Pbartender
First Post
n his defense:
- He hasn't seemed to be terribly combat effective at times (misses alot, does not do heavy damage overall), and he sees the rogues (we have 2) always flanking and doing crazy damage, and the warlock hits more often since he's against reflex not AC.
- He got a magic holy symbol at one point, but all the powers it is used with are wis/cha based and he takes mostly str based powers since he feels he would miss all the time with them
Are we exposing real flaws about the paladin? Am I beiong unreasonable? Is there a better way to handle/houserule this? How powerful a fighter should a Paladin be allowed to get? Is he fundamentally unbalanced (I mean as a class, not the player himself, LOL)?
That's the crux of the matter right there. It's not a flaw, it's a disconnect between how the paladin was designed to work and your player's expectations of how they should work.
The 4E classes can be very different from their 3E counterparts. My wife played a 4E paladin for the last several months, and she discovered the same thing... Paladins aren't really meant so much to be dealing that much damage. They're mainly designed to attract the attention of enemies, and take lots of hits. A player who realizes this will be much happier with a paladin, and will in turn move to tactics that greatly benefit the group as a whole.
His paladin, used the right way as a defender, will make those two rogues in the party ten times as effective as he pins down enemies so they can't escape the rogues' flanking and then uses his powers and marking abilities to defend the rogues from retaliation.
Otherwise... I'd recommend an Avenger (PHB II, if you're allowing it), the divine striker, which would seem to better suit the play style your player is looking for in a paladin.