Re: session re****t

Mary Kuhner posts regarding the paladin character Charis:

  My mental image of what she should be doing
  involves being able to walk onto a battlefield and
  make things go better for her side, not
  by direct force of arms, but by strengthening
  and rallying her allies.  The fear-resistance
  power works for this except that the
  10' range makes it next to impossible to use:  in
  a lengthy campaign a PC who needed to make
  a fear save has been within 10' of Charis
  exactly *once*.  A very few spells, mainly Bless,
  work for it.  Nothing else does.

Interesting.  Brian mentioned online games; the World of Warcraft
paladin matches your description almost perfectly.  The aren't great
warriors, though they are difficult to kill, but in large groups, their
primary advantage is that they can substantially enhance the abilities
of everyone in their party.

Brian, your concept seems to make them more personally powerful than
other warriors, in return for adherence to a strict code of behavior.
I don't think that can work in online games, where there's no good way
to judge that adherence.

It also doesn't work in table top games where the gamesmaster prefers
not to judge players' play, but those games can just choose not to use
the character class.  For my part, I just see the mechanical difference
between paladins and other warriors primarily as a matter of the
paladins being, on average, higher level.

Warren J. Dew