Shattered Kingdoms

You are saying you dont love your paladins ain?

Ain only loves his hellions and priests.

Just because the fear spell is magical doesn't mean that paladins shouldn't be able to be immune to it. Paladins are clergy granted supernatural abilities by their god, no reason that one of those supernatural abilities wouldn't be immunity to fear.

The argument that this would often leave the paladin as the only person in the room actually makes the idea better: Paladins should always prefer to die instead of fleeing from necromantic spells, no matter what their allies are doing.

The argument of "If you don't want to get feared, get enchants" is also flawed because paladins should be willing to lose everything at any time if necessary, and therefore will undoubtedly not have access to the right saves when the time for battle comes. Their fearlessness should not be proportional to their loot.

This has been implemented in DnD for years now, because it's ridiculous that a paladin should be forced to flee from a fight when the entire point of their existence is to fight evil fearlessly and to the death. The fact that a necromancer can force a paladin to flee, thereby dismantling their vow of courage, is complete absurdity.

Regardless of what supernatural abilities they have, they're still mortal and still fear things. Fear is called the 'mind killer" for a reason, because everything has some sort of fear. As it stands now, paladins are already strong enough. BoG, holy word, flame strike, healing, cure disease / blindness. They can take just about anything thrown at them. Not to mention the nimbus that htey have that makes a darky fight to the death.

If they get a spell to make it to where they can't flee, take their nimbus away that keeps people from fleeing to balance it out.

Good point. If they can nimbus a necromancer, the necro should be able to fear them. It gives balance.

Darky priests, necromancers, hellions, deep elves. Not all dark-auras can be affected by bolt of glory. Also, if you think that a paladin can "Take anything thrown at them" then you should try rolling a darkie merc/barb and own some paladin face all while laughing maniacally. It's good for the soul, really.

For example, if you wanted to roll a darky that wasn't a hellion, necromancer, or priest, (Leaving room for 9 classes) then unless you choose deep-elf you're completely immune to BoG, and if you do choose deep-elf and not one of these classes then you more than likely have access to scrolls as well, which means you should always have polymorph scrolls to be immune to BoG.

And the entire point of my suggestion is that paladins are not supposed to flee from evil, ever. Never. Doing so, in fact, should be an dishonor greater than death to any paladin. Read help vows if you think otherwise.


This is not a balance issue and will not affect game balance very much: Otherwise I'd be suggesting that paladins should be able to raise armies of up to 20 summoned holy soldiers, equip them all, have them all berserk, and then be able to massacre anything in their path, which is ludicrous. This is an RP issue that has sensible and minor effects on game balance. A paladin needs to be able to stand his ground against a necromancer without having to worry about a spell with ~1/2 round casting time and an unlucky roll turning him into a scared little sissy. The entire point of paladins is their ability to fight courageously and fearlessly.

Also wtf? Necromancers already have counters for nimbus, it's called MR. Or etherealform if you don't like enchanting crap all day long.

I support this idea. It does not create a significant balance issue, and cements their role as zealots against the darkness in a tangible way.

Ill counter the argument with necromancers study the dark arts, one of which is causing such intense fear into anyone. Why would a mere mortal be able to resist this innately simply because he worships a god?

That argument is sort of deflated by the fact that you can easily save against it with, like, 15wp.