Concerned about paladins.

[Destil]

FWIW, CharOp generally considers Paladins to be the most powerful defender in the game at the moment, due largely to their ability to punish multiple enemies via Divine Challenge/Sanction in a turn -- while Fighters and company may be sticky, their marks still require Immediate actions, which means you can only tag one of your marks per round.

I'd hate to think we're living in a world where CharOp's opinions matter, though...

Compared to a fighter all other defenders look a bit weak. Having played a paladin from 5th-16th level I'm fairly happy to say I find the class excellent. Their leaderish options (especially save granting) are great and they can fill in for healing in really tough fights. Or as a friend says, lay on hands is retroactive defending. "Oh, sorry about that monster that got by and hit you, let me spend a surge to heal you." They're easily the second best defender at range (after a swordmage), and most of the build options are interesting and have some good value and worthwhile focus.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Paladins are great if played as a hybrid defender/leader. With good feat and item choices you can dish out healing and saves as well as any leader can.

DS

 

[Stalker0]

Are you using Divine Power. Paladins got a real big boost from that book. I allowed the paladin in my game to retool his character completely when that book came out in order to ease his dissatisfaction with the class. I can say that character is a certain force to be reckoned with.

I'll second this, I felt most of the major issues with paladins were snuffed right out with this book.

 

[Lostdwarf]

Overall, Paladins are fine. There is one in my campagin (I was the dm through heroic tier, just handed off the dm chair and we are now playing through King of the Troll Haunt Warrens.) Our 11th level Dragonborn palandin has been the only pure defender through the whole run, and has done fine. Divine Power did make for a better build, but he wasn't that terrible before. Paladins have the heaviest armor with no extra feat cost. Try to see them as a defender/leader hybrid. They debuff, have some extra healing, hand out saving throws, and are darned hard to kill. In eleven levels I think he has only been dropped once or twice, and he was up the next round with a healing word. Also, between his dragon breath and the Dragonborn racial paragon path he took the is a minion killing machine.

 

[The Human Target]

Put me down for a "Pally's were super weak at defending and got better after DP vote."

However, I think that a class that had to be patched to work right is never going to be as good as a class that was good from the word go.

 

[Neonchameleon]

With just the PHB, yes they are weak.

I'm currently playing a Divine Power Charisma-Paladin. SOP for him involves two rounds of marking everyone in 3 squares (including 7 points of autodamage if they attack someone else), and then either taking two of the remaining targets and marking both at once or beating one guy up with Enfeebling Strike so even if he tried to get away he'd be at -4 to hit. As defenders go, that's not even slightly weak for Level 2.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even PHB paladins were fine if you understood how to use them well. The STR build was definitely not really complete and needed some help, but the CHA build was perfectly fine. Really even the STR build worked well, it just had very few options and one level where there were basically no options at all.

What you have to understand is that Lay on Hands is retroactive defending, not really healing. A monster gets by you and hits the wizard? You just toss an LoH on him and its as if the monster hit the paladin instead. Its a perfectly valid way to defend.

DC is perfectly fine too. Its a mark that you do nothing to punish with and works even at range, especially if you pick up a heavy thrown weapon to use when you want to reengage a target that is not near you. Its no less sticky than any other mark. The enemy is punished for not attacking you, just like they are for the fighter mark PLUS they take damage. The fighter mark can only do damage to one enemy at a time anyhow and requires the fighter to hit and thus the target to be adjacent. Obviously DC works best in an encounter with one big bad enemy that you really want to have stick to you but combined with LoH it gives decent defending in most situations.

DP certainly did open up a lot of more interesting paladin options though, there's no arguing with that. STR paladins are now able to do more and have a decent selection of powers. You can more easily focus on different secondary roles, etc. I'd absolutely recommend using DP and pulling heavily from it to make the class a lot more interesting. Power-wise its mostly not that much different though if you were able to put together a good build before.

I think the problem was that paladin builds were not all that obvious and a lot of the way the designers looked at paladin in terms of the relationship of its class features to its role wasn't all that obvious to most players. So they ended up feeling like they weren't effective simply because it wasn't clear what options to focus on for a good build. Maybe that was bad class design but it wasn't due to being underpowered.

 

[DracoSuave]

The PHB at-wills for Paladins were pretty damn good, actually.

1[W]+Str+Wis Radiant? That's great for damage.
1[W]+Str, +1(or more) to hit? That's great for accuracy.
1[W]+Cha, some temp hps? It's sad when +thps is the -worst- of the at-wills.
1[W]+Cha, -2 to their attack that stacks with marked?

Yeah... not a bad selection, all told..

 

[jbear]

Add my voice to the 'Divine Power' totally pimped the Paladin.

One of my groups has a Strength based Longtooth Shifter Paladin who is more of a heavily armoured Striker than a Defender. He combines awesomely with our hybrid Invoker/Cleric and hybrid Paladin Rogue. He gets up in their face and lets loose Solar Enemy (channel divinity Sun domain feat) and 'boom' +5 radiant damage on all radiant attacks to enemies caught in a burst 2 for 2 rounds! Very nice with the Invokers Hand of Radiance which targets up to 3 enemies. Combined with action points this becomes pretty brutal... and that is against any enemy not just undead. Undead are punished doubly hard. And when dealt in combination with Ardent Vow it's just nasty!

And the Charisma based Drow Rogue/Paladin has an At-Will CHA Melee Basic attack that deals radiant damage and inflicts Randiant Vulnerability 3 until the end of his next turn (Thanks to a domain feat).

 

[Blackbrrd]

The paladin felt weak with just the PHB. Played in a group with a paladin from level 1-5.

With all the supplements out there now, especially Divine Power I think the Paladin looks like a pretty strong option. I still like the Fighter better but that is probably just because I have seen a Battlevigor Fighter in play and a PHB-only Paladin.