Hello, faithful readers!
From Rogues straight to Paladins, what a trip! It is no secret that those two classes can easily clash due to how they are typically represented - with Rogues often being depicted as thieves and used as an example of Chaotic Neutral characters, and the Paladin formerly being locked into the Lawful Good alignment in previous D&D editions with a strict moral code to follow lest they lose their power. Buuut when there’s a will, there’s a way - it’s up to the players to figure it out!
Me when the Paladin slaps my hand away from their backpack (they used smite). Don’t worry Selma (the cat) is unharmed (I’m not).
It is by smiting that one becomes a Paladin
Fun fact, we French don’t say “Practice makes perfect”, but “It is by smithing that one becomes a smith” - and it’s surely by smiting that one truly becomes a Paladin, for Divine Smite is most definitely their most well known power. A huge burst of guaranteed radiant damage that you can decide to add after you hit your target - and up until the 2024 ruleset, usable multiple times per turn for free, making them the terror of bosses (and DMs) alongside high-level monks spamming Stunning Strike.
For the Paladin comes with a fairly strong fantasy - a holy warrior following a strict moral code of conduct and, in return, being empowered by that very same oath they swore. They are durable frontliners with access to divine magic and great damage output, whose only weakness lies in their fairly limited mobility and range options.
Another class-defining feature is their Aura, granting incredible boons to their party members. Even just the base Aura of Protection boosts Saving Throws to such amounts that it easily breaks the concept of bounded accuracy when compared to parties without Paladins - prompting some to say that if this feature never existed and was instead revealed today in an Unearthed Arcana supplement, many would consider it too powerful.
Early drawings to decide on what our Dwarven Paladin should look like.
At the end of the day however, everyone is happy to have a Paladin in the party, as they boost the survival rate of the entire crew by quite a lot! They reduce your chances of failing an important saving throw, they can stand and take blows for the more fragile members, they can heal and remove nefarious conditions… What’s not to love? So swear an oath and you too can become a Paladin today!
The Paladins of Solasta
So! What about our Solastan Paladins, where do they stand? Can they stand up to the rest of the crew and shoulder the heavy weights a Paladin should?
I like to imagine a painter asking for different poses and the Paladin getting more and more annoyed at the exercise.
Oath of Devotion (SRD)
The Devotion Paladin is what we would call the “Vanilla” Paladin, or the Paladin Paladin - you can’t Paladin any more than that. They uphold the ideals of justice, virtue and order, and follow the line of their ancestor from previous editions when Paladins could only be Lawful Good (although with a little more leeway).
And they are good not only in alignment but also in power! Sacred weapon, although costing you an action to use, greatly boosts your chances to hit tougher enemies for an entire fight (1 minute) without the need for Concentration. And it provides light too so you don’t have to worry about holding a torch! The 2024 version is even better by removing the action cost, increasing the length to 10 minutes (in case the fight drags on) and even allowing you to choose to inflict Radiant damage which is rarely resisted by monsters. What’s not to like?
There is a tradeoff though, the 2024 Devotion Paladin no longer gets Turn the Unholy - which was quite useful against Fiends and Undead especially if your party did not feature a Cleric. Although you can’t damage turned creatures, they are effectively out of the fight for an entire minute (as they don’t get another saving throw at the end of each of their turn!) - which heavily alleviates the danger of the encounter while you pick off the remaining non-turned enemies.
Quick sketch to define our Dwarven friend’s facial features.
Fun fact: RAW (Rule As Written), a turned creature has to Dash every turn to get as far as they can from you… which made hunting them down extremely tedious in-game, as they would do that for an entire minute! We had to implement a distance limit to avoid the unending game of cat and mice at the end of each fight where you would use this feature.
Aside from their Channel Divinity options, Devotion Paladins also have a good support spell list with spells such as Lesser Restoration or Beacon of Hope - further buffed in Solasta as we gave them the Shield spell which, let’s be honest, pushed them way above their normal power level as Paladins already have very high AC. Looking back at it, we should have given them Shield of Faith instead.
Last but not least (okay kinda least), they get Aura of Devotion which, in Solasta I, did not really do that much as there are fairly few creatures who can charm. But hey the rest of the package was so stacked that you could do with a weaker Aura!
Final Verdict? Oath of Devotion is a great subclass both in flavor and in features. It’s simple, straightforward and does what it intends to do very well.
Oath of the Motherland (Crown of the Magister)
The Motherland Paladin is another one of our OG subclasses, back when things were moving very fast for a very small team! The theme here was a little less straightforward, with “Motherland” being used in lieu of “Badlands” as these paladins swore to restore these lands to its pre-Cataclysm state. A very interesting theme that does fit the Paladin’s fantasy of devoting themselves to a greater cause.
Funnily enough, the powers they get are all fire-related. Why you might ask? Well, to survive the post-Cataclysm Badlands one had to withstand its violent and volcanic nature (especially in the early years)! This effectively turned the Motherland Paladin into the “Fire Paladin” - a simple and straightforward concept, with a few caveats.
Subclasses themed around a single damage type are unfortunately a little hard to balance, as we already briefly mentioned during our previous article when talking about the Darkweaver’s penchant for poison. As soon as you encounter enemies with resistance (or worse, immunity) to this damage type, your day is ruined - Motherland Paladins a bit less so, as they are are still Paladins meaning they get access to Radiant damage with Divine Smite and other more “normal” damage types with their weapons.
Slowly locking down the different elements for our Paladin’s look.
Furthermore, Motherland Paladins not only dealt in fire damage - they had fire resistance which they shared with nearby allies thanks to their Volcanic Aura. Considering fire was quite a frequent damage type in Solasta, this made them invaluable to a party in many encounters, even if their Channel Divinity options were a little weak.
Final Verdict? I’d say it was one of our better early subclass designs! Sure there were a few wonky elements such as blinding for 1d4 turns (which is more 3.5e than 5e), or needing a flat DC 10 DEX Save AND an action to extinguish the fires of Fiery Wrath, but overall with a tiny bit of cleaning up the archetype can stand proud on its own. Plus, the idea of a paladin engulfed in righteous flame and fury barrelling down a corridor is hilarious (and terrifying).
Oath of Tirmar (Crown of the Magister)
The Tirmar Paladin has a fairly kickass theme - their order is a remnant of the Tirmarian Inquisition dead set on hunting down Soraks wherever they can find them. They notably have the ability to deal significant increased damage against them, making them easy prey once in melee range.
This makes them a perfect fit for Solasta I and its main campaign revolving around the Sorak menace, but… a very poor choice in any other situation. In fact, it suffers from the very same issues plaguing the Ranger - conditional features. You have very cool powers that only work against a certain type of enemies, and otherwise just feel like a Paladin without subclass when not facing them.
In order to counteract that, their power was made to also work against creatures with natural darkvision. This… did end up getting a chuckle out of a few players, as it was a little arbitrary - it’d be like dealing bonus damage against colorblind people. It also had a fairly unfortunate internal name that we translated word-for-word from French until we noticed that its meaning in English could be… uh… pretty bad. So we changed that, thankfully before implementing it.
Because their powers were so in sync with their theme, the Tirmar Paladin was probably the hardest archetype to rework in our Tabletop Sourcebook to make them work on Tabletop outside a Sorak-centric campaign. We kept the anti-shapeshifter theme going but added some more general anti-magic capabilities, such as a Dispel Magic effect on their Channel Divinity, or short-range blindsight to counter illusions instead of a mere darkvision aura as many playable species have access to darkvision already.
Last few details regarding the armor, color, shape, patterns.
Final Verdict? The Tirmar Paladin is a very powerful and fitting archetype for Solasta I, but not so much outside of it. And with its rework widening their area of expertise, we could see it lightly stepping on the Oath of the Watchers Paladin’s feet, whose whole shtick is protecting mortals against otherworldly threats - and that is something we wish to avoid. Therefore the Oath of Tirmar is likely to stay within the confines of the Crown of the Magister campaign!
Oath of Judgement (Lost Valley)
Ahhhh, the Oath of Judgement, the distant cousin of the Oath of Vengeance. We wanted to have a more offensive Paladin archetype for Lost Valley, one who would go well with the story of the DLC - and what Paladin would be better suited to answer the call of the Dominion than Judgement Paladin?
Our original elevator pitch was basically “Judge Dredd” but as a Paladin. One who upholds justice in their own way - with a little less violence maybe to soften it up - but who never turns a blind eye to it, no matter how small the infraction.
Their powers are all well-known by our players, being able to snare enemies or purge allies of negative conditions with their Channel Divinity, but mostly defined by their Aura of Righteousness… which adds your Proficiency Bonus to all damage rolls. Now this was not 100% intended - and by that I mean, we first thought about limiting it to attack rolls, but then we thought “hey, wouldn’t it be nice if it could benefit AoEs as well? Surely giving a +3 damage to Fireball wouldn’t break the game”. And yes I hear you, Fireball and other AoE spells scarcely need buffs, but we thought it’d be nice if the Judgement Paladin could work in tandem with spellcasters and martial classes alike. What slipped through our mind was that people would abuse the hell out of Magic Missiles since it’d basically double or triple the damage of each missile. This was eventually fixed in the Sourcebook by reverting it back to requiring an attack roll to work.
Final Verdict? We like it! The Oath of Judgement paints a clear picture of what a Judgement Paladin would be like, and its features deliver on that aggressive character one could imagine when making one.
And there we go! One Dwarven Paladin, ready to go!
The… ??? (Solasta II)
The other (and last) Solasta II subclass that will be revealed in the demo will be the Paladin’s! What do YOU think this new subclass’ theme will be?
Community Stream #05 Friday 7th
Our last Community Stream before we start showcasing the demo! Let’s talk Classes & Subclasses - both from Solasta and official ones from 2014 and 2024. I’m interested to hear about your favorite archetypes!
Article by Tactical Myzzrym
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