Yesterday I had the absolute PLEASURE to play my level 5, str 20, 8' goliath, Sentinel, Vengeance Paladin, and our wizard in my group hasted me.
What an absolute POWERHOUSE !!
Wow it was fun, everything just crumbled in front of me. The best part was that our Assasin Rogue got hastede too. Her and I took of and chased our enemies that was fleeing from us, we were fighting Yuan-ti purebloods and abominations, and we killed like 1 every single round. They dashed and ran, and we could just catch up to the one by one, and everytime they tried to run from me, my sentinel feat stopped them :)
The two of us killed just about everything, and the rest of the group just followed and looted the corpses :D
That was the most fun I have ever had with combat.
Haste is a nice spell. There are stronger concentration spells at the same level, but they all have situations where they aren't ideal. Fear is amazing, but a number of enemies are immune to frighten. Hypnotic Pattern is encounter-winning, but many enemies are immune to charm. Both are resisted by wisdom saves, and several enemies have strong wisdom saves, spell resistance, or both.
Haste just always works, and both the caster and the target gets to feel strong and cool. And the more damaging the target is, the better. throw it on a GWM monster, or an elven accuracy crit fisher, and watch them make a mess of things.
Eventually your wizard will have much stronger higher level spells to concentrate on, but as a vengeance paladin you'll eventually be able to cast it for yourself, which is nice as well, particularly when you know a combat is coming in advance and get to cast it before the fight starts.
While Haste is great, one thing I would say is don't forget that last line:
When the spell ends, the target can't move or take actions until after its next turn, as a wave of lethargy sweeps over it.
If the caster loses concentration, you lose an entire turn. That means you need to be confident that your caster (yourself if you can cast it) does not have to take too many concentration checks, as losing a full turn sucks.
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While Haste is great, one thing I would say is don't forget that last line:
When the spell ends, the target can't move or take actions until after its next turn, as a wave of lethargy sweeps over it.
If the caster loses concentration, you lose an entire turn. That means you need to be confident that your caster (yourself if you can cast it) does not have to take too many concentration checks, as losing a full turn sucks.
Agreed. I think all paladins should consider, Res (Con) or Warcaster feat.
In this case, it wasn't a problem AT ALL, because the caster was so far behind, that she basicly was not even IN combat. The rogue and I chased those we had to kill, so far ahead, that it took 6 rounds for the rest of the party to reach us, at full dash. They didn't do nothing though, there was some things to be looted, and some things to be investigated, and scrolls to translate, before they had time to catch up to us.
Basicly the party was split in two, with 2 powerhouse combatants and 4 investigators :D
Oh and I got Res(con) feat so next level when I get my Aura, my con saves hit +11 :D
I believe haste is a fantastic spell, but with the advent of tasha's, I find it tempting to say it's not all that it's cracked up to be as far as a spell for a paladin to use on themselves. It's good, but very circumstantial. As an offensive buff, I believe spirit shrouds to be a better alternative to haste due to its immediacy and leniency. As a defensive buff, haste clearly wins out, due to its increased mobility, higher AC, and better dex saves. In the case of glory, and to a lesser extent vengeance (because you need PAM to make it work,) there is a good amount of synergy especially when you factor in a paladin's find steed. But if we're talking about being a power house, hitting hard is the name of the game.
Let's assume two paladins, both are wearing a belt of hill giant strength (so both have a 5 STR mod) and they both have PAM, one uses haste and the other uses spirit shrouds, and let's say they go for three rounds.
hasted paladin gets a total of 7 regular attacks and 3 bonus actions PAM attacks. tallying up the damage, that's [(1d10+5)*7]+[(1d4+5)*3)]=96 damage
the spirit shrouds gets 6 attacks, and two BA PAM attacks. to cut it short, it's 78, but with 1d8 attached to every attack, that's adding 8d8. That's 114.
So, in this case, spirit shroud looks to be the winner. But what if we add GWM to the mix? Then, hasted wins, but barely as the final difference stands at 196 vs 194. For a difference that small, if mobility is a non-issue and you're not dying to have an extra 2 AC, I'd rather go with spirit shrouds as it also has the benefit of carrying a far less severe penalty for losing concentration.
I believe haste is a fantastic spell, but with the advent of tasha's, I find it tempting to say it's not all that it's cracked up to be as far as a spell for a paladin to use on themselves. It's good, but very circumstantial. As an offensive buff, I believe spirit shrouds to be a better alternative to haste due to its immediacy and leniency. As a defensive buff, haste clearly wins out, due to its increased mobility, higher AC, and better dex saves. In the case of glory, and to a lesser extent vengeance (because you need PAM to make it work,) there is a good amount of synergy especially when you factor in a paladin's find steed. But if we're talking about being a power house, hitting hard is the name of the game.
Let's assume two paladins, both are wearing a belt of hill giant strength (so both have a 5 STR mod) and they both have PAM, one uses haste and the other uses spirit shrouds, and let's say they go for three rounds.
hasted paladin gets a total of 7 regular attacks and 3 bonus actions PAM attacks. tallying up the damage, that's [(1d10+5)*7]+[(1d4+5)*3)]=96 damage
the spirit shrouds gets 6 attacks, and two BA PAM attacks. to cut it short, it's 78, but with 1d8 attached to every attack, that's adding 8d8. That's 114.
So, in this case, spirit shroud looks to be the winner. But what if we add GWM to the mix? Then, hasted wins, but barely as the final difference stands at 196 vs 194. For a difference that small, if mobility is a non-issue and you're not dying to have an extra 2 AC, I'd rather go with spirit shrouds as it also has the benefit of carrying a far less severe penalty for losing concentration.
Except we don't normally choose something just for being an offensive buff. We factor in other things. As you note, Haste brings +2 to AC, doubled movement, the advantage on DEX saves AND an extra action that we can do other things with, including make a weapon attack. Haste is only giving one extra attack a turn with 1d10 + 5 or avg 10.5 in your scenario vs all three attacks getting an extra 1d8 i.e. with three attacks, an average of 13.5 per turn. So a 3 point damage difference without going into crit chances and extra damage from crits. Still, to me, I think Haste is giving you more value, overall. Haste is both an offensive and defensive boost.
One of the best features of Spirit Shroud is it prevents a creature from healing. Unless I knew the creature had a strong ability to heal, I probably go with Haste though. But certainly, Spirit Shroud has its place in the paladin arsenal. The fact that you can choose the extra damage type with radiant likely being the go to option in most cases is quite strong, also.
Given that Haste is only on the paladin spell list for Vengeance and Glory, I can see why Spirit Shroud should be an option for most paladins. Overall, I prefer Haste, but many paladins won't have that option sans multi-classing, so Spirit Shroud is a good option B imo.
Also in all this, remember, I DID NOT cast haste on my self. I was hasted by our Wizard, and we took the combat away from the group, so she wasn't even attacked during my 10 rounds of haste. I was only level 5, so I used hunters mark for extra damage, and I'm a Hammer and shield Paladin, with Sentinel Feat, so I had my bonus action free in every round to move hunters mark, if my target died.
I love Haste, but I like Spiritual Weapon even more from Conquest. You get basically a third attack four levels earlier then Vengeance or Glory (with Haste). And if you are hasted by your allies, you will attack four times. And you don’t need to worry about concentration.
Except we don't normally choose something just for being an offensive buff. We factor in other things. As you note, Haste brings +2 to AC, doubled movement, the advantage on DEX saves AND an extra action that we can do other things with, including make a weapon attack. Haste is only giving one extra attack a turn with 1d10 + 5 or avg 10.5 in your scenario vs all three attacks getting an extra 1d8 i.e. with three attacks, an average of 13.5 per turn. So a 3 point damage difference without going into crit chances and extra damage from crits. Still, to me, I think Haste is giving you more value, overall. Haste is both an offensive and defensive boost.
The extra full attack and crit chance is actually huge for a Paladin, as that's another potential Divine Smite use, and even better if you can get yourself a source of advantage (like Oath of Vengeance has built in thanks to Vow of Enmity) as that's even more crit potential, so any extra attacks are big damage boosts to a Paladin.
One other advantage of Spirit Shroud though is that compared to casting Haste on yourself it has no penalty if your concentration is broken; while Paladins do have built in defence against that thanks to Aura of Protection, having an ally Haste you from a distance instead is even better, as even a high CHA bonus doesn't defend against a whiffed roll.
I say go with whatever fits your Paladin's theme better though. 😉
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I agree. I have analyzed my Palidan casting Haste on himself "six ways from Sunday" and I cannot find a situation where it give me more damage that not hasting-- with respect to damage dealt. However, if I assume my Palidan can pass all CON checks (he is going to get hit) it is cool to have an extra AC boost and more speed. Those two factors are hard to model in evaluations.
A savvy dungeon master will gladly throw a Dispel Magic on that hasted Paladin to shut it down. Unless Haste is up-cast, it is an auto-end to the Haste spell. But man, it's great when it's working.
Yesterday I had the absolute PLEASURE to play my level 5, str 20, 8' goliath, Sentinel, Vengeance Paladin, and our wizard in my group hasted me.
What an absolute POWERHOUSE !!
Wow it was fun, everything just crumbled in front of me.
The best part was that our Assasin Rogue got hastede too.
Her and I took of and chased our enemies that was fleeing from us, we were fighting Yuan-ti purebloods and abominations, and we killed like 1 every single round.
They dashed and ran, and we could just catch up to the one by one, and everytime they tried to run from me, my sentinel feat stopped them :)
The two of us killed just about everything, and the rest of the group just followed and looted the corpses :D
That was the most fun I have ever had with combat.
Haste is a nice spell. There are stronger concentration spells at the same level, but they all have situations where they aren't ideal. Fear is amazing, but a number of enemies are immune to frighten. Hypnotic Pattern is encounter-winning, but many enemies are immune to charm. Both are resisted by wisdom saves, and several enemies have strong wisdom saves, spell resistance, or both.
Haste just always works, and both the caster and the target gets to feel strong and cool. And the more damaging the target is, the better. throw it on a GWM monster, or an elven accuracy crit fisher, and watch them make a mess of things.
Eventually your wizard will have much stronger higher level spells to concentrate on, but as a vengeance paladin you'll eventually be able to cast it for yourself, which is nice as well, particularly when you know a combat is coming in advance and get to cast it before the fight starts.
While Haste is great, one thing I would say is don't forget that last line:
If the caster loses concentration, you lose an entire turn. That means you need to be confident that your caster (yourself if you can cast it) does not have to take too many concentration checks, as losing a full turn sucks.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Agreed. I think all paladins should consider, Res (Con) or Warcaster feat.
Hehe it is true with the concentration.
In this case, it wasn't a problem AT ALL, because the caster was so far behind, that she basicly was not even IN combat.
The rogue and I chased those we had to kill, so far ahead, that it took 6 rounds for the rest of the party to reach us, at full dash.
They didn't do nothing though, there was some things to be looted, and some things to be investigated, and scrolls to translate, before they had time to catch up to us.
Basicly the party was split in two, with 2 powerhouse combatants and 4 investigators :D
Oh and I got Res(con) feat so next level when I get my Aura, my con saves hit +11 :D
I almost want to make a paladin with two levels of fighter to get hasted and use action surge to unload five smites in one turn just for the lulz.
I believe haste is a fantastic spell, but with the advent of tasha's, I find it tempting to say it's not all that it's cracked up to be as far as a spell for a paladin to use on themselves. It's good, but very circumstantial. As an offensive buff, I believe spirit shrouds to be a better alternative to haste due to its immediacy and leniency. As a defensive buff, haste clearly wins out, due to its increased mobility, higher AC, and better dex saves. In the case of glory, and to a lesser extent vengeance (because you need PAM to make it work,) there is a good amount of synergy especially when you factor in a paladin's find steed. But if we're talking about being a power house, hitting hard is the name of the game.
Let's assume two paladins, both are wearing a belt of hill giant strength (so both have a 5 STR mod) and they both have PAM, one uses haste and the other uses spirit shrouds, and let's say they go for three rounds.
hasted paladin gets a total of 7 regular attacks and 3 bonus actions PAM attacks. tallying up the damage, that's [(1d10+5)*7]+[(1d4+5)*3)]=96 damage
the spirit shrouds gets 6 attacks, and two BA PAM attacks. to cut it short, it's 78, but with 1d8 attached to every attack, that's adding 8d8. That's 114.
So, in this case, spirit shroud looks to be the winner. But what if we add GWM to the mix? Then, hasted wins, but barely as the final difference stands at 196 vs 194. For a difference that small, if mobility is a non-issue and you're not dying to have an extra 2 AC, I'd rather go with spirit shrouds as it also has the benefit of carrying a far less severe penalty for losing concentration.
Except we don't normally choose something just for being an offensive buff. We factor in other things. As you note, Haste brings +2 to AC, doubled movement, the advantage on DEX saves AND an extra action that we can do other things with, including make a weapon attack. Haste is only giving one extra attack a turn with 1d10 + 5 or avg 10.5 in your scenario vs all three attacks getting an extra 1d8 i.e. with three attacks, an average of 13.5 per turn. So a 3 point damage difference without going into crit chances and extra damage from crits. Still, to me, I think Haste is giving you more value, overall. Haste is both an offensive and defensive boost.
One of the best features of Spirit Shroud is it prevents a creature from healing. Unless I knew the creature had a strong ability to heal, I probably go with Haste though. But certainly, Spirit Shroud has its place in the paladin arsenal. The fact that you can choose the extra damage type with radiant likely being the go to option in most cases is quite strong, also.
Given that Haste is only on the paladin spell list for Vengeance and Glory, I can see why Spirit Shroud should be an option for most paladins. Overall, I prefer Haste, but many paladins won't have that option sans multi-classing, so Spirit Shroud is a good option B imo.
Also in all this, remember, I DID NOT cast haste on my self.
I was hasted by our Wizard, and we took the combat away from the group, so she wasn't even attacked during my 10 rounds of haste.
I was only level 5, so I used hunters mark for extra damage, and I'm a Hammer and shield Paladin, with Sentinel Feat, so I had my bonus action free in every round to move hunters mark, if my target died.
If you haven't seen it, you should see this video, for an absolutely INSANE paladin damage build.
The Oath of Vengeance Paladin - D&D: Optimized #63 - YouTube
I love Haste, but I like Spiritual Weapon even more from Conquest. You get basically a third attack four levels earlier then Vengeance or Glory (with Haste). And if you are hasted by your allies, you will attack four times. And you don’t need to worry about concentration.
Yeah, Haste is amazing. Just wait until you can cast it on yourself! It's incredible.
Partway through the quest for absolute truth.
The extra full attack and crit chance is actually huge for a Paladin, as that's another potential Divine Smite use, and even better if you can get yourself a source of advantage (like Oath of Vengeance has built in thanks to Vow of Enmity) as that's even more crit potential, so any extra attacks are big damage boosts to a Paladin.
One other advantage of Spirit Shroud though is that compared to casting Haste on yourself it has no penalty if your concentration is broken; while Paladins do have built in defence against that thanks to Aura of Protection, having an ally Haste you from a distance instead is even better, as even a high CHA bonus doesn't defend against a whiffed roll.
I say go with whatever fits your Paladin's theme better though. 😉
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I agree. I have analyzed my Palidan casting Haste on himself "six ways from Sunday" and I cannot find a situation where it give me more damage that not hasting-- with respect to damage dealt. However, if I assume my Palidan can pass all CON checks (he is going to get hit) it is cool to have an extra AC boost and more speed. Those two factors are hard to model in evaluations.
A savvy dungeon master will gladly throw a Dispel Magic on that hasted Paladin to shut it down. Unless Haste is up-cast, it is an auto-end to the Haste spell. But man, it's great when it's working.
Haste is great until its over then you can do nothing for the next ten rounds or one turn.
What if a bad guy is still alive when the haste ends?
You fall over defenseless.
What could you do to defend yourself for the next ten rounds?