Was having this conversation with a fellow DnD enthusiast. I have never played with him before, but he is looking into starting a new Zoom campaign and he is going to create a new character. We were both discussing gish and half-casters, flavor and combat efficiency etc. Somehow (I really don't remember how) we landed on this question, which is the best class for a Paladin to take on? I figured we were talking about optimization and/or Party usefulness and/or most versatile character so for all of those I threw out typical answers and benefits of each from typical Warlock, Sorcerer, Bard and even Barbarian, Fighter and Rogue for Dex Paladins. But I didn't have a clear winner in my mind so wanted to see what fellow enthusiast thought.
For me, it's probably always going to be warlock. There's just so many things you can get out of warlock but what you will always get is a whole additional pool of spell slots. Paladins don't get a lot of spell slots, so the ability to dump extra smites, heals, buffs, debuffs w/e makes you so much more powerful no matter what your route is (dmg/support etc)
Hexblade - incredible for dmg and ASI consolidation
Blade - great way to have a+1 weapon always
Tome- spells
Eldritch blast - big dmg while not dumping spell slots
Invocations - excellent utility and roleplay opportunities as well.
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It doesn't matter how smart you think are you. No one will want to work with you if you're an *******.
I've just hit level 3 for my Paladin / Celestial Warlock build. Started with 2 levels of Paladin, and she's a Protector Aasimar, so on top of getting some good damage cantrips, she can now fly...
I plan to go through several 'Lock levels, before going back to Paladin. I see her as being super engaged with the "mystical" side of things, then drifting back to the more disciplined Paladin aspects.
I've just hit level 3 for my Paladin / Celestial Warlock build. Started with 2 levels of Paladin, and she's a Protector Aasimar, so on top of getting some good damage cantrips, she can now fly...
I plan to go through several 'Lock levels, before going back to Paladin. I see her as being super engaged with the "mystical" side of things, then drifting back to the more disciplined Paladin aspects.
What made you decide the celestial subclass as your choice? Is it thematics or mechanics?
What made you decide the celestial subclass as your choice? Is it thematics or mechanics?
A mix of both... she's the healer, and celestial adds the Healing Light feature. Plus, she's the truly Lawful Good character, and celestial fits that thematically.
For a quick dip warlock, hexblade in particular, offers the most. for an extended multiclass or an escqpe hatch if you don't care for paladin features past level 6, then sorcerer, especially divine soul sorcerer, does more for you. sword bard and battle master are both strong options as well. cgampion fighter is a great 3 level dip for crit fishing vengeance builds, but hexblade is probably better, particularly given hex warrior + elven accuracy combo for half elves.
Theres a couple things here that you can do here. Personally I'm not a fan of warlock or sorcerer multiclasses. I think they lose a lot of things for the sake of short rest spell slots and generally fall behind other in survivability. But that's my opinion. The two options I tend to go to are as follows.
Barbarian - Multiclassing with Barbarian can bring in a lot survivability and damage to your capability as well as given advantage to dex saves and advantage to attacks at will. Rage gives you resistance advantage on str checks and added damage to attacks. You do loose one of your 5th lvls and an ASI for going 3 lvls though so keep that in mind.
Cleric - Specifically War Cleric. This gives you a bonus action attack for your WIS modifier once per a long rest. On top of that you get a ranged cantrip, ranged damaging spells, a range heal, and a 6th lvl spell slot. This is a MAD build and I would not recommend it to every person especially if you aren't skilled with playing a character where your going to be fighting with low stats. Devotion Paladins work best for this as they are going to bring in the best combination of Attack and Defense and If you take a Scourge Aasimar as a race you don't really loose your capstone ability fully.
Barbarian/Fighter - Yes I know I have Barbarian already up there. This isn't a Barbarian or fighter. Its a Barbarian and Fighter. Specifically Bear totem and Champion. This is going to rapidly boost your survivability to everything besides psychic and max crits more likely.
What you get from this:
Advantage on Dex saves, advantage on attacks, Rage, resistance to everything besides psychic, 19-20 crit, Action surge, a second fighting style, second wind.
What you loose:
Capstone ability, Two ASI's Capstone ability, Aura improvement, both 5 lvl spell slots and two 4th level spell slots.
I would not recommend this build unless you rolled really well on stats. But when built up it is hell of hard to stop on the battlefield. Having both Defensive and dueling fighting styles while getting the ability to make double the attacks at advantage and crit on a 19-20 is no joke in a fight. Not to mention what else you get from it that being said like I stated earlier you had to have rolled a character and rolled well. The goal being to Use the 3 ASI's you have left for feats tough, res con, shield master. If you go Human variant pick up Heavy Armored Master. Yes this is a purely fight it out character and will not deal great Nova damage but it will survive and deal more damage over time.
I've been playing Descent into Avernus for quite sometime and I just went straight Glory Paladin until level 8, then I read about the glories (Pun intended) of Celestial Warlock, I'm going to go 2 levels of warlock, then go back to paladin until 11, then go back to warlock for the rest. Endgame plan is paladin 11 warlock 9. I'm also a white dragonborn (Don't know what I was thinking, totally should've gone red or gold) so the cold resistance is so useless. I'm also part of the Order of the Gauntlet from Heroes of Faerun.
Also seriously, who voted druid and wizard, why would you even play those with paladin. Unless you played ancients for druid or spellwarden for wizard. There is literally no point unless you are going for a very specific build.
The other options are bad or just weaker. These options either patch weaknesses in the Paladin baseclass or are just more optimal paths for the Paladin to progress (the MAD ability scores via Warlock, the enhanced spell slot power/versatility via Sorcerer).
If Paladin was well designed, you'd have stronger higher level incentives to *remain* Paladin, prompting Warlock to the best 1 level dip answer, but because Paladins don't modify the way they cast spells at levels 9-12, and have such slow spell-slot progression, the most potent Paladin is always a Sorcadin.
[Rant]
Which is frustrating, because, it's not a hard to make halfcasters have strong Baseclass options after 11: the design team chose not too, even though the blueprint for it exists on the Fighter and Warlock (on hit, immediate, free action benefits/or expansions of existing ones).
Base Paladins should be able to smite on Reaction attacks, full stop; they're not a full caster, they're a half caster: so the Base class should have modified their Bonus action spell casting to occur during an attack rather than using that attack and a bonus action and the resource(s) to do something (any single option that requires your ENTIRE turn to do (ontop of a limited resource(s)) is not something you see on ANY OTHER class in the game, and removing that BA requirement has almost no impact, beyond, making the Paladin's Reaction impactful/relevant to them a martial that uses magic).
Was having this conversation with a fellow DnD enthusiast. I have never played with him before, but he is looking into starting a new Zoom campaign and he is going to create a new character. We were both discussing gish and half-casters, flavor and combat efficiency etc. Somehow (I really don't remember how) we landed on this question, which is the best class for a Paladin to take on? I figured we were talking about optimization and/or Party usefulness and/or most versatile character so for all of those I threw out typical answers and benefits of each from typical Warlock, Sorcerer, Bard and even Barbarian, Fighter and Rogue for Dex Paladins. But I didn't have a clear winner in my mind so wanted to see what fellow enthusiast thought.
For me, it's probably always going to be warlock. There's just so many things you can get out of warlock but what you will always get is a whole additional pool of spell slots. Paladins don't get a lot of spell slots, so the ability to dump extra smites, heals, buffs, debuffs w/e makes you so much more powerful no matter what your route is (dmg/support etc)
Hexblade - incredible for dmg and ASI consolidation
Blade - great way to have a+1 weapon always
Tome- spells
Eldritch blast - big dmg while not dumping spell slots
Invocations - excellent utility and roleplay opportunities as well.
It doesn't matter how smart you think are you. No one will want to work with you if you're an *******.
For pumping out damage in a nova strike, Paladin/Sorcerer 6/14 gives you a lot more spell slots to play with.
Paladin/Warlock 6/14 gives you spell slots that recharge on a short rest and you can become something of an EB blaster.
Paladin is just about the ideal melee class, but it's hampered by a lack of spell slots which is why people multiclass.
I've just hit level 3 for my Paladin / Celestial Warlock build. Started with 2 levels of Paladin, and she's a Protector Aasimar, so on top of getting some good damage cantrips, she can now fly...
I plan to go through several 'Lock levels, before going back to Paladin. I see her as being super engaged with the "mystical" side of things, then drifting back to the more disciplined Paladin aspects.
What made you decide the celestial subclass as your choice? Is it thematics or mechanics?
A mix of both... she's the healer, and celestial adds the Healing Light feature. Plus, she's the truly Lawful Good character, and celestial fits that thematically.
For a quick dip warlock, hexblade in particular, offers the most. for an extended multiclass or an escqpe hatch if you don't care for paladin features past level 6, then sorcerer, especially divine soul sorcerer, does more for you. sword bard and battle master are both strong options as well. cgampion fighter is a great 3 level dip for crit fishing vengeance builds, but hexblade is probably better, particularly given hex warrior + elven accuracy combo for half elves.
Theres a couple things here that you can do here. Personally I'm not a fan of warlock or sorcerer multiclasses. I think they lose a lot of things for the sake of short rest spell slots and generally fall behind other in survivability. But that's my opinion. The two options I tend to go to are as follows.
Barbarian - Multiclassing with Barbarian can bring in a lot survivability and damage to your capability as well as given advantage to dex saves and advantage to attacks at will. Rage gives you resistance advantage on str checks and added damage to attacks. You do loose one of your 5th lvls and an ASI for going 3 lvls though so keep that in mind.
Cleric - Specifically War Cleric. This gives you a bonus action attack for your WIS modifier once per a long rest. On top of that you get a ranged cantrip, ranged damaging spells, a range heal, and a 6th lvl spell slot. This is a MAD build and I would not recommend it to every person especially if you aren't skilled with playing a character where your going to be fighting with low stats. Devotion Paladins work best for this as they are going to bring in the best combination of Attack and Defense and If you take a Scourge Aasimar as a race you don't really loose your capstone ability fully.
Barbarian/Fighter - Yes I know I have Barbarian already up there. This isn't a Barbarian or fighter. Its a Barbarian and Fighter. Specifically Bear totem and Champion. This is going to rapidly boost your survivability to everything besides psychic and max crits more likely.
What you get from this:
Advantage on Dex saves, advantage on attacks, Rage, resistance to everything besides psychic, 19-20 crit, Action surge, a second fighting style, second wind.
What you loose:
Capstone ability, Two ASI's Capstone ability, Aura improvement, both 5 lvl spell slots and two 4th level spell slots.
I would not recommend this build unless you rolled really well on stats. But when built up it is hell of hard to stop on the battlefield. Having both Defensive and dueling fighting styles while getting the ability to make double the attacks at advantage and crit on a 19-20 is no joke in a fight. Not to mention what else you get from it that being said like I stated earlier you had to have rolled a character and rolled well. The goal being to Use the 3 ASI's you have left for feats tough, res con, shield master. If you go Human variant pick up Heavy Armored Master. Yes this is a purely fight it out character and will not deal great Nova damage but it will survive and deal more damage over time.
I've been playing Descent into Avernus for quite sometime and I just went straight Glory Paladin until level 8, then I read about the glories (Pun intended) of Celestial Warlock, I'm going to go 2 levels of warlock, then go back to paladin until 11, then go back to warlock for the rest. Endgame plan is paladin 11 warlock 9. I'm also a white dragonborn (Don't know what I was thinking, totally should've gone red or gold) so the cold resistance is so useless. I'm also part of the Order of the Gauntlet from Heroes of Faerun.
Also seriously, who voted druid and wizard, why would you even play those with paladin. Unless you played ancients for druid or spellwarden for wizard. There is literally no point unless you are going for a very specific build.
The long-game answer: Sorcerer
The short-term answer: Warlock
The other options are bad or just weaker. These options either patch weaknesses in the Paladin baseclass or are just more optimal paths for the Paladin to progress (the MAD ability scores via Warlock, the enhanced spell slot power/versatility via Sorcerer).
If Paladin was well designed, you'd have stronger higher level incentives to *remain* Paladin, prompting Warlock to the best 1 level dip answer, but because Paladins don't modify the way they cast spells at levels 9-12, and have such slow spell-slot progression, the most potent Paladin is always a Sorcadin.
[Rant]
Which is frustrating, because, it's not a hard to make halfcasters have strong Baseclass options after 11: the design team chose not too, even though the blueprint for it exists on the Fighter and Warlock (on hit, immediate, free action benefits/or expansions of existing ones).
Base Paladins should be able to smite on Reaction attacks, full stop; they're not a full caster, they're a half caster: so the Base class should have modified their Bonus action spell casting to occur during an attack rather than using that attack and a bonus action and the resource(s) to do something (any single option that requires your ENTIRE turn to do (ontop of a limited resource(s)) is not something you see on ANY OTHER class in the game, and removing that BA requirement has almost no impact, beyond, making the Paladin's Reaction impactful/relevant to them a martial that uses magic).