I don’t know so much about how you become a paladin but the first ones was priests who learned martial arts and somehow intertwined it as I understood it so, if you are a priest, and you want to become a paladin, do you have to “study again from the scratch” or, more or less learn how to fight with a sword? I want my character to have been a priest but wanting to be more… Don’t know the word but, combat ready? So she became a paladin instead. Or a priest with a sword but, I don’t think that that is it’s own thing?
Edit: I mean… I could be a priest with a sword to be able to do melee combat but, wouldn’t that make me a paladin? or?
It’s basically comparable to a mage and a swordmage.
Your typical Paladin and Priest draw from the same source of power, I.E. the Light, and share mostly the same curriculum with some minor deviations to accommodate your different roles.
If you are a Priest and you want to become a Paladin, I imagine your extensive knowledge and background with the light would make it a lot easier for you to become a paladin.
However, you would still need a lot of training and copious amounts of PT to become close to a Paladin even if you start out as a priest.
There are battle-priests. And yes there is a difference between a priest and a paladin, albeit minor one. Since priests and paladins share beliefs and virtues.
Yeah I imagine you’d be quite far behind on the melee combat if you recently changed from priest to paladin and if you only see to the physique it takes to swing a sword around in heavy armor I’d say it takes a good amount of training.
I didn’t know battle-priest was a thing, I googled it and I saw that some Dwarf npc wearing heavy armor and a mace and a shield in Northrend was labled that, maybe that’s really what I’m looking for, I’m not sure It basically goes “raised to be trained as a priest, became a priest, was with the Argent Crusade in Northrend and figured hey I want to kill undeads with a sword too”. What would fit with that story? I don’t know
I think the armed & armored priest is often borrowed from DnD where the Cleric(AKA their priest) tends to also be given access to heavier armor and bigger weapons, similar to the Paladin class. The reason why they had access to heavy armor and weapons was because they were often on the frontline, where they would expect being hit, and because they had a limited amount of spells, thus making a melee weapon invaluable in order to save their precious spells in case they were attacked and had to defend themselves.
I imagine you can easily use the same rationale for an armed priest on the frontline. Pure faith alone won’t protect you from the seeking arrow, and though you may lack the in-depth specialized training; a mace in a semi-competent hand is still better than an unarmed semi-competent hand.
Most people can be trained to fight at a professional standard within 6-12 months, although with ample room for improvement of course.
In Warcraft, the first Human paladins were priests who took up the sword and got good. There’s been some iteration and specialization since then, but at the core of it that’s still what they are: Priests who put on some armor and start breaking faces.
We actually had Battle-Priests in our own world. During the Crusades, alongside Templar and Hospitaller Knights, you would find Battle Clerics, who could fight, but under certain rules.
They were members of the Clergy, and to shed blood was ‘Ungodly’, so they could not use bladed weapons. As such they were restricted to bludgeoning weapons (This is actually where the Tabletop RP and later, Computer game fantasy of Priests and maces/hammers comes from)
Now, as any amateur biologist can tell you, if you hit someone with a mace hard enough, there will be blood, but I think it was the -principle- of the thing.
Way I would look at it is like the game of ‘Scissors-Paper-Stone’
A Warrior is always going to outclass a Paladin or Priest in an outright Fight.
A Priest is always going to outclass a Warrior if magic comes into it.
A Paladin is the middle ground. They will always outclass a Priest at fighting, but they will always outclass a Warrior at magic, and so they are the middle.
I mean they’re still good at both, but they excel at neither in the ways that the others do.
This process does seem to be more ‘Priest becomes Paladin’ than ‘Warrior becomes Paladin’. We see this with the original Human Paladins and also characters like Liadrin. Equally however, we know that some of the first Blood Knights were -not- Priests, so clearly it is able to approach becoming a Paladin from both directions.
Human paladins area very specific thing with an element of knighting, being anointed for the task and imbued with superhuman qualities. They’re something a bit different via custom and ritual than simply being a priest in plate or warrior with priest magic even if that’s how it all started so as to battle the orcish necrolytes.
Dwarves and elves share the tradition via the silver hand but blood elves have diverged sufficiently to be their own thing as blood knights. Draenei vindicators haven’t really been elaborated upon culturally in terms of customs. Then there’s that one night elf priestess who becomes a paladin in Legion…
I guess that the answer is yes and no, a paladin is a priest in plate mechanically but is empowered differently and ends up with different powers. If a priest wants to be a paladin they’d need the proper combat training and rituals to be empowered to the task. It’s ultimately their faith which carries them through it.
Gavinrad the Dire, Tirion Fordring, and Saidan Dathrohan were all originally Knights of Stormwind and Lordaeron actually. The priests to become paladins of the original five were in the minority; Turalyon and Uther.
![:thinking:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
![:woman_shrugging:t2:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/woman_shrugging/2.png?v=6" ":woman_shrugging:t2:")
I will think a little about this