When Player’s Handbook 2 came out, I was mostly interested in the Avenger sort of in the abstract… I liked the fact that there was a “holy warrior” that was completely different from Paladins. Now that Divine Power has come out, it’s easier to make two Paladins who are different from each other, especially when you start tailoring their feat choices, but the existence of Avengers still makes things more interesting.

When Divine Power was newer, I mentioned the possibility of making a Paladin who is “smitier” by trading Lay On Hands for Ardent Vow and then taking feats to grab undead-smiting powers from another class. Just for kicks I made such a quickie Paladin character, with a Charisma/Wisdom focus so that other divine classes’ powers would work better. At level one, I took the feats Hero of Faith (Avenger multiclass with oath of enmity once per encounter) and Divine Channeler (Avenger), picking Abjure Undead as the relevant power.

Abjure Undead is a single target attack that pulls and immobilizes one undead creature in a burst five. With a +3 Wisdom, it pulls the target 4 squares on a hit, meaning anybody in range is going to end up in an adjacent square.

Between Abjure Undead, Divine Challenge, and Oath of Enmity, this Paladin would make a pretty effective boss-slayer… especially against undead bosses.

(For the curious and uninitiated, Oath of Enmity lets you pick one target that you will be able to roll twice and take the better result for all your melee attacks against, as long as no other enemies are adjacent to you. Avengers have got all kinds of powers designed for keeping their target isolated from others or for getting passed lines of melee fighters to attack the artillery… Paladins aren’t really built for that, but in a fight with a big deadly boss monster the Paladin’s going to be glomping on to it anyway…)

On subsequent levels, taking the feat of Versatile Channeler allows the Paladin to Turn Undead instead of Abjuring… Channel Divinity powers are limited to one per encounter so the character couldn’t do both in the same fight, but some fights would clearly be designed for one or the other (compare a fight with lots of undead versus one with a single big boss enemy who’s a valid target for Abjure). Taking Demonbane and Devilbane expands the usefulness of those smite powers by allowing them to affect elementals and immortals, respectively… those categories include but aren’t limited to demons and devils. Demonbane would let the Paladin open a can of smite ass on giants and all manner of elemental beasties, for instance.

And that brings up a slightly different option: keep Lay On Hands, spend a feat on Radiant Touch. Radiant Touch gives you an encounter power that uses up one of your daily uses of the Lay On Hands healing ability to instead do damage equal to your healing surge value to an undead target. Demonbane and Devilbane would also expand the legal targets for that power… so once per encounter, as long as Lay On Hands uses remain, the Paladin could touch an immortal, undead, or elemental enemy and do damage equal to 25% of the PC’s maximum HPs… and Lay On Hands would still be useful for healing teammates.

By the time this character reached level 11, one of the “Slayer” paragon paths… the Avenger’s Relentless Slayer or the Paladin’s Demonslayer or Dragonslayer… would probably have presented itself as a logical choice for whatever campaign the character’s in. Relentless Slayer would involve picking a common enemy type (say, demons or vampires) and getting the ability to double up the Oath of Enmity against them… useful since this character doesn’t regain the Oath power after killing the first target… and also getting some extra side attacks, useful for taking out minions and mooks. Demonslayer is pretty much what it sounds like. Dragonslayer contains abilities that are useful against dragons in that they’re designed to be used on a big solo-type monsters that can fly and use blasts and fear effects… but most or all of the abilities would frequently be useful against big boss undead, demons, devils, primordials, evil gods, etc.

Pretty much, you’d take Relentless Slayer if you want to be able to take on crowds and Dragonslayer if you want to take on single big foes. Demonslayer would be most useful if you’re actually fighting demons all the time.

Going in another direction, a Paladin who wanted to be more leaderly could keep Lay On Hands and take Divine Channeler (Cleric) or Versatile Channeler to get Healer’s Mercy, the power that lets all allies in a burst 5 take a healing surge at the cost of weakening the user for one turn. Very suiting to Paladins who play up the martyr angle, with powers that expose themselves to attacks or damage to heal and protect allies or deliver additional damage to foes. Taking the feats of Healing Hands (add Charisma modifier to Lay On Hands) and Devoted Paladin (add Charisma modifier to Lay On Hands again plus get an extra healing surge) makes the Paladin even more efficient at healing. A very different Paladin from the evil-smiting one.

On a sidenote: with Bards having multiclass versatility, a “holy fool” type could grab a lot of different channel divinity powers… and as soon as a Bard has any one divine multiclass feat and a declared deity, the Bard would also be eligible for related divinity and domain feats.

Of course, any scheme to get as many channel divinity powers as possible is going to run into some diminishing returns, as you can still only use one per encounter. But a character with a portfolio of divine powers to draw from would have a flexibility that even Wizards would have to envy, being able to pull out different abilities for different fights, as in the example of a Paladin with both Abjure Undead and Turn or Rebuke Undead.

On another sidenote: it seems like you could use feats to take combinations of powers from another class that the original class could never have. Clerics, as written, have to take either Turn Undead or Healer’s Mercy. A character could use Divine Channeling (Cleric) to take one and Versatile Channeler to take the other. I have to wonder what the reasoning was in not allowing Versatile Channeler to pick up a Channel Divinity power you passed on from your own class.

Hey, folks. I’m a little under the weather right now and I’m supposed to be resting, but I came up with an idea for a character that I wanted to share and it’s a bug in my brain. Oh, well. At least it’s a fun bug.

Ayara Hunts-With-Pack is your typical “child raised by wolves” character, transplanted into a fantasy setting. This sort of character is easy enough to make as a simple matter of roleplaying characterization with no particular class necessary, but the Beastmaster Ranger does give the rather satisfying addition of allowing you to have part of your pack traveling with you.

But why stop there?
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