Paladin stats recommendation
Winter_Wolf
Member Posts: 5
Hey guys,
After 17 years I am looking forward playing trough Baldur's Gate again. I have decided on Undead hunter paladin. What stats should be priority for that class, what roll is recommended ? He is gonna used two handed weapons. Thank you !
After 17 years I am looking forward playing trough Baldur's Gate again. I have decided on Undead hunter paladin. What stats should be priority for that class, what roll is recommended ? He is gonna used two handed weapons. Thank you !
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So max CHA instead, to make shopping cheaper, and any leftovers in INT (which doesn't matter much for a Paladin, except that eventually [edit: in BG2ee] you'll have to fight illithids).
01-50 < 51-75 < 76-90 < 91-99 < 00
STR 18/xx (more xx is good, but don't bother re-rolling just for this if the stats total is adequate)
DEX 18
CON 18
INT whatever is left after allocating the other stats, but 10 would be useful
WIS 13 (which is the minimum allowed for a Paladin, and more gains nothing)
CHA 18
When you meet Illithids (a.k.a. Mind Flayers) in BG2ee, they have an attack which gives you a temporary penalty (it lasts a minute or so) of -5 INT, and if that takes you down to 0 then you're dead (regardless of having plenty of HP left). Therefore it's good if a Paladin can enter BG2ee with INT 11, so he can survive 2 Illithid strikes (although not 3) in the same battle without dying. There's a Tome in BG1ee which gives you permanent +1 INT, so if you start BG1ee with INT 10, then you can finish with INT 11, which is where you want to be when you import to BG2ee. Anything from INT 9 upwards lets you use protection scrolls and a couple of the Wands (although a Paladin can never use most types of Wand), so starting with INT 10 (later 11) automatically satisfies this criterion too.
So ideally, you'd like a roll of 4 x 18 + 13 + 10 = 95, which is a very high roll even for a Paladin (although their high minima do give them somewhat better rolls than most other classes).
Unless you get lucky and can roll the full 95, you can afford to sacrifice up to 5 points of INT and 1 point of CHA (but no more than 5 points of INT, else even after the BG1ee INT Tome you'll still be killed in one blow by any Illithid in BG2ee, which is way too risky) and after that you might even have to consider sacrificing a point of CON or STR ... but no, I'd say re-roll if you can't max your physical stats. With the better rolls of a Paladin, it's not difficult to roll a 90 (it should take only a couple of minutes of rolling to get it), and that's enough to build a fine Paladin ... only INT 5 (or INT 6 after the Tome), but Paladins aren't expected to be very smart.
also as @Gallowglass was mentioning, having 11 INT can be very useful for the mind flayers, but in reality there is only basically 2 major parts in the game that you will be fighting lots of them
now dexterity in theory could also be a dump stat, in bg1 you can get the mits of dex very early in the game which will crank your dex to 18, but on the flip side you won't be able to use awesome mitties like the gauntlets of weapon specialization, but there can always be potions of agility to take care of that worse case scenario, but then we come to bg2, the mits of dexterity are a little bit more difficult to come by, yes in theory you can get them early in chapter 2, but there is going to be some hard battles along the way, plus potions of agility are a lot more rare in bg2
but when I play paladins I like to use the belt of interior barrier and the gauntlets of extraordinary weapon specialization so I would normally make my stats like thus:
STR: 18
DEX: 18
CON: 18
INT: leftover ( but at least aim for 5)
WIS: 13
CHA: 17
and here is my reasoning:
Strength: 18/91 or higher is preferred, but if I get a roll of 95 or higher I will stick with whatever I got, because in chapter 6 you will get the opportunity to increase it to 19 so its almost irrelevant for what it was when it was in the 18s
Dexterity: the only reason why I say 18 here is because you can use the tome to increase it to 19 so in SoA when you do the hell trail to get 10% magic resistance you are going to lose one point of dex permanently, but if its 19 and drops to 18, you will not lose AC
Constitution: 18 obviously because of the sweetski HP and in bg1 using the tome to crank it to 19 for even more sweetski HP, and having 19 con is nice if you plan on using the claw of kazgaroth ( which is usually what I give my paladins) because then it will go back down to 17 con instead of 16
Intelligence: now usually I try and hit 10 in character creation, which based on my above roll would require a total of 94, so if I get impatient I might just go with 5, because if you increase it with the tome in bg1, it will go to 6, and 6 INT is enough to survive a hit from a mind flayer, which basically most melee characters in bg2 can only survive anyway, and plus as I say there are tons of potions of genius in bg2 ( I believe all temples have around 20 potions of them) if you are really worried
Wisdom: lulz, again as @Gallowglass said, wisdom does nothing for a pally, and even with a minimum of 13, you can still crank it to 16 with the 3 tomes of wisdom in bg1, and in bg2 there will be a point in the game where you have to lose 1 stat point permanently in one stat, and I always choose wisdom because again it does nothing for the pally anyway
Charisma: usually I try and go for an 18 here, just for kicks, but in all seriousness starting off with 17 and then hitting 18 with the tome is good enough, higher charisma does lower store prices, but by the time im at the end of bg1 and SoA I always have around 300 000 gold left, plus you can get a cloak of charisma in beregost in bg1 in chapter 1 which will increase your charisma by 2 points, so even if you have 17, it will crank it to 19 which is high enough to have the happy reaction with every NPC in the game, and charisma only affects store pricing up to 20, so 21 charisma for a paladin is pretty much just for spite
so there's my 3 cents ( I always like to give a little bit more, 'cause im such a nice guy and all) on what I would do, but to be perfectly honest, no matter what stats you have, your paladin will make it through, even better if you give your pally some cripplingly low stats in some of your attributes it will give your pally more character, I remember having a friend playing a paladin and he just accepted the first roll that he got, didn't change his stats, didn't reroll or nothin' and he was having a blastio
This is especially true in the case of DEX. There's only one copy of the Gauntlets of Dexterity in each game, and there's almost always someone else in the party who would benefit significantly by having the Gauntlets, so you're crippling your companion (and therefore the overall effectiveness of your party) if your protagonist needs to hog the Gauntlets.
Even in the case of STR, which some people say doesn't matter much because "there are so many STR-boosting items in BG2", that's only true towards the end of the game. Until at least the middle of SoA, you probably won't have as many STR-boosting items as you have companions who could seriously benefit from such an item. So again, it's a considerable boon if your protagonist doesn't need to compete with his own companions for these items.
Furthermore, every stat-boosting item takes up an equipment slot on the character using it, and there are usually several other useful items which you might want to be able to equip, if only you didn't need to use the slot for your stat-boosting item (e.g. the Gauntlets of Weapon Specialisation, which @sarevok57 correctly mentions as another desirable use for the gauntlet slot).
So no, in general I reckon the idea of relying on stat-boosting items to make up for an inadequate roll is misguided. I always try to get my protagonist a good enough roll to begin with, so that the rest of the party can benefit from the stat-boosting items.
Yes, I'd advocate maxing stats for any newbie, this is a bloody hard game to wade into uninitiated but after first or second or tenth playthrough, I actually try to give my PC a human score.
Now, sometimes I break that rule but by occasion. e.g. I rollled an 18/00 for my Dwarven Defender on 3rd role. I'm not stupid, I'll take it, but the Dex and Con were left unremarkable.
Point is, with smart gameplay and utilization of all the gear and goodies available, a person can own the game with mediocre stats. This for some, becomes the fun challenge itself and I agree.
Knowing you can beat the game with max stats, well, good for you. Knowing you can beat the game with a handicap, well much like golf, it sort of gives you a stronger sense of pride IMHO.
You are a hero though, so with that in mind, gimping yourself too much is rather detracting from the sense of the story as well.
One of the nicest things I liked about PS:T was the stat progression, you added points as you leveled as opposed to set score at the beginning. This always struck me as a far more sensible and rewarding feature. This way you could determine as the game progressed, where you actually needed to improve upon as opposed to finding out the hard way half-way through that your stat selection was misguided.
Anyway, all I'm trying to blurt out is that being the biggest bad-ass dude in BG is not required. Being fallible in some aspects can make the game more personal and therefore more rewarding when you win, this is the whole concept with D&D - PnP.
M2c
Also as an undead hunter you'll get the spell Draw Upon Holy Might likely as both an innate ability and eventually a spell. That will make whatever you initially put in dexterity to be not as important. Along with a book you can get to boost your dexterity starting out with 16 or 17 dexterity isn't the end of the world. So ending up with something like 18,16,18,x,13,17 is fine.