I've suggested a Paladin class before, but based on a bit more play experience I'd like to revise the concept. Hit Points: As warrior. This is a melee frontliner. Class equipment 3x divine weapon - 2x shield - heavy armor - boots - racial skill - paladin skill Most of the equipment is already in the game, except the paladin skills. More on these below. You'll note that this setup is very similar to the warrior, except that he equips divine weapons instead of standard weapons and two shields instead of a helmet. In their offense capabilities, Paladins will be between priests and warriors. Warriors will typically pack 18 attack cards, this class will have 9-12 based on weapon choice. Priests typically have 6-8 (unless you forego utility spells and go vampire). What the class lacks in offense compared to warriors, he makes up in defense. Warriors have 3 block cards (unless they equip items like Blocking Mace), this class will have 6. Combined with the spells such as Healing and Impenetrable Nimbus from divine weapons, this class will be very good at defending Victory Points and narrow passages. Paladin Skills Paladins get their own skill set to make them unique as a class. Most of these skills will center around defense buffs like Immovable. I can also imagine them borrowing some trait cards from priests, such as Holy Presence. However, key to the Paladin are his unique traits. These "halos" are trait cards that create a zone around the Paladin that gives buffs to him and his allies. Halo of Healing (silver): At the start of each round, heal 5 hit points to you and all allies within 3 squares. Halo of Purity (bronze): At the start of each round, you and all allies within 3 squares discard all enemy attachments. Halo of Shielding (bronze): You and all allies within 3 squares gain a +1 bonus to die rolls. Halo of Revenge (silver): If an enemy within 3 squares deals damage to an ally, deal 4 holy damage to that enemy. Notes Compared to my previous draft, this class has been straightened and simplified to only include 6 types of items instead of 11. This will make balancing the class easier as the game designer only needs to worry about cards on 6 item types. It also makes these PCs easier to equip as you only need to dig through 6 item screens. I didn't give the class a helmet to keep these card sets unique to warriors. Paladins get enough utility from divine spells. For the same reason, I removed the divine item. If you want to keep a card exclusive to priests, not paladins, put it on divine items only.
I don't like the idea at all. Why? Because in my fights there were numerous, plenty, a lot of situations when a warrior would easily defend one victory point. It is even possible for wizards with WoW sending attackers away with some blocking help from walls and others or for a nimbus priest. So another type of character that is better at this job would ruin the game experience and make it a race to VP then wait and heal, heal, heal, heal, block, block, block. Both boring and not challenging. Groups without a paladin would have like zero chance to win on maps with a single VP and that is a class breaker in my opinion. To make this even a bit balanced you would need to restrict movement of such heavily armored class in such way, that for example every move you make is one square a time. Team Sprint, WoW, pushes, whatever - such class cannot move fast by any means.
Mosalla, I think you're wildly exaggerating. If it was that easy to defend a VP just by stacking a few block cards, a warrior with two Blocking Mace and a Blocking Axe would be the dominant build in MP (that's 4 parries, 2 unreliable blocks and 3 flimsy blocks on your 3 weapons alone). Add a healer priest and you have the rough equivalent of double paladin. If you are correct that build should break the game in half... Interestingly, with the current items Warriors have a much easier time to stack block cards than Paladins. There are quite a few warrior weapons with block cards, but for divine, there are very few as I found out when I just checked: * lvl 9 common Recoiling Mace with 1 Parry * lvl 10 epic St. Ozark's Blade with 2 Weak Parry * lvl 18 legendary St. Nyssa's Hammer with 1 Acrobatic Block * lvl 15 uncommon Duality Mace with 1 Lifesaving Block (and two Nimbus) * lvl 2 rare Blessed Branch with 1 Unreliable Block That's all of them. The two shields on the Paladin make up for the fact that he has a harder time getting his blocks from other items. For maximum defense Paladin, double Duality Mace may be your best bet, but even that can be countered and Touch Of Death is much more effective in SP than it is in MP. Nimbus Blade works too but costs two major tokens. I really don't see this break the game as there is really not much new, it's just repackaging existing cards. Yes, you have a class with a stronger defense than the existing ones - but at a price. You only get 2/3 of the attack power of a fighter, and about half of the utility of a priest. In the end, it's the same 4 gold 4 blue token 36 card deck that any other class gets. If Paladin VP hogging really became dominant, we'd just see more War Crys, more attacks from the back, more Winds of War, Purge... The counter strategies exist already.
I think the point Mosalla was trying to make is that to get an equivalent level of blocks to your proposed paladin, you have to sacrifice something else, generally damage. Further if you concentrate all of your attacks in a few powerful attacks, you'll just get wrecked by blocks. But you also have a valid argument in that there are easily available counters. I like the paladin class skills, but they are much more powerful than other equivalent class cards. You've basically outshone holy presence, not that I don't think priest abilities need a buff, but maybe just two squares standard instead of three?
@Yoyo: Well, that's the same with the Paladin. If he stacks 6 block cards instead of 3, he's missing 3 cards in offense, utility or mobility. For example, you can build a damage-focused Paladin by using divine weapons like Lifesuck Spear. This one has 6/6 attack cards, 34 total damage of which 10 are vampire. It's a good damage output on par with a warrior, but you don't get the utility cards of other weapons like Nimbus or Inspiring Presence. It's all a tradeoff. As for the Paladin Halos, you may be right that range 3 is too much. It's hard to balance things perfectly on paper, that's where the playtest comes in.
One paladin, and a few Sprint Team items on other characters is all you need. Nimbus would be just an extra. First round, Sprint to VP with paladin. Party follows him slowly. Wizard uses WoW and freezes to push enemies away from heavy tanking paladin. He can even build walls around him. Priest does Nimbus or whatever he wants really. You can get another wizard for easier win. I am saying this strategy *already* works with heavy armored warrior. You don't need a paladin, which would be way overpowered in this job. You do not need damage at all. You just need to wait 6 turns there with parries, blocks, hard to pin downs, super armor and immovable. Other games shown numerous times that a paladin is really bad concept in PvP, although I like the class and would play it myself whenever I could. It just does not work.
unless there's more than one vp, then that paladin can just sit all day and be ineffective, personally I would go with a warrior weapon divine item spread for paladins, but I'm sure we'll see what the actual dual classes are soon enough.
@Yoyo: Sure, that's another way to do it. However, weapons like the Holy Avenger are iconic D&D, so I'd go for that. Yes, you keep saying that this would totally dominate PVP but there is no proof whatsoever and I haven't seen anybody pull it off successfully. None of the decks that currently dominate (Whirlwind bashing, dwarf control etc.) rely on VPs for anything. How can you hold a VP for 6 turns against Volcano, Whirlwind Enemies and Winds Of War? I'll believe it when I see it. Huh? The Diablo II Paladin was overpowered, but for entirely different reasons, a specific attack power. See Hammerdin. In D&D 3E, Paladins are if anything a Tier 5 class, bottom of the barrel with the exception of very specific charge abuse builds. In D&D 4E, Paladins are a balanced Defender class but then 4E is quite balanced in general. Maybe you have a specific game in mind but I have no idea what you are talking about.
You gave Volcanos and WWE, WoW example. This is easily countered by smoke, immovable, armor and heals. Immovable you propose to be a part of paladin build. Good armor can reduce damage from lava to 4 or even less every turn. So just ignore lava. Plus you get heals, Nimbus, dwarven Toughness, you can buff your warrior or paladin to restore life every turn, put Bless under his feet etc. Additionally movement removing our tank from VP we already countered by having many our fast movement skills. All my build lacks is damage. You use movement control, but don't do much damage, except for warrior's/paladin's weapons and some little cold spells.
Did anyone notice how OP those Haloes are?? I can't imagine any trait with range 3, affects allies only would be anything less than gold on a trait. I mean, the heal 5 to all by itself is ridiculous... clearly this paladin is overleveled.
@Jade: Sure, the halo cards are ideas, not finished cards. I'm fine with making the effect weaker or bumping them up to gold if that balances them. They can also be balanced with duration, anything between 1 and 3 turns. A bronze level healing halo could be "at the start of your turn, heal 3 hp to the party member within 3 squares with the lowest hp".
Cool concept as usual Martin. Agreed that the halos are too good, but the tuning of details is going to lie with the devs anyway, it's really the concepts and ambiance that we should work on. I really like the idea for the halos, cool supporty/tanky effects. I like the ideas it's based on, but I think it may be somewhat difficult to balance the mechanical needs of the class with the needs of the class from a setting perspective. For example, I personally think the concept of having two shields is kind of silly. (then again, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how warriors use 3 weapons either ) You can already build a pretty defensive cleric that does similar things, so how do you make it stand out a great deal? I'm not sure paladin skills alone are enough to differentiate them. Yes, combining different sets of items can change the dynamics some, but I feel like this particular combination is less effective at doing this than either of your other suggested hybrids. Personally, I'd be tempted to make a paladin specific item to do the job. I know it may reduce the ease of implementation and balancing for the devs, but just as you would like to keep cleric and warrior isolated from paladin to some degree, I think it would be nice if the hybrids also had at least a little bit of class specific itemization. Not sure what should go on it to really make it stand out though.
If we're going to create concepts for a cross class, and I'm sure we can all agree that a paladin is a warrior-priest hybrid. Then we need to look at what other options are available. I would place the emphasis on warrior-priest rather than a defender of the faith as Martin envisioned it. Warrior weapons, let's go with two, and two divine item slots. Otherwise the same, shield, boots, helmet, racial, and class slot. I'm pretty sure this keeps all decks at 36 cards which is an important consideration.This makes him both less than a warrior or priest individually, but I would argue the more than the sum of it's parts. Just basically, before we get into theoretical class skills, we could have a character that could punch as hard as a warrior, and self nimbus consistently. In addition while I like the various aura ideas that Martin has concocted, I feel the range needs to be one not three base. You have right now, super heal weakest, super purge, super good luck (is there a good luck card? It would make sense, I know bad luck exists), and super thorns, which is unprecedented. If it affects the paladin also, it needs to be comparable to current priest and warrior skills. Currently, priest and warrior skills are on the weak side, none of them do anything as pervasive as the electricity wizard skills, which reduce block chance for everything. As such, the closest comparable skill is holy presence, which has a range of one and doesn't effect the priest. Since that card is dual purpose, we can add the caster or originator to the list of affected parties with our paladin; since the proposed paladin skills are single purpose. Considering all of that, and that holy presence, however under-powered, is our guideline, I would propose that the heal be made comparable to twin heals, only 2 points per turn. This would make the paladin a roving healing presence, or whatever the two heal duration 3 priest spell is called. the purge skill should be comparable to purge, so no problems there. Good luck is comparable to bad luck, and if you have to stay in a 3x3 box more than offsets it's power. Thorns should act like ouch and spiked mail card wise, a constant two damage per attack card that connected. If we have this setup, plus the same abilities at range one, I think we've got a real solid choice that doesn't dis-plant either the priest or the warrior and yet completes the party and adds useful abilities. And most importantly remains balanced yet not op.
@Artificerprodigy: Thanks for the heads-up. If you look at the Paladin class in D&D, where Card Hunter takes most of its inspiration from, the class has always been a mix between Cleric and Fighter. From that point, I don't think it needs to be too different thematically. There are still many other classic D&D classes with more space for unique items: - Bards with musical instruments and musical skills - Monks with fists, belts and monk skills - Druids with druidic weapons and druidic items - Psionicists with crystal items and mental skills - Barbarians with light armor and rage skills In my eyes it's an advantage of Paladin, Swordmage and Mystic that these are based on existing items. Players spend so much time building up their collection, why not give them new ways to use it?
