This is a charismatic melee character, a holy fighter mage in full plate, wielding sword & tower shield.
He has the full range of arcane spell levels and 2 levels of paladin spells. His God fuels him with Divine might & shield, and glorious saves. Still spell, and later auto still spell let him use his arcane powers even in full plate. The draconic heritage gives harder skin (AC) and a boost to his physical and mental abilities. The strength bonus improves the AB and damage, compensating to some extent for BAB loss due to taking sorcerer and RDD levels pre epic, and for neglecting to pump strength at level up. Taunt also improves the hit ratio.
I have seen different builds combining these 3 classes. The charisma synergy between paladin/sorcerer is obvious and the RDD bonuses are tempting. In a build like this you would want to have at least 8 levels of paladin to get BAB 16 and 4 attacks at level 20. You would also want at least 23 levels of sorcerer to get epic spells like epic warding. And you would like to have 10 levels of RDD for the full stats bonuses. But that’s 41 levels. So we have to make a choice.
I have seen Blue Emu referring to a Pal 8/Sorc 18/RDD 14 build elsewhere in the forums, but I have not seen it posted as such in this guild’s forum. I mention it because it’s the one that maybe comes closest to my build and it seems to be based on some of the same ideas.
The build:
Human, lawful good
Str 14 -> 22 Dex 8 Con 14 -> 16 Int 12 -> 14 Wis 12 Cha 16 -> 28
Charisma is increased at lvl up. The rest is RDD bonuses.
1 sorc 1, power attack, cleave 2 sorc 2 3 pal 1, weapon focus long sword 4 pal 2 5 pal 3 6 pal 4, divine shield 7 pal 5 8 RDD 1 9 pal 6, divine might 10 RDD 2 11 RDD 3 12 pal 7, extra turning 13 RDD 4 14 sorc 3 15 sorc 4, still spell 16 sorc 5 17 sorc 6 18 pal 8, knockdown 19 pal 9 20 pal 10 21 sorc 7, epic weapon focus long sword 22 sorc 8 23 sorc 9 24 sorc 10, toughness 25 sorc 11 26 sorc 12 27 sorc 13, improved critical long sword 28 sorc 14 29 sorc 15 30 sorc 16, armour skin 31 sorc 17 32 sorc 18 33 sorc 19, auto still spell I 34 sorc 20 35 RDD 5 36 RDD 6, auto still spell II 37 RDD 7 38 RDD 8 39 RDD 9, auto still spell III 40 RDD 10
Skills: Lore 8, Discipline 43, Spellcraft 43, Concentration 43, Taunt 23, the rest is optional
Spells: Paladin spells: Divine favour, deafening clang, aura of glory (or anything else) Sorcerer spells: Most buffs, utility- and defensive spells, but also a couple of attack spells. The high charisma makes the offensive spells hard to save from. But your low caster level makes it hard to penetrate spell resistance. Before you get still spell, you only use scrolls and wands in battle situations, and buff before battle. With still spell you must still cast your highest lvl spells without armour, so your highest lvl spells are buffs. When you take your last sorc lvl you pick the lvl 9 spells you plan to use with auto still spell III
The character has 420 HP, BAB 16, AB 35/30/25/20 without buffs and AC 26 with full plate and tower shield. Both AB and AC can be buffed with spells. Divine shield gives AC +8 - and even more with eagle’s splendour and aura of glory active. Divine grace, a high charisma and a high spellcraft give very high saves, especially against spells.
Familiar: You’ll get a lvl 20 familiar. It levels up late and will only serve as a small distraction if you take it to the battlefield. When you play the first lvls, it can be a good helper, but should be obsolete by lvl 5 or 6. Later I suggest taking a utility familiar like the pixie, so you can have some rogue skills available when needed.
Levelling order: When you get to lvl 33 you need to be able to cast lvl 9 arcane spells (sorc lvl 18) to get auto still I. Therefore you must take at least 5 sorc lvls before lvl 20. This means you can only take 4 RDD levels before epic levels and still get 4 attacks per round. That’s why I ended up with Pal10/Sorc 6/RDD4 at lvl 20. You are free to choose the levelling order before lvl 20. But you need 1 lvl of pal to get wp long sword, 3 lvls of pal to get the divine feats and extra turning must be taken when you lvl up as paladin.
Variants: The last 6 lvls are optional. I have chosen RDD for the bonuses. If you want you can take 6 lvls of sorc instead and get 2 epic spells. You can also take 3 RDD and 3 sorc lvls and get 1 epic spell and +2 con. Another option is to take paladin lvls, but I don’t think that is as strong as the other alternatives.
Edited By griphook on 06/27/05 14:38
Minor correction: With Cha 28 the divine might/shield bonus is +9 (not +8).