Playing paladin first time in forever.

[Pete Mack]

Book 1 is fine, though it'd be nice if See Invisible duration scaled with CL, like the other minor buffing spells.

Book 3 is killer, even though I can only cast slay evil with marginal reliability.

Book 2... not so much. I have yet to cast a single spell for anything except the mana points. I found this book at or before CL 25 and am now CL 36. With a weaker character, Protection from Evil might be somewhat useful, but it has always been better for giving priests some useful melee early. And even at CL 37... I found a randart Arkenstone at Dl 26, dropped by Bolg.

[Nick]

Thanks for the assessment, Pete. Here are some of my thoughts about the book 2 spells:

Protection from Evil - point taken.

Remove Curse - a bit niche, but does improve with player level, so it's like ?Remove Curse when you first get it, and scales to ?*Remove Curse* at CL50. Worth it? I don't know, I'd be interested to hear other opinions.

Word of Recall - saves an inventory slot (provided there's some other use for the book...)

Healing - this ought to be useful at some point, but can be redesigned to be better fit for purpose. Given Minor Healing scales quite well with CL, is a second healing spell needed?

Clairvoyance - not everyone gets an Arkenstone at DL 26. Should this be earlier, though?

No changes will make it into 4.2.2, but it would be good to do refinement of all the classes' spells (there's been a thread on rangers recently too), maybe for 4.2.3.

[Pete Mack]

As I stated elsewhere, I have always thought branded weapons phased out too early. With 'Battle Blessings', this is even more so. Lightning and acid brands are suddenly better than almost any other ego type, and cold branded MoD is good against essentially all serious monsters except tarrasque.

And minor healing doesn't scale *that* well. At CL 36, it's 46/9%. That is a pale shadow of the old paladin healing spell, and it doesn't affect secondary damage (cuts, poison, stun.) It certainly will never hold up going to to toe against any deep monsters, who easily do 100 damage per turn.

[archolewa]

I make very heavy use of the Heal spell once I get it at 5% fail rate. Sure you cant use it in an emergenc, but you can be aggressive with it to keep your health high. I use it pretty much whenever Im down 300 HP. In fact, I consider "reliable Heal" to be a vig jump in my paladins power level.

Enlightenment is the best spell in the second book. I play with standarts, and very rarely get the Arkenstone, and even when I do, giving up a Lantern of True Sight can be painful, so not needing the stone is wonderful. That being said, I dont think it comes too late to be useful.

Remove Curse on the other hand comes waaaay too late. The only time I have ever found myself wanting to use a cursed item is the early game. By the time Remove Curse comes online, you have enough gear that you can safely ignore cursed items.

Protection from Evil also phases out too quickly to be useful unless you get lucky and find the second book quickly (which has happened for me, but only rarely).

[Estie]

The arkenstone is - unrelated to paladin - in a messed up situation. With standarts, you find the phial early and the arkenstone late. Only about 1/3 of all randart sets have an arkenstone at all, but all artifact lights drop in a small window between ~ lvl 20 - 50. This has been adressed previously.

[Selkie]

Originally Posted by Estie

The arkenstone is - unrelated to paladin - in a messed up situation. With standarts, you find the phial early and the arkenstone late. Only about 1/3 of all randart sets have an arkenstone at all, but all artifact lights drop in a small window between ~ lvl 20 - 50. This has been adressed previously.

Lights are a major problem in randart sets. I thought they stopped appearing at level 40. Sometimes I have to spend so long on 20-39 just searching for a randart light

[Pete Mack]

I am sure I will eventually use the big healing spell, some time around CL 42. And yes, the recall spell allows me to carry the book for free, and yes clairvoyance is a fine spell, and I can sort of cast it now at CL 37. I might replace the arkenstone with something slightly more useful. But that is 2 spells that are truly useful quite late in the game. Something like temp nether resistance, or temp sustain_all might be class-suitable.

Temp rFire+rCold would free up two potion slots, but isn't quite as coherent.

[Pete Mack]

Or what is paladin thematically? Fights demons, while priests fight undead? Then temp rFire might be better, since fire is the element most associated with Hell.

[Pete Mack]

Oh yes: remove curse spell should show power. Right now I have no idea if it is worth using instead of waiting for *remove curse*.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Oh yes: remove curse spell should show power. Right now I have no idea if it is worth using instead of waiting for *remove curse*.

Good point.