Wow, for a new player you sure have absorbed this game. I like both your builds. They aren't like hyper optimized, but they aren't supposed to be either. I would say your offensive build would work better for your purposes, but either would do the job so whichever looks the most fun I guess
First, in what universe is that post gigantic?
Second, Paladin is probably the best for that situation (CRB only Fighter sucks pertty hard). I don't know the AP and I obviously don't know your GM, but Paladin should have enough defense for you to use the offensive build (especially with Fey Foundling).
The Ranger will have a pet to help you with body blocking, and otherwise, "tanking" is normally done by forcing the enemies to notice you (at least that's how GMs normally play the enemies, to my knowledge and experience) - if you hit hard, enemies will think twice about running past you and eating AoOs, or ignoring you and having their own squishy targets slaughtered. Dumber enemies should simply not an enemy currently spilling their guts.
Also, dead dudes don't do damage.
Agreed with the others, the offensive build seems like a solid route. I might suggest throwing Toughness in as a solid feat option, though. Like you said, there's a good chance that you'll get swarmed as one of the party's few front liners, so some extra HP couldn't hurt. I'd personally take that over Cleave at 3, though feel free to go with Cleave and move into that series as you progress. I've not played with that feat a lot, but what I've heard from many people on the forums is that Cleave can be extremely situational and not entirely useful even when the needed circumstances do show up.
At the end of the day, though, it can always be fun to cut down a swathe of enemies in a single turn... :)
You really don't want to build a massively tanky character because it will get ignored if your offensive powers aren't up to snuff.
I'm not sure what the typical enemy composition is for Curse of the Crimson Throne, so I can't speak to how effective a paladin is in it. Paladins are either great, or kind of lousy offensively depending on if they have any Smite Evils left for the day and if the enemy they're facing is evil. If you end up facing a lot of neutral hungry creatures, or even non-evil NPCs you're main source of extra damage is gone.
Personally, I'm always a fan of lots of damage in the enemy's face to be a constant threat so they focus on you.
To this end I would suggest a two-handed reach weapon user so you can lock down an area, and still deal plenty of damage.
I have GMed Curse of the Crimson Throne and I can assure you that your offensive paladin is going to shine. If you get to the fifth book, you are going to be the king (not literally; you will understand soon). Just remember to use Aura of Justice and your friends will also be happy.
With a Paladin you will also have some very interesting roleplaying moments in the first and second books. And remember to be nice with... ehmmm... a... lovely... evil NPC with whom you may end working. She is really nice!
All in all, a very interesting AP for a Paladin.
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Consider a reach weapon, Combat reflexes and several feats going off from there.
It would be very hard to get by such a PC.
Always remember that "aggro" doesn't exist in the game. Reach weapons, as suggested above, help make that concept more viable. It helps to grab the feat (whose name I can't currently recall) that stops movement on OAs. The only way to "aggro" is to be a threat yourself, making it painful to let you move unchecked.
I've DMed a game where one player did monoMonk and got crazy high AC and saves. But did no damage. His back line did not appreciate his inability to die when he couldn't prevent THEM from dying.
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I would definitely recommend Fey Foundling. It helps your own healing, but also any healing you receive from others. If you are the one enemies need to get past too get to the rest of the party, then you're going to get hit.
I agree that a reach weapon and combat reflexes is a good start. Two-handed reach weapons are quite scary in Pathfinder. They're also handy when fighting bigger enemies, easier to close in without giving away Attacks of Opportunity to your enemies.
The next thing is to also get a close-range weapon like spiked armor, so that you can handle enemies that get too close for the polearm. Fortunately they're in the CRB. (There are other close weapons that aren't handheld that look better on a paladin than spiked armor, but they're not in the CRB.)
Oh, and yeah, paladin is definitely the way to go. You get a lot of abilities to help you stand your ground, like immunity to fear. Since you're going to be walking in front, you may also be the one people start talking to, and paladins are good at Diplomacy.
I'm not sure if I'd suggest reach weapons with both a new player and new DM. Reach has this dead-zone that you really need to pay attention to.
Paladins technically cannot fully utilize their lay on hands with a standard shield. Instead you could use a buckler and a one-handed weapon. As long as the weapon is not a light weapon you can wield it 2 handed and gain all the benefits of 2 handed fighting (note the buckler is "off" when using both hands on the weapon. This way if you get surrounded you can switch to sword and board without having to draw any new weapons.
As the only core melee character (check with the dragon sorcerer to make sure they don't intend to melee), I would play a medium character. The biggest reason is that your allies will get the spell enlarge person that they can cast on you. Taking you from small to medium is pointless, but the trade from medium to large is quite potent. This will give you more reach than a reach weapon and force melee opponents to take a large detour around you to get to your allies.
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I'm not sure if I'd suggest reach weapons with both a new player and new DM. Reach has this dead-zone that you really need to pay attention to.
Those rules aren't as hard as some people make them out to be. It's worth the effort to sit down and really understand how reach and cover from reach works. It'll make you significantly more powerful in combat just to know these rules.
To overcome the dead zone, the CRB-only solutions are basically spiked armor or Improved Unarmed Strike (kicking people).
Paladins technically cannot fully utilize their lay on hands with a standard shield.
Not with a heavy shield, no. But with a light shield you can hold stuff in that hand, just not use it as a weapon. So you should also be able to touch yourself to Lay on Hands.
As the only core melee character (check with the dragon sorcerer to make sure they don't intend to melee), I would play a medium character. The biggest reason is that your allies will get the spell enlarge person that they can cast on you. Taking you from small to medium is pointless, but the trade from medium to large is quite potent. This will give you more reach than a reach weapon and force melee opponents to take a large detour around you to get to your allies.
That's good advice. If you're going to use Combat Reflexes however, make sure to take high enough Dexterity (14 or so) that you still have some remaining when you're enlarged.
One of the frequent criticisms of defensive builds is that enemies will just walk around you and attack the weak guys in the back.
This is, based on my actual gaming experience, a misguided criticism.
Combats quite often take place in areas with choke points. Like, any room that you enter through a standard door. And if there isn't a choke point, the party can fall back to where there is one, or the casters can make one (summons, wall spells, pit spells).
Right, IRL that rarely occurs. Of course ranged attackers can concentrate on the spellcasters in the back, but rarely do foes "walk around' a tank.
I'm not sure if I'd suggest reach weapons with both a new player and new DM. Reach has this dead-zone that you really need to pay attention to.
Spiked gauntlets.
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You can do a reach based trip build. Human fighter could do it earliest.
Get a small sized version of whatever weapon you want to use and snag a spiked shield. You threaten your whole reach and you can trip everyone who enters into your reach. The enemy can't put sharp bits of metal into your Wizard if they get knocked down.
Human fighter 1
LN Medium humanoid (human)
Init +1; Senses Perception +0
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Defense
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AC 19, touch 11, flat-footed 18 (+6 armor, +1 Dex, +2 shield)
hp 11 (1d10+1)
Fort +2, Ref +1, Will +0
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft. (20 ft. in armor)
Melee (S) guisarme +3 (1d6+4/×3)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with guisarme)
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Statistics
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Str 18, Dex 13, Con 11, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 8
Base Atk +1; CMB +5 (+7 trip); CMD 16 (18 vs. trip)
Feats Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Improved Trip
Skills Acrobatics -6 (-10 to jump), Intimidate +3, Ride -2, Survival +4, Swim +1
Languages Common, Elven
Other Gear chainmail, heavy wooden shield, guisarme
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Special Abilities
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Combat Expertise +/-1 Bonus to AC in exchange for an equal penalty to attack.
Combat Reflexes (2 AoO/round) Can make extra attacks of opportunity/rd, and even when flat-footed.
Improved Trip You don't provoke attacks of opportunity when tripping.
I wasn't trying to say that the rules for reach themselves are difficult, but it's something extra to think about when there are already 1000 new things to keep in mind.
While you can get around it with spiked gauntlets or unarmed combat, but again that's one more thing for the GM/Player to think about. The damage, the attack rating, etc will be different than it will be with the main weapon.
In my experience, new players have enough difficulty managing one weapon's stats.
I agree that walking around the tank doesn't happen as often as people make it out to happen. One reason is that movement is fairly even. If a baddie takes his turn to move around the tank then the tank just took him out of combat for a turn.
For the halfling version, you'd have the advantage if you get a mount of being able to block multiple squares, while having a medium-sized mount that can still navigate dungeons. More actions using your pet means more opportunities to stop people from getting by you.
If the GM allows it, the Low Profile feat from the Advanced Player's Guide would make your heavily ranged group happy since they can fire over you without penalty without having to take Improved Precise Shot (though the same goes for people firing over you to get to them, but your party's probably going to be dealing more ranged damage).
One of the frequent criticisms of defensive builds is that enemies will just walk around you and attack the weak guys in the back.
This is, based on my actual gaming experience, a misguided criticism.
Combats quite often take place in areas with choke points. Like, any room that you enter through a standard door. And if there isn't a choke point, the party can fall back to where there is one, or the casters can make one (summons, wall spells, pit spells).
Well-coordinated and patient parties can do a lot to enable a "tank" to hold the line while ranged types do their thing. Having a good CMD is important so enemies can't just Overrun you.
So I would encourage you to ask your other players to think of tactics that can support what you want to do. A party of four all doing their own thing independently is not going to be nearly as successful as a party that develops tactics based on their collective capabilities.
Yes and no. Sometimes, it works. If there's no choke points, then you're hosed.
I'm playing a skulls and shackles game with a tower shield specialist right now, and yeah, he can't be hit, and yeah, he's had some bright moments when the opportunity for choke points are there, but he spends at least half his time sucking balls, sorry to say.
Maybe a master strategist can make it happen, but it requires extensive tactical skill.
Not something I'd recommend for a newbie. The AoO route is a lot more easy to make work.
While that's a good idea, thank you, it's not really applicable to the situations where he's been having a difficult time.
Something else to think about is the Stalwart Defender prestige class. It's core and has some amazing defensive features, and works really well with Paladin. It has some feat prerequisites that aren't great, and to really optimize you need a flawed scarlet and green cabochan ioun stone from Seeker of Secrets book, but can still be effective without it.
If you can create a choke point you're amazing, if you can't, you're still a 2-handed power attacking tank, with smite.
You want to be defensive enough so that not all attacks hit you, but not so defensive that attacks never hit you and enemies decide to go for easier targets... You also want a good offense to encourage enemies to focus on you.
IME, a Paladin with decent Con and Cha, plus a breastplate is enough. Lay on Hands alone greatly increases your resilience.
Your "more damage" build is pretty good, but I wouldn't bother with Cleave... That feat is pretty awful.
Cleave won't really synergize with a Paladin's abilities (at least not Core Paladin -- not going to swear 100% that some later archetype can't do something useful with it). You are better off getting Combat Reflexes instead -- still only a little bit more synergistic with a Core Paladin's abilities (depending upon whether your Smite Evil target provokes AoOs from you), but at least it will usually let you hit more things. The Cleave feat chain eventually does let you hit a fair number of things, but this requires a lot of investment, which you can't afford on a class with no bonus feats.
(I was going to say something about reallocating your More Damage Paladin point buy for 1 point less Strength and a bit more Dexterity, but then I see that you rolled instead of doing point buy -- got the equivalent of 34 point buy, so you should do fine. At 4th level, put your ability score increase into Dexterity to get another AoO out of Combat Reflexes and another point of AC including Touch AC. At 8th level, put your ability score increase into Charisma to bump up the modifier for that. After that, put the rest into Strength. If playing the More Defense Halfling Paladin, just pour them all into Strength and you'll actually end up doing pretty good damage.)
I wouldn't recommend sticking Stalwart Defender on a Core Paladin base -- the loss of progression of your various abilities will hurt too much. (Some later books have some Paladin archetypes that could work better with Stalwart Defender.)
Note that since you are short on feats and therefore not likely to be able to get the Improved/Greater Combat Maneuver feats, using a Reach weapon means that you can still perform combat maneuvers using your weapon without provoking AoOs on enemies that don't have enough reach of their own to be able to attack you without first moving. You won't have the bonus that the Improved Combat Maneuver feats add, but with your Strength, you'll still have a chance to pull them off. Of the Core Rulebook Reach weapons, Guisarme has the Trip property (which unfortunately doesn't give a bonus, just lets you recover from a severely botched Trip attempt by dropping the weapon, so have a backup weapon ready), and Ranseur has the Disarm property (which gives a bonus to Disarm); the Glaive has slightly more base damage (more significant if you are Small), but has neither of these properties.
Also, Paladin guide.
You want to be defensive enough so that not all attacks hit you, but not so defensive that attacks never hit you and enemies decide to go for easier targets... You also want a good offense to encourage enemies to focus on you.
I have heard that before: "but not so defensive that attacks never hit you and enemies decide to go for easier targets..." but how many round sis that? I'd say at least 3.
Isnt that enuf?
I wouldn't recommend sticking Stalwart Defender on a Core Paladin base -- the loss of progression of your various abilities will hurt too much. (Some later books have some Paladin archetypes that could work better with Stalwart Defender.)/QUOTE]
I would very much disagree. A paladin doesn't get much after 8th level, just more uses of what they already have. 3 smites per day 4 lay on hands with the fatigue mercy, and divine bond at +2, on top of all that you're getting the same benefits as a barbarian's rage, and amazing tank abilities to lock down an opponent. Yeah it's well worth the cost.