Pally Past Life Build for my Monk.

[Musashiclaw]

I want to use alot of the gear I have farmed out for my monk and use it for this Pally past life. I also thought about trying to fit in the ability to do traps on elite. I will TR right after so this is not an endgame build.

I know alot to hope for in a build...

Any help would be appreciated.

[Munkenmo]

As someone who's done 3 pally lives to improve my monk, I worked around the following templates.

9monk = touch of death, improved evasion and ensures i'll have good unarmed damage, so i can justify my handwraps.
1 arti = +2 umd with scrolls, +1 weapon / armor buff, repair spell, and access to open locks / other rogue skills (i generally ignored traps and just opened locks)
10 paladin = qualifies for paladin past life

I tried going for a half elf with cleric dilly, but was underwhelmed, the same time i could use heal scrolls with the dilly, i had access to all my umd gear and was no failing heal scrolls, i swapped to rogue dilly, but i generally don't get sneak attacks that much when i'm soloing TR's.

Human with heal amp was a nice life, the extra skill point made for an easier time picking up search / disable.

Warforged was my favorite overall, the free arti repair was enough to heal me through most content in between fights up untill i could heal scroll, no negative levels was a bonus, and the healing amp was good enough in firestance.

leveling order

1 arti, 9monk, 10paladin.

pick up ninja spy 1, and then hunter of the dead for the heal amp / ghost touch.

[JOTMON]

I went Human Pal10/Monk9/Rogue1. for a couple TR lives.
Light side/ Heal amp/ Hunter of the dead. rarely had to drink a pot with constant healing curse and high healing amp.

Level 1 Rogue
2-10 Monk
11-20 Paladin
TR again..

Stonedust Handwraps are great for levelling TR Monk splash lives

[karl_k0ch]

As someone who's done 3 pally lives to improve my monk, I worked around the following templates.

This is what I saw working very well on a guildmate of mine. Traps is a matter of skill points, and might work on a human; Maxing Search, Disable Device and UMD needs 6 skill points per level, i.e.

2 paladin
1 human
3 int = 16 Int,
which is 13 base int, if you have a +3 tome. This, unfortunately, dumps concentration. You could go with 12 base int and ignore UMD on paladin levels.

[Musashiclaw]

Fortunately I have +4's on this guy across the board(was my Christmas present for this project).

I have most of the good handwraps. I have all the good cannith stuff for level 4, 12, 16 for leveling him as a monk.
I wanted to make sure I could use this gear and my handwraps(my bank is already full of too much stuff as it is. I would hate to add crafted swords in there)

I appreciate the advice I will think on it some more. It will probably be a week or so before this guy hits 20 for his last monk PL and I TR him to a Pally.

Anyone else have advice?


PS
fTdOmen
Did you do any Rogue PL for sneak attack damage? the deal +1 damage when sneak attacking sounds interesting but may not be worth the grind.

[whomhead]

I have enjoyed using the 15 paladin, 4 monk, 1 rogue/fighter template. I wrote it up some time ago, so the thread is a bit out of date, but here it is: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=313168

If you're going light path, then I don't see much advantage to taking more than 4 monk levels on a paladin past life. You will get more DPS out of extra paladin levels (via zeal and divine might) than you get from the extra die-step and second tier stances from more monk. If you're OK with going dark path, then the 10/9/1 template should work very well.

[Munkenmo]

PS
fTdOmen
Did you do any Rogue PL for sneak attack damage? the deal +1 damage when sneak attacking sounds interesting but may not be worth the grind.

I've done 3barb, 3pally, 3monk, 3f so far.

now i'm working on 3 arti, then i'm just going to do 1 each of the remaining classes to unlock completionist.

3 rogue tempts me, and i may get round to doing 2more, but the bonus is so miniscule compared to ED's that i'm not going to bother unless i get sick of playing at cap again.

also, i'd never bother with 3 barb lives had i known about the cap increase, it's next to no difference now, where as +3 umd towards a heal scroll from arti is huge.

[Uska]

I did 1/9/10 rogue/monk/paly could find and disarm nearly every trap and did well grouped or solo I went light monk and human for self healing. that was khandi's first paly life and wish I had done it this time instead of pure paladin for second paly life.

[Musashiclaw]

I did 1/9/10 rogue/monk/paly could find and disarm nearly every trap and did well grouped or solo I went light monk and human for self healing. that was khandi's first paly life and wish I had done it this time instead of pure paladin for second paly life.

have a copy of that build?

[Kinerd]

Beware Divine Sacrifice and Smite Evil while fighting unarmed. For this reason you may be better off just grabbing some trashy scimitars for your paladin life/lives. You may be even better off not TRing at all.

[Uska]

Nvm

[Uska]

have a copy of that build?

Not handy but did it as a 36 pt build with all +3 tomes I think 14 starting int rogue 1st level then 3 monk for fists of light then 6 paladin then 6 more monk then the rest paladin. I quickly did enough epics and got my true heart and Tr'd again couldn't do it as fast this time no time to,play

[whomhead]

Beware Divine Sacrifice and Smite Evil while fighting unarmed. For this reason you may be better off just grabbing some trashy scimitars for your paladin life/lives. You may be even better off not TRing at all.

Care to back that assertion up?

[karl_k0ch]

Care to back that assertion up?

Slow attack animation, only performs a mainhand attack, and no offhands when unarmed.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Beware Divine Sacrifice and Smite Evil while fighting unarmed. For this reason you may be better off just grabbing some trashy scimitars for your paladin life/lives. You may be even better off not TRing at all.

Divine might on the other hand works fine.

[whomhead]

Slow attack animation, only performs a mainhand attack, and no offhands when unarmed.

I guess I wasn't exactly clear. I am well aware that the divine sacrifice/smite abilities don't work well unarmed. I was referring to the (seemingly, to me at least, wildly false) assertion that he would be better off using crappy scimitars over going unarmed. While it is true that the abilities mentioned don't work well unarmed, there are many other things about unarmed (faster attack speeds, full strength bonus to off-hand, stunning fist...) that are very advantageous on a paladin.

[Lonnbeimnech]

I guess I wasn't exactly clear. I am well aware that the divine sacrifice/smite abilities don't work well unarmed. I was referring to the (seemingly, to me at least, wildly false) assertion that he would be better off using crappy scimitars over going unarmed. While it is true that the abilities mentioned don't work well unarmed, there are many other things about unarmed (faster attack speeds, full strength bonus to off-hand, stunning fist...) that are very advantageous on a paladin.

Also, you would be doing 2d6 unarmed with 9 monk, up to 3d6 if you had reinforced fists and monk pl, compared to a scimmys 1d6 up to 1.5d6 if you had some gs.

Not to mention touch of death...

[Kinerd]

I guess I wasn't exactly clear. I am well aware that the divine sacrifice/smite abilities don't work well unarmed. I was referring to the (seemingly, to me at least, wildly false) assertion that he would be better off using crappy scimitars over going unarmed. While it is true that the abilities mentioned don't work well unarmed, there are many other things about unarmed (faster attack speeds, full strength bonus to off-hand, stunning fist...) that are very advantageous on a paladin.

Well, most importantly I didn't say "would be", I said "may be", but let's look at your points.

1. A leveling paladin doesn't have a huge amount of Strength bonus. (This point exacerbates the advantage of Divine Sacrifice's 5d6.)

2. The faster attack speed is also mitigated by the enhanced critical profile. Scimitar starts at 25, and about a sixth of the time is at 31 via DS so it's more like a 26, unarmed is 21, that's a 24% increase. The attack speed is about a 10% increase, and you're not going to have a large enough amount of magical effects (keeping in mind the ~d6 advantage from DS) to overcome that.

3. Stunning fist is very good, but one of its serious bonuses is to survivability, which is not relevant on a paladin.

Looking at these points, I can see how a transitional paladin may be better off with scims vs. wraps.

[whomhead]

Well, most importantly I didn't say "would be", I said "may be", but let's look at your points.

1. A leveling paladin doesn't have a huge amount of Strength bonus. (This point exacerbates the advantage of Divine Sacrifice's 5d6.)

2. The faster attack speed is also mitigated by the enhanced critical profile. Scimitar starts at 25, and about a sixth of the time is at 31 via DS so it's more like a 26, unarmed is 21, that's a 24% increase. The attack speed is about a 10% increase, and you're not going to have a large enough amount of magical effects (keeping in mind the ~d6 advantage from DS) to overcome that.

3. Stunning fist is very good, but one of its serious bonuses is to survivability, which is not relevant on a paladin.

Looking at these points, I can see how a transitional paladin may be better off with scims vs. wraps.

1) The 5d6 from DS only occurs when you actually use the ability. The strength bonus to off-hand occurs every single time your off-hand attacks, full stop. You will also gain greater benefit to that through the faster attack animation.

2) Again, it seems as though you're imagining that every attack is a DS. That 1/6 increase to 31 is only when you activate DS. The 10% increase to attack speeds is every time, all the time. Also, there is no reason not to be using holy handwraps of bleeding at basically all times on a TR. How would those compare to the "crappy scimitars" you are imagining? Keep in mind, the person we are ostensibly advising here is TRing a monk, so they should have access to good wraps - that's 2d6 + 1d8 (at least) that you get every single time you attack, and by the way did I mention that you'll be attacking 10% faster? Then there are the ki strikes and benefits of being in monk stance that you don't get at all with scimitars.

3) First, just because paladins can self-heal does not mean that they don't benefit from greater survivability. A benefit is a benefit. Also, there is that apparently negligible consideration of the 50% increased damage and sneak attack that you get on stunned mobs. Throughout heroic leveling, SF is practically an insta-death attack for how quickly stunned stuff dies.

[boredman]

An unarmed paladin is totally viable in my opinion (more if you have good monk gear), and i think some splashes you can make are

Paladin 14/monk 6 , for paladin tier II prestige, one level 4 spell (either zeal or csw), 25% incorporeal from ninja spy I and extra monk features

Paladin 15/monk 4/rogue 1 or Fighter 1, for two level 4 spells, DM III, light monk for healing ki and 1 min buffs, rogue for umd or fighter for extra feat.

Paladin 11/monk 9, for one level 3 spell, tierI paladin prestige, ninja spy I, touch of death, improved evasion, little more fast movement.

Paladin 18/monk 2, for paladin tier III prestige, more sp, hp, bab

(even with just unarmed strike I, you can do very decent dps with handwraps + zeal, Df, DM, DS I and good gear and maybe some wis+stunning fist + improve sunder investment if want to play at epic levels)

But if you want to do elite traps can make a Paladin 12/rogue 4/monk 4 splash, with some int invest probably can do traps without much stat compromise and umd with some sneak damage, uncany dodge, haste boost II, light monk benefits and unarmed strike II.

Or a Paladin 12/rogue 6 or 7/monk 1 or 2 with better sneak damage and easily trap skills and umd, no monk path but still able to use monk gear and extra monk feat and monk stance and decent cmw on HOTD prestige with heal amp gear and race.