Skill choice

[un4given]

Building a 2wf pure paladin.

Was going to take UMD since I plan to have around 20 base charisma come level 20 (without enh/items/ect). Also taking Balance since it's pretty mandatory. 1 point in tumble to even out the numbers. The question is:

is it worth eating a +2 int tome at 1 to pick up diplomacy? My toon won't have a huge HP pool and his AC won't be amazing either. Was thinking of Diplo as sort of a fall back cushion for when things got too hot for my toon. Or could I get away with running umd/balance and not worry about diplo?

[Ralmeth]

I do not recommend taking diplomacy, or even worse, using it in combat. As a Paladin, the last thing you want to do is give aggro to someone else on purpose, especially a squishy. Instead, it would be worth to use that tome so you can put points into jump.

[Fennario]

I'm not entirely sure balance is the way to go either.

You said that you are building a twf pally. So that meant that you are going to have a 17 base dex at least. Your balance should be fine without any ranks put into it. Just slap a balance item on when you need it. There's really only a few places that you get knocked down a lot anyway.

6 dex mod (17 + 5 item)
15 item (find on AH or can even use the Co6 boots)
4 gh
----
25
-5 if you wear dt fullplate
-----
20

You'll bounce back up just fine.

[SEMPER]

how about intimidate ?

your gonna have a pretty good cha and being able to fill in or be the intimidator is very helpful sometimes and u dont have to have uber ac to fill these shoes some just do it by melee ne way imho

[William_the_Bat]

I like that so many of the skills are useful.

My fairly old pally took concentration and balance. If I were starting him over, I'd take UMD and intimidate, but cringe every time I got knocked down or interrupted trying to re-apply divine favor and zeal mid-combat.

[Ralmeth]

I'm not entirely sure balance is the way to go either.

You said that you are building a twf pally. So that meant that you are going to have a 17 base dex at least. Your balance should be fine without any ranks put into it. Just slap a balance item on when you need it. There's really only a few places that you get knocked down a lot anyway.

6 dex mod (17 + 5 item)
15 item (find on AH or can even use the Co6 boots)
4 gh
----
25
-5 if you wear dt fullplate
-----
20

You'll bounce back up just fine.

That's assuming you want to wear your balance boots all the time as well as a dex item (both of which are nice to have, but up for debate as item slots are tight). I agree with you that you could get by without it, but I do think it's a very useful skill to be putting points into.

[Ralmeth]

how about intimidate ?

your gonna have a pretty good cha and being able to fill in or be the intimidator is very helpful sometimes and u dont have to have uber ac to fill these shoes some just do it by melee ne way imho

That's a good idea too. You just need to know when and when not to use it. You definitely would not want to spam intimidate, but used at the right times it could be very useful.