Thoughts on Class - Paladin

As stated in the previous post, I am working on trying to create the Druid and Bard classes for use in Labyrinth Lord basic. A friend asked me why not the Paladin?

I've always been bothered by the Paladin class. It seems to me a redundancy. We already have the heavily armored and armed Cleric which can easily be said to represent the militant arm of a church. The religious orders of knighthood, sent out to protect the flock with force of arms when prayer alone just doesn't do it.

Why not make Paladin a title bestowed upon the leaders of the armed and armored church troops in the field instead of a class?

When most people think of priests they seldom think of them armored like knights and going about bashing heads. Instead they see them as either robed monks (monks are another class I take issue with) or wearing holy raiment and being mostly tied to a given location giving sermons a couple days a week or involved in the Machiavellian internal church politics.

One of the things currently being discussed for D&DNext is the possible split of the Cleric into two classes, the Cleric as the armored version and the Priest a more spell focused version. That still leaves us with the redundancy of the Paladin. We will see which way they go with that, however I have no plan to try to wedge the Paladin class into my LL basic campaign.