a question from someone who has only just begun playing a paladin in general I'm assuming all channel divinities are once per short rest unless otherwise stated. Am I reading this right? is inspiring smite once per short rest? Because that seems... really weak to me.
You are correct. Once per short rest. Considering how few bonus actions pallys use, it’s not bad to be able to dish out healing (real healing, not temp hp, oops it is temp healing, I read it wrong). And the game typically assume 2-3 short rests per day. Obviously the more you take, the better it gets.
Umm, Inspiring Smite does grant THP, not regular HP. Lay on Hands is what Paladins can use to do “real healing.” And it’s amazing since it is most efficiently used to drop 1-2 HP at a time to pick up downed teammates so as to avoid anyone having to spend a spell slot to give a yo-yo 1d8+(1-5) averaging an unimpressive average of 8ish HP which is no more effective than the 1 HP would have probably been under the same conditions most of the time anyway. And if your character is mobile enough then that means one of the other PCs likely won’t have to Learn/Prepare Healing Word instead of something more interesting since nobody needs a belt and suspenders.
n contrast, THP can often be far more effective if you can drop a high enough number of them on the right character before they get hit. Yes, that does mean they are more situational, but luckily for Paladins they get both features
Honestly, Paladin is one of the strongest base classes in 5e. IMO, a Paladin with no subclass whatsoever can be approximately as effective as any of the PHB Sorcerers, and at least one subclass each across a number of the other classes, and probably stronger.
Consider this, if you can dump 2d8+2 THP on a squishy like the party’s 3rd-level Wiz or Sorc early in the day,, then depending on that Character’s Con mod and how well you roll on the 2d8 that could be clutch. (Assuming Fixed HP and Standard Array with at least a half-optimized race, that squishy wakes up every morning with a whopping 18 HP. (Please insert here, the least enthusiastic “yay” you can imagine.) Assuming that Paladin rolls average on their 2d8, then you just effectively increased that squishy’s HP by more than 50%. That’s almost like giving them another 2 levels worth of HP above their natural maximum. And they get to keep them until they lose them, or take another Long Rest. That could very well be the thing that prevents them going down in the first place. (For a less squishy character with a d8 HD, they likely get up every morning with around 23 HP, so a buff of 10 THP is still around a 45ish% boost.)
IMO, the only real downside to Inspiring Smite is that it competes with Peerless Athlete which is also situational, but but when those situations come up it’s a really nice feature. So hopefully you’ll have had a break in between. Consider the “expected average” is two Short Rests per adventuring day, you can have your cake and eat it too with good resource management.
To be honest, the real “weakness” with this Oath is its Aura. Auras are their thing second only to Divine Smite, and possibly more useful depending on the campaign. But the range on that is soooo dissuading. Between the party making an ideal target for every AoE the enemy can use, and the risk of Covid exposure.... And then it only goes up to 10 feet at 18th-level. (Take that “yay” you inserted earlier, make it even less enthusiastic, then toss it in the bin and insert a “WTF?!?” here instead.) IMO it should have started at 10‘ and then bumped to 15’ to go from bad to “situational.”
My main issue with it being "clutch" is the fact that for the most part 18 points is not much if you're higher than first level. And if you're higher than first level then 18 points plus 20 isn't much either. Which is to say that it really isn't clutch. Taking 18 to 25 damage in one turn is pretty low after fifth level
Especially considering by using it that way you can't then also use spells like armor of agathus. I can understand if it was based on a portion of your straight smite damage for that attack. That would make sense.
But, you can’t use armor of agathys anyway, that’s for conquest pallys and this is a feature for glory. And you can distribute those (temp, thank you for the correction) hp to anyone, and as a bonus action. Load up the barb or fighter before the go in to tank. Buff one of the squishies from 30 feet away so they can last another round. Though now it occurs to me you might have meant you can’t give it to someone else if they have AoA active. But even then, There’s usually a few people running around without any temp hp, and more hp doesn’t hurt anyone.
That said, it’s not fantastic, but I always thought glory was a little lackluster. It fits the the Ancient Greece theme well enough, but never seemed like it would be all that interesting to play.
You.. can if you multiclass. And again, if 18+ a max of 20 isn't much on one person, it's really not much divided amongst more than one.
It's not only a small amount of THP, but it's once per long rest, AND it takes a bonus action, glory is actively bad. It's really just a shame, considering how close it could be to being fun and worthwhile.
Once per long rest could be cool if: -you could expend a spell slot to use it again OR -the amount of THP was proportionate to your smite damage.
Alternatively, they could have just reduced the temporary HP granted per smite and called it a day.
My main issue with it being "clutch" is the fact that for the most part 18 points is not much if you're higher than first level. And if you're higher than first level then 18 points plus 20 isn't much either. Which is to say that it really isn't clutch. Taking 18 to 25 damage in one turn is pretty low after fifth level
Especially considering by using it that way you can't then also use spells like armor of agathus. I can understand if it was based on a portion of your straight smite damage for that attack. That would make sense.
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning. This is a 3rd level class feature, so the numbers I ran were for a party of 3rd level PCs. Additionally I went with the most averagest of average rolls for my example. If that 3rd-level squishy has 18 HP normally, and you give it 2d8+3 THP and roll perfectly average on the 2d8, then you gave that squishy 10 THP which makes it 55.55% more survivable than it was 6 seconds ago. If you “roll well” that could be as much as 19 THP on top of the squishy’s 18 HP, or 105.55% more survivable than it was 6 seconds ago because you just have them more THP than they have regular HP. If effectively more than doubling a party member’s HP isn’t something you would call “clutch,” then you must be a hard gorram person to please. And if your party takes the average 2 short rests that day you can do it 3 times....
WotC’s market research shows that most campaigns end around 12th level on average.
Assuming a typical optimizers build following RAW (Fixed HP, standard array, and prioritizing Spellcasting ability first and Con second), then your average player would put their 14 and 15 in such a way that both of those stats come out as 16 at character creation, and that the first two ASIs would pump Spellcasting Ability to 20, and the next would go into Con. Therefore at 12th-level, that squishy (Wiz or Sorc) would have 98 HP.
At 12th-level a Glory Pally could use this feature to drop a “personal force field” of 14-28 THP (Avg 21) up to 3x per day if they have the expected 2 short rests. That comes out to 42-84 (Avg 63) THP over the course of the day. Even rolling snake eyes all three times this Pally can buff that squishy’s survivability by around 43%, and assuming that all three end up averaging out to, well, average, then that goes up to just over 64%.
Now, I’m not arguing that Inspiring Smite is the best Chanel Divinity out there, or that it’s even close. What I am saying is that even if this is the worst Chanel Divinity that any Paladin in the whole game has access to, it still isn’t bad. Especially considering that it’s going on the Paladin chassis, and that’s S Tier all day.
a question from someone who has only just begun playing a paladin in general I'm assuming all channel divinities are once per short rest unless otherwise stated. Am I reading this right? is inspiring smite once per short rest? Because that seems... really weak to me.
2d8+Level 1/short rest is a completely credible amount of THP - on average, about 1/6 the value of the Inspiring Leader feat, in exchange for taking a bonus action rather than 10 minutes (i.e. even if you spend your whole round doing just it, it still takes 1/100 the time to do, and in reality you still get a move and an action). Glory Paladins are quite, quite far from being the best Paladin subclass, but Inspiring Smite isn't the problem.
On average, if we're talking the easiest dungeon mobs you can get at the lowest levels, unless you are playing a one-on-one campaign, where it consists entirely of you and your friend, and no one else, an average pull will consist of one monster per player. Most campaigns consist of three+ player characters. On average, unless the DM is pitting them against the lowest, worst, 0 CRest pulls every time, and if at any point all three of those monsters decide to attack him at once that's the 18 points done in one round if they hit. And that's if it goes perfect. If you roll ones on your d8s it's a waste of a class feature for that short rest until you start getting up there in paladin levels, which given the rest of the subclass features, why would you do that?
As I said, my metric here for it being "actively bad" consists of how close it comes to being just fine, and actually fun, compared to how wide misses the mark. To your point that inspiring smite is not the problem, the fact that inspiring smite is so thoroughly uninspiring, and doesn't improve in quality the more you put into that subclass is the problem. Glory isn't even worth taking a dip into. That's the problem.
second wind is a class feature you get no matter which subclass you take. It's not really why you take fighter, its just part of why you take it. Inspiring smite is a subclass feature which is only moderately better, and requires an additional level in that class.
It's whatever. DM's got a house rule that you can spend spell slots to get your channel divinities back (minimum spell slot doubles every time it's used. resets after two long rests) and I'm gonna take at least 8 levels in djinn warlock for shorter short rests. Should fix the problems I have with it nicely
On average, if we're talking the easiest dungeon mobs you can get at the lowest levels, unless you are playing a one-on-one campaign, where it consists entirely of you and your friend, and no one else, an average pull will consist of one monster per player. Most campaigns consist of three+ player characters. On average, unless the DM is pitting them against the lowest, worst, 0 CRest pulls every time, and if at any point all three of those monsters decide to attack him at once that's the 18 points done in one round if they hit. And that's if it goes perfect. If you roll ones on your d8s it's a waste of a class feature for that short rest until you start getting up there in paladin levels, which given the rest of the subclass features, why would you do that?
As I said, my metric here for it being "actively bad" consists of how close it comes to being just fine, and actually fun, compared to how wide misses the mark. To your point that inspiring smite is not the problem, the fact that inspiring smite is so thoroughly uninspiring, and doesn't improve in quality the more you put into that subclass is the problem. Glory isn't even worth taking a dip into. That's the problem.
It literally does scale with paladin level, although if we're talking about a level 9 Glory Paladin, which you're implying when you assume it generates 18 thp (2*4.5+9), of course there are other subclass features to discuss. And it is "inspiring" - you can hand the hit points out instead of keeping them to yourself. And it should take more than 3 attacks to deplete "18" hit points on an AC 21 paladin, which is the AC Glory paladins should generally hit by level 6, since the other use they have for Channel Divinity (which is generally better) gives them Advantage on knocking people prone, which has poor synergy with reach weapons but excellent synergy with Shield Master.
The flaws in Glory paladins are that many of their oath spells have poor synergy with Strength paladins (and Glory paladins are basically told to be good at Athletics) and their aura is brutally bad since 5E doesn't let you deliberately tank your initiative, and on top of that for no apparent reason you fail to buff non-walking speeds. It's just a poorly designed aura. If Glory paladins could choose to set their initiative at roll time to one less than the lowest in the rest of the party (provided this was also less than what they actually rolled), they'd be a lot more useful.
On average, if we're talking the easiest dungeon mobs you can get at the lowest levels, unless you are playing a one-on-one campaign, where it consists entirely of you and your friend, and no one else, an average pull will consist of one monster per player. Most campaigns consist of three+ player characters. On average, unless the DM is pitting them against the lowest, worst, 0 CRest pulls every time, and if at any point all three of those monsters decide to attack him at once that's the 18 points done in one round if they hit. And that's if it goes perfect. If you roll ones on your d8s it's a waste of a class feature for that short rest until you start getting up there in paladin levels, which given the rest of the subclass features, why would you do that?
As I said, my metric here for it being "actively bad" consists of how close it comes to being just fine, and actually fun, compared to how wide misses the mark. To your point that inspiring smite is not the problem, the fact that inspiring smite is so thoroughly uninspiring, and doesn't improve in quality the more you put into that subclass is the problem. Glory isn't even worth taking a dip into. That's the problem.
It literally does scale with paladin level...
it increases by 1 per paladin level. It scales, but it doesn't keep up -not by a long shot, is what I'm saying.
if we're talking about a level 9 Glory Paladin, which you're implying when you assume it generates 18 thp
I'm assuming the best case scenario when you get the class feature at level 3: you rolled 2d8s +3 (I just did the math wrong, or it was a typo, I don't remember). Which is bad enough. Best case scenario at 20th paladin level is bad enough at 36. And referring to the ability to distribute those points to more people as "inspiring" is disingenuous at best. 36 points on one person is good if they are only ever likely to be hit once. It's far more effective to just reactively heal someone, or cast false life on them
It's whatever. DM's got a house rule that you can spend spell slots to get your channel divinities back (minimum spell slot doubles every time it's used. resets after two long rests) and I'm gonna take at least 8 levels in djinn warlock for shorter short rests. Should fix the problems I have with it nicely
In other words, it doesn't matter. The best thing to do is to just not take oath of glory, or to introduce a mechanic which fixes the issue. It's still disappointing that back-to-front it's just straight up needs a rework to function on a comparable level.
To be clear, I wasn't suggesting you hand the hit points out to multiple people. I was suggesting you sometimes put them on someone other than the paladin. Healing spells and False Life consume spell slots, which are per long rest, so that's harder to compare. Inspiring Smite needs a smite to happen, but the spell slot isn't wasted - you still get to smite.
What do you want to compare it to, exactly? It's radically better than Turn the Tide from Oath of the Crown, which heals 1d6+CHA mod to everyone but only if the targets are both below half hit points and capable of hearing (so neither unconscious nor deaf, and the best use case for combat healing is downed allies).
Off the top of my head, I think only Conquest and Redemption have Channel Dvinities where both ways to use it are unbelievably rock solid. It's quite typical for one use to be much worse than the other, and for Glory, the worse one being 9+level thp that can be handed out is relatively good.
Yes, Inspiring Smite provides 3.5 more THP than Second Wind provides healing at every level, in exchange for needing to hit a target and spend a spell slot on damage rather than a spell in order to "pop" it.
a question from someone who has only just begun playing a paladin
in general I'm assuming all channel divinities are once per short rest unless otherwise stated. Am I reading this right? is inspiring smite once per short rest? Because that seems... really weak to me.
You are correct. Once per short rest.
Considering how few bonus actions pallys use, it’s not bad to be able to dish out healing (real healing, not temp hp, oops it is temp healing, I read it wrong). And the game typically assume 2-3 short rests per day. Obviously the more you take, the better it gets.
Umm, Inspiring Smite does grant THP, not regular HP. Lay on Hands is what Paladins can use to do “real healing.” And it’s amazing since it is most efficiently used to drop 1-2 HP at a time to pick up downed teammates so as to avoid anyone having to spend a spell slot to give a yo-yo 1d8+(1-5) averaging an unimpressive average of 8ish HP which is no more effective than the 1 HP would have probably been under the same conditions most of the time anyway. And if your character is mobile enough then that means one of the other PCs likely won’t have to Learn/Prepare Healing Word instead of something more interesting since nobody needs a belt and suspenders.
n contrast, THP can often be far more effective if you can drop a high enough number of them on the right character before they get hit. Yes, that does mean they are more situational, but luckily for Paladins they get both features
TheDeadHavRisen,
Honestly, Paladin is one of the strongest base classes in 5e. IMO, a Paladin with no subclass whatsoever can be approximately as effective as any of the PHB Sorcerers, and at least one subclass each across a number of the other classes, and probably stronger.
Consider this, if you can dump 2d8+2 THP on a squishy like the party’s 3rd-level Wiz or Sorc early in the day,, then depending on that Character’s Con mod and how well you roll on the 2d8 that could be clutch. (Assuming Fixed HP and Standard Array with at least a half-optimized race, that squishy wakes up every morning with a whopping 18 HP. (Please insert here, the least enthusiastic “yay” you can imagine.) Assuming that Paladin rolls average on their 2d8, then you just effectively increased that squishy’s HP by more than 50%. That’s almost like giving them another 2 levels worth of HP above their natural maximum. And they get to keep them until they lose them, or take another Long Rest. That could very well be the thing that prevents them going down in the first place. (For a less squishy character with a d8 HD, they likely get up every morning with around 23 HP, so a buff of 10 THP is still around a 45ish% boost.)
IMO, the only real downside to Inspiring Smite is that it competes with Peerless Athlete which is also situational, but but when those situations come up it’s a really nice feature. So hopefully you’ll have had a break in between. Consider the “expected average” is two Short Rests per adventuring day, you can have your cake and eat it too with good resource management.
To be honest, the real “weakness” with this Oath is its Aura. Auras are their thing second only to Divine Smite, and possibly more useful depending on the campaign. But the range on that is soooo dissuading. Between the party making an ideal target for every AoE the enemy can use, and the risk of Covid exposure.... And then it only goes up to 10 feet at 18th-level. (Take that “yay” you inserted earlier, make it even less enthusiastic, then toss it in the bin and insert a “WTF?!?” here instead.) IMO it should have started at 10‘ and then bumped to 15’ to go from bad to “situational.”
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My main issue with it being "clutch" is the fact that for the most part 18 points is not much if you're higher than first level. And if you're higher than first level then 18 points plus 20 isn't much either. Which is to say that it really isn't clutch. Taking 18 to 25 damage in one turn is pretty low after fifth level
Especially considering by using it that way you can't then also use spells like armor of agathus. I can understand if it was based on a portion of your straight smite damage for that attack. That would make sense.
But, you can’t use armor of agathys anyway, that’s for conquest pallys and this is a feature for glory.
And you can distribute those (temp, thank you for the correction) hp to anyone, and as a bonus action. Load up the barb or fighter before the go in to tank. Buff one of the squishies from 30 feet away so they can last another round. Though now it occurs to me you might have meant you can’t give it to someone else if they have AoA active. But even then, There’s usually a few people running around without any temp hp, and more hp doesn’t hurt anyone.
That said, it’s not fantastic, but I always thought glory was a little lackluster. It fits the the Ancient Greece theme well enough, but never seemed like it would be all that interesting to play.
You.. can if you multiclass. And again, if 18+ a max of 20 isn't much on one person, it's really not much divided amongst more than one.
It's not only a small amount of THP, but it's once per long rest, AND it takes a bonus action, glory is actively bad. It's really just a shame, considering how close it could be to being fun and worthwhile.
Once per long rest could be cool if:
-you could expend a spell slot to use it again
OR
-the amount of THP was proportionate to your smite damage.
Alternatively, they could have just reduced the temporary HP granted per smite and called it a day.
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning. This is a 3rd level class feature, so the numbers I ran were for a party of 3rd level PCs. Additionally I went with the most averagest of average rolls for my example. If that 3rd-level squishy has 18 HP normally, and you give it 2d8+3 THP and roll perfectly average on the 2d8, then you gave that squishy 10 THP which makes it 55.55% more survivable than it was 6 seconds ago. If you “roll well” that could be as much as 19 THP on top of the squishy’s 18 HP, or 105.55% more survivable than it was 6 seconds ago because you just have them more THP than they have regular HP. If effectively more than doubling a party member’s HP isn’t something you would call “clutch,” then you must be a hard gorram person to please. And if your party takes the average 2 short rests that day you can do it 3 times....
WotC’s market research shows that most campaigns end around 12th level on average.
Assuming a typical optimizers build following RAW (Fixed HP, standard array, and prioritizing Spellcasting ability first and Con second), then your average player would put their 14 and 15 in such a way that both of those stats come out as 16 at character creation, and that the first two ASIs would pump Spellcasting Ability to 20, and the next would go into Con. Therefore at 12th-level, that squishy (Wiz or Sorc) would have 98 HP.
At 12th-level a Glory Pally could use this feature to drop a “personal force field” of 14-28 THP (Avg 21) up to 3x per day if they have the expected 2 short rests. That comes out to 42-84 (Avg 63) THP over the course of the day. Even rolling snake eyes all three times this Pally can buff that squishy’s survivability by around 43%, and assuming that all three end up averaging out to, well, average, then that goes up to just over 64%.
Now, I’m not arguing that Inspiring Smite is the best Chanel Divinity out there, or that it’s even close. What I am saying is that even if this is the worst Chanel Divinity that any Paladin in the whole game has access to, it still isn’t bad. Especially considering that it’s going on the Paladin chassis, and that’s S Tier all day.
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2d8+Level 1/short rest is a completely credible amount of THP - on average, about 1/6 the value of the Inspiring Leader feat, in exchange for taking a bonus action rather than 10 minutes (i.e. even if you spend your whole round doing just it, it still takes 1/100 the time to do, and in reality you still get a move and an action). Glory Paladins are quite, quite far from being the best Paladin subclass, but Inspiring Smite isn't the problem.
On average, if we're talking the easiest dungeon mobs you can get at the lowest levels, unless you are playing a one-on-one campaign, where it consists entirely of you and your friend, and no one else, an average pull will consist of one monster per player. Most campaigns consist of three+ player characters. On average, unless the DM is pitting them against the lowest, worst, 0 CRest pulls every time, and if at any point all three of those monsters decide to attack him at once that's the 18 points done in one round if they hit. And that's if it goes perfect. If you roll ones on your d8s it's a waste of a class feature for that short rest until you start getting up there in paladin levels, which given the rest of the subclass features, why would you do that?
As I said, my metric here for it being "actively bad" consists of how close it comes to being just fine, and actually fun, compared to how wide misses the mark. To your point that inspiring smite is not the problem, the fact that inspiring smite is so thoroughly uninspiring, and doesn't improve in quality the more you put into that subclass is the problem. Glory isn't even worth taking a dip into. That's the problem.
Still better than second wind.
second wind is a class feature you get no matter which subclass you take. It's not really why you take fighter, its just part of why you take it.
Inspiring smite is a subclass feature which is only moderately better, and requires an additional level in that class.
It's whatever. DM's got a house rule that you can spend spell slots to get your channel divinities back (minimum spell slot doubles every time it's used. resets after two long rests) and I'm gonna take at least 8 levels in djinn warlock for shorter short rests. Should fix the problems I have with it nicely
It literally does scale with paladin level, although if we're talking about a level 9 Glory Paladin, which you're implying when you assume it generates 18 thp (2*4.5+9), of course there are other subclass features to discuss. And it is "inspiring" - you can hand the hit points out instead of keeping them to yourself. And it should take more than 3 attacks to deplete "18" hit points on an AC 21 paladin, which is the AC Glory paladins should generally hit by level 6, since the other use they have for Channel Divinity (which is generally better) gives them Advantage on knocking people prone, which has poor synergy with reach weapons but excellent synergy with Shield Master.
The flaws in Glory paladins are that many of their oath spells have poor synergy with Strength paladins (and Glory paladins are basically told to be good at Athletics) and their aura is brutally bad since 5E doesn't let you deliberately tank your initiative, and on top of that for no apparent reason you fail to buff non-walking speeds. It's just a poorly designed aura. If Glory paladins could choose to set their initiative at roll time to one less than the lowest in the rest of the party (provided this was also less than what they actually rolled), they'd be a lot more useful.
it increases by 1 per paladin level. It scales, but it doesn't keep up -not by a long shot, is what I'm saying.
I'm assuming the best case scenario when you get the class feature at level 3: you rolled 2d8s +3 (I just did the math wrong, or it was a typo, I don't remember). Which is bad enough. Best case scenario at 20th paladin level is bad enough at 36. And referring to the ability to distribute those points to more people as "inspiring" is disingenuous at best. 36 points on one person is good if they are only ever likely to be hit once. It's far more effective to just reactively heal someone, or cast false life on them
However, and moreover
In other words, it doesn't matter. The best thing to do is to just not take oath of glory, or to introduce a mechanic which fixes the issue. It's still disappointing that back-to-front it's just straight up needs a rework to function on a comparable level.
To be clear, I wasn't suggesting you hand the hit points out to multiple people. I was suggesting you sometimes put them on someone other than the paladin. Healing spells and False Life consume spell slots, which are per long rest, so that's harder to compare. Inspiring Smite needs a smite to happen, but the spell slot isn't wasted - you still get to smite.
What do you want to compare it to, exactly? It's radically better than Turn the Tide from Oath of the Crown, which heals 1d6+CHA mod to everyone but only if the targets are both below half hit points and capable of hearing (so neither unconscious nor deaf, and the best use case for combat healing is downed allies).
Off the top of my head, I think only Conquest and Redemption have Channel Dvinities where both ways to use it are unbelievably rock solid. It's quite typical for one use to be much worse than the other, and for Glory, the worse one being 9+level thp that can be handed out is relatively good.
Are you kidding?!? Second wind is a great feature.
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2d8>1d10
1d10+x. X=1-20. By fourth level, the averages are the same.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
Sir. You are aware that you also add your lvl to inspiring smite too, yes? Inspiring will always be superior.
Yes, Inspiring Smite provides 3.5 more THP than Second Wind provides healing at every level, in exchange for needing to hit a target and spend a spell slot on damage rather than a spell in order to "pop" it.
Hey guys,
1st time Paladin and going Glory route.
How long do the Temp Hit Points last after an Inspiring Smite? Assume the given player has not taken damage.