Help on a Paladin Build

[xammer99]

Good morning folks,

I am in the process of building a paladin for the Kingmaker adventure path and I would appreciate some advice on the build I plan to use.

Givens:
1. Race: Human
2. Class: Paladin of Erastil
3. Stat Rolls: 18 13 12 13 13 18

Preferences:
Currently I'm leaning towards going Sword & Shield with the following build:

1 Pal TWFight Imp Shield Bash
2 Pal
3 Pal Power Attack
4 Pal
5 Pal Mounted Combat
6 Pal
7 Pal Shield Slam
8 Pal
9 Pal Leadership
10 Pal
11 Pal Shield Master
12 Pal
13 Pal Cleave
14 Pal
15 Pal Great Cleave
16 Pal
17 Pal Strike Back
18 Pal
19 Pal x

Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to improve it? I looked at another build thread for a sword & board paladin, and it listed Imp & Greater Bullrush, but i wasn't sure why that is given that Shield Slam gives a free one. Is it because of the free AoO's provoked by Greater?

Thanks!

[TheOrangeOne]

What do you want your Paladin to do? be a mounted Knight fighting from horse back, then jumping on down and two weapon fight with a shield and sword? Slashing and Bashing?

[Eric Mason 37]

To be honest, since you have two really high stats, and many low/average ones, I would suggest going for a less MAD combat style. (If you had 3 or 4 moderately high stats, going the two-weapon route would be more feasible IMO.)

Archery: High Str and Dex, toss your human bonus onto Cha, the low Con won't be as bad since you're not going to be a front liner

Great Weapon: High Str and Con, toss your human bonus onto Cha

Either of those forms can be combined with fighting on a mount.

[xammer99]

TheOrangeOne: Yes, I'm interested in being a mounted Knight and fighting from horse back, then jumping down, or I presume crawl through a dungeon since Paizo seems to like those a lot and will invariably have several in Kingmaker.

Eric Mason: Unfortunately my paladin is the only possibility for a tank (2 rogues, 1 druid, 1 wizard) for the group. So I need to have some defense as well. Hence the Two Weapon build.

But for a Great Weapon build, what would you suggest?

And thank you both for the responses!

[Abraham spalding]

Honestly once you get the lay on hands ability you can swift heal yourself which means you'll have more "HP" each round that it looks like on paper, so you can do without the shield that way.

If you go with a bastard sword or long sword you could take a buckler and use it when you need it or go two handed when you really want to crank out the damage. The two handed style is much less feat intensive, and you could get spirited charge that way too along with quick draw (but a glove of storing would probably be more useful in the long run).

[xammer99]

So something like this?

1 Pal EWP: Bsword Pwr Atk
2 Pal
3 Pal Cleave
4 Pal
5 Pal Mounted Combat
6 Pal
7 Pal Leadership
8 Pal
9 Pal Ride By Attack
10 Pal
11 Pal Spirited Charge
12 Pal
13 Pal Imp Critical
14 Pal
15 Pal Imp Bullrush
16 Pal
17 Pal Great Cleave
18 Pal
19 Pal Strike Back
20 Pal

[Eric Mason 37]

Human Bonus Feat: Power Attack
1: Cleave
3: Mounted Combat
5: Ride by Attack
7: Spirited Charge

Or you can pass on Cleave, and start the mounted feat tree from the get go.

(Cleave is going to have it's most use at low levels since it is more usual to face lots of foes who will often end out adjacent to each other, while at high level, there tend to be fewer foes. I think this is strongly related to the increased complexity at higher levels, where running 10 enemies with a bunch of feats and such becomes daunting.)

After you have those feats I would look into picking up things that tickle your fancy.

Examples:
Switching from a great sword to a falchion and going the critical route
Leadership
A combat manuever (sunder offers some interesting posibilities like holy symbol smashing, and you get weapon bonuses to the CMB)
Lunge (a little extra reach gets very handy at higher levels, and might let you get a bit more milage out of cleave)
Quick Draw (handy for weapon switching and drawing a backup if you've been disarmed)