The issue I have with your response is that you, and many others, seem to think to goal of a character build is solely to do mass amounts of damage. Much of the new material in the 2024 books actually looks to reduce damage numbers but increase your tactical options. The changes to smite are in line with that.
I guess it's a difference of the goal we see as I and those I tend to play with aren't pushing min/max builds.
Now I'm not saying that min/maxing is bad, just that's not the way we tend to think. I think that difference in point of view is why we tend not to see this as a negative.
The problem with your response is that you're wrong, many other classes are doing more damage and sometimes MUCH more damage. No, it's not entirely about damage, but some of it is. Players get a thrill out of feeling effective and a "hero" moment. Paladins aren't the best support class. Paladins are emergency healers, but they aren't really healers in the same sense that clerics, druids, divine soul sorcerers are. Paladins aren't really damage dealers, anymore, nor were they the largest damage dealers in 5e either! With divine smite now being a bonus action, paladins really only have their action...unless they never smite. Which may be the way to go? I think the only role left for paladins is one option and one only...sword and board, tank. You will do piddling damage, but you can take defensive minded feats/fighting styles and raise your AC by your proficiency bonus or help reduce damage on allies. That's your only serious option...IF you want to still play a paladin? IMO, the best option is to not play a paladin and go to a different class, that got love in One DnD. All of this assumes you play One DnD, buy all their books, instead of just stay with 5e. I think a whole lot of people are going to do that. It wouldn't be the first new DnD edition to flop.
RAW ( 2024 phb ) atm you could do the following which i expect will be sage advice soon : + you start with sword & board, but you take the dual - wielder feat at 4th lvl & dueling fighting style + changing a weapon as now part of an attack what you do is : attack with your main head, swap to another weapon ( scimitar e.g. ) and take the nick attack, make a divine smite if you crit or swap to a 3rd weapon ( scimitar ) and do your dual wielder bonus action attack, swap back to your first weapon and take your extra attack action ....... - all attacks ( 4x at @5th lvl+ ) will be with +2 to the dmg because of dueling it won't get you even close to a warlock, wizard or valor bard but at least you feel like you could contribute a tiny bit of damage and still be hard to hit
sad part is, each class with dueling fighting style & shield prof. can do that ..... and when you have other classes: ( e.g. Bladesinger, Valor Bard ) at 7th+ lvl which have even more attacks and each attack is hitting with a 2nd spell slot "smite" w/o needing a spell slot, add 2 spell slots / 2 lvls above 5th. so 4d8 @9th, 6d8@11th ....
you see why Torvala, me and others are saying that Paladins & esp. Paladin smite are in a useless position as it stands right now.
add: do you really need those damage outputs ? it depends on what kind of game your DM is running add2: those numbers above are not even optimized chars, but just put quickly together if you go into optimized play at t4 you can reach depending on the situation 1000-2000 dmg in 1 round while the paladin of similiar lvl will have trouble getting past 120 dmg
Pretty sure you would still be able to damage a rakshasa or Tiamat with the One DnD Divine Smite. The spell is cast on you (range "self"), not the rakshasa or Tiamat, giving your attacks extra radiant damage. Thus, they take the damage, unless they're immune to radiant damage. At least that's how I read it.
Btw, I hate losing my bonus action to do a Divine Smite. I would have much preferred some sort of rule that paladins can only smite once per turn, like Sneak Attack for rogues, rather than this. Losing bonus action economy kills one of my favorite weapons and feats for a paladin, the glaive/halberd and Polearm Master feat. Seems to me that PAM no longer is workable for a paladin. Instead of giving paladins more options, WotC seems to have given them fewer. Also, no smiting with an opportunity attack and such. Even rogues get to use Sneak Attack outside of their turn. Sneak Attack scales and doesn't cost the rogue anything, only with a finite resource can paladins smite. So yeah, I think I'm playing classes OTHER than paladin in a One DnD game.
Will need to see if a new Rakshasa comes out but the way I read Rakshasa's Limited Magic Immunity from 2014, the target of a spell is irrelevant, it is immune to being affected by any spell of 6th level or lower. Thus I would say, as written, it would be immune to Divine Smite. Overall Rakshasa's limited magic has never been the best written immunity around and clarification on how it should or should not work has been needed for a long time.
I'd also say the Bonus Action cost of Divine Smite does not kill PAM, it kills Divine Smite for anything but critical hits. PAM is still perfectly a good choice, but you just have to use spells like Divine Favor, Spirit Shroud & Holy Weapon instead of smite spells to be outputting damage and only using divine smites on critical hits, or other smites when they are situationally useful. Of course relying on concentration spells does have it's own drawbacks, but oh well, perhaps using a pike to push creatures back and trying to back out of ranges makes it a bit more viable, also warcaster being a half-feat with CHA as an option for later levels...
Now the Bonus Action cost of Divine Smite does kill Great Weapon Master, since Great Weapon Master's bonus action attack is on kill or on crit, but on crit is when you want to smite still.
The issue I have with your response is that you, and many others, seem to think to goal of a character build is solely to do mass amounts of damage. Much of the new material in the 2024 books actually looks to reduce damage numbers but increase your tactical options. The changes to smite are in line with that.
I guess it's a difference of the goal we see as I and those I tend to play with aren't pushing min/max builds.
Now I'm not saying that min/maxing is bad, just that's not the way we tend to think. I think that difference in point of view is why we tend not to see this as a negative.
I am going to disagree on reducing damage, damage should roughly be around the same area and Paladin was always on the low-end of average & sustained DPR, just on the high end of Nova. The reason I say damage should be roughly in the same area is due to changes in how feats work and that now classes additionally get a background feat, most feats are now half-feats and that opens a lot of options that increase damage with an attribute increase too. Some feats lost some options, notably SS and GWM, but those were so unnecessarily overpowered in certain situations (like having advantage).
doing a massive amount of damage is not the goal but damage still fundamentally matters, Paladin is competing mostly with Fighter and Barbarian in how Paladin normally operates as a strong martial front-liner with high AC, Good HP and some of the best saves in the game. The problem is then that the best way to not take damage is to kill the things trying to kill you, faster. So if Paladin is doing this the slowest, then the high AC, Good HP and great saves aren't doing enough to carry the class, it is fundamentally behind. This could be justified before because Paladin could Nova at the times it really mattered but with that now gone, Paladin is in a bad position. This has nothing to do with min/maxing, it has to do with how the class performs in general. And that performance is hindrances by a massive nerf to action economy, thus as people are saying, the issue isn't once/round it is the bonus action cost of divine smite.
Paladin's alpha damage is weaker, but it's consistent damage is likely to be higher, particularly vengeance being able to stack divine favor and hunter's mark.
I don't think being able to delete an encounter is a good thing, so, I think this change is a good thing.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Paladin's alpha damage is weaker, but it's consistent damage is likely to be higher, particularly vengeance being able to stack divine favor and hunter's mark.
I don't think being able to delete an encounter is a good thing, so, I think this change is a good thing.
Paladin's alpha damage is not weaker, it is not existent anymore, its sustaineddamage is just a bit higher then in 5e when they "abuse" a feat ( Dual - Wielder ) and to use 2 spell slots every encounter to even get to that is imho at least a waste of resources not to mentioned that you need 2 rounds to set that up. (while Paladin will do ~120 after setup, others will clock in at 300-500 w/o setup ).
Also if you compare the +1d6 dmg ( once per round ) vs the +1d8 on each attack and slowing your opp. movement speed ( spirit shroud ) i dare to say that hunter's mark is still a wasted spell in 2024.
5.24 didn't remove abilities to delete an encounter they just moved them to other classes ( name: valor bard, warlocks, sorcerers, Bladesingers, Moondruids ). Paladin's Nova-Dmg ( read divine smite ) was balanced, because they had to spent resources which they didn't have a lot off to reach that. ( most of the time, they could do that 1 round per long rest ).
They also said 2024 was done to close the gap between martials & casters, but all i'm seeing is the gap between them got even more larger ......
If i look into the future i'm seeing ( the players that really want to play paladin's ) are gonna go Bladesinger 13-14 / Paladin 6-7 which is very MAD, or Paladin 3-4 / Valor - Bard 15-16 / Warlock 1 Vengeance Oath with Elf & Elven Accuracy
I think you exaggerate. I think paladin is a more palatable class than it was in 2014.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I think you exaggerate. I think paladin is a more palatable class than it was in 2014.
Paladin is definitely less palatable than it was in 2014, it didn't have multiple different things competing for BA (lay on hands, divine smites, all smite spells, sub class channel divinity options) and then having less synergy with certain feats like PAM or GWM. Most of this can be fixed by just removing the BA cost of Divine Smite but then you need to have a "duration" and still keep smites limited too once per round, more easily done as a feature.
Moving some of these things like Lay on hands and Sacred Weapon (for Oath of Devotion) to BA was good but then immediately counteracted by having them in resource contention with Divine Smite. 2024 definitely has an action economy issue and people have been telling wotc this would be a huge issue since the UAs.
I do not agree. Bonus actions are bonus, there should be no expectation that you're going to be able to use one, all the time.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I do not agree. Bonus actions are bonus, there should be no expectation that you're going to be able to use one, all the time.
if you think like that, then why are there feats that give you a bonus action every time .... + PAM + dual wielder + GWM ( if you crit or kill something )
and for all these cases you loose tremendous if you can not weaponize your bonus action, thats even more true at lower lvls ..... but the go to build won't use PAM or GWM, not even twf style, it will use : + dual wielder & Nick Mastery If you have a valor Bard change the extra attack to an eldritch blast
this gives you 3 attacks at 4th lvl+, with 4 attacks at 5th+. When you add in Valor Bard you will be at 7 attacks at 14/15+ you might now also have someone haste you or drink a potion to add another attack and start adding conc spells ( CME for Bard/Bladesinger/moondruids; Spirit shroud in other cases )
The issue I have with your response is that you, and many others, seem to think to goal of a character build is solely to do mass amounts of damage. Much of the new material in the 2024 books actually looks to reduce damage numbers but increase your tactical options. The changes to smite are in line with that.
I guess it's a difference of the goal we see as I and those I tend to play with aren't pushing min/max builds.
Now I'm not saying that min/maxing is bad, just that's not the way we tend to think. I think that difference in point of view is why we tend not to see this as a negative.
I am going to disagree on reducing damage, damage should roughly be around the same area and Paladin was always on the low-end of average & sustained DPR, just on the high end of Nova. The reason I say damage should be roughly in the same area is due to changes in how feats work and that now classes additionally get a background feat, most feats are now half-feats and that opens a lot of options that increase damage with an attribute increase too. Some feats lost some options, notably SS and GWM, but those were so unnecessarily overpowered in certain situations (like having advantage).
doing a massive amount of damage is not the goal but damage still fundamentally matters, Paladin is competing mostly with Fighter and Barbarian in how Paladin normally operates as a strong martial front-liner with high AC, Good HP and some of the best saves in the game. The problem is then that the best way to not take damage is to kill the things trying to kill you, faster. So if Paladin is doing this the slowest, then the high AC, Good HP and great saves aren't doing enough to carry the class, it is fundamentally behind. This could be justified before because Paladin could Nova at the times it really mattered but with that now gone, Paladin is in a bad position. This has nothing to do with min/maxing, it has to do with how the class performs in general. And that performance is hindrances by a massive nerf to action economy, thus as people are saying, the issue isn't once/round it is the bonus action cost of divine smite.
Agreed, I think a number of us have said...even if WotC wanted to eliminate the Nova round, limiting Divine Smite to once per round would have been a better option to having it cost a bonus action. For me, it's the bonus action that stings most. For them, they likely wanted to eliminate the potential double smite of a smite spell AND a divine smite.
I do not agree. Bonus actions are bonus, there should be no expectation that you're going to be able to use one, all the time.
if you think like that, then why are there feats that give you a bonus action every time .... + PAM + dual wielder + GWM ( if you crit or kill something )
and for all these cases you loose tremendous if you can not weaponize your bonus action, thats even more true at lower lvls ..... but the go to build won't use PAM or GWM, not even twf style, it will use : + dual wielder & Nick Mastery If you have a valor Bard change the extra attack to an eldritch blast
this gives you 3 attacks at 4th lvl+, with 4 attacks at 5th+. When you add in Valor Bard you will be at 7 attacks at 14/15+ you might now also have someone haste you or drink a potion to add another attack and start adding conc spells ( CME for Bard/Bladesinger/moondruids; Spirit shroud in other cases )
A huge number of things are bonus actions. So many feats and abilities now will conflict with divine smite, which has been a defining class ability for paladins.
I suspect that this will become a moot point in the DnD community and most DMs will just allow paladins to smite as they did before, but only once per turn. Small sample size and anecdotal, but the four DMs I know say that's what they're planning to do. I could be totally wrong, but I think that's going to be the compromise many DMs are going to settle on. No nova round, anymore, but not conflicting with other bonus actions. Just my guess.
I do not agree. Bonus actions are bonus, there should be no expectation that you're going to be able to use one, all the time.
In 1 round, a level 5 battlemaster fighter can use:
Action Surge, Main action (attack), Main action (attack), Bonus action (TWF, PAM, Second Wind, etc) & free actions (Manoeuvrers)
in 1 round a level 5 World Tree Barbarian can use:
Main action (attack), Bonus Action (rage, GWM, PAM, etc), Reckless Attack & Life-Giving Force
in 1 round a Paladin can use:
Main Action (Attack / Channel divinity / Spell /etc) and bonus action (Spell i.e. divine smite / Channel divinity /etc)
Paladin is vastly behind, and no subclass is giving any extra options that aren't reliant on action or bonus action either. Yes fighter has limited Action Surges but they still get their nova round once per short rest, Barbarian is adding rage damage every attack that hits . Barbarian does not need to sacrifice a GWM or PAM attack for rage damage or reckless attack, except for the round they activate rage on. Channel divinities for Paladin that are BA are equivalent to popping rage but Paladin loses chances to smite on crit on those rounds and straight up loses damage from this interaction. As for the battlemaster fighter, they only have 3 Manoeuvers which use a bonus action, the rest have no such requirements, most of them are essentially free actions.
It's also worth noting that other barbarian subclasses add additional bonuses to damage or supply supplemental effects at level 3, whereas most of what paladin gets at level 3 is access to new spells and a channel divinity option which is action or bonus action. Basically, Paladin is at a HUGE action economy disadvantage here and burning resources to be at a disadvantage. Channel divinity options on BA are fine, Divine Smite being on BA is the huge obvious issue here that has Paladin behind both Fighter and Barbarian, horrendously so.
RAW ( 2024 phb ) atm you could do the following which i expect will be sage advice soon :
+ you start with sword & board, but you take the dual - wielder feat at 4th lvl & dueling fighting style
+ changing a weapon as now part of an attack what you do is : attack with your main head, swap to another weapon ( scimitar e.g. ) and take the nick attack, make a divine smite if you crit or swap to a 3rd weapon ( scimitar ) and do your dual wielder bonus action attack, swap back to your first weapon and take your extra attack action .......
- all attacks ( 4x at @5th lvl+ ) will be with +2 to the dmg because of dueling it won't get you even close to a warlock, wizard or valor bard but at least you feel like you could contribute a tiny bit of damage and still be hard to hit
sad part is, each class with dueling fighting style & shield prof. can do that .....
and when you have other classes: ( e.g. Bladesinger, Valor Bard ) at 7th+ lvl which have even more attacks and each attack is hitting with a 2nd spell slot "smite" w/o needing a spell slot, add 2 spell slots / 2 lvls above 5th. so 4d8 @9th, 6d8@11th ....
you see why Torvala, me and others are saying that Paladins & esp. Paladin smite are in a useless position as it stands right now.
add: do you really need those damage outputs ? it depends on what kind of game your DM is running
add2: those numbers above are not even optimized chars, but just put quickly together if you go into optimized play at t4 you can reach depending on the situation 1000-2000 dmg in 1 round while the paladin of similiar lvl will have trouble getting past 120 dmg
Will need to see if a new Rakshasa comes out but the way I read Rakshasa's Limited Magic Immunity from 2014, the target of a spell is irrelevant, it is immune to being affected by any spell of 6th level or lower. Thus I would say, as written, it would be immune to Divine Smite. Overall Rakshasa's limited magic has never been the best written immunity around and clarification on how it should or should not work has been needed for a long time.
I'd also say the Bonus Action cost of Divine Smite does not kill PAM, it kills Divine Smite for anything but critical hits. PAM is still perfectly a good choice, but you just have to use spells like Divine Favor, Spirit Shroud & Holy Weapon instead of smite spells to be outputting damage and only using divine smites on critical hits, or other smites when they are situationally useful. Of course relying on concentration spells does have it's own drawbacks, but oh well, perhaps using a pike to push creatures back and trying to back out of ranges makes it a bit more viable, also warcaster being a half-feat with CHA as an option for later levels...
Now the Bonus Action cost of Divine Smite does kill Great Weapon Master, since Great Weapon Master's bonus action attack is on kill or on crit, but on crit is when you want to smite still.
I am going to disagree on reducing damage, damage should roughly be around the same area and Paladin was always on the low-end of average & sustained DPR, just on the high end of Nova. The reason I say damage should be roughly in the same area is due to changes in how feats work and that now classes additionally get a background feat, most feats are now half-feats and that opens a lot of options that increase damage with an attribute increase too. Some feats lost some options, notably SS and GWM, but those were so unnecessarily overpowered in certain situations (like having advantage).
doing a massive amount of damage is not the goal but damage still fundamentally matters, Paladin is competing mostly with Fighter and Barbarian in how Paladin normally operates as a strong martial front-liner with high AC, Good HP and some of the best saves in the game. The problem is then that the best way to not take damage is to kill the things trying to kill you, faster. So if Paladin is doing this the slowest, then the high AC, Good HP and great saves aren't doing enough to carry the class, it is fundamentally behind. This could be justified before because Paladin could Nova at the times it really mattered but with that now gone, Paladin is in a bad position. This has nothing to do with min/maxing, it has to do with how the class performs in general. And that performance is hindrances by a massive nerf to action economy, thus as people are saying, the issue isn't once/round it is the bonus action cost of divine smite.
Paladin's alpha damage is weaker, but it's consistent damage is likely to be higher, particularly vengeance being able to stack divine favor and hunter's mark.
I don't think being able to delete an encounter is a good thing, so, I think this change is a good thing.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Paladin's alpha damage is not weaker, it is not existent anymore, its sustaineddamage is just a bit higher then in 5e when they "abuse" a feat ( Dual - Wielder ) and to use 2 spell slots every encounter to even get to that is imho at least a waste of resources not to mentioned that you need 2 rounds to set that up. (while Paladin will do ~120 after setup, others will clock in at 300-500 w/o setup ).
Also if you compare the +1d6 dmg ( once per round ) vs the +1d8 on each attack and slowing your opp. movement speed ( spirit shroud ) i dare to say that hunter's mark is still a wasted spell in 2024.
5.24 didn't remove abilities to delete an encounter they just moved them to other classes ( name: valor bard, warlocks, sorcerers, Bladesingers, Moondruids ). Paladin's Nova-Dmg ( read divine smite ) was balanced, because they had to spent resources which they didn't have a lot off to reach that. ( most of the time, they could do that 1 round per long rest ).
They also said 2024 was done to close the gap between martials & casters, but all i'm seeing is the gap between them got even more larger ......
If i look into the future i'm seeing ( the players that really want to play paladin's ) are gonna go Bladesinger 13-14 / Paladin 6-7 which is very MAD, or Paladin 3-4 / Valor - Bard 15-16 / Warlock 1 Vengeance Oath with Elf & Elven Accuracy
I think you exaggerate. I think paladin is a more palatable class than it was in 2014.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Paladin is definitely less palatable than it was in 2014, it didn't have multiple different things competing for BA (lay on hands, divine smites, all smite spells, sub class channel divinity options) and then having less synergy with certain feats like PAM or GWM. Most of this can be fixed by just removing the BA cost of Divine Smite but then you need to have a "duration" and still keep smites limited too once per round, more easily done as a feature.
Moving some of these things like Lay on hands and Sacred Weapon (for Oath of Devotion) to BA was good but then immediately counteracted by having them in resource contention with Divine Smite. 2024 definitely has an action economy issue and people have been telling wotc this would be a huge issue since the UAs.
I do not agree. Bonus actions are bonus, there should be no expectation that you're going to be able to use one, all the time.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
if you think like that, then why are there feats that give you a bonus action every time ....
+ PAM
+ dual wielder
+ GWM ( if you crit or kill something )
and for all these cases you loose tremendous if you can not weaponize your bonus action, thats even more true at lower lvls .....
but the go to build won't use PAM or GWM, not even twf style, it will use :
+ dual wielder & Nick Mastery
If you have a valor Bard change the extra attack to an eldritch blast
this gives you 3 attacks at 4th lvl+, with 4 attacks at 5th+. When you add in Valor Bard you will be at 7 attacks at 14/15+
you might now also have someone haste you or drink a potion to add another attack and start adding conc spells ( CME for Bard/Bladesinger/moondruids; Spirit shroud in other cases )
Agreed, I think a number of us have said...even if WotC wanted to eliminate the Nova round, limiting Divine Smite to once per round would have been a better option to having it cost a bonus action. For me, it's the bonus action that stings most. For them, they likely wanted to eliminate the potential double smite of a smite spell AND a divine smite.
A huge number of things are bonus actions. So many feats and abilities now will conflict with divine smite, which has been a defining class ability for paladins.
I suspect that this will become a moot point in the DnD community and most DMs will just allow paladins to smite as they did before, but only once per turn. Small sample size and anecdotal, but the four DMs I know say that's what they're planning to do. I could be totally wrong, but I think that's going to be the compromise many DMs are going to settle on. No nova round, anymore, but not conflicting with other bonus actions. Just my guess.
In 1 round, a level 5 battlemaster fighter can use:
Action Surge, Main action (attack), Main action (attack), Bonus action (TWF, PAM, Second Wind, etc) & free actions (Manoeuvrers)
in 1 round a level 5 World Tree Barbarian can use:
Main action (attack), Bonus Action (rage, GWM, PAM, etc), Reckless Attack & Life-Giving Force
in 1 round a Paladin can use:
Main Action (Attack / Channel divinity / Spell /etc) and bonus action (Spell i.e. divine smite / Channel divinity /etc)
Paladin is vastly behind, and no subclass is giving any extra options that aren't reliant on action or bonus action either. Yes fighter has limited Action Surges but they still get their nova round once per short rest, Barbarian is adding rage damage every attack that hits . Barbarian does not need to sacrifice a GWM or PAM attack for rage damage or reckless attack, except for the round they activate rage on. Channel divinities for Paladin that are BA are equivalent to popping rage but Paladin loses chances to smite on crit on those rounds and straight up loses damage from this interaction. As for the battlemaster fighter, they only have 3 Manoeuvers which use a bonus action, the rest have no such requirements, most of them are essentially free actions.
It's also worth noting that other barbarian subclasses add additional bonuses to damage or supply supplemental effects at level 3, whereas most of what paladin gets at level 3 is access to new spells and a channel divinity option which is action or bonus action. Basically, Paladin is at a HUGE action economy disadvantage here and burning resources to be at a disadvantage. Channel divinity options on BA are fine, Divine Smite being on BA is the huge obvious issue here that has Paladin behind both Fighter and Barbarian, horrendously so.