13th Age 2e Pregenerated Character Builds: Bulwark Paladin

By Jay Godden

In this series, I’m presenting two different pregenerated builds for every 13^th Age Heroes’ Handbook character class, at all levels. My goal is to present complete mechanical builds using only standard elements and rules from the Heroes’ Handbook, ready for you to apply your own backgrounds, icon relationships, and One Unique Thing.

In this pair of articles, we look at two potential builds for the Paladin.

The Paladin is usually the main defensive line of any party they find themselves in, boasting the highest AC of all the classes, and having the hit points to match. They have reliable offense to go along with their very strong defensive stats which keeps them threatening in melee while they divert attention from their less armoured allies. Depending on talent choices, Paladins can either double down on tanking and other party support, or become highly dangerous in their own right, even taking on a sort of anti-paladin role with the Evil Way talent.

All Paladins have access to the Smite power, to augment their melee attacks at choice moments, and Lay on Hands to heal themselves or allies with a touch. This is changed from first edition where Lay on Hands cost one of your talents. This makes them versatile combatants that are pretty simple to play.

Bulwark Paladin
Download the Bulwark Paladin character sheets here. These sheets make use of the class-specific character sheets designed for second edition by Miguel Friginal.

The Bulwark is a defensive powerhouse, focussed on keeping enemies directed at you while you protect and heal your allies. You will fight from the front lines, engaging as many enemies as you can and absorbing as much hate and as many attacks as possible. The Bulwark Paladin is fairly simple to play, mostly worrying about positioning and staying alive. The main thing to keep track of is which enemy is best for you to apply your Challenge to (usually the most dangerous enemy on the battlefield).

As usual magic item choices are left out of the character sheets, check with your GM to see if they will be granting you any. With that said, a Bulwark will make excellent use of magical armour, shields, belts, and necklaces, helping improve your sky-high defenses even further. If your damage feels lower than you would like, take a look at some choice ring, weapon, and gloves with damage-related powers.

Talents

Bastion

This is your bread and butter defensive ability, once per battle (plus an additional number of times per arc equal to your Con mod) you can take half of the damage from an attack against a nearby ally. You should feel free to use this on any allies with smaller recoveries than you (which will probably be almost everyone, thanks to Rugged), or when taking the full amount of damage would send an ally into a scary situation.

Paladin’s Challenge

When you successfully hit a monster with this Challenge, they take a big penalty to attacks against people that aren’t you, and to checks to disengage from you. This makes it highly likely that the monster will stick around and attack you, instead of your squishier friends.

Undaunted

This talent helps you shrug off conditions, keeping you able to protect your allies and helping you deal with the many attacks that are hopefully being directed your way.

Kin Power

Forgeborn’s Rugged turns your recovery dice into d12s, so when you use Lay on Hands on yourself or get any healing from any other source you will heal huge amounts. This will help offset all of the damage you’ll be taking on your allies’ behalf with Bastion.

Attributes

While in some ways you care more about defense than offense, a high Strength still helps you to land hits and apply your Paladin’s Challenge. You can use Charisma instead of Dexterity to determine AC as a Paladin, so having that and Constitution high will maximise your survivability: Str 19 (+4) Dex 13 (+1) Con 17 (+3) Wis 12 (+1) Int 10 (+0) Cha 14 (+2).

1^st level

Attributes: Str 19 (+4) Dex 13 (+1) Con 17 (+3) Wis 12 (+1) Int 10 (+0) Cha 14 (+2).

Kin Power: Rugged

Talents: Bastion, Paladin’s Challenge, Undaunted

Feat: A: Lay on Hands

2^nd level

New feat (A: Strong Recovery).

3^rd level

New feat (A: Paladin’s Challenge).

4^th level

+1 to three attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution), new feat (A: Rugged).

5^th level

New talent (Champion of the Light), new feat (C: Lay on Hands replaces adv, A: Undaunted).

6^th level

New feat (C: Smite).

7^th level

+1 to four attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma), new feat (C: Undaunted).

8^th level

New talent (Great Dragon), new feat (E: Bastion), new spells (Great Dragon Incarnation, Dragon Shield).

9^th level

New feat (E: Champion of the Light).

10^th level

+1 to five attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma), new feat (E: Lay on Hands replaces champ, C: Champion of the Light).

Zenith feat

New feat (Z: Talent of the Gods), new talent (God-Touched), new spell (Respite)