Another possibility, if you don’t want to rework the class, would be to change the setting the Paladin operates in. Tired of playing a lawful good character in a lawful world under the domain of a good god? How about playing a Drow Paladin, not from the Underdark, but IN the Underdark?

Suddenly doing the right thing isn’t so easy, and being a lawful good character becomes more than a restriction, it becomes life threatening. This could lead to excellent character development, well beyond a two dimensional “good guy with a sword and some healing spells”.

I’ve always like the Paladin conceptually, but on paper and in DDO they just fail to impress me. If you want to heal, play a Cleric, if you want to fight, play a Fighter or Barbarian. Clerics can be any alignment that has a god, right? And there are no (or few) alignment restrictions for Fighters or Barbarians, are there? How hard would it be for bunch of neutral good or lawful neutral characters to live in the Underdark and party with the lawful good Paladin?

It’s the Dm’s world! your just living in it, if you do not like it there is the door!

Upon the wasted battlefields, in the frozen tundra, Sturm Brightblade and the Knights of Palidine stood, weapons at the ready, staring down the vile Knights of the Rose, who slaughter entire villages in the name of there heathen gods. On the opposite end of the field stood Jareth Mortryr, a Knight of the Rose, waiting for the orders from his lords to cite the attack upon the vile enemies, who oppress there subjects, putting to death any who disagree with their belief in Palidine.

In a case such as this, which side is right. Both sides have undying faith in their causes and beliefs, and likewise both believe that their ways are right, but how do you tell the difference? ( I know it’s Forgotten Realms, but Sturm Brightbalde is actually from the dragons series of Forgotten Realms novels aiden. very good series, and I do recommend it, if your interested in reading it. It gives alot of depth to the different classes.) Now to cover a couple more of the major gripes.

Though the leveling system can be somewhat overwhelming, when you want to for a little while, step out of reality and into a place that exists purely in the imagination, and I speak for myself on this one, I personally would like to have a fighting chance at survival as the adventures continue to get harder. That is the main thing I dislike about war and fighting games. (Well, that and the fact that most, if not all of them are based in a setting of pure reality. When I want to play a game, it’s not to do the things I could do in real life, ex. join the military and shoot people for a living, start a fight and beat people up on the streets, etc.) I will admit that there are a few aspects that I dislike about D&D, but in most cases if you are either DM, or in a campaign with a good DM, those things can be easily worked out as you go. For example, and I’ve had this one happen recenly to me in a session, so I’ll type out the conversation for your enjoyment.

Player: I really like the wizards, but what I’d really like to do is be able to incorporate fighting and magic for a more fun game.
Me : Well, I mean, you can choose to multiclass, but you’d have to be second level to do that.

Now if I hadn’t read the books, and had I wanted to be a jerk, that whole conversation would have ended there, and I probably would have lost a player for that campaign, but as it stands, the conversation continued as such.

Me: There is a rule in the PHB that talks about making new classes. Lets see what we can do to make it a bit more fun for you, within reason.

We sat down and within 30 minutes had a character made up that she has enjoyed playing ever since, and is still throughly impressed with. She is able to do things that in real life, she never would have even dreamed of doing, aside from the simple magical aspect. Also, just to try to debunk a few myths about the genre of people who play games such as this, she is a soldier in the U.S. Army, has been in for about 8 years, and plans on staying in to retire. I myself am the typical college student at OU, and am majoring in business management. The other people in my campain are professional types, and we are all adamant players. (Kinda reinforcing the Rabid Player stereotype, but oh well.)

Now on to the next subject, the “Two Book Minimum”. I personally have all the 3.5 books on my external hard drive, and I hate to say it, but aside from certain expanded parts, can quote most of the rules from memory. That comes in handy, because in most cases, if my party needs a rule, I can just turn my laptop around and let them see it, or I can simply give them the hard drive, and they can hook it up to one of their laptops, as I really only need Microsoft Wordpad to run a truly fun and successful gaming session. That is one sign of a truly good DM, but I realize that not everyone can afford to memorize all that stuff, so that is not the only way. I’m not getting into all the ways right now, as I’ve taken enough time on this subject for those of you who will actually read this.

Now then, since I’ve mostly pimping D&D, and explaining ways that it can be made more fun, I’ll go ahead and focus on some of my least favorite aspects. First, I’m not a big fan of looking like a geek when I’m walking into where ever we are playing with a full bag of dice. (Take it from me, using a Crown Royal bag to try to hide what you’re carrying really doesn’t help much.) If there was a way to change that, I’d jump on it in a heartbeat. Maybe a computer program to do the dice rolls for you………..
Likewise, the length of a game session is a bit on the tedious side. When I’m being descriptive, which I always have to be, otherwise my people will get bored, it usually takes anywhere from 10 to 48 hours to get through one session. That equals alot of free time, (we only really play on weekends) tons of patience, (Which at times can be in short supply, depending on whats going on in the peoples lives) and still more Mt. Dew. (which, after about five 24 packs in a weekend can get pretty pricey.) Next and last gripe.
At all times, you’re at the mercy of the dice, which at times really truly sucks. It’[s all like shooting craps, with more sides to the dice. Some nights, you may be on a roll, (Unintentional humor, and I do apologize if you don’t get it.) and then other nights you may lose it all. Only real difference is, in craps, if you lose it all, you walk away broke, while in D&D, if you lose it all, you walk away without a character. It has happened to the best of players. (I’m sure that even Mr. E. Gary Gygax has died a time or two in a game. For those of you who don’t know who that is, he was the creator of the most popular pen and paper RPG of all time, D&D.)
Now, from a DM’s point of view, one of the best things I can have happen with a session is having all of my players, once we finally finish, walk away with smiles on their faces. Sorry for being so long winded, but I just wanted to throw in my two cents in this argument, and add another fairly well informed perspective to this speculative debate on an opinion that was stated from only one side of the margin of them. (Yes people, I’m talking about the original post. He does not like RPG’s, and I won’t criticize him for it. As they say “Different Strokes for Different Folks.”)

4. Alignment (I am going to address some accusations mentioned in the comments too): Indeed, these serve only as a guideline for your character’s personality. Aren’t actually all of the (GOOD!) Paladins a “shining paragons of justice and virtue”? Or to be more precise – can you imagine a good paladin, who serves a good god, in a world where a paladin is chosen and accepted by aforementioned god (unless I have got something wrong here in which case my point may or may not be completely invalid) to be a bastard who goes around stealing from people and hurting them without reason? Such person would be abandoned by that god and voila! We have an ex-paladin here. The same for a paladin who completely ignores his order’s law (chaotic)? They would just kick him out because he failed to fit into them. Not a problem. And also characters can change alignment if I recall correctly, so that is one problem less.
Someone here said that alignment is a bad thing, because you can force a good cleric to do a bad deed and an evil person can do something good. Sure, but the good cleric will be, as said, FORCED to do something (say, kill somebody). But he won’t stop being a good person, because he did it for greater good, not for his own selfish needs. The same for evil character – he travels with heroes not because he wants to save the world but because he wants to do some killing/get powerful to be better tyrant/get cash/bask in the glory and so on. Saving a city doesn’t change the fact that he did it only to have his own monument and get his weight in gold. So that’s not really an argument here. And besides, you still can ignore or modify the alignment rules if you feel like it.

3. Levels: While you say it is unnatural and I have to agree with you, but I can’t disagree more with your hostility towards it. One thing I always loved in RPGs was leveling. The enormous joy you feel when you know you have become stronger. But I guess it is once again a matter of taste as I personally never liked the idea of training skills in RPGs, it was always too unpredictable (some Roguelikes) or too much like casual grinding (Morrowind and some other RGs). So yes, it is UNREALISTIC but at least as much, if not more, fun. Besides, as you mentioned, implementing training would implement more rules which we know you already dislike and it only adds to general complication of gameplay.
And random encounters… Well, I never really thought that there is anyone who actually uses them. Besides you can create random encounters chart for ANY system so it’s not a valid point in my eyes.

2. Two-Book Minimum: Fine, it’s that if you want to play D&D legally (or without extensive researches) you need to pay quite a bit. But how does that relate to the actual content? Just because something is expensive it has to be bad? I don’t want to be filled with prejudice against you, but argument like that gives an impression that you are either a troll or a flamewar spewer. I am not going to bias my opinions and post on that thing so I will assume that you are a decent person.

1. Rabid Players: with all due respect to all posters above me, terrifying majority of people above who talked against DnD spend their keypresses on insults, missing the point and pointing mistakes (really, is there any better way to prove that you don’t know what you are talking about [or are just plain stupid] than ignoring content of the post and nitpicking writing mistakes?) The sole reason for big amounts of DnD fanboys is that DnD is popular. Take your favorite system, imagine that it is as popular as DnD and now, can’t you see all the fanboys out there? Or take the crappiest system, you will see the same thing. So I am saying again – arguments like this one don’t really give a good impression about the poster.

Some of the other arguments I saw in the comments:
# Non-standard rules in DnD – can’t really say anything about it, I am afraid I never played any other system – we play diceless when we want to, and we enjoy rolling the dice enough to don’t need any simplifications.
# DnD is a feeder for imagination-less people – well, SORRY, but I think someone holds here a personal vendetta against DnD. I might not be the most experienced player, but the time I spent on my campaign for this game was no more restricting than me writing a novel.

So these are my opinions on the matter. Feel free to disagree but if all you can say are more or less insults then please feed yourself some hay. Thank you for your time .

Once the player has looked up the rule, if you have GM who thinks the player is cheating or doesn’t agree with the rule, he has to stop and look at the rule too. There are plenty of games we play with universal mechanics or near universal mechanics for task resolution.

You wanna see a rule that defies logic, and completely class/level system obsolete, read the Turning undead rules very closely, and apply it to a level 2 character turning level 1 undead, then apply it to a level 20 cleric turning higher level undead. Clerics become less powerful as they level.

Healing naturally, everyone heals so many hp per night of rest…this is the same for a level 10 as it is for a level 1…so, level 1 characters heal faster? Wizards recover from fights easier than warriors do? Flaw. I could do this all day.

I wish my group would drop this turd of a system completely, but they cling to it for some reason, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.