The title is pretty self explanatory.

As for myself, I can't decide between the Thief and the Paladin. The Thief is a former noble and can reclaim his titles. This gets him a town of his own - though not much can be done with it - with extra quests to complete and soldiers to recruit. He can also disarm traps, use stealth to attack enemies from the shadows, reach three of the four spell mastery levels, and easily take out enemies from afar. He's squishy, however, and that's where I like my Paladin.

My Paladin can take a hit and dish it out, too. The Thief has a wide instead of tight damage range with the bow, such as 5-30. The same level melee weapon may be 30-40. And then there are the large shields and larger armors to wear. For lack of a better word, they look cool. But he's not quite as good with dealing with traps and he can only reach two out of the four spell mastery levels. That makes me worry about how I'm going to deal with debilitating status effects. Finally, the Paladin's quest reward lets him become a commander, but all I've gotten out of that so far has been a chest.

I went with the Thief because of his Eloquence skill, which improves reputation changes, has better haggling, and could supposedly access more dialogue options than the other classes. Personally, I would have preferred a single class to choose that allowed the player to pursue any skill, but there ya go.

I chose to play the Paladin because I like the idea of being a formidable melee class and having a little magic as back-up. I think the combat system is a little flawed in the sense that enemies do incredible amounts of damage, forcing you to grind a lot at the beginning of the game. Basically I find a melee focused class more fun and interesting to play because they're better at taking hits and they can wear some really cool looking armor. I just know that fighting the Undead Bishop would have been impossible had I not been able to stand and take some damage.

I'm playing a priest, using a bow as his main weapon.
I'm a bit on the "high" level side, well, more like mid level according to the skills :p (31 at the moment in act 2) and my main issue with combat isn't that ennemies hit like trucks, I can quite offset that with potion spam (I have one full inventory tab for health potions... well obliged, and it goes down quickly), it's that as soon as I've downed a mob a bit, it flees.
And with a melee weapon, running after a fleeing monster means kind of stuttering behind it and not hitting it at all.
I regretted a while during act 1 to not having made a thief, because I didn't knew how to open locked chest without lockpicking.
Then when I learned how to do it I just started bashing those, and recently I got the shatter spell ^^
Levitation is great too, well a lot of magic are cool, but unfortunately, fighting magic is... hard to use at best.
At my level in act 2, there are plenty monsters on which my offensive spells have like a 50% chance of working. So better just cripple them with arrow.

It can get very hard though on the first time setting foot in a map with monsters.
Because the game puts you at the center quite often, you get rushed by a ton of monsters... And as a very well armored priest (cough cough) it becomes an exercise in pressing I then using healthpots very fast.

All in all, what makes me like the priest class is mostly it's ranks.
I'm now an inquisitorial judge, and seriously, that kicks ass.... :)
I can pretty much judge anyone (well except top brass) on my own without answering to anyone.

thief because mages are glass peashooters in 99% of CRPGs. They are identical to archers only weaker and with special effects for their arrows.
(unlike PnP RPGs when its quadratic wizard linear warriors)
A theif gets awesome social skills, most magic, and a superior ranged attack.

Mages also tend to be carpal tunnel waiting to happen since an archer shoots the bow until the enemy is dead and a fighter swings his sword until the enemy is dead. But mages require an additional click for every casting of the spell. I have just confirmed that in this game it holds true (holy word needs me to right click for each casting attempt, while bow attack requires one click and then is repeated until enemy is dead)

I'm glad I chose a thief. Was starting to wonder if I made the right decision. My reasoning for the choice was having checked out some of the skills. Many of the magic skills were offered to thief along with many non magic combat abilities as well. Seemed like a a good balance between priest and paladin. I often pick the thief role in CRPGs. I hadn't thought about the social skills, but I prefer social/intelligent characters so that is good to know.

Only thing, the thief is referred to as noble, and it's rather silly. Maybe all classes do? If not, well, I'm a thief, a dirty rotten scoundrel... not a high noble.

Easy difficulty, focusing on ranger skills, have the dog, and at level 7 I get my ass handed to me by skeletons. Other than that combat has been mostly easy.

And at the start of the game, he's given the chance to reclaim those titles.

I think I've finally settled on playing as the Thief instead of the Paladin. The titles of baron and duke are nice, but one of the larger reasons is that the merchant in my town is guaranteed to sell magic boxes. Always. Those have saved my butt so often in a tough fight and now I can just horde them in my inventory.

Yes, alchemist in Glatzburg always sells those as well :-P And maybe even the one in Hillbrant.