Does anyone rate the Paladin?

[Sarcerok]

Well having played each class to past L5 twice (6 total runs) and comparing, I find that while the mage does serious harm with rank 2 chaos magic, his smaller army, combined with a smaller hidden multiplier on rage gain (and lower starting rage) means that he will be way behind the other classes on rage levels. Note that the two best rage entities aren't even in the demo. Since the mage does most of his damage with his spells (which give zero rage usually for him) and less so with his armies, his rage input is really bad.

Also note that chaos magic requires a fair amount of might runes in addition to mind runes, whereas order magic requires an equal amount of mind and magic runes. This means that the paladin will not reasonably ever be good at chaos magic, but that he is actually about as good at order magic as the mage is, probably a lot more so since the mage will be spending on chaos magic instead. Ressurection is possibly even better than fireball as it can be used to prevent even small amounts of troop loss, saving you a lot of coin over time. The only downside is that ressurection will not work on undead, demons, and plants so you have to switch more to using humanoids and animals.

So in my opinion, with the paladin you get great leadership, good spellcasting (in order magic) and good rage levels. In fact, the fastest way to build rage is to have YOUR units die, and if you can ressurect them this is a viable option. Finally, combine that coin savings with the trade skill which lets you make a lot of coin selling old or redundant items and scrolls and you will be able to get the really great (and imbalancing) items you normally just drool over in the store.

On a side note, the only demons I saw in the demo were these imps in the medusa tournament fight (not counting the guys on the towers) and they were horribly powerful with super high initiative, 45 hp each, they cast fireball with huge damage, and there were RANK TWO. Undead seem pretty powerful but next to demons, bleh. Imagine what a Rank 5 demon would be like. Having an advantage vs them later in the game will not be wasted.

Like Dane I will be starting a Paladin tomorrow.