[3.5] Paladin (WoW RPG Version / Opt. Build Help)

[WeeFreeMen]

Wow, that was a mouth full for a Title. >_<

Anyway. I am going to be playing a Low-Magic campaign and I decided to pick Paladin, but since both myself and the DM agreed that the standard Paladin was pretty weak, we decided that I could use the WoW-RPG version.
(ALSO: This campaign is Undead / Demon heavy)

Ill place a spoiler for those who aren't familiar with it.

More to the point.
I was thinking of going Lightning Maces (Com. War), while the WoW paladin has plenty of support with the Aura's. However, the WoW Bash feat just seemed to fit in with a TWF-Light Mace build.

I have yet to decide a PrC, if one at all.
My question, to get to it, What feats would you guys suggest for a good paladin build overall? Is Lightning-Maces a good idea?

I planned on getting some Divine Feats, for the Turn Undead uses, perhaps the one that add's Cha to damage against undead.

ALSO!: I recall a feat that up-d the Lay On Hands payout, my either giving it a different multiplier or something along the lines to have a greater effect. Does anyone know what Im talking about? What Book? or am I just crazy. >_<

WoW-Paladin

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Weapon / Armor Prof: As normal
Aura of Good: As Normal
Holy Strike: Like smite, but for anything. Same progression.
Divine Grace: Cha to saves
Aura's: This is the awesome thing of the class. Aura's / Day = 1 / 3lvs.
-Aura of Might: 3rd lv: +1 Sacred Bonus / 3lvs : Damage / Hit
-Aura of Devotion: 6th: +1 Sacred Bonus to AC / 3lvs. (up to +5)
-Aura of Retribution: 9th: 2d4+Cha per melee hit to those affected. +1d4 /3lv
-Aura of Resistance 12th: +1 Sacred Bonus on Saves / 3lv
-Aura of Wisdom 15th: Ability to not lose spell slot after casting on DC Spell-Craft 10 + (2x Spell Level)
Divine Health: As normal
Turn Undead: 4th lv.
Lay On Hands: 4th lv. NOTE: were using the normal paladin Lay on Hands, as the WoW version dumps ALL your spells per day for a lame heal.
Crusader Strikes: 5th lv. : Gain Cha to damage on Holy Strikes, stacks.
Fist of Justice: 7th: Gain Bash feat for all weapons.

WoW-Bash Feat

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You may attempt a Bash as a full attack
action with a bludgeoning weapon. If the attack hits,
roll damage normally; the foe struck by your attack must
then attempt a Fortitude save (DC 10 + the damage
rolled). The foe takes no damage from the blow, but if he
fails the save, he is stunned for 1 round (see Chapter 13:
Abilities and Conditions). You can use Bash only once
per round and no more than once per level per day.
When you use Bash, you forfeit any bonus or extra
attacks granted by other feats or abilities

[Kaiyanwang]

IMHO, lightin maces is good for TWFighters (more attacks, more chanche to proc the extra attack).

What Bash does? It's something with bludgeoning weapons I guess (un the videogame, is a fighter attack, IIRC).

[WeeFreeMen]

Its in the spoiler. >_<

Basically. Trade full attack for Stun chance. 1 round. DC = 10 + damage that WOULD have been dealt. Fort Save.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you want to use Lightning Maces, you don't actually have to wield light maces. The Aptitude weapon property in ToB makes any weapon with the enchantment usable with any feat that specifies a particular weapon. You could wield two +1 Keen Aptitude Kukris (15-20 threat range!) and use the feat Lightning Maces with them as though they were light maces. Include the feat Roundabout Kick, also in CW, and you can use an Aptitude weapon with it in place of unarmed strikes. That gets you two extra attacks per critical hit, with a 15-20 threat range. Take Martial Study and Martial Stance for Blood in the Water and get a cumulative +1 to attack and damage every time you get a critical hit.

Without Aptitude Weapon cheese, Lightning Maces isn't really worth taking.

[Kaiyanwang]

My apologies. So:

- Bash save seems more likely to be failed (expecially if combined with an holy strike) than other similar feats.

- The main drawback is the full attack thing. If dragon compendium is allowed, I'd go with staggering blow (chance to stun the enemy on crit).

Seems to me that the paladin takes bash anyway, I understood badly? Anyway,IMHO lighting mace is better with oher classes.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

There's the feat Hands of the Healer in BoED, which counts your Cha score as 2 points higher for how much your Lay on Hands can do each day. There's also one in Faiths of Eberron that's based on the action point system, which allows you to LoH as a Swift Action, or from 30 ft. away, or to Empower it, creatively called Action Healing. I wouldn't consider either one to be worth taking.

[WeeFreeMen]

Haha.
Ok, so now that we have ruled out all my ideas.
What do you guys think would be a good idea? Build?

Sword and Board?
Lance/Charger?

Lets have it. :D

[Irreverent Fool]

I believe there is a d20 World of Warcraft PnP RPG book. I'm reasonably certain you could adapt the paladin there with little effort.

obnoxious
sig

[Person_Man]

For the record, IMO the Paladin is one of the most powerful non-caster classes out there. It's just not used well. Advice:

1) Remember that a single level of Paladin entitles you to use any spell trigger item for a spell on your spell list. Like Holy Sword and Protection from Evil (screw you mind control and summoned monsters). Buy wands, and put them in wand bracers and wand chambers.

2) Be a small race. Ride a medium mount. Pick something awesome from the special mounts section of the DMG. Use Share Spells liberally. Find a way to get Pounce and use it with a lance two-handed.

3) Take powerful feats. Sword of the Arcane Order, Battle Blessing, Travel Devotion, Earth Devotion, Animal Devotion, Dragon Cohort, Spirited Charge, etc.

[Indon]

Something you might want to do for optimization purposes regardless of the primary purpose of your build is pump your Spellcraft - so if you need healing in a pinch or something, you can just pop your Aura of Wisdom and gain multiple healing spells with a single spell slot.

As a Paladin, you don't get higher than 4'th level spells. So if you have +17 to your Spellcraft, Aura of Wisdom seems to grant effectively infinite Paladin spellcasting (I'm reasonably certain it doesn't really work that way, but it's been a while since I've read the book so I don't recall why).

You might want to encourage other spellcasters in the group to do the same so they can benefit similarly.

[Fenix_of_Doom]

Haha.
Ok, so now that we have ruled out all my ideas.
What do you guys think would be a good idea? Build?

Sword and Board?
Lance/Charger?

Lets have it. :D

A lance charger is both cooler and mechanically better, the paladin is also a good choice for such a build, so I'd follow Person_Man's advice and make a kick-ass lancer.

[WeeFreeMen]

For the record, IMO the Paladin is one of the most powerful non-caster classes out there. It's just not used well. Advice:

1) Remember that a single level of Paladin entitles you to use any spell trigger item for a spell on your spell list. Like Holy Sword and Protection from Evil (screw you mind control and summoned monsters). Buy wands, and put them in wand bracers and wand chambers.

2) Be a small race. Ride a medium mount. Pick something awesome from the special mounts section of the DMG. Use Share Spells liberally. Find a way to get Pounce and use it with a lance two-handed.

3) Take powerful feats. Sword of the Arcane Order, Battle Blessing, Travel Devotion, Earth Devotion, Animal Devotion, Dragon Cohort, Spirited Charge, etc.

Let me restate lol.

1) Low magic campaign. Our DM has said the BEST we can hope for is a +1 item, towards lv 7. We are lv 1 atm.

2) My race is pre determined. Aasimar. and WoW paladin doesnt get a Special mount, but a Warhorse will be supplied to me, free of charge.

[AstralFire]

Ugh. Retnoobs. Retnoobs. Healers should heal. Healers should heal, man. Why aren't you healing us, man.

Given that the WoW RPG is a few years old, the idea of anything in it being better for a D&D Paladin except to make you heal makes me giggle.

That Bash attack seems terrible. You won't have a second attack for most of the campaign, but you can't charge or move with it, and you're giving up all of your damage for one round to delay one monster's turn. I would look into the Sword and Fist (3.0 book) feat Knockdown for a similar effect, though the prereqs are a little rough at low levels.

[Kaiyanwang]

I would look into the Sword and Fist (3.0 book) feat Knockdown for a similar effect, though the prereqs are a little rough at low levels.

This is why, on the long road, IMHO, is better staggering blow (even if taking improved critical with the bludgeoning weapon is not so good for a lot of build).

Anyway,Knockdown is in the SRD, too. From the wiki, here.

About a charger paladin (and so folloing Person man advice) why not a charging smite (PHII) + wild cohort?

About retnoobs:

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I mainly agree but I've to admit that recently in Pvp are really devastating.

Anyway, since I played a Druid, I think that classes able to do
more than one thing do exist.
Ahh.. Warrior, Rogue, Priest and Mage.. these pathetic imitations of a Druid..
Joking, of course.

[AstralFire]

Staggering blow is probably your best bet because Knock-down can drive many DMs crazy as they're not prepared to deal with Power Attackers What Trip Fools Hella Low.

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I've mained mostly hybrids, so before I quit, I was glad to see GC's philosophy come into play with them being allowed to keep pace. I was just being silly; the idea of a Paladin being a main healer boggles me completely from a Fantasy perspective.

[Kaiyanwang]

Staggering blow is probably your best bet because Knock-down can drive many DMs crazy as they're not prepared to deal with Power Attackers What Trip Fools Hella Low.

Actually, it's feat intensive, but with few flaws and screwing the mount* maybe you can have both for an acceptable level, and have sort of a short range bettlefield control (stun and trip) that could be good in a low magic campaign (correct me if I'm wrong).


*I'd personally go for the mount

off topic

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I've mained mostly hybrids, so before I quit, I was glad to see GC's philosophy come into play with them being allowed to keep pace. I was just being silly; the idea of a Paladin being a main healer boggles me completely from a Fantasy perspective.

Wow paladins are IMHO more similar to D&D clerics, but without ranged spells. Retribution and Protection are CoDzillas (eve if the damage output of a retpaladin reminds me a charging smite cheesed up), Holy are buffer-healer.

Even Death Knight are similar to an evil cleric of D&D, BTW

[mistformsquirrl]

I rather like that Paladin version... may have to try that sometime >.< never have bothered looking at the Warcraft d20 book.

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Ugh... WoW... not that I had huge problems with the game. It's the friggin players! <T.T>

I played for the first year and a half of it's existence; and despite performing my job every bit as well as other players; just because my builds were 'odd'; I got screamed at incessently. I mean holy crap - don't you dare leave that cookie cutter mold <x.x>;;;

Shouldn't be too surprising though, same thing happened in FFXI before that too heh <,< people who'd never played with me would /tell me "You suck"; because of my unusual choice of subjobs. /bitterrantoff

Seriously though, I enjoyed my Paladin and Warrior (both 60, which was the cap at the time) <._.> just got fed up with the people. Shame that that seems to happen in pretty much every MMO I play these days.

[Mr.Moron]

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Wow paladins are IMHO more similar to D&D clerics, but without ranged spells. Retribution and Protection are CoDzillas (eve if the damage output of a retpaladin reminds me a charging smite cheesed up), Holy are buffer-healer.

Even Death Knight are similar to an evil cleric of D&D, BTW

Earlier in the life of the game, this wasn't the case. In high-end PvE there just wasn't room for any non-healer specs. Retribution/Protection*/Enhacement/Elemental/Feral/Balance were completely non-viable.

[[[ even more off topic
*Improved Blessing of Salvation was in Protection and could excuse you going down this route. Since it was an important buff you didn't want wearing off after just 5 minutes. This combined with being the assigned "OOC Resser" (This was a very cheesy tactic which involved taking advantage of the fact bosses didn't trigger the combat state for everyone in the zone.) for my guild meant I pretty much got to /follow through most of molten core.
]]

PvP was a little better. Protection was the best PvP spec back while Repentance was still in protection. However a patch fixed that soon enough.

Truth be told I always enjoyed healing on all 3 of my paladins. I always found it more troublesome that paladins weren't tanks more so than they weren't face-smasher. DPS was never my thing and I think a defender fit my personal image of a paladin more so than a face-smiter.

I played for the first year and a half of it's existence; and despite performing my job every bit as well as other players; just because my builds were 'odd'; I got screamed at incessently. I mean holy crap - don't you dare leave that cookie cutter mold <x.x>;;;

The thing with Early WoW was if you were doing a role other than Healing outside of a 5-man(including UBRS, early on at least) you were not performing up to par. Not only did the hybrids have woefully insufficient abilties to try anything but healing they simply didn't have the gear. Every piece of tanking gear had "Classes: Warrior" on it. Certainly you could go in after the fact and do it as a hoot on farm content, but certainly not on progression encounters.

The tools just didn't exist it wasn't possible mechanically. That wasn't the fault of the players. I'm not saying it was a good thing. It was just true.

[mistformsquirrl]

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True to a point - but I mostly did 5-man stuff. That's what was most frustrating

Despite pulling my weight (and I did heal - make no mistake; healing spells were cast! But I didn't just sit and watch health bars like a priest - I healed, off tanked, and a little DPS too; but mostly the first two) - I'd still catch enormous attitude even at the end of a blazingly successful run. And that's what PO'd me like nuts.

"... we just beat the frakking dungeon with ease - no one even got below half HP; and you're whining at me because you don't like my build!?"

*headdesk*

I'd get the same crap on my Warrior too (Warrior was my first 60); though the reason was different. /grumble

But that's enough bitter off topic ranting from me <'x'> sorry.