I've always liked the Knight archetype.  Noble, armored, even supernatural powers.  Which game has a knight class that you think is the most fun?

I'll start. 

1.  Palladium Fantasy, because it was my first RPG, and was the only RPG we played in high school.  I've branched out since then, but for the time we played at school I loved the knights.  They didn't have Fighters in Palladium, and I liked that.  You could be a soldier, merc, archer, ranger, knight, Paladin, thief, or assassin.  All of those were variations on a melee combat and armor class, but nothing supernatural.  They had the best horse riding skill, the Lance weapon proficiency was exclusive to the knight and Paladin, and good starting gear.  But, they had the code of chivalry.  Paladins we're slightly better stats than knights, but higher attribute minimums were required. My rolls were not good enough, so I was a normal knight. 

2.  Star Wars.  Jedi.  Obviously.  But, they're often OP and unbalanced, so play at your own risk. 

3.  Basic Fantasy.  It's easy.  It's free.  There is a free supplement that gives the ranger and Paladin.  But, they're not in the main book, and they don't get spells until level 10.  They do get lay of hands, turn undead at 1/2 strength, and can turn their sword into a magic sword once per day for one turn.   But, kinda underwhelming. 

What games do you like for playing a Paladin?

For a D&D hater I'm inordinately fond of the AD&D paladin.  All these cool powers but you've got to put a 17 or better into Charisma.

Rolemaster Paladins have the spell Holy Martyr at level 50.  It allows them to explode in a righteous +50 fireball.  I do like the Rolemaster Paladin spell lists in general.  I love how RM generally rolls class abilities into a spell list that functions much the same as everyone else's spell lists.  They've essentially unified class abilities into a single uniform mechanic.

I too like the Palladium Fantasy, paladin who just gets better stuff because they've got better stats.  The second edition version has a "Demon Death Blow" ability.

By the broader definiition Warhammer's Chosen Chaos Knights are pretty cool.  Deity provides powers specific to deity at its finest.

Chivalry and Sorcery has a very Christian take on paladins.

There are two other fantasy games I play a lot of.  Pocket Fantasy, and Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool edition.

1.  Pocket Fantasy is free, super rules lite, but technically doesn't have a Paladin.  They have a Commander.  This is a class that has two underling NPC's, and has group buffs for the underlings and the rest of the party.  In short, it is a pet and buff based class.

2.  Dungeons and Delvers.  This is my preferred fantasy game right now.  It isn't expensive, but you have to buy it at a less popular website like Big Geek Emporium.  The Author took it off DTRPG because of complaints that DTRPG was engaging in censorship of authors, so they pulled their game in protest.  The game itself is neat as all characters can be built by the player picking abilities from a list of about 15 or so.  You can never have them all, or even half of them, so no two characters ought to be alike. 

It also uses a dice chain system where everything starts at 1D4 and goes up to 1D12.  Roll a stat dice, a skill dice, and then often dice from your abilities as well, then pick the best 2 to get your result.

This game allows you to customize your Paladin to either be a charging attack master, or healing hands, or bonuses and buffs when using a shield, or a 2-handed weapon.

It is a fun game that I recommend.  It also fixes two things I dislike about D&D.  Spiralling hit points (in Delvers your Fighter starts with 5 HP and ends with 9 HP), and treats armor as additional 1-3 hit points that reset after combat.   Armor does not raise the target number needed to hit you.  In fact, heavy armor actually slows you down, movement wise.  It is implied that the best way to play is on a grid map, but you can play theater of the mind, and I do.  Speed is less important in theater of the mind I feel.

https://biggeekemporium.com/product/dungeons-delvers-dice-pool/

I'll second Rolemaster for the spell lists.  And they do that for all the spellcasting classes, which I love.  I really dislike the D&D method of just choosing spells from some other class(es) list.  Put the effort in to create discrete lists for each class, even if there's a little overlap.

Well, if it's paladins specifically, I really like the 1E Paladins.

But if we're talking about different takes on fighters in general, Lejendary Adventure has Soldiers, Foresters, Mariners, Nobles, Bravos, Guards, Holy Warriors, and Warrior Monks. Assassins, Jongleurs, Outlaws, Pirates, and Rogues also do a decent job at fighting. At the start, Nobles are the best fighters of all, although a Bravo has a good chance of beating a noble in a duel, and Soldiers will prove to be the best in the long run, though in unarmed combat the Warrior Monk is obviously going to be the best. Foresters tend to be the best archers.

What about setting? (I prefer to use generic systems.)

I have a little bit of a crush on the Stormlight Archives and their "Knights Radiant".

Paladin.  A bit of Fighter & Cleric, all in one.  Tons of roleplay flavor.  An excellent adventuring class.  I'm having a hard time committing to a single edition / ruleset.  I think I'd rather play a Fighter / Cleric in OD&D or B/X, with some "Paladin" flavor.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 25, 2023, 07:26:58 PM
I've always liked the Knight archetype.  Noble, armored, even supernatural powers.  Which game has a knight class that you think is the most fun?

I'd say Pendragon is the obvious choice, though it isn't a class-based game in the usual sense.

I only gave it a brief read, but C&C seems to have cool paladins AND knights, with no spells.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/09/a-few-thought-on-castles-crusades.html

Other than that, the 5e vengeance paladin is cool.

I do not think paladins have much to add to my B/Xish games; fighter/cleric hybrids are enough.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 26, 2023, 02:35:28 PM
I only gave it a brief read, but C&C seems to have cool paladins AND knights, with no spells.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/09/a-few-thought-on-castles-crusades.html

Other than that, the 5e vengeance paladin is cool.

I do not think paladins have much to add to my B/Xish games; fighter/cleric hybrids are enough.

True; C&C adds a spell-casting paladin in Adventurers Backpack, along with a class called the Ethereal Knight, which is like a planar knight variant.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 26, 2023, 02:35:28 PM
I only gave it a brief read, but C&C seems to have cool paladins AND knights, with no spells.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/09/a-few-thought-on-castles-crusades.html

Other than that, the 5e vengeance paladin is cool.

I do not think paladins have much to add to my B/Xish games; fighter/cleric hybrids are enough.

Yeah, C&C did a lot of cool things with the classes. Since it wasn't trying to clone anything, they had the flexibility to change things positively. I also like how Illusion magic really is something different, something that went away with 2e and never came back. The Bard also being more of a martial character is really cool.

I liked all the versions that required the paladin to live by a code.  My favorite version was from BECMI, where you had to achieve 10 levels in fighter and be Lawful to qualify.  Paladinhood was something you had to earn.

Yeah, I really like the Companion version.  Really Companion created the first prestige classes.  I'd probably put the limit at fourth but that's largely a matter of how I view levels.  But basically why would the gods support a nobody who's not all that impressive.  That said, there should probably be a pious peasant kind of class too because the paladin is too closely tied to the trappings of knighthood and nobility.  That's one of those detail things.  I can totally see the evil god of the divine right of kings having paladins but I think the various other gods might have some other kind of champion.

I guess whatever game 'defines' paladin for you.

For me, it's AD&D.

Not that I think it would go over well with the preferences of most on this forum, but the Pathfinder 1e Paladin is extremely cool.  It has of course, all the 3.X warts, but it also has all the 3.X nice things- a large number of abilities, serious damage against the most big bad guys, a real righteous badass.  It was what the 3.5 Paladin should have been. 

It's not necessarily what every paladin should be or anything.  But it's definitely a highlight of that system.