Paladin build idea.

[Metahuman1]

Ok, so, for starters, I'm stacking some Substitution levels onto the Pally, Specifically the first level of Ruby Rose Knight, and following that up with the Mystic Fire Knight Levels, and using the Paladin of Freedom Variant and the Underdark Champion AFC.

Advance into Grey Gard one level, just one level.

Now, for what ever race you grab, stick the Unseelie Fey Template on it, taking the summer power, and offer to drop something else the template offers in exchange for not being evil.

For feats, take that one feat form one of the dragonlance books that makes your casting Cha based, and then pick up Extend Spell, Persist Spell, and Divine Metamagic Persist spell.


You now have Paladin Buffs lasting all day long, and those are based on Cha. You also have Paladin class features, modified to have a fair number of other tricks that are actually pretty spiffy, and room to grab some things like travel devotion that Turn Undead also help, and on top of that, you've pretty effectively minimized paladin code issues.




So, thoughts on this build in a Teir 4-2 game? (I know, it's no DMM cleric or Batman Wizard and it's not even really a Mailman Sorcerer or save or suck/lose/die Favored soul, but that's not really the goal.)

[Keltaris]

Battle Blessing (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-champion--57/battle-blessing--182/) is a must IMHO.

[Metahuman1]

Ok, looks like a good feat.

I was also looking at Item Familiar and Ability Enhancer feats. That way the only major expenses are maybe an animated shield, armor, and of course the favorite of turn undead builds, Nightsticks.

[toapat]

Ok, looks like a good feat.

I was also looking at Item Familiar and Ability Enhancer feats. That way the only major expenses are maybe an animated shield, armor, and of course the favorite of turn undead builds, Nightsticks.

Mystic Fire Knight 1 doesnt get you turn undead. While turn is a nice resource, the problem is that actually using turn is a feat investment, no matter how you choose to invest in its use. With only 4 feats, Turn undead is costing you a full quarter of your actual feat slots, as three are already dedicated to Paladin Fixing, and Sword of the Arcane Order

what is this dragonlance Chacasting feat from?

Underdark Knight isnt really worth it, when compared to Divine Spirit, even if you are not getting the final spirit. You really have to be going all out in an Anti-caster build for it.

[HunterOfJello]

The dragonlance feat that changes divine spells to be based off of Charisma is called Dynamic Priest. FYI it only changes the bonus spells per day and maximum divine spell level to being based off of charisma. Your spell DCs are still based on wisdom (although you will likely never have spells that need decent DCs). You also have to take it at 1st level.

~

I tried playing a CG paladin once and it honestly made no god damn sense whatsoever. I've avoided Paladins of Freedom ever since.

If it was me, I'd play a LE Unseelie Fey whose paladin code is that they can never take selfless actions. They must always take actions to make themselves more powerful (with loose definitions of "power") and must always be selfish. Any good action towards someone else that does not possess the foreseeable chance of benefiting them in the future, will cause them to fall.

[TopCheese]

See if you can change out 3.5 Smite Evil for Pathfinder Smite Evil.

It just works so much better than 3.5 Smite....So much better...

[eggs]

I must be missing something about grey guard. People love it, but it looks to me like a class designed to slow the Paladin's progression (ie. make builds worse) in exchange for benefits that could be avoided by just not making your paladin fall. Needless to say, I'd recommend avoiding it.

Unseelie Fey is just cheesy, but whatever. It works.

The thing I'd watch out for in this build is that it looks like it banks a lot of feats on very delayed rewards. Until level 12 or so, you probably aren't able to afford many nightsticks and probably aren't persisting more than one or two spells - so almost all this build's feats look to be invested in something like persistent Bless Weapon or Find the Gap, which just isn't that amazing of a tradeoff.

[toapat]

I must be missing something about grey guard. People love it, but it looks to me like a class designed to slow the Paladin's progression (ie. make builds worse) in exchange for benefits that could be avoided by just not making your paladin fall. Needless to say, I'd recommend avoiding it.

Unseelie Fey is just cheesy, but whatever. It works.

The thing I'd watch out for in this build is that it looks like it banks a lot of feats on very delayed rewards. Until level 12 or so, you probably aren't able to afford many nightsticks and probably aren't persisting more than one or two spells - so almost all this build's feats look to be invested in something like persistent Bless Weapon or Find the Gap, which just isn't that amazing of a tradeoff.

I Agree. Basically every "paladin" PRC is inferior to just going pure paladin, except for the mount advancing ones, which dont count because they really only use paladin as a springboard

As well as most builds that rely on Turn undead putting alot of pressure on the already non-existant feat count of paladin. Clerics can afford it because they can just replace all that lost benefit from feats with permananced spells. Paladins cant

[eggs]

I'm not sure I agree on generalizing the Turning part. A Paladin that throws one of the better devotion feats into one of its slots can get a good, immediate return on that investment and is still able to piece together a feat combo or two.

My contention with this case is that Persist is a 3-feat chain with no payoff until hitting the last feat in that chain and that requires a ton of Turning to put to good use at all (7/buff). Plus, since it's a straightclassed paladin without abnormally awesome rolls, the obligatory stat-consolidation feat takes up another slot. So in this case, feat starvation is much more of an issue than normal.

In the case of a more general straight-classed Dynamic Priest Paladin, you could grab Animal or Travel Devotion for a powerful ability, immediately have enough uses to activate 3-4 times per day and have enough feat slots left open for a human to piece together two unrelated 3-feat chains, or a nonhuman to grab two related feat chains (3 feats pretty much being the standard for things like Spirited Charge, Shock Trooper, Combat Brute, Faith Unswerving or Dreadful Wrath+Imperious Command+Intimidate-as-class-skill-feat setups).

And in the case of a multiclassed Paladin, feat starvation becomes even less of an issue, because you can cherrypick classes that don't rely on additional feats to combine ability requirements or to provide genuinely useful features.

[toapat]

Id say anything other then Animal Devotion, including travel devotion, isnt worth giving up +1 Spell slot/spell level and +2 CL

Or if your DM lets you take the original version of DMM, not the later versions that make it require the metamagic it is allowing you to run off of turn undead.

otherwise, i would say even without SotAO, Mystic Fire Knight 4 is better

[Metahuman1]

Ok, so, not quite what I though I was gonna get. Back to the drawing board I guess.