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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dandu" data-source="post: 5503917" data-attributes="member: 85158">In core, paladins and monks tend to have issues dealing with CR-appropriate challenges. Their contributions towards monsters tend to be less than what would be achieved with other classes. This hinders their ability to work well with other classes as they cannot pull their weight. One problem the monk and paladin share is MAD; multiple attribute dependency. Whereas a Barbarian can dump all stats except for Strength and Constitution, a Paladin has to allocate his best scores in Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma, unless he does not want to make use of his Paladin abilities. Similarly, a Monk requires Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom, otherwise he will have low AC and/or not hit and/or not deal enough damage and/or have insufficient HP. So when it comes to hurting people, a Paladin or Monk is going to do less damage than a Barbarian. Is this ok? Depends on if they do anything to make up for it. The Monk, going by his class features... doesn't. Immunity to poisons and diseases is ho-hum considering that most melee classes have good fortitude saves (and high Con), the ability to semi-duplicate a first level spell just isn't impressive. You can heal yourself a certain amount, but healing wands are cheap. Spell Resistance huts you as much as it helps because buffing and healing spells from your allies are also subject to it. Evasion and Improved Evasion aren't bad; along with high saves, they help you survive, but simply surviving isn't enough. You have to actually be a threat (deal damage, or do nasty things to people) or else the enemy ignores you, kills the other party members, then swings back to finish you off. Oh, and a monk gets some sneaky skills. Doesn't have enough skill points to make full use of his skill list (Hide, Move Silently, Spot and Listen use up 4 skill points already. Tumble is pretty important, Jump is useful, Sense Motive could come in handy, and Diplomacy's always good) unless you put something positive in Int... in addition to everything else.Paladins get full BAB and can wear armor so that eliminates some of the Monk's problems. You don't have much skills to speak of, so let's hope your in combat abilities are up to snuff. Smite Evil can only be used a very limited amount per day, so its impact is just not that great. Lay on Hands provides healing, but you either have to have high Cha (and lower physical stats) and/or be a high level Paladin to get a lot of healing out of it, while a wand of CLW only costs 750 gp and heals 50d8+50 hit points. Divine Grace increases saves, but again you need good Cha to get a lot out of it. Turn undead is rarely going to be good enough to affect CR appropriate undead. A special mount can come in handy, but using a horse in a dungeon seems somewhat unfeasible. It doesn't fly either, so at level 10 or above when there are many flying enemies you might as well not even bother.If you want, we can present generic, moderately optimized, core only builds and compare them. Would you kindly roll up a paladin? I'll provide the spellcasters. Level 13 should be good.</blockquote>

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