Paladin/Sorcerers & Reserve Feats?

[Citadel97501]

Hello all, I was thinking about a multiclassed Sorcerer/Paladin with some Reserve Feats. While I know at the start this is a bit limited for optimization purposes but all in all it sounds interesting as a heavy change for the playstyle of a normal paladin or sorcerer. Here are my thoughts on it, feel free to critique it.

Race
Human (level 5 or higher starting characters could be a different race.)

Class
Sorcerer 2 (You can decide to take just those levels until your 12th level)
Paladin 4, (higher than 4 is drastically expensive, due to another spell level, but mounts and another smite are interesting.)
Abjurant Champion 5

Feats
Human: Precocious Apprentice (Note: becomes awful at higher levels so if you start at 8th+ level avoid)
Level 1: Acid Splatter, Winter's Blast, or Fiery Burst
Level 3: Combat Casting (Switch places with combat casting if you don't take Precocious Apprentice)
Level 6: Heighten Spell
Level 9 (Taken at 10th): Blade of Force or Magic Disruption, Abjurant Champion seems to support Magic Disruption...
Level 12: Minor Shapeshift
Level 15: Summon Elemental

Benefits
-Armored Reserve Casting without ASF early on, before spell armors.
-30 + armor class at high level due to Greater Mage Armor, & Shield
-Great Saving Throws
-Off Hand Blasting is powerful after you have enough spell levels...8d6
-Good BAB...
-Martial Weapon Proficiency, and Heavy Armor Proficiency
-Nasty anti-magic tricks, quickened Dispel Magic followed by a sword stab or a blasting spell anyone?
-Good Melee Damage boosts with Blade of Force, Minor Shapeshifting, Smite Evil, and Arcane Boost all stacking although that is pricy on action economy. Weapon + Strength Mod + 38 before enhancement bonuses?

Weaknesses
-Lose 9th level spells, possibly even 8th level.
-Sorcerer Casting is a full level behind wizards.
-Massively Feat Intensive early on.
-Uses a lot of swift actions...
-All the reserve action attacks are in lieu of weapon attacks unfortunately.
-Early on the Armor class is lower than a full paladin due to a lack of a shield.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you're not going to be a full caster, then your reserve feats aren't going to deal a significant amount of damage. With a Paladin/Sorcerer, you should focus on using your spells to buff yourself and use melee attacks to deal damage.

Reserve feats that deal damage take a standard action to activate, you can't replace a normal attack with them, so there's no such thing as "Off Hand Blasting" as you can't do any other attacks in the same round that you use one.

Acidic Splatter, Fiery Burst, and Winter's Blast all require you to be able to cast 2nd level spells before you can take any of them. That means at least four Sorcerer levels, so for example at Paladin 2/ Sorcerer 4 you can take one of those feats. That's only going to deal 2d6 damage per use at 6th level, which is downright pitiful.

Consider instead going with a more standard gish build, such as Paladin 2/ Sorcerer 4/ Spellsword 1/ Abjurant Champion 5/ Sacred Exorcist 8, which gets 9th level spells and a +16 BAB at 20th level. Spend a feat on Arcane Preparation (or get a custom Runestaff) and you can cast Greater Luminous Armor from BoED, which is an abjuration spell that grants a +8 armor bonus, Abjurant Champion increases that to +13. Use (Extended or Persistent) Wraithstrike to make your melee attacks into touch attacks, and Power Attack for your full BAB with a two-handed weapon. Use Illumian (Naenhoon) for your race and you can make two of your buffs Persistent each day once you start taking Sacred Exorcist, this can be used with Draconic Polymorph and Greater Invisibility or similar.

[Citadel97501]

If you're not going to be a full caster, then your reserve feats aren't going to deal a significant amount of damage. With a Paladin/Sorcerer, you should focus on using your spells to buff yourself and use melee attacks to deal damage.

Reserve feats that deal damage take a standard action to activate, you can't replace a normal attack with them, so there's no such thing as "Off Hand Blasting" as you can't do any other attacks in the same round that you use one.

Acidic Splatter, Fiery Burst, and Winter's Blast all require you to be able to cast 2nd level spells before you can take any of them. That means at least four Sorcerer levels, so for example at Paladin 2/ Sorcerer 4 you can take one of those feats. That's only going to deal 2d6 damage per use at 6th level, which is downright pitiful.

Consider instead going with a more standard gish build, such as Paladin 2/ Sorcerer 4/ Spellsword 1/ Abjurant Champion 5/ Sacred Exorcist 8, which gets 9th level spells and a +16 BAB at 20th level. Spend a feat on Arcane Preparation (or get a custom Runestaff) and you can cast Greater Luminous Armor from BoED, which is an abjuration spell that grants a +8 armor bonus, Abjurant Champion increases that to +13. Use (Extended or Persistent) Wraithstrike to make your melee attacks into touch attacks, and Power Attack for your full BAB with a two-handed weapon. Use Illumian (Naenhoon) for your race and you can make two of your buffs Persistent each day once you start taking Sacred Exorcist, this can be used with Draconic Polymorph and Greater Invisibility or similar.

Thank you for the notes, I would like to point out that technically you don't need to be level 4 Sorcerer to get one of those feats working as you can get it early with Precocious Apprentice, which is why I was running that feat. By off hand blasting, I meant a sword in the right & a reserve blast in the left. Good catch on those spells.

[Selene Sparks]

Class
Sorcerer 2 (You can decide to take just those levels until your 12th level)
Paladin 4, (higher than 4 is drastically expensive, due to another spell level, but mounts and another smite are interesting.)
Abjurant Champion 5This really is a very suboptimal way to go. It's not just that you're losing a spell level, it's that you're giving it up for nothing. Your mount won't scale, and so will be essentially useless, and smite evil is essentially meaningless.

Feats
Snip
The primary problem here is that Reserve Feats don't scale well at all. Second, you're not really focusing, and 3.5 really supports specializing in terms of what you expect to be doing. For example, you lack Power Attack, which is the core of any melee's damage output. As a final note, Magic Disruption is less than useless, whereas Blade of Force actually has some synergy what you're doing, so if you've got your heart set on this, that's the one you should go with.

Benefits
-Armored Reserve Casting without ASF early on, before spell armors.I'd recommend a level of Spellsword instead.

-Off Hand Blasting is powerful after you have enough spell levels...8d6It really isn't. Look, 8d6 comes out to 28 damage. You get this at level 20. Compare that to the HP of most monsters even 10 levels below you, and it's pretty obvious this is a bad option, especially considering that Supernatural abilities are standard actions, so you're wasting actions on it without benefit.

Blasting, unless you're pulling serious metamagic stunts, isn't efficient. It's simply flatly worse than hitting things with your sword.

-Good Melee Damage boosts with Blade of Force, Minor Shapeshifting, Smite Evil, and Arcane Boost all stacking although that is pricy on action economy. Weapon + Strength Mod + 38 before enhancement bonuses?The problem here is that you're expending a lot of actions and daily resources for what's a frankly unimpressive damage output. Compare that to a basic power attack, which can be combined with essentially any damage booster you can think of, but is weapon(7) + 1.5 strength + 2 BAB, on touch with Wraithstrike.

A more effective route would probably be a typical Sorcadin, that is Paladin 2/Sorcerer 4/Spellsword 1/Abjurant Champion 5/Sacred Exorcist 8, but there are variants, such as battle sorcerer or, if fractional BAB and flaws are on the table, early ruathar to speed things up and give you access to other PrCs later on. I, personally, like trying to fit Spelldancer in there, but I like persistomancy, and it might not fly at your table.

If you really find reserve feats that compelling, what you really want is to grab a few levels in a Circle Magic class. It still won't be terribly efficient, but it will be relevant for a lot longer.