So we've seen previews for presumably optional modified race rules to be released in the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (formerly Xanathar's Two: Electric Boogaloo). Meant to weaken racial stereotypes within the game and recognize adventurers as unique individuals who fall outside of their home culture's mainstream, or else they would have taken up roles within that mainstream rather than becoming adventurers to begin with. These changes include (though are not necessarily limited to, since we don't have the full rules):
Variant Ability Bonuses: if your race grants you bonuses to ability scores, you can apply those bonuses to whatever scores you wish rather than to the ones listed for that race. The only restrictions are that these cannot push a score above 20, and you cannot apply multiple racial ability bonuses to the same ability score - that privilege is apparently still reserved for Changelings who favor charisma.
Variant proficiencies: if your race grants you a bonus skill proficiency, you can apply it to a different skill or to a tool. If your race grants you a bonus simple weapon proficiency, you can apply it to another simple weapon or a tool. If your race grants you a bonus martial weapon proficiency, you can apply it to another simple or martial weapon or to a tool. If your race grants you a bonus tool proficiency, you can apply it to another tool or to a simple weapon. No word so far that I'm aware of on whether you can do any proficiency trades with racial armor proficiencies.
While these changes would have some significant potential ramifications for all classes, at least in games that they are used (in D&D all rules are optional rules, and fans of classic Tolkienian fantasy racial archetypes may not use these variants), these changes are likely to be especially relevant to paladins, as the class is more dependent than most others on multiple high ability scores. Any race being able to be a Strength/Charisma or Dexterity/Charisma race raises a whole lot of races that were otherwise rather suboptimal paladins up to top tier contenders. The proficiency changes, while not as big a deal, also still help paladins more than most. and has limited in-class skill access so any additional skill versatility is significant, and already has proficiency in all standard weapons and armors, so the ability to move such bonus proficiencies to tools lets paladins get at least some utility from those features, and for dexadins picking up thieves tools that's potentially *a lot* of utility.
I don't think any of my personal top tier choices get overshadowed or stop being top tier as a result. What makes these races top tier isn't that they just have the right ability bonuses, it's that they already combine those bonuses with additional stand out features. Races like Variant Humans, Fallen Aasimar, Half Elves (including scag variants), Tritons (in maritime games), and Eladrin, these all remain phenomenal choices for paladins. The only major change here is that races that were formerly only great choices for str paladins (eg Fallen Aasimar) or dex paladins (eg Eladrin), can now readily choose either.
So yeah, previous top tier choices all stay top tier choices under the new system, but a number of formerly high tier choices that had been coasting on having the 'right ability score bonuses' sink somewhat in the overall rankings now that any race can have the right bonuses. Examples include Dragonborn and Zariel Tieflings. Neither is a bad race for paladins under the new system - I don't think there *is* a bad race for paladins under the new system. These races in particular are buoyed significantly by their damage resistances, but that alone doesn't really raise them above the pack when it isn't coupled with restricted access the coveted weapon + spell stat bonuses.
On the other hand, a number of races & subraces with amazing racial features that were kept out of the top tiers for paladin races due to *not* having those stat bonuses suddenly shoot up into contention for best paladin races. The most immediate examples that spring to mind are the non-fallen Aasimar subraces. All Aasimar have amazing racial features for paladins, but protector and scourge Aasimar lacked the key boost to a weapon attack stat, which made them lag behind their fallen bretheren unless they dipped into hexblade for hex warrior. Now both suddenly surge to the forefront, as their distinguishing daily abilities are, if anything, arguably stronger than that of the fallen, at least for non-conquerors. Though admittedly scourge aasimar's damaging aura does suffer from a bit of anti-synergy with aura of protection, so of the three Protector Aasimar are probably now the strongest, even if all three remain excellent options.
Other races that suddenly become noteworthy paladin options include, but are not limited to:
High Elves, with a useful package of elven traits plus their free cantrip. Int based, but the best option - booming blade - doesn't even care.
Shadar-Kai - still not as good as Eladrin, since their racial teleport with bonus rider recharges on long rests instead of short, but necrotic resistance almost makes up the difference
Stout Halflings, with the fantastic halfling package plus resistance to a not-uncommon condition and damage type
Forest Gnomes, the amazing gnome cunning ability plus a useful cantrip in minor illusion. yeah, int based, but creative uses of that particular spell often don't call for saves anyway.
Aarakocra / Winged Variant Tieflings - at will flight is amazing, now with the right stats for dexadins (restrictions on the flight generally excluding heavy armor)
Yuan-Ti Pureblood: already crazy good for magic resistance, now with a bonus to your weapon stat so you can skip the hex dip if you want
Warforged: Welcome Back, Warforged Envoy! Integrated Protection still isn't quite as good as the playtest version... unless you actually find some magic plate, then it's even better. Warforged were never bad Paladins, particularly with a hex dip, but now they're downright great paladins, regardless.
Dwarves: everyone's hype about mountain dwarves, and sure, +2/+2 ability score bonuses is exciting and goes a long way. But with paladins already having armor proficiencies, and so far in the previews no way to swap those out for something useful, I'm inclined to give the nod instead to hill dwarves, with +2/+1 and an extra hit point per level. Or, if you don't think Sunlight Sensitivity will be a major drawback in your game, Grey Dwarves are really exciting, imo.
I'm sure this is only scratching the surface.
While there are a ton of specifics to look at, I do think there are a couple general trends that come out of this:
Reduced incentives to dip hexblade. Not /significantly/ reduced, hexblade is still a very strong multiclass for paladin, especially for the first level or two. Combining your weapon and magic stats frees up a lot of pressure on ASIs later in your character progression, and that's on top of really just a tremendous suite of other useful features that first level hexblade brings. But on top of that, races that previously granted bonuses to charisma but not to strength or dexterity were strongly incentivized to dip hexblade and to dip it early, as early as level 2. the ability to swap around racial ability score bonuses significantly reduces the pressure to dip hexblade early, and by the time your character would be feeling that pressure later on, you may have stumbled upon one of the strength-fixing magic items - gauntlets of ogre power or belt of giant strength - that more or less fixes the split stat issue altogether. This doesn't necessarily mean less multiclassing altogether, a lot of paladin guides recommended multiclassing out into sorcerer, bard, or warlock even before hexblades were a thing, but it might mean a bit less overexposure for hexadins specifically.
Much easier time for dexadins getting necessary proficiencies. Dexadin has been a strong if underrepresented option for paladins since day 1 of 5e, since dexterity is generally a stronger and more versatile score then strength. But a fair bit of that strength is tied into skill and tool proficiencies, specifically stealth, acrobatics, and thieves tools, that paladins can have a bit of a hard time grabbing. All paladins appreciate easier access to perception, but for dexadins specifically easier access to stealth, acrobatics, and thieves' tools is huge. Dexadins also arguably benefit more from the versatile stat bonuses than strength paladins, since dexadins have a harder time multiclassing and thus often didn't have the option of hex dipping to fix their stat issues.
No more low tier racial choices. Paladins are a strong class by default, and their only real hang up is the multiple ability score dependency thing. A race could grant bonuses to your weapon stat and charisma and literally nothing else and be considered a mid tier choice. Every race does that now. Some of the criticism about the variable racial stats in Tasha's I've heard have been from role-play types frustrated with roll-play types over-emphasizing stat bonuses and mechanical optimization. I can understand that frustration, but the net effect of this change is a dramatically flattened tier list for races, particularly for highly stat dependent classes like paladin. Dedicated optomizers will still ferret out the 'best' choices, but players who lie in the middle - who care about narrative concepts but also worry about mechanical effectiveness - are much more free to choose their characters race based on narrative priorities without worrying about mechanical implementation.
A general look at paladin racial tiers. This is where they stood before Tasha's, or where they'll stand in games that don't use Tasha's:
Top Tier: Races with bonuses to both charisma and one of the weapon attack stats AND additional strong racial features for a paladin, including Vuman, Half Elf, Fallen Aasimar, Triton, Eladrin, Lightfoot Halfling.
High tier: races with either bonuses to both charisma and one of the weapon attack stats but relatively few or less useful racial features OR races with bonuses to just one of the preferred stats plus additional strong racial features. eg Dragonborn, Zariel Tieflings, non-Fallen Aasimar, Yuan-Ti Pureblood, etc
Mid Tier: Races with bonuses to just Strength, Dex, or Cha,
Low tier: races with neither bonuses to charisma nor a weapon attack stat.
Vs. With Tashas:
High Tier (formerly top tier): Races with especially strong or plentiful racial features
Mid Tier (formerly high tier): Everyone else.
No low tier, and, at first glance, insufficient mechanical distinction to separate a top tier our of the high tier, though I could be proven wrong in that, as some races to get benefits that are so good (vuman, yuan-ti) or so plentiful (aasimar) that they might still stand out above the rest.
...
So those are my thoughts on the Tasha's race changes as they relate to paladins. What does everyone else think? Are there any races that you might want to play as paladins under these rules that you wouldn't have before, or that you would build differently under these rules?
Kobolds now make fairly good DEX-based Paladins if Pack Tactics doesn't change in Tasha's.
Bugbears are also nice, with increased reach, Stealth, and bonus damage on surprise attacks. Adding a layer of smite damage means serving up s*** sandwich to your foes becomes that much easier.
Githyanki psionics make for unusual but effective Paladins now that the WIS bonus can go towards CHA instead.
Pack Tactics for Kobolds is tied to Volos, which was just erratad. If PT was going to change then it should logically have been changed there and not in Tashas.
Half-Orcs were already pretty good for Paladins, 15 into Str, Con, and Cha, 8 into everything else. Now you can choose whether your +1 goes into Con or Cha.
Actually they're perfect just the way they are. A little mentally slow, but great at crumping heads.
As you say, the Protector Aasimar is now a great choice instead of just a good choice. Your choice whether you want to make him a Dex Paladin or a Str Paladin. With more flexible stats yes, people will be more likely to go Hexblade because they want to be a Hexblade, not just because it mechanically benefits your character.
That said, you could always swap out language and tool proficiencies in your background (p125 PHB) so I've never made a high dex character that wasn't proficient in stealth and thieves' tools.
Unfortunately the tasha's rules are written in such a way that if you trade multiple racial stat bonuses for other bonuses then you cannot stack those bonuses on the same stat, even if the original racial stat bonuses could stack that way. As such, changelings can still have +3 charisma if they want, but they cannot have +3 to any other stat.
Of course, if you were going to stack +3 to any single stat as a paladin, it would probably be charisma anyway, so changelings remain as compelling a paladin option as they ever were. IE still ever so slightly behind variant humans, half elves, Aasimar, Tritons (in maritime games), and Eladrin, but very very close all the same. Starting with no more than a +2 bonus in strength or dex means you'll probably want to dip into a hexblade multiclass early on, unless you think your DM is likely to drop gauntlets of ogre power or a belt of giant strength in the first few levels. But hexblade is a strong multiclass option for paladins regardless, and changeling traits are pretty cool and interesting in role play situations.
As is changeling society in Eberron, particularly vis a vis the shared personas thing. In changeling communities, for instance, Old Ben might be the shop keep, but it might be a different "Old Ben" each day, with whatever individual changeling happens to be tending the counter taking on the Old Ben face and persona while working the job. For a paladin, you could imagine a traditional changeling folk hero, with any changeling who wanted to live up to that ideal also taking on the name and persona associated with it. Or a 'Dread Pirate Roberts' situation, with successive generations of apprentices/squires/side-kicks taking on a singular heroic identity as the heroes who trained them retire. You also have to think about how the characteristics that changelings would find to be heroic would vary from the traditional heroic tropes of human society. In particular, you might look to build a more flexible, medium armored dexadin rather than the traditional heavy armored strength paladin, or you might look into multiclassing with bard - though the paladin multiclassing requirements make that somewhat difficult, particularly if you do want to stack those charisma bonuses.
Regardless, there's lots of great mechanical and narrative possibilities with Changeling Paladins, but Tasha's doesn't really add to or change them in any meaningful way, so we could make a separate thread if you want to discuss them further.
So we've seen previews for presumably optional modified race rules to be released in the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (formerly Xanathar's Two: Electric Boogaloo). Meant to weaken racial stereotypes within the game and recognize adventurers as unique individuals who fall outside of their home culture's mainstream, or else they would have taken up roles within that mainstream rather than becoming adventurers to begin with. These changes include (though are not necessarily limited to, since we don't have the full rules):
While these changes would have some significant potential ramifications for all classes, at least in games that they are used (in D&D all rules are optional rules, and fans of classic Tolkienian fantasy racial archetypes may not use these variants), these changes are likely to be especially relevant to paladins, as the class is more dependent than most others on multiple high ability scores. Any race being able to be a Strength/Charisma or Dexterity/Charisma race raises a whole lot of races that were otherwise rather suboptimal paladins up to top tier contenders. The proficiency changes, while not as big a deal, also still help paladins more than most. and has limited in-class skill access so any additional skill versatility is significant, and already has proficiency in all standard weapons and armors, so the ability to move such bonus proficiencies to tools lets paladins get at least some utility from those features, and for dexadins picking up thieves tools that's potentially *a lot* of utility.
I don't think any of my personal top tier choices get overshadowed or stop being top tier as a result. What makes these races top tier isn't that they just have the right ability bonuses, it's that they already combine those bonuses with additional stand out features. Races like Variant Humans, Fallen Aasimar, Half Elves (including scag variants), Tritons (in maritime games), and Eladrin, these all remain phenomenal choices for paladins. The only major change here is that races that were formerly only great choices for str paladins (eg Fallen Aasimar) or dex paladins (eg Eladrin), can now readily choose either.
So yeah, previous top tier choices all stay top tier choices under the new system, but a number of formerly high tier choices that had been coasting on having the 'right ability score bonuses' sink somewhat in the overall rankings now that any race can have the right bonuses. Examples include Dragonborn and Zariel Tieflings. Neither is a bad race for paladins under the new system - I don't think there *is* a bad race for paladins under the new system. These races in particular are buoyed significantly by their damage resistances, but that alone doesn't really raise them above the pack when it isn't coupled with restricted access the coveted weapon + spell stat bonuses.
On the other hand, a number of races & subraces with amazing racial features that were kept out of the top tiers for paladin races due to *not* having those stat bonuses suddenly shoot up into contention for best paladin races. The most immediate examples that spring to mind are the non-fallen Aasimar subraces. All Aasimar have amazing racial features for paladins, but protector and scourge Aasimar lacked the key boost to a weapon attack stat, which made them lag behind their fallen bretheren unless they dipped into hexblade for hex warrior. Now both suddenly surge to the forefront, as their distinguishing daily abilities are, if anything, arguably stronger than that of the fallen, at least for non-conquerors. Though admittedly scourge aasimar's damaging aura does suffer from a bit of anti-synergy with aura of protection, so of the three Protector Aasimar are probably now the strongest, even if all three remain excellent options.
Other races that suddenly become noteworthy paladin options include, but are not limited to:
I'm sure this is only scratching the surface.
While there are a ton of specifics to look at, I do think there are a couple general trends that come out of this:
A general look at paladin racial tiers. This is where they stood before Tasha's, or where they'll stand in games that don't use Tasha's:
Vs. With Tashas:
No low tier, and, at first glance, insufficient mechanical distinction to separate a top tier our of the high tier, though I could be proven wrong in that, as some races to get benefits that are so good (vuman, yuan-ti) or so plentiful (aasimar) that they might still stand out above the rest.
...
So those are my thoughts on the Tasha's race changes as they relate to paladins. What does everyone else think? Are there any races that you might want to play as paladins under these rules that you wouldn't have before, or that you would build differently under these rules?
Arrakokra, take that +1wis, and put it into Cha for my OoV paly double-whipper
2014 5E mostly
3.5 maybe.
Kobolds now make fairly good DEX-based Paladins if Pack Tactics doesn't change in Tasha's.
Bugbears are also nice, with increased reach, Stealth, and bonus damage on surprise attacks. Adding a layer of smite damage means serving up s*** sandwich to your foes becomes that much easier.
Githyanki psionics make for unusual but effective Paladins now that the WIS bonus can go towards CHA instead.
Pack Tactics for Kobolds is tied to Volos, which was just erratad. If PT was going to change then it should logically have been changed there and not in Tashas.
Half-Orcs were already pretty good for Paladins, 15 into Str, Con, and Cha, 8 into everything else. Now you can choose whether your +1 goes into Con or Cha.
Actually they're perfect just the way they are. A little mentally slow, but great at crumping heads.
As you say, the Protector Aasimar is now a great choice instead of just a good choice. Your choice whether you want to make him a Dex Paladin or a Str Paladin. With more flexible stats yes, people will be more likely to go Hexblade because they want to be a Hexblade, not just because it mechanically benefits your character.
That said, you could always swap out language and tool proficiencies in your background (p125 PHB) so I've never made a high dex character that wasn't proficient in stealth and thieves' tools.
Changelings! +3 to any stat! 2 skills of your choice. Best race for any build, any class.
Unfortunately the tasha's rules are written in such a way that if you trade multiple racial stat bonuses for other bonuses then you cannot stack those bonuses on the same stat, even if the original racial stat bonuses could stack that way. As such, changelings can still have +3 charisma if they want, but they cannot have +3 to any other stat.
Of course, if you were going to stack +3 to any single stat as a paladin, it would probably be charisma anyway, so changelings remain as compelling a paladin option as they ever were. IE still ever so slightly behind variant humans, half elves, Aasimar, Tritons (in maritime games), and Eladrin, but very very close all the same. Starting with no more than a +2 bonus in strength or dex means you'll probably want to dip into a hexblade multiclass early on, unless you think your DM is likely to drop gauntlets of ogre power or a belt of giant strength in the first few levels. But hexblade is a strong multiclass option for paladins regardless, and changeling traits are pretty cool and interesting in role play situations.
As is changeling society in Eberron, particularly vis a vis the shared personas thing. In changeling communities, for instance, Old Ben might be the shop keep, but it might be a different "Old Ben" each day, with whatever individual changeling happens to be tending the counter taking on the Old Ben face and persona while working the job. For a paladin, you could imagine a traditional changeling folk hero, with any changeling who wanted to live up to that ideal also taking on the name and persona associated with it. Or a 'Dread Pirate Roberts' situation, with successive generations of apprentices/squires/side-kicks taking on a singular heroic identity as the heroes who trained them retire. You also have to think about how the characteristics that changelings would find to be heroic would vary from the traditional heroic tropes of human society. In particular, you might look to build a more flexible, medium armored dexadin rather than the traditional heavy armored strength paladin, or you might look into multiclassing with bard - though the paladin multiclassing requirements make that somewhat difficult, particularly if you do want to stack those charisma bonuses.
Regardless, there's lots of great mechanical and narrative possibilities with Changeling Paladins, but Tasha's doesn't really add to or change them in any meaningful way, so we could make a separate thread if you want to discuss them further.