I was asked to make a paladin build. So here it is:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nidukouvzz0ylao/Paladin%20Champion.odt?dl=0

Great Smiting X for 429 damage smites, and uses rapiers for better threat range. Critical smites for 858 damage.

It gets 30 charisma by level 40 but the other stats kind of suck. You will need to get good gear with stat bonuses on them.

I know people will tell me how bad it is, but I don't care. I had fun WTFpwning things when I was testing it out. I wonder if it could 1-hit kill mephistopheles?

I think I'm going to level one to 5 and play the Pirates of the Sword Coast module. I haven't played that before and I hear it's fun.

Like your previous build, this one focuses on being good at levels 30+, despite the fact that no campaign and very few modules get you that high.

Your smites won't be that powerful until you get all your epic smiting feats, and the rest of the time this character will have low damage output with only 13 strength (although divine might will help a bit I guess).

2 more minor remarks: what exactly is the purpose of the monk level you took, and you listed taking great cleave but not cleave, which is a prerequisite. And tbh, great cleave would be a mostly wasted feat since your character won't have the damage to kill even weak enemies in 1 hit.

I disagree. It gets good combat feats before 30 and it can do decent strength damage with gear like belts of giant strength. Combine that with a nymph cloak and divine might and it's doing good damage per hit. Maybe not as much as certain other builds but it does good.

28+ it only has great smite for feats. Meaning you have all your other feats tucked away at this point. The additional great smite feats are just gravy. It's good before level 30 it just builds up a higher damage multiplier for smite evil after 30.

The 1 level in Monk gets you 3 good feats for free. At level 1 Monks get a pile of feats but this only uses Cleave, Monk AC bonus, and Evasion. Evasion in particular stacks well the Champion of Torm's Sacred Defense (bonus saving throws).

The 1 level in Monk does reduce your potential damage for smite evil by a little bit but IMO it's worth it for the extra feats.

It does cleave okay. You have to use the paladin spells like magic weapon, greater magic weapon, and holy sword. They add bonus damage to your weapon, and combined with good gear and Divine Might it can take out weak enemies like goblins and such with a cleave.

Divine Might does work with cleave. The damage from Divine Might is a physical damage increase effect rather than an on-hit damage bonus (like fire damage on a sword like Harbinger Kin).

If you are going to focus on smite evil, I don't think you will find a better build. By waiting until after character level 20 to get your first Champion of Torm levels you get 4 bonus epic feats before level 30. Great Smiting IV at level 30 isn't a bad deal, considering you need 25 charisma to get the first level in it.

The monk AC bonus doesn't work while armored, and without armor you'd have very low AC considering your dex.

Even fully buffed, it's highly doubtful you could take out weak enemies in 1 hit past level 10. Great cleave is pretty much always a wasted feat except for builds that plan on getting overwhelming criticals tbh.

Sure, this char is good at smiting. But focusing on smite evil makes you a 1 trick pony, and smiters, especially ones that only get into divine champion late, are good against bosses but weak in pretty much every other fight unless you plan to rest to get your smites back all the time. Not to mention that until you get smite infidel from divine champion, your smites won't work on any enemy that's not evil.


Also, just as a reminder, HotU ends at about lvl 25 IIRC. Meaning by the time you face Mephistopheles, you won't even have gotten any of your epic smiting feats, and your smites will do little damage to him.
You should really stop planning your builds in the arena mod that lets you get to lvl 40 instantly, and instead plan on having to actually play them from lvl 1 to 30.

Another borderline unplayable build.

You have three smites, only against evil creatures and outside of that, it's pretty much useless.

Wow you guys are a bunch of trolls.

Yes I am leveling it up, and yes it does kick ass before level 20. Are you seriously suggesting it's hard to level up a paladin? Really? I mean, really?

If you think you can do better, try. I would be happy to pick apart whatever crap you can come up with.

Leveling it up. You mean in the Debug Mode, like your Arcane Archer?

In both cases you made combat classes with low total AB and low general damage. Which makes them annoying to play, to be generous.

If you want to make combat classes that get some respect you need Good BAB and concentrate on stat that boosts your AB, and have decent general damage.

So far you have let one or the other slip; Badly. Building one trick ponies that suck bad on multiple classes of enemies.

Great Cleave doesn't require you to take out foes in one hit. You just need to kill more than 1 foe in a round.

Suppose you have 4 attacks per round and great cleave. You kill a (wounded) enemy with your first attack. Cleave! Then, the second enemy, who's been wounded by the cleave, dies after attack 2 and 3. Great cleave! Then, you get to hit enemy 4 with your last attack. And should that one also die, you'd get another Great Cleave.

Also, there are some issues with the Cleave implementation in NWN1. Mainly, if you have 4 or more attacks per round and kill an enemy halfway through a flurry of attacks, the "cleave" will occur in the same flurry and therefore be aimed at the already dead opponent. Having Great Cleave resolves this, since you'll simply get 2 Great Cleaves: one against the already dead opponent, and one against the next foe.

Great Cleave is therefore far from useless even on low damage builds. In fact, I'd recommend it to any build that already has Cleave, unless severely feat-starved. (Although conversely, I wouldn't recommend either feat unless your build can afford it or needs it as prerequisite, since (great)Cleave is far from essential.)

Given the low strength on this build, it is unlikely it would face many enemies that it could reliably kill in one round.

Great Cleave for me is a qualifier for Dev Crit, or for very rare entertainment value (strong character encounters a horde of Kobolds).

For this build, yeah. Though the bug means that even if you only kill one foe a round, Great Cleave often is better than normal Cleave. But of course, it's not exactly worth it to spend 2 feats to get 1 cleave a round.

Still, in general, a dual-wielding monk or something with lots of low-damage attacks does benefit from Great Cleave for this reason.

Short answer: IMPOSSIBLE. Not even worth considering...

... for many reasons.

First, your Level 28 toon will be doing relatively low damage as a dedicated smiter not more than 100-150 per smite figuring on the additional bonuses from Divine Might, Prayer, capped Strength, Divine Favor, a +10 weapon enhancement... yada yada yada. Even your Level 40 product wouldn't come close to a one-hit kill (assuming you didn't die in the first few rounds by getting DevCritted).

Meph is immune to crits so you'd need at least 8-10 successful smites to kill him. His 1000+ HPs won't drop all in one fell swoop with your rapier.

Did I mention his 20/- resistance to physical damage? Add that to the laundry list.

The highest possible damage adept dedicated smiter is a pally/CoT/WM SCYTHE-WIELDER. Easily. And that also wouldn't be able to one-hit kill Meph.

Not sure why you bothered to dilute your smiting focus with a single level of monk (I suppose to get free Cleave? which has no bearing at all on smiting), but WM5 is the key to reaching the insane smite damage levels (well over 2K on a crit). Crit range also has little impact on damage because all it does is allow you to crit lower ACs more often. To maximize damage against the toughest bosses, figure on either not being able to crit them at all because their AC is beyond your AB+20 potential, or just barely be able to reach it on a high roll, probably 19 or 20.

But all this is light years beyond your build. As long as you have fun playing a non-optimized build, that's all that is important, I suppose. Single player has reloads so you can die as often as you want without concerning yourself with how to make your ideas more competitive from a statistical aspect.

Game on, mate!

Charisma paladins are quite silly. They have crazy saves and AC, tons of non-physical damage, and enough AB from spells to hit things consistently, even up to level 40. In the Single Player Campaigns, they have little to no trouble killing most things, especially once they're geared up.

But as for Smite: It is very fun wtf-pwning things with it, but only from above level 30, as it takes quite a few feats to make it viable. Hordes of the Underdark finishes at level 28 [assuming solo and no cheating, by then every monster is only worth 40xp regardless of level]. This is not enough levels to build up a decent smite.

Part of the challenge of a campaign powerbuild is that is has to be playable at all levels, and ends usually at a level cap before 20 or 40 [17 for original, 13 for sou, 28 for hotu for example]. Level 40 builds that peak late [for example a Dragon Shifter] aren't viable in Single player unless you plan to artificially level them via DebugMode or similar.

Paladins are usually pretty playable at all levels anyway so this shouldn't be an issue. This build looks pretty good [I like the early Monk Level, gives some gear options+Evasion+Cleave], but imo it could be tweaked a bit.

Assuming that you'd be playing it in a campaign and not a level 40 environment and without DebugMode, I wouldn't see the point in raising charisma so high from the beginning or focusing on Smiting, as it won't be powerful by level 28. You'd be better, imo, rounding out the abilities, say something like:

14 str
8 dex, drink a cats grace potion to get it to 12 if necessary,
10 con
14 int
14 wis
16 cha [all points here, to 24]

And focusing mainly on paladin after 20, with maybe a monk chucked in at 22 or 27 for a tumble dump. Say Paladin 26 Monk 2.

I also wouldn't bother with Great Cleave [kinda more a Dev Crit pre-req, Cleave should be enough] Extra Turning and Smiting [you'll have plenty of turn undeads].

Maybe something like:

1. Weapon Focus, Power Attack
2. *Monk: Cleave*
3. Divine Might
6. Knockdown [always fun]
9. Improved Critical
12. Blind Fight
15. Divine Shield
18. Extend Spell [for extra divine favours]
21. Epic Weapon Focus
24. Improved Power Attack [more damage, why not]
27. Great Charisma

*Paladin Bonus*: Epic Prowess, Armour Skin.

And have skills as Discipline, Heal, Lore, Taunt [you have charisma, may as well use it for this!] and Tumble [on monk levels].

This way, it's more well rounded from start to finish, and will probably still give Meph a run for his money. I realise this does cut out the core point of the build [smiting], but again, you probably wont get much out of that within the constraints of a campaign. Better to just be a solid Charisma Paladin.

Regarding your comment on a physical damage cap at 100: Such a thing doesn't exist. Strength is capped at 255, though above strength 100 characters are permanently encumbered. Useful if you're thinking about creating strong monsters in a module or artifically raising stats as a DM, not so applicable for players. :P

Anyway, personal preference. Please don't interpret this as an attack, just commenting on how I'd do it I suppose.

I imagine what you have is a fun build. :)