Hi, I'm attempting to make a paladin possibly oathbreaker wasn't sure how well it would multiclass with pact of the great old ones warlock or how many levels of warlock or paladin to take.
I've never played a paladin or warlock so any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
No, I've recently moved so I'm not in a group right now I'm just enjoying making a character.
I didn't know that about the oathbreaker though, thanks for telling me.
I make my characters starting with the backstory and personality.
This one I'm thinking variant human(although I like the idea of kalashtar) polearm master. I'm basing this character on two things, Balin Le Savage from Arthurian legend and H.P Lovecraft lore.
So he gets possessed by a malicious spirit, (they meld into one being) and is attempting to wake Azathoth.
I thought oathbreaker strictly because if he was a paladin that stops being virtuous then oathbreaker, but I want him to play in a way that doesn't make it obvious what he's planning. He's gonna be lawful evil I think so he can portray good if it suits his nefarious purpose mwahahaha.
Sorry for the lengthy response I get carried away lol.
Oathbeaker paladin is a variant presented in the DMG for villainous characters and npcs. Specifically it is presented as an option for paladins who swore another oath, then broke that oath and swore themselves to evil (whether selfish personal evil or to the service of an evil master - most of the Lovecraftian pantheon would certainly qualify) instead of seeking to atone and restore their original oath.
That's all just lore though. Many DMs do not allow the option to PCs at all, others allow oathbreaker as an oath of its own and don't require the character to first break another oath. Speak to your DM to determine if the oathbreaker is allowed in your game and what if any hoops you might have to jump through in order to access it. Game balance wise the oathbreaker is strong, but so are paladins in general, and oathbreaker isn't out of line or in any way broken.
Assuming your DM allows it, paladin and warlock are a natural mechanical fit for multiclassing. Both are charisma heavy, and the warlock's focus on short-rest resources is a good compliment to the paladin, which otherwise relies heavily on daily resources with relatively few abilities that refresh on a short rest. Thematically, the combination can be a bit trickier, since the paladin's commitment to their oath can clash with the demands of a warlock's patron. To be clear, not every warlock actually serves their patron, certainly not willingly, but the conflict can still be present none the less. Some paladin/warlock combinations fit more naturally though, and for an oathbreaker in particular choosing to form a pact with a warlock patron can be the narrative explanation for how or why your character forsook their original oath. The narrative you described of a knight overtaken by a malign supernatural influence fits very well here, thematically.
In terms of oathbreaker specifically, again assuming your DM allows it, the signature feature of the subclass is their level 7 ability 'Aura of Hate', which adds their charisma modifier to their melee damage rolls and to those of any undead or fiends (friendly or enemy) within the aura's range. As such, any oathbreaker build will want to have a good charisma, and will want to take at least 7 levels of paladin. Since the paladin class is somewhat feat starved and stat intensive, you'll then want to take at least one more paladin level for the ability score improvement at level 8. These don't all have to be consecutive levels, but you should plan for at least 8 levels of paladin in your overall build, and you should try not to delay those 8 levels unnecessarily.
As for warlock, mechanically this combination would prefer the hexblade patron - the paladin perhaps overtaken by a spirit within the broken remains of a cursed weapon - perhaps the shard of a holy blade that some time in the past struck down some unkillable evil, trapping pieces of its malign power within the broken pieces of the weapon. The mechanical reason for the combination is that hexblade allows you to use your charisma as your attack stat with a one handed weapon, or with a pact weapon of any type if you go to third level of warlock and take the blade pact, and there's an obvious mechanical advantage in using your charisma to attack with and adding your charisma modifier as extra damage from oathbreaker.
While that's the strongest mechanical fit, though, it's not at all obligatory, and other warlock patrons still make for a great multiclass combination with paladins - oathbreakers or otherwise. You'll just have to take care to manage both your strength and your charisma as you level, instead of focusing solely on your charisma and letting your strength remain where it started.
In terms of how many levels of warlock to take in your build, 2 levels gets you two first level spells per short rest, two cantrips, and two invocations, which is a nice return on investment and will help make sure you've got spare low level spell slots around to smite with.
So I'd definitely recommend 8 levels of paladin and 2 levels of warlock minimum. Start as a paladin, take the first level of warlock after your 'fall' to oathbreaker, finish out to level 8 paladin, and then take your second level of warlock. If you're playing a variant human, your bonus feat should be polearm master, otherwise your first asi should be polearm master. After that, alternate ability score improvements between raising strength and charisma. Optionally you might take sentinel somewhere in there, but it's not as critical as polearm master, and you don't want to let either your strength or your charisma languish.
In terms of starting stats, try to start with at least a 16 in strength and charisma, at least a 14 in constitution, and try not to dump dexterity or wisdom more than you have too. intelligence can be left at base level if it's not strictly required for your character concept. Pala-dumb is a cliche for a reason - apart from the odd religion check you're just not going to use it for anything.
Skill wise, be proficient in athletics, perception, and as many charisma skills as you can manage. Remember that if you already have a skill granted by your background, then you can choose any other skill instead. This should help you get perception proficiency if you can't get it otherwise.
That gets you to level 10, and in my experience most campaigns are wrapping up by that point. If yours goes longer your options are wide open. You can go back to and just stick with either paladin or warlock, or mix about any combination between them. A third level of warlock in particular raises your short rest slots to level 2 and can teach you the misty step spell, which can be helpful since paladins can be lacking in mobility. Or you could bridge over to sorcerer, which combos well with both paladin and warlock. Divine Soul sorcerer is the best fit mechanically, imo, but shadow sorcerer or wild magic sorcerer both work well enough (well, wild sorcerer works if your DM remembers to actually use the wild magic table), and either might fit your character concept better. Alternatively, some levels of fighter can be a good option. Action surge works very well with the oathbreaker's aura of hate, and if you go three levels then battle master has some useful maneuvers, or champion's expanded crit range can help you roll more crits to smite with. In terms of late game ASIs, just keep alternating strength and charisma until you max out both, maybe fitting in sentinel or warcaster at some point if you have a spare ASI or decide you need them.
Play wise, roll a bunch of attacks, dealing nice extra damage on each, and throw in a smite when the targets extra tough or if you happen to roll a crit, since critical hits will double the smite damage as well. Pay attention to what spells you have available as well, as some of them will offer better rewards than just a smite, particularly buff spells that affect all your attacks or that benefit multiple members of the party. Bless is a good one early on. When you can't get to melee, warlock provides a strong ranged fallback via the eldritch blast cantrip, possibly augmented with an invocation.
Don't burn all your spell slots in a single encounter - that includes not saving them all to try to use them all against the 'boss'. There won't always be a boss encounter, and sometimes there will be more then one, and in any event you want to be able to contribute reasonably to every encounter so the rest of your party isn't stretched thin picking up the slack. The pair of spell slots that come back on a short rest will help you, but in general just try to spread out your spell slot resources - whether used on spells or on divine smite - throughout the day. And don't forget your channel divinity, paladin can use one per short rest and oathbreaker has some decent options there.
You probably want to ignore the smite spells though - branding smite, etc. Those spells use your concentration and a bonus action and need you to hit with a weapon attack coming from a separate attack action AND they often also require the enemy to fail a save to be effective, and the return for all of that hassle generally just isn't worth it (with the notable exception of oath of conquest paladins casting wrathful smite). If you want to use a spell slot to smite, plain old divine smite is almost always your best option.
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If your DM does NOT allow oathbreaker, then you have a couple other options for darker/edgier paladins. Vengeance is probably the best, as it doesn't add any additional charisma dependence, so you can more safely focus on strength with your ability score improvements. Otherwise tactics and gameplay is similar, except that instead of a passive damage aura the key feature for vengeance is an active buff via their channel divinity as a bonus action to give you advantage on attack rolls against a chosen target. This does take your bonus action at the start of a fight, and you need to correctly judge when to use it and what enemy to target, but the advantage increases your chance of critting, which turns into big damage with divine smite. Feat & equipment wise vengeance paladins tend to prefer greatswords and great weapon master over spears and polearm master, but a polearm master build will still work perfectly fine. If going that route, I'd play up the crit-fishing aspect with a three level dip into champion fighter somewhere in your later progression.
The other edgelord paladin subclass is the oath of conquest. Conqueror is something of a special duck, though, as the signature feature there is 'aura of conquest' which is amazing, but only works on enemies that are already frightened of you. Which means they have to have failed a saving throw against one of your frightening effects, which means maximizing the character's charisma - and thus the Save DC of their magical abilities - is a MUCH higher priority for them. As such, while they love to dip a level or two into warlock, it's *almost always* hexblade patron for that charisma attacks thing. And weapon wise while they're fine with spears or polearms, feat-wise they generally prioritize something to shore up their concentration saves or tanking abilities - warcaster, resilient constitution, or sentinel - over increasing their offensive ability, so you'd probably want to skip polearm master.
You can make a spear wielding conquest paladin/warlock build work, certainly, but I'm just saying the details would probably end up much different from what you seem to be aiming for. Still, a build focused on inflicting the frighten condition would fit pretty well with the palpable aura of existential dread often associated with Mythos creatures, so it might be worth tinkering with as a build. It would just be a somewhat more complicated character to build and play.
If it's something you're interested in, though, search for the 'wall of fear' thread on the giantitp forums for a conquest paladin build guide.
I'm naming the character Elan Morin Tedronai after a character from my favorite book series he was called the betrayer of hope.
I'm planning on the character to be seemingly good so he can achieve his goals but I can't help but to drop little hints in so afterwards it's oh I should've paid more attention to what mufasa was saying lol.
The hard part will be not saying kneel before Zod mwahahaha
Sception I just saw your post I found the wall of fear thread absolutely love it, I'm rethinking polearm master,maybe the shield feat for knocking prone but does that work with great weapon master feat?
What you did with oathbreaker sounds downright wicked brutal, very cool.
You totally just fixed my characters backstory, a dark elf was trying to become a lich and failed leaving his soul wandering feeding off of the lifeforce of others until he forgot who he was eventually becoming a spirit known as malady, I didn't know how he was doing this or came to posses the paladin though, but if part of his soul was trapped in something that the paladin gets that could be it. Their souls eventually meld together that's where balin le savage comes in he was the knight with two swords but this will be the knight with two souls
I really appreciate your advice and help thank you very much. I'm very new to DND so my knowledge is extremely limited and thank you for directing me to the build guide helps alot.
I'm thinking fallen aasimar or dragonborn with fear feat not sure which I like better thematically lol. I'll try the conquest/hexblade, it just sounds like a fun build.
The key feature of Conqueror is Aura of Conquest at paladin level 7. Enemies frightened of you in the aura take a bit of damage at the start of their turn, and their speed is reduced to zero. This is an amazing lockdown ability for a tank, but only works against enemies that you frighten fist, so it's of zero use against frighten-immune enemies (oozes, constructs, some unead & fiends, misc other monsters), and not very effective against enemies with good saving throws in general and good wisdom saves in particular. It's main purpose is in crowd control, keeping groups of weak willed minions or brawny but oafish brutes in line and preventing them from picking on your party. It's also pretty effective at coercing surrender - nothing says 'you picked the wrong side' like being trapped and afraid, taking damage round after round until you give up or die.
Before paladin level 7, you're "just" a paladin - a paladin who leans more towards tanking and support than damage output, but still a paladin. You've got a decent crowd control aoe channel divinity, & a couple good oath spells. You've got divine smite when you need it, lay on hands to top off allies after healing between battles, good AC, decent weapon attacks. And, of course, you have warlock features as well.
The key Hexblade feature, for this build at least, is Hex Warrior. It lets you choose a one handed weapon each morning, and then you can use your charisma as your attack stat for that weapon for the rest of the day. Because your'e starting with a less than ideal strength, you're going to want to take your first level of hexblade at level 2. Hex Warrior isn't the only feature you get from Hexblade 1 though. You also get Hexblade's Curse, a useful damage buff activated with a bonus action that refreshes on a short rest. It's a good way to amp up your damage to end an encounter sooner when confronted with enemies you can't frighten. You also pick up some useful spells, in particular Shield, though you can't use it while wielding a weapon and shield until you get Warcaster.
Once you have Aura of Conquest, your game plan changes significantly. Suddenly you're all about dominating crowds of weaker enemies through fear. You need to keep track of your frighten abilities, and develop an eye for what sorts of enemies are most vulnerable to frighten. Generally not the mastermind sort, no your tricks are designed for big dumb brutes & weak willed minions, the kind of attrition fights that are meant to wear down party resources before the 'real' fight. Your ability to 'assert your authority' over these sorts of foes ensures that when your party does reach the "real" fight, your friends do so at much closer to full strength. Of course, you have to pull your weight in boss fights too, and that's when you switch over to damage mode - hexblade's curse, divine smite, spiritual weapon, etc. You won't be able to bring *as much* damage to bare as other paladins, but other paladins don't dominate the earlier fights as effectively as you do.
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In terms of progression, first level is paladin, for the heavy armor proficiency. Second level is hexblade, so fix up your weapon attack stat. Then straight paladin to paladin level 9, picking up warcaster and +2 charisma with your ability score improvements along the way, along with defense style, oath of conquest, extra attack, aura of protection, aura of conquest, and access to third level paladin spells for Fear.
That brings you to 10th level, as Paladin 9, Warlock 1. From there, the doors are wide open. Pure paladin for the rest of your levels is fine, paladin keeps offering Conquerors useful tools at every level. A second level of warlock somewhere in there lets you grab a couple invocations and an extra first level slot per day for shield or wrathful smite, and you can still get 18 levels of paladin for the expanded aura range.
Or you can take more warlock than that. Warlock 3 for for the boon - pact blade if you want to switch to two handed weapons (though I personally prefer sword & board). If not, chain is good, for the very useful imp familiar and the very-nice-for-a-tank 'gift of the ever living ones' invocation. Warlock 4 gets you a precious ASI, warlock 5 lets you cast Fear with your two short-rest-recharging slots.
You can also multiclass into sorcerer if you want, for useful spells, faster spell slot advancement than paladin, and useful metamagic abilities, in particular the 'heighten' metamagic to give a target disadvantage on a save against one of your frighten abilities.
Honestly, any of these are valid options. Regardless of the classes you choose to level, for your ability score improvements you should finish maxing out charisma. Any leftover ASIs you manage to pick up can go into feats - sentinel is an exceptionally useful option to help you lock down an enemy that you are unable to or fail to frighten, and is probably the best feat to take whenever you have the spare opportunity. It will probably be pretty late, but the later you get it the more important it will be anyway, since you tend to run into more frighten immune or resistant enemies at later levels.
Beyond that, alert makes you immune to surprise and boosts your initiative significantly, helping you lock down enemies before they even get to act. Inspiring Leader is a massive boost to party HP reserves - though keep in mind that temporary hp doesn't stack, so if someone else in your party is handing them out (glamour bard, another character with inspiring leader, etc), then the feat is redundant. Lucky's couple of free rerolls can get you out of all sort of terrible situations. It basically just makes you better at everything. More about feats later, though.
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In terms of role-playing, Conquest isn't exactly a 'nice' oath. Like one of the edgier incarnations of Batman, you believe the world is an inherently cruel and disordered place, and only the constant intimidation of chaos can allow the fragile joys of peace and order to flourish, however you aren't necessarily evil, and you certainly aren't outright murderous. Other more 'virtous' paladins commit themselves to exterminating evil, but you know the truth, that most creatures are not inherently good or evil. Creatures like Orcs or Goblins and minotaurs aren't "monsters", they just lack the proper motivation to behave in a civilized fashion. In many ways, you're closest to a redemption paladin, though they would never admit as much. The difference is that they offer the carrot, while you wield the stick.
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Mechanically, the first thing to consider when building your Conqueror is stats, as Conquest Paladin is a very stat intensive build. In order of priority:
Charisma. Aura of Conquest is amazing, but it only does anything at all if enemies first fail a save against frighten, so the save DCs of your frighten effects absolutely must be as high as possible. Charisma also boosts your saves & those of nearby allies via aura of protection, and after you multiclass hexblade Charisma will be your primary weapon attack stat as well. In a die rolled game, put your highest score here. In a points buy game, you want to start with a +3 bonus, which means a score of 16. Races with a +2 bonus to charisma can start with a 17, but that's only worth it if you have access to a decent 'half feat' (ie, feat with a lesser bonus coupled with +1 to a stat) that boosts charisma. In the core rules there really isn't one. If you're a half elf specifically, then elven accuracy is worth considering. If your DM allows the skill feats from Unearthed Arcana, then Menacing is *fantastic*, and you should absolutely play a +2 cha race, start with cha 17, and take menacing. However, the skill feats are long abandoned playtest content and most DMs don't (and shouldn't) allow them.
Strength. You'll be dipping hexblade eventually, so you don't need strength for weapon attack after that, but you will need it for first level at least, and long term you need Strength 15 at least to comfortably wear the heaviest armor. In a die roll game, try to put at least a 15 here after racial modifiers so you don't have to raise it later to wear plate armor. In a point buy game, you want *exactly* 15 here. If you weren't multiclassing hexblade, you'd want to start with a 16 for a +3 bonus, but given the hexblade dip you're better off using those points to bring one of your weaker stats up from 8 to 10.
Constitution. You're a melee combatant, and more than that you're a melee tank, which means you're specifically trying to direct enemy attention away from your more fragile friends and towards yourself, so you need hit points. You're also a caster who relies heavily on concentration spells, which means you're going to be making a lot of constitution saves to maintain concentration on spells. In particular the frightening spells 'Wrathful Smite' and 'Fear' are almost impossible for an enemy to escape after they've failed their initial save... unless you fail a concentration saving throw. So you really want your concentration to be as high as you can manage given all the pressure on your other stats. In practice this generally means a 14 constitution for a +2 bonus - good enough, if not as high as you'd really like. some races with especially high stat modifiers can manage a 16 for a +3 bonus though. 15 isn't really advisable imo, as you'd need to raise it further to get actual benefit from it. A non-multiclassing conqueror would happily take resilient constitution to do so, but as a hexadin you'll already be taking warcaster, and resilient con on top of that is a bit overkill given the pressure on your ability score improvements.
After constitution there's a big gap where you switch from 'how high do these need to be' with the previous three stats to 'how low can i afford to dump them' for the next three.
Wisdom/Dexterity. You don't need these stats to be high, but you don't want them to be low either.
Dexterity saves to reduce damage from spells & traps are incredibly common. No matter how high your AC is, if your dex is too low you're going to leak hp anyway, which you really don't want to be doing as the party tank. Dexterity also affects your initiative, and there's a big difference between locking enemies down with aura of conquest before or after they've already swarmed your more vulnerable party members.
Wisdom saves are only slightly less common than dexterity saves, and while you'll have a decent wisdom save with proficiency and aura of protection alone, the consequences of failing wisdom saves are generally much worse than dexterity saves, incapacitating your character or even worse turning them against the party, so 'decent' isn't necessarily good enough. Plus wisdom is tied to the most commonly rolled skill in the game, and the one that characters most often have to roll individually instead of relying on individual experts to handle for the entire party, namely perception. A high initiative roll doesn't help you much if you can't act in the first round anyway because you're surprised due to a flubbed perception check.
Between Dexterity and Wisdom there's no clear answer for which is more important. Ideally you'd like at least a 10 in both to avoid negative modifiers, but if that's not possible then either or both can be dumped.
Intelligence: the dump stat of choice for paladins. Int saves are uncommon and int skills can be handled by someone else in the party, so apart from maybe the odd religion check you aren't going to be using your intelligence modifier for much of anything. You will be extra weak to intellect devourers, but every character has some weaknesses and they're a pretty niche enemy. If you're character concept or role playing idea requires a better score then so be it, but otherwise put your worst roll here, or in point buy games leave it at the base value of 8 and don't look back. Remember, "pala-dumb' is a cliche for a reason.
Because of the relatively high pressure on your stats - three you want to be high and two you'd prefer not to dump - stat mods should probably factor heavily into your choice of race. To be clear, you can play any character as any race and make it work, so if your character concept requires a specific race then so be it. However, if your concept isn't race specific, then you should start by looking at races with a bonus to charisma, and preferably with bonuses to strength and/or constitution as well. Some suggestions, with example point buy stat arrays, include:
Variant Human, min-max: s15, d8, c16, i8, w8, h16; balanced: S15, d10, C14, W10, I8, H16. Conquest puts a lot of pressure on your ASIs, so Vuman's bonus feat is a big, big deal. Every conqueror would like to add sentinel, alert, or inspiring leader to their tool set, sentinel especially, but most can't afford to until very late in their progression. Vuman also grants a bonus skill proficiency for perception.
Half Elf, balanced: s15, d10, c16, i8, w10, h16; elven accuracy: s15, d10, c16, i8, w8, h17. Half Elf's +2 cha and +1 to two other stats of choice, in your case str and con, are unparalleled for stat bonuses, letting you get the highly desired con 16 without dumping either of dex or wis, or with only dumping one or the other if you also want charisma 17, which can be worth it if you want to take the elven accuracy feat. Two bonus skill proficiencies and some useful elven traits on top of that are just icing on the cake.
Fallen Aasimar, balanced: s15, d10, c14, i8, w12, H16. +2 cha and +1 strength gives you the stats you need. with enough extra for a halfway decent wisdom even, though without a con boost there's no con 16 option if you want that. Otherwise Aasimar has a huge set of fantastic bonuses, multiple damage resistances, an extra heal, etc. Fallen in particular has a 1/day aoe frighten ability resisted by an exceptionally rare charisma save, which is fantastic. Only lasts a single round, but leaves you with a damage buff for the rest of the encounter.
Scourge Aasimar, min-max:: S15, D8, C16, i8, w10, H16. Instead of the fear aura into melee damage boost you get a damage aura. Party unfriendly, which conflicts with aura of protection, but works well on enemies trapped within your aura of conquest. In general Fallen is better for conquest, for that amazing frighten burst, but Scourge does allow for a min-maxy stat array with a 16 con if you want that.
Changeling, super-cha: s15, d10, c14, i8, w8, h18. Changeling is an eberron race that may or may not be available in your campaign. It grants +2 charisma and a +1 to any stat of your choice, which can /also/ be charisma. This allows a starting score of 18 charisma in points buy games, unique in the game, which puts you ahead in your most important stat. You also can shift your appearance and voice, which isn't a big combat boost but has tons of role play possibilities, and you get proficiency in some cha skills which is always welcome.
Triton, min-max: s15, d10, c16, i8, w8, h16 - triton's +1 str, con, and cha are second only to half elf in stat bonuses, and the swim speed and ability to breathe under water are immesurably valuable in maritime games specifically. Normally there are races with better features for you, but if you're setting out to conquer the seven seas, triton is the go to.
Those are just a few recommendations. Again, any race can work, and any race with a bonus to charisma and to either strength or constitution will work well.
Next thing to consider is your Feats & Ability Score Improvements. There are Three top priorities for a conqueror: Max out your charisma in order to maximize your aura of protection, and save DCs, shore up your concentration saving throws, and raise your primary weapon attack stat. The hexblade multiclass does two things to these priorities, namely it lets you use your charisma as your weapon attack stat, and it it locks down your option for shoring up your concentration saves into the Warcaster feat specifically. A single classed conqueror might take resilient constitution or even lucky instead, but hexadins want warcaster specifically in order to make effective use of your small handful of warlock spells.
So for you, that means you want to take warcaster with your first available ASI, then spend all your remaining ASIs raising charisma until the stat is maxed out at 20. Only after that should you consider other feats. Once you are considering other feats, IMO the best option is sentinel, followed closely by alert, inspiring leader, and lucky, in no particular order. There are a few other niche options you might consider - I for instance am toying with the idea of taking mounted combatant on a conquest hexadin who was lucky enough to earn the services of a Nightmare - but for the most part sentinel, alert, inspiring, and lucky are the feats worth considering for the few open ASIs that you'll have later in your build.
If you pick variant human as your race, you can grab one of those feats at first level, since a first level paladin can't cast spells and thus cannot take war caster anyway. Otherwise, you don't have a free ASI to spend on any other feat until level 16 at the earliest. Almost no campaigns actually get to that level, so frankly unless you're playing a variant human I'd just put the entire idea of feats out of your mind altogether, unless you have a character concept that absolutely requires one.
On Half Feats:
some feats have a somewhat lesser ability coupled with a +1 bonus to a single stat, and these are generally referred to as 'half feats' by the community. For Variant Humans, taking such a feat as your bonus feat at level 1 can help with your stat distribution. The attractive options here are Heavy Armor Master which comes with +1 strength, and Resilient constitution which comes with +1 constitution. Both are good, but imo not as good as sentinel, alert, inspiring leader, or lucky.
If you start with a 17 charisma via a +2 charisma race, or if you roll dice for stats in your game and your charisma happens to land on an odd score after you put your best stat there and apply racial modifiers, then you can replace one of your +2 charisma ASIs with a half charisma feat to gain the extra advantages of the feat without slowing your charisma bonus advancement. Note that this is only worth doing if you've otherwise maxed out your charisma, taking a lower starting charisma than you otherwise could have just so you can round it out with a half feat is still slowing your charisma modifier advancement and not even doing it for the value of a whole feat.
Sadly, half cha feats are very limited. The only PHB choice is actor which, honestly, instead of taking a starting 17 cha to round out with actor I think you're better off with a starting 16, putting some extra points into other stats, and just taking +2 cha ASIs instead. Actor is a little more interesting on a Changeling, except that changelings should be starting with a round 18 charisma instead, so they aren't looking for a half feat anyway outside of die rolled games.
elf and half elf characters specifically can take elven accuracy, which is a better choice, letting you re-roll one of the dice when attacking with advantage. That's a nice little bonus, and half elves can start with a 17 charisma then use elven accuracy to round that up to 18 without slowing cha mod advancement. That's pretty decent, though not so amazing that I'd call it obligatory, as again starting with 16 cha for better stats elsewhere and just taking +2 charisma ASIs instead of the half feat is still a valid alternative.
Dragonborn have Dragon Fear, which sounds exciting as it's another frighten effect AND it replaces the dragonborn's otherwise somewhat lackluster breath attack. Unfortunately it's not as good as it seems. First of all, dragonborn only have a +1 bonus to charisma, so in a point buy game the best charisma they can start with is 16. A half feat doesn't help round you up to the next point of charisma bonus, and lowering your starting charisma to 15 is again effectively lowering your cha mod for not even a full feat, so you're better off just taking +2 charisma ASI instead. This is especially the case because Dragon Fear suffers some nasty anti-synergy with aura of conquest. Specifically, the frighten effect from Dragon Fear gives enemies new saves to escape the effect whenever they take damage, and aura of conquest, in addition to reducing frightened enemies' speed to zero, deals a small amount of psychic damage at the start of their turn. So enemies frightened by dragon fear get an extra chance to escape your aura at the start of their turn, freeing them up to act normally if they pass their new save.
Unearthed Arcana is a series of articles where Wizard publishes what is basically play test material for the community to try out and give feedback on. A while back there was an Unearthed Arcana article titled 'Skill Feats' which added a half-feat for each skill in the game. These feats were interesting, but never really followed up on, and at this point are basically abandoned content, but some DMs allow old Unearthed Arcana stuff anyway, and if your DM allows skill feats then the Menacing feat is amazing. In addition to granting double proficiency bonus on intimidate, which is fun and fluffy if not strong, it also lets you trade an attack out of your normal attack action to roll intimidate against a target humanoid's wisdom check - not save - to frighten them for one turn, usable as much as you want forever. Even if it only works on humanoids, at-will, hard-to-resist frighten is stupidly good for a conqueror, and if your DM allows it then you should absolutely play a +2 charisma race like Half Elf or Aasimar, start with a 17 charisma, and take Menacing with your second ability score improvement (warcaster still comes first, imo).
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One feat I *don't* recommend is Shield Master. It's not terrible, saved somewhat by the dex save boost, but while shoving enemies prone is a good thing for conquerors to do, it's something they can *already* do by giving up a normal attack from their attack action, without spending any feat at all. Shoving as a bonus action isn't enough better than that to be worth spending a whole feat on a character that already has such heavy pressure on their ability score improvements. Especially since the shield master shove can only be done after you've already made a normal attack action, so you can't shove first in order to attack the prone enemy with advantage that turn, AND you can't shove prone after spending your action frightening enemies with your channel divinity or the Fear spell, nor can you do it on the same turn you cast wrathful smite, since that also takes a bonus action.
Again, not terrible, but not good enough to be worth the limited feat slot, imo.
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On combat style: they're all decent, but the one you want is defense, for a +1 AC while wearing armor, which is basically all the time. You're more about tanking than damage, so the AC is better for you than the damage from dueling or great weapon style, plus it scales better with your level. Protection is decent in general, but not for you, since you'll frequently be imposing disadvantage on enemy attacks via frighten anyway, and want to keep your reaction open for opportunity attacks or the Shield spell.
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on equipment: wear the heaviest armor and best shield that your DM has made available to you. Since you're not taking any weapon-type-specific feats or combat styles, you're free to use whatever the best one-handed weapon available is, or whichever one you happen to like. Long sword is pretty much objectively better than spear since you aren't taking polearm master, but spear and shield still works perfectly fine if you prefer that aesthetically. Especially if you have other PCs in the party more focused on damage output. Note that Hex Warrior can only be applied to one weapon per day, so if you happen to find a better weapon than what you're currently using, you have to wait until the next long rest in order to use it.
If you eventually opt to take 3 or more levels of hexblade, then you can pick up the blade pact, which frees you up to use two handed weapons as well if you want. Reach is decent on a conqueror, so switching to a halberd, glaive, or pike at that point can be worth while. In general, though, I think one handed weapon and a shield is better for you, so if you do opt to take warlock to level 3 you might be better with a different boon, maybe chain for the fancy familiar and 'gift of the ever living ones' invocation. That said, for conquest hexadin you might want to stick to just one or maybe two levels of warlock anyway, so that you can still get the aura range expansion if you eventually make it to level 20, in which case you won't get a warlock boon at all. if you want reach on a one handed weapon, a whip is always an option.
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Warlock Spells -
The key cantrips to pick up here are eldritch blast for a decent fallback ranged option and booming blade (from the sword coast adventurer's guide) to use with the warcaster feat for a more damaging opportunity attack that discourages the enemy from moving further with even more damage if they do. For first level spells, the important ones to grab are Shield, for a reactive boost to your AC which can nullify incoming attacks and is especially strong stacked on top of your already very good armor class, and Cause Fear, which isn't better than Wrathful Smite in first level spell slots, nor better than Fear for spell slots of 3rd level or higher, but has a useful niche to fill as a two-target frighten spell when cast in second level spell slots specifically. Note that, since shield has somatic but not material components, you can only cast it while your hands are full if you have the warcaster feat, which is why warcaster is mandatory for you as a hexadin. There are other feats that can shore up concentration saves, but the Shield spell is so useful that the ability to cast it alone makes warcaster a must have feat, even worth delaying charisma bonus advancement.
Some DMs don't allow the SCAG cantrips, or restrict you to only a single source book outside of the PHB, in which case you have to pick Xanathar's Guide to access both Oath of Conquest and Hexblade, and as such can't get the SCAG cantrips regardless. In that case it's a bit of a shame, since you'll still want to pick up Warcaster and you won't really have any good spells to use as opportunity attacks with that part of the feat, but you can live without booming blade. Honestly any other warlock cantrip that appeals to you would do fine, I'd look for something more on the utility side of things, since regular weapon attacks and eldritch blast will have you covered for offensive at-will attacks.
If you eventually get up to second level spells, Misty Step is a valuable tool to add to your toolbox, as paladin can otherwise be lacking in mobility options.
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Paladin spells
Unlike many paladins, Conquerors tend to like to cast their spells rather than just divine smite all their spell slots away. Don't get me wrong, you'll still smite on occasion, when an especially dangerous enemy needs to be taken down quickly or when you roll a crit on a bulky foe and want to pile on the damage, but more often than not you'll be casting actual spells. Once you have Aura of Conquest frightening enemies becomes a top priority, but even before then maintaining concentration on an important buff spell can help attract enemy attention away from your more vulnerable party members. Early on, you should consider opening fights with Bless if the enemies look like they have a high AC and/or they seem like they'll be forcing the party to roll a lot of saving throws. Remember that concentration saves ARE saving throws, to the bonus from bless does apply to help you maintain the bless spell if you take damage. Other first level paladin spells are more situational, but can still be good. Read through them to see what you have access to.
In second level slots, Find Steed is one of the best summon spells for its level, what with the permanent-until-killed duration. Even if you don't actively ride it into battle, a warhorse or mastiff is a useful combatant charging in to help out, and if they die you can just summon them back in your next down time. Aid is another useful 2nd level spell. It seems like it wants you to cast it at the start of the day to slightly bump up the hit points of a few party members, but to really make it shine keep it in reserve then cast it in the middle of a tough fight when multiple party members are down to wake up to three of them up with 5 hp. It's basically a multi-target healing word, and that's worth a full action and a second level spell slot. The other key second level paladin spell is the conquest oath spell spiritual weapon, which provides some extra damage output and a good use of your bonus actions in longer fights, particularly against frighten-immune enemies.
For third level spells... you cast Fear, and pretty much only Fear, but it might be worth your time to keep a Revivify in the back pocket.
There are other solid paladin spells, and more good ones at higher level - improved find steed in particular is nice, but these are some good ones to start with.
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Frightening Your Enemies
Aura of Conquest does everything if your target is frightened of you, and nothing if they aren't. So how do you frighten enemies? There are four main ways.
Aura of Conquest - your channel divinity, which means you can use it once per short rest, which usually pans out to twice a day. Aura of Conquest doesn't take a spell slot, affects a wide area, doesn't target your allies, and super importantly does not take your concentration, so you can couple it with a buff spell like Bless, or follow up with a concentration-based fear spell to pick up stragglers who pass their initial save. It is a wisdom save to resist the initial effect, which is standard. Enemies get to make additional wisdom saves to try to break free at the end of each of their turns, which makes aura of conquest among the easier frighten effects to escape, but the fantastic AOE, party friendliness, and especially lack of concentration requirement still make it very good. Because it doesn't take a spell slot and you get it back on short rests, this should typically be the first frightener you use when it's available. It's best for groups of weaker-willed enemies, so you don't have to worry about saving it for important fights.
Wrathful Smite (paladin spell) - this is your frightener for first level spell slots. Until you get aura of conquest plain old divine smite is a better use of the slot, but afterwords Wrathful Smite is worth the extra effort. It uses your concentration and takes a bonus action to prepare before attacking. After that, your next hit with a melee weapon causes some extra damage and forces the target to make a wisdom save against frighten. Single target isn't great, taking your bonus action and then needing to make a regular action to attack to use it isn't great either. What is great is that if a target fails that initial save they need to use up an entire action on their turn to even try to escape, and that escape attempt is a wisdom *check*, not a wisdom save, against your spell DC. Not only are enemy checks often lower than enemy saves, the frighten condition itself imposes disadvantage on ability checks, which means they'll have to burn an action just to roll twice and take the lowest result and hope that still beats the spell DC that they already failed against. This is the spell to use when you need to land and hold a frighten on a single important target, or when you already used Conquering Presence and you need to snag a particular enemy that slipped through your grip.
Cause Fear (warlock spell) - Cause Fear targets one enemy, uses your concentration, they have to make a wisdom save or be frightened of you, and they get a new save to escape at the end of each of their turns. As a first level spell it's very weak, much worse than Wrathful Smite, but Cause Fear has an advantage in that when you cast it in higher level spell slots you can target an extra enemy for each spell level above first. This means you can cast the spell in your second level slots to potentially frighten two enemies. Still takes your concentration, still allows a new save at the end of the enemies' turns to escape, still not great. But it remains your best frightener for second level slots, and sometimes you want to spook more than one enemy, but they just aren't worth the investment of Fear or Conquering Presence. Alternatively, sometimes you use Conquering Presence and more than one enemy gets lucky and passes their save.
Fear (Oath Spell) - Fear is your most dangerous fear effect, and will be the main use of your 3rd level spell slots. Higher level slots too, for that matter. It's a 30 foot cone, and not party friendly, so not as good aoe as Conquering Presence. It requires Concentration, and like all the rest it allows an initial wisdom save to negate the effect. Where Fear excels is that enemies can only attempt Wisdom Saves at the end of their turn if they're out of your line of sight. Since enemies frightened of you in your aura have their speed reduced to zero, they cannot flee, and thus cannot break line of sight, so as long as you maintain your concentration they cannot escape the effect at all, at least not on their own. If you move away from them so that they're not in your aura, then Fear compels them to spend their action dashing away from you, provoking opportunity attacks from your allies and wasting their turn as they try to get to somewhere that they can start making new saves. In general, it's better to keep them in the aura, frightened and immobilized, but sometimes it's better to force them to waste their actions instead, particularly with enemies that force saves instead of rolling attacks, so it's nice to have the option.
That's all all the frighten effects that most conquerors will have, but if you find a way to access more, the main things to judge their value on are:
- what kind of save do they allow. Frighten is almost always resisted by wisdom saves, and since failed wisdom saves can be so debilitating a lot of enemies do have decent to good wisdom saves, which can be a problem for you, and this makes non-wisdom based frighten abilities particularly valuable. This is why the Fallen Aasimar's frighten ability is so good, even though it only lasts a single turn
- do they take your concentration. Most of your frightening ability already use your concentration, so anything that doesn't is extra valuable. A fantastic option here, if you're lucky enough to find one, is a Mace of Terror. This is a rare magic item, so the chances of coming across one are low, but it does give you a fantastic frighten effect - big friendly burst, only allows enemies who fail to take dash or dodge actions. Fixed save DC, which will eventually be less than the DC of your other effects, but no concentration so enemies who do pass can be targeted by another frighten effect to possibly pick them up.
- how do they escape the effect. most frighten effects allow saves to escape at the end of each turn, but any ability that makes that harder is better. Sadly, I can't think of any good examples beyond the Wrathful Smite and Fear that you already have access to, but it's something to keep in mind.
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That's pretty much the basics. I've played... a few of these things at this point, if you have any questions let me know, here or in the Wall of Fear thread. I post under the name 'malisteen' over there, though I'm not always as active as I might like. There are several other posters over there with more Conquest experience than me, so if I don't answer someone else will.
I forgot to mention skills. Being a bit more brief, the most important skills for the build mechanically are perception (to avoid getting surprised) and athletics (to be able to knock enemies prone via the 'shove' maneuver in combat), while the most fitting thematically is, of course, intimidate. Remember that if you are already proficient with a skill that your background would grant you, then you can pick any other skill proficiency in its place. Depending on your race and background choice, you might have to use this to get perception proficiency.
intimidate doesn't necessarily come up all that often on it's own, it tends to be less called for then persuasion or deception. But there are uses for it, particularly in coercing enemies to surrender. Most fights are effectively over long before the final blow is struck, and the Conqueror is particularly adept in creating those situations, particularly once you have access to Aura of Conquest and the Fear spell. Offering your opponents the chance to surrender is a good idea if you think they might accept. Ending a fight early saves party resources and gets you captives that you can interrogate, turn in for bounties, or possibly even exchange for ransom or prisoner release.
Any other proficiency slots you might have you can use as you think best fits your character's personality and backstory. If playing your guy up as templar, take religion. An inquisitor or ivalice-style judge would want insight. A general or noble might want history. If nothing else in particular springs to mind, you'll have a high charisma, so more charisma based skills would probably be the most effective. Persuasion in particular is pretty important to your party, if nobody else is proficient then you really should make an effort to be proficient yourself.
Happy to help. One thing I just came accross recently that might be worth considering, if you haven't already started, is the far traveler background from, I think, sword coast adventurer's guide. The background skills are athletics and perception, two skills you'll definitely want, but the interesting thing is that is also grants proficiency with an instrument, which should be a woodwind - flute or pipes or such.
This is because of the uncommon magic item, Pipes of Haunting, which requires proficiency in a woodwind to use. Of course, it's unlikely that you'll come accross any specific magic item in a given campaign, but if you're lucky enough to do so you'd like to be proficient, as its 30 foot, party friendly frighten burst for an action, effectively usable d3 times a day, is particularly nice for a Conqueror.
There are other frightening magic items you'd love to get your hands on - including the Mace of Terror and Wand of Fear, but those are both rare items, and as such even less likely to turn up in a given game.
The advice and thoughts in this thread are brilliant. I am glad I found the conversation because I am DMing a similar character.
If you're DMing for a conqueror, you may bind their abilities a bit frustrating to work around. Aura of Conquest + Wrathful Smite or Fear is extremely debilitating and extremely difficult to escape for any melee monsters without reach that fail the initial save. A few encounters where the Conqueror shuts down significant portions of the combat, and you'll be tempted to start breaking out the most obvious counter - Fear Immune enemies. Constructs, Oozes, etc.
And don't get me wrong, sprinkling a few fear-immune enemies into the campaign is a good idea. They force the Conqueror out of their usual tactics, shift things up a bit. But even so, when a player's character concept, and their character's entire subclass, revolve around the frighten condition, it isn't particularly fun if they regularly can't use that stuff at all.
You might then be tempted to go with enemies that aren't immune to frighten, just highly resistant to it, perhaps spamming enemies with spell resistance or sky high wisdom saves so they will reliably pass their saving throws. But from a player experience front, this can be even worse. At least when confronted with an enemy you know is flat immune to frighten, you can use your actions and spell slots for other things. Spending actions on fear and conquering presence only for every enemy in the effect to pass their saves is super frustrating since you still don't get to 'do your thing', only now you're also out character resources and actions as well.
Again, sprinkling some such monsters into your encounters is a good idea, but spamming spell resistance isn't answer to a conqueror that's dominating combat too much, and if you know in advance your campaign is going to heavily feature enemies with spell resistance (say you're running 'descent to avernus'), then that's worth mentioning to a player up front so they can either choose a different build option, or at least know what they're getting into.'
Notably legendary resistance doesn't pose the same problem, for two reasons. The first is that stripping uses of legendary resistance is actually a useful thing to do. If a boss enemy shruggs of a couple frightens from the conqueror, but as a result doesn't have any uses of LR left when the wizard casts 'Banishment', then the conqueror still feels like they did something useful. Mainly though Legendary Resistance doesn't bother Conquerors as much because frighten affects and aura of conquest are for managing brutes and mobs, not boss monsters. The dragon or whatever showing up is already a queue for the conqueror to switch over to damage mode.
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So what's the answer for stopping Conqeror's from trivializing fights if it isn't to spam frighten-immune or effectively frighten-immune enemies?
The first is to properly understand the interaction of the Fear spell with aura of conquest. Fear forces an enemy to use their action to dash as far as they can away from the source of the Fear.... unless they have nowhere to go. Notably, the Fear spell, unlike the effect of a Wand of Fear, does not restrict a target's actions if they can't actually go anywhere - which is always the case if they're immobilized in the conqueror's aura. It's important to bring this up in advance with your conqueror, so the player doens't feel disappointed when they finally access Fear if that's how they were expecting it to work. In practice, though, this means Fear gives the conqueror a number of interesting options. They can move out of aura range, forcing the target to give up their action to dash away, but also letting them do exactly that and potentially reach a position where they can save out of the effect or attract other enemies. Or they can lock the target down, in which case they can't flee or even save to escape, but they still have actions available. If you give your conqueror a Wand of Fear than they can lock down enemies, but the wand of fear also allows the targets to save at the end of the turn regardless, so it still isn't an encounter-destroying aoe save-or-die when combined with Aura of Conquest.
Next key thing to keep in mind are the affects of frighten itself. The target can't move closer to the conqueror voluntarily, or at all if they're within the conqueror's aura, and they have disadvantage on attacks and ability checks, but they are otherwise free to act. Enemies that make ranged attacks can still do so, albeit with disadvantage. Enemies with reach can still generally attack the conqueror at least, again albeit with disadvantage. Enemies may be able to arrange ways to give themselves or their allies advantage to cancel out the disadvantage from frighten. Groups of enemies can push or pull each other out of the aura range in order to free up their movement. Enemies that 'attack' by forcing party members to roll saves can continue to make 'attacks' largely unimpeded, even while they remain trapped in the aura.
Ideally you want to design encounters that are still engaging and challenging even while the conqueror's abilities are active and effective. Mix in a few melee brutes or minions that the conqueror can effectively lock down, things that will be problematic for the party if allowed to fight unimpeded, but maybe also one or two enemies with strong wisdom saves that will likely remain free, some with ranged attacks or reach that are impeded if they get locked down but not entirely out of the fight, and some with spellcasty type 'save or suffer' effects who don't care about the disadvantage, or are able to create advantage for themselves or their heir allies to cancel out the disadvantage. EG a mob with pack tactics with a stronger frontline champion or two plus some back line spellcasty or archer type enemies, and/or a sneaking or teleporting hunter type to threaten the party backlines showing up in the second or third round of combat, which either forces the back line squishies to react to defend themselves, or forces the conqueror to fall back from the front lines in order to peel, potentially releasing enemies that they had under their aura up to that point.
That 'waves' concept is useful for encounter design in general. Try to design dungeons or other combat encounter settings not as a single room with a discrete set of enemies, but as a handful of nearby rooms, with multiple connecting pathways between them, each with a wave of enemies that will react to the sounds of combat breaking out a round or two later. This helps avoid situations where an entire encounter is decided by a single control or aoe damage spell, allows for practical use of choke points while still enabling enemies to get to combat by going 'the long way around' if the direct path is blocked, gives sneaky parties advantages for scouting ahead & coming up distractions or stealthy attack tactics, and just feels more realistic than typical dungeon crawls where enemy groups can be down the hall from each other yet remain entirely separate encounters.
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Hi, I'm attempting to make a paladin possibly oathbreaker wasn't sure how well it would multiclass with pact of the great old ones warlock or how many levels of warlock or paladin to take.
I've never played a paladin or warlock so any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
The Oathbreaker Paladin is generally not allowed for player characters. Have you asked your GM about doing this?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No, I've recently moved so I'm not in a group right now I'm just enjoying making a character.
I didn't know that about the oathbreaker though, thanks for telling me.
I make my characters starting with the backstory and personality.
This one I'm thinking variant human(although I like the idea of kalashtar) polearm master. I'm basing this character on two things, Balin Le Savage from Arthurian legend and H.P Lovecraft lore.
So he gets possessed by a malicious spirit, (they meld into one being) and is attempting to wake Azathoth.
I thought oathbreaker strictly because if he was a paladin that stops being virtuous then oathbreaker, but I want him to play in a way that doesn't make it obvious what he's planning. He's gonna be lawful evil I think so he can portray good if it suits his nefarious purpose mwahahaha.
Sorry for the lengthy response I get carried away lol.
Would you suggest path of vengeance instead?
Sure, you could run a Vengeance paladin. There's also Conquest as the obvious oath for evil paladins.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I've never heard of conquest paladin's, right on thank you I'll read up on those
The Oath of Conquest is found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Oathbeaker paladin is a variant presented in the DMG for villainous characters and npcs. Specifically it is presented as an option for paladins who swore another oath, then broke that oath and swore themselves to evil (whether selfish personal evil or to the service of an evil master - most of the Lovecraftian pantheon would certainly qualify) instead of seeking to atone and restore their original oath.
That's all just lore though. Many DMs do not allow the option to PCs at all, others allow oathbreaker as an oath of its own and don't require the character to first break another oath. Speak to your DM to determine if the oathbreaker is allowed in your game and what if any hoops you might have to jump through in order to access it. Game balance wise the oathbreaker is strong, but so are paladins in general, and oathbreaker isn't out of line or in any way broken.
Assuming your DM allows it, paladin and warlock are a natural mechanical fit for multiclassing. Both are charisma heavy, and the warlock's focus on short-rest resources is a good compliment to the paladin, which otherwise relies heavily on daily resources with relatively few abilities that refresh on a short rest. Thematically, the combination can be a bit trickier, since the paladin's commitment to their oath can clash with the demands of a warlock's patron. To be clear, not every warlock actually serves their patron, certainly not willingly, but the conflict can still be present none the less. Some paladin/warlock combinations fit more naturally though, and for an oathbreaker in particular choosing to form a pact with a warlock patron can be the narrative explanation for how or why your character forsook their original oath. The narrative you described of a knight overtaken by a malign supernatural influence fits very well here, thematically.
In terms of oathbreaker specifically, again assuming your DM allows it, the signature feature of the subclass is their level 7 ability 'Aura of Hate', which adds their charisma modifier to their melee damage rolls and to those of any undead or fiends (friendly or enemy) within the aura's range. As such, any oathbreaker build will want to have a good charisma, and will want to take at least 7 levels of paladin. Since the paladin class is somewhat feat starved and stat intensive, you'll then want to take at least one more paladin level for the ability score improvement at level 8. These don't all have to be consecutive levels, but you should plan for at least 8 levels of paladin in your overall build, and you should try not to delay those 8 levels unnecessarily.
As for warlock, mechanically this combination would prefer the hexblade patron - the paladin perhaps overtaken by a spirit within the broken remains of a cursed weapon - perhaps the shard of a holy blade that some time in the past struck down some unkillable evil, trapping pieces of its malign power within the broken pieces of the weapon. The mechanical reason for the combination is that hexblade allows you to use your charisma as your attack stat with a one handed weapon, or with a pact weapon of any type if you go to third level of warlock and take the blade pact, and there's an obvious mechanical advantage in using your charisma to attack with and adding your charisma modifier as extra damage from oathbreaker.
While that's the strongest mechanical fit, though, it's not at all obligatory, and other warlock patrons still make for a great multiclass combination with paladins - oathbreakers or otherwise. You'll just have to take care to manage both your strength and your charisma as you level, instead of focusing solely on your charisma and letting your strength remain where it started.
In terms of how many levels of warlock to take in your build, 2 levels gets you two first level spells per short rest, two cantrips, and two invocations, which is a nice return on investment and will help make sure you've got spare low level spell slots around to smite with.
So I'd definitely recommend 8 levels of paladin and 2 levels of warlock minimum. Start as a paladin, take the first level of warlock after your 'fall' to oathbreaker, finish out to level 8 paladin, and then take your second level of warlock. If you're playing a variant human, your bonus feat should be polearm master, otherwise your first asi should be polearm master. After that, alternate ability score improvements between raising strength and charisma. Optionally you might take sentinel somewhere in there, but it's not as critical as polearm master, and you don't want to let either your strength or your charisma languish.
In terms of starting stats, try to start with at least a 16 in strength and charisma, at least a 14 in constitution, and try not to dump dexterity or wisdom more than you have too. intelligence can be left at base level if it's not strictly required for your character concept. Pala-dumb is a cliche for a reason - apart from the odd religion check you're just not going to use it for anything.
Skill wise, be proficient in athletics, perception, and as many charisma skills as you can manage. Remember that if you already have a skill granted by your background, then you can choose any other skill instead. This should help you get perception proficiency if you can't get it otherwise.
That gets you to level 10, and in my experience most campaigns are wrapping up by that point. If yours goes longer your options are wide open. You can go back to and just stick with either paladin or warlock, or mix about any combination between them. A third level of warlock in particular raises your short rest slots to level 2 and can teach you the misty step spell, which can be helpful since paladins can be lacking in mobility. Or you could bridge over to sorcerer, which combos well with both paladin and warlock. Divine Soul sorcerer is the best fit mechanically, imo, but shadow sorcerer or wild magic sorcerer both work well enough (well, wild sorcerer works if your DM remembers to actually use the wild magic table), and either might fit your character concept better. Alternatively, some levels of fighter can be a good option. Action surge works very well with the oathbreaker's aura of hate, and if you go three levels then battle master has some useful maneuvers, or champion's expanded crit range can help you roll more crits to smite with. In terms of late game ASIs, just keep alternating strength and charisma until you max out both, maybe fitting in sentinel or warcaster at some point if you have a spare ASI or decide you need them.
Play wise, roll a bunch of attacks, dealing nice extra damage on each, and throw in a smite when the targets extra tough or if you happen to roll a crit, since critical hits will double the smite damage as well. Pay attention to what spells you have available as well, as some of them will offer better rewards than just a smite, particularly buff spells that affect all your attacks or that benefit multiple members of the party. Bless is a good one early on. When you can't get to melee, warlock provides a strong ranged fallback via the eldritch blast cantrip, possibly augmented with an invocation.
Don't burn all your spell slots in a single encounter - that includes not saving them all to try to use them all against the 'boss'. There won't always be a boss encounter, and sometimes there will be more then one, and in any event you want to be able to contribute reasonably to every encounter so the rest of your party isn't stretched thin picking up the slack. The pair of spell slots that come back on a short rest will help you, but in general just try to spread out your spell slot resources - whether used on spells or on divine smite - throughout the day. And don't forget your channel divinity, paladin can use one per short rest and oathbreaker has some decent options there.
You probably want to ignore the smite spells though - branding smite, etc. Those spells use your concentration and a bonus action and need you to hit with a weapon attack coming from a separate attack action AND they often also require the enemy to fail a save to be effective, and the return for all of that hassle generally just isn't worth it (with the notable exception of oath of conquest paladins casting wrathful smite). If you want to use a spell slot to smite, plain old divine smite is almost always your best option.
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If your DM does NOT allow oathbreaker, then you have a couple other options for darker/edgier paladins. Vengeance is probably the best, as it doesn't add any additional charisma dependence, so you can more safely focus on strength with your ability score improvements. Otherwise tactics and gameplay is similar, except that instead of a passive damage aura the key feature for vengeance is an active buff via their channel divinity as a bonus action to give you advantage on attack rolls against a chosen target. This does take your bonus action at the start of a fight, and you need to correctly judge when to use it and what enemy to target, but the advantage increases your chance of critting, which turns into big damage with divine smite. Feat & equipment wise vengeance paladins tend to prefer greatswords and great weapon master over spears and polearm master, but a polearm master build will still work perfectly fine. If going that route, I'd play up the crit-fishing aspect with a three level dip into champion fighter somewhere in your later progression.
The other edgelord paladin subclass is the oath of conquest. Conqueror is something of a special duck, though, as the signature feature there is 'aura of conquest' which is amazing, but only works on enemies that are already frightened of you. Which means they have to have failed a saving throw against one of your frightening effects, which means maximizing the character's charisma - and thus the Save DC of their magical abilities - is a MUCH higher priority for them. As such, while they love to dip a level or two into warlock, it's *almost always* hexblade patron for that charisma attacks thing. And weapon wise while they're fine with spears or polearms, feat-wise they generally prioritize something to shore up their concentration saves or tanking abilities - warcaster, resilient constitution, or sentinel - over increasing their offensive ability, so you'd probably want to skip polearm master.
You can make a spear wielding conquest paladin/warlock build work, certainly, but I'm just saying the details would probably end up much different from what you seem to be aiming for. Still, a build focused on inflicting the frighten condition would fit pretty well with the palpable aura of existential dread often associated with Mythos creatures, so it might be worth tinkering with as a build. It would just be a somewhat more complicated character to build and play.
If it's something you're interested in, though, search for the 'wall of fear' thread on the giantitp forums for a conquest paladin build guide.
I'm naming the character Elan Morin Tedronai after a character from my favorite book series he was called the betrayer of hope.
I'm planning on the character to be seemingly good so he can achieve his goals but I can't help but to drop little hints in so afterwards it's oh I should've paid more attention to what mufasa was saying lol.
The hard part will be not saying kneel before Zod mwahahaha
Sception I just saw your post I found the wall of fear thread absolutely love it, I'm rethinking polearm master,maybe the shield feat for knocking prone but does that work with great weapon master feat?
What you did with oathbreaker sounds downright wicked brutal, very cool.
You totally just fixed my characters backstory, a dark elf was trying to become a lich and failed leaving his soul wandering feeding off of the lifeforce of others until he forgot who he was eventually becoming a spirit known as malady, I didn't know how he was doing this or came to posses the paladin though, but if part of his soul was trapped in something that the paladin gets that could be it. Their souls eventually meld together that's where balin le savage comes in he was the knight with two swords but this will be the knight with two souls
I really appreciate your advice and help thank you very much. I'm very new to DND so my knowledge is extremely limited and thank you for directing me to the build guide helps alot.
I'm thinking fallen aasimar or dragonborn with fear feat not sure which I like better thematically lol. I'll try the conquest/hexblade, it just sounds like a fun build.
Conquest/Hexblade, now *that's* in my wheelhouse.
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The key feature of Conqueror is Aura of Conquest at paladin level 7. Enemies frightened of you in the aura take a bit of damage at the start of their turn, and their speed is reduced to zero. This is an amazing lockdown ability for a tank, but only works against enemies that you frighten fist, so it's of zero use against frighten-immune enemies (oozes, constructs, some unead & fiends, misc other monsters), and not very effective against enemies with good saving throws in general and good wisdom saves in particular. It's main purpose is in crowd control, keeping groups of weak willed minions or brawny but oafish brutes in line and preventing them from picking on your party. It's also pretty effective at coercing surrender - nothing says 'you picked the wrong side' like being trapped and afraid, taking damage round after round until you give up or die.
Before paladin level 7, you're "just" a paladin - a paladin who leans more towards tanking and support than damage output, but still a paladin. You've got a decent crowd control aoe channel divinity, & a couple good oath spells. You've got divine smite when you need it, lay on hands to top off allies after healing between battles, good AC, decent weapon attacks. And, of course, you have warlock features as well.
The key Hexblade feature, for this build at least, is Hex Warrior. It lets you choose a one handed weapon each morning, and then you can use your charisma as your attack stat for that weapon for the rest of the day. Because your'e starting with a less than ideal strength, you're going to want to take your first level of hexblade at level 2. Hex Warrior isn't the only feature you get from Hexblade 1 though. You also get Hexblade's Curse, a useful damage buff activated with a bonus action that refreshes on a short rest. It's a good way to amp up your damage to end an encounter sooner when confronted with enemies you can't frighten. You also pick up some useful spells, in particular Shield, though you can't use it while wielding a weapon and shield until you get Warcaster.
Once you have Aura of Conquest, your game plan changes significantly. Suddenly you're all about dominating crowds of weaker enemies through fear. You need to keep track of your frighten abilities, and develop an eye for what sorts of enemies are most vulnerable to frighten. Generally not the mastermind sort, no your tricks are designed for big dumb brutes & weak willed minions, the kind of attrition fights that are meant to wear down party resources before the 'real' fight. Your ability to 'assert your authority' over these sorts of foes ensures that when your party does reach the "real" fight, your friends do so at much closer to full strength. Of course, you have to pull your weight in boss fights too, and that's when you switch over to damage mode - hexblade's curse, divine smite, spiritual weapon, etc. You won't be able to bring *as much* damage to bare as other paladins, but other paladins don't dominate the earlier fights as effectively as you do.
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In terms of progression, first level is paladin, for the heavy armor proficiency. Second level is hexblade, so fix up your weapon attack stat. Then straight paladin to paladin level 9, picking up warcaster and +2 charisma with your ability score improvements along the way, along with defense style, oath of conquest, extra attack, aura of protection, aura of conquest, and access to third level paladin spells for Fear.
That brings you to 10th level, as Paladin 9, Warlock 1. From there, the doors are wide open. Pure paladin for the rest of your levels is fine, paladin keeps offering Conquerors useful tools at every level. A second level of warlock somewhere in there lets you grab a couple invocations and an extra first level slot per day for shield or wrathful smite, and you can still get 18 levels of paladin for the expanded aura range.
Or you can take more warlock than that. Warlock 3 for for the boon - pact blade if you want to switch to two handed weapons (though I personally prefer sword & board). If not, chain is good, for the very useful imp familiar and the very-nice-for-a-tank 'gift of the ever living ones' invocation. Warlock 4 gets you a precious ASI, warlock 5 lets you cast Fear with your two short-rest-recharging slots.
You can also multiclass into sorcerer if you want, for useful spells, faster spell slot advancement than paladin, and useful metamagic abilities, in particular the 'heighten' metamagic to give a target disadvantage on a save against one of your frighten abilities.
Honestly, any of these are valid options. Regardless of the classes you choose to level, for your ability score improvements you should finish maxing out charisma. Any leftover ASIs you manage to pick up can go into feats - sentinel is an exceptionally useful option to help you lock down an enemy that you are unable to or fail to frighten, and is probably the best feat to take whenever you have the spare opportunity. It will probably be pretty late, but the later you get it the more important it will be anyway, since you tend to run into more frighten immune or resistant enemies at later levels.
Beyond that, alert makes you immune to surprise and boosts your initiative significantly, helping you lock down enemies before they even get to act. Inspiring Leader is a massive boost to party HP reserves - though keep in mind that temporary hp doesn't stack, so if someone else in your party is handing them out (glamour bard, another character with inspiring leader, etc), then the feat is redundant. Lucky's couple of free rerolls can get you out of all sort of terrible situations. It basically just makes you better at everything. More about feats later, though.
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In terms of role-playing, Conquest isn't exactly a 'nice' oath. Like one of the edgier incarnations of Batman, you believe the world is an inherently cruel and disordered place, and only the constant intimidation of chaos can allow the fragile joys of peace and order to flourish, however you aren't necessarily evil, and you certainly aren't outright murderous. Other more 'virtous' paladins commit themselves to exterminating evil, but you know the truth, that most creatures are not inherently good or evil. Creatures like Orcs or Goblins and minotaurs aren't "monsters", they just lack the proper motivation to behave in a civilized fashion. In many ways, you're closest to a redemption paladin, though they would never admit as much. The difference is that they offer the carrot, while you wield the stick.
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Mechanically, the first thing to consider when building your Conqueror is stats, as Conquest Paladin is a very stat intensive build. In order of priority:
Charisma. Aura of Conquest is amazing, but it only does anything at all if enemies first fail a save against frighten, so the save DCs of your frighten effects absolutely must be as high as possible. Charisma also boosts your saves & those of nearby allies via aura of protection, and after you multiclass hexblade Charisma will be your primary weapon attack stat as well. In a die rolled game, put your highest score here. In a points buy game, you want to start with a +3 bonus, which means a score of 16. Races with a +2 bonus to charisma can start with a 17, but that's only worth it if you have access to a decent 'half feat' (ie, feat with a lesser bonus coupled with +1 to a stat) that boosts charisma. In the core rules there really isn't one. If you're a half elf specifically, then elven accuracy is worth considering. If your DM allows the skill feats from Unearthed Arcana, then Menacing is *fantastic*, and you should absolutely play a +2 cha race, start with cha 17, and take menacing. However, the skill feats are long abandoned playtest content and most DMs don't (and shouldn't) allow them.
Strength. You'll be dipping hexblade eventually, so you don't need strength for weapon attack after that, but you will need it for first level at least, and long term you need Strength 15 at least to comfortably wear the heaviest armor. In a die roll game, try to put at least a 15 here after racial modifiers so you don't have to raise it later to wear plate armor. In a point buy game, you want *exactly* 15 here. If you weren't multiclassing hexblade, you'd want to start with a 16 for a +3 bonus, but given the hexblade dip you're better off using those points to bring one of your weaker stats up from 8 to 10.
Constitution. You're a melee combatant, and more than that you're a melee tank, which means you're specifically trying to direct enemy attention away from your more fragile friends and towards yourself, so you need hit points. You're also a caster who relies heavily on concentration spells, which means you're going to be making a lot of constitution saves to maintain concentration on spells. In particular the frightening spells 'Wrathful Smite' and 'Fear' are almost impossible for an enemy to escape after they've failed their initial save... unless you fail a concentration saving throw. So you really want your concentration to be as high as you can manage given all the pressure on your other stats. In practice this generally means a 14 constitution for a +2 bonus - good enough, if not as high as you'd really like. some races with especially high stat modifiers can manage a 16 for a +3 bonus though. 15 isn't really advisable imo, as you'd need to raise it further to get actual benefit from it. A non-multiclassing conqueror would happily take resilient constitution to do so, but as a hexadin you'll already be taking warcaster, and resilient con on top of that is a bit overkill given the pressure on your ability score improvements.
After constitution there's a big gap where you switch from 'how high do these need to be' with the previous three stats to 'how low can i afford to dump them' for the next three.
Wisdom/Dexterity. You don't need these stats to be high, but you don't want them to be low either.
Dexterity saves to reduce damage from spells & traps are incredibly common. No matter how high your AC is, if your dex is too low you're going to leak hp anyway, which you really don't want to be doing as the party tank. Dexterity also affects your initiative, and there's a big difference between locking enemies down with aura of conquest before or after they've already swarmed your more vulnerable party members.
Wisdom saves are only slightly less common than dexterity saves, and while you'll have a decent wisdom save with proficiency and aura of protection alone, the consequences of failing wisdom saves are generally much worse than dexterity saves, incapacitating your character or even worse turning them against the party, so 'decent' isn't necessarily good enough. Plus wisdom is tied to the most commonly rolled skill in the game, and the one that characters most often have to roll individually instead of relying on individual experts to handle for the entire party, namely perception. A high initiative roll doesn't help you much if you can't act in the first round anyway because you're surprised due to a flubbed perception check.
Between Dexterity and Wisdom there's no clear answer for which is more important. Ideally you'd like at least a 10 in both to avoid negative modifiers, but if that's not possible then either or both can be dumped.
Intelligence: the dump stat of choice for paladins. Int saves are uncommon and int skills can be handled by someone else in the party, so apart from maybe the odd religion check you aren't going to be using your intelligence modifier for much of anything. You will be extra weak to intellect devourers, but every character has some weaknesses and they're a pretty niche enemy. If you're character concept or role playing idea requires a better score then so be it, but otherwise put your worst roll here, or in point buy games leave it at the base value of 8 and don't look back. Remember, "pala-dumb' is a cliche for a reason.
Because of the relatively high pressure on your stats - three you want to be high and two you'd prefer not to dump - stat mods should probably factor heavily into your choice of race. To be clear, you can play any character as any race and make it work, so if your character concept requires a specific race then so be it. However, if your concept isn't race specific, then you should start by looking at races with a bonus to charisma, and preferably with bonuses to strength and/or constitution as well. Some suggestions, with example point buy stat arrays, include:
Variant Human, min-max: s15, d8, c16, i8, w8, h16; balanced: S15, d10, C14, W10, I8, H16. Conquest puts a lot of pressure on your ASIs, so Vuman's bonus feat is a big, big deal. Every conqueror would like to add sentinel, alert, or inspiring leader to their tool set, sentinel especially, but most can't afford to until very late in their progression. Vuman also grants a bonus skill proficiency for perception.
Half Elf, balanced: s15, d10, c16, i8, w10, h16; elven accuracy: s15, d10, c16, i8, w8, h17. Half Elf's +2 cha and +1 to two other stats of choice, in your case str and con, are unparalleled for stat bonuses, letting you get the highly desired con 16 without dumping either of dex or wis, or with only dumping one or the other if you also want charisma 17, which can be worth it if you want to take the elven accuracy feat. Two bonus skill proficiencies and some useful elven traits on top of that are just icing on the cake.
Fallen Aasimar, balanced: s15, d10, c14, i8, w12, H16. +2 cha and +1 strength gives you the stats you need. with enough extra for a halfway decent wisdom even, though without a con boost there's no con 16 option if you want that. Otherwise Aasimar has a huge set of fantastic bonuses, multiple damage resistances, an extra heal, etc. Fallen in particular has a 1/day aoe frighten ability resisted by an exceptionally rare charisma save, which is fantastic. Only lasts a single round, but leaves you with a damage buff for the rest of the encounter.
Scourge Aasimar, min-max:: S15, D8, C16, i8, w10, H16. Instead of the fear aura into melee damage boost you get a damage aura. Party unfriendly, which conflicts with aura of protection, but works well on enemies trapped within your aura of conquest. In general Fallen is better for conquest, for that amazing frighten burst, but Scourge does allow for a min-maxy stat array with a 16 con if you want that.
Changeling, super-cha: s15, d10, c14, i8, w8, h18. Changeling is an eberron race that may or may not be available in your campaign. It grants +2 charisma and a +1 to any stat of your choice, which can /also/ be charisma. This allows a starting score of 18 charisma in points buy games, unique in the game, which puts you ahead in your most important stat. You also can shift your appearance and voice, which isn't a big combat boost but has tons of role play possibilities, and you get proficiency in some cha skills which is always welcome.
Triton, min-max: s15, d10, c16, i8, w8, h16 - triton's +1 str, con, and cha are second only to half elf in stat bonuses, and the swim speed and ability to breathe under water are immesurably valuable in maritime games specifically. Normally there are races with better features for you, but if you're setting out to conquer the seven seas, triton is the go to.
Those are just a few recommendations. Again, any race can work, and any race with a bonus to charisma and to either strength or constitution will work well.
Next thing to consider is your Feats & Ability Score Improvements. There are Three top priorities for a conqueror: Max out your charisma in order to maximize your aura of protection, and save DCs, shore up your concentration saving throws, and raise your primary weapon attack stat. The hexblade multiclass does two things to these priorities, namely it lets you use your charisma as your weapon attack stat, and it it locks down your option for shoring up your concentration saves into the Warcaster feat specifically. A single classed conqueror might take resilient constitution or even lucky instead, but hexadins want warcaster specifically in order to make effective use of your small handful of warlock spells.
So for you, that means you want to take warcaster with your first available ASI, then spend all your remaining ASIs raising charisma until the stat is maxed out at 20. Only after that should you consider other feats. Once you are considering other feats, IMO the best option is sentinel, followed closely by alert, inspiring leader, and lucky, in no particular order. There are a few other niche options you might consider - I for instance am toying with the idea of taking mounted combatant on a conquest hexadin who was lucky enough to earn the services of a Nightmare - but for the most part sentinel, alert, inspiring, and lucky are the feats worth considering for the few open ASIs that you'll have later in your build.
If you pick variant human as your race, you can grab one of those feats at first level, since a first level paladin can't cast spells and thus cannot take war caster anyway. Otherwise, you don't have a free ASI to spend on any other feat until level 16 at the earliest. Almost no campaigns actually get to that level, so frankly unless you're playing a variant human I'd just put the entire idea of feats out of your mind altogether, unless you have a character concept that absolutely requires one.
On Half Feats:
some feats have a somewhat lesser ability coupled with a +1 bonus to a single stat, and these are generally referred to as 'half feats' by the community. For Variant Humans, taking such a feat as your bonus feat at level 1 can help with your stat distribution. The attractive options here are Heavy Armor Master which comes with +1 strength, and Resilient constitution which comes with +1 constitution. Both are good, but imo not as good as sentinel, alert, inspiring leader, or lucky.
If you start with a 17 charisma via a +2 charisma race, or if you roll dice for stats in your game and your charisma happens to land on an odd score after you put your best stat there and apply racial modifiers, then you can replace one of your +2 charisma ASIs with a half charisma feat to gain the extra advantages of the feat without slowing your charisma bonus advancement. Note that this is only worth doing if you've otherwise maxed out your charisma, taking a lower starting charisma than you otherwise could have just so you can round it out with a half feat is still slowing your charisma modifier advancement and not even doing it for the value of a whole feat.
Sadly, half cha feats are very limited. The only PHB choice is actor which, honestly, instead of taking a starting 17 cha to round out with actor I think you're better off with a starting 16, putting some extra points into other stats, and just taking +2 cha ASIs instead. Actor is a little more interesting on a Changeling, except that changelings should be starting with a round 18 charisma instead, so they aren't looking for a half feat anyway outside of die rolled games.
elf and half elf characters specifically can take elven accuracy, which is a better choice, letting you re-roll one of the dice when attacking with advantage. That's a nice little bonus, and half elves can start with a 17 charisma then use elven accuracy to round that up to 18 without slowing cha mod advancement. That's pretty decent, though not so amazing that I'd call it obligatory, as again starting with 16 cha for better stats elsewhere and just taking +2 charisma ASIs instead of the half feat is still a valid alternative.
Dragonborn have Dragon Fear, which sounds exciting as it's another frighten effect AND it replaces the dragonborn's otherwise somewhat lackluster breath attack. Unfortunately it's not as good as it seems. First of all, dragonborn only have a +1 bonus to charisma, so in a point buy game the best charisma they can start with is 16. A half feat doesn't help round you up to the next point of charisma bonus, and lowering your starting charisma to 15 is again effectively lowering your cha mod for not even a full feat, so you're better off just taking +2 charisma ASI instead. This is especially the case because Dragon Fear suffers some nasty anti-synergy with aura of conquest. Specifically, the frighten effect from Dragon Fear gives enemies new saves to escape the effect whenever they take damage, and aura of conquest, in addition to reducing frightened enemies' speed to zero, deals a small amount of psychic damage at the start of their turn. So enemies frightened by dragon fear get an extra chance to escape your aura at the start of their turn, freeing them up to act normally if they pass their new save.
Unearthed Arcana is a series of articles where Wizard publishes what is basically play test material for the community to try out and give feedback on. A while back there was an Unearthed Arcana article titled 'Skill Feats' which added a half-feat for each skill in the game. These feats were interesting, but never really followed up on, and at this point are basically abandoned content, but some DMs allow old Unearthed Arcana stuff anyway, and if your DM allows skill feats then the Menacing feat is amazing. In addition to granting double proficiency bonus on intimidate, which is fun and fluffy if not strong, it also lets you trade an attack out of your normal attack action to roll intimidate against a target humanoid's wisdom check - not save - to frighten them for one turn, usable as much as you want forever. Even if it only works on humanoids, at-will, hard-to-resist frighten is stupidly good for a conqueror, and if your DM allows it then you should absolutely play a +2 charisma race like Half Elf or Aasimar, start with a 17 charisma, and take Menacing with your second ability score improvement (warcaster still comes first, imo).
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One feat I *don't* recommend is Shield Master. It's not terrible, saved somewhat by the dex save boost, but while shoving enemies prone is a good thing for conquerors to do, it's something they can *already* do by giving up a normal attack from their attack action, without spending any feat at all. Shoving as a bonus action isn't enough better than that to be worth spending a whole feat on a character that already has such heavy pressure on their ability score improvements. Especially since the shield master shove can only be done after you've already made a normal attack action, so you can't shove first in order to attack the prone enemy with advantage that turn, AND you can't shove prone after spending your action frightening enemies with your channel divinity or the Fear spell, nor can you do it on the same turn you cast wrathful smite, since that also takes a bonus action.
Again, not terrible, but not good enough to be worth the limited feat slot, imo.
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On combat style: they're all decent, but the one you want is defense, for a +1 AC while wearing armor, which is basically all the time. You're more about tanking than damage, so the AC is better for you than the damage from dueling or great weapon style, plus it scales better with your level. Protection is decent in general, but not for you, since you'll frequently be imposing disadvantage on enemy attacks via frighten anyway, and want to keep your reaction open for opportunity attacks or the Shield spell.
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on equipment: wear the heaviest armor and best shield that your DM has made available to you. Since you're not taking any weapon-type-specific feats or combat styles, you're free to use whatever the best one-handed weapon available is, or whichever one you happen to like. Long sword is pretty much objectively better than spear since you aren't taking polearm master, but spear and shield still works perfectly fine if you prefer that aesthetically. Especially if you have other PCs in the party more focused on damage output. Note that Hex Warrior can only be applied to one weapon per day, so if you happen to find a better weapon than what you're currently using, you have to wait until the next long rest in order to use it.
If you eventually opt to take 3 or more levels of hexblade, then you can pick up the blade pact, which frees you up to use two handed weapons as well if you want. Reach is decent on a conqueror, so switching to a halberd, glaive, or pike at that point can be worth while. In general, though, I think one handed weapon and a shield is better for you, so if you do opt to take warlock to level 3 you might be better with a different boon, maybe chain for the fancy familiar and 'gift of the ever living ones' invocation. That said, for conquest hexadin you might want to stick to just one or maybe two levels of warlock anyway, so that you can still get the aura range expansion if you eventually make it to level 20, in which case you won't get a warlock boon at all. if you want reach on a one handed weapon, a whip is always an option.
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Warlock Spells -
The key cantrips to pick up here are eldritch blast for a decent fallback ranged option and booming blade (from the sword coast adventurer's guide) to use with the warcaster feat for a more damaging opportunity attack that discourages the enemy from moving further with even more damage if they do. For first level spells, the important ones to grab are Shield, for a reactive boost to your AC which can nullify incoming attacks and is especially strong stacked on top of your already very good armor class, and Cause Fear, which isn't better than Wrathful Smite in first level spell slots, nor better than Fear for spell slots of 3rd level or higher, but has a useful niche to fill as a two-target frighten spell when cast in second level spell slots specifically. Note that, since shield has somatic but not material components, you can only cast it while your hands are full if you have the warcaster feat, which is why warcaster is mandatory for you as a hexadin. There are other feats that can shore up concentration saves, but the Shield spell is so useful that the ability to cast it alone makes warcaster a must have feat, even worth delaying charisma bonus advancement.
Some DMs don't allow the SCAG cantrips, or restrict you to only a single source book outside of the PHB, in which case you have to pick Xanathar's Guide to access both Oath of Conquest and Hexblade, and as such can't get the SCAG cantrips regardless. In that case it's a bit of a shame, since you'll still want to pick up Warcaster and you won't really have any good spells to use as opportunity attacks with that part of the feat, but you can live without booming blade. Honestly any other warlock cantrip that appeals to you would do fine, I'd look for something more on the utility side of things, since regular weapon attacks and eldritch blast will have you covered for offensive at-will attacks.
If you eventually get up to second level spells, Misty Step is a valuable tool to add to your toolbox, as paladin can otherwise be lacking in mobility options.
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Paladin spells
Unlike many paladins, Conquerors tend to like to cast their spells rather than just divine smite all their spell slots away. Don't get me wrong, you'll still smite on occasion, when an especially dangerous enemy needs to be taken down quickly or when you roll a crit on a bulky foe and want to pile on the damage, but more often than not you'll be casting actual spells. Once you have Aura of Conquest frightening enemies becomes a top priority, but even before then maintaining concentration on an important buff spell can help attract enemy attention away from your more vulnerable party members. Early on, you should consider opening fights with Bless if the enemies look like they have a high AC and/or they seem like they'll be forcing the party to roll a lot of saving throws. Remember that concentration saves ARE saving throws, to the bonus from bless does apply to help you maintain the bless spell if you take damage. Other first level paladin spells are more situational, but can still be good. Read through them to see what you have access to.
In second level slots, Find Steed is one of the best summon spells for its level, what with the permanent-until-killed duration. Even if you don't actively ride it into battle, a warhorse or mastiff is a useful combatant charging in to help out, and if they die you can just summon them back in your next down time. Aid is another useful 2nd level spell. It seems like it wants you to cast it at the start of the day to slightly bump up the hit points of a few party members, but to really make it shine keep it in reserve then cast it in the middle of a tough fight when multiple party members are down to wake up to three of them up with 5 hp. It's basically a multi-target healing word, and that's worth a full action and a second level spell slot. The other key second level paladin spell is the conquest oath spell spiritual weapon, which provides some extra damage output and a good use of your bonus actions in longer fights, particularly against frighten-immune enemies.
For third level spells... you cast Fear, and pretty much only Fear, but it might be worth your time to keep a Revivify in the back pocket.
There are other solid paladin spells, and more good ones at higher level - improved find steed in particular is nice, but these are some good ones to start with.
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Frightening Your Enemies
Aura of Conquest does everything if your target is frightened of you, and nothing if they aren't. So how do you frighten enemies? There are four main ways.
Aura of Conquest - your channel divinity, which means you can use it once per short rest, which usually pans out to twice a day. Aura of Conquest doesn't take a spell slot, affects a wide area, doesn't target your allies, and super importantly does not take your concentration, so you can couple it with a buff spell like Bless, or follow up with a concentration-based fear spell to pick up stragglers who pass their initial save. It is a wisdom save to resist the initial effect, which is standard. Enemies get to make additional wisdom saves to try to break free at the end of each of their turns, which makes aura of conquest among the easier frighten effects to escape, but the fantastic AOE, party friendliness, and especially lack of concentration requirement still make it very good. Because it doesn't take a spell slot and you get it back on short rests, this should typically be the first frightener you use when it's available. It's best for groups of weaker-willed enemies, so you don't have to worry about saving it for important fights.
Wrathful Smite (paladin spell) - this is your frightener for first level spell slots. Until you get aura of conquest plain old divine smite is a better use of the slot, but afterwords Wrathful Smite is worth the extra effort. It uses your concentration and takes a bonus action to prepare before attacking. After that, your next hit with a melee weapon causes some extra damage and forces the target to make a wisdom save against frighten. Single target isn't great, taking your bonus action and then needing to make a regular action to attack to use it isn't great either. What is great is that if a target fails that initial save they need to use up an entire action on their turn to even try to escape, and that escape attempt is a wisdom *check*, not a wisdom save, against your spell DC. Not only are enemy checks often lower than enemy saves, the frighten condition itself imposes disadvantage on ability checks, which means they'll have to burn an action just to roll twice and take the lowest result and hope that still beats the spell DC that they already failed against. This is the spell to use when you need to land and hold a frighten on a single important target, or when you already used Conquering Presence and you need to snag a particular enemy that slipped through your grip.
Cause Fear (warlock spell) - Cause Fear targets one enemy, uses your concentration, they have to make a wisdom save or be frightened of you, and they get a new save to escape at the end of each of their turns. As a first level spell it's very weak, much worse than Wrathful Smite, but Cause Fear has an advantage in that when you cast it in higher level spell slots you can target an extra enemy for each spell level above first. This means you can cast the spell in your second level slots to potentially frighten two enemies. Still takes your concentration, still allows a new save at the end of the enemies' turns to escape, still not great. But it remains your best frightener for second level slots, and sometimes you want to spook more than one enemy, but they just aren't worth the investment of Fear or Conquering Presence. Alternatively, sometimes you use Conquering Presence and more than one enemy gets lucky and passes their save.
Fear (Oath Spell) - Fear is your most dangerous fear effect, and will be the main use of your 3rd level spell slots. Higher level slots too, for that matter. It's a 30 foot cone, and not party friendly, so not as good aoe as Conquering Presence. It requires Concentration, and like all the rest it allows an initial wisdom save to negate the effect. Where Fear excels is that enemies can only attempt Wisdom Saves at the end of their turn if they're out of your line of sight. Since enemies frightened of you in your aura have their speed reduced to zero, they cannot flee, and thus cannot break line of sight, so as long as you maintain your concentration they cannot escape the effect at all, at least not on their own. If you move away from them so that they're not in your aura, then Fear compels them to spend their action dashing away from you, provoking opportunity attacks from your allies and wasting their turn as they try to get to somewhere that they can start making new saves. In general, it's better to keep them in the aura, frightened and immobilized, but sometimes it's better to force them to waste their actions instead, particularly with enemies that force saves instead of rolling attacks, so it's nice to have the option.
That's all all the frighten effects that most conquerors will have, but if you find a way to access more, the main things to judge their value on are:
- what kind of save do they allow. Frighten is almost always resisted by wisdom saves, and since failed wisdom saves can be so debilitating a lot of enemies do have decent to good wisdom saves, which can be a problem for you, and this makes non-wisdom based frighten abilities particularly valuable. This is why the Fallen Aasimar's frighten ability is so good, even though it only lasts a single turn
- do they take your concentration. Most of your frightening ability already use your concentration, so anything that doesn't is extra valuable. A fantastic option here, if you're lucky enough to find one, is a Mace of Terror. This is a rare magic item, so the chances of coming across one are low, but it does give you a fantastic frighten effect - big friendly burst, only allows enemies who fail to take dash or dodge actions. Fixed save DC, which will eventually be less than the DC of your other effects, but no concentration so enemies who do pass can be targeted by another frighten effect to possibly pick them up.
- how do they escape the effect. most frighten effects allow saves to escape at the end of each turn, but any ability that makes that harder is better. Sadly, I can't think of any good examples beyond the Wrathful Smite and Fear that you already have access to, but it's something to keep in mind.
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That's pretty much the basics. I've played... a few of these things at this point, if you have any questions let me know, here or in the Wall of Fear thread. I post under the name 'malisteen' over there, though I'm not always as active as I might like. There are several other posters over there with more Conquest experience than me, so if I don't answer someone else will.
Thank you, you are awesome. I really appreciate you explaining why each thing works and how to know what to look for to make everything mesh well.
I forgot to mention skills. Being a bit more brief, the most important skills for the build mechanically are perception (to avoid getting surprised) and athletics (to be able to knock enemies prone via the 'shove' maneuver in combat), while the most fitting thematically is, of course, intimidate. Remember that if you are already proficient with a skill that your background would grant you, then you can pick any other skill proficiency in its place. Depending on your race and background choice, you might have to use this to get perception proficiency.
intimidate doesn't necessarily come up all that often on it's own, it tends to be less called for then persuasion or deception. But there are uses for it, particularly in coercing enemies to surrender. Most fights are effectively over long before the final blow is struck, and the Conqueror is particularly adept in creating those situations, particularly once you have access to Aura of Conquest and the Fear spell. Offering your opponents the chance to surrender is a good idea if you think they might accept. Ending a fight early saves party resources and gets you captives that you can interrogate, turn in for bounties, or possibly even exchange for ransom or prisoner release.
Any other proficiency slots you might have you can use as you think best fits your character's personality and backstory. If playing your guy up as templar, take religion. An inquisitor or ivalice-style judge would want insight. A general or noble might want history. If nothing else in particular springs to mind, you'll have a high charisma, so more charisma based skills would probably be the most effective. Persuasion in particular is pretty important to your party, if nobody else is proficient then you really should make an effort to be proficient yourself.
Dude you are awesome, I super appreciate your help with this character. I am pretty stoked to try it out
Happy to help. One thing I just came accross recently that might be worth considering, if you haven't already started, is the far traveler background from, I think, sword coast adventurer's guide. The background skills are athletics and perception, two skills you'll definitely want, but the interesting thing is that is also grants proficiency with an instrument, which should be a woodwind - flute or pipes or such.
This is because of the uncommon magic item, Pipes of Haunting, which requires proficiency in a woodwind to use. Of course, it's unlikely that you'll come accross any specific magic item in a given campaign, but if you're lucky enough to do so you'd like to be proficient, as its 30 foot, party friendly frighten burst for an action, effectively usable d3 times a day, is particularly nice for a Conqueror.
There are other frightening magic items you'd love to get your hands on - including the Mace of Terror and Wand of Fear, but those are both rare items, and as such even less likely to turn up in a given game.
The advice and thoughts in this thread are brilliant. I am glad I found the conversation because I am DMing a similar character.
If you're DMing for a conqueror, you may bind their abilities a bit frustrating to work around. Aura of Conquest + Wrathful Smite or Fear is extremely debilitating and extremely difficult to escape for any melee monsters without reach that fail the initial save. A few encounters where the Conqueror shuts down significant portions of the combat, and you'll be tempted to start breaking out the most obvious counter - Fear Immune enemies. Constructs, Oozes, etc.
And don't get me wrong, sprinkling a few fear-immune enemies into the campaign is a good idea. They force the Conqueror out of their usual tactics, shift things up a bit. But even so, when a player's character concept, and their character's entire subclass, revolve around the frighten condition, it isn't particularly fun if they regularly can't use that stuff at all.
You might then be tempted to go with enemies that aren't immune to frighten, just highly resistant to it, perhaps spamming enemies with spell resistance or sky high wisdom saves so they will reliably pass their saving throws. But from a player experience front, this can be even worse. At least when confronted with an enemy you know is flat immune to frighten, you can use your actions and spell slots for other things. Spending actions on fear and conquering presence only for every enemy in the effect to pass their saves is super frustrating since you still don't get to 'do your thing', only now you're also out character resources and actions as well.
Again, sprinkling some such monsters into your encounters is a good idea, but spamming spell resistance isn't answer to a conqueror that's dominating combat too much, and if you know in advance your campaign is going to heavily feature enemies with spell resistance (say you're running 'descent to avernus'), then that's worth mentioning to a player up front so they can either choose a different build option, or at least know what they're getting into.'
Notably legendary resistance doesn't pose the same problem, for two reasons. The first is that stripping uses of legendary resistance is actually a useful thing to do. If a boss enemy shruggs of a couple frightens from the conqueror, but as a result doesn't have any uses of LR left when the wizard casts 'Banishment', then the conqueror still feels like they did something useful. Mainly though Legendary Resistance doesn't bother Conquerors as much because frighten affects and aura of conquest are for managing brutes and mobs, not boss monsters. The dragon or whatever showing up is already a queue for the conqueror to switch over to damage mode.
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So what's the answer for stopping Conqeror's from trivializing fights if it isn't to spam frighten-immune or effectively frighten-immune enemies?
The first is to properly understand the interaction of the Fear spell with aura of conquest. Fear forces an enemy to use their action to dash as far as they can away from the source of the Fear.... unless they have nowhere to go. Notably, the Fear spell, unlike the effect of a Wand of Fear, does not restrict a target's actions if they can't actually go anywhere - which is always the case if they're immobilized in the conqueror's aura. It's important to bring this up in advance with your conqueror, so the player doens't feel disappointed when they finally access Fear if that's how they were expecting it to work. In practice, though, this means Fear gives the conqueror a number of interesting options. They can move out of aura range, forcing the target to give up their action to dash away, but also letting them do exactly that and potentially reach a position where they can save out of the effect or attract other enemies. Or they can lock the target down, in which case they can't flee or even save to escape, but they still have actions available. If you give your conqueror a Wand of Fear than they can lock down enemies, but the wand of fear also allows the targets to save at the end of the turn regardless, so it still isn't an encounter-destroying aoe save-or-die when combined with Aura of Conquest.
Next key thing to keep in mind are the affects of frighten itself. The target can't move closer to the conqueror voluntarily, or at all if they're within the conqueror's aura, and they have disadvantage on attacks and ability checks, but they are otherwise free to act. Enemies that make ranged attacks can still do so, albeit with disadvantage. Enemies with reach can still generally attack the conqueror at least, again albeit with disadvantage. Enemies may be able to arrange ways to give themselves or their allies advantage to cancel out the disadvantage from frighten. Groups of enemies can push or pull each other out of the aura range in order to free up their movement. Enemies that 'attack' by forcing party members to roll saves can continue to make 'attacks' largely unimpeded, even while they remain trapped in the aura.
Ideally you want to design encounters that are still engaging and challenging even while the conqueror's abilities are active and effective. Mix in a few melee brutes or minions that the conqueror can effectively lock down, things that will be problematic for the party if allowed to fight unimpeded, but maybe also one or two enemies with strong wisdom saves that will likely remain free, some with ranged attacks or reach that are impeded if they get locked down but not entirely out of the fight, and some with spellcasty type 'save or suffer' effects who don't care about the disadvantage, or are able to create advantage for themselves or their heir allies to cancel out the disadvantage. EG a mob with pack tactics with a stronger frontline champion or two plus some back line spellcasty or archer type enemies, and/or a sneaking or teleporting hunter type to threaten the party backlines showing up in the second or third round of combat, which either forces the back line squishies to react to defend themselves, or forces the conqueror to fall back from the front lines in order to peel, potentially releasing enemies that they had under their aura up to that point.
That 'waves' concept is useful for encounter design in general. Try to design dungeons or other combat encounter settings not as a single room with a discrete set of enemies, but as a handful of nearby rooms, with multiple connecting pathways between them, each with a wave of enemies that will react to the sounds of combat breaking out a round or two later. This helps avoid situations where an entire encounter is decided by a single control or aoe damage spell, allows for practical use of choke points while still enabling enemies to get to combat by going 'the long way around' if the direct path is blocked, gives sneaky parties advantages for scouting ahead & coming up distractions or stealthy attack tactics, and just feels more realistic than typical dungeon crawls where enemy groups can be down the hall from each other yet remain entirely separate encounters.