Dual wielding Paladin build?


Rules Questions


So a good few years back I joined my current group midway through the campaign, and went through three characters before I found my niche.
I'm mostly curious if anyone knows if the Paladin build I used is legit or not.

We were level 15 or so, I had written into my characters story that he had a Holy Avenger Bastard Sword, I then picked up a few other items(I joined around level 13 so I had my starting budget to spend), magic mithral full plate, and a Sun Blade.

It says the Sun Blade can be treated as a short sword so I used it in my off hand while two-weapon fighting, so with all three two-weapon feats I was getting a ton of attacks a round.

The DM allowed it but regretted it when I took the final boss almost single-handed and killed him in three rounds. Smite, and the Sun Blade does double damage to evil outsiders so I was shelling out around 300 damage a round.

Does that build actually work?


The Sun Blade only does double damage against Negative Energy Plane creatures and undead creatures, but yes, the build will work but only if you had Exotic Weapon Proficiency for the Bastard Sword so you could one hand your Holy Avenger.


Agreed with CrystalSpellblade - it's perfectly legal as long as you picked up the exotic proficiency for the bastard sword, and the boss you were describing was either undead or from the plane of negative energy.


I did indeed have the exotic weapon feat.

As for the boss, he was a High Priest of the big religion who used a bunch of dark artifacts to turn himself into a huge sized, demon creature made of black sand.


If anyone wants to talk about other stupid but effective builds go right ahead


RavenStarver wrote:

I did indeed have the exotic weapon feat.

As for the boss, he was a High Priest of the big religion who used a bunch of dark artifacts to turn himself into a huge sized, demon creature made of black sand.

Demons don't count; they're from the Abyss (one of the outer planes). Creatures from the NEP will list Environment: Negative Energy Plane in their entry. So if this priest actually turned himself into a Demon, Devil, or other "fiendish" outsider from an outer plane, or even a denizen from the Shadow plane, you shouldn't have gotten the extra damage beyond the +4 enhancement bonus from the target being Evil. Nightshades are examples of creatures from the NEP.

Regarding "stupid but effective" tactics, Sunblades count as Shortswords which are light weapons. You can wield a Huge sized light weapon as a two-handed weapon, albeit at -4 attack penalty. So if you get your hands on a Huge Sunblade... which would be about 16' long... you can swing it around with nearly the ease with which you'd swing a Greatsword. Then you can spike out your hair and get all angsty and wear an outfit that looks like it was designed on an etch-a-sketch and then fed through a threshing machine.

Lantern Lodge

@Kazaan Then people would call your sword the giant butter knife, and wonder why you don't cut off all your hair every time you put your sword away!


From RAW side it sound legal. The paladin is very good against evil, you have veeerrrry good equipment and an effective build.

Maybe this together was too much for your GM. Maybe the 'powerlevel' of your group is lover than yours so that the group is not longer balanced. That can happen when a high level PC joins a group that play since lvl1. Maybe your GM is unexperienced and never has a powerfull paladin in his group. ...

Talk with your GM and find an arrangement for the group. RAW cannot help here.

-edit-
The 'Smite' extra damage only works for your first successful attack! I overread this fact and that caused a lot of trouble (was an NPC antipaladin) :)


That campaign ended years ago, around five if I remember correctly. The DM actually is very experienced but very few people play paladins sadly so I did catch him off guard with the build. Now it's just become an inside joke


Eridan wrote:

From RAW side it sound legal. The paladin is very good against evil, you have veeerrrry good equipment and an effective build.

-edit-
The 'Smite' extra damage only works for your first successful attack! I overread this fact and that caused a lot of trouble (was an NPC antipaladin) :)

What makes you think smite only works once - it should work until the smite target dies, or the paladin rests...

Quote:
The smite evil effect remains until the target of the smite is dead or the next time the paladin rests and regains her uses of this ability.


Kwauss is correct: You use Smite on a target and you gain the benefits of it against that target until the target dies or combat ends.

The Exchange

smite gets a bonus for the first attack against dragons, undead, or evil outsiders. it might not be the sun blade he was talking about.


It was a combination of several factors.

1) The boss' type was Evil Undead Outsider so Sun Blade wrecked him

2) Smite was doing double level in damage since evil undead

3) I had also been buffed with Eagles Splendor, Bulls Strength, and Enlarge Person before I went in


Oh, and 4) I was rolling stupidily well that night.


The extra damage Eridan was refering too is the double damage to evil outsiders/undead/dragons. That on works on the first hit of the smite, after that you only do normal smite damage(which is still plenty).

PFSRD wrote:
If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses.


"And there I was, with my Gnome Ranger/Bard/Mystic Theurge..."

Grand Lodge

And here I thought it was talking about a Titan Mauler Barbarian build, wielding a halfling or gnome Paladin in each hand.

"I smite him with my main-hand Paladin!"

Would that smite work for both Paladins?

Barbarian would need TWF, I would think, to make it work at all.


kinevon wrote:
...wielding a halfling or gnome Paladin in each hand.

Why not have both? Halfling in one hand, Gnome in the other. I'm pretty sure they'd both count as holy weapons.


Kazaan wrote:
kinevon wrote:
...wielding a halfling or gnome Paladin in each hand.
Why not have both? Halfling in one hand, Gnome in the other. I'm pretty sure they'd both count as holy weapons.

Do the smites of my wielded paladins stack with the wielders smite?

:)


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We have to go deeper. The Gnome and Halfling are each wielding a tiny paladin in each hand. So four tiny paladins, two small paladins, and one medium paladin each activate Smite and attack with their Super Fractal Smite Attack!


I actually created an NPC paladin for my game that also duel-wields a Holy Avenger bastard sword with an offhand Sun Blade. I can confirm that the damage potential is comedically obscene; I ran the character's stats trough a DPR calculator and when he smites a generically evil creature (let alone an undead creature) he does something like 600dpr - and that includes the round spent casting a buff and moving into melee range.

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