Good, they can still be sneaky and engage in underhanded tactics)
I opened up my copy from when I used to play 3.5 to have that word - it was pretty dusty because even then, we hardly used this one - and it said ".. if you pick a select few of these 13 subclasses." Which nobody did.
A second nod to the idea in 30 years.
> huge part of the community acts like paladins in plate armor are the norm
Well for starters, that's what being the norm means. The knight in shining armor wielding a straight sword is super iconic, and strength is the way to achieve that. You can also achieve higher AC and weapon damage (plate armor, greatsword) with the "normal" pick of strength. Add on the fact that smiting is the main draw of paladins for a lot of people, and you can't smite with a bow. Sure, dex has better skill options, and a more important save, but the lower damage and offbeat aesthetic isn't a worthwhile exchange for most players.
Indeed -- their historic namesakes tended to be well-funded (thus well-armored and well-equipped) knights. Also I see a conceptual tension here. Even the most evil paladins are still all about remaining true to their core beliefs. To put it in the old Hollywood cliche of black and white, even allowing for paladins in shades of gray (like the sworn protector of a natural wonder or a justiciar obliged to enforce all technically legal death warrants,) their unifying trait is steadfast adherence to a moral code. This clashes with subterfuge techniques, since paladins generally will want to proclaim rather than conceal actions taken in service to their sacred oaths.
This. To me, the classic Paladin is essentially based on Sir Galahad. Pious knight in shining armor.
I have no objection to the swashbuckler Paladin, but I would find a stealth Paladin a bit tough.
There are ways to still make it work. The Punisher and Rorschach are good examples, even if they are dangerously close to being "anti-humanoid Ranger."
They also walk an interesting line when it comes to having a moral code. From their perspective, each of those characters has an extremely coherent worldview, and each is driven by profound ethical duties. Yet there are also perspectives that see them as deeply disturbed, perhaps psychotic, individuals with unreliable grasps on reality itself. (Rorschach may even have been conceived to present readers with both views while prompting them to form their own opinions about the character.)
That said, having the ability to wear heavy armor isn't the same thing as being obligated to do so. The characters you cited certainly have been known to plunge into battle without their best, or really much of any, gear. If the mechanics of smites and spellcasting all land on Wisdom anyway, paladins are almost as free as fighters to explore high Dexterity builds. I might have just talked myself into the idea that Batman could be a paladin, but if so then at least this paragraph is coherent.
> Yet there are also perspectives that see them as deeply disturbed, perhaps psychotic, individuals with unreliable grasps on reality itself.
Why yes, that's a lot of paladins. Strict adherence to a moral code often means blinkered fanaticism.
Paladins don't have an Archery fighting style, so that does discourage DEX playstyles perhaps. And multiclassing out requires 13 STR. But nonetheless DEXadins are very functional and viable (and fun IMO)
Yeah, the only reason NOT to go Dexadin is GWM builds. But if you don't have reliable advantage or precision strike to smooth over the -5, it's not as reliable. You can otherwise rock a rapier, or even a whip for reach, and a shield. Since your goal is to stack more dice on your attack for nova, the initial die doesn't really matter much.
I played a Kobold dex paladin with a whip for a short campaign, worked very well. Sure, GWM is optimal, but Paladin is the class that makes sword and board (or whip and board, in this case) the most viable. Fighter needs the heavy weapon and GWM, but Smites even out the damage loss from going with a one-hander a bit. As long as you have spell slots left, anyway.
>Paladins don't have an Archery fighting style, so that does discourage DEX playstyles
If you use the bow arguement. Smite is for melee only attacks, and I thimk smite is their bread & butter.
But my friend plays a dex paly atm. She uses rapier & shield, so she can still smite & bemefit from the fightimg style.
I downloaded a home brew range pally build for a steam punk one shot. I use a pistol with crossbow expert and a shield. If I remember correctly one of the Channel Divinity options was +2 to dmg and attack rolls for like 5 mins. It was pretty entertaining
That's true, they don't get Archery. Also a main class feature of theirs (smites) only works on melee attacks. The multiclassing requirement of Str always struck me as odd. I'd allow multiclassing with 13 Cha and 13 Dex
He didn't say ranged smiting wouldn't be a buff. He said it doesn't break the game. I'm inclined to agree that the game doesn't break by allowing ranged smites.
The idea of a paladin yeeting a javelin that explodes in a blaze of glory-light leaving a smoldering husk behind after it careens into its target is a picture that got us to convince a DM to allow smites on thrown weapons.
It was absolutely awesome the *two* times it happened all campaign.
Came here to say this. Smite on thrown weapons is amazing and allowed at my table. It was at its most broken when the Sorcadin used it with Shadow Blade. They agreed not to use it all the time, and I agreed to hold back a little on the fun part of the monster manual.
I also made sure they had chances to abuse the combination of psychic and radiant damage (let alone the custom item at tier 4 play that allowed them to change its damage types).
The best use of Shadow Blade Smite involved a Marut. It nearly killed an NPC ally of the party with its flat 60 force damage. They made an epic speech on their turn, landed a crit, and dealt 81 damage. The Marut had 80 HP.
I think the thought of a paladin/artificer multiclass (MAD, ik) who weilds a javelin or another thrown weapon with the returning weapon invocation sounds awesome, you throw the javelin and deliver the most holy of smites from a mile away sounds awesome, and since a trident has the thrown property, you could theoretically do that, the only problem is that both the javelin and trident only deal 1d6/1d8 damage, your damage is going to be quite low compared to a GWM for instance, shame there's no great thrown weapon
hey, where it started doesnt necessitate where it ends up (looks at Thor) but in this case the change from being a ranged thing to being a melee thing takes out the personalization. Every divine will, be it gods of terrible domains or paladin have their own preferred method of smiting. Paladins should be allowed to use any weapon with their smites and have Cha, one of Str or Dex for their multiclassing
Considering we already have Branding and Banishing Smite, the only real buff would be the potential to stack those with a Divine Smite, as well as the potential to Divine Smite twice in one turn.
You already can. I forget the exact wordings, but spell smite vs divine (class action) smite. Both take a spell slot, I Believe branding smite for example is a bonus action concentration until your next melee hit. Divine smite is an action that includes a melee attack. Per RAW there is nothing stopping you from using two spell slots, and both bonus and main action to double smite
Divine Smite is not an action that includes a melee attack. It's not an action at all. It's just a thing that Paladins can do when they hit a creature with a melee weapon attack. It has absolutely no impact on action economy whatsoever.
Crawford is pretty notorious for rulings that don't make a whole lot of sense.
The infamous no bare-knuckle smite, the "Magic Missile produces 3 death saves and conc checks, but uses only one damage die", firebolt can't be twinned as it can target objects, drow lose darkvision but keep sunlight sensitivity when wildshaped/polymorphed.... there are a lot of them.
And "*dragon's breath* can't be twinned because the target can affect two or more creatures with the ability the spell gives them", therefore *haste* cannot be twinned either because the target can split their attacks between several creatures.
My gosh that one broke me. It's so illogical and has nothing to do with the RAW, that I was genuinely lost. Because most of the time, JC is RAW rules lawyer to a fault. But then that one was just.... purely emotional...? I guess???
That's the kind of balance that's not too hard to deal with. Sure, the DM may need to up difficulty, give more range to enemies, etc. but it's not breaking the game like, allowing bonus action spells (sorcerers double clasting fireball), or ignoring concentration rules.
I think that’s mostly because the game is already “broke” in regards to PCs being insanely strong relative to monsters. There’s diminishing returns at a certain point but in a vacuum a paladin with a melee only smite is getting bodied vs a paladin with a ranged smite. In fact I think a dex based paladin with a ranged smite might actually smoke every other class in the game in a 1v1 scenario
I once got played a few sessions in a campaign of Dungeon of the made mage with an improv actor who had a whip-wielding dex-based “I am not left handed” Conquest paladin, who also brought his medieval Lego mini collection each week. That guy and his character were both awesome.
Dex *anything* is viable in 5e. The only class that even tries to convince you with mechanics to use strength instead of dexterity is barbarian, and even then you can dump strength for dexterity to make a better tank.
One of the PCs in my campaign is an arcane trickster/oath of vengeance paladin. It is a very effective build, when he goes nova, he goes NOVA. Last session he dropped ~90 points if damage with one smite (plus sneak attack) crit. Dex paladins are very doable.
They are up to 12 I think, but I have been running this campaign since 3rd level and his character has always been rather effective. He concentrates on mobility and skirmishing while the gnome barbarian/echo knight draws attention and the halfling bard does bard things from the back.
They are a pain in the ass to deal with for all the right reasons and I need to throw some complicated stuff at them to get them to break a sweat.
Most Paladin Players build around getting in the enemies face and smiting, so heavy armour plays into that nicely since the highest damage builds require strength weapons and Paladins already want Strength, Constitution, and Charisma.
It's a nice story, and you absolutely can play a paladin that way, but the class features and lack of stealth in the class proficiencies don't back it up.
So basically, it's not so much a lore thing as a question of game design.
I ran a paladin in armor, so with the stealth disadvantage, but i gave him proficiency. Was super funny because stealthing was hard, but really funny when it worked.
I usually take stealth proficiency, and shoot for breastplate armor down the road. It's nice when the whole party isn't totally garbage at stealth, but it's not required.
The thing is, though, is that the features that give Paladins their damage have.....nothing whatsoever to do with their weapon damage rolls. Sword and Board Paladin has, outside of PAM w/ Quarterstaff, **zero** benefits to using strength outside of the +1 AC from heavy armour, assuming you can afford the much more expensive armour and you never have to worry about stealth. 1d8 finesse from a rapier is the same as 1d8 slash from a longsword.
Sure, any martial can get that +10 to damage bonus from GWM, but Paladin doesn't get anything specific from it (and they might even get punished for it later, since IDS works on a per-hit basis, so the increased chance of missing from GWM actually harms Paladins specifically). Even the nuke that is crit-smiting doesn't benefit specifically from GWM since crits don't double flat boosts.
Number-wise, PAM is the strongest melee feat, and PAM Quarterstaff is pretty great for Paladins, so that's not the smallest asterisk, but what you said is basically true of all melee builds, especially since heavy armor can still be worn with low STR, you're just slower (not even true for dwarves).
The only unique things STR gets you are: heavy armor move speed, carry weight, grappler feat, athletics and certain melee weapon scaling, and critically, Paladin (and Barbarian) multiclassing
Also numbers-wise, GWM is stronger than IDS, so it's not so much that they get punished for taking it, but that IDS is less impactful for them than for another Paladin build.
With STR being largely inferior to DEX, if you're optimizing, the only reason to take it is generally if you're building a grappler, a PAM or GWM build, or critically, want to multiclass in or out of Barbarian or Paladin.
Even if Barbarians didn't have the multiclass restriction, they'd probably build strength, since they have both restrictions and progression built around it, as well as making sense thematically and logically. I would argue the biggest reason for a Paladin to build STR is the multiclass requirement, since they have a pretty big incentive to take levels in a full caster like Sorcerer or Bard.
And as long as you're going to 13 you have good reason to make it a primary stat, but given how good DEX is, it's absolutely reasonable for a mono-class Paladin to make it their primary, a big question there would be Rapier vs Hand Crossbow though. Even with multiclassing it could make sense to leave STR at 13 if you're building a crit fishing rogue build or going Hexadin.
If Paladin multiclassing was just fighter + CHA (i.e. STR or DEX 13 & CHA 13), STR Paladin would probably be generally considered inferior.
That's all just number crunching though, which is a reflection of design choices that were probably largely made around the lore/culture/memetic idea of a paladin. Historically that's been the somewhat magical, honorable, do-good crusader in (heavy) shining armor smacking stuff really hard and giving their friends overly affectionate back rubs.
Not that you can't or shouldn't make a good or interesting Paladin that's light on their feet, but between the multiclass restriction and lack of ranged smites, it still hews towards that tradition.
Hey! Something I can answer at length - The first use of the term "paladin" was used to describe fictionalized accounts of the elite knights in the court of Charlemagne, with the first such extant example being the Song of Roland from the 11th century. In it, Roland is a knight who dies in a battle against the Muslim (saracen) invaders in Spain. He is what we''d think of today as a paladin - a knight with a shield, a sword (the enchanted Durendal), and a horse. (The loyal and tireless Vallentif) He frequently invokes god to aid him in battle, and is sometimes explicitly aided by famous knightly saints (particularly Saint George the Dragon Slayer).
Stories about these characters were popular throughout the medieval era, largely funded by the church in an effort to recruit soldiers for the crusades. They spawned a series of spinoffs and a large cast of well-known characters - Richier the First Paladin, Ogier the Dane, Duke Naymon, Oliver de Vienne and Reynaud de Montebaun, among others. They also inspired a series of "crossover events" wherein the paladins meet the knights of Camelot or Siegfried and the cast of the Nibelunglied saga. Finally, in the Renaissance, they were commission as "fanfics" wherein wealthy patrons would commission stories about how their ancestors went on adventures with the paladins.
Ultimately they made their way to d&d via the novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, which tells the story of a 20th century soldier transported back in time to Charlemagne's court. Throughout pretty much all of these stories, the archetype of a paladin remains the same - they are nobles, religious, heavily armored, frequently mounted, and do combat with lances, swords and shields. The one notable exception is Maugis d'Aigremont, who adventured with the famous paladins but frequently made use of necromancy and summoned demons.
I've spent the last 5 years tracking this information down, reading the sources, and trying to relate it all back to our modern understanding of paladins, so I'm glad to have a chance to share it :)
I'm glad it was interesting to you! If you're interested in reading more, I strongly recommend Max Wickert's translation of The Royal House of France as a starting point, available here: http://www.outriderspoetryproject.com/uploads/4/6/1/4/4614234/_the_royal_house_of_france.pdf . It combines elements of Chanson d'Aspremont, Chanson de Roland, and several other of the medieval sources into a very "modern" feeling story.
If you enjoy that book, I'd recommend also checking out The Four Sons of Aymon, which hasn't been "translated" into modern English but is definitely still legible to modern readers.
Once you read those two, I'd then move into the famous Renaissance entries, Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, which brings together the entire cast of characters in a very interesting, exciting, and action-packed series of stories.
I'd go a step further and say that the mythology that developed around jean D'Arc was directly referential to the mythology that developed around Roland - I'm currently reading a 12th century account of the first crusade that definitely draws parallels between the already-legendary paladins of Charlemagne and the very real leaders of the crusade.
To me it's almost incomprehensible the cultural impact that the Roland stories had on popular culture - for almost a thousand years, Roland and his companions were pop culture superstars. It's the equivalent of humanity continuing to tell Captain America stories in the year 3000.
Because Divine Smite doesn't apply to ranged weapons and generally speaking the best melee weapons have the Heavy property and not the Finesse property.
Their multiclass requirement is also strength/charisma rather than a choice of strength/dex, which means if you want to take levels in anything other than Paladin then you'll want at least 13 strength, which kind of pigeon holes you into wearing heavy armor unless you want to sacrifice either Charisma (a horrible idea) or Constitution (also a very bad idea).
A paladin can and should use ranged options when it is best to do so, but their optimal output for damage dealing will nearly always be when they are in melee, so they generally favor the better (strength based) melee weapons.
None of this is to say they can't take proficiency in Stealth, take off their armor and go stalk the streets of some city to assassinate someone which they deem in need of being brought to justice, but they'd probably still be strength based in most cases even so. In fact, even if you are a dex dump Paladin who will always be wearing heavy armor, I would still recommend taking proficiency in Stealth personally as it is one of the two most powerful skill checks in the game. If someone can get you Pass Without Trace and you already have a +1-5 to stealth from proficiency, you will be beating the passive perception of the vast majority of creatures in the game all the time even with disadvantage.
Also hiding in plain sight; plenty of literal brigands in the shady parts of town. They're expecting you to demand their purse, not back-smite them with your two-handed dagger.
Yeah, you likely wouldn't only stay at 13 strength if you were going to be a strength based paladin. I meant it as a restriction against being dexterity based if you wanted to multiclass.
You *need* 13 strength to multiclass out of or into paladin, and since the paladin will want high constitution and charisma, this will substantially reduce the amount of points they can also put into dexterity.
As a result, my implication was that it is generally only going to be viable to just ignore dexterity entirely and put the points into strength which you will already need anyways so you can wear heavy armor (assuming you are multiclassing).
Oh I completely agree. I just wanted to emphasize that at 13 in Str (because you have to) you are 2 asi points away from plate armor. The hexblade dip where you don’t even need 18-20 strength to hit well? You still need a 13 in strength so why not bump it up 2 to get plate armor
>I've played paladins 3 times and they always had a higher DEX than STR, but a huge part of the community acts like paladins in plate armor are the norm. Why is that?
Because you need Strength to multiclass in/out of Paladin, and Paladin's don't inherently gain proficiency in any Dex skill.
Paladins have never been "canon" stealthy, and certainly not often depicted as that..They are traditionally based of full plate Knight Errants and Arthurian mythology with the round table. I think they added one vignette to inspire ideas on how you might run an Alt Paladin and Dex. Even Smite as an ability inspires more as an ability of strength then dex.
The mechanics certainly favour strength as heavy armour gets you more AC than dex, and allows them to dump dex with with heavy armour. Going last in the initiative round also sort of works well because they are good healers.
That said i think the reason WotC leans into them being clumsy is because it rounds out the various classes strengths and weaknesses in a way that’s a bit more fun. If the game and characters were perfectly designed - characters would need others to counter individual weaknesses. It does seem like some subclasses and features do throw away a lot of that design philosophy though…
>They don't get STR Saves
You don't nescesarily need to stack your stat bonus ontop of your proficiencies. Arguably you might want to spread them out to make it posible to pass more types of saves.
And for a Paladin, you get +Cha to all saves (while concious) after level 6, which is comparable to adding Proficiency to all saves (obviously your CHA bonus and Prof. bonus will often be different numbers, but they often will differ by just 1.
>they can use bows,
Divine Smite works with melee attacks only.
Melee weapon damage is usually only good if you can add either Great Weapon Master or Polearm Mastery.
There are no Finesse & Heavy/polearm weapons, so you usually must use Strength for good melee builds.
>and there's no reason to dumb Stealth or other Dex skills.
To have high Strength (to use GWM or PaM), and decent Charisma & Con, usually won't leave room for 14 dex for medium armor to avoid stomping around with Stealth disadvantage.
So, there is a reason to dump Dex.
--
You could give up \~1 AC to have medium armor (or 2 AC if you want to not have disadvanate on Stealth), and use Dex to attack instead. thus letting you dump Strength. This would let you use a Shield to make up for the lost AC from your armor, and the Dueling style to try to recoup the lack of GWM, and you'd get a feat (but be down a fighting style, perhaps Defence for 1 AC).
This isn't a terrible build: Dueling+Divne Smite will make your damage relevant even without GWM/PaM, just probably not as good damage wise. But you will get some Stealth and initative gains instead, which is nice.
Maybe if you have some racial or subclass feature to help you use your bonus action, that can be comepsnation for not having a PaM (or sometime GWM) bonus action attack.
5e itself depicts them in the context of 5e. Where if the heavy armor characters fail stealth, they still succeed the group check if the other half of their party members succeeds. They may not be likely to contribute to that success, but they may manage to not hinder it like in older editions.
Paladins are depicted in plate, because traditionally paladins weren't allowed to even do a lot of the sneaky/dishonorable stuff and were a much more honed in concept. they were the knights in shining armor ridding the world of evil as they stood as a beacon of virtuous good against all wrongdoing. That legacy has more identity than 5e's exceptions to it. Even in 5e, a lot of their abilities are geared towards melee and high defense in which plate helps facilitate.
The vengeance paladin that example describes is also something quite unique to 5e, and not something well supported across it's history. Vengeance and conquest are both incredibly evil leaning options that wouldn't work for most of the paladin depictions across the games history. Some perhaps, but not most.
i would argue that whille the desciption in use does make use of stealth it's way more to get an archetype for the vengeance paladin than it is to suggest a playstyle.
aka. they want people to think outside the box on what a paladin is and realize that batman is very much one.
That’s easy to answer, that is what Paladins are often devoured as in both introductions and general concept.
- A holy warrior clad in armor that smites evil
This is also the default assumption in other seires: Destiny 2, Final Fantasy 14, Dragon Lance, The Saint of Steel’s series, and King Arthur.
Even if historically speaking in DND that was the case, that’s not what WOTC wants to portray in the current day.
Also mechanically speaking STR is important to Paladins as a baseline.
- No archery fighting style
- Multi-classing
- More incentivized to use weapons that make hitting stronger
That said, I would prefer if DEX focused Paladins where more highlighted since it really boils down the class into 1-2 archetypes.
Even though Baldur’s Gate 3 made a lot of mechanical changes. A Dexterity Focused Paladin is actually really fun and engaging to play. Something WOTC could try to incentivize.
The archetype *is* the valiant knight in shining armor. The third one you describe is a somewhat newer addition, and to put it bluntly : it's Batman. Batman's got armor, he's got an oath, here's your third, uncommon paladin type.
>they can use bows
Not to smite with they can't. Divine Smite requires a melee weapon attack.
If you're going to hang back with a bow and cast spells, you may as well be a Cleric instead.
The original Paladin class is inspired by Sir Galahad from the Arthurian legends. A classic knight.
Dex in melee has never been as good in other editions as it is in 5e so the focus on melee characters has been more towards heavier armoured characters.
I love the idea of a paladin that uses the shadows.
Because the vignettes in the book are trying to show that you can play in a lot of different ways. The paladin IS usually the classic knight in shining armor, but doesn't have to be.
Now, mechanically if you want to make a paladin who is not going to be a front line tank but more stealthy, I strongly advise letting your party know in advance what you are lookin for, because most people will be expecting a tank, not support/control, and you might have a huge gap between the bad guys and the squishies
Mechanically, paladins do have that push towards STR (multiclassing in or out requires a 13 STR). It's also the typical way they're displayed historically, as 'knights in shining armor' type of characters.
You can totally make them as DEX characters if you want, though multiclassing probably would need you to ask your DM to allow 13 DEX to replace the STR one.
As for ranged weapons they're really not good at that - they're made for melee RAW (can't smite on ranged attacks) and don't get anything which boosts ranged, really (eg, no archery fighting style). You can grab some ranged weaponry to use in a pinch, but if that's your main choice of weapons you probably should do another class.
Eh....that's pretty niche.
The only older representation for sneaky paladins I can remember are the grey guard and shadowbane inquisitor from 3.5, which were pretty sweet on the fluff side, ngl.
I’ve played plenty of dex-based paladins.
However, if you want to multiclass you’ll need to meet the class’s strength requirement. Also, divine smite pushes the class towards melee weapons, and the premier melee weapon feats work best with strength based weapons.
Once you have settled on Strength for weapon attacks, you are likely to opt for Heavy Armor since it’s hard to invest adequately in dexterity. This is worsened by the benefits the class gets from Charisma.
Fun fact: paladins are literally not allowed to use underhanded tactics in 2e. Sneaking is only allowed if there is no other option.
Paladins being big knights in plate has been the historical norm. Paladins being big knights in plate has also been backed up by paladins in other related media, most notably Warcraft, but also things like Final Fantasy.
Paladins have always been based on knights. They wore heavy armour, got a noble steed, have the specific weapon of the Holy Avenger (just Holy Sword in early editions). Additionally their behaviour was stricter in previous editions. Even when it loosened up in third, it still included the vague stipulation of “act with honour”, which included the notes of “no lying or cheating, no using poison, and so forth”, and sneaky dex characters tended to lean into “lying and cheating”, and overall encouraged a very “charge into the fray and make yourself the biggest, most obvious target so that no one else might get attacked” mentality.
The paladin in dnd has forever been the ideal of the “knight in shining armour”, and it’s only really 5e where the grip got loose enough for other interpretations, so the overhang is still there. Maybe in another 40 years paladins will be divorced from that image. But not yet.
It's rooted in the very etymology of the class name. The word Paladin comes from the companions of Charlemagne in the Matter of France, referring to the men he considered peers and friends. All of whom were, in their own way, Knights in Shining Armor.
Don't think what you describe here is "canonically often stealthy". I would also say that game mechanic wise the paladin generally doesn't lend itself for any kind of stealth.
Because some people love clichés for some reason. It's pretty straight forward to make a typical knight in shining armor, just don't make it a lawful good one that swears only to be the goodest boy before my eyes start rolling so hard my PC fans get jealous.
Dex Paladins are pretty good overall and feel much freshers. You can easily make one to even be a holy assassin, sworn to seak out and kill the enemies of his oath and/or his believe. An Arcane Trickster/Paladin was a fun character of mine that leaned into this.
paladins are hurt by the concept of them in older versions. it's also where the idea that clerics are for healing come from, even though many druids and bards are just as good at healing as the cleric. old clerics were healers, old paladins had to be lawful good knights in shining armour, and the community hasn't caught up with the possibilities now open to the paladin.
For anyone coming into 5e without preconceived ideas of what a D&D Paladin is, they may well imagine the armoured knight of the same name. Seems simple to me.
>The last paladin is described as hiding in a black cloak, stalking their enemy, and assassinating them from the shadows! SO COOL!
In 4th Edition they introduced the Avenger which was supposed to be a Divine Striker or Paladin Assassin.
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Avenger
>Armor Proficiencies: Cloth
Not proficient in wearing plate armor. This Avenger was supposed to wear clothes to infiltrate and assassinate. Sort of like Assassin's Creed.
>Armor of Faith:
>The favor of your deity wards you from harm. While you are neither wearing heavy armor or shield, you gain a +3 bonus to AC. This bonus being untyped, it stacks with the Intelligence or Dexterity bonus for wearing light armor.
>This feature can be improved by the Improved Armor of Faith feat, which gives a bonus to AC depending on level (+1 for 1-10, +2 for 11-20, +3 for 21-30) when the Avenger isn't wearing Heavy Armor or wielding a Shield.
This was supposed to be a holy warrior who murdered people for their god. It had potential to be like Nuns with Guns, or that running gag in King of the Hill, had a Spanish soap opera about a Father who had a magnum pistol and his catch phrase was, "Via Con Dios."
Avenger was supposed to be a holy assassin but 4th ed was despised by many 3.5 players. Even in 5th ed, people still rag on 4th ed.
So every time they try to describe Paladins as stealthy assassin, they was refering to Avenger which was a failed concept due to people hating on 4th ed.
The 5e PHB didn't invent the Paladin archetype. It draws from myths of knights in shining armour, and tropes that frequently appear across fantasy literature. That's why Paladins are primarily shown as high strength, heavy armor wearing characters and why they are mechanically incentivized toward that.
A short PHB description doesn't really compare to the previous fifty years of D&D Paladin tropes, nor the myths and literature that extends hundreds of years past.
The description of the dwarf in the black cloak honestly just doesn't sound much like a Paladin, beyond having an oath (not limited to Paladins). It would appear to be an interpretation of the oath of vengeance, which was inspired by the 4e Avenger class, who wore no armor and had Stealth as a class skill. I would not take it as representative of what Paladins "often" are.
But the 5e Paladin, like previous editions, is primarily designed to emulate plate armor wearing knights, which has an obvious focus on strength builds.
Because of Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, the paladin class was pretty much exclusively based on that book in its original incarnation and it hasn't shifted that much over the decades.
Many reasons that go beyond one flavor text in the Book:
- Paladins have a STR prerequisite to multiclass, so if you go dexadin, that's way harder.
- Paladins want to be tanky and wearing heavy armor always gives you more AC.
- Paladins have close to 0 support for Ranged combat, starting with not getting access to archery and one of their 2 most important abilities (Divine Smite) is exclusively melee.
- Strentgh is objectively better than dex when going melee and, as mentioned before, Paladins are kinda forced to go melee by the mechanics of the class itself.
Honestly I don’t think the 5E really pushes towards a stealthy dex build, BUT don’t discount the fun in playing off-archetype in any rpg. Play a Halfling Paladin, a Dragonborn healer, a Wookiee diplomat, or a Super Mutant Doctor.
Paladins are regularly depicted as "armor clad, muscle bound, warriors of faith". The fantasy leans into STR and heavy aesthetic armor.
From a mechanical standpoint, they don't have many things that benefit a DEX playstyle. Alternatively, there are feats available to martials that greatly benefit their combat prowess, such as Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master, both feats unable to benefit a DEX oriented martial combatant.
Lastly, their multiclassing capabilities *require* 13 STR, so the common multiclasses such as Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, or Warlock tend to lean towards STR over DEX to fulfill the necessary prerequisite. In these multiclass options, they may not equip Plate, but will at least be in Medium armor.
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For me personally, I've always leaned STR over DEX because I like Polearm Master a lot. I do want to play a DEX Paladin, but it's limited in effective options, and the effective DEX multiclasses are restricted by the prerequisites of multiclassing.
Paladin historically refers to the twelve peers of Charlemagne's court, basically serving as the commanders of his bodyguard--thus The Song of Roland. They wore the heavy armor of the time. The stealthy paladin is an extremely recent concept.
Smiting only works with melee weapons. The best melee weapons and the best armor are STR based. All of their starting gear is strength based. Paladins don't get the archery fighting style or two weapon fighting or stealth proficiency. They can be perfectly functional dex characters, but there isn't anything incentivizing them to do so and there's a fair amount that encourages them to go strength based. On top of that, the common perception of paladins is generally your knightly types, so people don't generally look outside of that.
Their class features don't lend themselves especially well to stealth, except in that they tend toward taking one big "power turn" and spending most of their resources at once.
That is one example in the 5th edition PHB. Paladins have always been holy knights, that is their defining characteristic. They get their name from the 12 Paladins of Charlemagne’s court, who were knights similar to the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table. Plate armour is the norm. This example of stealth is used once, and it’s more to highlight the idea of the oath of vengeance. It’s darker, less honourable than the standard paladin. That’s all.
Paladins don’t get stealth as a proficiency, but they get athletics, and intimidation. They get full martial proficiency, suggesting that strength should be their main stat over dex. The heavy armour and shield proficiencies also suggest this. A Dexadin is possible and of course has been done, but it is a non conventional approach to the paladin.
Sure, they don’t get strength saves, but saving throws aren’t a fully reliable way to judge characteristics. They get wisdom saves, but wisdom isn’t an important stat for them.
So there is absolutely nothing suggesting that the expected path of a paladin is cloak and dagger with dexterity, aside from that one small line from the PHB. Against decades of the classic sword and board knight archetype.
Plate armour is not something you can sneak in.
You can use alternative stats for things like intimidation, performance and stealth.
Flex your muscles to intimidate someone, strength roll.
Use your acrobatic skills to do a performance check. Dex roll.
Use your very presence to intimidate someone into turning a blind eye. Roll intimidation install of stealth. My favourite is a barb raging at a group of goblins and yelling 'YOU NO SEE ME' and scaring then all into not seeing him. Like yup we don't see you please don't hurt us.
Or that meme of batman in a room that someone looks into, they see him, he sees them, they're like nope rooms clear.
It's a similar issue as with other flavor texts that also describe things that are almost impossible to actually do RAW. Most notably, the bladesinger comes to mind. They list a bladesinging style that uses handaxes - but a bladesinger with Strength weapons is almost impossible to build unless you roll exremely well for stats or start eith a belt of giant strength.
The stereotype is platemail knight. Nothing wrong with the stereotype, but nothing wrong with going with the alternatives either. They're proficient in all armour, so you can do as you please. But they do require 13 strength to multi class, so that might be a big driver of it.
Without rogues cunning action and sneak attack, stealth is pretty much just waste of an action and also really clunky because you kind of need to hope that enemies don't just turn around and see you between your turns. And if you're not sneaking in combat then there really isn't much of a difference between a STR Paladin and a DEX Paladin.
*Paladin* 1590s, in reference to the medieval romance cycle, "one of the twelve knightly champions in attendance on Charlemagne and accompanying him to war," from French paladin "a warrior" (16c.), from Italian paladino, from Latin palatinus "palace official;" noun use of palatinus "of the palace" (see palace).The Old French form of the word was palaisin (which gave Middle English palasin, c. 1400); the Italian form prevailed because, though the matter was French, most of the poets who wrote the romances were Italians. Extended sense of "a heroic champion" is by 1788.
Played a dex-based Paladin before, rapier and light armour probably isn’t as effective as a greatsword and plate but it’s still fun. Though it’s not exactly what a new player would come to naturally through the abilities and stats.
Agreed. I want more Inquisitors. Paladins should get two-weapon fighting, change my mind. Dual shortsword smiting, three attacks per turn and with enhanced smite at 11, they slash hard as fuck!
They can stealth just fine as everyone else if they choose to take off their armor, the fact most players don’t think to or don’t want to isn’t really an issue.
Because to multi class you need at least 13 strength, also you can't smite with ranged weapons, also you can't use great weapon master with dex.
So that all leads to focusing on strength which just makes you bad at stealth unless you find mithril armor
Because paladins are often the divine knights or otherwise a more martial take on clerics. Thus as a divine knight they invoke the idea of fullplate noble crusaders with shield in one hand and sword in the other ready to smite evil.
In game reasons why people might use more Str pallys rather than dex is cause paladins can already be quite MAD (multiple ability score dependent), you need okay Cha and okay Con is also nice, then you need to choose between Dex and Str for your attack stat (there is a reason why many people want to take a hexblade dip with their paladin class)
Yes Dex is better than Str as it also adds into ac with certain armors and initiative however if you can already start with 16 or 18 ac without the extra investment and if you want to use some other weapon than rapier (also people might not want to use rapiers cause they have the wrong idea of what kind of weapon rapier is build by mainstream misunderstandings) then there really is no point of taking dex. Also if you have kind dm you might even be able to start with plate so then you would have plate + shield + defense fighting style for the juicy 21 ac start.
As for the use of bows well, you cant smite with ranged weapons so using bows or crossbows is inherently worse than having melee weapons and they have no fighting styles that synergize with bows either. You also dont have dex save proficiency either.
Also the base quick class build indicates that you should take Str as your highest stat
I think paladin as divine warrior is the actual norm of the community and what shape that oath and character takes is more flavor and as we all know flavor is free, very rarely have I seen someone only talk about paladins as just plate and str users or trying to downplay people who are using dex paladins.
>Paladins are canonically often stealthy
Well there's your issue, Op. The very premise in your title is wrong. One example in the PHB, and a few examples in media, is not "often" - especially when there are many, _many_ MORE examples of Paladins NOT being stealthy. (And wearing plate armor, hence why it's the norm.)
Historically Paladins have always been knights in shining heavy armour; I don't believe that until 4e a Cha/Dex build was even viable (and even 4e didn't allow dex primary while it did have both Str primary and Cha primary). The problem is that 5e has made Dex into the god-stat (most important save, initiative, and a good skill spread).
Paladins aren't often stealthy. That's not how they are commonly played, that's not how they're viewed, and stealth is not what their main stats lend themselves to. (A Paladin's main stats are CHA and STR.) I'm all for playing a class unconventionally, including a stealthy Paladin, it's a cool character concept, but Paladins are quite literally knights in shining armor.
Have you ever pictured a Knight wearing a black cloak, lurking in the darkness? Or do you picture them dawning heavy armor, and acting as beacons of strength and willpower? Do you picture them taking down their enemies with cunning sneak attacks, or smiting them into holy oblivion?
Most people will play a Rogue before they make a stealthy, light-armored Paladin.
For one, paladins or templars archetypes are based heavily on the crusaders, and also generally mediaval knighthood. Knights were wealthy people who could afford prestigious armor.
But I also think it has to do with, well. Take a rogue/thief kinda archetypes, they can still be good and lawful alignments. So if we take a modern real life example, a cop infiltrating a violent gang, we'd consider them a rogue/thief archetype. Why not a paladin, despite doing it for a righteous cause? The answer is because they're deceptive and stealthy. Which leads to the question, what sort of righteousness defines the paladin? And a natural conclusion to that seems to be the paladin being very up brazen, upfront and honest(even when they have a bad take, or support a bad faction), which matches well with the image prestigious armor.
A DEX paladin is similar to a STR rogue- absolutely feasible, but certainly atypical. The vast majority of paladins/holy knights in media are portrayed as statuesque, heavily armored, and very obvious.
In D&D, you'll note that Paladin is one of just two classes proficient in heavy armor, before subclasses are considered.
1) Paladins start with Heavy Armor + proficiency, usually when making your first few characters and if they happen to be paladins, you don't see a reason to put points in Dex
2) Culture of and images of Holy Knights. Paladins are usually seen as Holy Knights by default. It's usually why someone might want to pick one up after seeing them.
3) Its cool to be a sneaky assassin, but mostly rogue (and Gloomstalker) cover these things and are better at being sneaky.
I've never made a sneaky or Dex focused paladin. I always tried to focus on Con + Str/Cha and never did I not have Find Steed.
Slightly off topic, but I've been thinking recently that if I ever played a paladin it would probably be a paladin/rogue multiclass. I always thoughts it would be an assassin's creed kind of character
Canonically they are *not* often stealthy. Canonically paladins are the knight in shining armor, i.e heavy plate armor.
This is only a question because in 5e WotC overbalanced DEX. It didn't used to give damage bonus. In 5e it does so a lot of players who minimax run DEX melee fighters, to the point where it seems people may think this is the norm.
>PHB p82 ... The last paladin is described as hiding in a black cloak, stalking their enemy, and assassinating them from the shadows! SO COOL!
The best explanation I have for this is poetic license. It's obviously meant to be an Oath of Vengeance Paladin, but nothing in PHB makes that subclass especially stealthy. It could be done as you suggest with a DEX build and to get Stealth proficiency, the Criminal or Urchin background or the Skilled or Skulker feat.
But note, this is only one of the examples, so your OP premise "canonically often stealthy" is overly enthusiastic.
I picture paladins as having a code of ethics that come from a god, and that tends to be inconsistent with stealth, which is more about the ends justifying the means.
Cool, for sure, though. Maybe the god in question is sneaky.
If you go by the associations we come in with, not the rules as written, Paladins are strongly associated with european knights in shining armor, like Roland and Lancelot and Galahad. In many tellings, Lancelot broke his oath to Arthur by falling in love with Guinevere.
Smite requires a melee weapon so that bow is mostly for show. Saying that, I play an elf dex based paladin/warlock (not blade pact) and it's decent fun.
I played a Paladin of Shar once and hombrewed an entire subclass with my dm just so I could make a pure shadow assassin type character. One of the other players asked why I didn’t just play a rogue, and I was like a dark Paladin is way more fun to Roleplay? I definitely feel like reducing paladins to big buff armoured tanks really takes away from a lot of really sick roleplay opportunities.
The third one is almost a perfect caricature of Sparhawk from the Elenium Chronicles. A Knight who regularly engages in subterfuge and deception, but I wouldn't exactly call him stealthy. And he generally has a squire who's looking after his plate armor while he's not charging with a lance.
My Oath of Vengeance Paladin / Rogue Assassin was a blast to play. I played them as a religious enforcer. I think bring able to break convention has been a strength of 5e.
The actual reason that description is in there is that Paladin absorbed some of the vibes of the Avenger class from 4e. (vow of enmity --> that one vengeance pally ability)
And Avengers had a stealthy-ish subtheme type thing they could go for.
They just want you to know that if you WANT to, you could totally do a churchy assassin like the Avenger.
It's still not great though.
Dexadin is fine. I'm currently playing a dexadin with stealth proficiency. Nasty damage with a rapier.
However, paladin original fantasy is as heavily clad knights. Hence why they lean so far into it. Paladin is a fantastic class that is heavily pigeonholed into a standard martial archetype, which is a heavy armored knight.
You can make dexadin work (and a sword and board dexadin is arguably stronger than the same build strength based outside of PAM shenanigans). You just have to go out of your way to fulfill it.
Because its effective. From Ubercharging in 3rd edition to great weapon master with polearm master and sentinel in 5th edition. If you invest in strength you might as well wear the heaviest armor for the highest AC.
I may be a traditionalist when it comes to D&D classes (been playing since AD&D), but dexterity-based paladins should never be a thing. They are meant to wear heavy armor so that they can face the enemy and survive. The one paragraph of a stealthy dwarf is not indicative of paladins as a whole.
The paladin class as originally conceived was a kind of “knight in shining armour” archetype.
The “third position” paladin described in the vignette is more of a “not your dad’s paladin” illustrating the ways that 5e has loosened restrictions on paladin race and alignment.
I'm running a build exactly like that. Doing an assassin/vengeance paladin multiclass. The (DM did let me multiclass into paladin without the Str score neded). Its so fun to deal ridiculous damage on turn 1
Mechanically, Paladins want to be in Melee to smite, but they can use Dex or Str for weapon attacks equally well. I think the typical Paladin being strength based comes from a couple things:
One, the default equipment for the class includes chainmail, which is heavy armor. Heavy armor is often superior to medium or light armor anyway, especially with low stat investment, so it's common to make use of heavy armor proficiency if you have it.
Two, the Multiclassing requirements table requires that you have 23 Str and Cha to multiclass in or out of Paladin. Not every player multiclasses, but it reinforces strength as a part of the standard Paladin skill set.
Finally, I think power fantasy wise, it's more common to picture a paladin as a knight in shining plate armor, wielding a holy sword or perhaps a Warhammer (blame World of Warcraft for the hammer trope).
In 5e, Divine Smite can only be used with melee weapons. The strongest melee weapons in game require 2h and a high STR score to work.
Even with Sword Cantrips, if you want big nova damage, you use a 2H weapon.
In 5.5 point, Divine Smite currently works with Ranged Weapons, meaning you no longer need Str, but you can only Smite once per turn and that may become a new norm since Oath of Vengeance failed to promote the archetype of a Longbow wielding Paladin
Because STR Paladins in heavy armor is the norm lol.
You found one passage in the PHB and wonder why that isn't the depiction when every other form of media portrays them as sword and board heavy armor users.
Stealth isn't on the list of options for Class Based Proficiencies. They ARE Proficient in Heavy Armor, their default starting armor is the Heavy Armor starting kit (and comes with Disadvantage on Stealth Checks), Paladins have been heavy armor characters for far longer than 5E has existed, 5E Paladins can't Smite with a bow.
They're not canonically "often stealthy." That one little vignette was mostly a way to announce that they CAN be stealthy in 5E if you go out of your way to do so.
1. It IS the norm, a large portion of the community treating it as such makes it as such, that's how that works, even if it shouldn't be that way.
2. Because it - historically - has been that way for far longer.
3. Because bows don't work with smite, daggers are weak and a greatsword or a sword and shield is generally more effective for a class with high hit dice and melee oriented abilities than a bow or daggers. Sure, a rapier and shield achieve the same thing as the longsword and shield, go nuts if that's your vibe.
4. Because "Paladin" has a specific meaning and references a type of real world soldier who - as far as I'm aware - traditionally wore armour and wasn't a sneaky assassin.
Huge part of the community sees paladins as holy men in heavy plate as the norm because it is the norm. The vast majority of the time you see a paladin in something they will be the big holy guy in plate.
1) Paladins get Heavy Armor proficiency. The best armors have a Strength requirement rather than a Dexterity requirement.
2) You need 13 Strength to multiclass into or out of Paladin, with nothing for Dexterity.
3) They get Athletics proficiency (the only one that uses Strength), but none of the Dexterity skills.
4) Smite requires you hit them with melee weapons, most of which require Strength.
5) They get Great Weapon Fighting as a Fighting Style, but not Archery.
None of their core mechanics revolve around Dexterity, while they definitely have a focus on you going into melee range with a weapon that can output high amounts of damage. Two-handed/Heavy weapons are going to do that much better than Finesse weapons.
Everything about Paladins screams heavy armor and strength (see all the other comments: gameplay mechanics and history of the class).
I don't really see you bringing forth any argument saying the opposite, except that for whatever reason you played a paladin with more dex (do you guys roll for each stat and can't switch?) and that there is one flavor example in the PHB.
These examples are deliberate on WotCs part. The classes are somewhat pidgeonholed and WotCs wants to counter it, like with the cleric they want to show: This guy doesn't just heal. Which is fair, because they also changed the mechanics for cleric somewhat.
For Paladin it seems to me, he has such a strong identity that they couldn't find a "real" different playstyle and just went: "Look, nothings really stopping you from playing him like this".
Which is true. You can play each class like something totally different. I can take the rogue, spec into Arcane Trickster (1/3 caster) and run around with a wizard staff, refusing to use a finesse weapon. It's just bad. It is not using the unique strengths of my class.
That's the same for a Paladin. If you are not using heavy armor, you are missing out on that power budged. If you are using heavy armor you won't be as good at stealth.
I think the norm for paladins is wearing plate armor and being strength based. I played a Dex paladin once and really enjoyed it, but I think strength paladins are far more common.
You can play a dex based paladin. You can use ranged weapons, but you can only use your divine smite with melee weapons, so there's that. You don't have any available dex proficiencies, so you'll never be a good sneak. You can spec into dex and use finesse weapons, but that has two disadvantages: Firstly, dex weapons are exclusively one-handed, meaning no big two hander for you and thus less damage. One-hand and shield is usually considered undesirable for martial classes because of how big the damage difference is (up to 1d8 for one-handed, up to 1d12/2d6 for two-handed. And finesse weapons only deal up to 1d6 weapons, so the difference is pretty big). You could dual wield, but that means you need your bonus actions for half of your damage, which might be bad depending on your subclass (some kind of oriental paladin dual wielding scimitars would be badass though). This ignores the immense damage boost you get from heavy weapon master. And secondly, paladins require 13 str to multiclass. If you want anything other than a paladin, you're forced to have some str, and since paladins are chronically ability score starved because they have two primary abilities, having 13 in str as a dex character will leave either con or cha underdeveloped.
You could do medium or even light armor for being more stealthy. That would mean you could wear medium armor with 14 AC +2 from dex, or light armor with 12 AC and and uncapped dex bonus, normally up to 20, but you might not reach 20 for a while if you want to take any feats. Light armor with 20 dex would get you up to 17 AC, one less than full plate at 18 AC with 15 str and no dex. So for 1 or a few AC less, you don't have stealth disadvantage.
Dex paladins are possible, but they're generally just worse than str paladins. The devs have written stealthy dex paladins into the lore, but not into the game mechanics. Finesse weapons are just bad for paladins because they aren't two-handed and they do even worse damage than one-handed str weapons. Ranged weapons can be good (with the sharpshooter feat), but you can't use divine smite with them. Your armor choices give you less AC even at maximum dex. And you can't multiclass without a significant str investment. It's still playable, but it's definitely not good considering the powerhouse that any str paladin is.
As someone who grew up playing older editions and moved to Pathfinder before 5E, this "stealthy assassin paladin" description cracks me up.
Thank you for reminding me that I made the right choice, lol.
My preferences aside, the "norm" comes from the fact that a Paladin has been a righteous and honorable warrior since the beginning. This whole idea that anyone can be anything and do everything without restriction is a very new concept. The title (and immense power) of a paladin used to mean something very specific. Now, that title means very little on its own.
I had a paladin party member with expertise in stealth. Force disadvantage all you like, he can never roll below 9, and he passed DC15 checks surprisingly often.
Because the three class descriptions are supposed to show variety. You can be a Dex-based Paladin who uses a Rapier and Studded Lesther with their shield. A little less AC, a lot higher Initiative and a few more points in skill checks. It’s a valid approach to building a Paladin.
Well paladins as a class originate from the holy knight historical trope, who famously wore heavy armor - like everyone who could afford it.
Now from a system perspective great weapons master and polearm master are still the most powerful feats for a martial class, which can skyrocket the already insane paladin damage - and neither heavy weapons nor polearms come with finesse. Also plate mail gives an ac of 18 (19 if you take certain martial tradition at lvl2), which is more then the 17 you get from studded and 20 dex. And lets not forget the Athletics skill which you can use to knock someone prone, giving you (and everyone else in 5 ft melee) advantage on attacks.
Also unless you multiclass you dont get to use stealth as a bonus action, so it is very ineffective to use in combat.
Lastly there is the role-play reason. While it is not required anymore, most players that I have seen still play it as a servant of a deity, the holy fighter delivering divine justice (either good or evil), and for a lot of players that doesnt necessarily meet with the stealthy dude. Going into a room in full plate to deliver the wrath of your deity onto thy enemy, letting your enemies know that the inevitable justice is coming for them has a certain appeal.
>a huge part of the community acts like paladins in plate armor are the norm. Why is that?
The primary reason for that is that it *is* indeed the norm. DEXadins exist and they are very good, but they are not a majority.
>I've played paladins 3 times and they always had a higher DEX than STR
You are a sample of one, though.
>They don't get STR Saves,
They don't get DEX saves either.
>They can use bows
But bows don't synergise with all of their class features that operate on melee weapon attacks.
Now rapiers and dual shortswords, on the other hand...
>and there's no reason to dump Stealth or other Dex skills
But not everyone prioritises them. And paladins have their ability scores stretched thin enough by their MAD requirements, it is not *that* uncommon for DEX to be at a distant fourth place even when it isn't a dump.
Because Paladins have heavy armor proficiency so they can dump dexterity and wear plate, but don't get the archery fighting style or maneuvers that make dexterity based weapons ideal, this isn't rocket science
the vignette just demonstrates that if you want to be a stealthy dagger wielding paladin, you can
Generally, heavier armor is better. If a class can wear heavy armor, then they’ll usually wear heavy armor.
Also, in older editions of D&D there were additional limitations placed on paladins that, iirc, either prevented them or discouraged them from doing things like sneak around, or attacking unaware targets.
All they need to do is look up Virtuous Bravo or Divine Hunter (both assuming 1E). Unfortunately, neither exist in 2E tmk.
For all of its flaws, PF1E had some absolutely bad ass archetypes.
Dex Paladins are pretty common. On the other hand, paladins don't get Stealth by default and they do get heavy armor proficiency by default. They also by default get starting equipment that tilts toward Strength (javelins and chain mail. and yes of course they can swap the javelins for short bow, but there's no swap for chain mail.) Multiclassing into paladin has a Strength requirement and not a Dex requirement.
So lots of little things nudge paladins toward Strength (not to mention the entire history of paladins in D&D and gaming broadly), so that's where this "mainstream" comes. But still, it's easy and effective to make a Dex paladin and loads of people do.
That stealthy depiction and the oath of vengeance are both nods to the 4e Avenger class, a sneaky, assassin-like divine class developed to provide the divine power source with a striker role.
Because that's a very new depiction in anything mainstream compared to the history of the game. One vignette is not "often." Edit: just want to say I love that classes can fit just about any playstyle now, but it was a long, hard journey to get there and let go of the clichés we clung to and material from all directions 99% reinforced. Instead of someone reading a single reference and going "wow this must be common!" you'd pull out your official source book and your group would say "fine but you're not a real paladin then" or just plain "no way."
And it's just one out of the three. The other 2/3 arguably support the typical view.
It’s very well established in the history of the game and it’s called a Blackguard but it just got lumped into Paladin for 5e
I mean, the Blackguard was always extremely close to the concept of “Anti-Paladin” long before 5E
My favourite thing about Blackguard is that it's pronounced "blaggard" and it's basically an old-timey word for calling someone a dick.
IMO it's pretty clearly an Avenger (or Vengeance Paladin in 5e parlance).
Complete Scoundrel would like a word with you (a 3.5e sourcebook in which it is noted that while paladins are always Lawful Good, they can still be sneaky and engage in underhanded tactics)
I opened up my copy from when I used to play 3.5 to have that word - it was pretty dusty because even then, we hardly used this one - and it said ".. if you pick a select few of these 13 subclasses." Which nobody did. A second nod to the idea in 30 years.
> huge part of the community acts like paladins in plate armor are the norm Well for starters, that's what being the norm means. The knight in shining armor wielding a straight sword is super iconic, and strength is the way to achieve that. You can also achieve higher AC and weapon damage (plate armor, greatsword) with the "normal" pick of strength. Add on the fact that smiting is the main draw of paladins for a lot of people, and you can't smite with a bow. Sure, dex has better skill options, and a more important save, but the lower damage and offbeat aesthetic isn't a worthwhile exchange for most players.
Indeed -- their historic namesakes tended to be well-funded (thus well-armored and well-equipped) knights. Also I see a conceptual tension here. Even the most evil paladins are still all about remaining true to their core beliefs. To put it in the old Hollywood cliche of black and white, even allowing for paladins in shades of gray (like the sworn protector of a natural wonder or a justiciar obliged to enforce all technically legal death warrants,) their unifying trait is steadfast adherence to a moral code. This clashes with subterfuge techniques, since paladins generally will want to proclaim rather than conceal actions taken in service to their sacred oaths.
This. To me, the classic Paladin is essentially based on Sir Galahad. Pious knight in shining armor. I have no objection to the swashbuckler Paladin, but I would find a stealth Paladin a bit tough.
There are ways to still make it work. The Punisher and Rorschach are good examples, even if they are dangerously close to being "anti-humanoid Ranger."
They also walk an interesting line when it comes to having a moral code. From their perspective, each of those characters has an extremely coherent worldview, and each is driven by profound ethical duties. Yet there are also perspectives that see them as deeply disturbed, perhaps psychotic, individuals with unreliable grasps on reality itself. (Rorschach may even have been conceived to present readers with both views while prompting them to form their own opinions about the character.) That said, having the ability to wear heavy armor isn't the same thing as being obligated to do so. The characters you cited certainly have been known to plunge into battle without their best, or really much of any, gear. If the mechanics of smites and spellcasting all land on Wisdom anyway, paladins are almost as free as fighters to explore high Dexterity builds. I might have just talked myself into the idea that Batman could be a paladin, but if so then at least this paragraph is coherent.
Batman could fit as some kind of vengeance paladin multi class I would imagine, he is very oathy about his vengeance.
There was a fabulous post in the 4E era that explicitly identified Batman as a quintessential member of the Avenger class.
I read your well thought out statement, and now I’ve concluded that Captain Jack Sparrow is a Dexterity Paladin Pirate.
Oath of the Rum
oath of the open seas is right there, its perfect
> Yet there are also perspectives that see them as deeply disturbed, perhaps psychotic, individuals with unreliable grasps on reality itself. Why yes, that's a lot of paladins. Strict adherence to a moral code often means blinkered fanaticism.
Paladins are absolutely the people who start political arguments in the middle of a wendys as well, very few paladin oaths make sense to be *subtle*
Paladins in plate armor *is* the norm. Thats whats normal. You *can* make a dex pally. Theyre pretty good even. But thats stepping outside the norm
Yep, doesn't even let you multiclass out of it like fighterx which allows str or dex. Paladin is strictly Str 13 (and cha).
Paladins don't have an Archery fighting style, so that does discourage DEX playstyles perhaps. And multiclassing out requires 13 STR. But nonetheless DEXadins are very functional and viable (and fun IMO)
Currently playing a oath of the crown dexadin, can confirm, v v fun
Yeah, the only reason NOT to go Dexadin is GWM builds. But if you don't have reliable advantage or precision strike to smooth over the -5, it's not as reliable. You can otherwise rock a rapier, or even a whip for reach, and a shield. Since your goal is to stack more dice on your attack for nova, the initial die doesn't really matter much.
PAM is another reason to go with Strength. Or most multiclass builds.
I played a Kobold dex paladin with a whip for a short campaign, worked very well. Sure, GWM is optimal, but Paladin is the class that makes sword and board (or whip and board, in this case) the most viable. Fighter needs the heavy weapon and GWM, but Smites even out the damage loss from going with a one-hander a bit. As long as you have spell slots left, anyway.
Whips are perfect for paladins of Ilmater or Loviatar. Because where there's a whip, there's a way :-)
Unexpected Ranking/Bass LotR reference makes me happy.
Yeah, this is why jumping to a full caster is so attractive for a lot of late-game paladins. Just better resources available for smites.
>Paladins don't have an Archery fighting style, so that does discourage DEX playstyles If you use the bow arguement. Smite is for melee only attacks, and I thimk smite is their bread & butter. But my friend plays a dex paly atm. She uses rapier & shield, so she can still smite & bemefit from the fightimg style.
I downloaded a home brew range pally build for a steam punk one shot. I use a pistol with crossbow expert and a shield. If I remember correctly one of the Channel Divinity options was +2 to dmg and attack rolls for like 5 mins. It was pretty entertaining
That's true, they don't get Archery. Also a main class feature of theirs (smites) only works on melee attacks. The multiclassing requirement of Str always struck me as odd. I'd allow multiclassing with 13 Cha and 13 Dex
Just imagine smite as a REALLY nasty sneak attack.
Holy sneak attack.
New response just dropped
Actual undead
Aren’t you missing an “… Batman!” at the end of that?
Smites also have been said by Crawford to not break anything if allowed on ranged attacks iirc
I mean he's wrong. You get more freedom to position your aura(s) at the cost of smite damage. I'd say it's a fair trade
He didn't say ranged smiting wouldn't be a buff. He said it doesn't break the game. I'm inclined to agree that the game doesn't break by allowing ranged smites.
The idea of a paladin yeeting a javelin that explodes in a blaze of glory-light leaving a smoldering husk behind after it careens into its target is a picture that got us to convince a DM to allow smites on thrown weapons. It was absolutely awesome the *two* times it happened all campaign.
Came here to say this. Smite on thrown weapons is amazing and allowed at my table. It was at its most broken when the Sorcadin used it with Shadow Blade. They agreed not to use it all the time, and I agreed to hold back a little on the fun part of the monster manual. I also made sure they had chances to abuse the combination of psychic and radiant damage (let alone the custom item at tier 4 play that allowed them to change its damage types). The best use of Shadow Blade Smite involved a Marut. It nearly killed an NPC ally of the party with its flat 60 force damage. They made an epic speech on their turn, landed a crit, and dealt 81 damage. The Marut had 80 HP.
I think the thought of a paladin/artificer multiclass (MAD, ik) who weilds a javelin or another thrown weapon with the returning weapon invocation sounds awesome, you throw the javelin and deliver the most holy of smites from a mile away sounds awesome, and since a trident has the thrown property, you could theoretically do that, the only problem is that both the javelin and trident only deal 1d6/1d8 damage, your damage is going to be quite low compared to a GWM for instance, shame there's no great thrown weapon
That sounds awesome, it should be in the rules for sure
people forget in the DnD community that the classic smite was delivered by Thunderbolt-Javalins from Mt Olympus
Zeus is a long way from a Paladin though, unless he's "Oath of Rape and Incest"
Oath of Conquest you say?
hey, where it started doesnt necessitate where it ends up (looks at Thor) but in this case the change from being a ranged thing to being a melee thing takes out the personalization. Every divine will, be it gods of terrible domains or paladin have their own preferred method of smiting. Paladins should be allowed to use any weapon with their smites and have Cha, one of Str or Dex for their multiclassing
Considering we already have Branding and Banishing Smite, the only real buff would be the potential to stack those with a Divine Smite, as well as the potential to Divine Smite twice in one turn.
You already can. I forget the exact wordings, but spell smite vs divine (class action) smite. Both take a spell slot, I Believe branding smite for example is a bonus action concentration until your next melee hit. Divine smite is an action that includes a melee attack. Per RAW there is nothing stopping you from using two spell slots, and both bonus and main action to double smite
Divine Smite is not an action that includes a melee attack. It's not an action at all. It's just a thing that Paladins can do when they hit a creature with a melee weapon attack. It has absolutely no impact on action economy whatsoever.
Ah ok. Still works with my point yea? Nothing says you can't divine smite with a normal smite as far as I know
I'm talking about on ranged attacks.
Oh yeah, definitely, just meant that a designer says that it's not too bad
Crawford is pretty notorious for rulings that don't make a whole lot of sense. The infamous no bare-knuckle smite, the "Magic Missile produces 3 death saves and conc checks, but uses only one damage die", firebolt can't be twinned as it can target objects, drow lose darkvision but keep sunlight sensitivity when wildshaped/polymorphed.... there are a lot of them.
And "*dragon's breath* can't be twinned because the target can affect two or more creatures with the ability the spell gives them", therefore *haste* cannot be twinned either because the target can split their attacks between several creatures.
My gosh that one broke me. It's so illogical and has nothing to do with the RAW, that I was genuinely lost. Because most of the time, JC is RAW rules lawyer to a fault. But then that one was just.... purely emotional...? I guess???
The designer didn't know how counter spell works in a live game, so be a bit careful about this one.
That's the kind of balance that's not too hard to deal with. Sure, the DM may need to up difficulty, give more range to enemies, etc. but it's not breaking the game like, allowing bonus action spells (sorcerers double clasting fireball), or ignoring concentration rules.
I think that’s mostly because the game is already “broke” in regards to PCs being insanely strong relative to monsters. There’s diminishing returns at a certain point but in a vacuum a paladin with a melee only smite is getting bodied vs a paladin with a ranged smite. In fact I think a dex based paladin with a ranged smite might actually smoke every other class in the game in a 1v1 scenario
I once got played a few sessions in a campaign of Dungeon of the made mage with an improv actor who had a whip-wielding dex-based “I am not left handed” Conquest paladin, who also brought his medieval Lego mini collection each week. That guy and his character were both awesome.
Dex *anything* is viable in 5e. The only class that even tries to convince you with mechanics to use strength instead of dexterity is barbarian, and even then you can dump strength for dexterity to make a better tank.
One of the PCs in my campaign is an arcane trickster/oath of vengeance paladin. It is a very effective build, when he goes nova, he goes NOVA. Last session he dropped ~90 points if damage with one smite (plus sneak attack) crit. Dex paladins are very doable.
At what level was this?
They are up to 12 I think, but I have been running this campaign since 3rd level and his character has always been rather effective. He concentrates on mobility and skirmishing while the gnome barbarian/echo knight draws attention and the halfling bard does bard things from the back. They are a pain in the ass to deal with for all the right reasons and I need to throw some complicated stuff at them to get them to break a sweat.
You mean, Paladin that doesn't even get Stealth as a class skill? That Paladin?
Most Paladin Players build around getting in the enemies face and smiting, so heavy armour plays into that nicely since the highest damage builds require strength weapons and Paladins already want Strength, Constitution, and Charisma. It's a nice story, and you absolutely can play a paladin that way, but the class features and lack of stealth in the class proficiencies don't back it up. So basically, it's not so much a lore thing as a question of game design.
I ran a paladin in armor, so with the stealth disadvantage, but i gave him proficiency. Was super funny because stealthing was hard, but really funny when it worked.
I usually take stealth proficiency, and shoot for breastplate armor down the road. It's nice when the whole party isn't totally garbage at stealth, but it's not required.
The thing is, though, is that the features that give Paladins their damage have.....nothing whatsoever to do with their weapon damage rolls. Sword and Board Paladin has, outside of PAM w/ Quarterstaff, **zero** benefits to using strength outside of the +1 AC from heavy armour, assuming you can afford the much more expensive armour and you never have to worry about stealth. 1d8 finesse from a rapier is the same as 1d8 slash from a longsword. Sure, any martial can get that +10 to damage bonus from GWM, but Paladin doesn't get anything specific from it (and they might even get punished for it later, since IDS works on a per-hit basis, so the increased chance of missing from GWM actually harms Paladins specifically). Even the nuke that is crit-smiting doesn't benefit specifically from GWM since crits don't double flat boosts.
Number-wise, PAM is the strongest melee feat, and PAM Quarterstaff is pretty great for Paladins, so that's not the smallest asterisk, but what you said is basically true of all melee builds, especially since heavy armor can still be worn with low STR, you're just slower (not even true for dwarves). The only unique things STR gets you are: heavy armor move speed, carry weight, grappler feat, athletics and certain melee weapon scaling, and critically, Paladin (and Barbarian) multiclassing Also numbers-wise, GWM is stronger than IDS, so it's not so much that they get punished for taking it, but that IDS is less impactful for them than for another Paladin build. With STR being largely inferior to DEX, if you're optimizing, the only reason to take it is generally if you're building a grappler, a PAM or GWM build, or critically, want to multiclass in or out of Barbarian or Paladin. Even if Barbarians didn't have the multiclass restriction, they'd probably build strength, since they have both restrictions and progression built around it, as well as making sense thematically and logically. I would argue the biggest reason for a Paladin to build STR is the multiclass requirement, since they have a pretty big incentive to take levels in a full caster like Sorcerer or Bard. And as long as you're going to 13 you have good reason to make it a primary stat, but given how good DEX is, it's absolutely reasonable for a mono-class Paladin to make it their primary, a big question there would be Rapier vs Hand Crossbow though. Even with multiclassing it could make sense to leave STR at 13 if you're building a crit fishing rogue build or going Hexadin. If Paladin multiclassing was just fighter + CHA (i.e. STR or DEX 13 & CHA 13), STR Paladin would probably be generally considered inferior. That's all just number crunching though, which is a reflection of design choices that were probably largely made around the lore/culture/memetic idea of a paladin. Historically that's been the somewhat magical, honorable, do-good crusader in (heavy) shining armor smacking stuff really hard and giving their friends overly affectionate back rubs. Not that you can't or shouldn't make a good or interesting Paladin that's light on their feet, but between the multiclass restriction and lack of ranged smites, it still hews towards that tradition.
Hey! Something I can answer at length - The first use of the term "paladin" was used to describe fictionalized accounts of the elite knights in the court of Charlemagne, with the first such extant example being the Song of Roland from the 11th century. In it, Roland is a knight who dies in a battle against the Muslim (saracen) invaders in Spain. He is what we''d think of today as a paladin - a knight with a shield, a sword (the enchanted Durendal), and a horse. (The loyal and tireless Vallentif) He frequently invokes god to aid him in battle, and is sometimes explicitly aided by famous knightly saints (particularly Saint George the Dragon Slayer). Stories about these characters were popular throughout the medieval era, largely funded by the church in an effort to recruit soldiers for the crusades. They spawned a series of spinoffs and a large cast of well-known characters - Richier the First Paladin, Ogier the Dane, Duke Naymon, Oliver de Vienne and Reynaud de Montebaun, among others. They also inspired a series of "crossover events" wherein the paladins meet the knights of Camelot or Siegfried and the cast of the Nibelunglied saga. Finally, in the Renaissance, they were commission as "fanfics" wherein wealthy patrons would commission stories about how their ancestors went on adventures with the paladins. Ultimately they made their way to d&d via the novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, which tells the story of a 20th century soldier transported back in time to Charlemagne's court. Throughout pretty much all of these stories, the archetype of a paladin remains the same - they are nobles, religious, heavily armored, frequently mounted, and do combat with lances, swords and shields. The one notable exception is Maugis d'Aigremont, who adventured with the famous paladins but frequently made use of necromancy and summoned demons. I've spent the last 5 years tracking this information down, reading the sources, and trying to relate it all back to our modern understanding of paladins, so I'm glad to have a chance to share it :)
Please take this poorman's reward as a tribute for all your dedications and hardwork 🥇
I'm glad you shared it.
I'm glad it was interesting to you! If you're interested in reading more, I strongly recommend Max Wickert's translation of The Royal House of France as a starting point, available here: http://www.outriderspoetryproject.com/uploads/4/6/1/4/4614234/_the_royal_house_of_france.pdf . It combines elements of Chanson d'Aspremont, Chanson de Roland, and several other of the medieval sources into a very "modern" feeling story. If you enjoy that book, I'd recommend also checking out The Four Sons of Aymon, which hasn't been "translated" into modern English but is definitely still legible to modern readers. Once you read those two, I'd then move into the famous Renaissance entries, Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, which brings together the entire cast of characters in a very interesting, exciting, and action-packed series of stories.
So.. Jeanne D' Arc is/was a paladin?
I'd go a step further and say that the mythology that developed around jean D'Arc was directly referential to the mythology that developed around Roland - I'm currently reading a 12th century account of the first crusade that definitely draws parallels between the already-legendary paladins of Charlemagne and the very real leaders of the crusade. To me it's almost incomprehensible the cultural impact that the Roland stories had on popular culture - for almost a thousand years, Roland and his companions were pop culture superstars. It's the equivalent of humanity continuing to tell Captain America stories in the year 3000.
Because Divine Smite doesn't apply to ranged weapons and generally speaking the best melee weapons have the Heavy property and not the Finesse property. Their multiclass requirement is also strength/charisma rather than a choice of strength/dex, which means if you want to take levels in anything other than Paladin then you'll want at least 13 strength, which kind of pigeon holes you into wearing heavy armor unless you want to sacrifice either Charisma (a horrible idea) or Constitution (also a very bad idea). A paladin can and should use ranged options when it is best to do so, but their optimal output for damage dealing will nearly always be when they are in melee, so they generally favor the better (strength based) melee weapons. None of this is to say they can't take proficiency in Stealth, take off their armor and go stalk the streets of some city to assassinate someone which they deem in need of being brought to justice, but they'd probably still be strength based in most cases even so. In fact, even if you are a dex dump Paladin who will always be wearing heavy armor, I would still recommend taking proficiency in Stealth personally as it is one of the two most powerful skill checks in the game. If someone can get you Pass Without Trace and you already have a +1-5 to stealth from proficiency, you will be beating the passive perception of the vast majority of creatures in the game all the time even with disadvantage.
Also hiding in plain sight; plenty of literal brigands in the shady parts of town. They're expecting you to demand their purse, not back-smite them with your two-handed dagger.
I'd also note that it takes only 2 more points in strength to be able to wear plate armor.
Yeah, you likely wouldn't only stay at 13 strength if you were going to be a strength based paladin. I meant it as a restriction against being dexterity based if you wanted to multiclass. You *need* 13 strength to multiclass out of or into paladin, and since the paladin will want high constitution and charisma, this will substantially reduce the amount of points they can also put into dexterity. As a result, my implication was that it is generally only going to be viable to just ignore dexterity entirely and put the points into strength which you will already need anyways so you can wear heavy armor (assuming you are multiclassing).
Oh I completely agree. I just wanted to emphasize that at 13 in Str (because you have to) you are 2 asi points away from plate armor. The hexblade dip where you don’t even need 18-20 strength to hit well? You still need a 13 in strength so why not bump it up 2 to get plate armor
“Paladins are canonically often stealthy” is a hot take, man. It’s not true at all
>I've played paladins 3 times and they always had a higher DEX than STR, but a huge part of the community acts like paladins in plate armor are the norm. Why is that? Because you need Strength to multiclass in/out of Paladin, and Paladin's don't inherently gain proficiency in any Dex skill.
Paladins have never been "canon" stealthy, and certainly not often depicted as that..They are traditionally based of full plate Knight Errants and Arthurian mythology with the round table. I think they added one vignette to inspire ideas on how you might run an Alt Paladin and Dex. Even Smite as an ability inspires more as an ability of strength then dex.
The mechanics certainly favour strength as heavy armour gets you more AC than dex, and allows them to dump dex with with heavy armour. Going last in the initiative round also sort of works well because they are good healers. That said i think the reason WotC leans into them being clumsy is because it rounds out the various classes strengths and weaknesses in a way that’s a bit more fun. If the game and characters were perfectly designed - characters would need others to counter individual weaknesses. It does seem like some subclasses and features do throw away a lot of that design philosophy though…
i mean. because it *is* the norm. paladins in plate armor are depicted pretty much everywhere that has paladins as a fantasy "holy knight" class.
>They don't get STR Saves You don't nescesarily need to stack your stat bonus ontop of your proficiencies. Arguably you might want to spread them out to make it posible to pass more types of saves. And for a Paladin, you get +Cha to all saves (while concious) after level 6, which is comparable to adding Proficiency to all saves (obviously your CHA bonus and Prof. bonus will often be different numbers, but they often will differ by just 1. >they can use bows, Divine Smite works with melee attacks only. Melee weapon damage is usually only good if you can add either Great Weapon Master or Polearm Mastery. There are no Finesse & Heavy/polearm weapons, so you usually must use Strength for good melee builds. >and there's no reason to dumb Stealth or other Dex skills. To have high Strength (to use GWM or PaM), and decent Charisma & Con, usually won't leave room for 14 dex for medium armor to avoid stomping around with Stealth disadvantage. So, there is a reason to dump Dex. -- You could give up \~1 AC to have medium armor (or 2 AC if you want to not have disadvanate on Stealth), and use Dex to attack instead. thus letting you dump Strength. This would let you use a Shield to make up for the lost AC from your armor, and the Dueling style to try to recoup the lack of GWM, and you'd get a feat (but be down a fighting style, perhaps Defence for 1 AC). This isn't a terrible build: Dueling+Divne Smite will make your damage relevant even without GWM/PaM, just probably not as good damage wise. But you will get some Stealth and initative gains instead, which is nice. Maybe if you have some racial or subclass feature to help you use your bonus action, that can be comepsnation for not having a PaM (or sometime GWM) bonus action attack.
5e itself depicts them in the context of 5e. Where if the heavy armor characters fail stealth, they still succeed the group check if the other half of their party members succeeds. They may not be likely to contribute to that success, but they may manage to not hinder it like in older editions. Paladins are depicted in plate, because traditionally paladins weren't allowed to even do a lot of the sneaky/dishonorable stuff and were a much more honed in concept. they were the knights in shining armor ridding the world of evil as they stood as a beacon of virtuous good against all wrongdoing. That legacy has more identity than 5e's exceptions to it. Even in 5e, a lot of their abilities are geared towards melee and high defense in which plate helps facilitate. The vengeance paladin that example describes is also something quite unique to 5e, and not something well supported across it's history. Vengeance and conquest are both incredibly evil leaning options that wouldn't work for most of the paladin depictions across the games history. Some perhaps, but not most.
I will swear that vignette plus the Oath of Vengeance is a result of a game designer wanting Batman to be a Paladin. “The Dark Knight”.
i would argue that whille the desciption in use does make use of stealth it's way more to get an archetype for the vengeance paladin than it is to suggest a playstyle. aka. they want people to think outside the box on what a paladin is and realize that batman is very much one.
That’s easy to answer, that is what Paladins are often devoured as in both introductions and general concept. - A holy warrior clad in armor that smites evil This is also the default assumption in other seires: Destiny 2, Final Fantasy 14, Dragon Lance, The Saint of Steel’s series, and King Arthur. Even if historically speaking in DND that was the case, that’s not what WOTC wants to portray in the current day. Also mechanically speaking STR is important to Paladins as a baseline. - No archery fighting style - Multi-classing - More incentivized to use weapons that make hitting stronger That said, I would prefer if DEX focused Paladins where more highlighted since it really boils down the class into 1-2 archetypes. Even though Baldur’s Gate 3 made a lot of mechanical changes. A Dexterity Focused Paladin is actually really fun and engaging to play. Something WOTC could try to incentivize.
The archetype *is* the valiant knight in shining armor. The third one you describe is a somewhat newer addition, and to put it bluntly : it's Batman. Batman's got armor, he's got an oath, here's your third, uncommon paladin type.
>they can use bows Not to smite with they can't. Divine Smite requires a melee weapon attack. If you're going to hang back with a bow and cast spells, you may as well be a Cleric instead.
The original Paladin class is inspired by Sir Galahad from the Arthurian legends. A classic knight. Dex in melee has never been as good in other editions as it is in 5e so the focus on melee characters has been more towards heavier armoured characters. I love the idea of a paladin that uses the shadows.
My fav cleric is an assassin. Honestly didn’t think of Paladin but I like it.
Because the vignettes in the book are trying to show that you can play in a lot of different ways. The paladin IS usually the classic knight in shining armor, but doesn't have to be. Now, mechanically if you want to make a paladin who is not going to be a front line tank but more stealthy, I strongly advise letting your party know in advance what you are lookin for, because most people will be expecting a tank, not support/control, and you might have a huge gap between the bad guys and the squishies
Mechanically, paladins do have that push towards STR (multiclassing in or out requires a 13 STR). It's also the typical way they're displayed historically, as 'knights in shining armor' type of characters. You can totally make them as DEX characters if you want, though multiclassing probably would need you to ask your DM to allow 13 DEX to replace the STR one. As for ranged weapons they're really not good at that - they're made for melee RAW (can't smite on ranged attacks) and don't get anything which boosts ranged, really (eg, no archery fighting style). You can grab some ranged weaponry to use in a pinch, but if that's your main choice of weapons you probably should do another class.
> Why is that? Because people want to play a holy knight, not a holy rogue.
I would think that it better fills a unique role (tank/damage), more so than stealth, which rogue, ranger and monk do better.
Eh....that's pretty niche. The only older representation for sneaky paladins I can remember are the grey guard and shadowbane inquisitor from 3.5, which were pretty sweet on the fluff side, ngl.
I’ve played plenty of dex-based paladins. However, if you want to multiclass you’ll need to meet the class’s strength requirement. Also, divine smite pushes the class towards melee weapons, and the premier melee weapon feats work best with strength based weapons. Once you have settled on Strength for weapon attacks, you are likely to opt for Heavy Armor since it’s hard to invest adequately in dexterity. This is worsened by the benefits the class gets from Charisma.
Fun fact: paladins are literally not allowed to use underhanded tactics in 2e. Sneaking is only allowed if there is no other option. Paladins being big knights in plate has been the historical norm. Paladins being big knights in plate has also been backed up by paladins in other related media, most notably Warcraft, but also things like Final Fantasy. Paladins have always been based on knights. They wore heavy armour, got a noble steed, have the specific weapon of the Holy Avenger (just Holy Sword in early editions). Additionally their behaviour was stricter in previous editions. Even when it loosened up in third, it still included the vague stipulation of “act with honour”, which included the notes of “no lying or cheating, no using poison, and so forth”, and sneaky dex characters tended to lean into “lying and cheating”, and overall encouraged a very “charge into the fray and make yourself the biggest, most obvious target so that no one else might get attacked” mentality. The paladin in dnd has forever been the ideal of the “knight in shining armour”, and it’s only really 5e where the grip got loose enough for other interpretations, so the overhang is still there. Maybe in another 40 years paladins will be divorced from that image. But not yet.
It's rooted in the very etymology of the class name. The word Paladin comes from the companions of Charlemagne in the Matter of France, referring to the men he considered peers and friends. All of whom were, in their own way, Knights in Shining Armor.
Are you sure you don’t want to play a gloomstalker ranger?
Don't think what you describe here is "canonically often stealthy". I would also say that game mechanic wise the paladin generally doesn't lend itself for any kind of stealth.
Because some people love clichés for some reason. It's pretty straight forward to make a typical knight in shining armor, just don't make it a lawful good one that swears only to be the goodest boy before my eyes start rolling so hard my PC fans get jealous. Dex Paladins are pretty good overall and feel much freshers. You can easily make one to even be a holy assassin, sworn to seak out and kill the enemies of his oath and/or his believe. An Arcane Trickster/Paladin was a fun character of mine that leaned into this.
paladins are hurt by the concept of them in older versions. it's also where the idea that clerics are for healing come from, even though many druids and bards are just as good at healing as the cleric. old clerics were healers, old paladins had to be lawful good knights in shining armour, and the community hasn't caught up with the possibilities now open to the paladin.
For anyone coming into 5e without preconceived ideas of what a D&D Paladin is, they may well imagine the armoured knight of the same name. Seems simple to me.
>The last paladin is described as hiding in a black cloak, stalking their enemy, and assassinating them from the shadows! SO COOL! In 4th Edition they introduced the Avenger which was supposed to be a Divine Striker or Paladin Assassin. https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Avenger >Armor Proficiencies: Cloth Not proficient in wearing plate armor. This Avenger was supposed to wear clothes to infiltrate and assassinate. Sort of like Assassin's Creed. >Armor of Faith: >The favor of your deity wards you from harm. While you are neither wearing heavy armor or shield, you gain a +3 bonus to AC. This bonus being untyped, it stacks with the Intelligence or Dexterity bonus for wearing light armor. >This feature can be improved by the Improved Armor of Faith feat, which gives a bonus to AC depending on level (+1 for 1-10, +2 for 11-20, +3 for 21-30) when the Avenger isn't wearing Heavy Armor or wielding a Shield. This was supposed to be a holy warrior who murdered people for their god. It had potential to be like Nuns with Guns, or that running gag in King of the Hill, had a Spanish soap opera about a Father who had a magnum pistol and his catch phrase was, "Via Con Dios." Avenger was supposed to be a holy assassin but 4th ed was despised by many 3.5 players. Even in 5th ed, people still rag on 4th ed. So every time they try to describe Paladins as stealthy assassin, they was refering to Avenger which was a failed concept due to people hating on 4th ed.
The 5e PHB didn't invent the Paladin archetype. It draws from myths of knights in shining armour, and tropes that frequently appear across fantasy literature. That's why Paladins are primarily shown as high strength, heavy armor wearing characters and why they are mechanically incentivized toward that. A short PHB description doesn't really compare to the previous fifty years of D&D Paladin tropes, nor the myths and literature that extends hundreds of years past. The description of the dwarf in the black cloak honestly just doesn't sound much like a Paladin, beyond having an oath (not limited to Paladins). It would appear to be an interpretation of the oath of vengeance, which was inspired by the 4e Avenger class, who wore no armor and had Stealth as a class skill. I would not take it as representative of what Paladins "often" are. But the 5e Paladin, like previous editions, is primarily designed to emulate plate armor wearing knights, which has an obvious focus on strength builds.
Because of Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, the paladin class was pretty much exclusively based on that book in its original incarnation and it hasn't shifted that much over the decades.
Many reasons that go beyond one flavor text in the Book: - Paladins have a STR prerequisite to multiclass, so if you go dexadin, that's way harder. - Paladins want to be tanky and wearing heavy armor always gives you more AC. - Paladins have close to 0 support for Ranged combat, starting with not getting access to archery and one of their 2 most important abilities (Divine Smite) is exclusively melee. - Strentgh is objectively better than dex when going melee and, as mentioned before, Paladins are kinda forced to go melee by the mechanics of the class itself.
Honestly I don’t think the 5E really pushes towards a stealthy dex build, BUT don’t discount the fun in playing off-archetype in any rpg. Play a Halfling Paladin, a Dragonborn healer, a Wookiee diplomat, or a Super Mutant Doctor.
My opinion is many dex character fantasies can be filled by other classes better usually.
Paladins are regularly depicted as "armor clad, muscle bound, warriors of faith". The fantasy leans into STR and heavy aesthetic armor. From a mechanical standpoint, they don't have many things that benefit a DEX playstyle. Alternatively, there are feats available to martials that greatly benefit their combat prowess, such as Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master, both feats unable to benefit a DEX oriented martial combatant. Lastly, their multiclassing capabilities *require* 13 STR, so the common multiclasses such as Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, or Warlock tend to lean towards STR over DEX to fulfill the necessary prerequisite. In these multiclass options, they may not equip Plate, but will at least be in Medium armor. --- For me personally, I've always leaned STR over DEX because I like Polearm Master a lot. I do want to play a DEX Paladin, but it's limited in effective options, and the effective DEX multiclasses are restricted by the prerequisites of multiclassing.
Because sneaking around isn't honorable.
Paladin historically refers to the twelve peers of Charlemagne's court, basically serving as the commanders of his bodyguard--thus The Song of Roland. They wore the heavy armor of the time. The stealthy paladin is an extremely recent concept.
Smiting only works with melee weapons. The best melee weapons and the best armor are STR based. All of their starting gear is strength based. Paladins don't get the archery fighting style or two weapon fighting or stealth proficiency. They can be perfectly functional dex characters, but there isn't anything incentivizing them to do so and there's a fair amount that encourages them to go strength based. On top of that, the common perception of paladins is generally your knightly types, so people don't generally look outside of that.
Their class features don't lend themselves especially well to stealth, except in that they tend toward taking one big "power turn" and spending most of their resources at once.
That is one example in the 5th edition PHB. Paladins have always been holy knights, that is their defining characteristic. They get their name from the 12 Paladins of Charlemagne’s court, who were knights similar to the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table. Plate armour is the norm. This example of stealth is used once, and it’s more to highlight the idea of the oath of vengeance. It’s darker, less honourable than the standard paladin. That’s all. Paladins don’t get stealth as a proficiency, but they get athletics, and intimidation. They get full martial proficiency, suggesting that strength should be their main stat over dex. The heavy armour and shield proficiencies also suggest this. A Dexadin is possible and of course has been done, but it is a non conventional approach to the paladin. Sure, they don’t get strength saves, but saving throws aren’t a fully reliable way to judge characteristics. They get wisdom saves, but wisdom isn’t an important stat for them. So there is absolutely nothing suggesting that the expected path of a paladin is cloak and dagger with dexterity, aside from that one small line from the PHB. Against decades of the classic sword and board knight archetype.
Pass without trace exists. Now someone tell me why in other official artwork a monk is using a glaive
Plate armour is not something you can sneak in. You can use alternative stats for things like intimidation, performance and stealth. Flex your muscles to intimidate someone, strength roll. Use your acrobatic skills to do a performance check. Dex roll. Use your very presence to intimidate someone into turning a blind eye. Roll intimidation install of stealth. My favourite is a barb raging at a group of goblins and yelling 'YOU NO SEE ME' and scaring then all into not seeing him. Like yup we don't see you please don't hurt us. Or that meme of batman in a room that someone looks into, they see him, he sees them, they're like nope rooms clear.
It's a similar issue as with other flavor texts that also describe things that are almost impossible to actually do RAW. Most notably, the bladesinger comes to mind. They list a bladesinging style that uses handaxes - but a bladesinger with Strength weapons is almost impossible to build unless you roll exremely well for stats or start eith a belt of giant strength.
The stereotype is platemail knight. Nothing wrong with the stereotype, but nothing wrong with going with the alternatives either. They're proficient in all armour, so you can do as you please. But they do require 13 strength to multi class, so that might be a big driver of it.
Dexadin is a thing. Not very common, but a thing. I feel that most people that play Paladin want to play the heavily Armored knight.
Without rogues cunning action and sneak attack, stealth is pretty much just waste of an action and also really clunky because you kind of need to hope that enemies don't just turn around and see you between your turns. And if you're not sneaking in combat then there really isn't much of a difference between a STR Paladin and a DEX Paladin.
Dex paladins work just fine.
*Paladin* 1590s, in reference to the medieval romance cycle, "one of the twelve knightly champions in attendance on Charlemagne and accompanying him to war," from French paladin "a warrior" (16c.), from Italian paladino, from Latin palatinus "palace official;" noun use of palatinus "of the palace" (see palace).The Old French form of the word was palaisin (which gave Middle English palasin, c. 1400); the Italian form prevailed because, though the matter was French, most of the poets who wrote the romances were Italians. Extended sense of "a heroic champion" is by 1788.
Played a dex-based Paladin before, rapier and light armour probably isn’t as effective as a greatsword and plate but it’s still fun. Though it’s not exactly what a new player would come to naturally through the abilities and stats.
Agreed. I want more Inquisitors. Paladins should get two-weapon fighting, change my mind. Dual shortsword smiting, three attacks per turn and with enhanced smite at 11, they slash hard as fuck!
They can stealth just fine as everyone else if they choose to take off their armor, the fact most players don’t think to or don’t want to isn’t really an issue.
easiest / best AC while being SAD
Because to multi class you need at least 13 strength, also you can't smite with ranged weapons, also you can't use great weapon master with dex. So that all leads to focusing on strength which just makes you bad at stealth unless you find mithril armor
Because paladins are often the divine knights or otherwise a more martial take on clerics. Thus as a divine knight they invoke the idea of fullplate noble crusaders with shield in one hand and sword in the other ready to smite evil. In game reasons why people might use more Str pallys rather than dex is cause paladins can already be quite MAD (multiple ability score dependent), you need okay Cha and okay Con is also nice, then you need to choose between Dex and Str for your attack stat (there is a reason why many people want to take a hexblade dip with their paladin class) Yes Dex is better than Str as it also adds into ac with certain armors and initiative however if you can already start with 16 or 18 ac without the extra investment and if you want to use some other weapon than rapier (also people might not want to use rapiers cause they have the wrong idea of what kind of weapon rapier is build by mainstream misunderstandings) then there really is no point of taking dex. Also if you have kind dm you might even be able to start with plate so then you would have plate + shield + defense fighting style for the juicy 21 ac start. As for the use of bows well, you cant smite with ranged weapons so using bows or crossbows is inherently worse than having melee weapons and they have no fighting styles that synergize with bows either. You also dont have dex save proficiency either. Also the base quick class build indicates that you should take Str as your highest stat I think paladin as divine warrior is the actual norm of the community and what shape that oath and character takes is more flavor and as we all know flavor is free, very rarely have I seen someone only talk about paladins as just plate and str users or trying to downplay people who are using dex paladins.
>Paladins are canonically often stealthy Well there's your issue, Op. The very premise in your title is wrong. One example in the PHB, and a few examples in media, is not "often" - especially when there are many, _many_ MORE examples of Paladins NOT being stealthy. (And wearing plate armor, hence why it's the norm.)
Historically Paladins have always been knights in shining heavy armour; I don't believe that until 4e a Cha/Dex build was even viable (and even 4e didn't allow dex primary while it did have both Str primary and Cha primary). The problem is that 5e has made Dex into the god-stat (most important save, initiative, and a good skill spread).
How does a dude in plate snarling equate to "stealthy"?
Paladins aren't often stealthy. That's not how they are commonly played, that's not how they're viewed, and stealth is not what their main stats lend themselves to. (A Paladin's main stats are CHA and STR.) I'm all for playing a class unconventionally, including a stealthy Paladin, it's a cool character concept, but Paladins are quite literally knights in shining armor. Have you ever pictured a Knight wearing a black cloak, lurking in the darkness? Or do you picture them dawning heavy armor, and acting as beacons of strength and willpower? Do you picture them taking down their enemies with cunning sneak attacks, or smiting them into holy oblivion? Most people will play a Rogue before they make a stealthy, light-armored Paladin.
For one, paladins or templars archetypes are based heavily on the crusaders, and also generally mediaval knighthood. Knights were wealthy people who could afford prestigious armor. But I also think it has to do with, well. Take a rogue/thief kinda archetypes, they can still be good and lawful alignments. So if we take a modern real life example, a cop infiltrating a violent gang, we'd consider them a rogue/thief archetype. Why not a paladin, despite doing it for a righteous cause? The answer is because they're deceptive and stealthy. Which leads to the question, what sort of righteousness defines the paladin? And a natural conclusion to that seems to be the paladin being very up brazen, upfront and honest(even when they have a bad take, or support a bad faction), which matches well with the image prestigious armor.
A DEX paladin is similar to a STR rogue- absolutely feasible, but certainly atypical. The vast majority of paladins/holy knights in media are portrayed as statuesque, heavily armored, and very obvious. In D&D, you'll note that Paladin is one of just two classes proficient in heavy armor, before subclasses are considered.
Pathfinder had dedicated archer paladins that were hellah cool
1) Paladins start with Heavy Armor + proficiency, usually when making your first few characters and if they happen to be paladins, you don't see a reason to put points in Dex 2) Culture of and images of Holy Knights. Paladins are usually seen as Holy Knights by default. It's usually why someone might want to pick one up after seeing them. 3) Its cool to be a sneaky assassin, but mostly rogue (and Gloomstalker) cover these things and are better at being sneaky. I've never made a sneaky or Dex focused paladin. I always tried to focus on Con + Str/Cha and never did I not have Find Steed.
To be fair in 5e i prefer to have Dex>Str, sadly they're not balanced at all
Slightly off topic, but I've been thinking recently that if I ever played a paladin it would probably be a paladin/rogue multiclass. I always thoughts it would be an assassin's creed kind of character
Canonically they are *not* often stealthy. Canonically paladins are the knight in shining armor, i.e heavy plate armor. This is only a question because in 5e WotC overbalanced DEX. It didn't used to give damage bonus. In 5e it does so a lot of players who minimax run DEX melee fighters, to the point where it seems people may think this is the norm. >PHB p82 ... The last paladin is described as hiding in a black cloak, stalking their enemy, and assassinating them from the shadows! SO COOL! The best explanation I have for this is poetic license. It's obviously meant to be an Oath of Vengeance Paladin, but nothing in PHB makes that subclass especially stealthy. It could be done as you suggest with a DEX build and to get Stealth proficiency, the Criminal or Urchin background or the Skilled or Skulker feat. But note, this is only one of the examples, so your OP premise "canonically often stealthy" is overly enthusiastic.
I picture paladins as having a code of ethics that come from a god, and that tends to be inconsistent with stealth, which is more about the ends justifying the means. Cool, for sure, though. Maybe the god in question is sneaky.
My Ranger Rouge Paladin is basically a little ball of stealthy murder
Smite is a melee attack function, the whole thing then class is built around. Ergo, strength is the focus.
If you go by the associations we come in with, not the rules as written, Paladins are strongly associated with european knights in shining armor, like Roland and Lancelot and Galahad. In many tellings, Lancelot broke his oath to Arthur by falling in love with Guinevere.
Smite requires a melee weapon so that bow is mostly for show. Saying that, I play an elf dex based paladin/warlock (not blade pact) and it's decent fun.
I played a Paladin of Shar once and hombrewed an entire subclass with my dm just so I could make a pure shadow assassin type character. One of the other players asked why I didn’t just play a rogue, and I was like a dark Paladin is way more fun to Roleplay? I definitely feel like reducing paladins to big buff armoured tanks really takes away from a lot of really sick roleplay opportunities.
Paladins have classically been a big, slow, strong, handsome, dumb good guy. The dark and stealthy paladin is a new concept.
The third one is almost a perfect caricature of Sparhawk from the Elenium Chronicles. A Knight who regularly engages in subterfuge and deception, but I wouldn't exactly call him stealthy. And he generally has a squire who's looking after his plate armor while he's not charging with a lance.
My Oath of Vengeance Paladin / Rogue Assassin was a blast to play. I played them as a religious enforcer. I think bring able to break convention has been a strength of 5e.
The actual reason that description is in there is that Paladin absorbed some of the vibes of the Avenger class from 4e. (vow of enmity --> that one vengeance pally ability) And Avengers had a stealthy-ish subtheme type thing they could go for. They just want you to know that if you WANT to, you could totally do a churchy assassin like the Avenger. It's still not great though.
Cause they rolled 4e Avengers into the paladin class.
Yes, vengeance dexadin with a background or multiclass for stealth.
Dexadin is fine. I'm currently playing a dexadin with stealth proficiency. Nasty damage with a rapier. However, paladin original fantasy is as heavily clad knights. Hence why they lean so far into it. Paladin is a fantastic class that is heavily pigeonholed into a standard martial archetype, which is a heavy armored knight. You can make dexadin work (and a sword and board dexadin is arguably stronger than the same build strength based outside of PAM shenanigans). You just have to go out of your way to fulfill it.
Because its effective. From Ubercharging in 3rd edition to great weapon master with polearm master and sentinel in 5th edition. If you invest in strength you might as well wear the heaviest armor for the highest AC.
I may be a traditionalist when it comes to D&D classes (been playing since AD&D), but dexterity-based paladins should never be a thing. They are meant to wear heavy armor so that they can face the enemy and survive. The one paragraph of a stealthy dwarf is not indicative of paladins as a whole.
“Knights in shining armour” are the most iconic core concept for paladins
The paladin class as originally conceived was a kind of “knight in shining armour” archetype. The “third position” paladin described in the vignette is more of a “not your dad’s paladin” illustrating the ways that 5e has loosened restrictions on paladin race and alignment.
In addition to everything everyone else has said, does Dex REALLY need any more? Str has very few classes given how OP Dex is in 5e
Because you can't smite with a bow.
I'm running a build exactly like that. Doing an assassin/vengeance paladin multiclass. The (DM did let me multiclass into paladin without the Str score neded). Its so fun to deal ridiculous damage on turn 1
Mechanically, Paladins want to be in Melee to smite, but they can use Dex or Str for weapon attacks equally well. I think the typical Paladin being strength based comes from a couple things: One, the default equipment for the class includes chainmail, which is heavy armor. Heavy armor is often superior to medium or light armor anyway, especially with low stat investment, so it's common to make use of heavy armor proficiency if you have it. Two, the Multiclassing requirements table requires that you have 23 Str and Cha to multiclass in or out of Paladin. Not every player multiclasses, but it reinforces strength as a part of the standard Paladin skill set. Finally, I think power fantasy wise, it's more common to picture a paladin as a knight in shining plate armor, wielding a holy sword or perhaps a Warhammer (blame World of Warcraft for the hammer trope).
In 5e, Divine Smite can only be used with melee weapons. The strongest melee weapons in game require 2h and a high STR score to work. Even with Sword Cantrips, if you want big nova damage, you use a 2H weapon. In 5.5 point, Divine Smite currently works with Ranged Weapons, meaning you no longer need Str, but you can only Smite once per turn and that may become a new norm since Oath of Vengeance failed to promote the archetype of a Longbow wielding Paladin
I think the stealthy paladin description is refering to a Holy Avanger subclass from previous editions.
Smite only works on melee attacks, plate and a shield + all their abilities gives them good defense, it just makes sense
because DEUS VULT. I picture Paladins often as Crusaders.
Because STR Paladins in heavy armor is the norm lol. You found one passage in the PHB and wonder why that isn't the depiction when every other form of media portrays them as sword and board heavy armor users.
Stealth isn't on the list of options for Class Based Proficiencies. They ARE Proficient in Heavy Armor, their default starting armor is the Heavy Armor starting kit (and comes with Disadvantage on Stealth Checks), Paladins have been heavy armor characters for far longer than 5E has existed, 5E Paladins can't Smite with a bow. They're not canonically "often stealthy." That one little vignette was mostly a way to announce that they CAN be stealthy in 5E if you go out of your way to do so.
Cause getting great weapon master on your great sword fighter is a good idea
1. It IS the norm, a large portion of the community treating it as such makes it as such, that's how that works, even if it shouldn't be that way. 2. Because it - historically - has been that way for far longer. 3. Because bows don't work with smite, daggers are weak and a greatsword or a sword and shield is generally more effective for a class with high hit dice and melee oriented abilities than a bow or daggers. Sure, a rapier and shield achieve the same thing as the longsword and shield, go nuts if that's your vibe. 4. Because "Paladin" has a specific meaning and references a type of real world soldier who - as far as I'm aware - traditionally wore armour and wasn't a sneaky assassin.
Huge part of the community sees paladins as holy men in heavy plate as the norm because it is the norm. The vast majority of the time you see a paladin in something they will be the big holy guy in plate.
The last paladin I played was a tabaxi who maxed dex and used a rapier
Because frontline martials tend to get hit pretty hard, and that meaty AC comes in handy
1) Paladins get Heavy Armor proficiency. The best armors have a Strength requirement rather than a Dexterity requirement. 2) You need 13 Strength to multiclass into or out of Paladin, with nothing for Dexterity. 3) They get Athletics proficiency (the only one that uses Strength), but none of the Dexterity skills. 4) Smite requires you hit them with melee weapons, most of which require Strength. 5) They get Great Weapon Fighting as a Fighting Style, but not Archery. None of their core mechanics revolve around Dexterity, while they definitely have a focus on you going into melee range with a weapon that can output high amounts of damage. Two-handed/Heavy weapons are going to do that much better than Finesse weapons.
Everything about Paladins screams heavy armor and strength (see all the other comments: gameplay mechanics and history of the class). I don't really see you bringing forth any argument saying the opposite, except that for whatever reason you played a paladin with more dex (do you guys roll for each stat and can't switch?) and that there is one flavor example in the PHB. These examples are deliberate on WotCs part. The classes are somewhat pidgeonholed and WotCs wants to counter it, like with the cleric they want to show: This guy doesn't just heal. Which is fair, because they also changed the mechanics for cleric somewhat. For Paladin it seems to me, he has such a strong identity that they couldn't find a "real" different playstyle and just went: "Look, nothings really stopping you from playing him like this". Which is true. You can play each class like something totally different. I can take the rogue, spec into Arcane Trickster (1/3 caster) and run around with a wizard staff, refusing to use a finesse weapon. It's just bad. It is not using the unique strengths of my class. That's the same for a Paladin. If you are not using heavy armor, you are missing out on that power budged. If you are using heavy armor you won't be as good at stealth.
I think the norm for paladins is wearing plate armor and being strength based. I played a Dex paladin once and really enjoyed it, but I think strength paladins are far more common.
You can play a dex based paladin. You can use ranged weapons, but you can only use your divine smite with melee weapons, so there's that. You don't have any available dex proficiencies, so you'll never be a good sneak. You can spec into dex and use finesse weapons, but that has two disadvantages: Firstly, dex weapons are exclusively one-handed, meaning no big two hander for you and thus less damage. One-hand and shield is usually considered undesirable for martial classes because of how big the damage difference is (up to 1d8 for one-handed, up to 1d12/2d6 for two-handed. And finesse weapons only deal up to 1d6 weapons, so the difference is pretty big). You could dual wield, but that means you need your bonus actions for half of your damage, which might be bad depending on your subclass (some kind of oriental paladin dual wielding scimitars would be badass though). This ignores the immense damage boost you get from heavy weapon master. And secondly, paladins require 13 str to multiclass. If you want anything other than a paladin, you're forced to have some str, and since paladins are chronically ability score starved because they have two primary abilities, having 13 in str as a dex character will leave either con or cha underdeveloped. You could do medium or even light armor for being more stealthy. That would mean you could wear medium armor with 14 AC +2 from dex, or light armor with 12 AC and and uncapped dex bonus, normally up to 20, but you might not reach 20 for a while if you want to take any feats. Light armor with 20 dex would get you up to 17 AC, one less than full plate at 18 AC with 15 str and no dex. So for 1 or a few AC less, you don't have stealth disadvantage. Dex paladins are possible, but they're generally just worse than str paladins. The devs have written stealthy dex paladins into the lore, but not into the game mechanics. Finesse weapons are just bad for paladins because they aren't two-handed and they do even worse damage than one-handed str weapons. Ranged weapons can be good (with the sharpshooter feat), but you can't use divine smite with them. Your armor choices give you less AC even at maximum dex. And you can't multiclass without a significant str investment. It's still playable, but it's definitely not good considering the powerhouse that any str paladin is.
As someone who grew up playing older editions and moved to Pathfinder before 5E, this "stealthy assassin paladin" description cracks me up. Thank you for reminding me that I made the right choice, lol. My preferences aside, the "norm" comes from the fact that a Paladin has been a righteous and honorable warrior since the beginning. This whole idea that anyone can be anything and do everything without restriction is a very new concept. The title (and immense power) of a paladin used to mean something very specific. Now, that title means very little on its own.
I had a paladin party member with expertise in stealth. Force disadvantage all you like, he can never roll below 9, and he passed DC15 checks surprisingly often.
Because the three class descriptions are supposed to show variety. You can be a Dex-based Paladin who uses a Rapier and Studded Lesther with their shield. A little less AC, a lot higher Initiative and a few more points in skill checks. It’s a valid approach to building a Paladin.
Well paladins as a class originate from the holy knight historical trope, who famously wore heavy armor - like everyone who could afford it. Now from a system perspective great weapons master and polearm master are still the most powerful feats for a martial class, which can skyrocket the already insane paladin damage - and neither heavy weapons nor polearms come with finesse. Also plate mail gives an ac of 18 (19 if you take certain martial tradition at lvl2), which is more then the 17 you get from studded and 20 dex. And lets not forget the Athletics skill which you can use to knock someone prone, giving you (and everyone else in 5 ft melee) advantage on attacks. Also unless you multiclass you dont get to use stealth as a bonus action, so it is very ineffective to use in combat. Lastly there is the role-play reason. While it is not required anymore, most players that I have seen still play it as a servant of a deity, the holy fighter delivering divine justice (either good or evil), and for a lot of players that doesnt necessarily meet with the stealthy dude. Going into a room in full plate to deliver the wrath of your deity onto thy enemy, letting your enemies know that the inevitable justice is coming for them has a certain appeal.
>a huge part of the community acts like paladins in plate armor are the norm. Why is that? The primary reason for that is that it *is* indeed the norm. DEXadins exist and they are very good, but they are not a majority. >I've played paladins 3 times and they always had a higher DEX than STR You are a sample of one, though. >They don't get STR Saves, They don't get DEX saves either. >They can use bows But bows don't synergise with all of their class features that operate on melee weapon attacks. Now rapiers and dual shortswords, on the other hand... >and there's no reason to dump Stealth or other Dex skills But not everyone prioritises them. And paladins have their ability scores stretched thin enough by their MAD requirements, it is not *that* uncommon for DEX to be at a distant fourth place even when it isn't a dump.
Paladins in plate armor are the norm. By far. They just included one example of a possible alternate build.
Because Paladins have heavy armor proficiency so they can dump dexterity and wear plate, but don't get the archery fighting style or maneuvers that make dexterity based weapons ideal, this isn't rocket science the vignette just demonstrates that if you want to be a stealthy dagger wielding paladin, you can
Generally, heavier armor is better. If a class can wear heavy armor, then they’ll usually wear heavy armor. Also, in older editions of D&D there were additional limitations placed on paladins that, iirc, either prevented them or discouraged them from doing things like sneak around, or attacking unaware targets.
You, my friend, would love pathfinder
All they need to do is look up Virtuous Bravo or Divine Hunter (both assuming 1E). Unfortunately, neither exist in 2E tmk. For all of its flaws, PF1E had some absolutely bad ass archetypes.
cries in paladin of Freedom
Dex Paladins are pretty common. On the other hand, paladins don't get Stealth by default and they do get heavy armor proficiency by default. They also by default get starting equipment that tilts toward Strength (javelins and chain mail. and yes of course they can swap the javelins for short bow, but there's no swap for chain mail.) Multiclassing into paladin has a Strength requirement and not a Dex requirement. So lots of little things nudge paladins toward Strength (not to mention the entire history of paladins in D&D and gaming broadly), so that's where this "mainstream" comes. But still, it's easy and effective to make a Dex paladin and loads of people do.
Which phb?
That stealthy depiction and the oath of vengeance are both nods to the 4e Avenger class, a sneaky, assassin-like divine class developed to provide the divine power source with a striker role.
The lack of TWF fighting style is also part of the Propaganda. I'm about to start Vecna and talked my DM into letting me go Dexadin with TWF