I should say I have never played a Pathfinder paladin.
I'm wanting to build an archery paladin and am deciding whether I want to take the Divine Hunter archetype or not. I'm sure I want him to be human, but am having trouble figuring out if the trade-offs are worth it.
Our DM will be running a home campaign, so I have idea what to expect in terms of story or theme. We may run to lvl 10, we may go all the way to 20, so I don't have much info to share that way.
It seems to be that either I'll be a stock human and a core Paladin, or a dual talent human with the Divine Hunter arch. I don't need an extra feat (though it's always nice) if I'm getting one through the DH anyway.
What I don't know is if the trade-offs are worth it. I don't mind giving up heavy armor, since my dex is so high I can make it up with medium, and getting Precise Shot is great. giving up fear immunity could be costly though, down the road. I also just don't know if aura of care is worth giving up aura of resolve. Righteous Hunter is great, but who knows if we'll even get to lvl 14.
Also, I read about the benefits of Oath of Vengeance, and am considering that too (with a normal human).
Any thoughts or questions are welcome!
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Hmmm.... I've never actually played a Divine Hunter, but let's take a look at the individual features and see how they compare:
PRECISE SHOT: Free feat for heavy armour. UPGRADE
SHARED PRECISION If your team are dedicated range characters they'll already have the feat, and if they're not it's only rarely going to help them. DOWNGRADE
DIVINE BOND: If you weren't going to go weapon bond then you wouldn't be considering this archetype. You don't care about the bonds you lose, but you don't really care about returning or distance either, so the only one that matters is Seeking. UPGRADE
DISTANT MERCY: Without this your ability to heal your party in combat is bad. You're not on the front line so the only way to heal allies is to have this. Having said that you don't get it till level 6 and it costs you a mercy. On top of that the best thing about LoH is that you can use it on yourself as a swift action - which is only useful if you're the one taking damage. To my mind the main reason to use LoH on allies is going to be to deliver mercies, and then it's likely after the fighting's done. This could occasionally be a life-saver, but I feel like you lose too much. DOWNGRADE
AURA OF CARE: This is another one that seems to be geared toward a ranged party. If they're all ranged you hopefully have ways to negate this before you get to this level, and if you're not then you get a lot less benefit out of it. DOWNGRADE
HUNTER'S BLESSING: Another ability aimed at a ranged team that gives them things they should already have. The idea of this ability is to give those around you more damage output, but I feel like Aura of Justice would have done that better. The only advantage here is that it only costs 1 use of Smite, rather than 2. DOWNGRADE
RIGHTEOUS HUNTER: This is almost identical to Aura of Righteousness. The standard aura would be a lot less useful on an archer since hopefully you'll never be close enough to an enemy for it to be useful, so this is a way of keeping it useful. Useful for your own attacks, but the usefulness of the aura depends on your party composition. EVEN
Having really looked at what you get and what you give up I can't say I really like this archetype. The main upgrades you get are a free feat and the ability to add Seeking to your weapon (distance might occasionally be useful too). Shared Precision, Aura of Care and Hunter's Blessing all seem geared to improving a range-focused party, but if your party's built for range the Aura will be giving them things they already have. On top of that you're losing immunities and resistance aruas that could save your party.
Oath of Vengeance is definitely a strong option: Channel energy on a normal paladin is a fairly useless ability, whereas extra Smites are amazing. Powerful Justice is a slight downgrade from Aura of Justice, but you can use it more often than a standard Paladin could.
If you're wanting to look at archetypes I'd be tempted to go for something like TEMPERED CHAMPION (Erastil, Kroina and Ylimancha are all Good deities with the Longbow as favoured weapon). You do give up spell-casting though, so it depends how much that matters to this character.
Theconiel is right, Halfling would work here. My other thought is Half-Elf for the Favoured-Class-Bonus. Getting those Auras wide enough that you can use them from the background could be really useful. If you can fit in some spare feats ULTIMATE RESOLVE and/or FEARLESS AURA can give your party some pretty amazing defense, and with half elf they can affect everyone within 30 feet by level 10-11. It can be hard to fit in extra feats for an archer though, so again it's kind of a trade-off.
EDIT: Half elf favoured class bonus reads: "Add +1 foot to the size of all the paladin’s aura class features. This option has no effect unless the paladin has selected it 5 times (or another increment of 5); an aura of 14 feet is effectively the same as a 10-foot aura, for example."
Note that paladins' distance healing often consists of using shield other to split damage with other characters and then swift-action LOH on themselves, so that's not a problem.
The thing I see is that archery usually wants a lot of feats.
PBS
Precise shot
Rapid shot
deadly aim
manyshot
so it kinda depends on which race you want, and if there are other feats you want.
Like to me, divine hunter is worth it, even with all the bad trades, simply cause I want the feats online faster. Having PBS, precise and rapid all at lv1 is pretty fun.
Update: talked to my DM about possible races I could use. His response was, "Go crazy. Anything in Pathfinder is okay if it has a player character option."
I didn't expect that kind of freedom! If any race at all is available, anything out there out-class human? Maybe the Azata-Blooded Aasimar?
J
Thanks for all your responses. Right now I'm going with the Azata-Blooded Aasimar, and making him an Oath of Vengeance Paladin. I did consider Halfling (and obviously human), but the benefits of the race I chose just outweighed it.
I was really tempted by Divine Hunter (greatly appreciate your analysis MrCharisma), but the only benefit I really wanted was the free feat at lvl 1, so ultimately it wasn't worth it to me. I wish I could find a way to scrounge a bonus feat in the first five levels though. Like Chess Pwn said, there are multiple feats I need to take as early as possible. If I was playing a simple lvl 1-5 adventure I'd def go the Human/Divine Hunter route.
Tempered Champion was the first archetype I considered--love the DPR potential!--but I just couldn't justify giving up spell-casting altogether to get it.
I should have said that we will be playing this campaign when there are less than four of us who show up to our regular campaign, and with only three players, I figure I will need all the abilities I can get--as will whoever shows up.
Any other ideas/comments/feedback are more than welcome! I'm still trying to pick out traits, as well as where to put my skill points (I am going to take the bonus skill rank as my FCB), with an Int of 10.
FYI my stats at lvl 1 will be: 14, 16/18, 12, 10, 8, 16/18
I was really tempted by Divine Hunter (greatly appreciate your analysis MrCharisma), but the only benefit I really wanted was the free feat at lvl 1, so ultimately it wasn't worth it to me.
I'll just point out again that I've never actually played a Divine Hunter. From where I'm standing it doesn't look worth it, but sometimes playing it will help you see benefits that weren't obvious.
Like to me, divine hunter is worth it, even with all the bad trades, simply cause I want the feats online faster. Having PBS, precise and rapid all at lv1 is pretty fun.
This is actually a good point that I hadn't really considered. As JDawg75 said, this looks a lot better in a low level campaign.
I also hadn't considered is whether or not you're building your characters together. A number of your abilities seem to give your allies free access to feats they should already have, but if you build them together your team-mates could potentially skip some feats. This means that your entire team could end up stronger, even if you yourself are a little weaker. Just a thought.
Aside from that the stats look good (I'd probably go DEX over CHA here, but either will work), Oath of Vengeance looks like a good idea, and Human is probably your best bet since feats are your main concern.
The one other thing you MIGHT consider is taking a 1 level dip into Fighter (or potentially something like Far-Strike Monk) for the bonus feat. 1 level won't hurt too badly on your Paladin levels, but getting those feats going asap can really help. If retraining is an option it becomes an even more attractive option. If you are doing this I'd probably take the dip at level 3 (after you get divine grace) or at level 5 (after you get channel wrath).
Don't forget to buy non-magical alchemical and special arrows. Angel Quill arrows are really handy since they reduce DR and cost the beast an action to rip them out. There is also a feat called Channel Ray which dose what it says on the tin. It's really good if you need to heal a specific target while staying out of range. Also since you're going to be taking shooting feats like Point blank and Precise they apply to it as well if you want to snipe an undead with it.
Also Erastil has a trait that ignores the soft cover from allies in the way of your shots. Though I think spells are better than those bonus feats, to each their own.I've always been of the opinion that spells are the weakest part of the class. Extremely limited spell slots, very low level spells overall, reduced caster level, and not something I overly relied on in combat. So when Tempered Champion came out, it immediately became my favourite Archetype for Paladins.
I've played Paladins at mid to high level, and got a ton of mileage out of their spellcasting: Hero's Defiance, Resist Energy, Protection from Evil, the various Litany spells, Liberating Command, Bloodsworn Retribution, Restoration, just to name a few. And that character didn't even use Unsanctioned Knowledge. Plus, it allows them to use many useful wands and scrolls without a Use Magic Device check. I'm convinced that the Paladin's limited spellcasting is still more useful in combat (and certainly more useful outside of it) than some bonus combat feats from a limited list, and the ability to trade 2 Lay on Hands for 1 Weapon Bond.
Offensively of course the Paladin is not a powerful caster. Then again when I was playing that campaign, Litany of Sloth and Litany of Righteousness allowed no save and IIRC bypassed SR as well. Other party members are better spellcasters, but if you cast defensive/buff spells instead of them, it frees up their turn to go on the offense.
That's one of the reasons I'm staying with the vanilla paladin (with oath of vengeance). It'll be a small group, and I won't know ahead of time who will be in it--plus the composition could change from week to week. It's just for weeks when the full group doesn't show up for our regular campaign. I'm thinking I can't count on someone else in the group to have spellcasting, let alone healing/support magic. I'm taking Magical Knack, which will help with the casting. Overall, I think the Paladin is a very well-designed class.
I appreciate all the feedback though, it's helped clarify things for me. I'll be creating a related thread about classes that would be appropriate for a small group (3, 4 max) that has a changing composition over the course of a campaign.
J
