Glass_Belwas's page

As a little background...I'm currently playing in the Shackled City adventure line, I'm creating a gish character that will end up having a build of roughly:

Human - 2 Paladin/3 Sorcerer/6 Dragon Disciple/9 Eldritch Knight

I'm sitting at level 3 (2 Paladin/1 Sorcerer w/ Draconic Bloodline). The following aspects of the character are currently set in stone as far as my GM is concerned:
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Str 17 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 7 Cha 14

Feats: Fey Foundling, Exotic Weapon Prof. Bastard Sword, Arcane Strike
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It's designed to be a melee combatant (currently mixing Greatsword and Ranseur) and mix in some spell utility for buffs, battlefield control, and some damage. I'm scrambling to make up just a bit for not loving the basic Paladin, so I can't just rebuild from the ground up. Near as I can tell from working with PcGen I end up with a 16 BAB and access to level 7 spells. Not perfect but I can live with it. I think.

All that out of the way...

Is Spell Perfection a decent option for this kind of build? It soaks up 3 feats for the Metamagic requirements and 1 for Spell Perfection itself. With DD and EK having a nice amount of bonus feats I'm not feeling particularly feat starved, but I wanted to see if there was perhaps something better that they could be spent on.

I'm trying to stay away from spells that have Saves (because my DC won't be as high as a ground-up Sorcerer) and, if possible, SR (because my caster level isn't = to my HD, and we don't use traits). I'm not against using them if they're worthwhile but I know going in they're not going to be quite as effective as a full level 20 caster.

If you think Spell Perfection IS a good idea, which MM feats would you recommend to qualify for it, and which spell would you recommend for Spell Perfection?

I'm also open to suggestions on feats, level allocation (all PrC stuff is subject to GM approval but he's signed off on DD and EK), and spells.

Longtime D&D player, new to the Pathfinder stuff specifically; playing in my first PF adventure now.

In a game currently that's a mixture of moderately heavy RP + combat, and playing in a home-brew world, currently running the Shackled City adventure. I'm trying not to meta on it, so haven't looked ahead to know what is coming.

We currently have (all level 1's) Wizard, Monk, Cleric, Rogue, Psion (Wilder), and I'm a level 1 Paladin. The DM runs a helper Barbarian as well, although the Barbarian's effectiveness has been, shall we say...limited.

The way this DM usually operates is we top out around level 10-12, so I took the initial level of Paladin with that in mind. When it was revealed we were going to level 20 that it changed my outlook on what I wanted to play.

It's not the LG stipulation that I'm finding boring, it's the mechanical limitations that preclude me from being very useful or fun outside of fighting evil. So, while I respect that the Paladin can annihilate evil things, I find it very one dimensional as a class. It has little in the way of many useful out of combat skills aside from Diplomacy. I tend to like versatility in what I play, which made the idea of multiclassing into Bard appealing. Being a combat juggernaut is fine to a point, but having the ability to contribute in other ways is important to me.

My DM is a little rigid in terms of what classes and combos he is okay with, as he tries to get everyone to be very character-centric and make the classes/feats/skills/choices in general make a sort of cohesive sense. The idea of mixing Oracle/Paladin wasn't well received due to the character being a follower a LG Sun Deity. So it's somewhat limiting, but not so much that I'd throw in the towel altogether. Also, he doesn't seem all that willing to allow for a retraining/change of class, and I'm more or less stuck as Human for my race.

I looked at Bard as offering a lot of utility with its wide array of skills, buffing/support magic/abilities and it's still somewhat combat viable with a 3/4 BAB, as well as having synergy in the CHA scores. D8 HP isn't as good as d10, obviously, but I was thinking the Toughness feat might make up some of that ground.

We operate on a 20 point buy system.

My initial stat loadout when I was considering straight Paladin was:

STR 16 (18 w/ racial) DEX 10 CON 14 INT 10 WIS 10 CHA 14

tinkering with a bit of revision to keep the concept of a holy warrior with a bit more skill than brawn I altered it to:

STR 15 (17 w/ racial) DEX 14 CON 14 INT 10 WIS 8 CHA 14

The goal here was to get a bit more Dex to make Light Armor as Bard less of a pain than a 10 Dex.

I still envision something of a melee combatant, hence keeping Strength high enough to make that viable, and dropping 1 point into STR at level 4 to get to 18. Then pumping the remainder into CHA. Spell selection is mostly a combination of utility spells like Cure X Wounds, Feather Fall, Invisibility, with some combat offensive/defense buffs like Haste, Blink, and then supplementing those spells with some from the Paladin spell list as levels allow.

I've been tinkering with a few builds on PcGen just to get an idea of what the numbers look like, and I'm not unhappy with the following options:

Paladin 10/Bard 10 or Paladin 4/Bard 16

What I'm asking for is a bit of help in determining which might be the best way to go here in terms of getting the most bang for my buck from my level assignments, feats, skill assignments, spells in terms of making a kind of well-rounded holy swordsman who could fight effectively in melee with something like a Greatsword/Falchion/Bastard Sword, toss some magic around, scout, be a Face, as well as tossing out the bardic performance songs to make the people around him better too.

Poking holes in the idea is also great so long as you explain why you think certain parts of the concept are flawed and I've overlooked something crucial.

I'm not married to either of the above options in terms of how many levels in each, but at this point I'm more or less stuck with at least 1 level of Paladin, and while the general concept is a charismatic holy warrior, I don't really want to play him as the tin can who is only effective in combat or talking people into being nicer to the party.

I'm also not married to the stat assignment either, so I could potentially become more of an archer if it really seemed superior to max DEX at the expensive of STR.

Constructive criticism is appreciated. :)