Right now I am more of the mind to refurbish existing systems rather than creating new ones, so I'm not sure I can legit answer that in the same way I could, say, help guide what Trader combat looks like (though Grejuva was the principle dev of the spell list there).

That said, what I see as existing Paladin points of strength are:

1) They should be good at group buffing. The revised Heroic Strength will be relevant when I can get to it, Lead is already pretty nice and I hope to make it nicer.

2) They should be good at melee combat. Revised smite will help, they have some spell support here, and we've already discussed engagement management as a necessary piece of this pie.

3) Defense. This is actually kinda hard. Right now the way armor defenses work it's not really feasible to make Paladins absorb more damage on the high end than they already do. And given there is the potential for extreme damage absorption it's not really justified to give them some of the high-powered defensive abilities that Traders recently got (ala Mask of the Moons and Elision).

I want to modernize this but I'm not really sure what a modern conception of Paladin defense looks like yet. I want to do TM Parry and a DFA negation contest, but beyond that it gets very blurry.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

Thanks for the response. I understand this is still very early on, but now you have me thinking about the end-state of the guild.

> I want to modernize this but I'm not really sure what a modern conception of Paladin defense looks like yet. I want to do TM Parry and a DFA negation contest, but beyond that it gets very blurry.

I sympathize with this. In most RPGs, you could just give them +10 defense and turn undead as the perk and be done. They're now the best at that role, but with DR's power curve, +10 defense doesn't mean much against ranks, stats, buffs, paid items, and so forth. That's why I was focusing on a niche that's unique. Something no one else can do as a means of differentiating them, like parrying spells. Plugging your goals into the framework, I see something like this:

Group combat : "Group Buffs"*, lead, (protect)
Solo combat : DFA protection, TM parry (+anti targeting glyph? Active armor abilities?)
Group non-combat : ? (I guess Banner of Truce may qualify here in a literal sense) (Updates to support glyphs?)
Solo non-combat* : ?



That all sounds great. I'm greedy though, so some thoughts for consideration:

1. Can the buffs provide something unique? Strength is good, but it's redundant with half of the other guild's own buffs, more than half with stamina. More still if you include items and sorcery. What if a stunned character was automatically protected. What about an intervene type ability, where you push a friendly target to ranged and taunt the creature(s) facing them (maybe require a horse?). What about making divine armor and Righteous wrath spread to your group? What about making lead a passive for anyone in your group that grows with size?

2. Same for self-buffs. Can TM parry extend to ranged weapons? Can you consider making holy weapons perma blessed and synergize with smite? Maybe turn it into a TM focus ( I know, I know, greedy).

3. Can you extend this uniqueness to situations outside of combat? For example, maybe a "smite anvil" while forging to undo a mistake (improve quality) with a holy forging hammer. Maybe sanctify a piece to remove impurities and improve the . Maybe a sacred insight that tells us when a gathering node will repop (though that should probably be innate to scouting). Maybe a squire that will do useful things like go to a town and buy items for us from NPCs (brush + oil, for example) or deposit our coins or put/get stuff in our vaults (like full bundles).

4. For the solo buffs, you could some of them very powerful with longer CDs. This could be a way to differentiate them from other guild abilities, and you could even tie in with a holy festival like HE. Provide a longer CD copy of HE gifts, such as converting XP for yourself or others to raw ranks, blessing someone with a short-term RPA, doing more with death's sting (ie: new glyph of warding => -1 favor cost per depart option, minimum 0, and no sting), summoning a wraith (new glyph of bonding?), giving you a +stat (random) that exceeds caps, and so forth.

> To be honest, if you found a way to give us more absorption I don't think I'd be very excited about the change anyway. Active armor sounds more interesting, but I'm still ignorant on what it is and how it'll work.

+1 to this. I like the idea of active armor, but I'm not sure how I would feel about an expertise like maneuver. I'd rather a "defensive stance" where you can plant your shield, yell a taunt, and then reflect damage from attacks (% of the original attack, maybe exceeding the original with high armor and conviction skills or based off shield size) so long as you don't take another action.

>Let's say I expect a debilitation being cast my way, so I trace a glyph that has a short duration but absorbs the single next incoming debilitation and makes the debilitator pay somehow.

I really like the idea of some more abilities (as opposed to the passive anti-stun, Rally) that let Paladins resist or shed debilitation like water off a duck. It has a nice thematic feel to it, too: Come at a paladin on equal footing or be sanctimoniously humbled for your shameful behavior.

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"Warrior Mages don't bother covering up their disasters.
They're proud of them." -Raesh, on history

>Maybe they need shaman like totems that take time to ramp up and can be destroyed, but become very powerful once fully empowered.

Totems are a planned Barbarian release. I don't see why something like this couldn't just be a glyph though.