Palading Starting Feats

Medium armor decreases your movement rate, unless you're a dwarf. The only movement difference between medium and heavy armor is a barbarian retains their +10 to movement while in medium armor, but not heavy. (So a human barbarian in light armor would have a move of 40. In medium they'd have a move of 30 and in heavy a move of 20. Non-barbarians move at 30 in light armor and 20 in medium or heavy armor.)

There are feats (though not in ToEE) that increase your damage on a charge, but all charging does by the rules is add +2 to attack and give you -2 to AC. If things work differently in ToEE, I'd be surprised.

 

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As for ToEE a paladin is good to start with Focus on long sword to take that Radiant one. The other good starting feat imho is Improved initiative. So he starts being quick and deadly. Then I try to make him a tank and take Dodge. Never miss with Improved Criticals. The last feat is perhaps Lightning Reflexes or Iron Will depending on which saves are worse. Also I try to generate a paladin with 18 in Charisma. This adds +4 to saving throws at level 2. So here he goes - heavily armored, heavily resistant, dodging tank with his deadly Radiant sword. All feats that decrease attack rating are good only against weak opponents, which are of no problem in any case. To win over a strong opponent, a paladin needs maximums in attack and defence (and resistances also).

As for clerics I used to take Good and War domains to make a good combat cleric. But if he is going to make a powerful weapon he should seriously consider to take Good and Law domains and make a weapon which will be the most devastating against evil (2d6) + chaotic (add another 2d6). As fo feats I found combat casting not very useful. No it's useful but only in critical situations. But player should not let such situations happen. And it's not too difficult. So here are two imho interesting ways to develop cleric. Take focus on conjuring and Augment summoning - in fact these summoning spells are very good ranged spells, especially for flanking enemies. The other way - to take focus in Enchantment sphere and feat Highten spell - to get maximum from Bane, Pray, Command and the sweet Hold Person spells. Basically all of them are 1-3 level spells, so without heightening they are not very useful. There remain 2 more feats, but they are often used for crafting items and weapons.

 

Another goody for a Paladin is the Handaxe(using a Great Cleaver).....All the power of a Bastard sword with twice the threat range. Thats after your Arms and armour craftsman(woman) makes some alterations.

Also, I didn't think a Paladin had to worry about the Scather/Fragerach thing. Pallies are Lawful good after all. I was under the impression that only Chaotic good characters had to REALLY worry about that bug? With CN characters getting one auto hit thingie?

 

If you've already got a good Charisma, your Paladin's saves are going to be good enough that you won't need the save boosting feats. You're better off spending them on combat feats.

> Another goody for a Paladin is the Handaxe(using a Great Cleaver).....All the power of a Bastard sword with twice the threat range. Thats after your Arms and armour craftsman(woman) makes some alterations.

The great cleaver is incredibly cheesy (and against the rules) so I don't use it. But that's a matter of preference.

I'm not talking about the bug. Fragarch's powers are Chaotic in nature. Paladins are lawful. Which means they lose a level as long as they are using it.

 

Though there is a reason to improve high defense or high resistance. Here is an example. Perhaps a paladin has such a save value, that an opponent wizard can paralyze our paladin with 10% probability. But if we take the Iron Will this probability reduces to 5%, which is TWICE effective! In another case if our paladin had just 50% to resist a spell, another +5% would not be a great advantage. 50 or 45% it's almost the same. But 10 and 5% is much more different.
Thus it may have a good reason to take ALL advantages from opponents if they have just FEW of them. This also applies to maximising armor. The toughest fights are long fights and paladin should be better prepared for them.
As for combat melee feats, most of them are next to worthless. I mean that Power Attack, Cleave, Combat Reflexes and other. They are good only against weak opponents. And can't help against though ones.
Yes there are few good feats: Dodge, Combat Expertise, Improved Trip (against casters or archers), but a paladin perhaps is not the only fighter in a group. A half-orc fighter can trip better. While paladin, being a specialist in resistances may further specialise in this.

 

Power Attack, especially with a two-handed weapon, can be devasting, and is incredibly important for fighting monsters whose DR you don't have the right weapon for. Combine it with Smite Evil and Improved Critical and you have chance of dropping even powerful baddies with one hit. Which lets you Cleave into that baddie's friend. And even "weak" monsters can hurt you or block your path to the more dangerous enemy. Making a hole in a bunch of gnolls so you can get to the mage or cleric behind them is a whole lot easier when you can drop several of them in a round.

Combat Reflexes is always useful if you've got a good Dex, as the AI isn't particularly smart about avoiding AOOs a lot of the time and getting free whacks at the Bugbear Barbarian who's making a beeline for your mage could be the only thing keeping your mage alive.

And I agree, having good armor is important, but that doesn't relate to feats at all.

Personally, I just don't see my Paladins failing saves that often. Especially if you slap a Cloak of Charisma on them. It's just a shame Extra Smiting isn't available in ToEE.

 

Well, there are two strategies of wining a battle. To try to strike harder to kill opponents quicker, paying less attention to own defence or to advance slowly paying maximum attention to personal defence. Personally I like second variant more.
Because some hits may deal nasty consequenses (eg. poison, desease), so if you catch something bad too often, very soon you will not be able to strike hard at all.
Power Attack may be deadly with two-handed weapon and critical hit but it's not accurate and rarely happening event. At the same time personal defenses are lowered and you don't have a +3 large shield.
And paladin already has his own "power attack" - Smite Evil, which is also more accurate.
Also paladins task is to be a tank to protect mages. It's essential if he can stand longer against enemies. He greatly needs shield for this. Power attack with one-handed weapon is not impressing at all.
There are ways to reach enemy casters very soon. By summon spells or sending a sneaking rogue beforehand. So there is no need to rush to a wizard THROUGH other enemies. Even 1 turn means that you are late.
And the last argument is that when you become able to enchant weapons, you realize, that it's easy to increase damage highly just by adding holy, fire, cold and shock damage instead of lowering defense and accuracy for harder hits.
BTW the Radiant sword is the best sword for the beginning and thus worth much to take it and specialise in it.

 

The paladin is immune to disease, and with thier high saves, poison is rarely an issue. And Power Attack always works, as long as you hit. I'm not talking about dropping everything into Power Attack (unless you're fighting something with a really low AC and lots of HP) but a point or two to boost damage by 2 to 4 points unless the monster has a really high AC, in which case you turn Power Attack off.

And it still helps immensely against creatures whose Damage Reduction you either don't have the proper weapon for (silver weapons, for example, are pretty limited) or there is no way to penetrate (Elementals). Your paladin with the Holy Longsword +1 isn't going to do much damage at all to an Elemental or Construct because of their DR and the fact they're not evil.

And I'm not sure how the rogue is going to sneak through a wall of enemies. Even sneaking, he can't move through other creatures. Plus, he moves slower.

Honestly, I think it's a matter of different play styles. With my paladins, I routinely give them the frostbrand, slap holy on it and buy them a suit of dwarven plate, where the DR makes up for the lack of AC. Give them a Cloak of Charisma and a Belt of Strength and they can mop up most things pretty easily without much risk to themselves. And if they do take a bad hit, they can always use Lay on Hands (boosted by their Cloak) to heal right back up.

 

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Just in case anyone cares