Paladins are the quintessential knights in shining armor in both and. They are typically seen wearing heavy armor and wielding a sword and shield, but they are ideal on the frontlines.
However, since 2009, Paizo has been nudging Paladins to be more than just shining defenders. The divergence came from reworking Smite Evil — the previous iteration of ’s Divine Smite — to trigger at any range.
Compared to, many Paladins rely on archery, hyper-focus on spell casting, or stop a fight from even breaking out. Wizards of The Cost has made some recent changes to give more options, including updating the 2024 rules to let Paladins take the archery fighting style.
However, this is a small step over the course of nearly 50 years of identical Paladin tropes. It is also far too late for D&D content that was previously released, including the Paladin class in and the character Xenk Yender from .
Thanks to ’ open gaming license, Paizo made the first addition of using 3e rules as a basis. Many features were the same, like class and spell names, but many features were greatly altered in.