Hey guys I just rolled my first paladin for my first foray into a Forgotten Realms 3.5 campaign. The concept is to eventually go full mounted via the cavalier prestige class (Complete Warrior). We are starting at lvl 7 so I went with a one level dip into hospitaler for the bonus feat and I am planning on going either 3 or 4 levels of Pious Templar. Bear in mind I will be the only front line melee in the group. Our group consists of me (paladin), a rogue, druid, evoker, and one undecided. The only thing that scares me is the campaign is a 10th level campaign and the dm thinks it will be fine since there will be 5 of us but I am not so sure. Well anyway below are my stats and feats the major weakness I see is the low reflex.
5 Paladin/1 Hospitaler/1 Pious Templar Race=Human
Str 18
Dex 12
Con 16
Int 10
Wis 14
CHA 15
Feats
Mounted Combat
Ride by attack
Weapon Focus-Great Sword
True Believer-Torm
Spirited Charge
Gear
All Masterwork except for +1 Full Plate
Skills are worked mostly for fail safe ride checks and meeting prestige class requirements. My ride check is sitting at +23 (+10 equestrain saddle +2 Handle Animal synergy +10 ranks+1 from dex mod)
However, based on what you're going for, I am obligated to mention the Supermount:
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
If you haven't perused it before, it's highly recommended to do so.
If done right, you can even sprinkle with some Ubercharger ingredients (Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, and the almighty Shock Trooper) to be even more effective.
Druid is one of the best melee classes in 3.5e!
"Hi, I'm a level 8 Druid. All day long, I am wild shaped into a BROWN BEAR. My animal companion is a BROWN BEAR. In a major combat, the first thing I do is summon a BROWN BEAR!"
What part of this is not 'front line melee' again?
And if you want to be remotely close to as badass as a meleeist as a Druid can be, you are going to have to leave Paladin for a more powerful melee class, like Crusader, Favored Soul, or Cleric. You could play them just like a Paladin if you want, too.
gavin those classes don't get a mount also the person playing the druid has never played a druid before so I can't really expect much out of her. In any mounted character build you almost have to go paladin just for the progressing mount.
My updated plan is to go 5paladin/10 annointed knight/5 cavalier
5 paladin levels gives me my mount. 10 annointed knight gives me combat reflexes, DR 3, +2d6 dmg, bonus free action attacks, an intelligent sword, good aligned sword, and unicorns blood not to mention 3 more bonus feats
If you can use content from the Wizards of the Coast website, you can use the wild cohort feat instead of a paladin's special mount ability.
First, you're starting at level 7. That's DMM: Persistent Spell (Divine Power) level. A Cleric is flat-out a better character than a Paladin at that level. I'd consider going straight Cleric and putting the investment in required to have Divine Power up all day.
Second, there's the 1 level Cleric dip. This can be used at 1st level, or 2nd level, to qualify for various feats powered by Turn attempts more quickly. It also provides some other goodies- a save bonus, a bit of healing, and domains. Those domains can be turned into Devotion feats- and lots of those are really good. Travel Devotion, in particular.
Then, there's basic melee strategy to keep in mind. Since you're mounted, you're going to be charging with a lance as much as possible. Thus you're focused on damage potential, instead of tripping, grappling, and what have you.
The engine for this is Power Attack. Two-hand a lance from horseback, and it gets good returns all by itself. Make it a Valorous lance (Unapproachable East). Now it's doubled again (rather 'tripled'), just as long as you're charging. The plan is to throw as much stuff on there to increase your to-hit and damage as much as possible, then Power Attack as much as you can afford to.
Note that Shock Trooper (or was it the other feat from Complete Warrior) allows you to do this a lot more.
See what happens when you Spirited Charge with a Valorous Lance, trigger your Charm domain, Smite Evil, activate Divine Power, and plow the resulting bonus into Power Attack. That's the 'point' of a mounted paladin.
Feat: battle blessing. You can use all paladin spells as a swift action. Wicked.
Spell: rhino rush, swift action (even without battle blessing!), double damage on a charge, 1st level
Spell: find the gap, standard action, 1/round level, once per round ignore armor and natural armor bonus, 3rd level.
Spell: one mind (lesser & greater), gain bonusses on sport, to hit and damage when mounted.
Spell: righteous aura, 1 hour/level, +4 sacred bonus to cha, 4th level.
Let's leave it here for a moment. With spirited charge, a lance, a valourous lance, and rhino rush, you'll do quintuple (5x!) damage. Find the gap makes the attack virtually a touch attack, so you can use full power attack (you'll hit anyway). You can use a smite, to add class level to damage vs evil. you can use a divine might, to add charisma to the attack. All this extra damage will be x5! In the build I suggest below, you'll have all this already at level 12, without too much trouble, and at starting level 7 you can do x5 damage with a valorous weapon.
On some suggestions/ideas so far:
- cavalier is a trap, as far as I'm concerned. It's main feature is the deadly charge, wich does the same as rhino rush for you... except that you can use rhino rush when not mounted (due to small corridors in a dungeon, or a surprise attack at night), you can get it back with a pearl of power, and rhino rush is just a 1st level spell and you'll get much more then that from spellcasting. Weapon focus lance is a total waste, since weapon focus is only worth it to have your irrative attacks hit every now and then, and with mounted combat you won't have those. It won't improve your smite class ability, which sucks. Smite means paladin level = damage, on a x5 charge, the difference in damage between paladin 10 and pally5/something else 5 is already 25, and it only gets bigger.
- anointed knight: very nice, flavourful class, though not too strong and certainly not for mounted combat. Again, you'll loose the smite, worse, you'll loose the spells and most importantly, you won't improve the horsy. Which means it'll die quite easily, which sucks.
- shock trooper (feat): cost's 3 feats in total, with prereqs, and does basicly the same as find the gap, a spell that paladin will gain anyway and can cast as a free action with battleblessing. Not worth it imho for the feat starved pally
Suggestion: human paladin 20.
Feats
H mounted combat, 1 ride by attack, 3 spirited charge, 6 power attack, 9 battle blessing, 12 divine might, 15 animal devotion, 18 awesome smite.
At level 7, when you start, you already have spirited charge, can afford a valorous lance and can do great damage with charge attacks. When that's not possible, you'll be more limited.
Damage continous to increase sharply, when gaining access to find the gap and divine might, and simple because the smite's get stronger. At level 12, you should easily do 200+ damage to an evil foe. At mid to high levels, you'll also get much more options, swift action spells with battle blessing, several smite options, the ability to fly or get greatly improve strength with animal devotion.
My 2 cents. good luck!
Race: Strongheart Halfling
7 Paladin
STR 16
Dex 12
Con 16
Int 12
Wis 14
CHA 15
Feats:
Mounted Combat
Ride by Attack
Spirited Charge
Battle Blessing (This feat seems almost too good lol)
Mount: Riding Dog unless DM allows a blink dog
Using a small MWK greatsword spirited charge+rhino's charge allows for basically 3d10+12 or with a small lance 4d6+12
I just have a quick question about leap attack(Complete adventurer feat) does it work while mounted? If it does I would assume it uses my mount's jump skill. I would assume there would be some kind of skill penalty since the mount is carrying me but I can't seem to find any rulings on it.
On a sidenote: yeah, battle blessing is great. Then again, the pally really needed that kind of power boost to stay on par with other classes. But with the spell compendium and complete champion, they can easily compete with the other melee orientated classes.
I would assume there would be some kind of skill penalty since the mount is carrying me but I can't seem to find any rulings on it.
As far as I know, the horse would only take a penalty if the weight it carried was more than its light load.
I actually ended up taking power attack in place of battle blessing.
I just finished playing a session with the build and the halfling just destroyed anything it touched. The only thing that could keep up with his damage was our evoker. Each charge was doing about 20-30 points of damage and that was w/o power attack or rhino's charge.
So damage is still pretty good even being small and I can't wait until I can cast find the gap. Once that is nabbed its pretty much full power attack so my charges will be hitting for 3d6+20.
What does the party look like?
It is a roleplay game after all, even though at this forum we look at the game through optimization glasses. If you can keep up in the party, then the optimzation level is indeed okay.Had the group been w/o me the charger or the evoker things would have been pretty bad for the group. Our big baddie of the encounter was a high level drow sorcerer with DR 15. No one else could reliably hit hard enough to get through it. The DM has been really cool about everything he had the drow up on a small platform and was like if you can make the ride check and your mount can make the jump check you can still charge him.
It may sound silly, but if you are starting at level 8, you can take a level as a Barbarian, grab lion totem, convert to LG and Paladin. You lose your ability to rage, but you can now full attack on a charge. Perhaps there is something you can do to convert your rages to something useful.
==Aelryinth
And don't try two handing a lance and thinking its couched for a proper charge. You can get TH dmg while charging, or you can get a lance's charging dmg. They don't stack (i.e. you do have to use a weapon properly to get the benefits of it). It's one of the Sage clarifications.
It may sound silly, but if you are starting at level 8, you can take a level as a Barbarian, grab lion totem, convert to LG and Paladin. You lose your ability to rage, but you can now full attack on a charge. Perhaps there is something you can do to convert your rages to something useful.
==Aelryinth
That's interesting! I always wondered how other people did that. Considering how the thing was uses in the past, held under an arm, I never really followed how people did use it 2handed on a mounted charge, even though there wasn't anything RAW against it.
The combination pounce/mounted attack falls for me in the same catagory though... RAW it's legal, but somehow I just can't get visualize a character making a mounted charge and, riding by the target at high speed, stabbing 2, 3 or 4 times with the lance. But maybe I just lack the imagination
==Aelryinth
I am thinking of combining it with monkey grip so I can use normal sized lances with just a -2 penalty.
In high levels paladin uses medium lance 1d8 dmg casts find the gap followed by casting earth hammer making the lance deal bludgeoning and becoming adamatine as well as boosting dice to 2d6
So assuming I dump the next ability points to strength that comes to roughly on average 2d6 roll 6pts+26(power attack bonus)+6 (1.5 strength mod bonus) 38x3=114 dmg w/o rhino's rush or 228 dmg with rhino's rush. This is without even criting.