[BUILD] Paladin Of Lathander
Sikorsky
Member Posts: 402
Hi everyone!
After all these years human needs to make ideas to keep the game interesting. I came up with an idea: Priest of Lathander to Fighter dual class aka Paladin of Lathander. Let's look at what we can get. I would dual on the 10th level.
So as a pure Paladin we get access to 4th level cleric spells at level 15th. With our build, we get access to 5th level at level 10th. So Spell-speaking we are better than pure Paladin.
Turn-undead will be probably better for Paladin on high levels but we will not use it so it doesn’t matter.
Fighter levels give us Thac0, ApR, Greater Specialization and Fighter HLA.
High wisdom give us more spells per level – pure paladins don’t have that.
From cleric levels, we get 10 round Boon of Lathander and access to Righteous Magic also 10 round.
Righteous Magic is basically a variation of Kai or Offensive Spin for us, and it lasts 10 rounds!
On paper, this build looks very promising. What do you think? Am I missing some major cons? Or will it actually work very well?
After all these years human needs to make ideas to keep the game interesting. I came up with an idea: Priest of Lathander to Fighter dual class aka Paladin of Lathander. Let's look at what we can get. I would dual on the 10th level.
So as a pure Paladin we get access to 4th level cleric spells at level 15th. With our build, we get access to 5th level at level 10th. So Spell-speaking we are better than pure Paladin.
Turn-undead will be probably better for Paladin on high levels but we will not use it so it doesn’t matter.
Fighter levels give us Thac0, ApR, Greater Specialization and Fighter HLA.
High wisdom give us more spells per level – pure paladins don’t have that.
From cleric levels, we get 10 round Boon of Lathander and access to Righteous Magic also 10 round.
Righteous Magic is basically a variation of Kai or Offensive Spin for us, and it lasts 10 rounds!
On paper, this build looks very promising. What do you think? Am I missing some major cons? Or will it actually work very well?
Post edited by Sikorsky on
2
Comments
Edit. Nevermind, just realized you are dual classing into a fighter. Paladins I guess can use the speed weapons while you can't?
All your priest spells will forever cast as a level 9 priest. Your fighter levels won't improve them.
So for example, Draw Upon Holy Might will increase all your physical stats by 3, no matter how high you level up as a fighter.
A paladin's draw upon holy might will eventually increase you physical stats by up to 6. Twice as powerful.
Cleric (PoL) 9/Fighter 19: 9*(1d8 + 2) + 10*3 HP. 120 max, 103 average if rolling.
Paladin 18: 9*(1d10 + 4) + 9*3 HP. 153 max, 130 average if rolling.
So then, you're giving up about 30 hit points - or 40 if you increase that to Con 19 with a tome. It's a major cost.
Also - no, you don't unlock the dual class in SoD. It takes 725K total XP to complete it, more than the 500K cap. Level 9 is a great place to dual if you're not running SoD; if you are, I'd go to level 10 or level 11 instead and dual after starting SoA.
Each additional Cleric level effectively costs you a Fighter level. In exchange? You get a level 4 and a level 5 slot for going to Cleric 10. For Cleric 11, you get level 1, 3, and 6 slots, plus additional uses of your kit abilities.
Neither build's dispel magic would ever be terribly effective, would it?
A paladin's caster level is 8 levels below their class level. So even at level 34 a paladin would only cast dispel magic as a level 26 priest, which would technically be better than the lathander build, but still fail to dispel anything anything cast by the high level mages you'd encounter at that point in the game.
As far as I know outside of the inquisitor's innate ability, pureclass priests and bards are the only people who can dispel magic terribly effectively, capping out at level 40.
Boon of Lathander is an innate spell and is therefore actually cast at the average of your two class levels. This means that every 2 fighters levels you have more than cleric levels, Boon of Lathander will last another round. Thus, a level 11/17 Cleric of Lathander/Fighter's BoL will last 14 rounds instead of 11.
The priest kits are each available to the god's alignment and each other alignment within one step; that's NG for Lathander, LN for Helm, and LG for Tyr.
The kit spells, for comparison:
Lathander: Hold Undead, Boon of Lathander (+1 attack, damage, saves, and APR, lasts 1 round/level)
Helm: True Sight, Seeking Sword (+4 enchant, 2d4 damage, 3 APR, lasts 1 round/level)
Tyr: Exaltation (Removes various disabling states and protects against them for one turn), Divine Favor (Attack and damage +1 per 3 levels, lasts 2 rounds)
In each case, the first spell gets uses at level 1, 6, 11, etc. and the second gets uses at level 1, 11, etc. They're all useful spells for a warrior, too.
True.
That's not much of a downside considering that the best or one of the best weapon is blunt.
Yes I know about that. But this character will have low AC, access to Hardiness, maybe DoE in off-hand so less HP should not do as much harm.
You're right, that was my mistake. I was looking at exp needed for 9th level fighter insted of 10th. I will edit my post then.
Ok, but not all spells progress with level. +3 from DUHM should be enouth late game with all other boosts and items. Armor of Faith will also give us only 10% but I'm OK with that. Dispel magic..... I think I will leave that to Keldorn, If we are talking about this spell it is him or nobody.
Can someone confirm that? We're getting extra use on 11th or 10th? If it's on 11th - I think over it.
Interesting. I didn't know about that. Another point for the build I guess.
For challenging fights we can use BoL that give us +1 ApR and other bonuses so it kind of replaced the need of speed weapon. We can wield DoE in off-hand insteed and be kind of Tank with mellee power.
Yeah, Tyr would be cool for RP perspective. But there are Paladins of Lathander out there I guess..... that Boon is just too powerful.
You make up for the lack of speed weapon by using Boon of Lathander, which gives a +1 APR. Dual at 11 for optimal minimal downtime vs. maximal abilities/spell-casting. Include IWD Ranger spell-progression from Tweaks to unlock gradually even more awesome spells.
I prefer Fighter for his grandmastery=more ApR, Thac0 and Damage. And Ranger from priest of Lathander is just.... strange at least. Also I don’t need that extra spells. This build is about to work like Paladin - few buffs and straight to battle.
Such things are game breaking and fun breaking. The idea is to make valuable warrior within game mechanics and without using exploits or/and shdowkeeping. Another thing is that our main buff will be Righteous Magic - full damage from every hit.
It’s not about powerbuilding. It’s about creating an interesting build in a different way that we used to. You can also say that fighter->Cleric will be better.
P.S. I’m not so sure that Cavalier would take him down.
P.S.2. I find custom kit mods overpowered.
Add Mazzy for even more paladin-ness