Thursday 10 October 2002
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Pic of the day: In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall
escape my sight; let those who worship evil's might beware my power ...
(Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot) Paladin!I am not really a paladin, I just play one in DAoC. As with most things in my life, playing DAoC goes in fads. My troll fad is over for this time (though I may return to it). Now I'm back in the realm of Albion, playing paladins. Actually I have one on a European server (Prydwen) and one new on an American server, Galahad. The last one is because this server has an all-paladin guild, and I could really want to join that. Paladins are one of several "hybrid classes", fighters that also use some magic. They are different from all other classes in one way: The more paladins you have in one group, the better. They can play solo, and they can play in groups with other characters. But unlike any other class, you can actually stack a whole group with 8 paladins and it will be playable. Not only playable, it will be really good. It is one of the best groups you can make. ***The key to the paladin is his (or her) chants. Chants are a simplified form of magic, and there are only a few of them. One heal chant, one weapon enchant, one shield chant. (Lately there has also shown up an endurance chant and a resistance to magic chant. These are not implemented in Europe yet, I believe.) In addition each paladin has a self-only shield spell, an aura of protection. On the American servers there is also a taunt spell, a kind of insult that pulls a monster to attack you in rage. (On a human player, it will break concentration, such as during spellcasting or shooting with a bow.) The three basic chants are still the core of the paladin's life, though. Chants are valid for the whole group. If you run a healing chant, it will heal anyone who is wounded in your group (as long as they are within reasonable distance). If you run a weapon enchantment, all weapons in the group will do extra damage. And the shield chant will make everyone in the group harder to hit. Heal chants "stack", that is to say, more than one can be in effect at the same time. If two of us run a heal chant, then the entire group is healed by twice as much. Three chants, thrice as much. This is not the case for the other chants. Still, it makes a large paladin group very hard to kill. Each chant has a pulse of approximately 5 seconds (perhaps 7). For each pulse, the spell is cast again at no extra cost. You can run these while fighting, while running, while resting. They are automatic once started. A paladin is not as good a fighter as a dedicated armsman or mercenary, or the equivalent classes from other realms. They are certainly not as good magicians as the cloth-wearing classes, and not as good healers as clerics and friars. But they are very flexible. In a group, you can mix and match the chants as needed. If the group is taking heavy damage, all may be running heal chants. But if you are fighting close up, you may want to have someone running a weapon enchant and someone doing the restore stamina. You can twist your chants so you can run two or three chants in the same pulse, but this takes a lot of stamina (as well as quick fingers). By twisting, you can even run two heals in each pulse. Multiply this by up to eight, and you don't really need any other healers in the group. ***It should surprise no one that the paladin class tends to attract people with a sense of chivalry. A paladin is courageous, he will risk his hide to protect others; especially those weaker than himself. A paladin is polite to friends and strangers. He will kill the enemies of his country if need be, but he will not mock them. A paladin is reliable; his word is sacred, and he will not leave his friends to their fate. This is also the reason why I have hesitated to approached that guild, The Faithful as they are fittingly called. How reliable can my character really be when I live in Europe and have to go to bed when the game heats up in the evening? I wish there was a paladin guild on the European servers, but for some strange reason these guilds seem to be very rare. Anyway, this is the continuation of a long trend. Building Paladin units is my preferred strategy in Master of Magic, and white magic seems to be the type that comes easiest for me to play both in that game and in Magic: the Gathering and in that online Magewar game. So it should surprise no one that I have "become" a paladin, even if only in a game. I guess it's a rub-off from real life ... you don't think so? Really? ^_^ |
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