Paladin

A deity-sworn holy warrior who summons weapons of light, smites and judges foes, and holds a party together with auras, shields and heals.

The Paladin is a hybrid: not quite the warrior's equal at raw damage, not quite the cleric's equal at healing, but able to do enough of both that a party can survive without either. You swear to one of the five gods, and that oath is mechanical rather than decorative. Your deity gates part of your kit, colours your summoned gear and determines which of the exclusive signature abilities you can ever learn.

In practice the paladin plays as a durable front-liner who converts SP into holy damage and party support. You summon your own weapon and shield rather than hunting for them, taunt with accuse, keep one aura running at all times, and top allies up with grace and holylight between swings. The class splits cleanly on weapon choice: one-handed and shield paladins run judge and dawnstrike and lean defensive, while two-handed paladins run smite and divinestorm and lean into damage.

Resources#

The paladin spends SP. Every live ability is either free or costs spellpoints, and sacrifice exists precisely because you will run dry: it converts half your current health into half your maximum SP.

The class also has Conviction, a 0 to 100 bar viewed with the conviction command. Conviction is designed to be the paladin's answer to the cleric's Faith: it builds through faithful action rather than through healing, and decays more slowly. At present the bar exists, decays on its own timer and can be inspected, but no live ability spends it yet. Treat it as flavour that will become mechanical later rather than as something to plan around.

Two shared systems matter as well. Passives are equipped with passives, two slots at a time, and only equipped passives fire. Talents give you one point every ten levels up to a maximum of ten, spent with talents spend <tree>.

Talent Trees#

Holy#

The support and divine-magic half of the class, and the larger of the two main trees. It holds the summoned holyweapon and holyshield, the aura line, the heals, the shields, the anti-undead abilities, and the utility from silence through to resurrect. Only one aura may be active at a time, so much of playing this tree well is choosing which aura the current fight wants.

Retribution#

The weapon half. smite and judge are your bread-and-butter strikes, split by weapon type, and the tree escalates through divinestorm and dawnstrike to handofgod. It also holds the party buffs bless and embolden, the fatigue drains, and most of the deity-locked signatures.

Zeal#

Currently a single ability, warhorn, locked to worshippers of Kranos. The tree exists to hold the war-god material and will grow.

Deity Locks#

Four live abilities are restricted by which god you serve. Changing religion swaps the available skills automatically, so a paladin who converts does not lose access permanently, but does lose it while they worship elsewhere.

Skills#

The paladin catalogue is still being built out. Live abilities are listed first by tree; a large planned roadmap follows.

Holy#

Retribution#

Zeal#

Planned#

These are on the paladin design roadmap but are not yet in game. Levels are the design levels and are likely to shift when the abilities are built, in the same way the live abilities were re-tiered across the full level range.

Playing a Paladin#

The first thing to do at level 2 is summon your kit. holyweapon gives you a weapon that scales with you and gains blessings as you level, and holyshield does the same for your off-hand, which means paladins effectively never have a gear gap in those slots. Decide early whether you want one-handed and shield or two-handed, because that decision picks half your rotation: one-handed paladins get judge at 9 and dawnstrike at 65, two-handed paladins get smite at 5 and divinestorm at 61, and each requires the correct weapon in hand.

The moment-to-moment loop is simple. Keep one aura running at all times, since they cost nothing and only one may be active. accuse holds threat. Your weapon strike goes on cooldown, holyfire sits on your weapon as a passive leech, and grace is cast on whoever needs it before you go back to swinging. When SP runs low and the fight is going well, sacrifice trades health you can heal back for SP you cannot otherwise get. When SP runs low and the fight is going badly, disengage instead.

Aura choice is the main tactical decision the class asks you to make. Aura of Might when the party needs to kill something faster, Aura of Sanctum when incoming damage is the problem, Aura of Radiance when the healer is struggling with sustained chip damage, and Aura of Fortitude at higher levels when the party simply needs to be bigger. Swap between pulls rather than mid-fight.

In a group you are the off-tank and the safety net. You will rarely out-heal a cleric or healer, but you can cover for one that is out of range or out of SP, and resurrect means a party with a paladin does not have to walk back from a wipe. Against undead you are far stronger than your level suggests: exorcize and eradicate both hit undead disproportionately hard, so volunteer for the crypt runs. Solo, you are one of the safer levelling classes precisely because you never have to stop and find a healer.