For example my next Paladin build will be a half-elf Paladin, and I'll dump strength completely (no multiclassing). His weapons will therefore be finesse only and sword and board fighting with the dueling style. Carrying a rapier, whip, dagger, and longbow, stats 8/16/14/10/10/17 so I can fit Elven Accuracy in there sometime. Of course because he's a dexterity fighter he can actually use Elven Accuracy whereas if he was a strength based fighter he couldn't, and fishing for criticals never hurts.
Pretty much any build (unless you do something completely wrong) is viable.
Do you mean unarmed combat? Or are you just talking about melee in general. Freeman gives a good example of a dex build paladin with a finesse weapon, which can work really well.
If you mean unarmed combat, just, like, punching people. Then no. On a hit you'd be doing 3 damage (1+str is standard unarmed damage). I'm not sure if your unarmed hit would count as a melee weapon (I don't think it does), meaning you couldn't smite with it. You could take tavern brawler to get to a d4+str for damage, but that doesn't fix the fist-is-not-a-weapon problem.
Of course, it also depends on the enemy. If you're fighting a monk, they'll beat you up. If you're fighting a monster, they'll win. If you're fighting a fighter, it could go either way. If you and a wizard (who promises not to use spells) are boxing, you'll probably win.
my paladin is a dex paladin so I didn’t put my strength as my top score. So I have a 14 strength (+2). Would he be good in hand to hand? Just curious.
Depends what you're doing with him.
For example my next Paladin build will be a half-elf Paladin, and I'll dump strength completely (no multiclassing). His weapons will therefore be finesse only and sword and board fighting with the dueling style. Carrying a rapier, whip, dagger, and longbow, stats 8/16/14/10/10/17 so I can fit Elven Accuracy in there sometime. Of course because he's a dexterity fighter he can actually use Elven Accuracy whereas if he was a strength based fighter he couldn't, and fishing for criticals never hurts.
Pretty much any build (unless you do something completely wrong) is viable.
Do you mean unarmed combat? Or are you just talking about melee in general. Freeman gives a good example of a dex build paladin with a finesse weapon, which can work really well.
If you mean unarmed combat, just, like, punching people. Then no. On a hit you'd be doing 3 damage (1+str is standard unarmed damage). I'm not sure if your unarmed hit would count as a melee weapon (I don't think it does), meaning you couldn't smite with it. You could take tavern brawler to get to a d4+str for damage, but that doesn't fix the fist-is-not-a-weapon problem.
Of course, it also depends on the enemy. If you're fighting a monk, they'll beat you up. If you're fighting a monster, they'll win. If you're fighting a fighter, it could go either way. If you and a wizard (who promises not to use spells) are boxing, you'll probably win.
Thanks! Now I’m trying to optimize my build more to be able to be good at fighting even with out weapons.
Then there’s tavern brawler. Or a couple levels in monk, of course.
My character can’t be a monk because his embarrassingly low wisdom