Todd Kenreck: The Oath of Conquest is for paladins that have gone down a much darker road. I talked to Jeremy Crawford about this latest subclass in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

Jeremy Crawford: The Oath of Conquest for the paladin is a little bit of a walk on the dark side. In the player's handbook, we already have the Oath of Vengeance, which is another sort of darker paladin. Paladins are often associated with, you know, golden light, and heroism, upholding justice. So in the player's handbook, we introduced for players who wanted a bit of a dark paladin, the Dark Avenger. And in fact, we even say that the Oath of Vengeance is called the Avenger, or the Dark Knight. They are there, meeting out vengeance.

So, the Oath of Conquest, we go even deeper then, into that darker realm for the paladin. Where these are paladins that believe so much in law and order, that they are going to enforce it. They are going to conquer those who are unruly, and prone to evil, and bend them to their will. And so, these paladins are not necessarily evil. In fact, we point out that many of them can still be the Paragons of Justice that people think of when they often think of paladins.

But there is this darker side to them. I like to think of them a little bit, their bit like Saruman in the Lord of The Rings before he goes totally bad. Where really Saruman at the, kind of, the poison in his soul that gets at him, is he starts to lose hope in other people. He stops believing that mortals around him are capable of achieving the lofty heights that he originally believed they could achieve.

And so, instead of trusting them and inspiring them, as Gandalf tries to, he begins to conquer. And so I imagine the Oath of Conquest paladins as taking the kind of first few steps down that dark road, where they start wondering, "Is the world around me actually capable of ever getting better." Because, especially in the D&D multiverse, it's like just as soon as you clean the room up, everything gets messed up again, because, here comes another group of bad guys.

And you can imagine there would be these paladins. Paladins who have such lofty ideals, and who are infused with such mighty magic, might sometimes think, "What the heck is wrong with this place?" This place being the world. That bad creates are always showing up, kingdoms are always getting things wrong. And so the Oath of Conquest is kind of the answer to that. That these are the paladins that they've kind of had enough.

And they are going to start enforcing that things will get better. That's, again, that's dark. And I think you can have some really interesting Oath of Conquest characters who tread that sort of tight rope, who maybe still manage to be good characters, still are faithful friends to their adventuring companions. But, are pushing hard toward their view of what the world should be like.

Now, we talk about, in Xanathar's Guide, that there even some members of this oath, who contrary to what is tradition for most paladins, who have actually dedicated themselves to some of the lords of the nine hells. And, so these would be lawful, evil paladins. Now, one of the neat things is, the greatest opponents of those lawful, evil paladins, are other paladins who are members of the Oath of Conquest.

So, we plant this seed in the description of the subclass, of there being actually this slow, boiling civil war, within this subclass. And essentially, they're paladins, who are on this spectrum of kind of losing their hope. They're the ones who still have some, and who still believe in goodness. And they're the ones who've gone all the way to the dark side, and basically like, "We are going to crush these kingdoms around us, and make them be places of glorious order."

Now, when it comes to the game mechanics, how this gets expressed, is this paladin is very effective at striking fear in others. We imagine this paladin to have this imperious presence. And then, as they level up, they start having this ability to with just their, an aura that emanates from them to make people who are frightened of them, being unable to move. So you can image, people are suddenly just quivering around them.

In terms of mood, one of my favorite abilities that these paladins have, is their scornful rebuke. Where, if you strike them in battle, they can make it so you take psychic damage in return. Where it's just basically, like they're not going to have it. And they are not going to put up with anyone showing any kind of rebellious behavior toward them.

One of the other names for these paladins, are Knight Tyrants. Again, they are the paladins who've gone so far into the woods of their lawfulness, that some of them get lost there. Now, these paladins are distinct from oathbreakers, who are in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Those are paladins that have truly given themselves over to evil.

You can imagine, if you're thinking about characters who might be like members of the Oath of Conquest in other stories; Judge Dredd would be an example of this. Now, you could also certainly create a Judge Dredd like character with the Oath of Vengeance. Again, in some ways it depends on how much you want to turn up the darkness. Because, again, the Oath of Vengeance, I think of as being a bit gray, and Oath of Conquest starts getting dark. But not so dark as the oathbreaker, which is why the Oath of Conquest is on the player's side of things, in a player book, whereas the oathbreaker is in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

And it's something we imagine to mostly be there for non-player characters. But certainly a player character could use it as well. If they decide I've had enough of any of these oaths, and embrace that oathless path.

Todd Kenreck: The paladin Oath of Conquest is in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. You can purchase that book on DNDBeyond.com. And you can earn pre order bonuses as well, by clicking on the link in this video description. I'm Todd Kenreck, thanks for watching.