Paladin for first play through

[BrannFox]

I am going to start my first play-through as a Paladin. Before I start digging I obviously want to go Paladin two handed sword. Are they viable? Are they damage dealers or mainly tank/healers? In most CRPG's, the best defense is to slaughter the enemies before they can do much damage. So will a Two handed strength/Charisma Paladin be viable?

[IlluminaZero]

Two handed Fighter and the new Titan Fighter are def worth consideration if you want max two-handed flavor. Thing is you can also get the main perks with tiny dips iirc.

Rule of fun should always win out in the end. If you really want to min-max you can look into multi-class after getting the key feats.

[TGxRedPlayer]

Yeah it's pretty good, I'm playing a lawful good paladin using the mod Great Radiance [www.nexusmods.com] that makes it so the unique longsword is a greatsword instead (the mod page also has a version of Radiance for every type of weapon)

[Belegc]

As always, this depends a lot on the difficulty level, party composition and mythic path. as you want to be a "classic" two-handed Strength based paladin, you defenses will lack a bit on the higher difficulties.

you can somewhat compensate this by taking the mythic heavy armor feat that gives you 1/2 STR to max dex allowed, staying enlarged +lunge feat for reach and obtain some shield AC bonus (there are several ways) and you will be ok for most difficulty levels.

Angel mythic path (which is very fitting from RP perspective) will give you further defenses so you should be ok. just be aware that you don't get any bonus feats on Paladin so you might need to plan your character a bit beforehand.

[Matunus]

Two-handed swords may be viable, but certainly not great. If you are willing to spend a feat on exotic weapon proficiency, fauchard is likely your best choice for any good-aligned strength-based character. It has a high crit range and reach and you can get one of the best as early as the beginning of act 3.

[IlluminaZero]

One nice thing about being a mounted two-hander and dual wielder is that you can basically let your pet do all the tanking for you :3 IE the main negative - That being inferior tanking - Is basically negated via mounting.

Also iirc reach might actually be a disservice in real time since you will default on attacking outside of your horse’s attack range. Denying flanking bonus and horse attacks.

If you play turn based you can manually position your reach character within horse melee range. The extra reach still has value in getting additional full attacks out along with cleave.

I usually make my Seelah a Falchion or Scimitar user for this reason. While you don’t “need” a shield to tank with a mount you can still go shields with the mounted shield feat.

[Belegc]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

One nice thing about being a mounted two-hander and dual wielder is that you can basically let your pet do all the tanking for you :3 IE the main negative - That being inferior tanking - Is basically negated via mounting.

Also iirc reach might actually be a disservice in real time since you will default on attacking outside of your horse’s attack range. Denying flanking bonus and horse attacks.

If you play turn based you can manually position your reach character within horse melee range. The extra reach still has value in getting additional full attacks out along with cleave.

I usually make my Seelah a Falchion or Scimitar user for this reason. While you don’t “need” a shield to tank with a mount you can still go shields with the mounted shield feat.

In my opinion, mounted combat is not recommended when playing the game for the first time. it adds another layer of complexity - you basically need to build a whole new companion with their own rules, the auto-dismount can be very annoying, being in range, teamwork feats and so on.
on the non-higher difficulties (say normal and below or maybe slightly higher than this) you can build a character that will work well even without it.

In truth, I think that pets/mounts are very overrated in general - on the lower difficulties you don't need them, on the higher difficulties they are not as good as a well-built characters and tend to fall off around chapter 3. unless going for a specialized charging build with cavaliers I don't think they are must-have at all but I think this opinion is not very common around the forums unfortunately.

[Aranador]

I disagree with mounted combat being 'bat' for a first timer. Paladin gets divine bond - it's built right into the class the chance to get a horse, and a horse neatly solves big problems with the paladin, being a slow AF character who spends half the fight trying to reach an enemy.

'advanced' play for when you know the system a little more, thats where you dip into beastrider or that new ranger subclass, and generally get a little more complex than what the bas class gives you. Seela on a hippogrif or smilodon is Seela Mk 2.0

[CHAO$$$]

Paladins are Mark of Justice (level 11) bots. Or level 1 charisma tank dips.

Either way there is an area early on in chapter 3 where you fight a hag. In that area there is an item that converts your smite AC bonuses into sacred. This item is the sole reason Paladin is good. Get it!

Paladin and Judge (inquis) are the only 2 classes that can still reliably provide high value sacred buffs. That is the only reason to have them and just being able to do that makes both of them top tier.

[darkholyPL]

I did a Paladin on my own first, blind playthrough. I decided to multi-class him pretty early on, as the first party member you'll get is already a Paladin. Didn't see much point in running 2 Paladins in the same party. Sure, later on you can just choose not to take her with you, and opt for someone else, but I'd rather play a class, that is not represented already by companions.

That said, you could just make her a different class, she does come at lvl1 so it's not a big deal, but at the same time, if you're like me, you'd probably want to leave companions at their chosen class, or at least lean into what they are supposed to be, on your very first run.

[IlluminaZero]

Eh - Even if you ignore the absurd amount of combat benefits Pets are also QoL due to increasing party encumbrance dramatically with their absurd strength values. If you're a loot goblin you're going to be constantly fighting against encumbrance unless you do something like have multiple animal companions in your team.

Mounted does NOT fall off at any point in the game. Half the reason its so good is that they directly augment the capacity of their martial. Unlike say; summons, the better optimized your martial is the stronger your mount is.

You can also do other more nuancey silly things like stacking allied caster on your animal companions for +2 spell penetration per companion at minimal cost. Unless it was patched allied caster stacks - I have a screenshot of my Ember having +65 spell penetration thanks to Cavalier sharing allied caster party wide. It was just too hilarious NOT to archive.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

Unless it was patched allied caster stacks

I can´t imagine that, because i don´t think the game calculates the distance of the characters to each other.

Something like outflank or sneak attacks just works, because 2 people are in threat range - no matter what.

But for something like the allied spellcaster You would need to calculate the distance to each other. I also think that all other teamwork feats which work that way, would also stack, no matter where they are.

Also mounted introduces some nice bugs and visual glitches - and when the mount goes down You´re not in the most advantageous spot. And again pets are mainly defensiveness via their AC bonus they get. Else any character will outperform them damage wise - except You have an exclusive support character which shouldn´t do damage. Pets can´t be QoL, when they require more work and more micro. The encumbrance is of no issue past the early stages of the game - because You can take all the loot of any map with You, thanks to bags of holding. Nonetheless they provide additional attacks, but they wouldn´t be super important at some point, because a party of 6 will just shred through anything in the game at a certain point (on core). And when they wouldn´t do it - the pet wouldn´t help much, but would be a problem.

The main advantage about pets is, that You don´t need to revive them, and that it doesn´t matter which negative effects they get - which is a super broken mechanic / feature. Take that away - and people wouldn´t use pets on that scale.

[IlluminaZero]

You're riding the pet. Pets don't "require more micro" they make it *easier* to micro your Martials.

Later on the main advantage of pets isn't tanking but alpha strikes. Consistent turn 0 full attacks is amazingly powerful. That the pet is *also* a competent tank is a side bonus that is really more relevant early game than late game.

The real negatives of pets isn't any of the points emphasized but that they contribute to the pre-buff tax. Basically you have to x2 any single target buffs you use if you want to be really cautious.

If your pets are constantly dying and/or getting debilitated you're doing it wrong. This is especially late game. As before a well optimized party can eliminate most enemy groups before they can effectively act. Mounted martials in particular can do consistently at minimal resource cost. (Which is great if you hate re-casting buffs as much as I do)

[Triple G]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

You're riding the pet. Pets don't "require more micro" they make it *easier* to micro your Martials.

You need to mount the pet - which is an extra click - else it´s exactly the same.

Edit: while You need to navigate through the panel, as it only shows 6 characters. So You have to open / close the pet picture every now and then, if You want to access it.

[IlluminaZero]

I am not the one emphasizing mounted micro as a negative. If that extra click is the only reason you emphasized it - I mean it should be self-evident how nitpicky that is? Literally "an extra click" as you phrased it.

But no. In actual combat mounted makes microing martials *easier* due to the absolute mobility it provides. A hasted horse may as well have teleport in most circumstances. In many cases its even better since it doesn't even require something like LOS.

Addendum: Being able to use your mount to tank for your Two-Hander / Dual wielder also makes things easier as well. Far less need to adopt an "off-tank" mentality.

[Cutlass Jack]

Originally posted by Triple G:

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

You're riding the pet. Pets don't "require more micro" they make it *easier* to micro your Martials.

You need to mount the pet - which is an extra click - else it´s exactly the same.

Edit: while You need to navigate through the panel, as it only shows 6 characters. So You have to open / close the pet picture every now and then, if You want to access it.

I just use the mount power directly on the horse.
While its slightly annoying to have to remount when entering a map, at least you only have to do it once. And its way more obvious than say, noticing that Ulbrig's claws turned off.