I played my SP martyr until Act 2 of Hell when it became clear that he
has to be more of a zealot than a martyr a lot of the time. The problem
is all the unleechable creatures in early act 2. With the damage he
does, he can't tolerate the damage to self when killing skeletons or PIs
and has to use Zeal. His leech is also not quite sufficient to take back
the life he's losing so even on leechable characters, he's taking some
damage.

On the bright side, his damage is quite good, even with a lowly
Butcher's Pupil. He doesn't take ages to kill things and his gear is
quite satisfactory considering he's a puritan

Since I am not really interested in playing another zeal/fanaticism
paladin, it's hard to work up the enthusiasm to continue. Well, that and
the fact that I finally updated Sacred and downloaded the free expansion
for it.

For anyone who is interested, Sacred was changed in such a way that
monster regeneration stops after areas are "at peace" and grey aura
creatures don't actively attack. That means you don't have to deal with
that level of tediousness. Also, it seems a lot of the buggy quests were
fixed.

I also started playing a Battle Mage and he's more fun than a gladiator
(at least for now)...shades of playing a sorc with war cray capability
and the ability to beat things around a bit.

Shari