Does anyone rate the Paladin?
 

Okay, my obsession with this demo is getting out of hand. :-P

I've already played it through three times to get a feel for each class. Mage is awesome - some excellent spells to use. The Magic tree seems interesting and useful. Warrior is great fun too. I really like some of the better human units such as the Horseman and the Knight. The Might tree is good fun, especially as you can use lots of Rage to supplement your physical strength.

But what about the Paladin? Is he 'Jack of all trades, master of none'?

The Mind tree doesn't look very appealing to me. Scouting might be nice, but it's cheap so anyone can get it if they want. Holy Anger gives you a 5% bonus against undead at level 1, but it costs 5 Might Runes and 8 Mind Runes to upgrade to level 2, which only gives a 10% bonus. Doesn't seem worth it. Glory is definitely required as it increases leadership, but I think Mages and Warriors will need to invest in this too. And the second level of upgrades in the Mind tree don't look very interesting - they all give slight bonuses in terms of money and experience. I suppose the Paladin will have an advantage in the full game in that he can afford better gear, but I'm dubious as to whether it is worth it.

It looks like the Mage and Warrior are more fun to play than Paladin. Your thoughts?

BTW I am starting the game for a fourth time, this time on Hard as a Mage. :cool:

Well i am already on my 7th playthrough.. But the Paladin ? I think he is just as good as the others, sure the mind benefits don't look obvious but they are nice, also holy anger doesn't give a 5% bonus, it gives a plus 5 attack bonus, something very different ;) And later on he even gains more experience from vanquisihing undead and demons in the form of more gold and experience. Plus you have to remember at a certain point he can trade in mind runes for runes of the two other types.

So to me they are all 3 very different even though they have mostly the same spells.. and oh yeah, the paladin starts out with a scroll of resurrection, and if you then learn order magic.. well, you just happen to have the spell of resurrection :D

7th Playthrough, omg :eek::eek:
I finished my second playthrough, and i definitely think i will be enjoying mage and fighter more than the paladin. Paladin skills don't look so good to me, but i can fully say when i play with paladin again

Initially, I also thought about it. The Paladin seemed to be a character between the Fighter and the Mage. But when a I discover Resurrection, and specially Glory, I changed mi mind about that. The Paladin is awesome! With objects, I reached more than 1800 Leadership, muuuuuch more than I expected, and nearly twice Leadership I was able to reach with the Fighter or the Mage.

Yes, It's true that the Mind habilities' branch seems to have little less use than the other two, but I think the true power of the Paladin isn't his 'own' habilities, the true power is his capability to reach medium or high levels in two (or maybe the three, who knows) branchs. Because he gains as much runes of magic as of might when ups a level, he's able to become a good fighter and also a good magician. And also I'm sure that be a Paladin will reward you along the game with some gifts, more than if you are a Fighter or a Mage.

His greater strength also lies in being able to fight the undead and demons with greater skill than anybody else, while the fighters skill lies in rage and leadership and the mages lie in magic.

They are all good in each their own way, personally i'll be playing with a Paladin first when i get the game.

The game actually looks pretty well balanced. I think each class will be able to succeed for different reasons.

All those rune and money bonuses should lead to being able to hire bigger armies and invest in more total skills than the other two classes.

Personally I think I'm going to try warrior first but that just suits my general RPG taste.

Well i think the warrior has the biggest chance of large armies to be honest as he gets more leadership bonuses, and generally starts out more favorable, the paladin on the other hand might have better luck getting his hands on the expensive stuff..

Great answers guys. :)

I am loving this more and more. Four games down now, and my first 'win' on Hard. I really enjoyed the challenge of hard, and I cruelly missed out on level 5, which would have allowed me to get Glory, which would have given me 1000 leadership and a chance at the Magic School trial.

And it's all because I took pity on the Dragon in the training school. :!: I missed out on level 5 by that much.

I found that on Hard, the upgrade fights were close to impossible (except for the cursed ring, which is easy). I couldn't upgrade the staff, or the snake ring, nor could I beat the level 6 tournament. These were all winnable fights on medium (well, not the snake ring - I hadn't seen that before).

Really annoyed. :evil:

But I thought I would be sick of this demo now, but no. I've still got to play the Paladin and Mage on hard, and make sure I kill that fricken dragon. :-P

well, after playing the demo for the 7th time,IMO it all depends on the lvl of difficulty you play. on easy the mage has bit of advantage since he can use rage and magic at ease, but in impossible (I played it twice with each class on this difficulty) classes are well balanced and paladin might have a bit of advantage since runes and money are hard to get by and he can get the leadership skill which helped me finish both times with a higher leadership rate than the warrior (and mage of-course).

Paladin is pretty nice i think, the Runic Stones enable him to get beefed in the other trees fairly rapidly, though at the cost of mind runes.

Maybe in the early game the mind runes are scarcer than in the midgame since you already have all the skills you need moderate amounts of Mind for. with the excess mind you could just buy more runes of the other types which is nice.

Considering a pally myself when i get the game although i'll prolly still go mage first :)

Well having played each class to past L5 twice (6 total runs) and comparing, I find that while the mage does serious harm with rank 2 chaos magic, his smaller army, combined with a smaller hidden multiplier on rage gain (and lower starting rage) means that he will be way behind the other classes on rage levels. Note that the two best rage entities aren't even in the demo. Since the mage does most of his damage with his spells (which give zero rage usually for him) and less so with his armies, his rage input is really bad.

Also note that chaos magic requires a fair amount of might runes in addition to mind runes, whereas order magic requires an equal amount of mind and magic runes. This means that the paladin will not reasonably ever be good at chaos magic, but that he is actually about as good at order magic as the mage is, probably a lot more so since the mage will be spending on chaos magic instead. Ressurection is possibly even better than fireball as it can be used to prevent even small amounts of troop loss, saving you a lot of coin over time. The only downside is that ressurection will not work on undead, demons, and plants so you have to switch more to using humanoids and animals.

So in my opinion, with the paladin you get great leadership, good spellcasting (in order magic) and good rage levels. In fact, the fastest way to build rage is to have YOUR units die, and if you can ressurect them this is a viable option. Finally, combine that coin savings with the trade skill which lets you make a lot of coin selling old or redundant items and scrolls and you will be able to get the really great (and imbalancing) items you normally just drool over in the store.

On a side note, the only demons I saw in the demo were these imps in the medusa tournament fight (not counting the guys on the towers) and they were horribly powerful with super high initiative, 45 hp each, they cast fireball with huge damage, and there were RANK TWO. Undead seem pretty powerful but next to demons, bleh. Imagine what a Rank 5 demon would be like. Having an advantage vs them later in the game will not be wasted.

Like Dane I will be starting a Paladin tomorrow.

Demons are very powerful))) My favourite units are demonesses. It's very funny, you know, when these ladies are in the opposing army 'cause they have the unique ability to change the two creatures' places. You get very nervous when you find a hundred of hungry demons or cerbers behind your troops while your archers are in the centre of enemy's positions:grin: it forces the mind to work hard:)

Haven't seen any demons yet.. though i am looking forward to fighting them ;)

It's ssssuch a pity that there are so few of the demon's dwellings in the game:( they are pretty))))

Well, you should. I fighted against Scoffer Imps once (medusa owned them) and wow, they weren't exactly weak. They throwed fireballs, had high speed (dunno about the other stats) and strike and return ability.

Wow wow wow, so many openions... I vote paladin as best. He is a combo of mage and warrior. He can get more troops than mage and better in magic compared to warrior. In the starting he may be difficult to play with, once you reach a good level, he is unmatched.

You must see the demons and archdemons ( sorry if i've spoilt your curiosity). Archdemons are damn good as the demons (demon is the name of a troop)

Actually Archdemons are great at killing Dragons (u will be facing a lot of them in the game) since they have fire protection (basically 80% reduction from fire dmg) and dragons do fire damge not physical damge.

I was kinda stuck to the Paladin, since I let my daughter choose the char she liked the most. ofcourse that was gonna be the paladin who looks like a real prince.

Like him so far. The best combo of both styles.

Yeah I've totally changed my mind about the Paladin now - he rocks. Best of both worlds toward the end of the game and you can spend Mind runes to double up on Might and Might. Great work, Paladin! :-P

I am doing my second run now on imposible dificulty and i am still impressed with the paladin. I dont think i could have done so go with any of the other classes.

I'm no expert in the game but having played a Paladin to lvl 25 so far on normal and gone a little way with a mage and a warrior I'd also say that Paladin strikes an excellent line between a mage and a warrior. It seems I'm getting the very best from both worlds while giving up very little.

Yep I agree, and his special skill #2 that can transform 30 mind runes into 30 of both might and mind is giving him the secret advantage in skilling himself. Still for Impossible I ended with Warrior ... not that I would stop trusting Paladin... even I don't use his IRON FIST skill at all... but just a fell for hack and slash :) ... but PALADIN was the master of disaster, absolutely.

To me the Pal is the weakest!
Mag has the greatest tactical flexibilty!
Warrior is ok!
The pal has no real special ability (like the other 2) and the biggest advantage he has is resurection ( of course this is big in the beggnin of the game at a higher dif. level. )so Meh!
The warrior gets extrarage = higher crit. chance something that afects all youre troops all the time, with the mage i can use what ever i want for 3 turns !
The pall is not thee best of bouth but the losser of all!
If u are luky and find resurection spell with the other clases early the pals adv. is gone!

I wouldn't discount the Paladin. He's excellant at knocking off undead and demons because of Holy Avenger. Plus Runic Armor is a fantastic skill. 30 mind runes gets you 30 might and 30 magic. Great trade off if you ask me. At level 26, I have enough magic to cast my level 3 order and distortion spells and enough rage to attack every round. Kind of sucks that I upgraded the percentage of Drain Soul so now that it costs 45 rage, but it's quite handy when facing down hundreds of knights.

I'm not too fond of the Paladin. Even when I maxed out the skill that trades mind runes for might and magic runes I still had way more mind runes than I needed.

I think the Paladin is a great all rounder and if you develope him that way he really stands out.

The magic tree esp Order magic eats lots of mind runes and even as a mage I find most magic skills require a few mind runes.

As a paladin, go for demonic tolerance (Demonesses + Angra's ring = cheese) and you shouldn't have too many lying around.

I am playing as a Mage now and I am REALLY missing those Mind runes the Paladin gets. He's a great all rounder. Many of the upgrades in the Mind tree are essential IMO - Scouting, Glory, and Trading, to name a few.

I love the Paladin so far, just got the game couple of days ago, level 8 so far in normal mode and i have over 4K leadership already. i got a nice helmet from the Staff of Destruction quest in the tower, it gives +400 leadership, was an epic battle for level 8!

I'm being very careful with what skills i spend my runes on. For starters i'm going down the left tree in Might to get 'Tactics', the left tree in Mind to get 'Runic Stone', and in Magic in both trees half way to get Order Magic, Distortion Magic & Meditation, seems to be a great mage-rage combo :)

well, on normal settings u should be ok, since later on u can actually buy runes for 100,000GP each (after u free the dwarf king son he give su the option to buy runes for cash), and on normal settings u have more than enough cash ;).

To be honest, in all games with a proper build and tactics most people should have an abundance of gold irrespective of the difficulty level. No doubt you will have more gold on normal than on hard or impossible but nonetheless you should have some gold to purchase an odd crystal or rune near the end game to round off your character.

True, Sandsai, but I had over 2 million at level 23 with my Impossible Mage, and only 500,000 at the same stage with the Impossible Warrior. This is partly because I'm better at the Mage, but IMO it is easier too.

To answer my own question of many weeks ago:

HELL YES I rate the Paladin. That Resurrect scroll is supremely important, as is the skill that gives you to the Might and Magic runes. One question: does the Paladin start with Lake Fairies/Sprites after the tutorial? Because if he does, he can stash them until he gets Sacrifice/Anga's Ruby. Then, let the destruction begin. :cool:

Well, luck has a lot to do with it too. Early on my mage was struggling a bit as I couldn't find any good spells or artifacts to pump up my intellect. My warrior didn't have these issues and found just the rights units and artifacts at the right time, allowing me to have plenty of gold around. The war is a bit more luck based than the mage I suppose, then again maybe its just me.

Isn't this boring to play always with same strat?

Well, to me at least it would get dull. I like to change the composition of my army, including all sorts of creatures, even the suckier ones. Though the royal snakes seems to be a constant, I must confess!

Well, I don't play with the same strategy because each game throws up different possibilities. Yes, I do consider Lake Fairies/Sprites with Anga's Ruby to be about the most overpowered combo in the game, but my current game doesn't have any Hordes of either, so I have run out (yes, I could have used Sacrifice).

This time I got the Crown of Blackthorn for the first time, so I thought I'd try Dryads/Royal Thorns to test this out. You HAVE to play differently depending on the hand you are dealt, which is why I love this game so much.

I just wanted to try Lake Fairies/Sprites early in the game, like in Freedom Isles. I suspect they will dominate there. ;)

Very well said.

Why dont you get the full game :P loads better than the demo.