Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough through the forum posts, but it seems like more often than not, when paladin sub-classes are discussed or recommended, the Oath of Heroism is neglected. Is this because it's U/A? Is it like this for other classes as well?
I think Paladin is less popular to discuss, unlike Warlock. Yeah, I'd say people like giving real life experience with how their characters felt, rather than just be another noisy critic and U/A are new for most: not a lot of time to RP it through. Oath of Heroism looks strong, sort of pushed forward so Paladins didn't feel the need to go Warlock for hexblade. I'd say it's on par with Ancients and Vengeance in terms of power, but heck, that's just a feeling
Mostly because it's UA, yeah. UA options tend to be under or over powered, and either get updated and published or effectively dropped altogether. There's not much discussion of oath of treachery either, even though I think that oath has some pretty fun and interesting ideas to it. More so than heroism, tbh.
But as for heroism... the flavor and tenets are a bit 'generic paladin' for my taste. The spell list has haste and freedom of movement, which are both quite nice, but I'm not too impressed with the first and second level oath spells, which has you waiting until level 9 for relevant spell options. Expeditious retreat helps with maneuverability, which can be a weakness for paladins, but imo the concentration requirement on it is just too much. Peerless athlete is pretty meh as a channel divinity, but legendary strike is pretty good for crit fishing, particularly on a dual wielding or polearm master build. Especially nice on an elf dual shortsword build with elven accuracy, or a half elf spear build with polearm master, elven accuracy, and a single level dip in hexblade. Bonus points if you can convince a friend to play a wolf totem barbarian to give you advantage on melee attacks. With elven accuracy, advantage, and a bonus action attack from dual wielding or polearm master, you're looking at nine chances a turn to roll a 19 to 20 for critical smite damage, at least while legendary strike is up. The half elf, hex dip version can alternate between legendary strike and hexblade's curse to have the expanded crit range up against at least one enemy in nearly every fight.
Crit fishing also helps you trigger mighty deed more... except that mighty deed isn't that overwhelming an ability. The temp hp aren't much and don't scale, and the frighten condition is resisted by wisdom saves and only lasts a round. I would hope to see this feature beefed up significantly in a future update or final release, otherwise heroism is another paladin oath that I would tend to multiclass out of into warlock or sorcerer after grabbing aura of protection at level 6.
That said, if you do stick with the class, Glorious defense is pretty amazing. At will Shield spell PLUS a riposte attack? Nothing will want to attack you. Which means you really need to pick up Warcaster either before this or failing that with your level 16 asi. The bonus is keyed to your cha score, so again the hexblade dip is extra tempting, though for a regular strength based build the relatively common gauntlets of strength could serve the same purpose. Sadly no elven accuracy for such a build, though.
Capstone is great, as most paladin capstones are, but again I'd lean heavily towards the hexblade dip with this oath, which means never seeing that capstone.
so yeah. A decent crit-fishy paladin oath, though thematically I'm not sure if fills a place that devotion paladins don't aready fill, and mechanically crit fishy paladins are already pretty well served by oath of vengeance, especially as I'm not sure the level 7 feature is worth sticking around for, and even if you don't multi out most campaigns don't last long enough to see the actually quite good level 15 feature. If they beef up the level 7 aura, though, it could be pretty decent.
Still not as cool or interesting as the treachery paladin, may it rest in peace.
I would say it falls in a similar place as Treachery does with Oathbreaker. There are subtle differences thematically, but big differences mechanically.
Devotion is your classic paladin focused on serving his deity as the sword that destroys evil and bringing glory to that deity and protecting the innocent. Heroism is still very much a classic paladin, but more focused on the people he is protecting and allowing (not propelling) the mythos of himself. Its as if "bravery" and "chivalry" is the deity this paladin serves. This to me is the folk hero background mixed with the paladin class, where as the devotion paladin is the acolyte background in the class.
Mechanically speaking they are similar, but with devotion more focused on a all around balanced half caster. Devotion can fit so many 2 tier roles of a party, off healer, buffer, frontliner, tank, off hand caster, face of the party (with need for high CHA stat for ANY paladin). Where as the heorism oath seems more focused on damage output and buffing (specifically frontliners). Again any paladin is pretty balanced, but each sub has medium focus on a certain theme and mechanical attribute in combat.
Well, the subclass is coming to 5e in the form of the Oath of Glory paladin in the Theros book. I don't think there's a lack of love for it, it's a fine subclass, it's just that there's not much about it worth talking about. I really like it. I can't wait to see the changes made to it in the final version besides the name change. I don't see anyone bad-mouthing it. It's not a bad subclass, there's just more eventful subclasses to talk in recent UA.
I don't think anyone really hates the subclass, it's just not necessary to talk about because we all know that it's coming soon. (About 5 weeks until it's officially released.)
It does step on the toes of the Devotion paladin a bit, but so does the Conquest paladin with the Oathbreaker and Vengeance paladins. Just like the Grave domain cleric steps on the toes of the Death domain cleric, or the Blades bard to the Valor bard. Things can overlap without it making another option null, but the community seems to freak out when something like this happens.
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Well, the subclass is coming to 5e in the form of the Oath of Glory paladin in the Theros book. I don't think there's a lack of love for it, it's a fine subclass, it's just that there's not much about it worth talking about. I really like it. I can't wait to see the changes made to it in the final version besides the name change. I don't see anyone bad-mouthing it. It's not a bad subclass, there's just more eventful subclasses to talk in recent UA.
I don't think anyone really hates the subclass, it's just not necessary to talk about because we all know that it's coming soon. (About 5 weeks until it's officially released.)
It does step on the toes of the Devotion paladin a bit, but so does the Conquest paladin with the Oathbreaker and Vengeance paladins. Just like the Grave domain cleric steps on the toes of the Death domain cleric, or the Blades bard to the Valor bard. Things can overlap without it making another option null, but the community seems to freak out when something like this happens.
Hi again Levi,
gotta agree with your statement about overlaps. Personally I’m not sure why people are thinking it’s the same as devotion. It’s now called the Oath of Glory, as it’s more morally ambiguous. Devotion requires, to make obvious things obvious, devotion. You have to be that pure of spirit righteous holy warrior. Glory takes it to a different place. You don’t need to be pure or just. Become a legend. Hone yourself and earn your place in the stars. It’s very much a self-obsessed oath. Where Devotion is more about tempering your urges, Glory seems to almost encourage it.
Yes, I agree completely. This is the kind of paladin that bards sing stories of. They're the ones who'd have an entourage following them from city to city, telling tales of his great feats. This definitely feels like Hercules or Perseus in D&D terms. They would encourage these tales of greatness, because they'd believe them. They're self-centered, probably not that intelligent, and very well spoken. This paladin should have the Inspiring Leader feat, and be focused and centered around utter combat obliteration.
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I'm probably a little late to the party, but I honestly think that this subclass is pretty decent. It solves many of the Paladins 'issues' (lack of range, reliance on crits, etc.) through its oath spells and Channel Divinity. I also like how all of its features combo into themselves. At 15th level, you could cast Haste before the encounter starts, activate Channel Divinity on your turn, and then attack 3 times with an increased crit rate. If you crit, you can heal or frighten everyone around you. On top of that, you can use Glorious Defense when it's not your turn. If the attack activates, and if it crits, you get to use Mighty Deed again.
Additionally (not that many campaigns ever get this far, but whatever) you get once per round legendary resistance at level 20...for ten minutes. You get a feat only Legendary monsters have for 10 minutes.
As for the roleplay mechanics, I actually liked the Heroism flavor. You are given a divine calling to do 'Paladin stuff'. It does have slight overlaps with Devotion, but I think it could be differentiated enough to make it fun. I picture Devotion Paladins as more of the Superman or Optimus Prime figures (doing good for the sake of doing good). Heroism Paladins seem to me like Allmight from MHA or Naofumi Iwatani from Rising of the Shield Hero. Growing stronger in order to inspire/protect others. I think the rename will make this subclass more interesting with the moral ambiguity of 'glory'.
Personally I think this is one of the better UAs that has come out recently, and I can't wait for the official version.
It is very good at being a paladin. My player who played a paladin loved their abilities, but hated that he was useless at range. He's a monster in melee, dealing more than 100 damage on average every round, but once melee started, they'd normally average around 20 damage. They didn't like this, so they went through the trouble of learning how a gun worked, getting higher DEX, and enchanting the firearm in order to be able to work in ranged combat.
This paladin subclass solves those problems easily. This is one of my favorite paladin subclasses ever.
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I'm actually using this subclass for my next character (A LG Zariel Tiefling) and I'm really looking forward to how this subclass lines up with her backstory and motivations. Also, the synergy of both the subclass and race don't hurt either. :)
There's nothing /wrong/ with it. It's got some nice options to it. I personally do not find it very interesting.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough through the forum posts, but it seems like more often than not, when paladin sub-classes are discussed or recommended, the Oath of Heroism is neglected. Is this because it's U/A? Is it like this for other classes as well?
I think Paladin is less popular to discuss, unlike Warlock. Yeah, I'd say people like giving real life experience with how their characters felt, rather than just be another noisy critic and U/A are new for most: not a lot of time to RP it through. Oath of Heroism looks strong, sort of pushed forward so Paladins didn't feel the need to go Warlock for hexblade. I'd say it's on par with Ancients and Vengeance in terms of power, but heck, that's just a feeling
Mostly because it's UA, yeah. UA options tend to be under or over powered, and either get updated and published or effectively dropped altogether. There's not much discussion of oath of treachery either, even though I think that oath has some pretty fun and interesting ideas to it. More so than heroism, tbh.
But as for heroism... the flavor and tenets are a bit 'generic paladin' for my taste. The spell list has haste and freedom of movement, which are both quite nice, but I'm not too impressed with the first and second level oath spells, which has you waiting until level 9 for relevant spell options. Expeditious retreat helps with maneuverability, which can be a weakness for paladins, but imo the concentration requirement on it is just too much. Peerless athlete is pretty meh as a channel divinity, but legendary strike is pretty good for crit fishing, particularly on a dual wielding or polearm master build. Especially nice on an elf dual shortsword build with elven accuracy, or a half elf spear build with polearm master, elven accuracy, and a single level dip in hexblade. Bonus points if you can convince a friend to play a wolf totem barbarian to give you advantage on melee attacks. With elven accuracy, advantage, and a bonus action attack from dual wielding or polearm master, you're looking at nine chances a turn to roll a 19 to 20 for critical smite damage, at least while legendary strike is up. The half elf, hex dip version can alternate between legendary strike and hexblade's curse to have the expanded crit range up against at least one enemy in nearly every fight.
Crit fishing also helps you trigger mighty deed more... except that mighty deed isn't that overwhelming an ability. The temp hp aren't much and don't scale, and the frighten condition is resisted by wisdom saves and only lasts a round. I would hope to see this feature beefed up significantly in a future update or final release, otherwise heroism is another paladin oath that I would tend to multiclass out of into warlock or sorcerer after grabbing aura of protection at level 6.
That said, if you do stick with the class, Glorious defense is pretty amazing. At will Shield spell PLUS a riposte attack? Nothing will want to attack you. Which means you really need to pick up Warcaster either before this or failing that with your level 16 asi. The bonus is keyed to your cha score, so again the hexblade dip is extra tempting, though for a regular strength based build the relatively common gauntlets of strength could serve the same purpose. Sadly no elven accuracy for such a build, though.
Capstone is great, as most paladin capstones are, but again I'd lean heavily towards the hexblade dip with this oath, which means never seeing that capstone.
so yeah. A decent crit-fishy paladin oath, though thematically I'm not sure if fills a place that devotion paladins don't aready fill, and mechanically crit fishy paladins are already pretty well served by oath of vengeance, especially as I'm not sure the level 7 feature is worth sticking around for, and even if you don't multi out most campaigns don't last long enough to see the actually quite good level 15 feature. If they beef up the level 7 aura, though, it could be pretty decent.
Still not as cool or interesting as the treachery paladin, may it rest in peace.
I would say it falls in a similar place as Treachery does with Oathbreaker. There are subtle differences thematically, but big differences mechanically.
Devotion is your classic paladin focused on serving his deity as the sword that destroys evil and bringing glory to that deity and protecting the innocent.
Heroism is still very much a classic paladin, but more focused on the people he is protecting and allowing (not propelling) the mythos of himself. Its as if "bravery" and "chivalry" is the deity this paladin serves. This to me is the folk hero background mixed with the paladin class, where as the devotion paladin is the acolyte background in the class.
Mechanically speaking they are similar, but with devotion more focused on a all around balanced half caster. Devotion can fit so many 2 tier roles of a party, off healer, buffer, frontliner, tank, off hand caster, face of the party (with need for high CHA stat for ANY paladin). Where as the heorism oath seems more focused on damage output and buffing (specifically frontliners). Again any paladin is pretty balanced, but each sub has medium focus on a certain theme and mechanical attribute in combat.
Well, the subclass is coming to 5e in the form of the Oath of Glory paladin in the Theros book. I don't think there's a lack of love for it, it's a fine subclass, it's just that there's not much about it worth talking about. I really like it. I can't wait to see the changes made to it in the final version besides the name change. I don't see anyone bad-mouthing it. It's not a bad subclass, there's just more eventful subclasses to talk in recent UA.
I don't think anyone really hates the subclass, it's just not necessary to talk about because we all know that it's coming soon. (About 5 weeks until it's officially released.)
It does step on the toes of the Devotion paladin a bit, but so does the Conquest paladin with the Oathbreaker and Vengeance paladins. Just like the Grave domain cleric steps on the toes of the Death domain cleric, or the Blades bard to the Valor bard. Things can overlap without it making another option null, but the community seems to freak out when something like this happens.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Hi again Levi,
gotta agree with your statement about overlaps. Personally I’m not sure why people are thinking it’s the same as devotion. It’s now called the Oath of Glory, as it’s more morally ambiguous. Devotion requires, to make obvious things obvious, devotion. You have to be that pure of spirit righteous holy warrior. Glory takes it to a different place. You don’t need to be pure or just. Become a legend. Hone yourself and earn your place in the stars. It’s very much a self-obsessed oath. Where Devotion is more about tempering your urges, Glory seems to almost encourage it.
Yes, I agree completely. This is the kind of paladin that bards sing stories of. They're the ones who'd have an entourage following them from city to city, telling tales of his great feats. This definitely feels like Hercules or Perseus in D&D terms. They would encourage these tales of greatness, because they'd believe them. They're self-centered, probably not that intelligent, and very well spoken. This paladin should have the Inspiring Leader feat, and be focused and centered around utter combat obliteration.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I'm probably a little late to the party, but I honestly think that this subclass is pretty decent. It solves many of the Paladins 'issues' (lack of range, reliance on crits, etc.) through its oath spells and Channel Divinity. I also like how all of its features combo into themselves. At 15th level, you could cast Haste before the encounter starts, activate Channel Divinity on your turn, and then attack 3 times with an increased crit rate. If you crit, you can heal or frighten everyone around you. On top of that, you can use Glorious Defense when it's not your turn. If the attack activates, and if it crits, you get to use Mighty Deed again.
Additionally (not that many campaigns ever get this far, but whatever) you get once per round legendary resistance at level 20...for ten minutes. You get a feat only Legendary monsters have for 10 minutes.
As for the roleplay mechanics, I actually liked the Heroism flavor. You are given a divine calling to do 'Paladin stuff'. It does have slight overlaps with Devotion, but I think it could be differentiated enough to make it fun. I picture Devotion Paladins as more of the Superman or Optimus Prime figures (doing good for the sake of doing good). Heroism Paladins seem to me like Allmight from MHA or Naofumi Iwatani from Rising of the Shield Hero. Growing stronger in order to inspire/protect others. I think the rename will make this subclass more interesting with the moral ambiguity of 'glory'.
Personally I think this is one of the better UAs that has come out recently, and I can't wait for the official version.
-Spectre
It is very good at being a paladin. My player who played a paladin loved their abilities, but hated that he was useless at range. He's a monster in melee, dealing more than 100 damage on average every round, but once melee started, they'd normally average around 20 damage. They didn't like this, so they went through the trouble of learning how a gun worked, getting higher DEX, and enchanting the firearm in order to be able to work in ranged combat.
This paladin subclass solves those problems easily. This is one of my favorite paladin subclasses ever.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I'm actually using this subclass for my next character (A LG Zariel Tiefling) and I'm really looking forward to how this subclass lines up with her backstory and motivations. Also, the synergy of both the subclass and race don't hurt either. :)
That's a strange character concept. I never really saw a tiefling as this subclass, but it's a cool idea.
(Also, it sucks that the book it's coming out in was delayed. I preordered the physical copy on amazon, so I'm going to get it late.)
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There's nothing /wrong/ with it. It's got some nice options to it. I personally do not find it very interesting.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I have for a long time been a fan of greek mythology and paladins, so if I were to ever play a Paladin, it would be this one.
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