Knight of the Chalice Update Ideas

[Grailhawk]

TLDR: Some mook playing armchair developer because KotC is getting update this year, and because I got sick of my Paladin and TRed him.

• Increase light damage in the cores by 2d6 or 3d6 maybe use a 1/2/3/5/7/9d6 progression.
• Increase the light damage melee power scaling to 150%
• Make the capstone better add say 10-20 more Melee Power, PRR, and MRR
• Improve Exalted Smite add 1/2/3[w] to what it does now so that its better damage even when it doesn't crit.
• Combine Censure Demons and Outsider into a single tier 4 enhancement. (mostly so there is room to add a new tier 5)
• Combine Sealed Life and Vigor of Life in tier 5. (again mostly to make room for a new tier 5)
• Holy Retribution
  • Remove the HP limit on the insta-kill effect and increase the cooldown (say 60 seconds)
  • or
  • Increase the damage (say 500-1000) the target takes on a successful save and have it scale with melee power (say 200%).
• Avenging Cleave needs to apply more stacks of Vulnerability (say 1d6+1)
• Add New Tier 5's
  • Add a Vendetta (from Vistani) style clicky. I would suggest 5-10d6 light damage and 20-70 Melee Power on a 15 second up 60-90 second cooldown.
  • Add another Smite attack.
    • A smite that makes the paladin harder to kill if it lands. Something like +5[w] and +30 temp HP per paladin level on a 15-45 second cooldown.
    • or
    • A big damage smite. Something like 100% chance to crit with +3 crit multiplier on a rather short cooldown 6-12 seconds

[bloodnose13]

looking back at previous attempts to i really expect something like one or three enchancements to have their ap cost lowered, and maybe some extra crutch added, because.... you know.... paladins cant afford it.

in all seriousness though, i think that what should happen is for all the crutches to be removed and all of those paladin trees, not just kotc to gain the paladin theme that is inline with whats on that class in pnp.

by crutches i mean cleaves, retribution, all that stuff, cleaves are a sad joke, retribution is all powerful and goody, until run out of turns, and then, then you see again what it means to have paladin dps.

fact is that paladin trees were designed as one, one for sort of attack other for sort of defence, last one to make those with shields feel better, its a design that is supposed to make it more useful for multiclasses not for pure paladin builds, so how i see it:

vanguard tree should be made into universal tree and placed in pdk favor reward, there are other classes that would benefit from it. there is a tree based around shield in the class already and thats defender, it should have own shield focus and then maybe the tree would not feel like its made just for convenience, that tree is more useful for kotc or vanguard or multiclass to add some defences than other way around.

maybe all the paladin trees should be changed and reworked to oath idea. with each tree having own attack, defence and utility.

[Xgya]

TLDR: Some mook playing armchair developer because KotC is getting update this year, and because I got sick of my Paladin and TRed him.

• Increase light damage in the cores by 2d6 or 3d6 maybe use a 1/2/3/5/7/9d6 progression.
• Increase the light damage melee power scaling to 150%
• Make the capstone better add say 10-20 more Melee Power, PRR, and MRR
• Improve Exalted Smite add 1/2/3[w] to what it does now so that its better damage even when it doesn't crit.
• Combine Censure Demons and Outsider into a single tier 4 enhancement. (mostly so there is room to add a new tier 5)
• Combine Sealed Life and Vigor of Life in tier 5. (again mostly to make room for a new tier 5)
• Holy Retribution
  • Remove the HP limit on the insta-kill effect and increase the cooldown (say 60 seconds)
  • or
  • Increase the damage (say 500-1000) the target takes on a successful save and have it scale with melee power (say 200%).
• Avenging Cleave needs to apply more stacks of Vulnerability (say 1d6+1)
• Add New Tier 5's
  • Add a Vendetta (from Vistani) style clicky. I would suggest 5-10d6 light damage and 20-70 Melee Power on a 15 second up 60-90 second cooldown.
  • Add another Smite attack.
    • A smite that makes the paladin harder to kill if it lands. Something like +5[w] and +30 temp HP per paladin level on a 15-45 second cooldown.
    • or
    • A big damage smite. Something like 100% chance to crit with +3 crit multiplier on a rather short cooldown 6-12 seconds

I'd give the light damage the Spellsword treatment instead.
1d6 + 1/3 Paladin levels, with the die itself increasing with the cores.
Make it scale with 200% melee power. Every non-base-weapon damage that does scale seems to use this standard nowadays (sneak attack, runearm procs)

I'd want something in there that recharges smites on hit/crit. Maybe the Exalted Smite buff should be just that? Crit with it, doesn't cost a Smite charge?

Adding just a single stack of Vulnerability to the Avenging Cleave will allow Paladins to stack it up. They need this.

Disagree with the smite making a Paladin harder to kill. KotC is supposed to be the Paladin's pure DPS tree. I know it's a bit overused, but give some critical goodness in T5 (make it apply only to the deity's favored weapon? Paladins get favored weapons, and then suddenly forget the option even exists unless they spend extra feats on it themselves - and even then)