Paladin: Effective Building Guidelines

[resonance378]

This post is a learning tool for creating a Paladin.

Stats may vary by race, I've tried best to illustrate this below by offering racial adjustments pre character creation [] and ability score adjustments () post character creation.

Race: Human, Dragonblooded, Fallen Angel, Half-Celestial

Human STR: 14 [0] (0) DEX: 08 [0] (0) CON: 12 [0] (0) WIS: 13 [0] (1) INT: 10 [0] (0) CHA: 17 [0] (F) Extra Starting Feat	Dragonblooded - Half-Elf STR: 12 [2] (0) DEX: 08 [0] (0) CON: 12 [2] (0) WIS: 16 [-2] (0) INT: 10 [2] (0) CHA: 16 [2] (F) +5 Ranks of Lore Skill, Half-Elf Racial Feats
Fallen Angel - Human* STR: 14 [0] (0) DEX: 08 [0] (0) CON: 14 [0] (0) WIS: 13 [5] (0) INT: 10 [0] (0) CHA: 16 [2] (F) Divine Might, Divine Shield, +10 Heal, Strider (walk on quick sand, free up a ring slot)	Half-Celestial - Human* STR: 14 [0] (0) DEX: 08 [0] (0) CON: 15 [0] (0) WIS: 12 [6] (0) INT: 10 [0] (0) CHA: 16 [4] (F) Spell Focus: Evocation, Greater Spell Focus: Evocation, Epic Skill Focus: Healing, Spell Resistance: 10 +1/LVL (70), Strider (walk on quick sand, free up a ring slot)

*Any basic race can be used. Human is used here because of the extra Feat at level 1. Reasoning: Paladins have limited feats available.

Charisma(CHA) as your Ability Point Focus:
Paladins gain the bonus of their CHA to saves, so CHA should always be your main stat focus for a paladin build.

Dexterity
A nice +16 to +20 on top of your saves from your CHA score means you should not worry about your Dexterity. Ever. Unless of course you wish to go for that unique Dexer-din.

Constitution
Paladins gain d10 per level of Constitution. Any vet will tell you, for melee, this alone is not enough! 12 or better if you can afford it to start with. Also take the Toughness Feat!

Wisdom
You cannot take ranks in Paladin without a starting Wisdom of 11. 14 (Level 4) is your maximum for spells, anything after is good for bonus spell slots.

Intelligence
You are a zealot. You may be Wise, but are narrow of vision.
Given this, your Main Focus for skill points should be in this order: Discipline, Tumble*, Concentration.
If you have spare points I might recommend craft armor or weapons... everyone likes to look nice!
Your build may vary.

"Tumble!? Did you recommend tumble? But paladins don't get tumble!"
Correct, you will take one level of Monk at 39/40 and max out tumble and concentration if doing a 'pure' paladin.
Some will argue against this, but trust in this recommendation, evasion will work wonders with your 39 Paladin, 1 Monk build.
Depends on the build.

Strength
Amazingly enough, 14 base strength is a lot in the world of a paladin. See below, but your build may vary.

WHAT ABOUT MY ATTACK BONUS!?:
You have one of the better base attack bonuses in the game. This is what a few ability points are for. Work your way to 14 Wisdom or better, however you can, with whatever race you used.
Save a feat for a Legendary Level Spell Focus: Enchantment and save your coin for a book of Spell Focus Enchantment. With +14 Greater Magic Weapon, you really don't miss as often as most think.

WHAT ABOUT MY GREAT SMITE!?:
Keep in mind this feat does not scale to legendary levels at this time.*
If you want to focus on having an attack that does a maximum of 880 damage every 4 minutes ( 4 minutes is a looong time in the life of a Paladin, trust me ) then so be it.
*This may change but don't hold your breath!

Spells You Will Want:
Deafening Clang scales to temporary +15 but may interfere with a mage's Wail spell as it can deafen target. Wail works only if heard*
Greater Magic Weapon scales to base +10 and you have the ability to pump it to +14
Prayer, buff your group with this before going out against the bad guys. If you can cast one in combat to curse the enemy, even better.
*note will add others here later

This is it for now, I will update with more to this thread as time allows and knowledge is gained.
I look to add links to other paladin related content here on the boards, the wiki's, etc.

I'll part with this and say that for a Paladin, it appears, based on race, that you have 2 options: Smite or Fight

Keep this in mind with your play style.
Edit:20070124 - Added link to Build Index thread!
Edit: 20070118 - Changed formatting. Will be adding links to builds and discussing them in this document.

[fragment]

My first character on HG was a paladin so please allow me a little comment: paladins are very nice to play up to the low 30s. I took an early monk level for evasion - eases a newbies life dramatically - and went CHA, CHA, CHA all the way.

The main effect this had was that divine might and divine shield would become very strong assets, as from level 21 onwards they are always on, which gives the paladin sufficient self-buffing power to solo most lowbie areas save for those that require rogue skills or ranged combat. Until early 30s, the character felt invincible - while damage output was not stellar, he couldn't be killed easily.

Sadly, those two feats will become meaningless after a certain level/availability of equipment choices as +20 or so damage and + any amount of dodge AC don't really mean that much any longer. After that, you're just a bad fighter build with high saves.

Regards.

[resonance378]

Good point. Mileage on an all CHA build varies and I'm trying to illustrate this nicely (and balance things out too).

Perhaps as I update things will become clearer.
I need to add several UR and BUR races to the list as they look like great candidates for a Paladin platform.

[drunkenboaster]

I am currently playing a salamander paladin 28 bard 2 rdd10.
Starting stats:
Str 20
Dex 10
Con 16
Int 12
Wis 14
Cha 14

Final at 60 will be
Str 40
Dex 10
Con 18
Int 14
Wis 14
Cha 38

50 (38+12) charisma gives the max divine might bonus of +20 and a solid 30+d6 divine shield. Using all epic and LL feats for cha/str.

Skills at 40
Disc 43
Tumble 40
Umd 40
Concentration 34
Spellcraft 18
OL 1
DT 1

Spellcraft is there not so much for saves as to identify spells cast. Concentration for casting things like divine favor in combat. Umd and high charisma allows the use nice stuff like dachy staves for epic warding. All LL skill points go to discipline and taunt, not a super high AB so need the bonus to hit sometimes.

I did not go with a smiter because I don't like to hit everything once every few minutes and nothing in between. Pretty much had to go RDD cheese over monk cheese because i think the the extra con, str, and ac are more helpful than evasion

[resonance378]

I have to agree... for a fighting paladin the 2 bard 10 rrd looks to be the way to go.

I'm hoping funky can/will implement some changes I've suggested for paladin in the last few weeks. More just spit-balling ideas until some sort of definite No or Yes comes to a lot of them.

I like the idea of every class that has taunt (barb, pal, bard... any others?) getting a more effective taunt skill as the ranks and levels go by. Being able to cut into an enemies ac that you may be fighting at the time is great. Being able to cut into it significantly even better!

And with the taunt skill as it is, it only works if A target fails to save against it. And I've seen a lot of saves even with a very high taunt skill on my paladin.