For the Intimidation route I'd recommend something like:
H: Fey Foundling
1: Power Attack
3: Hurtful
5: Intimidating Prowess
7: Cornugon Smash
9: Furious Focus
11: Dreadful Carnage
I agree with skulky that Furious Focus isn't a great feat on its own, but it is a prerequisite for Dreadful Carnage.
I am looking for advice on building a human 2H Paladin that is effective in combat while still being a team player that can heal. Our campaign is starting at lvl 3 and a 15-pt buy (not following core rules; simple one-up/one-down scores):
STR - 17
DEX - 9
CON - 14
INT - 13
WIS - 8
CHA - 16
Uhm.... Your GM is basically giving you the green light to start with 20s or two 18s if you want 'em, and they'll be pain-free. So....
str 18
dex 12
con 14 (human, 15pts adjusted 1-for-1 from six 10s)
int 7
wis 7
cha: 17 (racial+2)(raise 4th)
* You're not taking Combat Expertise, so dump Int into the grave.
* You're a paladin, so dump Wis into the grave.
Traits: Dangerously Curious (magic), Envoy of Healing (religion)
Favored class option: always takes skill point. (This gives you 3/level as a human.)
Skills: +1 every level into Acrobatics, Diplomacy, Use Magic Device. (Do not spend a single point on Perception. Spotting crap is what your allies are for.)
Don't take Power Attack at 1st level; you will splatter any non-boss you hit with a two-hander every time. Therefore, all PA can help you do is miss. Weapon Focus is also too specific, when circumstances don't always let you use the same piece of equipment exclusively.1. Fey Foundling
3. Weapon Focus
5. Greater Mercy or Furious Focus or Extra LOH
Are my abilities spread out to be a fighter first, healer second? Do my feats complement my fighting style and what is the optimized order to select them?
Paladins don't get enough feats to indulge "styles". Their "style" is to get wrecked by the enemy, and then shrug it off like was nothing.
Your job is to have an Aura of Good that acts like a bug-zapper drawing the attention of evil away from your allies.
1. Fey Foundling, Quick Draw
3. Greater Mercy
4. (dip multiclass any BAB+1 that permits taking Power Attack as a 1st-level benefit)
5. Selective Channeling
7. Leadership (or, if GM shakes head: Deadly Aim or Extra LoH)
-- This is your basic switch-hitter package good to go at 1st level.
Shopping list: Cha headband, Opalescent White Pyramid ioun stone, cracked (martial proficiency: Fauchard), +1/Fortuitous Fauchard, +1/Adaptable composite bow, 5' weapon (your greatsword, a bludgeoning adamantine weapon, a light silver weapon, light quickdraw shield, heavy-ass armor, then save up for a 5x5 flying carpet
* Buy a Cha belt at 4th for +6 to all saves, and Smite bonus. Don't forget to double Smite damage bonus versus evil outsiders, dragons, and undead.
Vital Strike is a good feat, but it's better for barbarian types that are frequently Enlarged. Anyway, you have a lot on your plate.
* Avoid Unsanctioned Knowledge (Dangerously Curious + UMD are much more flexible and available right away).
* Absolutely avoid Radiant Charge (a trap feat that tempts you into sacrificing all of your LoH, which is the very fuel that keeps you alive when things are pounding you..
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This is a question that gets asked a lot, also the one I started with when I started playing pathfinder roughly a year ago. So allow me to share what i've learned since then regarding melee paladin optimization :)
First, with this system of point buy, I'd go for this build:
18 str, 10 dex, 14 con, 10 int, 7 wis, 18 cha.
This is the best combination of damage and accuracy from str, and defensive options which all scale from charisma. Your hidden main defensive feature, the 'targeted' mercy at level 6 (look it up on the compendium), scales off of charisma, as do the number of LoH and spells you get per day. Mid to lategame this is much better than the 1 AC we might lose from not having 12 dex. We're also going to be using a feat to use charisma for our initiative instead of dex, plus it gives extra LoH and better saves overall.
I dropped the int boost since unsanctioned knowledge isn't required and a bit of a waste. The paladin spellist on its own is good enough without slotting in additional options, especially since each point of int here costs you a point of strength and charisma, plus it spends a feat. Also, we can use the use magic device skill to already get spells from other classes. You only need 3 skills, being diplomacy, perception, and use magic divice, so 10 int on a human is just fine. Put that favored class bonus into HP every time for solid max hp.
As a general observation, greatswords are never bad options but nodachis are superior in every way, especially when you get the improved critical feat. Since they can also deal piercing damage next to slashing, they also double as a capable underwater weapon.
Also, a 1 level multiclass in bloodrager (celestial I.E., or even better, Id rager with the kindness emotional focus) opens up the rage class feature, being able to take the extra rage feats and the Id rager also allowing your main melee ally to also attack when you attack, for that ultimate teamplayer vibe. Rage also effectively gives you the effects of 2 toughness feats, Iron will, Great fortitude, 2 x weapon focus and 2x weapon specialisation. Personally I'd say rage in general is too powerful for any melee character not to have, especially if it costs only 1 level and 1 feat. But you might want to be a pure paladin from 1 to 20, of course.
Now, you should probably ask yourself how exactly you want to 'heal' your party. There are three paladin archetype options available to you:
-Hospitaler, which can channel positive energy well but heavily lacks offensive options.
-Divine defender, which gives all allies within 20 feet of you a 50% damage reduction. This is really solid on defensive but lacks smite evil, again limiting your offense. Might be worth it for you, though.
-Third, and my personal favorite option, is using the oath of vengeance subtype for extra smite evils per day (this costs channel energy, which you ideally never want to use since it's so bad outside of hospitaler, and even then it's bad), and then using the 'shield other' spell on vulnerable targets in the party. This transfers half the damage they take to you, which you can then heal with your swift action lay on hands on yourself while still full attacking each turn.
On traits, take dangerously curious to get use magic device as a class skill. This will allow you to use wands and scrolls from other caster classes, greatly increasing your versatility. Many of these protect yourself or your party, such as shield or obscuring mist. The other trait can be fate's favored for more damage and accuracy or the perception skill as a class skill, to protect the party from ambushes better.
Assuming you go for option 3 and prioritise charisma (even when gearing up), I'd go for this on feats. I'm assuming that with such high charisma, you generally won't need to use extra LoH as a feat. At mid to high level you can also buy the bracers of the merciful knight to both increase the number or uses per day and the amount healed per use. If you find your pool is lacking though, you can always slot one of them in somewhere.
Feat order:
1. Fey Foundling + Scion of war (charisma). Both can only be taken at 1st. Scion of war gets us charisma to initiative, which is super valuable and only grows in power with our pimped cha score.
3. Power attack. Almost everything on level 2 and below already dies to 1 hit of a flaming greatsword/nodachi wielded by an 18 str character, sop having it before level 3 is not really needed.
5. Extra rage (if 1 level multiclass in a rage class) or Vision mastery. This second feat lets you cast darkvision or see invisibility x times per day at character level as caster level. I can tell you from experience that nothing completely destroys a melee character like being unable to see or find targets. Normally you'd be helpless, hanging around until your caster makes the targets visible for you. Well, not anymore. Let your caster friend do something more useful :)
7. Vision mastery (if you didn't take it yet) or toughness. Toughness has value here since we're using shield other to protect your teammates. You will be taking a lot of damage, best make sure we can take it. Also, with toughness you arguably don't need a belt that increases your constitution score further, enabling you to cheaply get only the str and cha increasing belt and headband. A belt that increases both str and con by 2, for instance, costs 10 k with an upgrade to +4 copsting a whopping 30 k. A belt of only str costs 4 k, while buffing this to +4 costs only 12k and then to +6 'only' 20k.
9. Improved critical (nodachi). With this and power attack, your main two damage feats are set. Your main utility and defensive feats are now also set and the rest is personal preference.
From here, you should question how long the campaign is going to go and what your party needs of you. If you're going way up to level 17 and up, nothing really beats skill focus: survival, enabling you to take eldritch heritage (orc bloodline), improved eldritch hertiage and greater eldritch heritage. They grant you a +6 inherant bonus to strength and a rediculous power boost at level 17 from their giant form, more than worth losing 2 feats on the skill focus and the first heritage feat.
For more of a teamplayer vibe (this is a bit advanced stuff), you could take the extra traits feat, then pick wayang spellhunter (this trait can be refluffed to whatever you want, inspiring leader for instance) to lower the metamagic cost of the 'good hope' spell by 1. Then take the 'encouraging spell' metamagic feat. Paladins worshipping Iomedae can use good hope as a level 3 spell. Encouraging spell makes this already good, normally bard-only spell perhaps the best teambuff in the game. It now gives a +3 morale bonus to all weapon attack rolls, damage rolls, skill checks, ability checks AND ALL SAVING THROWS, to EVERYONE in the party for MINUTES at a time. This does take your standard+move on the first turn to do, but eh, can be done outside of combat too if needed, plus I guarantee that everyone in the group will love you for this buff.
Now go out there and smite some evil :)
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@ Swaveman, regarding your questions:
On skills:
UMD is the best skill. It theoretically opens up access to all spells in the game, giving you an endless pool of versatilty. You can replace the need for many other skills with the right scroll or spell, for instance there are level 1 scrolls which give you a swim speed. In combat, as a melee paladin we are mostly interested in the incredibly powerful buffs and utility spells out there that we don't normally have access to. To name a few: obscuring mist, displacement, dimension door, displacement, death ward, life bubble, stoneskin, heroism, shield, displacement, longarm, displacement, haste (if somehow no one else has it) etc.
Diplomacy is the best social skill. It is the most widely and easily used and has a good chance of allowing you to talk your way past potential enemies. Being pleasant to others and getting them to like you is just invaluable in general. I should note here that there's a good chance only you will be good at this, since you have charisma as your main stat while most classes dump charisma as much as they can. Your allies will look to you to do the talking for them unless they also happen to be a charisma main class.
Perception as a skill is very widely applicable to many situations. Do I notice something that is off/I check for traps etc is valuable in social situations, but the real value here is that allows you to detect hidden enemies which can prevent ambushes on the party. If the enemy team somehow sneak attacks you regardless and you have no time to warn the others, you still get a shot at acting during the surprise round, which is only possible if your perception roll is high enough to match their stealth. You then essentially get an extra standard action for the fight, which can allow you to turn on a critical buff to make the rest of the fight easier. Also important, a very good item named eyes of the eagle exists, which makes you top notch at perception even if your wisdom score is low. I tend to think that part of being the party's defender is also detecting all threats to it and as early as possible, which can easily prevent more damage than you could ever heal.
The above three skills effectively allow you to detect danger early (perception) and lower the amount of fights (diplomacy and UMD if utility spells are used to get past obstacles). But if you do get into fights, you have the absolute god skill to assist you (UMD). If you run into anything else, UMD as a whole is so versatile it can usually get you by (make sure you prep accordingly with lots of cheap utility scrolls). We could pick more skills if we had a higher int or used the favored class bonus for it, but that would cost us valuable attribute points elsewhere that would make us much weaker in combat, so we stick to these. As an exception, I did put 5 ranks in the fly skill when that became avaiable to me near 10-ish so i could fight in the air effectively. With those 4, i never really needed anything else.
Heal (the skill), in comparison, is extremely situational. It rarely comes up in social situations and the main combat benefit from this is being able to stabilise dying people more easily (and out of combat allowing others to roll vs ongoing diseases easier). However, any healing from any source automatically stabilises the dying anyway. Plus you yourself are immune to diseases, and remove disease is fairly easy to prepare for your main casters (or if you really must, buy a scroll for it and use it with use magic device). Considering our very limited skill point pool, this isn't worth it.
Sense motive is worth a single point to not be super easy to bluff, but it's not worth raising. You're not going to catch characters that heavility invest in bluffing. Use your common sense and rely on your wisdom based or skill point heavy allies to detect liers. Or, you know, use magic device or cast abydon's truth telling (level 1 paladin spell) on someone you suspect of lying to force them to tell the truth anyway.
On the nodachi: the point of where the extended crit range starts outweighing the base damage comes fairly quickly. It's where 5% (or 10% with the improved critical feat) of an attack's total expected damage is expected to deal more dan 1,5 damage. So thirty damage without the feat and fifteen damage with it. That first one might seem a lot, but remember you'll be stacking a lot of damage bonusses as a paladin. Smite evil, divine favor, weapon bond (holy or axiomatic add 2d6 i.e.), power attack, 2h weapon useage (1.5 x str benefits) and external buffs party members use on you are all buffing options you have available and combined all push towards the nodachi. And things like already having flaming weapon push it further. And next to this, if you ever do have to fight underwater, a nodachi will work while a greatsword won't. Look up the underwater combat rules, a nodachi deals full damage and takes no attack penalty since it can do piercing damage while a greatsword can't.
On rage, If you don't want to multiclass, there is a way to eventually still get rage as a full paladin. This is done by taking the sacred servant archetype which can be done in addition to oath of vengeance. In effect, you gain a cleric domain including an additonal spellslot each level, a really powerful summon ability and slightly more uses of LoH which you can turn back into smites via oath of vengeance, at the cost of only your divine weapon bond. Worship Ragathiel, and pick the rage subdomain. From paladin level 11 onwards, you now have rage. From level 15, you now also have rage powers like a barbarian. Lesser celestial totem on a paladin is an example of a fun rage power, adds your character level to hp healed by LoH :)
There are plenty of other good uses of this second archetype, too. For instance, if you want to protect the party from very nasty status conditions, take this archetype and worship a god of the freedom/liberation domain for that level 8 power, which makes all allies within 30 feet of you immune to a set of really nasty status effects for x rounds. If I could remake my level 13 paladin now, I'd start with both sacred servant and oath of vengeance as archetypes and take the freedom domain. I tend to value versatility over raw power.
Folks have given a lot of good advice, I don't have much to add. One thing I will say is, CHA is your most important ability score. You add it to all of your saves, you add it to hit, you add it to AC, and with lay on hands CHA gives you more hitpoints than CON does. If you're using a point buy that lets you start with 20 CHA and not tank every other stat, it's a good point buy for a paladin.
Make sure you have Oath of Vengeance. Channel Energy takes feat investment to use effectively, and you can't spare the feats.
But, what I really wanted to talk about, was something said upthread. You said you were worried about your paladin's alignment not meshing with the group. I thought that particularly could use addressing.
A paladin doesn't have to be a stick in the mud, trying to make sure no one has fun. Basically, what a paladin is is a good person, who's trying to make the world a better place. Think about the best, most noble, most selfless people you know. Most of them don't rub it in your face, don't preach at you when they think you're wrong, or when you do something stupid and they have to bail you out. But that's a more effective way to make a convert to the side of light than any heavy handed sermon, no matter how deserved.
There are excellent depictions of paladins across the internet, I suggest reading some old gaming stories for inspiration if you're worried about not fitting in with the party.
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Folks have given a lot of good advice, I don't have much to add. One thing I will say is, CHA is your most important ability score. You add it to all of your saves, you add it to hit, you add it to AC, and with lay on hands CHA gives you more hitpoints than CON does. If you're using a point buy that lets you start with 20 CHA and not tank every other stat, it's a good point buy for a paladin.
Based on this, should I be placed all of my skill upgrades in CHA then?
I would put all attribute points you get every fourth level into charisma, yes. Starting with a 20 definitelty has upsides, but you'd have to consider which attribute you're going to dump for it then, and the game technical and roleplay implications this would have. A 7 int, 7 wisdom character I.E. would realistically be really dumb in general, whereas a 10 int, 7 wisdom character can get by with just being naive. Gametechnically, the amount of skill points depend on int, and taking a -2 modifyer on it on and then saying it doesn't matter since you still get 3 skill points per level for getting a minimum of 1 per level, +1 from human and +1 from favored class bonus isn't going to fly all groups. That's a cheesy/lopehole-ish interpretation of the rules to allow you to ignore the -2 skillpoints per level from your negative intelligence, even though it should definitely impact you. Finally, some monsters can deal wisdom or intelligence damage on attacks. If both your mental stats are low then you are highly vulnerable to those killing you in just a few hits.
Maybe one last piece of advice, I'd at some point buy a Wayfinder slotted with an icandescent blue Ioun stone. This costs around 8000 gold but it grants you +2 wisdom and the blind-fight feat. This helps reducing the low wisdom score and gives you a very valuable tool to use when enemies are going to be using defensive buffs like displacement, which are hell to get through without this.
Skills: +1 every level into Acrobatics, Diplomacy, Use Magic Device. (Do not spend a single point on Perception. Spotting crap is what your allies are for.)I like the idea of maximizing Diplomacy and Use Magic Device, but what would I be using Acrobatics for? What are your thoughts on Heal or Sense Motive instead of Acrobatics?
Feel free to divvy those up elsewhere if you like. (I usually make halfling rogue/paladins who tumble around in melee, so Acro makes a lot more sense to them.)
But make sure you have a Snapleaf, and have a grappling-hook. That way, if you go over the side of the boat or off the cliff (rockin' some awesome -7 armor-check penalty or whatever to Acrobatics in heavy armor), you don't lose your ass down the briny deep or lava pit.