Palladium Does Not Sell You the Lie

What I like about Palladium is that it does not sell you the lie.

The lie is that every class is a complete adventurer. Every occupation can stand in the same hole, swing at the same monster, and contribute equally to the same five-room crawl. If a class cannot do that, it is a trap. The designer failed. The player got cheated. Balance the baker until he can tank, heal, and drop a fireball, or do not print the baker.

That is a crowdfunding 5E book. A Baker class drops, and immediately there is pressure to make the chef equal to the barbarian, the fighter, the wizard, and the cleric inside the same loop. The party is assumed. The dungeon is assumed. The only question left is whether the new kit can keep up with the old kits.

The stretch book will not stop at the base class. It needs subclasses so the baker can contribute. College of Cakes: you frost a layer, and the kobolds forget they had a job. Order of the Rolling Pin: extra attack, bludgeoning, and a rider that knocks a goblin prone because pastry is a weapon now. School of Fondant: illusion frosting, same trick as disguise self, except now the mimic is a wedding cake. Way of the Warm Loaf: you break bread, and everyone in thirty feet gets temporary hit points that smell like a kitchen. None of that makes a baker. It makes a cleric with a hat. The joke is that the stretch goal is already the whole design document. If the class cannot get the party past the kobolds without a cake, it was never allowed to just be a cook.

Palladium does not make that promise. Occupational Character Classes are not balanced against a dungeon. They are specialists. Some of them are ideal for crawling a hole. Many of them are good at other things. They do not need to overlap, and the game does not need to inflate a baker until he can participate in dungeon activity.

When people complain about trap classes, they are usually measuring the sheet against a game the book never agreed to run.

A knight, a longbowman, a thief, a mercenary, a ranger: those people can live in a corridor deep underground. Armor, weapons, skills that matter when the door is locked, and something is coming down the hall. This is where these OCCs shine.

A noble is not a joke OCC. A noble is wasted in a five-room dungeon and lethal at a banquet. A scholar is a problem when the map lies. A performer is a problem when the room is full of people you can turn. A priest is a problem in a village pretending the gods are not paying attention. A witch is a problem the moment the campaign is about a place instead of a loot table.

None of those people need a combat budget equal to the mercenary. They need a campaign that cares about what they specialize in. If you already decided the night is a dungeon, half the book looks like a trap. That is not the book failing. That is a board-game loop brought to a world-first game, and then anger that the baker cannot clear the room.

In the kit model, the character sheet is a loadout. Every class has to cover the same jobs so the party can stay in the same activity forever. Combat, spells, healing, contribution. If one class is weak in the loop, the loop breaks, so the designer pads it. Feats. Subclasses. Extra spell lists. A baker who can also smite.

Palladium occupations are jobs. A job is good at a job. You do not have to inflate it so it can pretend to be three other jobs on Tuesday night.

That is why a Palladium table does not need a balanced party. It needs a situation that cares what people do for a living. A Western Empire tax assessor, a Timiro horse trader, a Wolfen scout who still answers to a tribe, and a priest of Light who has been told not to make a scene. You are not matching damage dice. You are asking who keeps the road open, who lies to the count, and who gets hanged if the letter reaches the capital. The noble does not need to swing as hard as the mercenary. The assessor does not need a fireball. The baker, if you ever write one, needs a kitchen, a rumor network, and a reason the duke eats at his table. He does not need a challenge rating.

The mercenary is better in a fight. The noble is better when the fight is about land, fealty, and who gets to hang whom. Both of those are the game. Only one of them looks like a dungeon.

Once you accept the lie, the camera turns inward. The session becomes a build showcase. Subclass, feat stack, spell list, item slots. The world is backdrop. If the kit is not singing, the night feels empty, so the catalog feeds the kit. New classes have to be born equal. Old classes get patched until they are. Care for anything outside the character starts to die, because the only thing the rules promised you was contribution inside the loop.

Palladium’s answer is ruder and cleaner. Not all OCCs are equal. They should not be. Pick the campaign first. Then the occupations that belong in it stop looking like traps, and the ones that do not belong can sit on the shelf until you run the other game.

You can still crawl a dungeon in Palladium Fantasy. Plenty of characters are built for it. You just are not owed a world where the baker, the bard, and the baron are all equally good at the same hole. That was never the pitch.

Decide what the night is about. Put four specialists in a room that cares. Let the ones who are good at corridors take the corridors. Let the ones who are good at banquets take the banquets. Do not inflate anyone so they can fake the other job.