While that rule does suck, I have to comment about paladins. So far I've been playing as one, and I'm up to about 25. My guy looks pretty fuckin' cool for a 25 PAL IMO. Paladins are basically holy knights. It doesn't become really apparent what their purpose is until you start fighting undead shit that hits between 20-50 per hit. My Paladin has about 800HP at all times, and around 700MP, and man, when I start fighting undead, it becose truly obvious why you get Undead spells at certain levels. Primarily, Pallys are supposed to fight the Undead. We have spells that are specifically designed to fight the Undead. We can detect, fear, and assault dead things with our Holy Might. And Paladins by default get Mail armor, which is super-duper strong. Which is good, because paladins, by their nature, are second-class meat tanks who can heal and do some good melee damage. My guy has over 1500 AC for a damn reason. He also does an average of 75-100 per hit and over 150 almost every time on "Holy Strike" and crits that around 300+. That's a ton of damage for a 25!
Man, that's a BFS (big fuckin' sword) if I ever saw one!
So far, the game has been really fun. And addicting. But way more fun than addicting.