What's the diference between a Paladin and a Warpriest?

What's the diference between a Paladin and a Warpriest?

Paladin is the epitome of honor, chivalry and compassion, slayer of dragons and rescuer of princesses, who dates back to origins of D&D.

Warpriest is uninspired Fighter/Cleric mish-mash created by Pathfinder "authors" who ran out of ideas.

Know the difference.

>Repent, or I shall Smite you.
vs
>I will smite you until you repent

Plate armor

Paladins are adjacent to but not part of their Gods church hierarchy and thus cannot hold formal ecclesial offices, but also are not beholden to church edict and law. They are often members of powerful but independent Orders but this isn't necessarily the case. The Orders do not have any sway over who receives the Calling, merely in organizing and training those who do. Priests, meanwhile, always enter their vows volitionally, including those swearing them to martial brotherhoods

Paladins also don't truly need the god/gods. Their power comes from their faith and resolve. Religion is a great place to find that, but many paladins can simply serve the cause of good and order.

As I see it, paladin is 80% warrior, 20% cleric, 102% righteous.

Warpriest is 70% cleric, 30% warrior, and was billed as a hybrid - which it is. Think of it as a simplified multiclass with a few extra bells and whistles.

One is a holy warrior, the other is a warrior priest.

In the game itself, they are somewhat similar in function - beatstick with some divine spells - but the paladin is more useful for his smite and defensive abilities (healing and save boost auras) while the warpriest has better access to actual magic. Obviously, the warpriests also does not need to be lawful good. Also, the paladin has a code that may or may not be their deity's dogma.The warpriest is an official part of the clergy and follows the same code that clerics and inquisitors do.

To be honest, the warpriest's limited casting kinda reminds me of the 2E priests somehow.

>"authors"
This comes across as more jealous than scornful. Try calling them typists (without shudder quotes) in the future.

The one glaring difference between the two is the alignment restriction on the Paladin. A Paladin must be Lawful Good, but a Warpriest can be any alignment. This can open up any number of combat-oriented divine options that just aren't available as a Paladin.

On a related note, the Paladin is a knight in shining armour, a paragon of both law and good. The Warpriest is a more combat-oriented priest, and so can fill a number of different character concepts that just wouldn't be suite by a cleric alone, such as a stealthy worshipper of a god of murder, or a combat-oriented worshipper of a trickster god.

that doesn't make sense

Terminal velocity

Paladin is an obsolete old fossil of RPG. Warpriest has more range and variety.

One is a holy warrior while the other is a martial priest. A paladin would fight for his faith but not preach.

Paladins gain their power from belief; it's my headcanon that anyone who worships an ideal as a Paladin still gets their power from a god, but the god gives it to the Paladin without any sort of formal contract or mission.
I like to think that sometimes a god sees someone dedicated to a task and they're good at it despite the lack of divine spark and the god takes pity on them by lending what's essentially a tip for all the hard work. As the Paladin rises through the levels, they are basically becoming indispensable to the god in question and the god makes them a tool of their divine will in everything but name.

Their names.

Quite a bit actually. A cleric is a dedicated priest to a specific god and worships that god in a specific way (hence their domain). So a war cleric worships a god of war and embodies that aspect of the god especially, which essentially means they worship war. Now I’d say that has a tendency towards being non-good though you can have just wars.

Compare to a paladin who is a bastion of all that is good and lives by a code whether it be a code of an order or their own code. The paladin upholds justice and honour and can be expected to appose war generally as wars are more often not just than just. The paladin is more or less gifted powers from a god or multiple gods because they are living incarnations of good rather than being rewarded powers due to devotion to that god(or pantheon) specifically.

The god(s) would give the paladin their powers irrelevant of whether he/she worshipped them or not.

>who dates back to origins of D&D.
The Paladin archetype predates D&D by

several hundred y e a r s

One is too busy with dealing with complex moral issues to do anything else, the other one is too busy with "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius"-ing people to care about such things as morals.

The name may be quite a bit older, but the class itself was basically lifted straight out of Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Depends on setting.

One kicks ass then prays.
The other prays then kicks ass.

>not paladin of good and chaos

Paladins are men, warpriestess are women. There are no paladinesses and men can't worship the goddess of war.

>men can't worship the goddess of war
Try and stop me.
She just doesn't answer my phonecalls is all.