Which kind of Paladin is best?
Tad_Has_A_Cold_Olive
Member Posts: 183
So, I've been looking over the thread, and there doesn't seem to be a consensus about which Paladin kit is best in Icewind Dale. At least, not like the "Inquisitor or bust" opinion in the Baldur's Gate II subforum. So, just out of curiosity, which Paladin kit would you say is best to take into the Spine of the World?
- Which kind of Paladin is best?204 votes
- Paladin - More than enough smiting potential!3.43%
- Blackguard - Fear me!13.24%
- Cavalier - Who needs a bow when you can stab demons in the face?41.67%
- Inquisitor - Dark magic is bad no matter where you find it!8.82%
- Undead Hunter - There are way too many skeletons around here!32.84%
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Comments
But really anything except the Inquisitor. Even an unkitted Paladin is better than the Inquisitor in this game.
And Lay on Hands is a very strong healing spell I do not want to loose.
Never use ranged weapons on my paladin anyway.
In fact Immunity to Hold and Level drain for me are the most useless immunities as near the end of the game every party member will have Free Action this or the other way and I never experienced a single Level Drain.
I want to change my vote to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Undead Hunter
Vale of Shadows
Dorn's Deep (Lich Area)
Burial Isle
Now a very new player may find the Vale of Shadows tricky but once you get to grips with how the game works and can abuse things such as choke points, body pulling and whatever, all the Undead Hunter will do is speed up that area, not worth it for me.
The Lich Area in Dorn's Deep, the difficult enemies here are the Lich itself which you only need to kill once and can use summons to soak it's spells and then the Greater Mummies which granted, can one shot you with Sol's Searing Orb on Insane difficulty, but again you can use cheap summons to absorb them. The other undead in that area are very low level in comparison to your level by this point.
Burial Isle, ok I'll legit give this one, Undead Hunter will be very nice here since those things hit hard and got a lot of health, but they're not hard to hit, but the extra damage will be nice.
Immunity to Hold is irrelevant, there's a hundred and one things to combat this, interrupt spell casting, Ring of Free Action, Potion of Free Action, Spell of Free Action, Remove Paralysis, soak with summons etc.
Level Drain, is there even Level Drain in IWD? I don't know.
You lose Lay on Hands which is a lovely clutch heal in a dire situation and you lose being able to cast Cure Disease, I think, which is kinda handy.
Cavalier on the other hand gains bonuses to hit vs some of the toughest and basically, the toughest mobs in the game (aka, the final boss of each game). The Fire resistance is very nice vs enemy mages and in lower Dorn's Deep, the Acid Resistance...well I don't know, whatever about that one, there isn't much Acid damage in the game. The immunities are also quite frankly, far superior. Being immune to charm is glorious since half the bloody clerics in this game try to dominate you.
That one downside, you can't use ranged weapons...excuse me while I care that my main Sword and Board lady cannot chuck her sword at you and instead has to walk up to you and chop your face off.
From 2nd to 3rd edition the bad guys got all the good stuff in D&D.
Not that I'd ever take a Paladin anyway.
For me, it's a tossup between Undead Hunter and Cavalier. Literally. They both have serious advantages in this game, depending on what you want out of them, and I can't pick one. I'm playing with an Undead Hunter right now because I've pretty much only ever used Cavaliers --when I play Paladins-- since they became available in BG.
Inquisitor is kinda useless. I don't play evil characters, so I can't really talk about how a Blackguard works in practice. It reads about like an Undead Hunter, I guess. I dunno how their Poison Weapon skill works on hordes of undead and whatnot. Un-kitted Paladin is basically forfeiting the best parts of highly useful kits to keep semi-useful secondary aspects of the Paladin.
1. All paladins now get immunity to fear, and,
2. Cavaliers can no longer use thrown melee weapons,
I feel that cavaliers have become a bit nerfed and redundant.
By contrast, vanilla paladins are raised in my estimation, as they are the most versatile form of paladin and benefit the most from IWD rules IMO.
Yes I know you're probably going to come up with something about how on HoF that won't work, sure maybe I'll struggle, but I personally feel that there's plenty of ways to deal with the Burial Isle at least which don't involve your tank just sat there taking a beating and I still prefer the extra damage on the bosses from the Cavalier.
If that thread told me anything, I think I'd prefer a Dwarven Defender over either of the Paladins but there we are.
Now, in the thread we did come to a conclusion that having Fighter Dual Clerics is better off than having paladins overall. But if people are hellbent on taking paladins (which is fine, tbh, people don't need to powergame to the max in HoF mode), Cavaliers can definitely still function in HoF mode with other classes supplementing their flanks with summoned minions. It's just that being forced to melee at all times in HoF mode is painful.
So far, in every single fight if I don't have any summoned minions tanking, my melee fighter gets his health reduced to nothing in almost less than a round. Even when there are few stragglers left to deal with, I'd rather kite than sending melees to finish them off when I run out of animate dead.
The point is that being unable to use ranged weapons is quite a disadvantage in HoF mode, Undead or not. Hence, it's not the kit advantages that made Undead Hunters better than Cavalier, but it's the Cavalier's own disadvantage that puts the kit behind all the other kits! Again, it's fine to take a Cavalier through HoF run, some have done it (and expressed their regret for it), I wouldn't do it, but I bet it's still doable.
To ease off the mood, here's a meme I quite liked that described IWD so well: