Finesse Paladin - Yay or nay?

Tad_Has_A_Cold_Olive

So, after looking at a few feats and things, I had an idea for an unusual Paladin build.

The idea would be to go minimal Strength, pump up Dexterity & Charisma, and grab all the dual-wielding feats. The Paladin has the Divine Might feat which lets them spend a Turn Undead use to get Charisma to damage, and there's also the Champion of Torm's Divine Wrath ability as well. My thought is to maximize those bonuses to damage by giving the Paladin as many attacks as possible (hence dual-wielding). Maybe even get 4 levels of Fighter to nab weapon specialization too.

Am I onto something here, or am I completely off-base?

Jimbobslimbob

The latter. It's a silly idea. All that Dex is wasted.

Paladins can wear heavy armor - negating Dex bonus to AC

Charisma bonus to damage (for DM) is nice, but you can get Damage + AB by just increasing Strength. If NWN had Epic Divine Might, then perhaps this idea could work... but DM by itself is a short-lived buff to damage.

Paladin's suffer from multi-attribute dependency as it is. What this would achieve is just make that situation worse with no practical benefits.

A Paladin focusing on STR and CHA would have much higher damage than a Paladin focusing on DEX and CHA.

WS is a good idea on any melee build, so no complaints about that.

If you want a little extra damage you can always use a two-handed weapon. Like dual wielding, you will give up AC for it though. Damage-wise it's normally a better option than dual wielding on any character that doesn't use Sneak Attacks - as it's more likely to punch through damage resistance (4 attacks at 1.5 STR vs 4 at 1 STR and 2 at 0.5 STR).

Kamigoroshi

Nothing wrong with a dex centered paladin if you go with the Weapon Finesse feat. Just because paladins can wear heavy armor doesn't mean that all of them must use them. Might just as well stick with light armor on that front. True, such an paladin won't be of much use as a tank anymore. But that's exactly why it would make for an interesting playthrough. Especially if you go for one of the shorty races.

Jimbobslimbob

Kamigoroshi said:

Nothing wrong with a dex centered paladin if you go with the Weapon Finesse feat. Just because paladins can wear heavy armor doesn't mean that all of them must use them. Might just as well stick with light armor on that front. True, such an paladin won't be of much use as a tank anymore. But that's exactly why it would make for an interesting playthrough. Especially if you go for one of the shorty races.

Yes you can wear lighter armour, but it gains you nothing. You would need a total DEX of 28 (+9) or more to begin to see any improvements to AC over a standard Heavy Armour-wearing Paladin. Infact a DEX based Paladin would then also require full investment in 'Spot' as well, to prevent them losing all that DEX AC when caught flat footed. It is all just totally bonkers!

Damage will be almost non-existent - and short lived. It's a poor choice IMO. There aren't any benefits to doing this over a STR-based Two-Handed Paladin - But whatever floats your boat.

Grizzled_Dwarflord

Finesse Paladin: Nay

Charisma Paladin: Aye

Using combinations of Divine Favor, Greater Magic Weapon, Bless, Bulls, and his 1-for-1 BAB progression, the Charisma-based paladin has a naturally strong AB. Go Charisma-based to synergize Divine Might, Divine Shield, Smite Evil, Taunt, and the Divine Grace (or whatever the save bump is called). Then get your Extra Smitings in Epic. Divine damage is irresistable (unresistable?)

If you did go dex-based, or quasi-dex based, I would go Arcane Archer and deliver divine damage from afar.

mashedtaters

Of course you can. It’s not like this game is so hard you need to min-max everything and milk every last drop out of the character builds.

If you are trying to milk every last drop out of your PC, then fighters are almost always superior to everything... one of the things I dislike about this game.

BelgarathMTH

mashedtaters said:

Of course you can. It’s not like this game is so hard you need to min-max everything and milk every last drop out of the character builds.

If you are trying to milk every last drop out of your PC, then fighters are almost always superior to everything... one of the things I dislike about this game.

@mashedtaters , I agree. The paladin or crusader is always one of my favorite classes in any game, and I've always lamented how weak and poorly implemented paladins are in both NWN and NWN2. Clerics make better paladins than actual paladins.

Before someone starts telling me all the ways that I'm wrong and that paladins are actually wonderful in NWN, I already know, but the problem is opportunity cost. In my opinion after years of playing NWN with different combinations of cleric, fighter, and paladin, I find that anything a paladin can do, a fighter/cleric combination can do better.

Nic_Mercy

Just for fun I put together a finesse with dual-wield paladin 27/Cot10/rogue 3 and it seemed pretty good. The rogue levels were taken at 22, 27 and 37 for (UMD, Tumble and Uncanny Dodge) so BAB is maxed.

Not being a cleric has many upsides that are often overlooked. First and foremost, taking any cleric levels 1-20 will negatively impact your natural BAB. Secondly clerics are, to not put fine words on it, buff whores. They require time to both rest to replenish all those buffs and a fair amount of time to apply them. They are also at the mercy of enemies that have strong dispel magic effects. I have a cleric build on a PW at the moment that had a sad sad day when a quest boss dispelled all her shiny buffs

While the paladin has buffs, they few and minor for the most part. The paladin can function quite well without them, while a buff reliant cleric build will often be at a disadvantage without their buffs. Granted in the original campaigns and in most single player modules this weakness is often not taken advantage of but on many persistent worlds it can be a quite significant factor. The immunity to disease and fear on top of amazing saving throws for everything else is also another feather in a paladin's cap.

Shadooow

Majority singleplayers is easy enough to be beaten with naked character so the build really doesn't matter and you as a player have always the possibility to lower dificulty/reload if the encounters are too difficult for you to handle.

If we are talking here about build for multiplayer, then I built a 20paladin 10monk 10 rogue on a lvl 40 PW with ED and using gloves. It was viable but couldn't match the same build with cleric or power of bards. (Also my choice of weapon disallowed me to use 3 great spells from paladin list, so kama would be probably better if you want to try this build, unless the PW allows to buff gloves). If you want to be original go for it, it can be viable, but it can never match other builds in strength.

Best paladin build is probably the paladin/sorcerer(but prefferably bard if possible)/rdd, paladin/bard/pm if the module allows you to swap alignment as you need and build this illegality. Except that the build with CoT is good as a smiting specialist but thats about it. High lvl paladins aren't exactly great unless the module in which you play them has:
- powerful equipment for paladin
- changed holy avenger so it works on monsters above lvl 20
- custom prestige classes that makes good combo with paladin or custom changes to existing prestige classes such as PDK that makes good combo with paladin
- custom paladin class changes

Without this he is mostly just multiclass option for pre epic BAB, divine might/shield or saving throw boosts...