So here’s a sneaky question; I’m soon to be running my first game of dungeon world with people who have never played…

12 thoughts on “So here’s a sneaky question; I’m soon to be running my first game of dungeon world with people who have never played…”

1. I don’t find the paladin overpowered at all. I am curious where that came from.

2. Partially from watching the RollPlay game but also Adam Koebel said something to a similar effect on YouTube once so I presumed it was an established thing (I’ll see if I can hunt it down). It is very possible that I may have just stumbled across a minor concept and then inflated it greatly in my mind.

   Regardless I’m sure the right GM can balance things I’m just not so sure that little untested me can.

3. There’s no such thing as “overpowered” in Dungeon World. If there is, I suspect the game isn’t being played as designed.

4. To answer your question: I believe the Templar is meant to be Paladin-lite? I may be mistaken.

5. Don’t sweat it.

   Quest definitely has some potential to make the paladin feel invulnerable, but that just means you have to get creative in how you threaten them or (more importantly) the people and things they care about.  

   And don’t give players too much leeway on the trigger action, the goals, or the requirements. Be a fan, sure, but if someone’s like “uh, yeah, I utter a prayer and dedicate myself to slaying this orc, a blight on the land! I’ll take immunity to edged weapons and… immunity to blunt weapons!” you can (and should) point out that the move requires dedicating themselves to a mission through prayer and ritual cleansing.

   I’ve heard people have beef with Bloody Aegis, but I think that’s overblown. Debilities suck, and the paladin is already spread thin on their “strong” ability scores… if they use Blood Aegis too much, they’re going to missing rolls left and right.

6. The only thing to watch on the paladin is the quest. Make sure that the ability he gains from it is not too broad (ex: Immunity to all harm vs swords). And be ruthless with the cost you put on him for it. Other than that it’s no more problematic than other classes.

7. Galahad is a Paladin. He quests for the Holy Grail. The paladin in your game should be questing for something equally momentous.

   Bonus points for working in a Castle Anthrax reference.

8. Yeah, 100% agree that the Paladin is most certainly not overpowered. The most powerful thing they have is immunity in their Quest move, and that gives them the ability to not be harmed by a pretty narrowly defined source of danger that you need to sign off on anyway.

   There is some ambiguity as to how broad their immunity can or should be, but that’s a scope question that you need to examine at the table. I’ll bring up my classic example for scope questions: a mountain is technically an ‘inanimate obstacle.’ So can the Fighter break through a mountain, like this classy guy does? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQcS4xhhqo

   The answer is: depends on your table.

   Bottom line, every class has scope questions (how extensive can a Cleric’s boons be? Can a Druid shapeshift into Godzilla? Ritual explicitly lets you do anything, how the heck do we put the brakes on that one?). Banning the Paladin just means that you’ll be asking those questions about a different class instead of Paladin.

   But, can totally understand first-GM jitters. If you’ve exercised your firsthand judgment on it and still want an alternative, the True Knight is pretty solid: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5jVDS84xBJCVTRtYlFxeExET2c/edit

9. I’m fairly convinced it’s impossible to be “overpowered” in DW unless the GM lets you.

10. I wouldn’t sweat it. It’s not overpowered in the sense that it was in 3.5 or anything , and Quest actually gives you plenty of DM fodder

11. The only playbook I’ve seen overshadow the others is the Druid; you’ve just gotta be brutal on those miss results.

12. Defy Danger + creative players = more overpowered than any playbook you can give them.

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