Playing in Storm King's Thunder. Party is a sorcerer who focuses on blasting and a ranger who dual wields (or something? He runs around with Zephyr strike a lot). My Bladesinger just died, and I'm thinking about Paladin for my next build. We've had a lot of open-air combats, and there's a big battle that's about to take place, so I feel like the Mounted Combatant feat would synergize pretty well. I'll lock down enemies with fear and crit-fish with a lance while my horse stays out of range. Currently level 6
Rolled Stats:
Str 14, Dex 10, Con: 14, Int 11, Wis 14, Cha 17
Race: Custom Lineage (Tiefling Goliath), +2 STR. I could take +2 to Cha just to max it out, but I'd like to have a decent Strength score since I don't want to delay the level 7 feature. Also I'm a Tiefling Goliath, so I'd like to be kinda strong.
Feat: Fey-Touched: Cha (took Hex, which I plan to combine with Spiritual weapon in tough fights. Especially if I can't get advantage for crits).
Fighting style: Duelling
First round in combat would be Hex and then attacks, or Conquering Fear and Spiritual weapon, with Hex + attacks to follow next turn.
At either level 8 or level 9, I'll probably dip one level into Hexblade to avoid waiting for level 16 to max my strength, but Undead could also be good for the fear effect, since we've got okay DPS. Thinking just Eldritch Blast, Toll the Dead, Shield/Hellish Rebuke and Cause Fear. Maybe a utility cantrip. BB could be okay for lockdown if something resists fear but won't work with a lance and I don't think I'll be taking Warcaster till 13. Level 8/9 would be CHA. DM doesn't usually care about somatic components for casting (but that might change if I'm casting Shield a bunch), and even if he did I'd still probably take the Charisma first.
Let me know if you have any suggestions, or if I'm overlooking something.
Watch that str. You need a 15 to wear plate, and at level 6, I’d guess you’d have access to it, maybe?
warcaster isn’t great for a pally. You’ll spend most of your spell slots on smites, not casting (do components don’t really come up, will rarely if ever cast concentration spells, and have no cantrips. Though I guess if you multiclass you may get more use from it. Anyway, most recommend resilient con. Gets you to near the same place, mathematically, as warcaster, and applies to any con save, not just concentration.
Those ranged attacks are handy, but you can’t smite with them, you’re often better off charging into melee than plinking them from far away. Not bad to have, but maybe just choose one and utility cantrips.
Personally, not a fan of mounted combatant. Any time you’re not on your mount, you get no benefit from it. Compared to an asi in str, which you will use every single attack, mounted or no. That said, I’m not familiar with the adventure. If you’re outside all the time, In open areas, it can be a really good feat. But once you’re inside a dungeon and can’t bring your horse, your feat is sitting outside, too.
And remember find steed does not work like find familiar. You can’t send it to a pocket dimension and pull it out again. If, say, you have to climb a rope or a cliff, the horse is left behind, and then you’d have to cast the spell again to get it back, so indoors is doubly challenging.
First off .... Custom lineage as a race is mechanically stupid, unless you want to play a human with Darkvision as a racial trait. There's nothing that says you cant theme your characters origins and picking the race you want to get the racial abilities. With custom lineage you miss out on racial abilities all together. I mean hell mechanically you are making something thats nothing like a Goliath or a Tiefling as you are not getting any racial traits from either besides darkvision ..... Personally because in Tasha's you can do this. Pick what you want your dominant race to be, change the ability score modifiers to what you want and call it a day.
@Xalthu If he puts +2 from racial traits in STR he should have a 16 STR which should be good.
Xalthu hits the majority of this on the head though. I use mounted combatant myself, however, I don't use it for a steed from Find Steed. I pick it up at later levels when you have a flying mount from Find Greater Steed. For the most part Paladins don't benefit that mouch from Mounted Combatant besides the choosing whats attacked but thats really your only benefit to taking it as a Paladin.
First off .... Custom lineage as a race is mechanically stupid, unless you want to play a human with Darkvision as a racial trait. There's nothing that says you cant theme your characters origins and picking the race you want to get the racial abilities. With custom lineage you miss out on racial abilities all together. I mean hell mechanically you are making something thats nothing like a Goliath or a Tiefling as you are not getting any racial traits from either besides darkvision ..... Personally because in Tasha's you can do this. Pick what you want your dominant race to be, change the ability score modifiers to what you want and call it a day.
Tieflings get two spells once per day, I get Misty Step and Hex once per day and also added to my spell list. So not too different from straight Tiefling, especially with all the variants that race has and the different spells they get. So I’m losing fire resistance for more versatile spellcasting. Not really seeing an issue there.
Mounted combatant I consider a free feat since I already had an 18 charisma at level 4 and didn’t want to be too far above the rest of the party for balance purposes. I see it as a good way to get free advantage in some outdoor encounters, similar to the vengeance paladin getting advantage once per short rest with its channel divinity. So I can add hex and even spiritual weapon to stack dpr (spiritual weapon + Hex outdamage a 2nd level smite in two turns), saving smites for crits, while not sacrificing my main focus of battlefield control as a conquest paladin.
First off fire resistance is far better than either of those two spells that you can only use once a day.
Second Spiritual Weapon and hex does not out damage Smite at 2nd lvl at all. Spiritual Weapon using a lvl 2 spell slot with Hex does 1d8+1d6+spell casting ability modifier. Your ability modifier. This means your doing 1d8+1d6+4. for an average of 12. A 2nd lvl Smite does 3d8 damage or 4d8 against undead/fiend, which averages out to 13.5 or 18 and has a far higher max on a crit. In fact not even casting Spiritual Weapon using a 9th lvl Spell Slot compares to a 4th lvl Divine Smite. So your wrong there you might want to learn how smite actually damages before making more claims and burning two spell slots to barely compete with the power of one.
Third if you picked a Goliath as you call your character a Tiefling Goliath you'd have Stone Endurance, can carry double your normal carry weight, and have resistance to cold damage.
First off fire resistance is far better than either of those two spells that you can only use once a day.
Second Spiritual Weapon and hex does not out damage Smite at 2nd lvl at all. Spiritual Weapon using a lvl 2 spell slot with Hex does 1d8+1d6+spell casting ability modifier. Your ability modifier. This means your doing 1d8+1d6+4. for an average of 12. A 2nd lvl Smite does 3d8 damage or 4d8 against undead/fiend, which averages out to 13.5 or 18 and has a far higher max on a crit. In fact not even casting Spiritual Weapon using a 9th lvl Spell Slot compares to a 4th lvl Divine Smite. So your wrong there you might want to learn how smite actually damages before making more claims and burning two spell slots to barely compete with the power of one.
Third if you picked a Goliath as you call your character a Tiefling Goliath you'd have Stone Endurance, can carry double your normal carry weight, and have resistance to cold damage.
With Fey-Touched the spells are added to my list, so they can be cast with a spell slot as well as used once per long rest. If you rate fire resistance above that, fine, but Misty Step is a great utility spell and Hex is a nice way to add to DPR (and I like them far more than most of the Tiefling spells). Also, it makes sense that the two races I've chosen would cancel out each other's resistances, so from a roleplay perspective I think it makes more sense to choose custom lineage over choosing either Tiefling or Goliath and say I'm a mix of the two.
To your DPR point, what I said was that hex + spiritual weapon would out-damage a smite after two turns. So I can get more damage out of a level 2 slot with Spiritual Weapon (since it lasts a minute) when the fight will take more than one or two rounds than I would using it on a single smite. Not to mention hex damage will be applied to all my other attacks as well. That way I can hopefully save more smites for critical hits, since my damage isn't relying on them as much.
Thank you for your input, though. I will consider what you said.
Well first this would only really matter against a Paladin at lvl at lvl 5 and youd start to see major fall off vs Divine smite over time across levels. Further at lvl 5 you're blowing most of your spell slots just to get this online to begin with. Level 5 is also not the time to be dumping that many spells, especially as a Paladin at that low of level it really costs you later on.
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Playing in Storm King's Thunder. Party is a sorcerer who focuses on blasting and a ranger who dual wields (or something? He runs around with Zephyr strike a lot). My Bladesinger just died, and I'm thinking about Paladin for my next build. We've had a lot of open-air combats, and there's a big battle that's about to take place, so I feel like the Mounted Combatant feat would synergize pretty well. I'll lock down enemies with fear and crit-fish with a lance while my horse stays out of range. Currently level 6
Rolled Stats:
Str 14, Dex 10, Con: 14, Int 11, Wis 14, Cha 17
Race: Custom Lineage (Tiefling Goliath), +2 STR. I could take +2 to Cha just to max it out, but I'd like to have a decent Strength score since I don't want to delay the level 7 feature. Also I'm a Tiefling Goliath, so I'd like to be kinda strong.
Feat: Fey-Touched: Cha (took Hex, which I plan to combine with Spiritual weapon in tough fights. Especially if I can't get advantage for crits).
Fighting style: Duelling
First round in combat would be Hex and then attacks, or Conquering Fear and Spiritual weapon, with Hex + attacks to follow next turn.
At either level 8 or level 9, I'll probably dip one level into Hexblade to avoid waiting for level 16 to max my strength, but Undead could also be good for the fear effect, since we've got okay DPS. Thinking just Eldritch Blast, Toll the Dead, Shield/Hellish Rebuke and Cause Fear. Maybe a utility cantrip. BB could be okay for lockdown if something resists fear but won't work with a lance and I don't think I'll be taking Warcaster till 13. Level 8/9 would be CHA. DM doesn't usually care about somatic components for casting (but that might change if I'm casting Shield a bunch), and even if he did I'd still probably take the Charisma first.
Let me know if you have any suggestions, or if I'm overlooking something.
Watch that str. You need a 15 to wear plate, and at level 6, I’d guess you’d have access to it, maybe?
warcaster isn’t great for a pally. You’ll spend most of your spell slots on smites, not casting (do components don’t really come up, will rarely if ever cast concentration spells, and have no cantrips. Though I guess if you multiclass you may get more use from it. Anyway, most recommend resilient con. Gets you to near the same place, mathematically, as warcaster, and applies to any con save, not just concentration.
Those ranged attacks are handy, but you can’t smite with them, you’re often better off charging into melee than plinking them from far away. Not bad to have, but maybe just choose one and utility cantrips.
Personally, not a fan of mounted combatant. Any time you’re not on your mount, you get no benefit from it. Compared to an asi in str, which you will use every single attack, mounted or no. That said, I’m not familiar with the adventure. If you’re outside all the time, In open areas, it can be a really good feat. But once you’re inside a dungeon and can’t bring your horse, your feat is sitting outside, too.
And remember find steed does not work like find familiar. You can’t send it to a pocket dimension and pull it out again. If, say, you have to climb a rope or a cliff, the horse is left behind, and then you’d have to cast the spell again to get it back, so indoors is doubly challenging.
First off .... Custom lineage as a race is mechanically stupid, unless you want to play a human with Darkvision as a racial trait. There's nothing that says you cant theme your characters origins and picking the race you want to get the racial abilities. With custom lineage you miss out on racial abilities all together. I mean hell mechanically you are making something thats nothing like a Goliath or a Tiefling as you are not getting any racial traits from either besides darkvision ..... Personally because in Tasha's you can do this. Pick what you want your dominant race to be, change the ability score modifiers to what you want and call it a day.
@Xalthu If he puts +2 from racial traits in STR he should have a 16 STR which should be good.
Xalthu hits the majority of this on the head though. I use mounted combatant myself, however, I don't use it for a steed from Find Steed. I pick it up at later levels when you have a flying mount from Find Greater Steed. For the most part Paladins don't benefit that mouch from Mounted Combatant besides the choosing whats attacked but thats really your only benefit to taking it as a Paladin.
Mounted combatant I consider a free feat since I already had an 18 charisma at level 4 and didn’t want to be too far above the rest of the party for balance purposes. I see it as a good way to get free advantage in some outdoor encounters, similar to the vengeance paladin getting advantage once per short rest with its channel divinity. So I can add hex and even spiritual weapon to stack dpr (spiritual weapon + Hex outdamage a 2nd level smite in two turns), saving smites for crits, while not sacrificing my main focus of battlefield control as a conquest paladin.
First off fire resistance is far better than either of those two spells that you can only use once a day.
Second Spiritual Weapon and hex does not out damage Smite at 2nd lvl at all. Spiritual Weapon using a lvl 2 spell slot with Hex does 1d8+1d6+spell casting ability modifier. Your ability modifier. This means your doing 1d8+1d6+4. for an average of 12. A 2nd lvl Smite does 3d8 damage or 4d8 against undead/fiend, which averages out to 13.5 or 18 and has a far higher max on a crit. In fact not even casting Spiritual Weapon using a 9th lvl Spell Slot compares to a 4th lvl Divine Smite. So your wrong there you might want to learn how smite actually damages before making more claims and burning two spell slots to barely compete with the power of one.
Third if you picked a Goliath as you call your character a Tiefling Goliath you'd have Stone Endurance, can carry double your normal carry weight, and have resistance to cold damage.
With Fey-Touched the spells are added to my list, so they can be cast with a spell slot as well as used once per long rest. If you rate fire resistance above that, fine, but Misty Step is a great utility spell and Hex is a nice way to add to DPR (and I like them far more than most of the Tiefling spells). Also, it makes sense that the two races I've chosen would cancel out each other's resistances, so from a roleplay perspective I think it makes more sense to choose custom lineage over choosing either Tiefling or Goliath and say I'm a mix of the two.
To your DPR point, what I said was that hex + spiritual weapon would out-damage a smite after two turns. So I can get more damage out of a level 2 slot with Spiritual Weapon (since it lasts a minute) when the fight will take more than one or two rounds than I would using it on a single smite. Not to mention hex damage will be applied to all my other attacks as well. That way I can hopefully save more smites for critical hits, since my damage isn't relying on them as much.
Thank you for your input, though. I will consider what you said.
Well first this would only really matter against a Paladin at lvl at lvl 5 and youd start to see major fall off vs Divine smite over time across levels. Further at lvl 5 you're blowing most of your spell slots just to get this online to begin with. Level 5 is also not the time to be dumping that many spells, especially as a Paladin at that low of level it really costs you later on.