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And that assumes you wear Light armor to make Evasion possible in the first place, which is clearly the design according to the comments. Frankly, since not a single Action Point was spent on Rogue Enhancements, it might've been better to have taken levels of Dark Hunter (the Ranger subclass). It foregoes Evasion in favor of reducing trap damage, which would fit better with a heavy-armored combatant design, (though the 50% trap damage reduction requires 6 levels of Dark Hunter, rather than 2). Even ignoring that, heavy armor and a shield reduce trap damage anyway, so tanking traps is a viable option.
"PRR and MRR often reduce the damage of a trap.
Wearing a heavy or tower shield doubles your MRR and PRR against traps that allow a Reflex save."
Thus, a pure, heavy-armored Paladin might well be just as survivable in traps as a poorly-constructed Rogue multiclass attempting to Evade them. (Note that in both cases, a failed save means full damage, but full damage on a lightly-armored toon will be more than on a heavily-armored one with a shield.)
It would appear the Rogue levels were taken for Trapping skills, though it doesn't seem to explicitly say so. I'm torn on the value of building a toon like this that tries to be a Jack of all Trades, and if it fails, trapping is where it's the most likely to show.
Frankly, I consider Paladin to already stretch 28 point builds. Pally/Rogue is even worse. A Light armored Paladin loses a lot of durability and the value of some Enhancements solely in service of Evasion, when tanking trap and spell damage would probably serve better.
Still, if you solo on Normal, probably a decent approach. Running higher difficulties with it probably requires more familiarity with DDO (as the comments on the build seem to suggest).
And, as mentioned previously, multiclassing isn't a beginner concept. And some of why shows up in my comments on this build. It looks good on the surface, but I'd bet a properly-constructed pure pally would be more survivable, including in traps.
If I were building a first-life 28pt Paladin designed to solo (which means high survivability and the ability to take down groups of mobs), here's how I might approach it. (This is in specific response to the 18 Paladin, 2 Rogue build linked above.)
Heavy armor is what a Paladin is designed for, so we'll stick with that. Keep it simple and in the zone. The build would be pure Paladin: no multi-classing.
That said, the first decision would be about combat style. S&B (Sword and Board) is the most survivable, but THF (Two-Handed Fighting) puts out a lot more damage, especially on groups of mobs (All Paladins can get some decent single-target DPS with things like Smites.). TWF (Two-Weapon Fighting) is a non-starter because of the Dex requirements. SWF (Single Weapon Fighting) is possible, but it's still single-target and foregoes a shield (in most cases), which reduces survivability (particularly to traps). So if this were Hardcore, where survivability tops almost every other consideration? S&B. Likewise for Solo play.
The next consideration would be weapon. Any weapon that can be selected as a Favored Weapon (additional to-hit and damage as well as a few Enhancements to increase that) is a good option for a Paladin. Of those, Longsword (Sovereign Host) pairs with what is probably the most powerful L6 Active Deity ability (Unyielding Sovereignty). If I chose this option, I'd be looking for Cleave-type multi-target attacks (either the Feats, or the Enhancements in Knight of the Chalice). But another option would be either a Bastard Sword or Dwarven Axe, so as to still have Strikethrough (and take THF Feats). Both are Exotic weapons, which require a Feat.. or in the case of Dwarven Axe, being a Dwarf gets it automatically for a Paladin. One thing that not everyone knows, if you take combat style feats, you gain a HP bonus when leveling (up to 260 HP by cap for a Paladin with all 4 of any combat style line feats https://ddowiki.com/page/Heroic_Durability). You can get that bonus with Longsword if you take the Shield Mastery Feat line. Using Bastard Sword or Dwarven Axe with THF feats also gets you that bonus HP. In either event, 3 of your 7 Feats on the way to L20 are going to be occupied with combat style feats (as will 1 Epic Feat). Regardless of the other effects of those feats, a Feat that grants 60-70HP by cap is well worth taking (Toughness offers 36HP or thereabouts.). BTW, the advantage to taking cleave-type attacks as Enhancements, rather than Feats (aside from obviously leaving more Feats for other purposes) is that you can decide to respec to either take or discard them depending on how the THF Strikethrough compares to using specific attacks.
To recap: We have a S&B fighting style with either a Favored Weapon and Cleaves or a Bastard Sword or Dwarven Axe with THF. Heavy armor and shield will mitigate all kinds of damage including trap and spell damage via high PRR/MRR.
That leads directly to Race (we're obviously only considering F2P options):
Human mostly offers an extra Feat and Skill points and some healing amp and Heroism in the Enhancement tree. None of that looks compelling for this build, to me.
Dwarf offers the 'free' Dwarven Axe proficiency (& +2 Con, -2 Cha), and HP & some Dwarven Axe bonuses (including Strikethrough) in the Enhancement tree.
Half-Orc is also decent (+2 Str, -2 Int, -2 Cha), with Str and Strikethrough enhancements, but it doesn't really stand out.
Two more races deserve consideration, having become F2P recently:
Dragonborn (+2 Str, +2 Cha, -2 Dex) offers Str or Cha, HP, and decent defensive bonuses in its tree (along with the potential for a Breath Weapon, if you're willing to invest that heavily in its Racial tree and boost appropriate Spell Power).
Tiefling (+2 Cha) offers Cha, Fire damage on hit and a Scorch SLA (invest in Fire Spell Power for both), and an interesting defensive circle known as Obscuring Darkness.
Human gets 1 extra Skill point per level, Half-Orc 1 fewer.
I'd probably go Dwarf for DAxe; for other weapon options, Dwarf, Dragonborn or Tiefling.
Stats: There are only 3 that matter: Str, Con, and Cha (the latter mainly for saving throws; it affects the to-hit of smites, but not their damage, and Turn Undead is pretty much a waste of time on a Pally). Pally already gets some bonuses to saves, but only the good saving throw progression for Fort saves. At L2, the Pally gets a bonus to ALL saves from their Cha. I'd tend to focus on Str and Con, mostly, but an argument could be made for a relatively even Str/Con/Cha split (Str 16, Con 16, Cha 15). All levelups into Str. (Note: Dex is a waste of resources. Heavy armor and shields cap Dex at pretty low values. If you ever take Dex gear, you'll hit those limits long before cap, even with a heavily-penalized Dex. Wis could help with Will saves, but Cha has that same effect as well as improving Fort and Reflex saves for a Paladin. And the only thing Int buys you is more Skill points. You DO need 14 minimum Wis to cast the highest level Pally spells, but gear works to meet that requirement, so there's no point investing Stat points in it.)
Skills: I'd invest in only two, both cross-class for a Paladin: Spot and Balance. Spot to see sneaky mobs before they hit you, and Balance to get up quicker when tripped, etc. For a solo Paladin, Diplomacy and Intimidate are all but worthless except possibly for dialog options (Consider these only if you took a high Cha option on Stats and Race.). Heal has some value. It's possible that at some point your HP will be high enough that boosted Cure spells will be of greater utility, but you do self-heal so the HP regained at a rest shrine are less critical. Your only in-combat spells are Cure spells, so investing in Concentration is probably not of great value. Still, you could easily choose differently on Skills.
Feats:
If DAxe: L1 THF; L3 PA; L6 ITHF; L9 Imp Crit: Slash; L12 GTHF After that, as you wish. Perhaps a couple of Shield Mastery Feats. NOTE: This is where we discard the Bastard Sword option; the low-level feats are all spoken for, so you'd have to give up Power Attack to take the Exotic Proficiency: Bastard Sword... or take a level of Fighter, but that would require deciding that the ability to use a Bastard Sword was worth giving up access to a L20 Capstone in one of the Enhancement Trees, a questionable tradeoff at best.. and one of the more obvious downsides to multiclassing.)
If Longsword: L1 Shield Mastery; L3 PA; L6 Knight's Training; L9 Imp Crit: Slash; L12 Imp Shield Mastery; L15 Greater Shield Mastery
If some other Favored Weapon possibly a different Imp Crit variant, and if that weapon isn't covered by Knight's Training, obviously a different L6 Feat.
One other note on the Feats: Of all the Feats, the easiest to give up is Power Attack. Since this build uses 1 handed weapons, the effect is less valuable than when using 2 handers (-5 to hit for +5 to dmg vs for +10 to dmg).
As for Enhancements, you could do almost anything. By changing your relative investment in Racial, Knight of the Chalice, Sacred Defender, and Vanguard trees, you could turn this build into either a reasonable DPS or a fairly tanky build with more or less focus on shields. A non-THF build should probably consider taking the Cleave enhancements in KotC, to maximize DPS on groups of mobs (or the Dragonborn breath weapon). A DAxe build with Strikethrough might find that unnecessary.
And that's a build. Simple enough in design and playstyle to be a beginner build: First-life, 28 pt, pure, fairly straightforward, not overly burdened with required Stats, survivable (including traps without actually trapping), decent DPS both against groups and bosses, yet offering options in creation as well as plenty of flexibility to modify it during play by changing Enhancement priorities.
What do you think? Did I miss something? Get something wrong? Got a better suggestion?
Option 1:
----------
Dwarf Paladin Sword & Board using Dwarven Axes and Two-Handed Fighting
Deity - unimportant. Avoid all Favored Weapon based Enhancements. Arguably, Sovereign Host is best option for its massive heal that eliminates all kinds of negative statuses with a 10 min cooldown.
Base Stats (before racial bonuses) - Str 16, Con 16, Cha 15; all levelups into Str.
Skills - Spot (to see sneaky enemies), & Balance (to get up faster when tripped or otherwise made prone).
Feats - L1 Two-Handed Fighting
L3 Power Attack
L6 Improved Two-Handed Fighting
L9 Improved Critical: Slashing
L12 Greater Two-Handed Fighting
L15 & L18 as you wish. Perhaps a couple of Shield Mastery Feats.
Enhancements - For a tanky build, invest in Sacred Defender; for DPS, Knight of the Chalice; for a focus on Shield DPS, Vanguard; take all the Core (bottom line) Dwarf Racial Enhancements as they become available. If your focus changes, you can respec your enhancements at a cost in Platinum.
Option 2:
----------
Paladin Sword & Board using Longsword (or other 1-handed Favored Weapon)
Race - choice of Dwarf, Dragonborn, or Tiefling
Deity - match to chosen weapon, if possible, for extra bonuses (keeping in mind racial restrictions). For Longsword, that deity will be Sovereign Host (available to all races).
Base Stats (before racial bonuses) - Str 16, Con 16, Cha 15; all levelups into Str
Skills - Spot (to see sneaky enemies), & Balance (to get up faster when tripped or otherwise made prone)
Feats - L1 Shield Mastery
L3 Power Attack
L6 Knight's Training (or other option if your Favored Weapon isn't on this list)
L9 Improved Critical: Slashing (or other subcategory if your Favored weapon is Blunt or Piercing)
L12 Improved Shield Mastery
L15 Greater Shield Mastery
L18 as desired
Enhancements - For a tanky build, invest in Sacred Defender; for DPS, Knight of the Chalice; for a focus on Shield DPS, Vanguard. Each of the Racial tree options has some good choices as well. Consider taking the Cleaves in Knight of the Chalice for multi-target DPS, or if Dragon born you could invest in the Breath Weapon (and matching Spell Power). If your focus changes, you can respec your enhancements at a cost in Platinum. (Note: As a non-caster, your breath weapon will likely always be anemic, so I probably wouldn't take it. You won't have the Spell Power and/or DC Feats and Enhancements to really make its DPS worth its investment.)
Gear - The only truly important gear consideration is that you will require a Wis item in order to cast spells. 11 Wis is needed to cast first level spells and 14 to cast the highest level ones available to Paladins. That means a +3 Wis item by L4, rising to a +6 item later (much later because Paladins get higher level spells slower than caster classes).
For someone actually seeking to follow this build, this should be a clearer presentation.
Human Dark Apostate (Cleric) L20
Faith: Not critical unless you melee. Sovereign Host for Longsword as Favored Weapon is a good choice.
At L2, select Luck Domain for increased survivability (Improved Saving Throws, Displacement, Improved Spell DCs).
Stats: Str 12, Con 16, Int 12, Wis 16; all levelups into Wis
Skills: Concentration, Jump, Spellcraft, & Spot
Feats:
L1 - Maximize
L1 Human bonus - Empower
L1 Deity - Sovereign Host
L2 Domain - Luck
L3 - Enlarge
L6 - Quicken
L9 - Mental Toughness
L12 - Spell Focus - Evocation
L15 - Spell Focus - Necromancy
L18 - Spell Penetration
The Spell Focus and Spell Penetration Feats are mostly to ensure that options that increase those metrics in Enhancements and Epic Destinies are activated (some require that you have taken the feat as a prerequisite, last I recall).
NOTE: The following refers to SLAs. SLA = Spell-Like Ability, which is a spell you get from an Enhancement or equivalent instead of in your Spell List. Their advantages are generally low SP (Spell Point) requirements AND the ability to use Metamagics (like Maximize, Empower, Quicken, Enlarge, etc) when casting them at NO additional SP cost. Best way to ensure that happens is to make sure you right-click each SLA on your shortcut bars and permanently turn on every Metamagic for each one, rather than using the global toggles. That allows you to use the global toggles to manage your SP use for your actual spells.
NOTE2: Consider also deliberately setting the metamagics for your buffs. Most are only potentially affected by Quicken and Extend. The only reason to Quicken your buffs is if you play with a zerger. Otherwise, it's a waste of SP. Imo, most buffs don't need to be Extended, though the Displacement SLA you get from the Luck Domain is one of the ones that could/would benefit from it... but there's no plan to take Extend in this build.
Enhancements - Ignore the Human Racial Tree; you're Human for the extra L1 Feat, which will increase your SLA damage at low levels to the point where you can one-shot a lot of mobs with your single-target spells at up to Elite. That also gets you Enlarge at L3, which will let you immediately use the Tier 4 AoE SLA in Divine Disciple (when you get it) on groups of mobs before they notice you and aggro (while the ranged, casters and melees are still often grouped).
Invest first in the Divine Disciple tree. While leveling, you want the first two Light Cores ('Divine Emissary of Light' & 'Empowered by Light') AND the first two Dark Cores ('Divine Emissary of Darkness' & 'Empowered by Darkness'). Most of the other Divine Disciple Cores are simply spells added to your spellbook. Ignore them for now.
Invest in all the SLAs (labeled 'Prophetic Zenith') and Divine Smiting options and the Wisdom increases. Note: Pick whichever set of SLAs you prefer - Light or Dark. I tend to prefer Light because they work better on undead and otherwise there's little difference.
Split investment fairly evenly between Divine Disciple and Dark Apostate. In truth, you could take either one's Tier 5s and L20 Core Enhancement (known as the capstone), whichever suits you better. If you prefer the Divine Disciple one, then you'd respec that tree at or near L20 to take all Light or all Dark Cores.
In Dark Apostate, take all the Cores and specifically the Bane & Prayer SLAs, and Pray for Mercy (which weaponizes both into AoEs).
If you're not confident your SP will suffice, take the Apostate's Curse line for melee damage to conserve SP when necessary.
Gear - Wear Heavy Armor and a Shield and either a caster stick (usually a Scepter with Radiance and Radiance Lore), or a Longsword (if you chose Sovereign Host as your Deity; otherwise whatever your Favored Weapon is). Consider having two weapon sets, one with caster stick and shield and one with Favored Weapon and shield. Don't forget to have Apostate's Curse toggled on when using melee for the bonus Evil damage.
Play - Focus HEAVILY on your SLAs (Divine Disciple's Nimbus of Light, Searing Light, and Holy Smite and Dark Apostate's Bane and Prayer). That will minimize SP use while maximizing damage. Use melee only if your SP get low, to clean up individual enemies. Generally, you want to hit groups of mobs with Holy Smite first, then use the self-centered AoEs (Bane and Prayer) to finish them off, resorting to the single-target spells (Nimbus of Light & Searing Light) for stragglers, bosses, etc. Aside from buffs and cures, avoid using the spells on your Spell List as much as possible (by comparison, they're Spell Point hogs).
Two considerations:
1) At low levels, your only damage spells will be single-target if you start out focusing on the Divine Disciple tree. You could optionally start as a melee by investing some in the Dark Apostate tree instead.
2) Shadow Shrouding is quite powerful, protecting you from critical hits, poisons, and anything else that doesn't affect undead. However, it makes you take double damage from Light spells. Turn it off in quests where Light damage is likely. There's a list here, but it's far from exhaustive (I died on Hardcore to a Sunburst in Blockade Buster, which is not listed.) https://ddowiki.com/page/Guide_to_Pale_Masters:_Avoiding_Light_damage
Race could be other than Human, which would potentially give some useful Racial Enhancements (the Feats would be pushed back due to the loss of the Human L1 Feat slot and Spell Focus: Necromancy would be dropped). If you're starting out as melee, getting the caster feats a few levels later will be less problematic.
The biggest change would be in the order of taking Enhancements. You'd want to invest first into the Dark Apostate tree. You'd still want the big three (the Bane & Prayer SLAs, and Pray for Mercy which weaponizes both into AoEs). Other than that, your focus would be on the Cores and the Apostate's Curse line to maximize melee DPS. Since your early focus would be melee, your choice of Deity (and therefore Favored Weapon) would be more critical. You'd take the Quicken Feat before Enlarge, since your first AoEs would be self-centered. Consider switching to caster focus anytime from L6-L10. Your low Str will start to become a handicap in melee and one of the Tier 4 Divine Disciple AoEs will be within reach with a simple Enhancement respec. At that point, Spell DPS is likely to outperform melee.
Which brings us back to the fact that cloth-based caster builds are not newbie friendly beginner options.
When i started ages ago, i was tasked to be a caster too.
The plan was that fighter blocks door, i use the burning hands, cleric heals fighter and the rogue just sneaks and/or sneaks if poss. Eventually we started to face quite a few issues.
So i started to experiment a bit (btw the game was still fairly new that time:P so nearly 20 or so years ago:D), i used hypnotism and web, and all those movement restricting things, and we fared a LOT better:)
I would say for newbies, barbie, ranger, cleric, rogue and paladin are perhaps the easy choices.
From the above, ranger, cleric and paladin can use CXW wands so they are a bit easier than the others. (In the past you also needed access to marketplace ASAP, to get the CXW wands:D)
Barbie is a bit more party reliant, and rogue will need UMD in order to be able to use wands and a few useful stuff, but i still would say they are okay to start with.
I
I'd personally take Rogue off this list. As I've asserted earlier, they have too many issues for me to consider them newbie-friendly: Too many undead that Piercing damage doesn't bypass DR, crappy armor, trapping being both a bit complex and requiring gear and gear management, etc.
These days, Barb is much less party reliant than it used to be, with the ability to self-heal.
Other than those caveats, I largely agree. Though, ofc, the devil can be in the details.
But I did gloss over an option with my two Paladin variants. The remaining good option is a THF Paladin wielding Greatswords. While trap survivability would be a tad reduced, this is still a heavily-armored build with a lot of HP, so traps on most difficulties will be survivable by face-tanking them. And in terms of combat, as some have said, the best defense is high DPS: they can't hurt you if they're dead. And that's the basis of this build: it will do more DPS than either of the other Paladin versions, especially against groups of mobs (by far the most common of the dangerous fights in DDO). If you're soloing, which build is better could go either way; in a group, this one's almost certainly better.
It's rather easy to derive this build from the Dwarf DAxe THF build. It simply drops the DAxe and shield in favor of Greatswords (the only 'real' THF weapons that can be 'favored' by a deity). And it eliminates the restriction to the Dwarven race as well. It looks like this:
Option 3:
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Paladin Two-Handed Fighting using Greatswords
Race - not critical; the same options as above are still among the better ones: Dwarf, Dragonborn, or Tiefling
Deity - unimportant. You will get Greatsword as a Favored Weapon via an Enhancement in the KOTC (Knight of the Chalice) tree called Holy Combatant (T3). Arguably, Sovereign Host is still the best option for its massive heal that eliminates all kinds of negative statuses with a 10 min cooldown.
Base Stats (before racial bonuses) - Str 16, Con 16, Cha 15; all levelups into Str.
Skills - Spot (to see sneaky enemies), & Balance (to get up faster when tripped or otherwise made prone). Something I failed to mention on the previous two variants: You won't be able to take both of these skills with a dumped Int unless you have an Int Tome of +2 or greater. If you want both skills, drop Cha to 14 and raise Int to 10.
Feats -
L1 Two-Handed Fighting
L3 Power Attack
L6 Improved Two-Handed Fighting
L9 Improved Critical: Slashing
L12 Greater Two-Handed Fighting
L15 & L18 as you wish (inc Favored Weapon Feats)
Enhancements - Invest 12 AP into the KotC tree first, to unlock Holy Combatant by the end of L3. This will give you benefit from all the other KotC Enhancements that affect Favored Weapons, as well as the ones Paladins get automatically. (Note that at L15 and L18 you'll find Favored Weapon Feat options among your choices; FvS get all of them automatically, but Paladins and Clerics have to use Feat slots on them if they want them.)
For a tankier build, invest in Sacred Defender; for DPS, Knight of the Chalice; without a shield, Vanguard won't offer you much; obviously what Race you choose will affect what Enhancements it offers. Each of the Racial tree options has some good choices. If your focus changes, you can respec your enhancements at a cost in Platinum.
With this build, I'd be inclined to invest in all the Strikethrough I could. Unfortunately, none of the Paladin trees offer much, so you will almost certainly want to take and use the two Cleave-type attacks in the KotC tree: T2 Exalted Cleave & T5 Avenging Cleave. This will lock you into KotC as the one in which you take T5 options, but I'd argue they're the best ones anyway. You could still take either the KotC or SD (Sacred Defender) capstone at L20, though if you want the SD one, you'll have to forego more than a tiny investment in any tree outside the KotC and SD trees (including your Racial tree), because you'll need 41 AP in SD and something over 30 AP in KotC (depending which T5s you choose). Since you get 80 AP on the way to L20, that will leave almost nothing for Racial or other trees.
NOTE on 'stacking'. Kotc T5 Vigor of Life grants a +25% Competence bonus to HP. One of the SD T3/4/5 options for Greater Sacred Defense (Tenacious Defense) offers +[10/15/25]% Competence bonus to HP. These do not stack. In general, bonuses to the same thing (in this case HP) only stack if the TYPE differs. These are both typed as Competence, so they don't stack. If one were, for example, a Sacred or Profane bonus, then they would stack and you'd gain the benefits of both. Watch for this.
Gear - The only truly important gear consideration is that you will require a Wis item in order to cast spells. 11 Wis is needed to cast first level spells and 14 to cast the highest level ones available to Paladins. That means a +3 Wis item by L4, rising to a +6 item by L14 when Paladins gain access to L4 spells. Note: This is an excellent place for an Augment if you can find one; it'll give you your casting ability without wasting a slot on a Wis item you don't otherwise need much.
Races look good. People fight to get new ones included in the game.
But in most builds, the Race is not a major factor. It adds and subtracts a few Stat points, has a few minor perks, and provides an Enhancement tree. Oddly, the Race that makes the most difference is often Human, because of the additional Feat and Skill Points. Yet I find the Human Enhancement tree.. insipid. If you don't use Action Boosts a lot, there's not much value there, imo.
When building a toon, the Race adds flavor more than anything else. Sure, some races pair well with some classes, some add Spell Power or Healing that help some builds. But overall, Race is only core to a build if one specific element of that Race is key.
INTERMEDIATE CONCEPTS: Focusing a build on a key Racial element
To use a non-free Race example, the T1 PDK Enhancement Cormyrean Knight Training says: "You now use Charisma or Strength, whichever is higher, for attack and damage with shortswords, longswords, bastard swords, and greatswords.
In addition, as long as your Charisma remains higher than your Strength and you are wielding one of the above weapons, you receive a bonus to the DCs of your Tactical Feats equal to 1/3 your Charisma modifier."
This enhancement enables the building of a Paladin with dumped Str, as long as it uses one of the listed weapons. Instead of the Str 16, Con 16, Cha 15 investment mentioned for the above Paladin builds, you could invest in only Con and Cha.. but ONLY for the Longsword S&B build. Why? Because of this little gotcha in the Feat prerequisites: THF Feats require Str. OTOH, it opens a new build, because PDKs can choose Helm as their Deity and gain Bastard Swords as a Favored Weapon. But again, while you can THF with Bastard Swords, you still need the Str for the THF Feats.
So while you can create a very specific niche build around a Racial Trait or Tree, mostly Race is a secondary consideration in building a toon.
ADVANCED SECTION: You could still build a Cha-based THF PDK similar to the other builds above, but you couldn't change the initial Stats. I'd still go Str 16, Con 16, Cha 15; first levelup into Str for THF prereqs (Str 17 for ITHF & GTHF), rest into Cha, which has greater value to a Paladin. But this approach does mean you won't get the Tactical Feat bonus for quite a while. Gotchas abound in builds like this one. (Luckily it's an Iconic, so that doesn't actually matter since it starts at L15.) Newbies heads spinning yet?
I make a lot of these things, and even so I had to rewrite this paragraph close to half a dozen times as implications occurred to me. Always possible I've still left out some critical factor. Building a toon around a specific Racial Trait is not really a beginner concept.
Of course you could just go regular human and pick up Magical Training to gain access to the Fey Dark Illusionist Tree and grab Cha to hit and Dmg there as well as improved color spray which is a rather broken crowd control utility for your melee class.
That being said even if you sword and board which is fine now, I would still not focus in vanguard tree and instead focus in the chalice tree early on as it will significantly increase your dmg over Vanguard despite the shield focus of Vanguard. Good stuff to pick up in Vanguard as well though as you finish up the enhancement lines later with your extra points.
IF you have Feydark Illusionist, which even VIP newbies won't without buying either the tree itself, or the Feywild Expansion (and grinding the favor). And again, this is a thread for beginners, most of whom.. won't.
It also requires burning a Feat on Magical Training.
I mentioned some of the INTERMEDIATE and ADVANCED things in that particular post mostly so newbies would know the kinds of things with which we're avoiding burdening them, yet. Yours qualifies as another of those. :)
Note that if you play with others, most of the concerns about whether or not a particular class is beginner-friendly go away. And if the others with whom you play aren't newbies, the rest become relatively trivial as well.
Basically, classes in DDO fall into a few groups (this is simplistic; there are exceptions): [Non-F2P classes in italics]
Pure melee: Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin
Pure caster: Sorcerer, Wizard, Warlock, Alchemist
Specialists (not the same criteria used in game): Monk, Rogue, Artificer
Mixed classes that have melee and caster elements: Bard, Druid, Favored Soul
The remaining oddballs are almost opposites: Cleric is a durable caster; Ranger is usually a light-armored melee/ranged.
The pure casters are not beginner-friendly. Casting itself is complex but manageable; things like SP constraints, & concepts like SLAs and metamagics are challenging, but when you add their fragility to that, they definitely belong (as a group) in non-beginner territory.
The specialists are really just too challenging to build and play; to do them adequately (let alone well) requires extensive knowledge and often also careful play.
The problem with the mixed classes is their dichotomy; they pull you to build for two things at once (Ranger somewhat fits in this category conceptually, but instead of melee/caster its dichotomy is melee/ranged.) A melee FvS is probably quite decent. But it's hard to resist the temptation to use spells when they hand them to you. Problem is, you can't take all the Feats and/or Enhancements for both, nor gear for both, so you're going to be good at one or the other or mediocre at both.
I've provided a solid beginner Cleric build. It can melee (and arguably is best to do so for the first 5 levels or so). But it won't match a class built to melee. It shines as a caster that only uses melee in extremis.
Rangers are generally too squishy to be decent melees. Their newer Dark Hunter variant is better. A Ranger shines as a ranged toon; the problem is, if you're solo you'll do a lot of kiting even if you make a very good one. And, as with the melee/caster mixes, it can be a challenge to take all the Feats and Enhancements for both melee and ranged play, even though they do hand you a bunch of Feats of each type. The problem is that that makes you think you can play both at the same time, but swapping weapons as enemies close to melee range is clunky and slow.
Mostly it's the pure melee classes that are the most beginner-friendly. These days, even Fighters get self-heal with Second Wind (albeit not often between rests). Paladins and Barbarians have even better self-heal options. They're also among the ones with the fewest Stat requirements.
Thing is, you might REALLY want to play a sneaky Rogue. Nothing wrong with that. This list isn't intended to constrain your choices, only to suggest which classes might benefit most from the assistance of someone better-versed in the idiosyncrasies and intricacies of DDO toon building and gameplay: a friend or guildmate. And, of course, which might frustrate you by dying too readily or being challenging to play.
Whatever you choose, enjoy!
I've been running this, switching out the spell focuses and spell penetration for the shield mastery line. Have been able to run most content on hard or elite (depending on traps in the level, the damage they do on elite compared to hard is ludicrous, and hirelings are just dumb enough to stand in them and get obliterated if you didn't first).
Dark Apostate and Divine Disciple work very well until around level 15, then the damage begins tapering off, in my opinion, even taking the t5 enhancements in either tree. This is especially true once you are high enough to get to eveningstar (and can access it), where divine smite is doing 400ish damage, and bless/bane are straight up ineffective versus many of the enemies.
Investment into the Warpriest line in conjunction with the Dark Apostate line definitely makes you feel more melee capable and will net you about 120 or so more hit points.