Help a newbie?

[PiranJade]

Shortly after joining this wonderful forum I stumbled upon the opportunity to join a D&D 3.5 group in real life. ;D
I`m going to play a paladin and with my limited knowledge and although I own a Player`s Handbook now I have some questions and was hoping you could help me a little bit.

I saw that a paladin can cast paladin spells if she has enough wisdom. As all those have "somatic components", do I have a spell failure chance, because of my armor?

[Lin]

Divine spells don't suffer from spell failure chance. Otherwise paladins would have super serious problems.

[PiranJade]

Thank you for the quick reply!

[Wicksy]

clerics would be screwed too

[PiranJade]

As I have never played that kind of character so far I wasn`t sure if there were any problems that I wasn`t aware of.

My paladin might have some problems anyway...
I was inspired by Sir Didymus and Ambrosius from the movie "Labyrinth" and decided to create gnome paladin (female in this case) on a riding dog and I plan to specialize on mounted combat later. Let`s see how that`ll work out.
I haven`t started to put my idea together so far as I`m still reading about weapons for small characters and all that. Like I said I really don`t know much about D&D, so any comment or advice is very welcome.

[TheUdjat]

If you're going mounted combat, you want a lance, if only for the nice way it stacks onto charges (though beware of charging polearms).

Feats that are absolutely necessary:
Mounted Combat
Ride by Attack
[Spirited Charge is also considered pretty awesome, as it doubles damage on a mounted charge; or triples it with a lance]

You can also picked up Mounted Archery or whichever is the one that helps with ranged combat while mounted. That's if you'd like to hurl javelins or something as well as tangle up with melee. It might be worth your time to check out Ella Bladewhistle in Go Find Your Dead, as she is a halfing specializing in mounted combat. There might be some tips for you there.

I've also heard 'Battle Caster' or whatever it's called is extremely nice for Paladins, as it lets them cast spells that have a casting time of one Standard Action as a Swift Action instead. You might also want to look into Turning feats. A paladin's turn undead is usually less useful than a cleric's, and so it helps to give them something else to do with it. You could use it to gain DR, provide healing, boost attack, or any number of other things depending on what you take.

That's probably plenty of ideas to get you started. Best of luck.

[Japic]

Looks like Udjat beat me to it, but I was going to suggest also that you look at Ella. She's a fighter, but still a mounted specialized halfling. The best thing about a Fighter is the bonus feats, it might take you some time to get really good mounted warrior via the paladin class, but it's not impossible or anything. Especially when you get your Palidan's mount, then you'll be a little more bad assed. I know KMan has played mounted paladins in tabletop, so the options are there and I'm sure you'll be fine.

Oh, and awesome choice for the character inspiration, that little guy is hilarious. Only thing more on target would be a kobold mounted warrior; they're supposed to sound like yippy dogs when they talk. I don't think there are any small sized dog-like races, if so that'd be most awesome of all.

[PiranJade]

I really like the Halfling Outrider!
But as the group seems to need another melee weapon wielding character I guess I`ll go into the direction of the Cavalier.
The group consists of a human rogue, a clerik, a ranged fighter and me. The clerik and the fighter player are still quarelling about which races to play (The clerik wants an Aasimar and the fighter wants to use the draconic template. The clerik thinks that the draconic template should not be allowed to be played, the fighter says that an Assimar is as bad and if she is not allowed the draconic, he should not be allowed the Aasimar. Do I have to mention that they are a couple?) It might take some time until we can start to play. And if the fighter decides to go melee after all (and does that before we start to play), I`ll change my character to a halfling