[PF] Paladin Tier and Empyreal Knight

[Laniius]

I've seen posts rating the Paladin from anywhere from Tier 5 to Tier 3. I think the Paladin got a lot of love in Pathfinder, but enough to put it up a tier?

For my purposes, I am limited to what is found on www.d20pfsrd.com. No 3.5 material.

I am also curious about the Empyreal Knight archetype. You get

level 2: the ability to speak celestial

level 4: summon monster as a spell-like ability, up to summon monster 9 at level 20, limited to celesetial creatures, archons, and angels (still takes a full round) useable Cha mod times per day

level 5: a mount, celestial at 8, that gets wings at 12th level flying at 2x it's land speed

level 6: +4 to saves vs poison

level 9: resistance 10 acid/cold/electricity

level 12: immunity to petrification

level 15: truespeech (always on tongues)

level 18: the ability to boosty the AC and saves of party members with 20 feet as a swift action for 1 round per paladin level



and at level 20 you get DR 10/evil, treated as an outsider for adjudicating spells and effects (you can still be resurrected) and flight

in exchange you lose

divine grace, mercy, lay on hands, channel positive energy, and holy champion

Is the exchange worth it?

[Chained Birds]

I wouldn't say its all that worth it.

Losing Divine Grace (Your signature ability) and Lay on Hands is pretty tough. You would probably benefit more dipping into Summoner if you wanted to summon celestial monkeys at the drop of a hat. And if you wanted to speak Celestial, then choose it as a bonus language if you have a positive Int Mod, or cross-class a skill point into linguistics if you really want to talk with angels and such.
Also, Lay on Hands got a nifty utility boost that makes a Pally more Tank-able then ever with the whole using LoHs as a swift action when selecting to heal yourself + Mercies.

[Hiro Protagonest]

No. In exchange for a big bonus to saves across the board, you get the ability... to speak French. Or maybe Chinese, depends on which one Elven is. Lay on Hands plus Channel Energy is not worth a Summon Monster that's three levels behind. Empyreal Champion is worse than Holy Champion, unless you're stuck in some place where the wizard can't cast Fly and the cleric can't cast Air Walk and you can't summon your mount. The immunities and Truespeech in exchange for Mercy is the only deal that might not be worse.

[grarrrg]

Paladin Archetypes/Oaths

Situational, Awesome with the right build, worthless otherwise:
Divine Hunter, Archery
Holy Gun, Guns (recommend dipping 1 level into Mysterious Stranger Gunslinger though).
Holy Tactician, Melee-heavy party.
Shining Knight, Mounted
Undead Scourge, Fighting Undead
Oath Corruption, Fighting Aberrations
Oath Against Undead, Fighting Undead
Oath Against the Wyrm, Fighting Dragons

Major Trade-off, Gain/Loss Major abilities:
Warrior of the Light, lose Spells, gain Party boosting 'aura'-stuff.
Oath Against Savagery, lose Divine Grace, gain the ability to increase your Reach/# of AoO's, do extra damage on AoO's vs. Evil
Oath of Chastity, lose 2/3's Divine Grace (keep Will), gain 50% chance to ignore Critical/Sneak damage
Oath of Vengeance, lose Channel Energy, gain the ability to trade Lay on Hands for extra uses of Smite Evil.

Minor Trade-off, no major gain/loss
Divine Defender
Hospitaler
Sacred Servant
Sacred Shield
Oath Against Fiends

Bad, what you lose isn't worth what you gain:
Empyreal Knight, if you are going all the way to Paladin 20, then this moves up to "Major Trade-off", otherwise its horrible due to the gains coming much later than the losses. Level 2 is a prime example > Lose Divine Grace, Now you can speak a Language!
You lose Divine Grace, Lay-on-Hands (and Channel Energy/Mercies of course). Gain Temporary Allies. You and Mount gain Acid/Cold/Electricity Resist. Mount can Fly at level 12, you can Fly at LEVEL TWENTY.

Sword of Valor, limited Deity, lose Divine Grace for the possibility of acting in a Surprise Round, lose a Mercy to do "slightly different" Channel Energy.

Oath of Charity, lose Divine Bond, you can change your Mercies every day.

Oath of Loyalty, lose Smite Evil, gain the ability to grant an Ally minor temporary bonuses.

[Coidzor]

The best archetype for Paladins is the one that gives you free Planar Ally.

[Laniius]

The best archetype for Paladins is the one that gives you free Planar Ally.

The Sacred Servant. Hmm,

Spells

At 4th level, when a sacred servant gains the ability to cast spells, she also chooses one domain associated with her deity. Her effective cleric level for this domain is equal to her paladin level –3. In addition, she also gains one domain spell slot for each level of paladin spells she can cast. Every day she must prepare the domain spell from her chosen domain in that spell slot.

Does this mean that she gets a very small selection of 9th level spells? Or is she still limited to 4th level spells, she just gets a somewhat wider selection?

Edit: Also, who would control the Planar Ally, the GM or player? What would be a "reasonable task"?

[grarrrg]

The best archetype for Paladins is the one that gives you free Planar Ally.

It's a nice ability but 1/week?
I'd rather have the more readily useable abilities thank you.
The Domain can come in handy though.


...chooses one domain associated with her deity. Her effective cleric level for this domain is equal to her paladin level –3. In addition, she also gains one domain spell slot for each level of paladin spells she can cast. Every day she must prepare the domain spell from her chosen domain in that spell slot.

Does this mean that she gets a very small selection of 9th level spells? Or is she still limited to 4th level spells, she just gets a somewhat wider selection?


Still limited to 4th level,
one domain spell slot for each level of paladin spells she can cast

[Laniius]

It's a nice ability but 1/week?
I'd rather have the more readily useable abilities thank you.
The Domain can come in handy though.



Still limited to 4th level,


I thought that too, but then looked at the planar ally line of spells. Theoretically you can have the guy for 1 day per caster level. Depending on what constitutes a reasonable task, you don't have to pay him either. You get the ability at 8th level, so the duration could be 8 days and up.

The ability states that you don't have to pay the material costs, or the servant (for reasonable tasks). This servant is given to you by your deity, whose goals you are advancing. It would be up to you and your GM as to what counts as a "reasonable task" unless there are some stated rules otherwise.

[Engine]

Is the exchange worth it?

Let's see...

Voices of the Spheres
At 2nd level, an empyreal knight learns to speak and read Celestial, if she could not already.
This ability replaces divine grace.

No way. Speaking and reading Celestial requires the expenditure of 1 skill point, while a significant boost to all saves is something you can't get so easily.

Celestial Heart (Su)
As an empyreal knight advances, her ties with the celestial realms grant her a portion of the abilities and defenses of true angels. At 3rd level, she gains resistance 5 against acid, cold, and electricity. At 6th level, she gains a +4 racial bonus on saves against poison. At 9th level, her defenses improve to resistance 10 against acid, cold, and electricity. At 12th level, she gains immunity to petrification. At 15th level, she gains truespeech, the ability to speak with any creature that has a language as though using a tongues spell. This ability functions with a caster level equal to her character level, and is always active.

At 18th level, as a swift action, the empyreal knight can manifest a protective aura against evil. Against abilities or effects created by evil creatures, this ability provides a +4 deflection bonus to AC and a +4 resistance bonus on saving throws to anyone within 20 feet of her. It otherwise functions as a magic circle against evil. She can use this ability for a maximum of 1 round per day per paladin level. These rounds do not need to be consecutive.

These abilities replace mercy.

Never been too fond of mercies. It really depends on your DM, most of my DMs rarely used conditions against PCs so I always found that feature quite useless. All in all, IMHO you're trading something not so useful for something else not so useful (but Truespeech is nice).

Celestial Ally (Sp)
At 4th level, an empyreal knight can summon a celestial ally as a full-round action. This functions as summon monster I, except it can only be used to summon celestial creatures, archons, and angels. At 6th level, this improves to summon monster II, increasing by one spell level for every two levels thereafter, to a maximum of summon monster IX at 20th level. This ability can be used a number of times per day equal to the empyreal knight’s Charisma modifier (minimum 1), but only one ally can be summoned at a time.

This ability replaces lay on hands and channel positive energy.

Hm. I love summoning, really. But you lose Lay on Hands and Channel Energy. You could live without Channel Energy, but Lay on Hands? Not so sure. If you're doing an archer, you could probably benefit a lot from summoning. But if you want to go in melee, the loss of a swift action lifesaver could be self defeating.

Divine Bond (Su)
At 5th level, an empyreal knight forms a bond with a mount, as the standard paladin ability. Her mount gains the celestial template at 8th level. At 12th level, her mount sprouts wings if it cannot already fly, and gains a fly speed of twice its land speed and good maneuverability. If the mount could already fly, its fly speed and maneuverability improve to at least this level.

This ability otherwise functions as the paladin ability of the same name.

Fly is good. Problem is, a medium-sized Paladin will gain less from this than a small-sized Paladin. In dungeons, cities, castles and so on a large-sized mount would be more of a hindrance than an asset.

Empyreal Champion
At 20th level, an empyreal knight transcends her mortal self. Her DR increases to 10/evil. Her type is treated as outsider for the purposes of spells and magical effects. She gains darkvision 60 feet and low-light vision. As a standard action and a supernatural ability, she can sprout wings that allow her to fly at twice her land speed with average maneuverability. Any armor or clothing reshapes to allow her to fly when she uses this ability. She can retract the wings as a free action. Unlike other outsiders, an empyreal knight can still be brought back from the dead as if she were a member of her previous creature type.

This ability replaces holy champion.

Banishment is situational at best, while you could expect to fly a lot more. Being capable at 20th level to heal 60 points of damage is mediocre, but so are darkvision and low-light vision, especially because a lot of races gives you one of them. It could be nice, but now you have a redundant mount.

So...
Well, I love the summoning and I like the capstone feature (but 20th level? I doubt I ever saw a Pathfinder character of that level) but the loss of Divine Grace hurts a lot and being unable to choose if you want a mount or a boost for your weapon is bad. With a small-sized, archer Paladin (maybe halfling, at least they don't have low-light vision or darkvision) it could be good - losing Lay on Hands will affect you less because you'll be damaged less frequently and you have better things to do with your standard actions, being capable of fly means you could shoot arrows from above while your summons do the dirty job on the ground. But with a medium-sixed, melee Paladin I feel the Empyreal Knight takes too much.

[Coidzor]

The ability states that you don't have to pay the material costs, or the servant (for reasonable tasks). This servant is given to you by your deity, whose goals you are advancing. It would be up to you and your GM as to what counts as a "reasonable task" unless there are some stated rules otherwise.

Directed towards a lantern archon "help me cut down on crime by using your at-will ability to create continual flames to illuminate all of the streets, alleys, and neighbourhoods of a major city," probably going to be reasonable.

Similarly, asking a planetar to use its casting for out of combat support, buffing, and utility should easily fall under that.

IIRC, Pathfinder didn't change the default assumption from 3.5 where a spell like ability gained from a class had, as its caster level, one's level in said class. And my investigation of the archetype's write up on the PF SRD outright stated it was CL = Paladin level for the SLA. There doesn't appear to be any limit to how many planar allies one can have at a time from multiple castings, either, so by level 20 one can get a cycle going where one always has 3 planar allies running around.

[grarrrg]

There doesn't appear to be any limit to how many planar allies one can have at a time from multiple castings, either, so by level 20 one can get a cycle going where one always has 3 planar allies running around.

Alright, so depending on what is "reasonable" this is better than it looked at first.
But you still have the problem that if your Ally(s) gets killed, you'd have to wait up to a week for a replacement.

Also, the Domain isn't as useful as I first thought, as there is no clause that you use Cha for the powers, meaning you now need some Wis to make most powers worthwhile.

[Laniius]

Another thing that I noticed is that the Sacred Servant gives you less uses of smite evil, but can potentially give you MORE uses of lay on hands. The Sacred Servant archetype stacks with the Oath of Vengeance, which lets you swap lay on hands for smite evil on a 2:1 basis (2 lay on hands = 1 smite evil). So it evens out, if you go that route.

[Coidzor]

Alright, so depending on what is "reasonable" this is better than it looked at first.
But you still have the problem that if your Ally(s) gets killed, you'd have to wait up to a week for a replacement.

Better than waiting a whole year like one used to have to do for familiars, and they are, essentially, free.

I think the paladin used to have a 1 month wait to get a new mount if it died, or level up in paladin, even if they rezzed the mount. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/paladin.htm#specialMount)

Actually, wait, no, Paladins still have to wait a month despite paladin mounts generally using the animal companion mechanic for advancement. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin#TOC-Divine-Bond-Sp-) :smalltongue:

Hmm... Let's see, 17th level paladin mount or 3 Planetars with 8th level cleric casting?

Real tough decision, that. :smallwink:

Edit: I imagine as well that the reasonableness of a task improves if one is asked to split it up between 3 individuals with 8th level cleric spells. :smallbiggrin:

[Cieyrin]

Another thing that I noticed is that the Sacred Servant gives you less uses of smite evil, but can potentially give you MORE uses of lay on hands. The Sacred Servant archetype stacks with the Oath of Vengeance, which lets you swap lay on hands for smite evil on a 2:1 basis (2 lay on hands = 1 smite evil). So it evens out, if you go that route.

Hmm, I have been looking for a quick way to get Ultimate Mercy off early and Sacred Servant seems to be the path to doing so. Paladin with a +Cha (which could be any core race besides Dwarves and Elves) for starting Cha 20, pick up Greater and Ultimate Mercy at 3rd and 5th, pick up Cloak of Cha @ ECL 6 and use the Divine Bond with the holy symbol for an extra Lay on Hands. So you have 3 uses from level, 6 from Cha and 1 from Divine Bond to get the 10 you need to bring back anybody. The only thing that'd make this better is if you could swear an Oath of Charity to enhance your healing further but that conflicts with Sacred Servant. I guess I'll have to settle for Hospitaler and swear an Oath of Vengeance to even out my smites when I need to. Nice.

Bother, no Hospitaler either, they both conflict on Smite Evil. Sacred Servant is apparently only compatible with Oath against Corruption, against Savagery and of Vengeance and you can only have one of those at a time, since they all conflict with each other. Lame. :smallannoyed: I guess I'll just have to take comfort in my no cost rezzes and all my spells...:smallwink: