Quote Originally Posted by J-H View Post
For my BG2 game, one of the possible (albeit less likely) NPCs for the party to pick up is someone who wanted to be a paladin, but couldn't get sponsorship because his dad is a jerk... so he ended up coming up through the paladin order as a squire/cleric. If he doesn't screw up due to bad advice, he gets knighted into the order at some point.

Mechanically, I'd like to represent that with Paladin levels.

War Cleric 8/Paladin 12
As A Vuman starting with a slightly modified array of 15/14/13/13/9/9, and putting his ASIs into Heavy Armor Master +ability boosts, I can get Str, Wis, and Cha at 18, Con at 14, and Dex/Int at 10 each. Not maxed out, but acceptably high.

Extra Attack + Improved Divine Smite means he can attack 2/rd with +1d8 radiant damage, and from War Cleric Divine Smite, he gets a free bonus 1d8 on one of those attacks. 4x/day, he can also make a 3rd melee attack as a BA. For base damage, he's certainly keeping up with a full paladin in melee, and has more spell slots (1 7th, 1 6th, 2 5th, 3 4th, etc.) and access to higher-level cleric spells.

Aside from being somewhat MAD, and having a less powerful list than a Sorcadin, I'm not seeing any issues with this aside from some of the melee capabilities (Extra Attack) coming online very late as he transitions from cleric who melees to paladin who casts. Am I overlooking something?
Half-Elf with 15,14,14,12,8,8 point buy gets you-

15 Str, 8 Dex, 14 Con, 8 Int, 16 Wis, 14 Cha at level 1

Start with 8 straight levels of Cleric, literally any domain but War since it's weak. Take HAM(+1Str) at level 4, and +2 Cha at level 8

Starting at level 9, you go all Paladin from there. Probably Vengeance. Stats are 16 Str, 8 Dex, 14 Con, 8 Int, 16 Wis, 16 Cha

Paladin 4,8, and 12 gets you 18 in Str, Wis, and Cha or you could go 20, 18, and 16. It's worth noting that it *should* be easy to come across a Belt of Giant Strength at some point between levels 1-20 so you could probably get away with never raising Str past 16.

I'd be temped to sacrifice one ASI and go Cleric 9/Paladin 11 for 5th level Cleric spells/slots.

Out of all the Cleric domains that give you Heavy Armor prof, War would be my last pick. It's just really lacking.