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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 8641978" data-attributes="member: 7030563">Paladins also need strength to multiclass which is a major disadvantage for a dex based Paladin.  I would argue a dex Paladin would lose a lot of versatility due to a low athletics score (athletics is used far more than acrobatics and about as much as stealth).  Better Stealth with better Acrobatics would make up for this, but if you are going to be close to a strength Paladin in AC you are going to be in disadvantage on stealth, making the higher stealth not very usable.  So you are not just giving up damage, you are giving up AC too and if you are not giving up significant AC then you are not getting stealth and are still losing athletics.Second to stay close to a strength Paladin in AC you are going to have to use a shield, which brings two problems.  First your higher dexterity makes you better with ranged weapons but the only ranged weapons you can use with a shield are thrown weapons so this benefit will be mostly irrelevant.  Second you will have an issue casting spells which require somatic components.  This is not a big deal on a Paladin, but you are talking about versatility and in terms of versatility it is a consideration.Finally when it comes to versatility you can't use nearly as many melee weapons and you need to use melee weapons for smite.  A strength-based Paladin can use 28 different melee weapons effectively.  Dex based Paladin can use 5 (dagger, shorts sword, scimitar, whip, Rapier).  It terms of versatility this is a big difference.  When you are getting to level 6-7-8 instead of being able to use whatever magic weapon you find, you are going to have to wait for one of these 5 to come around.  This is even worst at higher levels when you find Wave or a Hammer of Thunderbolts. This criticism is true on a strength based build that gets PAM or GWM too, but the lack of versatility is the biggest problem with those feats.  A regular strength-based Paladin that relies on ASIs has no problem with this.  Find a dragontooth dagger or scimitar of speed and a strength based can use it just fine with strength.On the flip side, if you have a race with medium armor you can play a strength-based Rogue easy and I would argue that is more viable than as a dex-based Paladin is.</blockquote>

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