Longknife

My biggest problem with this quest is that with a high dexterity you can open the missive. What it says sounds pretty awful but you can't do anything about it when you talk to the monks, I almost felt it was pointless. You can use the info from the missive to get a sweet shirt before they do. It's a really sweet shirt. But again that's besides the point. The point is it's hard to make a playthrough feel truly unique in this game because everyone is treated the same. Different treatments are a pure illusion with no concrete consequences.

Check your privilege, you white cis-het ableist scum! I'm disabled. :U OH WAIT IMSORRY, I'm a person with a disability. Almost offended myself there.

I'm just so jaded and sick of all things SJW. Yesterday I watched a video by that Laci Green girl where some disabled woman was telling people that "disabled," "handicapped," and "crippled" are offensive terms and that the proper term is "people with disabilities." I'm going to challenge that woman to a cripple fight, in which I am a blackbelt.

I've not taken the Druid guy yet with the stupid-to-spell name, and I've limited experience with Grieving Mother. Having said that, Grieving Mother. From what I could discern of her personality, she and I are absolutely not on the same page. I took the confrontational dialog choices every time. Having said that though, she as a character is still well-written and thought provoking, so that I like, it's merely this is not a person I would get along with on a realistic basis. She and Durance both come across as bat **** insane and neither is a person I'd feel comfortable around, but whereas Durance at least makes sense with what he preaches (for the most part), Grieving Mother seems to absolutely cross the line.

How on earth would you even roleplay that scenario? There is no good-neutral-evil sort of options on the table. There is no "you can siphon energy from the machine to your benefit," there is no "you can activate it again to wipe out another part of the city," what you're doing is undeniably good. You gain positive karma regardless of what you choose to do there, and you do a good thing regardless of what you do. Deactivating the machine is half-assing it, blowing it up is doing the full job. To destroy the machine, you have to destroy the souls as well. My character wanted the machine destroyed but ultimately wasn't willing to pay that price. Touche on this point. I'd forgotten that when I wrote that. Still, some of my other complaints remain solid: 1) Community reputations do nothing for you beyond making some merchant prices cheaper or help to end a quest one step faster. The only time you'll encounter choice and consequence is the three factions all have a merchant offering different things. That's it. 2) Dialog reputations seemingly do nothing. It's an amazing illusion of uniqueness, but the amount of times a dialog reputation actually changes your outcome can be counted on one hand. Typically dialog reputation amounts to little more than someone commenting on what a great person you are (Benevolent) reputation before offering you the quest they were going to offer you anyways. Prime example? There's a quest where you find a monk who asks you to deliver a sealed message to his order. If you have Honest reputation he thanks the gods you found him, if you're deceptive he comments on it but also says you're sadly his only hope. In both scenarios, you're treated exactly the same. There is no situation where his monk order will be skeptical of what you tell them because you're deceptive or the like, it plays out exactly the same. All scenarios where dialog reputation is recognized, it has no actual impact on the quest and the quest would be obtainable anyways. The only exceptions I can name off the top of my head is it's possible to psyche out some enemy attackers with Aggressive rep and get them to back off. 3) Endings feel meaningless as far as difference goes, at least on the Gods. Helping a God is always universally good; even supporting Woedica does not support in the game feeding you tidbits about the bad it did, but rather only good or neutral aspects of this choice are mentioned. Betraying a God is always bad. I enjoy morally grey, but I also think trying to be as good or as evil as possible should be a thing. As far as the Gods and Companions go, bad endings are achieved by purposefully breaking a pact with a God or by just not bothering with a companion's quest (usually). It just feels a little weak. Unfortunately, Gods and Companions endings make up the majority of the endings.

If you cannot enjoy a game because the gender ratio is not perfectly even at 50-50, you're an idiot.

Sort of off-topic and not really about an objectively superior reporting method, but anyone ever heard someone complain about Yahtzee's (the Escapist) reviews? Me neither. Know why? Because he makes it a point to try and **** on games as much as possible instead of writing an advertisement for them. If Yahtzee doesn't **** on a game, that says something. If he does, then you know it's flawed and you know what flaws to expect. I don't need someone to write me four paragraphs about why they think Skyrim is pretty. I can look at it myself and say "ya that looks nice." I much prefer a reviewer who will call out all of the mistakes and flaws a game houses.Yknow, someone who puts the criticizing aspects back in the name "critic." Also, can we talk about what a weird little world we've got going where Yahtzee stands out as a video games journalist for actually providing criticism of games that aren't blatantly bad?

Gotta be honest.... Monk is a class on the opposite end of the spectrum from Paladin in my opinion. Why? Monk can be TREMENDOUSLY broken and powerful, but achieving this demands that you babysit the monk and micromanage a lot. Every time that Monk gets a wound, you use it. And if the Monk has 10 wounds? Prepare to pause combat every half a second to re-assign another wounded punch, because that's how fast the monk punches. It's tedious perhaps, but the reward payout is tremendous. Paladin seems like the opposite end of the spectrum. You need absolutely minimal micromanagement for the Paladin....but you also get minimal payout. Overall, it's a lazy man's class for if you can't be bothered to buff accuracy and DR with your Priest. The problem is that realistically speaking, if you can't be bothered with two buffs by your priest, you're gonna get slaughtered anyways. There's also not exactly two alternative priest spells in tier 1 that seem like equally viable alternatives to those two, so it's not like you get more mileage out of your priest because the paladin is there.

Am I the only one laughing my ass off at the fact that people know my name for providing criticism and are also convinced I have some vendetta against Paladins because I provided criticism regarding how poor their numbers currently are? Like wtf people, seriously chill out. This is like the fourth person to flip out on me because omg I said Paladins aren't the best thing since sliced bread. Anyways to answer OP, it's not that they're horriawful and undoable, it's just that yes, I would frankly rank them dead last in regards to class rankings. You will never encounter a lost fight and think "I could've won that if I just had a paladin!" This doesn't mean however that Paladins cannot do fine, it's just more of a "if your goal is to be as powerful as possible, don't make a Paladin" sort of thing. Fighter. And that's exactly the problem. If given an ultimatum between Fighter and Paladin, you'll pick Fighter. If given an ultimatum between Priest and Paladin, you'll pick Priest. If given an ultimatum between Rogue and Paladin, you'll pick Rogue. Paladin is a jack-of-all-trades, king of none, but unfortunately it's skills in all respective areas are so sub-par that it's hard to justify picking Paladin if your interest is in a party being as efficient as possible.

How on earth would you even roleplay that scenario? There is no good-neutral-evil sort of options on the table. There is no "you can siphon energy from the machine to your benefit," there is no "you can activate it again to wipe out another part of the city," what you're doing is undeniably good. You gain positive karma regardless of what you choose to do there, and you do a good thing regardless of what you do. Deactivating the machine is half-assing it, blowing it up is doing the full job.

I'm talking base stats plus any per encounter abilities or the like, not so interested in "Priest can buff the hell out of it's accuracy" for example. Still, am I correct in saying that it's Priest? Priest gets an accuracy boost with two weapons belonging to their god, and aside from that I can't really think of any other class-specific accuracy bonuses aside from Fighter's per encounter one.

I'm guessing they thought we'd counter charm with charm of our own, but realistically speaking, for the fight I was talking about at least, I tried that and my cipher's charm speed was completely outpaced by the enemy's, not to mention if your charm classes get charmed then it's GG. As far as I'm concerned, they can put this on the to-do list right next to making paralyze less OP.

Let me guess, you're fighting a certain someone on top of a certain castle in a "Round 2" of sorts...? I just closed my game frustrated with this fight. I beat it first try with another squad that was less caster-reliant, but this new game file I've got is more caster reliant, and I cannot do JACK when half my squad is charmed before I can even blink. I went down the entire list of Priest spells thinking "surely there's some way to counter it." NOPE none whatsoever. Charmed/Dominated is completely 100% counter-proof. A counter would be nice Obsidian....It's kind of hard to properly prepare for a fight when over half my team will be fighting it against me.

But that's just it. Re-read my examples. A Paladin could get superior defenses to Fighter without being OP because the Fighter still has better control skills and a better engagement limit. A Paladin could get tons of damage added onto Flames of Devotion and still fall behind Rogue and Wizard because Paladin's damage output would die the moment both casts were used. A Paladin could get the range on modals tweaked and upped drastically and still wouldn't hold a candle to priest. That's the point: Paladin is so far in the hole that you can buff it's stats across the board and STILL have it be balanced without taking away from other classes.

Because this is hardly an issue. Get Defender Mode, get Wary Defender and GG you're good. Since Fighters are usually brought along specifically for the purpose of tanking, who is going to mind spending these levels on that ability? Likewise, Faith and Conviction is not automatic on NPC Paladins, which is part of the problem.

And Sworn Enemy will get used how often...? It's nice, but it's something you might touch maybe five times per game, assuming you don't spam it on enemies it's unneccesary for out of a demand to make it useful. No. Infact even a Fighter has superior damage capacity, it's just unlikely you'll realize this potential because given the choice between an offensive Fighter and a defensive one, the defensive role is far more vital to the squad and the Fighter specializes in it whereas an offensive fighter would still get outpaced by the damage dealing classes. But yeah, if you made a Fighter and a Paladin and built both purely for damage, the Fighter has a couple talents that up it's hit percent by a huge margin, temporarily boost accuracy or let it attack faster. Paladin just has Flames of Devotion and Sworn Enemy, plus any Modals they might have. They'd look very similar, but Fighter's gonna have more control skills (Knock down) to up it's damage output. It's 30 endurance. It's....not that great. Upgraded it does more, but that's again part of the problem. Paladin has numerous abilities which are subpar and need an additional talent to upgrade them and make them....respectable. Still not amazing, but decent. The result is to service any one job, you're spending twice the levels every other class is spending, and you're STILL doing mediocre. Flames of Devotion has the exact same problem, as does the Paladin's Faith. It's good, this one I do like, but it's also not irreplaceable. Both Priest and Chanter get the same ability. Chanter's is a flippin' AOE whereas Priest can already do much of the same things Paladin can except 100% better, so the question remains "why not just bring a second Priest?" Seriously, name something a Paladin can do that a Priest can't and you'll find the list rather small, or most of the things listed will be things that a Paladin can do consistently (tank) but a Priest can also do via skills in an emergency battle. Let me put it this way: If you go to the Pillars of Eternity Gamepedia, classes get listed with different roles. Wizard and Druid are "mob ruler," Fighter, Barb and Monk are "Front Line," Cipher, Ranger and Rogue are "Heavy Hitter," and Chanter, Priest and Paladin are "Leaders." Try to imagine a squad where you only bring one of each type. AKA, imagine you're forced to choose between Wizard and Druid, to choose between Fighter Barb and Monk, to choose between Cipher, Ranger and Rogue.... If you have to choose one of each type to build a four man party? You will never choose Paladin for your leader slot. Chanter and Priest is a toss-up, cause even though Priest feels like a staple, a Chanter's summons can single-handedly turn a fight around. Paladin? You'd never in a million years choose to skip Chanter and Priest to bring a Paladin. That's exactly the problem.

Two things: Firstly, there is some degree of strategy and logic in getting different characters that all specialize in different jobs. For example let's imagine a party where instead of a pure tank with a pure support priest and a pure damage wiz/cipher/whatever, you have all three being middle of the road. The result? Chaos breaks out when your tank dies (aka enemies aren't collected in a bundle), your priest is buffing slower, and for any fight where the enemy never even touches your damage-dealers, any defense is moot and all you've done is killed slower than you could've. Specialization in that regard can be very effective. Likewise it of course makes sense to add 30% damage onto the guy dealing big 50 damage AOE hits in a matter of 5 seconds instead of adding 30% damage onto a guy who does maybe 30 damage to one target in the same amount of time. Second and more importantly, it's not that I think a jack-of-all-trades can't work, but rather I feel the Paladin is currently too weak on all fronts. Imagine it as though, for example, a Fighter is A+ on Tank, C- on damage dealing and B on support, on the opposite end a Wizard is A on damage, D- on tanking and B+ on support, and then a Paladin is a pure C- in every category. I would like to see those bumped up to at least straight B's, because that's possible while still being completely balanced. Today I learned there are people on these forums assuming all kinds of stuff about me for the most random reasons imagineable, to the point I'm not sure what the hell they're even talking about. :U Yknow I do it over-the-top specifically to annoy people like you who can't take a joke worth a damn? I'm 100% serious here.

By no means would my suggestion for defense make them superior tanks to Fighters. Fighters would still offer endurance regen, superior engagement and superior support control (knock down, aggro pull). That's the point: you can safely apply almost all of these suggested tweaks without Paladin becoming superior to the classes they compete with in that area. With my defense suggestion, Paladin would be the superior class for raw defense, but not neccesarily the one for keeping your squad alive, or even for staying up for that matter since endurance regen and knock down can be useful for a lot of different things. My offense suggestion wouldn't break Paladins either, nor would the support ones. The point is Paladins are abysmally sub-par across the board, to the point where minor tweaks could be made to everything across the board and they'd still be balanced. You lose me the moment you stop speaking plain english and start speaking computer geek. What the heck is "aggro", FFS???!!! The only aggro I know relates to farming, not computer games. (And I've got nothing to do with agro related business whatsoever. Just some comon knowledge.) Aggro = aggression. It means if I have an enemy go for my Cipher or Wizard, Fighter can pull the attention away with a skill (forget the name) without even needing to move. No other class can do this. MAYBE Monk could rush that enemy down and knock them on their ass quick, but aside from that, no one else offers this.

And why not just trade out the Paladin with his +5 accuracy bonus for a Priest who can provide exactly the same? That's exactly the point: Paladin is Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, but he's currently not jack-of-all-trades enough to warrant his existence in a party, regardless of what you want from your 6th man.

No it doesn't because: 1) Gaming websites will report on updates made within communities. They do this all the time. I know Edmund posted an update on his blog with info on the upcoming Isaac Rebirth expansion and gaming sites grabbed it, copy-pasted it and reported it. That's their job. 2) People read Polygon wtf?

By no means would my suggestion for defense make them superior tanks to Fighters. Fighters would still offer endurance regen, superior engagement and superior support control (knock down, aggro pull). That's the point: you can safely apply almost all of these suggested tweaks without Paladin becoming superior to the classes they compete with in that area. With my defense suggestion, Paladin would be the superior class for raw defense, but not neccesarily the one for keeping your squad alive, or even for staying up for that matter since endurance regen and knock down can be useful for a lot of different things. My offense suggestion wouldn't break Paladins either, nor would the support ones. The point is Paladins are abysmally sub-par across the board, to the point where minor tweaks could be made to everything across the board and they'd still be balanced.

Hi. Paladins suck. Thanks Josh. Here I'm gonna break down reasons Paladins suck as a class and how to remedy those problems: 1) Paladins are inferior tanks to Fighters, hands down. For a class that advertises itself as a tank, Paladin absolutely falls flat when compared to the alternative. If I have a squad where I need a tank? A Fighter can get +5 Deflection and an extra +2 for enemy engagement from the Defender Modal, another +10 to all defenses with Wary Defender, and another temporary +20 via Vigorous Defender for brief moments of heavy fire. This totals to +15 deflection and +10 of everything else alongside a temporary +35 deflection and +30 everything else when Vigorous Defender is activated, all while engaging two extra enemies. To top this off, Knock down allows a Fighter to get some damage off of him or others for a brief amount of time. Surely we've all had a battle with tons of enemies and one scary looking wizard in the back, and the solution was to run the Fighter through the enemies (naturally engaging them) and knock the wiz on his butt to buy time for the team to pick off stragglers, no? The Fighter later gets an AOE knock down, as well as a Scorpion "GET OVER HERE" skill to pull aggro off of a teammate; to my knowledge this is the only skill of it's type. Lastly, the Fighter regenerates endurance naturally. This means that a good chunk of incoming damage - already highly diminished by his high defenses - will be countered by his natural regeneration. Now let's look at the Paladin. A Paladin can, with the help of Faith and Conviction + Deep Faith, can either get (either because I'm unsure of how Deep Faith works) + 10 deflection and + 21 of everything else, or +16 and +40 of everything else. You may be reading and asking "wtf that's a pretty big difference, shouldn't you figure that out first before bothering with this post?" No, and here's why: this benefit does not exist for any paladins that are not the player character. These benefits are earned by following the proper dialog reputations to the letter. A paladin who picks neutral dialog options will not gain any of these defenses, and it will be quite a while in gameplay before you can even achieve that maximum amount. But for a hired adventurer Paladin or Pallegina? These benefits do not upgrade at all. You don't get them. This means Paladin's extra defense is non-existent for everyone but the player character, and the player character himself will not actually get such immense benefits ("immense" if it's the latter numbers, humble and about on par with Fighter if it's the former) until later in the game. Aside from this, Paladin houses no other benefits to defense whatsoever. These two are literally all Paladin has to try and bring it's defenses above that of other classes, and NPC Paladins cannot access these. While the numbers may be unclear, what's very clear is that Paladin offers nothing else. It does not have knock downs or engagement-grabbing support skills, it does not have extra engagement, and it does not naturally regenerate endurance. The only other tank benefit Paladin has to it's name is a modal that can increase it's DR by 3, while increasing the DR of surrounding allies by 3 as well. While nice, it ultimately doesn't seem to outweigh everything Fighter has. Final Verdict: In an ideal scenario, Paladin can have defenses to compete with Fighter to some degree. However, what Paladin lacks is flexibility. A tank's job is to hold the line and protect the squishies in the back. Fighter has the means to both ensure a squishy getting shot at is less likely and to get that pressure off the squishy should that happen. All of this is topped off with a natural Endurance regeneration which simply can't be underestimated, as it can be the difference between a character losing 80% Endurance to the swarm at the start of a long battle and later being in tip-top shape with little to no micromanagement or babysitting neccesary, and "oh he died 2 minutes ago." There is a reason people pick Fighters, and that's because the tank style they offer is far more adaptable, prepared for a variety of situations, and in some cases (when the Paladin lacks Faith benefits) 100% superior. How to fix it: Let's assume the +16 deflection and +40 every other defense numbers are correct. That's awesome. This is clearly enough to compete with Fighter. However, this doesn't apply to NPC Paladins and doesn't come into fruition until later in game. The fix is simple: adjust NPC Paladins to be affected by the player's dispositions OR have the faith naturally level up over time. Perhaps Pallegina's faith could level up over time since we don't know how her order works (or advertise how it works, passionate and benevolent...?) whereas NPC Paladins would relate to the player's reputations and the player is of course free to hire a paladin belonging to an order that already aligns with how the player acts. As for the fact that Paladins would be "late bloomers" with their highest defense, that could simply be addressed by providing the Paladin with other means to provide for the party in the mean time, namely support skills, which I will criticize further below. 2) Paladins have inferior offense to Monks and Barbarians by a clear margin The other two class alternatives to Fighter that are expected to hang out near the front lines are Monk and Barbarian. Arguably, Paladin tanks better than these two. I say "arguably" because while Paladin can bolster superior defenses, both of these classes are awarded insane amounts of endurance. If you have a Barb or Monk, you'll regularly see them below 50% Endurance, but it also doesn't frighten you so much because the other 50% they have remaining is nothing to sneeze at. It's also a useful tactic for activating many helpful racials. Which of these two classes has superior defense? It's somewhat debateable. I think most of us would agree Paladin, but wouldn't call the gap huge. Their offenses however...? Barbarian, assuming One Stands Alone is not a bug, should need no justification as to why his offense is superior. +20 damage across the board on a class that's in a constant AOE mode is nothing to sneeze at. Hell, it's downright disgusting. And Monk? Well Monk is a drunkard who likes marching into battlefields with nothing but a shirt on. In that sense the "who tanks better" argument quickly dies down between Monk and Paladin, except Monk focuses far more on offense. Monk actively chooses to take damage that he can expect to handle reliably, then turns that damage around into even greater damage for the opponents. If that wasn't enough, Monk gets plenty of utility skills to help out the team: knock downs, skills that help the Monk rush down any dangerous threats by jumping to them...the works. In this sense Monk both "tanks" (outpaces incoming damage, disables incoming damage, moves away from incoming damage) and dishes out damage in an extremely helpful manner. Monk reliably tanks down singular targets while Barbarian can work wonders on groups if surrounded (and of course you'll make every effort to make this happen). Both classes expect to take heavy damage, but bother also expect to dish out amounts of damage FAR higher than what they take. Now there's Paladin. What does Paladin do? Erm, well there's a Flames skill. And uhhh....that's it, really. A modal will give the Paladin (and nearby allies) higher accuracy and - with it - higher crit rate, but aside from that? Aside from that you MIGHT have an extra offensive skill from your respective Paladin order, and there's one per rest skill that increases damage but can only be used on specific foes, not on everything. This is akin to a Wizard's two per encounter spells, except the Paladin's two per encounter spells are single target. I also must say that at least from personal experience, I almost never see the Wizzie's AOE miss a target, but Flames of Devotion can miss just like any random swing can. Point is, Paladin really doesn't have any damage skills to it's name. Like...at all. You use Flames of Devotion, and after that, the Paladin becomes a Fighter with slightly less accuracy.....UNLESS you use the accuracy modal, but the moment you do, you lose the defense modal you might've been convinced to use above...see where this is going? Final Verdict: This is not a contest. It's clear as day. Paladin has nothing to it's name on damage except for two forgettable per encounter skills that are clearly inferior to per encounter skills offered by other classes. Everyone and their mother has more damage output than Paladin; even Fighter can be built offensively if you want and will offer better damage output. Paladin's damage increases essentially stop at Flames of Devotion and never really pick up again. How to fix it: Crank that **** up to 11. Would it be broken or "too powerful" if Flames of Devotion were made strong enough to compete with what Blinding Strike is to Rogue? A Rogue using Blinding Strike (or another ailment skill) on an enemy = dead enemy. A Paladin using Flames of Devotion on an enemy = merely a flesh wound. The thing is, a Rogue gets massive damage boosts any time an enemy has an ailment. If a Cipher or Wizard uses an AOE blind spell, Rogue is in candyland and will proceed to wipe the floor. Even IF Paladin's Flames of Devotion became practically an insta-kill for any mediocre enemy, this would not overstep it's boundaries as it would only clear out two mediocre enemies before the Paladin becomes nothing but a Fighter. Buff that **** up, it won't break anything, and it would reinforce the Paladin's "leader" role as the Paladin would be a class you can send after important targets. Remember when I said you might counter a scary Wizard or Cipher by sending the Fighter to spam it with disables? Paladin would have an alternative method of simply dropping the target dead much like a Rogue can, but a Rogue would retain it's superior flexibility by being able to continue to wipe out enemies if the proper circumstances are provided. I'm not saying this in the context of "yes make Flames of Devotion hit THAT HARD that it instantly KOs the average target," I'm merely making the comparison to Rogue to highlight how Paladin would by no means become OP even IF that were the case. Doing so also naturally boosts all of the Paladin abilities that are activated when the Paladin scores a kill. These too are lackluster because you can never be assured an enemy will die specifically to your paladin if focused at all, but if you're wanting one of those buffs badly, then you can choose to Flames of Devotion an enemy with decent health to get it. 3) Paladin's support skills are all pathetic in one way or another Let's go down the list, shall we? Lay on Hands: This is another case of a "meh" skill (Flames of Devotion) vs. another "meh" skill (Wizzie's per encounter AOE) where the alternative is an AOE. What benefits does this offer that Divine Radiance from Priest does not? Both are per encounter, this one heals more, but I've never known it to save a life in a dire situation. This skill for me has mostly been to either heal my Paladin themselves as a quasi (sucky) Fighter endurance regeneration, or to heal my Priest at a time the Priest has something more important to cast. But in the latter scenario....why not just bring another Priest? The Priest's per encounter spell meanwhile can damage enemies, provide everyone with an accuracy buff (competing with Paladin's modal a tad) and heal anyone who might have taken damage. How to Fix it: Again, crank this up to 11. Give me more reason to use this. Why not make it heal truckloads, to the point where it actually competes with a Priest's level 3 or level 4 heal spell while lacking the AOE aspect? This would be huge without being overpowered. FFS this thing could bring you from 1 endurance to max and still wouldn't muscle in on the Priest's job because the Paladin is limited to one per fight. Liberating Exhortation and Deprive the Unworthy: These are good in theory, the problem? Paladin is already so god damned confused as to what it wants to be that there's NO WAY you're going to pick these very situational abilities over some of the more universal alternatives. These are good abilities, but when I'm offered them as alternatives to all the other things Paladin is trying to be, I'll probably skip these because they're too situational. There's very limited fights where I can imagine needing these. How to Fix it: Make these AOE. If I'm fighting....what are they, Earth Wardens? The little hovering rock enemies that eat my health slowly with their debuff? Or Xuarips Skirmishers that stun? A single Liberating Exhortation can win the fight ALL thanks to the Paladin. That alone would justify the Paladin's existence. Deprive the Unworthy currently is more something for a boss, but if made to be an AOE, then the Paladin can temporarily counteract a buff-happy cleric on the enemy team. Single-target makes these very situational, AOE makes these game-changers, but their uses are still specific enough so that this won't break anything. In return, switch these from per encounter (you're NOT gonna need these that friggin' often) to per rest (would still be very capable of being a game-changer with only two AOEs per rest). Modals in General: Paladin modals are awesome. You know what's not? The piss-poor range they have. OMFG what is this? Is this like....was Josh trying to reinforce the "every stat matters" idea and felt Intelligence didn't do enough for Paladins, so he "fixed" it by making the range on these suck balls unless you capped Int? It's annoying as hell, is what this is. These modals are great, and they'd be even greater if they actually hit someone else besides my Fighter. My Fighter doesn't need extra DR, he's already tanky enough. My Fighter doesn't need extra accuracy and crit, he's not my damage dealer. Yknow what classes would love these? The ones I have positioned in the back because they have no defense but excellent offense. How to Fix it: Stop making Intelligence a "recommended for Paladin" skill altogether. Just boost the range on these things up and make Int's effect on the range be modest. As it stands now, Int is practically a requirement on Paladin for NO other reason whatsoever except to service these modals. You know what removing the demand for Int would also do? It'd give people spare points to play with and put towards Might or Con, which simultaneously would make Paladin hit harder or be tankier. As it stands now you've got Paladin so confused as to what it wants to be, it sucks and gets sub-par scores in everything. The most painful of all of this half-assedry is seeing intelligence needlessly be forced upon Paladin as a recommended stat, as if the stat demands for paladin weren't high enough already. And no, not all of these suck. The revive for example is quite nice, the later abilities (if you actually bother with a Paladin for that long) are all nice, and the sworn enemy one can be quite good, but those alone are not enough to justify bringing a Paladin along. Overall.... The problem with Paladin is that it's a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none." It can heal!! It can buff allies!! It can deal damage!! It can tank!! AND IT SUCKS BALLS AT ALL OF THOSE JOBS! For every ability you name that a Paladin has, chances are there's another class that does that job better. The idea was clearly to make Paladin provide a little of everything in some way, the problem being that it seems the developers were so conservative with the stats they provided the Paladin with, that Paladin simply cannot hold a candle to any of the others in any category. What is my motivation to use a Paladin as a support + backup tank for my Fighter instead of just using a Priest with my Fighter? What is my motivation to use my Paladin to help my Rogue with the damage dealing department instead of just using a Barbarian? As it stands now, no one is questioning if a Paladin is OP, because it's painfully obvious that all of Paladin's sub-par abilities combined can not compete with anyone else's focused efforts on 1-2 areas. Paladin is too ADHD and bipolar and hasn't justified that attitude. The fix? Just beef it up across the board. There's plenty of room for this. Not every above suggestion needs to be taken (all of them together might send the Paladin closer to OP territory), but there's no reason that all of these singular complaints and suggested tweaks cannot function in and of themselves. Thoughts?

Because balance is fun. Balance leads you to wanna explore and try different methods and different ways to beat the game and approach battles, because there's room for improvement. If you've got a method that works reliably (too reliably), then you use that method in your desire to be as effective and strong as possible. On the opposite end, if a method sucks balls, then it's not used and that's effectively "phantom content" in the sense that it's content that may as well not be there. The developers and the player both have interests in all content being as viable as possible because if it's not, then the game quickly becomes repetitive and lots of effort the devs put into various (inferior) methods and skills is all but moot. Without balance, motivation to explore new options? It tanks. Personally one of my motivators with trying new things is seeing which character could kick the other's ass in a fight based on their drastically different strengths and weaknesses. If one is a clear winner, then I lack motivation to bother exploring the characteristics of the second character since it's so clear who won. In this way, balance is a huge asset to replay value, which is again a cornerstone of RPG game design.