My GM is starting a new game at 4th level. For RP purposes (and because the bonus' are good) I am playing an Angelkin Aasimar Paladin.
She is allowing 3.5/Forgotten Reams material as well as Pathfinder with the caveat that if a class or feat is in both the Pathfinder version is always used. The game is set in a home brew modification of the FR setting.
She also give a LOT of extra feats. 3 at First level and then one more at every even level (like the fighter bonus track).
That said I was planning on taking Battle Blessing from 3.5 (makes Standard Action Paladin spells Swift and full round action Paladin spells Standard) and Unsanctioned Knowledge along with Fey Foundling for the healing boost and EWP: Jovar from the 3.5 Planar Handbook (Basically it is a 2 handed sword with an 18-20 crit range).
Looking for feat suggestions that would help out a Paladin. I know Power Attack HAS to be in there somewhere eventually. The Paladin has 13 intelligence for feat purposes should it matter.
Looking for suggestions going to level 20. At this point I am picturing him as 'utility infielder' hopefully doing a few things well instead of a one trick pony doing one thing exceedingly well.
I looked over the alternate class options and decided to stick with core Paladin.
tl;dr : Want feat suggestions to 20 on an Angelkin Aasimar core Paladin where race and class cannot be changed at this time. 3.5 and Pathfinder material is allowed.
The Nodachi is a two-hander with 18-20 and is not exotic, it is martial.
By core paladin, do you mean no archetypes?
looks like most of your feats are already chosen for you.
1) Fey Foundling
3) Power Attack
5) Battle Blessing
7) Unsanctioned Knowledge
That's the core of your build. You have a lot of choices, from good racial feats, to eldritch heritage feats, to intrigue feats.
For racial feats, look into Angel Blood, Flesh, and Wings. Natural Fly speed is a nice thing to have.
Eldritch Heritage (Orc) will give you both Natural Armor and a scaling inherent bonus to STR that stacks with enhancements.
There are feats like Martial Dominance which basically let you buy in more skill points.
Are you using traits?
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for the melee part...maybe furious focus to forgo the penalty to hit from PA on the first swing of the round. shield of swings to help your AC, although a the expense of damage. maybe take intimidating presence to up four scare game, and/or dazzling display to make your enemies cower. improved initiative would help, because you would likely go near the back end of the round unless boosted.
Intimidating prowess, cornugon smash intoHurtful if you are building for intimidate.
Practiced Spellcaster is a good one, and easy to get too since skills got 'fixed' in Pathfinder.
Sword of the Arcane Order requires a lot of role playing investment including following Mystra.
Intimidating prowess, cornugon smash intoHurtful if you are building for intimidate.Yes, although paladins (especially battle blessing paladins) have a thing with swift actions. You want to be smiting, casting spells and laying on hands, probably in that order.
Doesn't leave a lot of time for laying down the Hurtful - that one would probably serve better on a fighter.
@Mx2, isn't that role play investment that he's kind of already making, what with Unsanctioned Knowledge?
It also requires a specific deity, and that he follow a specific order. One that may not exist in the game.
There were also substitution levels which made you better at taking the feat, which would be the equivalent of taking an archetype.
With all those feats, you could just go with the tried & true. Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Toughness, Armor Focus, Shield Focus, etc, and make yourself more or less untouchable.
Also, in 3.5 there was a short (3) chain of feats that could get an aasimar wings, which is cool.
It also requires a specific deity, and that he follow a specific order. One that may not exist in the game.
Which is correct in this case. Mystra has been replaced by another goddess of magic and the Arcane Order stuff is no longer in existence.
While the Nodachi is martial it is only a D10. The Jovar is 2d6 and with as many feats as she gives I can afford to blow one on a EWP that coincides with his extra planar background.
Lots of good idea's so far.
I should have noted yes she is using traits. The three (she gives 3 instead of 2) I was going to take were Blade of Mercy, Seeker and Magical Knack for Paladin.
I did mean no archetypes. We will have a cleric so the healing will most likely be handled by her.
Martial Dominance seems great as I was too short on skill points to max Intimidate. The character is something of an emissary and ambassador so he has put most of his points into Diplomacy and Sense Motive and Perception is too useful not to max it in our games. Hence the Seeker trait.
Instead of Dazzling Display I was planning on using Blistering Invective with Unsanctioned Knowledge. Along with Battle Blessing I could use the spell and still move and attack or full attack in the round.
Awesome Smite was great in 3.5 but would require a lot of reword in Pathfinder (she uses Pathfinder Smite) as a lot of it's uses assume a single smite strike or already part of the new smite (ignoring DR of any kind) so I will probably skip it.
For Unsanctioned Knowledge I was thinking Shield of Faith, Heroism or Blistering Invective, Invisibility Purge (we will have a haster) and Divine Power.
It also requires a specific deity, and that he follow a specific order. One that may not exist in the game.Which is correct in this case. Mystra has been replaced by another goddess of magic and the Arcane Order stuff is no longer in existence.
While the Nodachi is martial it is only a D10. The Jovar is 2d6 and with as many feats as she gives I can afford to blow one on a EWP that coincides with his extra planar background.
Lots of good idea's so far.
I should have noted yes she is using traits. The three (she gives 3 instead of 2) I was going to take were Blade of Mercy, Seeker and Magical Knack for Paladin.
I did mean no archetypes. We will have a cleric so the healing will most likely be handled by her.
Martial Dominance seems great as I was too short on skill points to max Intimidate. The character is something of an emissary and ambassador so he has put most of his points into Diplomacy and Sense Motive and Perception is too useful not to max it in our games. Hence the Seeker trait.
Instead of Dazzling Display I was planning on using Blistering Invective with Unsanctioned Knowledge. Along with Battle Blessing I could use the spell and still move and attack or full attack in the round.
Awesome Smite was great in 3.5 but would require a lot of reword in Pathfinder (she uses Pathfinder Smite) as a lot of it's uses assume a single smite strike or already part of the new smite (ignoring DR of any kind) so I will probably skip it.
For Unsanctioned Knowledge I was thinking Shield of Faith, Heroism or Blistering Invective, Invisibility Purge (we will have a haster) and Divine Power.
Displacement > Invisibility Purge
If taking Divine Power anyway, consider the Fate's Favored trait.
If you want to make good use of the channel energy options with a devotion feat, for me, there's one option to start with: Destruction Devotion. It would work best if you could split your LoH and CE pools, but if you just take Extra LoH a time or two, it'll still be crazy-effective.
Turn on DDev, and for 10 rounds, every time you hit an enemy, any armor or natural armor bonus that target possesses is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0), and I believe you get to pick which one with each successful hit. And just think of the iteratives . . . . +10% modifier to your DPR every round at level 6? Or at 5th with haste? It may not be the *best* of the devotion feats (Knowledge Devotion for the WIN!!), but it plays *very* well in a combat-heavy game full of 3/4 BAB characters -- It's a team DPR feat. You get one use per day by taking the feat, and you can use it again by burning ONE turn/channel.
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If you can get it, Steadfast Determination from the PHB2. Use your Con mod on Will saves and no longer fail Fort saves on nat 1s. Allows you to dispense with Wisdom boosts and makes you immune to Fort saves with DCs equal or lower to your save bonus. As a Paladin, that's going to be a lot of things. Endurance as a prereq is a problem but workable.
Channel Energy wasn't for the healing; it's for powering Divine Feats, or alternatively Devotion feats.
Three great ones are Divine Might, Travel Devotion (requires your god has the Travel Domain) and Law Devotion (requires your god has the Law domain.)
Thanks but I used all three of those feats on a previous character who was a fighter cleric for Kalemvor for her previous game so I figured I would change things up this time. But thank you for the suggestions.
If you can get it, Steadfast Determination from the PHB2. Use your Con mod on Will saves and no longer fail Fort saves on nat 1s. Allows you to dispense with Wisdom boosts and makes you immune to Fort saves with DCs equal or lower to your save bonus. As a Paladin, that's going to be a lot of things. Endurance as a prereq is a problem but workable.
That is actually awesome TriOmega. I had forgotten about that one. Adding it to the build for level 6 I think.
If you want to make good use of the channel energy options with a devotion feat, for me, there's one option to start with: Destruction Devotion.
It turns out the GM has me worshipping Torm for story/background reasons so no destruction domain for me.
It turns out the GM has me worshipping Torm for story/background reasons so no destruction domain for me.
If I were you, I'd be sorely tempted to waste my 2nd level unsanctioned spell on a way to make an insect swarm, just for the pun potential.
3.5 RAW, Destruction Devotion does not require the domain to be part of your deity's portfolio, IIRC. Torm's followers, by default, need to be able to lay the smack down, so *somebody* in the organization has to be a fair hand at destroying *something*. It would logically follow that some of Torm's select may ask such a boon of him, and he would grant it as much as able, as he willed. I do not see this as a "flavor-fail" feat for your character (or any other, for that matter).
If a "real world" semi-argument would be of any assistance, here's mine:
I come from a very specific evangelical Christian background. I *am* a Christian, despite a rather high measure of disillusionment with the "status quo" -- I understand and share the faith's "source material" with a different emphasis than in which I was trained for so many years. I do not think of myself as heretical, nor those with differing views as (necessarily) heretical; but make no mistake -- I *am* unorthodox. I feel no obligation to "tithe", as it seems to me to be a misappropriation of apostolic instruction; I passionately believe that "church buildings" are a terrible emergent characteristic of the Christian faith; I believe that using political processes to mandate Christian values as enforceable law is an overt denial of God-given free will. Ultimately, I'm pretty different from the more "mainstream" believers in my part of the world.
I don't mention these things to sidetrack the conversation; rather, I want to focus upon the fact that even in highly structured religious/spiritual organizations that emphasize orthodoxy and conformity, there will ALWAYS be some point(s) of difference between/among brethren in that faith.
By the same token -- Torm would have a use for one of his champions to be able to break down barriers between his followers' weapons and the "voonerables" of his foes. Taking Destruction Devotion would simply be an expression of the "color" of his faith to which your character ascribes.
tl;dr -- deities have to be able to smite very well; why not their followers?
3.5 RAW, Destruction Devotion does not require the domain to be part of your deity's portfolio, IIRC.
Actually one of the last paragraphs in the section detailing the general rules for Domain feats states that a Domain must be present in your Deity's selection for you to have access to that Domain feat.
In any case, destruction would NOT work for the character as he has been developed, since his role has been as an emissary and diplomat for the church of Torm. He believes in talking things down if at all reasonably possible.
Of course he has no reservations in smashing the minions of evil into small chunks with smite when it is called for.
Then here we find another formatting issue with WotC's work on 3.5 supplemental material -- a feat with a prerequisite that isn't shown in the prerequisites section of the feat description text. Bad Form!! It does make a certain amount of sense, though. Oh, well.
master_marshmallow's 1st-7th feat tree is solid. I would go with that to start.
A cracked Opalescent[sic] White Pyramid costs 1500gp and treats a single weapon as if you had weapon familiarity with it (to treat it as a martial weapon).
By this method you can gain access to different exotic weapons without spending the feat.
Throw it in a Wayfinder and you get Weapon Focus on it for free too!