Sunday, May 12, 2019

I'm Going to Play a Paladin

The DM for the D&D game I play at Comics & Collectibles has let us know that the campaign we are currently running, the pirates campaign, will be ending soon. Once it's over, we're going to start a new campaign with brand new characters, which means that I finally get to play a Paladin.

However, there are a few problems with this. The first problem is that I'm not sure how I want to build this Paladin character. The Paladin class in D&D isn't really how I'd like my character to be. I'd like him to have more defensive magic and healing. More spell slots would be nice. I'm strongly considering multi-classing, to the point that I'm practically planning on it, but I haven't figured out which class I want him to multi-class into. I also have to pick out the Paladin's race and background, not to mention his backstory and personality. Long story short, I know that I want to be a Paladin, but I don't know what kind of Paladin I want to be or how I'll make that work within the rules of the game.

Another problem is that we're not jumping into the next campaign as soon as the current one ends. We'll spend some time between campaigns doing side quests and mini-adventures as a band of mercenary adventurers. This problem is almost a solution to the previous problem, as it will give me time to try to figure out what kind of Paladin I want to be and how to make it work. The problem is that I don't know how much time it will give me. If it's a short amount of time, I should whip up a character that would be fun to play for a while, but that I won't be emotionally invested in, since I won't be playing him for long.

If it's a long time, I would like to spend it as a Paladin as well, which means that I need to make two Paladin characters and make them sufficiently different that neither I nor others get tired of me playing basically the same character. I can probably accomplish this by giving the characters different races, voices, backgrounds, backstories, moral imperatives, and motivations, but if they're too similar mechanically (such as being primarily built around the same character class), they might still be too similar, despite any and all other differences.

I'm not sure what to do. I want to play a Paladin, but I'm not sure what kind of Paladin I want to play, and I'm not sure about playing two Paladins back-to-back. If I decide not to play two Paladins back-to-back, I should play something else first, so I can be a Paladin during the next major campaign, but that means waiting longer for my next opportunity to be a Paladin. Perhaps I could work things out so I could be a Paladin in spirit, if not on paper. I could be an especially noble Fighter or a somewhat martial Cleric, and either of them would be Paladin-like enough for my purposes without technically being Paladins. Maybe I'll play one of those for the mid-campaign adventures while I try to figure out what kind of Paladin I want to be when I finally get to start actually playing a Paladin.

All issues aside, I'm pretty excited about this. After more than a year of being Krusk Bloodfist, a Barbarian Pirate, I finally get to play a character with strong moral values, someone I can use as a role-model and as morality practice. I can finally start being a Lawful Good person, both in real life and in my weekly games. I've enjoyed playing Krusk Bloodfist, and I've LOVED watching his story unfold. I hope it ends well for him. But I'm looking forward to wrapping up his story over the next few months and passing the torch to a new, more noble character. I've had fun being a pirate, but now I'm excited about finally getting to play a Paladin.

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