Paladin/Crusader/Ruby Knight Vindicator/Crusader attempted build

[Particle_Man]

I am thinking of a character that would be assigned to a Cleric of Wee Jas in a PC party, as servant and bodyguard. So I will avoid stepping on the cleric's toes with a Windicator build that ends up with 9th level spell slots in their own right.

I will assume that there are long-standing legal agreements in place that exempt paladins of Wee Jas from obeying any orders from the clergy that would violate the paladin's oaths, and that a cleric of Wee Jas would know this. With that presumably well-known caveat in place, the character would be there to serve the cleric, protect her and her companions, follow her orders, and, of course, be cool.

I am taking some "kewl powers" (Cute little fire elemental for flanking! Immunity to Fire! Budget teleportation! Awesomesauce saving throws!). I am also trying for a "lockdown on a budget" build.

So I guess part of what I am looking for is whether I have built the character legally, and understood how it works appropriately. And of course, I post this partly to bore you all by telling you about my character.

Ok, here goes:

Human Paladin 1 - 4. Max out Know (religion), Intimidate, and (painfully) Hide (cross-class). Try for Diplomacy too if possible (I would love to be a polite servant, almost butler-level polite).

Feats: 1, H: Combat Reflexes, Stand Still. Try to get armour spikes and then a martial reach weapon of some sort. Brother, can you spare a potion of Enlarge Person? 3: Martial Study: Distracting Ember (I will name her Sparky) (Initiator level 1). Since I pick this up before getting a level in Crusader, it would only be usable once per encounter. On the plus side, it would not take up a slot of the Crusader's readied maneuvers. I would start buying a little Tumble if I can do so and still meet the prerequisites of the prestige class. It would only be useable when I am out of armour (town encounters, night encounters, etc.) but I have my reasons; see below.

Crusader 1 (at 5th). Initiator level 3. I would probably use only 2nd level Maneuvers here, avoiding the Shield one because I am going for that reach weapon which is likely two-handed. So, Foe Hammer, Mountain Hammer, Stone Vise, Battle Leader's Charge, and Tactical Strike, for Maneuvers, and Iron Guard's Glare for the stance (so a little lock-downish with the stance and Stone Vise). Again Tumble would be nice.

Ruby Knight Vindicator 1 - 10 (Character level 6th - 15; Initiator level 4 - 13). First Stance: Child of Shadow (nice default one when not in combat). Second Stance: Thicket of Blades (better late than never). Maneuvers: Defensive Rebuke, Divine Surge, Shadow Stride, Crushing Vise, Ancient Mountain Hammer (I thought about Death in the Dark but that didn't seem really paladinesque, somehow). Keep up that Tumble!

Feats: 6: Extra Granted Maneuver (Crusader love!). 9: Extra Turning (RKV love!). 12: Robilar's Gambit (Lock-down love!). 15: Martial Stance: Flame's Blessing (see, those ranks in Tumble finally pay off!).

Crusader 2 - 6 (Character level 16 - 20; Initiator level 14 - 18). Stance: Aura of Perfect Order (also a good default stance out of combat, if I don't mind being flashy). Maneuvers: 17: White Raven Tactics, 18: White Raven Hammer (replace Foe Hammer), 19: Strike of Righteous Vitality, 20: Mountain Tombstone Strike (replace Stone Vise). Getting some armour that is enchanted to give bonuses to hide and move silently couldn't hurt.

Feat 18: Martial Study: Diamond Defense (+16 (and more later!) to a saving throw? Please and thank you!).

Paladin Spells: Bless Weapon, ???. I dunno. I am tempted to fill the spell slots with nothing but Bless Weapon, frankly. Wands would be nice too.

So I think I end up with Distracting Ember (1x/encounter) and then Moutain Tombstone Strike, Strike of Righteous Vitality, White Raven Hammer, White Raven Tactics (or Defensive Rebuke - not sure yet), Diamond Defense, Crushing Vise and Shadow Stride as my 7 readied manuevers qua Crusader, although the other maneuvers see use during the character's career.

Magic Items: No real firmed up ideas aside from my scattered thoughts above. I mean, I would not say no to a Holy Avenger.

[Saintheart]

If you're looking at the spell angle, consider Battle Blessing (Complete Champion) - turns basically all Paladin spells into swift action spells, which is sheer gold for a Ruby Knight Windicator because you can spend turn undeads for additional swift actions per round once you get Divine Impetus. In the meantime, though, Battle Blessing gives you even more things you can do with your swift actions than just perform ToB counters and immediate actions. If you take it you're best advised to get a ruling whether Divine Impetus allows you more than 2 swift actions per round and therefore more than 2 Paladin spells per round, but even on 2 swift actions per round it's a damn nice feature for the gishy Paladin.

Paladin spell selection is a lot sweeter than it first appears. The Playground has some ideas about it here.

[Particle_Man]

Thanks for the info! I don’t think I will go for the feat (too few spell slots for one thing, too feat-starved for another) but I appreciate the idea and the info on spells.

[Saintheart]

Fair enough. Some other random thoughts:

(1) This is going to need a reasonably high DEX to use Combat Reflexes and AoOs a lot as a means of achieving lockdowns. Not sure if Robilar's Gambit allows you to exceed the maximum AoO limit imposed by your DEX bonus out of this - you might need DM clearance before going down this path.

(2) I'd repeat what I said about getting DM clearance as to how many swift actions RKV's Divine Impetus can pull per round. If all you can pull is 2, then you might not need to go with Extra Turning. If your CHA bonus is decent that's roughly 5 or 6 TU attempts per day, which Extra Turning might increase to about 9 or 10 per day. But once you know what that ruling is, the relevant question still becomes: how many of your maneuvers are a swift action or immediate action?

Remember that you already get a swift action per round as it is; the question to be asked is how often are you going to have to burn 2 or more swift actions in a single round, what's your combination of maneuvers going to be that allows that to happen - especially given Crusaders get their maneuvers at random? If you have 4 TU attempts per day (3 + CHA 12), then in four fights per day you can pull 2 swift actions in 1 round once.

For a Ruby Knight Paldicator with Battle Blessing, Extra Turning is a good idea - because it means you're casting every round as well as initiating swift action maneuvers every round. For a Paladin who isn't putting a priority on casting, you might not need it as much; for a lockdown build I would seriously consider Improved Trip in place of Extra Turning at least.

[Particle_Man]

Well in the tradition of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, I don't have a DM yet for this build - it is an idea I hope to try at some point though. So unless the DM is *me* then I just have to guess at char gen rules and rules on how many swift actions a RKV can get. I suppose the conservative answer is to use the default array and say the RKV only gets one extra swift action per turn and that Robilar's doesn't allow more attacks of opportunity than Combat Reflexes alone would grant.

So str 15 (improve more at 12th, 16th, 20th), con 14, dex 13 (to 14 at 8th level), int 8, wis 10 (improve to 11 at 4th level), chr 12. Assuming I can get the skill points to get into RKV (back of the napkin says . . . barely).

I guess the turn undead ability could also be used for getting a manoeuvre back that I really need right now or for getting a +4 to hit if I really need to hit a bad guy. And if I need to switch a stance in a hurry it can be useful to free up a swift action. It also depends on how many encounters I have per day.

That said, I see your point. But I don't want to give up two feat slots to get up to Improved Trip, and I want to get the maneuvers I have into the build so there is less room for the usual ways to get Combat Expertise and Improved Trip (something about 2 levels in a wolf totem barbarian (or, I suppose, a fighter)). That was why I called it a "budget lockdown build".

[Kayblis]

Just throwing it out there, you seem to not be using a shield in the name of keeping Reach. Thus you miss out on the cool maneuvers for shielding your friends and any shield-based enchanting. Let's fix that, shall we?

There is an exotic weapon called Spinning Sword, a whip-like Slashing weapon in the likes of a flail, that is Light and has reach of 10ft while being able to strike adjacent enemies. It's basically a one-handed Spiked Chain that can't be used two-handed for power attack or the extra 1/2 STR bonus. It deals 1d6 damage(medium), can be finessed and can be used as a belt for concealment(incurring a Search check to detect as a weapon). It comes from the Secrets of Sarlona book, and fits religious weaponry as whips and such are ceremonial tools in some religions.

If you plan on going lockdown with low STR, most of your damage will come from maneuvers and such, so it's not a big loss and you only ever need to enchant one weapon. If you're not interested in investing the feat on EWP, a +1 Animated Shield costs 9000gp and can still be used for Shield maneuvers.

[Particle_Man]

I like the notion of the animated shield and might consider adding the seventh level shield “you auto miss” maneuver. Again, it would depend on the dm and whether magic items are made, bought, or randomly found.

Thanks for the idea!

What else, well I estimate that I would have some skill points left over even with int 10 (go humans!). So I guess maxing out Hide makes sense. Other than that, maybe Move Silently, Spot, Listen, Diplomacy . . . well that is spreading things a bit thin, I guess.

Any thoughts?

Let's see: level 1 I max out Know (religion) and Intimidate and Hide to 2 ranks each. Levels 2 - 4 I max out Hide to 4 ranks and intimidate to 3. Level 5 I max out intimidate to 4 ranks and get 3 ranks in tumble.
Level 6, 7 ranks in tumble. Level 7, 10 ranks in tumble. One rank free. Ok. Level 8 - 16 keep putting one rank into tumble to get 19 ranks total. But that leaves 4 ranks per level from level 8 to 16 and 5 ranks per level from levels 17 - 20 to buy stuff with. So that is, what 57 ranks? Maxing out Hide (fits a class ability) would be 19 of those ranks, leaving 38 ranks. I guess split four ways that would be 8 ranks in Diplomacy, and 5 ranks each in MS, Spot and Listen (as they are cross-class skills). Anyhow, just a thought. I could probably take some of the tumble ranks a little later and take some of the other skills a little earlier.

[Particle_Man]

I think I miscalculated on skill points. Intimidation is not a class skill for paladins so I need int 10 to meet the rkv prerequisites. Guess I will put the 8 into wis and use wands for bless weapon and the like. I can improve dex at fourth level and str after that.

[Arkain]

Intimidate is a class skill for Crusaders, so just put some points into it then.

[Particle_Man]

Agreed but if I want to get into rkv by level six I also need to max out know (religion) and hide at level five. That leaves two points at level five (the crusader level if I want 2nd level maneuvers). I fall short on the count because the other two intimidate ranks cost four skill points.

Even with int 9 improved to 10 at level 4 I fall aggravatingly short. There are ways around this but each has a cost. Better by far if I can start with int 10 or higher.

But if I must, I would delay entry by one level. This would get Thicket if Blades sooner but I would never get child of shadow. To get the maneuvers I want and stances I want I would likely go paladin 4/crusader 2/rkv 1/crusader 1/rkv 8/crusader 1/rkv 1/crusader 2.