Alternates/Replacements for Paladins Divine Grace

[newgrace]

I am hopeing some of you can help me, i have a gestalt dwarf that is retraining into paladin. Problem is, he was originally fighter, and my chr is 8. So lay on hands and divine grace dont help me at all! I found a good alternative to resist disease and gave up turn undead for the Domain Luck from one of the DR magazines, but cant find alternatives for Divine Grace.

Can you guys look around and let me know if you find any divine grace alternatives? Anything is better than a +0 to all my saves :\

I dont care what the prereqs are, im trying not to "munchkin / min/max" my character for once, instead play out his personallity and beliefs. Hes a dwarf that was raised by Humans and has never met his kind. He strongly worships the god of luck, he flips a coin for most decisions and will blindly follow the results. Its gestalt, so one side is rogue/fortunes friend, the other is fighter which will retrain to paladin.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

In Races of Eberron, warforged paladins get a substitution for Divine Grace where they get their Con bonus to one save, I think Will. This may be thematically appropriate.

I would question why a luck-worshipping dwarf is a paladin, with the whole "luck = chaos" thing, but that's neither here nor there.

Brad

 

[newgrace]

In Races of Eberron, warforged paladins get a substitution for Divine Grace where they get their Con bonus to one save, I think Will. This may be thematically appropriate.

I would question why a luck-worshipping dwarf is a paladin, with the whole "luck = chaos" thing, but that's neither here nor there.

Brad

that would seem to fit well, ill see if the dm will let me give it a go. He is being loose on alignment restrictions, and allowing me to play a nuetral good paladin. its a low magic campaign and I am the only non-caster in the party. I wanted to be more of a fighter, so he made some ammends so i could go from fighter to paladin, since my character is very focused on religion, specially in his god.

 

[Slaved]

Not really what you are looking for but you could just leave it the way it is. At some point pick up an item that you declare to be very lucky for you and have it grant you a bonus to your charisma. As long as it is at least +4 you will get some healing, bonus to your saves, and people will generally like you more.

That seems to fit very well thematically. You could even try to get an ability on it like the luck blade and the luckstone.

Actually, putting all of those together maybe you could get a luck blade with a luckstone attatched to it and have it enchanted to increase your charisma score. If the dungeon master is very nice perhaps you could have the bonus be much higher than normally allowed but only increase your charisma for the purposes of your paladin abilities and still keep the cost reasonable.

 

[Maleketh]

There's a feat called Serenity in the Dragon Compendium. It lets a paladin use his Wisdom modifier rather than his Charisma modifier for Divine Grace, Lay on Hands, Turn Undead, and Smite Evil. That might suit your character better than making class feature substitutions.

 

[Kat']

There's a feat called Serenity in the Dragon Compendium. It lets a paladin use his Wisdom modifier rather than his Charisma modifier for Divine Grace, Lay on Hands, Turn Undead, and Smite Evil. That might suit your character better than making class feature substitutions.

Erm... am I the only one to think this feat is utterly BROKEN ????

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Erm... am I the only one to think this feat is utterly BROKEN ????

Yep! I'd forgotten about that, actually, which is why I hadn't mentioned it.

It costs a feat, which paladins have relatively few of (the usual 1/3 levels), and it reduces their MAD from 4 to 3. I don't have a big problem with it.

Brad

 

[Elethiomel]

Yep! I'd forgotten about that, actually, which is why I hadn't mentioned it.

It costs a feat, which paladins have relatively few of (the usual 1/3 levels), and it reduces their MAD from 4 to 3. I don't have a big problem with it.

Brad

Well, when it's Wisdom they can focus on Wisdom by taking a level of Monk and the Zen Archery feat and get spellcasting, saves, AC, to-hit, healing, and turn undead off the same stat. That's a lot.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Some players could make that kind of thing work. 95% would end up with a useless character.

The problem with just taking a level (smart players take at least two) of monk to get wisdom to "spellcasting, saves, AC, to hit, healing, and turning undead" is that, except possibly at very high levels or with an extremely generous amount of attributes it doesn't work out that way. Adding your wisdom to AC is nice, but the vast majority of characters will get more AC out of simply wearing fullplate--especially paladins who otherwise can dump dexterity. Unless your wisdom is 26 or higher, you're going to lose AC in that deal (sure, you could get mage armor cast on you, but you could also get magic fullplate and an animated shield). Similarly, Zen archery to get your attack bonus is nice, but it only works with ranged weapons (and, absent elf-paladin substitution levels and similar choices), you can't use your smites on ranged attacks (thus sacrificing another class ability). Also, as a ranged combatant, you can't really ignore dex because the feats that are required to make ranged combat work (point blank, precise, rapid shot, etc have dexterity as a prereq). And you still need strength in order to deal damage (because you're not going to be getting weapon specialization, favored enemy bonuses, etc to damage), so you don't end up reducing MAD as much as you might think. Finally, the level(s) of monk do let the paladin do all sorts of things with Wisdom, but they actually reduce the spellcasting and turning level by the number of monk levels. So, the wisdom dependent turning paladin may be more likely to roll high on the turning table, but he needs to roll three to six points higher than the ordinary charisma turning paladin in order to get the same result. It's pretty close to a wash. Likewise, the increased focus on wisdom may net a couple more bonus spells, but the character actually loses spells by being a lower level paladin, so it's not always a good deal.

Don't get me wrong. I think multiclassed paladin/monks can be extremely effective, but the feat being discussed doesn't do as much for them as you're implying it will. IME, a paladin/monk is often better off simply ignoring the wisdom to AC and flurry of blows as red herrings and buying a solid mithral breastplate and using an ordinary melee weapon. Evasion, Improved Grapple, bonuses to all saves, skill points, and the option for Combat Reflexes or Deflect Arrows are much better reasons to take monk than the hope of taking enough feats to make your whole character hang off one ability score.

Well, when it's Wisdom they can focus on Wisdom by taking a level of Monk and the Zen Archery feat and get spellcasting, saves, AC, to-hit, healing, and turn undead off the same stat. That's a lot.