Fantastic Friday: A Profusion of Paladins (D&D5E)

Many moons ago, in Dragon magazine #39 (July 1980), the article "Good Got You Down? Try This For Evil: The Anti-Paladin NPC," by George Laking and Tim Mesford. It introduced an NPC foil to goodie two-shows PC paladins in the form of their diametrical opposite: a foe who received power by following vices and eschewed virtue. Since it was presented as a class, there were tables that allowed player character anti-paladins, but it was presented as purely an NPC class. Adding to inversions of the paladin's abilities they also added the thief's backstab and the assassin's use of poisons, so they weren't exactly balanced for play.

Later, in issue #106 (February 1986), there was an article called "A Plethora of Paladins," by Christopher Wood. To the lawful good Paladin and the chaotic evil Anti-Paladin were introduced 7 more paladin-alikes: 

  • the neutral good Myrikhan, a lightly-armored questing knight of good with a bit of a focus on fire.
  • the chaotic good Garath, who function as church guardians.
  • the lawful neutral Lyan, a sort of strictly-lawful fighting chaplain.
  • the true neutral Paramander, anti-extremists who destroy powerful figures of extreme alignment ends and keep spellbooks like wizards
  • the chaotic neutral Fantra, a somewhat-rangery nomadic holy warrior, enjoined from helping those not of their faith.
  • the lawful evil Illrigger, holy assassins.
  • the neutral evil Arrikhan, a lightly-armored questing knight of evil with a bit of a focus on poison.

These were interesting additions, but were a lot of minor variations to the same theme. 2nd edition AD&D introduced kits as a means to customize classes and a lot of these paladins became class kits, substituting class features for other features and so on.

In 5E, the core paladin class has several subclasses, some of which represent these Old School paladins:

  • Oath of Devotion: the idealistic iconic paladin.
  • Oath of the Ancients: a guardian of sacred groves and ancient stone circles.
  • Oath of Vengeance: a grim vigilante.
  • Oathbreaker: essentially the 5E equivalent of the Anti-Paladin from #39, also intended to be an NPC subclass.

Like many 5E DMs coming from a long D&D background, I've toyed with updating these classes to 5th edition to see what kind of interesting things I could come up with, but the amount of work was daunting. And now, I don't have to.

Reddit user /u/BunnygeonMaster released A Plethora of Paladins two years ago, and it includes several interesting paladin oaths:

  • Oath of Anarchy: inspired by the Fantra from #106, these are freedom fighters opposing tyranny.
  • Oath of Benevolence: truly benevolent paragons of virtue.
  • Oath of Betrothal: who draw their magic from the matrimonial bond.
  • Oath of Detachment: inspired by the Paramander from #106, these anti-extremists try to moderate society to the benefit of the whole.
  • Oath of Enlightenment: psionic paladins.
  • Oath of Freshness: a joke subclass for the freshest of good boies.
  • Oath of Healing: fighting medics.
  • Oath of Liberty: pro-democracy paladins.
  • Oath of Power: super-heroic paladins loosely modeled on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
  • Oath of Society: inspired by the Lyan from #106, these paladins champion civilization against anarchy.
  • Oath of Strangers: a lone warrior modeled on the musketeers or the Wild West lawman.
  • Oath of the Directive: mecha-knights, presumably holy warriors of the cyberpapacy.
  • Oath of Tomorrow: paladins for progress.
  • Oath of Tradition: paladins who revere the spirits of their ancestors, who grant them power.
Also, Matt Colville has published The Illrigger: An MCDM Class for 5E (which seems somewhat broken to me, as a combination bard / paladin / warlock) which presumably matches the illrigger from the Dragon #106 article.

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