Paladin: Oath of Redemption Is Coming to D&D's Xanathar's Guide To Everything

Todd Kenreck: Not every paladin starts off on a good and righteous path. Today, we're talking about the Oath of Redemption in Xanathar's Guide To Everything.

Who is the Oath of Redemption for?

Jeremy Crawford: The Oath of Redemption for the paladin has a fun story when it comes to its path to where it is now, because unlike most of the other subclasses in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, it actually started out as a subclass for a different class. That's actually true of a couple of other subclasses in the book.

It originally, in the Unearthed Arcana process, started out as a pacifist subclass for the monk. That subclass kind of got a mixed reception from fans. We decided we still liked the idea of this character who's dedicated to peace, particularly because we know there are players who really like to play characters like that, who are really in a group to be there to support others, to resolve conflicts, and whenever possible, to do so peacefully. We thought, "There's still definitely something there, when it comes to the story archetype. We just didn't nail it when we tried it out in the monk."

We thought about it some more, and we thought, "Why not the paladin?" We did some design with it, and it really started to come together not when we started to focus on pacifism or peace, but really focused on this story of redemption, that this is a paladin who is not just about stopping conflict, but truly believes that others are redeemable.

Now, this paladin is not naïve. This paladin knows that in the DnD multiverse, there are monsters that are woven together by evil itself, things like devils demons. This paladin will not hesitate to oppose them and do so with force. When it comes to the many other creatures in the multiverse, humanoids and whatnot, this paladin has this blazing hope that others are redeemable and that peace is achievable.

This subclass is in stark and intentional opposition to the other paladin subclass in the book, the Oath of Conquest, which, its story roots are largely about the loss of hope in others. This is all about this hope that cannot be extinguished, about the capability for others to turn from evil and embrace good. This paladin is effective with their channel divinity at persuading others. They can give themselves this bonus where they're just better at persuasion checks for a while. This paladin is also good at rebuking others who've harmed someone else. They can deal damage to somebody who has just damaged somebody else.

As this paladin levels up, this paladin is also able to start taking the damage that somebody else was about to take. Then, that interfaces nicely with, then, as the paladin gets a little higher level, then this holy force begins to heal the paladin whenever the paladin is below half his or her hit points. Then, there starts being this nice loop where the paladin starts taking others wounds for them, and then this holy force begins healing this paladin, the idea being that this paladin is such a paragon of peace and of redemption, that it's like the cosmos itself is trying to keep this paladin alive as a positive force in the world.

Finally, at the capstone, once this paladin gets to 20th level, it becomes difficult for anyone to harm them unless the paladin harms that other person first. I think people are going to enjoy this as a very different take on the paladin.

We went back and forth about, do we want it to be in the cleric? Do we want it to be in the monk? Do we want it to be in the paladin? At the end of the day, we really liked the idea of it being in the paladin, particularly because of those three classes, the paladin has a tremendous amount of resilience. Also, story-wise, the paladin is defined by oath. We liked this idea of this person whose entire existence is about doing whatever can be done to take people who have wandered down a dark path and help them to see the light. I think that brightness and that peacefulness, and also that self-sacrifice, is really going to appeal to certain players.

Todd Kenreck: You can find the paladin Oath of Redemption in Xanathar's Guide to Everything on D&Dbeyond.com by clicking on the link in this video description and earn preorder bonuses as well. I'm Todd Kenreck. Thank you for watching.