Ranged Paladin Option

I like Paladins, and I like the classical Paladin with sword and shining armour, but it's always struck me as an idea that should – on paper – be a bit more flexible than it is. There are gods of archery, gods of cunning... and even in the relatively agnostic take on Paladins provided by Fifth Edition, I don't see a firm lore reason why you can't express your firmly-held convictions through a crossbow bolt.

So what the hey. This mod allows for 'ranged Paladins' to be built, at the cost of some damage compared to their melee brethren. Specifically:

• []At level 1, you choose between focusing on 'Melee' or 'Ranged' weapons. Melee characters function as-is. Ranged characters will trade Divine Smite and Improved Divine Smite for equivalents that work exclusively with ranged weapons; however, these use d6s rather than d8s.[/]

  []Oath of Devotion's Sacred Weapon can now, as in tabletop, be applied to either melee or ranged weapons.[/]

  []Archery is added to the list of Paladin Fighting Styles.[/]

I threw this together relatively quickly, so these aren't finely-tuned balance adjustments so much as a gut feeling that Smiting someone from across the room should come with a drawback.

Won't be suitable for all playthroughs; this does mess with class role / identity, and it's not like Paladin is a weak class in need of added range and flexibility. Still, thought it could be fun for those who want to mess around with the Paladin chassis or take it in another direction. Some subclasses's spells and features will work better than others.

I haven't altered default stats, equipment, etc since melee is still an option and you can find a bow on one of the tutorial imps. I'd throw in an equipment choice, but the game engine gets funny about having one and a feature-choice at the same level.

Compatibility notes

While I've tried to keep this relatively compatible, this does alter some Paladin features to function. As a whole modded subclasses should work, but if they have features that key off of Smites that might cause complications. While this mod doesn't directly alter the Paladin's base game level-up fields, mods altering Smites or total-overhaul mods will likely cause some weirdness.

This is the full technical breakdown of what this mod alters internally, mostly useful for those with some knowledge of the game's inner guts:

[]A few new passives will be merged into Paladin's 1st-level fields.[/]

[]'Smite_Divine', a hidden feature that handles some of the Smite reactions, has "BoostContext" and "BoostConditions" fields added (effectively locking whatever it adds if you're a ranged Paladin).[/]

[*]'ImprovedDivineSmite' has had its "Description", "DescriptionParams" and "Boosts" fie