Shattered Kingdoms

Paladins and hellions are mortal enemies, yet they do respect each
other's abilities, for they are two sides of the same coin. - Help Hellion : Help Paladin

The above excerpt from the help files gives the impression that Hellion's and Paladins are somewhat equal. While each are the exact opposite, to keep them from being too "cookie cutter" they were given different skill sets. In my opinion there is a slight imbalance in the Paladin and Hellion skill sets that favor Paladins.

Basically, most of what a Hellion can do, a Paladin can counter. Blindness, Deafness, Plague, all but a few maledicts can be completely done away with. Since Paladins have Sanctuary, the chance of them getting the first strike and throwing cleave out the window is pretty easy. Especially if they have potions / vials of detection spells.

Most of you will answer with Intimidate. Yes, while it is great (and i have it mastered with max charisma on my human) it doesn't always check. In fact, most of the attacks I've had, I'd say a ratio of about 2 or 3 of roughly 10 have been halted by intimidate. That's vs PC's btw. Anyone with reasonable mods and knowledge of the skill working can easily get around it, or at least maximize their chances of passing the intimidate check.

Ok, so Hellion's have Dominates. Alright, that's all fine and dandy, but the problem is it requires so much concentration, that a massive hit instantly cancels it. It takes near a Deep Elven concentration to actually be useful. Any BoG, Holy word, or anything that causes a "That really hurt!" and a human and probably half elven Hellion's dominate is instantly canceled.

Ok so according to the Hellion help file "No other warrior can live to fight another day as well as a Hellion" thus they're given Word of Recall. A Paladin's BoG makes this completely useless. Nimbus shuts that down completely. People want to complain about something overpowered, a spell that 100% of the time, wether it fully hits or not, makes a character stay and fight with 0% chance of escape is completely cheap in my opinion.

Hellions get Hellfire, which deals negative energy damage + fire damage, where as in terms of DD spells, Paladins get holy word, BoG, Spear of Faith, Flamestrike (AoE Group? Yeah..I don't see Hellions getting an AoE spell.) Without cleave, the chances of a Hellion actually beating a Paladin are quite low.

Just about anything a Hellion can do to shut down a Paladin can be cured away, with the exception of probably weaken and poison. On top of being able to heal themselves and having Protection as well as Bless, armor etc, Paladins have a pretty large advantage over Hellions in terms of skill sets in my opinion, and this is playing from a Hellion's perspective fighting several Paladins over my time.

In my opinion, I think one thing that could balance them out would be to make Cleave a non initial attack. It's already on a timer (about 1.5-3 ticks I believe) so it can't be spammed, but if a Hellion doesn't get an opening attack (which can happen a lot seeing as detects are so easy to obtain) their trump card is instantly out the window. As it goes right now, a Paladin can easily destroy a Hellion because they can heal themselves and literally outlast them and cure almost all of their maledicts that they throw at them.

Or another thing would be to take the nimbus effect from BoG. Taunt can be broken by having someone join in on the attack, but nimbus is absolute..I think. I may be wrong about that one. I just feel that actually forcing a player to stay and fight, especially in a class that excels in "living to fight another day" is a bit lame.

What do you guys think?

Welcome to the oldest debate in SKs.

No oldest debate is what do when drows and elves mudsex.

The only two things a paladin has up on a hellion is that the paladin can heal physical damage and disarm.

Bog is not 100% of the time. It's not even particularly hard to shrug off if you're not a delf.

In the end, if both parties have good enchantments, neither can hurt the other with spells at all anyway. So it boils down to a melee fight where the paladin gets the advantage of being able to disarm and a paladin has all that healing ability to outlast the hellion.

Of course the hellion always has that chance of insta-killing the paladin.

The only thing I would change at all if any, would be to make hellfire heal a hellion for half the amount it would normally deal in full damage.

I'm not even going to bother picking apart your post and explaining why you're wrong on many aspects. I've already done this argument too many times.

Paladins have a couple of obvious, very effective anti-dark spells, as a result of the decision to make paladins anti-darkie specialists and hellions more generalized killers. But it isn't as uneven as it appears.

cause serious and cause critical are completly useless spells btw.

Those fear stricken by intimidation should linger in the room, unable to move until the hellion leaves the room. This would simulate nimbus effect that paladin has.

As for the rest of the arguments, with the recent show of examples of one hellion, it is probably very difficult to bring up a successful case to buff hellions more.

That'd be elite.

I have to say, this is a pretty dumb idea. If you're so fear stricken, you'd probably be running for the hills.

Naw, on the ground whimpering like the beeotch you are!