Paladin Build

Hey! Kind of new to Skyrim, really enjoyed an assassin/archer playthrough. I'm looking to go the complete opposite direction though, and play with kind of a Paladin-ish character. I need help with race decision. I would like to go with Nord, but I've heard that Imperial would be better. For reference, starting stats don't really matter to me at all, I can make up the difference fairly easily. The only reason I would pick Imperial is because they have "Voice of the Emperor" which kind of fits the whole "Paladin" theme. This character will be as much of an RP character as anything, so I want to be able to feel like a Holy Warrior. Here are the perks I've decided on so far... Can anyone give me some advice? Additional information available upon request.

Skyrim Perk Calculator - Plan the perks for your Skyrim character before spending them!

Quite different perks you got laid out. But since you don't give a fluff about the starting stats, I will recomend being a Breton. They seem the most holy type. Nords = hate magic. Imperials = more royal than holy. Breton = just right. You COULD do an orc but, just depends how ya feeling. And orc only with a good back sotry on a reason why he is a palidin. if hes your everday orc than no, dont use orc

And no offenese but your perks seem a lil iffy. A Palidin probably wont be using conjuration or destruction. I did another calculator that might suit you better Skyrim Perk Calculator - Plan the perks for your Skyrim character before spending them! and hey i forgot to add the enchanting perks

I am a bit confused, why would you invest all those points in heavy armor and go up the light armor side of the smithing tree?

I'm a pretty competent writer and can put almost any race into a situation where they would want to be a Paladin. I don't really care who seems "holy" or not... I just want to pick a race that has the best racial ability. As far as perks go, Conjuration can go out the window, I was just trying to fill space. But I'm kind of set on destruction, kind of a "Righteous Fire" thing...

Oh, and Chryss... This is for more of a role play thing. I don't want to wear Daedric armor, since it isn't very Paladin-like, so I invested in the perk points to buy the perk that would let me craft Steel Plate. And I went up the heavy side to craft dwarven weapons.

Just so you know, Elven weapons are better than Dwarven, and Skyforge Steel weapons are equal to Elven, so you could use either of those for weapons. Unless you want Dwarven for the gold color. For a Paladin, I think you should look into taking the Necromage perk in Restoration, for more damage to undead. Armor caps out at 567 so you probably don't need 5/5 juggernaut if you are smithing too. Some people tell me Tower of Strength has been bugged to not do anything, but not sure now that it's patch 1.5 though. All of the weapon specialist perks are all bad, so ignore Bladesman - it does critical damage based on the base damage on the weapon before smithing, so it'll be netting you about an extra 6 damage per hit when your weapon does 200 damage. Plus traditional Paladin doesn't use swords, they use blunt. I would say if you use Destruction maybe stick with fire only and use it on undead only. You can dip into Alteration for the magic resistance, 5 perks for 30% resistance, comes in handy if you aren't Breton. You can also fill in some Illusion for the Calm spells.

Now on to the discussion of race. I think you could choose a few, one might be interesting is the Argonian because of his Histskin ability, regenerate health 10x faster for a minute, seems like a good Restoration spell or something fitting of a Paladin. I see where you're coming from with the imperial and the voice, and you could probably justify the Nord battle cry in a similar way. I had an Orc Paladin because his racial lets him take half damage for a minute, a good Paladin-esque ability, and he can deal double damage, which is helpful since I had mace/shield with low damage overall. You can also choose Breton for the 25% magic resistance and Dragonskin absorb magic ability, very defensive abilities. I think you could even choose High Elf, for the 1 minute of 10x magicka, meaning 1 minute of spamming heals, great for quickly leveling Restoration and your armor while getting hit by something. Yeah so, I guess I wrote too much. Pick what you think will be fun or what you want to do

I understand your logic there but I dont know if you realize that you can craft Ancient Nord Armor at the Skyforge when you get the Daedric perk, thats what I wear and its heavy armor, same as what Aela the Huntress wears.

Ancient Nord Armor is great for certain RolePlaying choices, but is only as good as Iron Armor... You can still get it to the armor cap with some work, but then you would be wearing the same armor that all the Draugr undead wear, not a good fit for a Paladin. I agree with The_Royal_Bastard that Steel Plate looks the most paladin-like. I actually wish Ebony came in a lighter color, would be a perfect look.

Is a paladin build 2-handed? sword and board? or spellsword with resto in the left hand?

It seems like you're going to spend the second half of your playing time on this character grinding skills you don't use in order to fill in perks you won't use. Why not plan the build out to around 55-60 or so? That's about as high as you'll get leveling the skills that you're actually perking. You'll have to reach pretty far to find a good RP justification for a 70th level paladin sneaking around picking pockets

I went through and built up a build for you, trying to follow what you said in the thread. It goes through level 69. Skyrim Perk Calculator - Plan the perks for your Skyrim character before spending them!

I kept what you said about smithing. Block, I would take everything, as a 1h pally relies heavily on it, and the perks are great on both sides. As said above, the heavy armor can be trimmed down some on the first perk, as you will not need all 5 points, i usually put in 3 though, to help out early - mid in the leveling process. As wanting to RP, pallys are generally blunt, so i put perks in for maces. I am not sure about any bugs with the system, but the stun at the top seemed a good fit too.

On speech, I found it fairly useless to go past investor, as after that point with speech, you will have more money than you need, especially as a paladin, so you save some points there.

In magic, I stuck with the resto and alteration schools. In resto, you don't really need 2 points in recovery, as with the cheaper spells, and 1 enchant, you will never run out of mana healing yourself when needed. The necromage perk would be a good pally fit though. Alteration, you could go up to master, but by about the time you can get all the magic resist perks in the game, your armor will be maxed, and you will not need the flesh spells to supplement armor.

You mentioned wanting to stick to destruction for a "holy fire" concept. I had toyed with this idea myself, and decided against it, as I didn't think it really fit with the casting animations. If it was a fire strike from the heavens, I would have gone that way. The more logical issue with it is that you might not use it much. You will just be switching your mace/weapon for another weapon really. As suggested, if you do, might want to only do it on undead. I found the switching to be more of a pain than anything in the middle of combat with other characters, and only switched when I needed to for resto on my pally, and used more humble means to defeat my enemies.

I liked what was said above about using illusion. The calm spell is definitely pally, especially against humans sentient races. Good luck with the play through, hope I helped a little.

To Jaer and Streets, both of you mentioned that paladins tend to use blunt. Where does this idea come from? (I'm really asking, not snarking.) I have honestly never heard of this in either a gaming or historical context, although 99% of my RP experience is in tabletop. I have played many games where clerics frequently have a restriction to blunts (historically based on some vague prohibition against bladed weapons discussed at one of the Vaticans), but paladins are generally seen as warriors first and can use the same range of weapons as fighters. In the historical European tradition (which Skyrim seems to be firmly grounded in) "paladin" was either a synonym for "knight" or an elite subclass of knight, where again they could use any weapon they wanted. St. George, probably the most archetypical paladin of all the legends, used a sword to slay the dragon.

Hey Morgan. I have heard the Paladin blunt weapon is because they fight undead, and in traditional tabletops (D&D), undead are immune to crits, so the blunt weapon does more damage to undead than a bladed weapon would. I think you can RP yourself to have any blade you want, and I agree with what you posted above. Hopefully not too big of a spoiler alert but *SPOILER* Dawnbreaker is a sword and it's the most Paladin-type weapon in the game. /SPOILER

I have also heard something about Paladin not wanting to draw blood, so he would need to use a blunt weapon to defeat foes with less likely chances of bleeding? Not sure where that one came from though.

Gotcha. In the TT RP games I'm mostly familiar with, those are the roles and justifications applied to clerics. Maybe the aspects of the two classes have swapped or merged in online RPGs?

most of you got it wrong, even the one who made the build.
a paladin is a holy warrior met to bring justice and protect his people from the undead, so in army's and such he has a hight ranking. and becouse he's so important he needs giht defence. also a paladin doesnt use spells like flames and such, so the destruction tree is bullsh**. i never saw a paladin destoying something to ashes. he focusses his magic to defendhimself and allies so he needs alteration spells like dragonhide, and healing spells like healing hand and fast healing. also a paladin doesnt use summoned undead to fight for them, or uses creatures from a hell like world to fight, he uses holy powers. so when using magic only focus on alteration and restoration.
then you need to get ful defence, so you better enchant your gear with defensive sh**, like magic resistance, and soul trap and drain life on your MACE, YES YOU HEARD IT, A MACE. paladins always uses maces. look on google and tupe paladin, you see pictures from paladins with MACES. you will need all perks from heavy armor and block, and everything from 1h except the sword and axe parts.
you also need everything in enchanting except the flame, shock and frost enchantings and the soul stealer things.

i hope i gave some usefull information of a real paladin,
its all about defending and staying allive. and the rest you have left in damage.
here is my paladin build (i use breton becouse of its magical resistance, is also better for paladin)
http://skyrimcalculator.com/255409
by the way, if you just improve your armor before enchanting it you dont need the arcane blacksmith perk.

Whoo, thread necro much there?

For the record, I firmly believe the idea Paladins Use Blunt is from Warcraft 3 and the following game art for WoW; their paladins tend to use hammers. As an old school D&D guy, paladins not only often used swords, but even had a unique magic weapons type in Holy Swords. Holy Avenger and the like (badassedly renamed Carsomyr in BG II). Paladins TRADITIONALLY use the weapon of their choice, like Morgan above said.

People like this build. So do I, Dawnguard spoilers.

Character Build: The Paladin - Anniversary Edition - The Skyrim Blog

Runemaster is pretty useless. I'm not sure what you intend to do with Conjuration, but the vast majority of that is either Summoning Daedra from Oblivion, or messing around with corpses.

My advice for any an all Paladin/Crusader/Clerical builds is do some research into the various Aedra, and pick one. Can't really have a Holy War without a Patron.

No,NO,NO.....dude take my advice man...

I know, that you are new to skyrim, but do not need to use block if you are using destruction.

I will give you some hints,take them A-Bourd if you will.

your restoration perks, I would not go for too much restoration builds.plus you need summoning and bound perks for conjuration man. not just all the right tree for that.


your magical block is your ward barrier bro, and your best advice from all of us is use alteration if for magical protection.

but you are on a waist of some perks that might prove as a value to you.

look dude, heavy armour is fine but.... use most of your perk points on some smithing right tree, unless you are going for heavy armour. light armour is left tree.

I go for all smithing man, because you can make some pretty cool stuff.

do whatever you want man,but take my advice bro.

Duuuude! First of all, put down the Bong, bro. Your advice is a lot more likely to be taken if it's somewhat intelligible.

Steel Smithing, Skyforge, good. Wards are not a reasonable substitute for a Shield. You can also Bash, which really helps you stagger the opponent. Wards Stagger You when they shatter. Impact is a reasonable substitute, but runs your Magicka down (As do Wards) unless you Enchant to eliminate Magicka from the equation.

If you're doing Heavy Armor, then Elven, and so forth are a Waste (Note the spelling) unless you're intent on Steel Plate Armor, for the Paladin look. I'd go farther up the Heavy side of the Anvil to Ebony for the best Mace, if 1H is your primary damage dealer. Intense Flames is a Fear Effect, which means chasing them down when they run away, and Runemaster is a useless perk. Skip both of them.

Good job on Enchanting, but it will take forever to level it that high. Conjuration is not a Paladin School, Anti-Paladin, maybe, but all it's good for is Bound Weapons, which you don't have perks in, Summoning Daedra (Uh, that's Demons) and Necromancy. Drop it entirely.

You want Ward Absorb, it counters the high casting cost of Wards, and works with the Spellbreaker Shield (which also looks great on a Paladin.) Nothing short of a Glitch exploit protects better against dragons, and with a Ward spell, you can cast magic through it. Use them only to block Magic, they suck against physical damage.

If you drop Speech as well, you can get it to just over the soft level cap of 50, and have some hope of unlocking that many points without exercising skills you'll never use otherwise. (You need to max All of them to get 80.)

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