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[GUIDE] My Word Is My Sword: The Paladin Guide
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<blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 7553374" data-attributes="member: 6795602"><p>I consider a "loss" to occur when a character in the party dies. You can't die in combat if you don't hit 0 hp and inspiring leader really helps keep that from happening especially for the squishiest backline characters. </p><p></p><p>Also, if you're using a one handed weapon all it takes is a single level of hexblade to solve the mad issue. </p><p></p><p>Honestly, I think inspiring leader is most thematic on a paladin and nearly just as strong on one as on a bard or sorcerer. So why the hate on taking it on a Paladin? </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I was going to get into specifics on HAM because I think you are underrating it's effectiveness even at higher levels but instead I'll use this opportunity to point out another one of my guiding principles. All the party contributes to damage. So even if you are doing double damage you aren't ending encounters twice as fast because you are still only increasing your party's damage output by a fraction of that. </p><p></p><p>However, when it comes to defense generally front line melee combatants are skewed toward actually taking a lot more attacks than their backline counterparts. As such that makes defensive abilities somewhat better than their percentages often appear. Likewise offensive abilities are often worse than their percentages appear.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I totally agree here and it has the added benefit of not being DM dependent as Shield Master now after the last sage advice as often gets ruled favorably for offense as disfavorably.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Not even 108% more as smites make up a sizable amount of your total daily damage and that number is basically flat between the 2 builds. Also even if that 108% was accurate it would drastically drop at level 5. It still isn't causing your party to do but maybe 30% more damage per round. It's good but it's not nearly as good as it appears. </p><p></p><p>But all this talk about offense has also got us ignoring the defensive benefits of the HAM protection style paladin. In the early levels HAM is probably reducing the damage you take by nearly half. The protection style itself is vastly increasing the survivability of any ally near the paladin. Honestly against many enemies at those levels it's nearly halving the number of times the ally is hit, effectively reducing their damage by nearly half as well.</p><p></p><p>At the end of the day I think offense is often overrated and defense(at least on front line characters) is often underrated.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Back before the updated shield master ruling, I had developed a crit fishing paladin build that without buffs could nearly keep up in damage per day with a PAM + GWM Precision attack battle master fighter. On a fighter shield master isn't better than PAM + GWM but on a Paladin shield master offers very impressive offense when built correctly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FrogReaver, post: 7553374, member: 6795602"] I consider a "loss" to occur when a character in the party dies. You can't die in combat if you don't hit 0 hp and inspiring leader really helps keep that from happening especially for the squishiest backline characters. Also, if you're using a one handed weapon all it takes is a single level of hexblade to solve the mad issue. Honestly, I think inspiring leader is most thematic on a paladin and nearly just as strong on one as on a bard or sorcerer. So why the hate on taking it on a Paladin? I was going to get into specifics on HAM because I think you are underrating it's effectiveness even at higher levels but instead I'll use this opportunity to point out another one of my guiding principles. All the party contributes to damage. So even if you are doing double damage you aren't ending encounters twice as fast because you are still only increasing your party's damage output by a fraction of that. However, when it comes to defense generally front line melee combatants are skewed toward actually taking a lot more attacks than their backline counterparts. As such that makes defensive abilities somewhat better than their percentages often appear. Likewise offensive abilities are often worse than their percentages appear. I totally agree here and it has the added benefit of not being DM dependent as Shield Master now after the last sage advice as often gets ruled favorably for offense as disfavorably. Not even 108% more as smites make up a sizable amount of your total daily damage and that number is basically flat between the 2 builds. Also even if that 108% was accurate it would drastically drop at level 5. It still isn't causing your party to do but maybe 30% more damage per round. It's good but it's not nearly as good as it appears. But all this talk about offense has also got us ignoring the defensive benefits of the HAM protection style paladin. In the early levels HAM is probably reducing the damage you take by nearly half. The protection style itself is vastly increasing the survivability of any ally near the paladin. Honestly against many enemies at those levels it's nearly halving the number of times the ally is hit, effectively reducing their damage by nearly half as well. At the end of the day I think offense is often overrated and defense(at least on front line characters) is often underrated. Back before the updated shield master ruling, I had developed a crit fishing paladin build that without buffs could nearly keep up in damage per day with a PAM + GWM Precision attack battle master fighter. On a fighter shield master isn't better than PAM + GWM but on a Paladin shield master offers very impressive offense when built correctly. [/QUOTE]
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[GUIDE] My Word Is My Sword: The Paladin Guide
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