GameBanshee Forums

How many Paladin levels would I basically need to get to be most effective? As far as I can tell, 2 would be enough with the passive bonuses of the Paladin Class. I´m not necessarily planning on making this one the Party Leader, but I´ve never really found much use for anything else besides what lvl 1 and 2 provides. Smite Evil, Turn Undead and all that jazz never really did it for me. Come to think of it, I don´t think I ever once used Turn Undead even with my Cleric. And Clerical spells are the domain of...well, my Cleric. DUH! I want a purely martial version of a Paladin. Would that suffice?

Skills, those skills! Will I miss out on much by focusing on Intimidate or Bluff instead of Diplomacy? The way I figure, if I fail a Diplomacy check and someone gets hostile, I can still hack them to pieces, but will I miss out on certain quests, hints, XP, cash or so on? I guess I could leave it to my Rogue or Wizard, who will get tons of skillpoints anyway, but they´re probably gonna get Charisma seriously dumped.

You need 2 levels of Paladin. The rest can be fighter. Of course you'll run out of fighter feats to take. For a 20 level build I might take 4 levels fighter 3 rogue and 20 cleric levels. Clerics miss very little BAB for all the spells they get.

Rogue 1
Fighter 1
Fighter 2
Rogue 2
Pal 1
Pal 2 (of Ilmater I guess)
Cleric 1
Cleric 2
Cleric 3
****
Cleric 15
Pal 3
Fighter 3
Fighter 4
Cleric 16
****
Cleric 20

The 9th level cleric spells are bad so you could take 5 levels of illusionist at the end. For mirror image/blink/blur

Two levels are enough for the passive bonuses, it might be worth considering taking a 3rd level for cure disease and +1 to will and reflex saves, but half a feat (that's what you get for a fighter level) might be still more useful, although there aren't too many very useful feats.
Paladin level 4 and 5 are definitely not worth to be taken.
Just take 2 levels as paladin for the aura and a 3rd when you don't want more feats.

Optimal for a diplomatic heavy armor fighting build would be gold dwarf with (str-dex-con-int-wis-cha) 18-13-20-3-4-18 or an aasimar with 18-13-18-3-8-20 who starts with mercantile background. Raise only strength at level up. Without heavy armor starting with 18 dex but lower wis and cha is better.

Most dialogue skill checks are made in the prologue, and if you've 18 cha (22 with eagle's splendor) you already have 4(6) ranks in the diplomatic skills without a single point spent, this will be sufficient for most checks.
Since diplomacy is class skills for paladins it would be a waste to spend double skill points for raising another skill when levelling up as paladin, but I wouldn't raise it at all when you've to spend double skill points.
Keep in mind that paladins refuse to accept rewards.

PS: You won't get a Paladin 2/Fighter 28 since the average character level in your party will be lower than 17 at the end of game.