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This is actually an interesting question. In DnD, Paladins are almost nothing like the Paladins in WoW. After looking at how the system works, I've determined that our armor is essentially maxed out (if I were to compare it to WoW, I'd say our armor is around t5) unless we decide to go attack a random dragon for his gold to keep buffing our armor (not a good idea in Eberron). However, attack rolls keep going up due to strength, dexterity, feats, and base attack bonuses. In the end, even with fullplate and a tower shield, you most likely will still get hit so having lots of health or grabbing evasive feats would be the most efficient way to have a blow miss in late game. Tanking is pretty much non-existent in DnD. If you want to be a character that take blows for the weaker party, the class of your choice would be Knight. They have class abilities that pretty much say that you take a blow for your adjacent ally instead. There's also a feat that says your shield will cover for adjacent allies so they get the shield bonus to their AC from YOUR shield. Paladins in DnD are pretty much the anti-evil fighters, but are slightly more skill based than fighters (only ever so slightly). All in all, your paladin would be good for a fight against evil. In a fight against neutrals or good NPCs, your paladin would be a weaker fighter. After seeing your character build, I'd have to say you will need more strength than dexterity therefore your hit rate and damage will be higher. At this point, your dexterity is only giving you a minor boost to armor (until you wear heavier armor), increasing your initiative slightly, and increasing your hit rate with a ranged weapon.

{EDIT: NATURAL CRIT FTW}

All that said, D&D from what I have seen at higher levels, health and AC are a moot point as spell casting gets so crazy the only thing that makes a difference is how well you can save against spells. That aside, I would counter Stan's point about health and ac. Mingan had a bunch of health (2nd highest in the group) and that didn't stop him from dieing (granted I didn't exactly play him very intelligently in that fight).

Stan makes a good point though that this isn't like wow, things we fight in D&D are actually intelligent and will kill the healers/casters first if they feel like it. What role your character fills is more determined by who he is. For example: If you hadn't been stunned by the evil aura chances are someone *coughjeffcough* would have opened the door and everyone would have died. The roles in an RP are more about skills that are useful than taking hits and dealing damage.

So basically I shouldn't focus on AC and just focus on the outer aspects of my character?

Technically, the bear was going after Mingan.

And if someone had opened the door for the person with the very deep, demonic voice, I would just have to shake my head and sigh...

Regardless, paladins are very much the anti-evil fighters in game combat mechanics. Smite evil and power attack with a two-handed weapon makes a *very* powerful combination. Another powerful, high-combination is taking advantage of the free, rather powerful paladin mount you get and focusing on mounted combat. Spirited charge and a lance lets you do a normal charge attack while mounted for 3x normal damage (4x if you crit, due to the way D&D's multiplier effects stack). Two-weapon fighting with a spiked light shield and main hand weapon with improved shield bash to keep the AC bonus is also effective.

The main problem with paladins is that they do not get many feats at all, so your options are really to spend nearly all your feats focusing on one style of combat or don't focus on a combat style at all, instead spending your feats on other things (open minded for 5 free skill points, the feats that boost your saves, feats that boost your abilities with action points, or miscellaneous feats that are useful for roleplaying (ex: favored in house for dragonmarked characters)). Granted, in Eberron if you really want to focus on a martial style as a paladin it is possible to get the knight training feat and take four levels of fighter for the combat related goodies you can get (four levels of of fighter gives you three fighter bonus feats and let's you take weapon focus and weapon specialization, if you so desire).

Speaking of that, Stan should definitely spend his level 4 fighter feat on weapon specialization (fullblade), unless you really need to spend it on something else to qualify for warforged juggernaut.

Heh, improved bull rush would have been a nice feat to have for the battle in the lava pits.

Regardless, as of now I feel that Libertas' role will be like a tank (seeing as his personality acts as an instigator), but act more like a balanced fighter rather than a major damage dealer (which I was trying to do the past few missions). I plan to have feats for 2-weapon fighting and then the improved sheild feats, but then focus on working with Libertas as a character than as a fighter seeing as that's been his role in the past with the first few missions. The paladin abilities will come naturally and I've already begun to put points in Ride for my mount.

I am curious though about how prestige classes work and how it affects paladins, I know I'm able to go into a prestige class, but normally paladins can't do dual classes and keep progressing with their paladin abilities.

I believe there is a feat you can take that will allow multi classing as a paladin just like there is one for monks.